All the Gates of Hell (12 page)

"I prefer 'Dragon Princess,' you oaf. My father is a king after all," the girl said.

Jin just stared. She did remember what Guan Yin had said about the person known as "Dragon Maiden," but she hadn't expected such a literal rendering of the name. She thought of many things she wanted to say, most of them questions, but what came out first was, "Wow, you can turn into a dragon! That is so cool!"

The girl frowned and shook her head. "Your pardon, Immanent One, but you are mistaken -- I don't 'turn into' a dragon. I
am
a dragon."

The old man groaned and Frank looked down at him. "I think he's regaining consciousness."

"He's likely to be a bit confused," Lung Nu said. "Things were a little chaotic, there at the end."

"Several disreputable young men ran past us," Jin said, "I assume that was your doing?"

"They were harming this gentleman. I intervened."

"Intervened and a half," Jin said, remembering the terror on their faces.

"Very timely," Frank said. "This man is the one who called our mistress. I assume you heard this call as well?"

She nodded. "The time of my arrival in this plane was nigh in any case. The surest way to find you both seemed to be that I simply go to where you two must surely appear." She glanced down at the old man. "Unfortunately, I may have been too late. He appears to be dying."

Jin reached for her cell phone. "I'll call..." She stopped. Both Frank and Lung Nu were staring at her, looking puzzled. "That's not why I'm here, is it?"

"If those brigands had killed him before you came to help him, then he would have been reborn here again and possibly gone through yet another lifetime to little purpose. He's ready to move on. You can sense that."

"Don' tell me what my life's about, boy."

The old man's eye's were open. He struggled to sit up. Lung Nu was closest, she went to help him but he pulled away from her. "What do you kids want?"

"Are you all right?" Jin asked, though that was just to be polite. Clearly he wasn't.

"Hell no. Those sorry-ass bastards kicked the crap out of me... Where'd they go?"

"I chased them away," Lung Nu said simply. "They won't be back."

"You? How in the hell... Wait. I remember...there was this big snake? No. That wasn't real. No big snakes, no ants crawling all over me. I got the horrors, that's all. My drinking is catching up with me."

Jin was close enough to smell his breath. "I'd say so."

He groaned. "Nobody asked you, missy."

"My name's Jin. I'm here to help you."

"Then buy me some proper sippin' whiskey. Hadn't had a taste of the good stuff since ninety-seven."

"You don't need it," Jin said.

"Don't tell me what I goddam need! Stupid bitch..."

Frank and Lung Nu glanced at each other. "Could there be a mistake?" Frank asked.

Jin just shook her head. There was no mistake. "What's your name?" she asked.

"Buster," he said. "And don't ask me if my last name is 'Brown' or I'll smack you one."

"Were you this polite to that gang? No wonder they beat the shit out of you."

"Thas' none of your damn business," Buster said. His tongue didn't seem to work right. Most of the words were getting slurred. Jin didn't think it was just the booze.

"Wrong," Jin said. "At this moment, it's as much my business as yours. Show me why you're so angry."

"Dammit, I said -- "

"Now, Buster."

Maybe it was the tone of command, which surprised even Jin, but Buster's mask of anger seemed to have shattered. He sat in the doorway looking old and frail and tired, his shabby clothes hanging off of him like rags on a bush. "Nothing you can do for me," he said. "If you kept them boys from hurting me...thanks. But please go away and leave me alone now."

"Can't do that, Buster," Jin said kindly. "I need to know what you're holding onto that keeps you mad at the world."

He laughed then. It turned into a harsh, rasping cough. "Old. No job. No family. Feet swollen, lungs rotten, liver poisoned, dick don't work no more...you keeping a list, missy? I got a ton of 'em."

"I'm not greedy, Buster, I'll settle for just one. The one that actually matters." She reached out and put her right hand on his shoulder. Buster tried to pull away but Jin held on, and his strength was no match for hers. After a time that seemed to Jin very long indeed but could not have been more than a few seconds, she let go. Touching Buster's life wasn't pleasant for her but her
Bodhisattva
mojo or whatever it was still worked fine. She knew what she had to do.

"This isn't about your liver, or feet, or even your dick. You've been waiting at least two lifetimes for me and almost went for a third. I owe you an apology for that. I hope you'll believe that I am very sorry for what I put you through."

