City of Fire (City Trilogy (Mass Market)) (21 page)

There were lines of passengers at the various airline counters and another crowd standing around the platform where various dignitaries in suits were welcoming Roland. Badik stood behind him. Off to one side was the band and the honor guard, all in tropical white uniforms and enough brass and gilt braid to outfit a temple. On their heads were wide-brimmed pith helmets from which large red plumes rose.

When she felt Kles stirring restlessly, Scirye put a hand on her coveralls over the spot and he grew still. She hoped no one had noticed, but a four-foot-high gecko in a pillbox cap looked at her curiously as he opened the front doors for them.

Outside the sunlight filled Honolulu like warm water in a bowl so that Scirye almost felt as if she were bathing rather than walking. She opened her coveralls immediately and Kles gratefully slipped up to her shoulder, where he began to groom himself.

After the long, cramped trip in the plane hold, they were all grateful to be free and their steps became more lively. Even Bayang felt relaxed enough to play the tour guide. Explaining that she had been here on other assignments, she briefly pointed out the sights.

Waikiki Beach spread out before them in a broad, gleaming crescent of sand. The ocean rolled onto it in bright sapphire waves. And on the crest of the waves men and women were riding on long, wooden boards.

“That looks like fun,” Leech said.

“If you like being a shark buffet,” Koko said.

“How do they do that?” Scirye said, amazed.

“You have to ride with the waves, and that takes courage as well
as balance,” Bayang said as she tried to select a place for their ambush. “If you try to fight the waves, you drown.”

Several miles in the distance, the Royal Sheraton Hotel rose like a pink palace among the little houses and palm trees, but just six blocks away was the marina where yachts bobbed majestically. There was one large white one big enough to be an ocean liner. In the boulevard next to them, cars, taxis, and buses flowed in both directions while dolphins on wheeled carts playfully darted about the slower-moving vehicles.

While Bayang continued her search, Scirye began one of her own for a pay telephone. If she could find one, perhaps she could borrow enough money to call the consulate. She pivoted slowly, her eyes passing over several peddlers in Hawaiian shirts and shorts on the sidewalk, pestering the passengers as they left the terminal and boarded taxis.

The most persistent was a little elderly lady in a tentlike muumuu that hung loose on her bony frame. The print was of bright red and yellow huge tropical flowers. On her head was a straw hat that looked like an upside-down bowl. Scarlet and saffron feathers adorned the rim and around her neck was a necklace of puka shells and some large pendant, though Scirye could not make out the design.

Like an elderly canary, she hopped about, thrusting a piece of cardboard first at one tourist and then another. Attached to the cardboard were crude earrings. “You buy, eh?” she chanted, her voice rising and falling musically. “I so, so hungry.”

“Those are nothing but fishhooks and feathers,” a female tourist said, and made shooing motions with her hands. “Go off and catch a fish.”

Other tourists made a point of sidestepping around the desperate woman. She turned and held out her trinkets toward Scirye and her companions. “You buy, you buy. Your Auntie, she so, so hungry.”

Scirye remembered that she had no money—she couldn’t have called home anyway. However, she did have one thing. And that would be Tumarg, too. Pivoting, she jerked her head at Koko. “Give me the candy bar.”

“What candy bar, girlie?” Koko asked innocently.

“There were six candy bars and I saw you pocket the extra one,” Scirye said, holding out her hand commandingly.

Leech nudged his friend. “Give it to her.”

“But—,” Koko protested.

“Just do it,” Leech said, “or we’ll be arguing all day with the junior Amazon.”

Grumbling, Koko dug out the candy bar, partly melted from being in his pocket. “A guy’s got to stay in practice or he loses his touch.”

“Once a thief, always a thief,” Kles declared.

“I was going to share it with everybody,” Koko insisted, though from the expression on Leech’s face, not even his best friend believed him.

Scirye strode over to the old peddler. The girl gave a little bow and presented the candy bar in both hands as if she were an ambassador presenting tribute to an empress. “Here, madam. It’s a small enough token, but I hope you’ll take it in friendship.”

The old lady took it timidly. “T’ank you.”

While they were distracted, a voice growled behind them, “Don’t move.”

Scirye turned her head with a frown.

A huge white shark with stubby legs and short but muscular arms glared at her. His hide glistened like moist sandpaper and his gills made slushing sounds. “You come with us now,” he said. “We’re going to show you some of the sights.”

Behind him were a half dozen smaller gray sharks. One of them snickered, “The last ones you’ll ever see.”

Scirye

“Into the alley.” The white shark jerked his huge head toward a narrow lane between a T-shirt store and a bar. “Why should we make killing convenient for you?” Scirye demanded. Before she even had a chance to think, her body responded as Nishke had trained her to do—spreading her legs slightly and shifting her weight so she was balanced on the balls of her feet.

“Fine. We don’t care if these other folks get hurt, too.” The white shark nodded to the tourists crowding the pavement.

And that would not be Tumarg. Reluctantly, Scirye faced the alley.

Bayang was by her side. “When I give the word,” the woman whispered softly to the children, “break into a run and then form a semicircle behind me. If I have to transform, it’s better if no one else but them sees me.”

Scirye took heart. Bayang was a dragon, after all. If she was with them, then things were bound to turn out all right.

So, though she hated to turn her back on the sharks, she did as she was told and walked with the others. Behind them, the sharks’ tails rasped against the pavement as they waddled in the rear.

Scirye saw that the alley ended in a brick wall; they would be trapped. On the other hand, the narrow alley would allow only a few of the gang to attack at any one time, so their advantage in numbers would be neutralized.

She tried to remember all the combat tips that Nishke had shown her as she walked along the stained concrete floor, past a row of smelly garbage cans and over a metal grate, into which dirty brown water trickled from a puddle.

“Now,” Bayang said and they ran, stopping and turning at the brick wall. Scirye flung open the bundle so that the axes clattered onto the ground. At the same time, Kles sprang into the air, ready with the claws of four paws and a deadly beak. Leech dropped the rope coils and then raised an axe.

The gang didn’t seem the least bit frightened by the threat. Instead, the sharks smiled greedily when they saw the gleam of gold. “A bonus to boot,” the white shark said, exposing what seemed to Scirye like rows and rows of fangs.

Scirye placed herself on Bayang’s right side just a step behind her, while Leech and Koko took the left.

“Who sent you?” Bayang called to the gang. “Was it Roland?”

“You been making a lotta trouble for him,” the white shark said. At a jerk of his hand, two of the gang started forward.

Scirye took her stance and gripped her axe tightly. Overhead, she heard the flapping of wings as Kles gained some height in order to dive faster. Bayang’s back tensed as if she were getting ready to change. These thugs were about to get a nasty surprise.

Suddenly the crazy old peddler appeared at the mouth of the alley. “You buy, you buy?” she asked in a high, cracked voice.

Scirye waved at her anxiously. “For your own sake, go.”

“Auntie,” the old lady corrected her as she shuffled into the alley. “I your Auntie.”

“Auntie,” Scirye said quickly. “Please leave.”

“You good-good girl,” Auntie nodded. The feathers on her strange hat fluttered vigorously.

“Yeah, and see what that’s going to get her,” Koko grumbled.

From a sleeve Auntie took the candy bar Scirye had given her. Flourishing it over her head like a sword, the old woman shuffled forward in her rubber flip-flops, the sandals hitting her heels with each step.

Suss. Slap. Suss. Slap.

The sound reminded Scirye of a giant serpent sliding on its belly. The stunned sharks parted on either side until she was between them and Scirye and her companions.

“Get lost,” the white shark said, shoving the little old lady hard. He seemed surprised when she did not fall to the concrete, but remained standing. He pushed even harder, but he might just as well have been pushing against a marble column.

Auntie squinted up at him from under the rim of her hat. “But you”—she frowned—”you bad-bad boy.”

“You don’t know how bad,” the white shark said, and flipped his wrist so that the blade of a gravity knife flicked outward.

“Hey, bad boy.” Auntie seemed amused. “What you gonna do with that toothpick?”

“Slice and dice,” the white shark said with a wicked grin. “Slice and dice.”

“I don’t t’ink so,” Auntie said with a shake of her head that sent the feathers fluttering. “Bad t’ings, dey happen to bad boys.”

Calmly Auntie unwrapped the candy bar. The heat had already made the chocolate mushy so it was easy for her to use the bar like a brush to daub the walls and alley. The white shark watched in astonishment while the gang members murmured nervously to one another.

Sensing he was losing control of the situation, he tried to grab her wrist. “You’re dead.”

Auntie smiled. “No, you dead.” And from her mouth came a series of clicks, rising and falling in tone from bass notes to high ones and then back down again.

For a moment, there was only the sound of traffic in the street, but then Scirye heard a scratching sound like thousands of matches being struck. It wasn’t loud, but it seemed to come from all around her as thousands, perhaps millions, of little legs skittered toward them.

The gang looked about uncertainly. Strange brown splotches began to appear on the red bricks and then pulse as the stains spread across the walls.

Scirye gazed in horrified fascination at the nearest one until she realized it wasn’t one spot at all but instead was a group of the largest cockroaches she had ever seen. Some were up to three inches long and they kept crawling from the cracks in the mortar between the bricks. More were streaming out of the grate in the alley floor in a steady flood until they were surrounded by the insects. Scirye felt as if she were in the middle of a sea of tentacles with the waves about to crash down upon them.

Auntie folded her arms. “Shame on you, pick on a weak old lady.”

Several of the gang were burbling in fear, and the white shark’s gill slits flapped open and shut as he stared at the bugs surrounding him. But he tried to tough it out. “I’m not scared.”

“Then you should be,” Auntie said and snapped her fingers.

From here and there in the alley came a rattling noise like beans
in a bowl, and the sound swelled in volume until it filled Scirye’s ears. The cockroaches were flapping their wings together.

At another snap of Auntie’s fingers, they launched themselves into the air. It was as if the floor and the walls were all collapsing.

A gray shark opened his mouth to scream and a stream of them entered his mouth, choking his cry. Another shark slapped his face and the sides of his head as cockroaches sought to enter his huge mouth and nostrils.

Koko was squatting, holding his hands over his head with his eyes shut. Kles had flown down to Scirye’s shoulder so he could spread his wings protectively over her mouth and nose. However, the insects flew past them. Even so, some of the flight paths strayed enough to hit them in their passage. It was like being grazed by bullets.

The insects covered each of the gang in a dark, wriggling skin so that not a hair or wart or an inch of hide could be seen. The white shark flailed his arms, taking a few stiff steps until he fell, and the cockroaches swept over him until he was simply a hump beneath the insect mass. His screams were suddenly muffled as insects filled his mouth. One by one, the rest of the gang plopped on the ground and disappeared under a living brown carpet.