Buster frowned. "What you talking about? I don't even know you!"

Jin touched him again, this time atop his filthy head as if bestowing a blessing. "Oh yes you do. Not my name, maybe, or even who I am. But you know why I'm here. Give me the bottle."

"I need it," he said simply.

"No, you don't," she said. "You keep repeating the same mistake. It's not the liquor, Buster -- it's the bottle."

"Bottle just holds booze," he said. "That's all it's good for."

"Bottle holds
you
," Jin said, "and that's not good for anyone." She held out her hand.

"Save the preachments, missy! I've gotten holy rolled by the best of 'em and I ain't impressed. You can't have my whiskey! It's all I got left."

"You mean it's all that's holding you here. Let it go."

He tried to pull away, but Jin was faster. She shoved him backwards, saw the bottle in an inner coat pocket and snatched it away.

"Why, you hateful bitch -- " He started for her and Frank and Lung Nu both took a step forward, but Jin waved them back.

"That's right, Buster. I don't 'do' kindness. I do this."

Jin flung the bottle against the brick storefront where it shattered into a thousand or more pieces. The whiskey ran down the bricks and puddled into the dirt. Buster's anger was gone. He was in tears now.

"That was all...I got nothing now!"

"Buster, that's what you had all along."

The old man looked puzzled for a moment, then another, then it was if a light bulb had gone off in back of his eyes. "Well, I'll be damned..."

He was gone.

"Not likely," Jin said, to no one in particular.

Better late than never to hear the truth, I suppose, but we've got a lot to answer for,
Guan Yin, Jin thought, for herself and all the Guan Yins who ever were or would be.

(())

Chapter 9

Jin was almost too tired to eat by the time they made it to Juney's, but that didn't stop her from tucking into a soyburger and fries when they finally showed up. Lung Nu and Frank sat at the table with her, but they weren't eating.

"I 'pose," Jin said to Lung Nu around a mouthful of burger, "tha' there's limits on what the Guan Yin who sent you here will let you tell me?"

"Correct, Mistress," Lung Nu said.

"Call me Jin," Jin said, glancing at the other tables. They were mostly empty this late in the day, but Jin didn't want to take chances. "You call me 'Mistress' around here and someone's going to get the wrong idea."

Lung Nu frowned, then shrugged. "As you wish...Jin."

Frank hadn't bothered to brief Lung Nu on the situation with the shadow as they walked to Juney's, except for one telling phrase, "She calls him 'Shiro' now," he had said. It didn't take a master detective to know that Lung Nu knew as much as Frank did about Shiro, and wasn't going to say any more.

"I would ask if you already know about the shadow, but of course you do. So. Frank doesn't eat. You don't, either?"

"We can," Lung Nu said. "Though, strictly speaking, it isn't necessary." She neither confirmed nor denied Jin's assumption about the shadow, but then Jin didn't need confirmation now.

"Did either of you notice anything strange about our encounter with Buster?"

Frank and Lung Nu exchanged glances. They actually looked perplexed. Jin almost smiled.

"No shadow," Jin said. "Shiro wasn't there. I can only think of one previous instance when that wasn't the case." She told them about the Lemon Man in Juney's earlier. Frank looked thoughtful.

"The only thing both instances have in common was that they both took place in Medias," he said.

Jin nodded. "Any idea why this might be? What's different about this particular hell?"

Lung Nu shrugged. "It's a fairly mild one as hells go," she said. "And it is the one in which you chose to incarnate. Other than that, I don't know. Perhaps he is constrained in some way?"

"I thought of that, but I can't imagine why. His scope of operation extends to almost all the hells, thanks to Teacher. He's come this way before."

Now Lung Nu looked puzzled. "Teacher?"

"Emma-O," Frank explained. "Teacher is his mortal form."

"Oh," said Lung Nu.

"While we're on the subject, I'm surprised you two didn't incarnate as well. Teacher said it had some advantages."

"From his standpoint, certainly," Frank said. "He was looking for you -- "

Too late he saw the warning in Lung Nu's face. Jin pounced on the slip. "Whereas you two were not. You knew where to find me."

Frank glared at Lung Nu, but finally shrugged. "Yes, we did."

"Guan Yin That Was implied as much," Jin said. "No point in sending either of you if it took a hundred years to track me down. Still, it's just nice to have confirmation, reluctant or no."

"You're clever," Lung Nu said admiringly, "but then I would expect no less. Just don't think you're going to trick me as easily as Celestial Youth tricks himself."

"Now wait a minute -- " Frank began, but Jin cut him off.

"Bickering? Is this any way for
Bodhisattvas
to behave?" Everything she had read about Enlightened Beings said they were above desire and human emotion, but in the short time that she'd known them, Lung Nu and Frank gave her the impression of squabbling siblings.

"It's impossible to remain in the cycle of Birth and Death and be unaffected by it," Frank said. "Taking corporeal form makes things bad enough even without actually incarnating. If I try hard enough, I can even convince myself that I'm hungry."

For a moment Jin could have sworn that Lung Nu wanted nothing so much as to stick her tongue out at Frank. Jin almost wished she had done so; it would have made Frank and Lung Nu both seem more like comfortable dinner companions than what they really were, and that was two beings of tremendous power and understanding temporarily slumming it in approximations of mortal form. Jin finished eating while Frank and Lung Nu waited patiently. "Unless you two have some insight you'd care to share, I need to decide our next step, yes?"

Frank and Lung Nu looked attentive, but that was all. "We await your will," Frank said.

Jin turned back to Lung Nu. "First of all, what should I call you? I'm sorry but, in this time and place, 'Lung Nu' sounds like a respiratory disease. I need something simpler."

"It's not actually my name," Lung Nu admitted. "More a description."

"You mean like 'Celestial Youth of the Treasure of Merit'?"

Lung Nu smiled as Frank scowled. "Something like that. My real name wasn't made for a human voice to speak. You may call me Ling, if you wish."

"That's a pretty name. Ling it is, so long as that's ok with you. Now then. I want you both to search for Shiro... and Ling, I know you know who I mean, so I won't bother explaining further. If you do have any questions, probably best to ask Frank. Find Shiro, preferably without letting him
know
he's been found."

"No questions, Mist-- I mean, Jin. We go."

Ling started to glow, but Frank put a hand on her arm before anyone noticed. "I believe Jin meant us to use the door," he said, trying not to smirk.

Ling cocked her head. "Really? How odd. Well...as you wish."

Jin watched them go. Whatever early questions she had harbored about Frank's motivations and loyalties, they were pretty much answered, and she saw no reason not to extend the same courtesy to Ling. Jin knew very well that the previous Guan Yin still pulled their strings. Jin only hoped that, in time, she could catch wise to precisely what strings were being pulled.

Jin checked the time, saw that it was almost midnight. Juney's would be closing in a few minutes. Jin laid a tip on the table and paid her tab on the way out.

I've got a dragon working for me
.

Say what she would about the entire situation, Jin still thought that this particular notion was pretty damn awesome. Jin wondered if Ling could breathe fire and was still thinking of a tactful way to broach the subject when she arrived back at her apartment. The message light on her machine was blinking, but she was too tired to deal with it. She did take a moment to check her email. Somewhere mixed in among all the penis and breast enlargement ads was a note from her mother:

SUBJECT: STATE OF ARRIVAL

Dear Lotus Blossom:

Arrived this morning. Sorry for the delay; I thought they were going to deport me directly but the Forces of Evil were nice enough to simply ask me to leave. Ok, so it wasn't a request, but that gave us some flex. Jonathan and I took a side trip to the Great Wall and then stopped in Japan on the way back. You should go, you know? The Great Buddha at Kamakura is really something. Anyway, come to dinner tomorrow night. Bring a date if you have one, and you darn well better.

-- Mom

P.S. You still think you're Guan Yin? Jonathan's a psychologist. He can help. Gives great back rubs too.

Jin sighed. At least she didn't say he was "great in the sack"; her mother's sex life was extremely high on the list of things that Jin most emphatically did
not
want to know about. She brushed her teeth and went straight to bed and, as before, lay there for some time while the noise of the day gradually subsided in her mind. She didn't go looking for the Guan Yin That Was this time, but she wasn't terribly surprised when the Guan Yin That Was came looking for her.