Silent Warrior (3 page)

Although shorter than the Pendray by an inch or two, and lacking a good thirty pounds of muscle, Hark seemed to set others off balance with his manic stream of words. Her muteness served a similar purpose. People didn’t know what to do with one or the other.

The Pendray shifted to block most of the doorway. “Way I figure, that money is mine. I know a Thief when I see one. You stole my gift and threatened Wu with powers that ain’t yours.”

As if putting up with the ignorance of a child, Hark shook his head. “She’s collared, dipshit.”

“No way. I’ve seen you fight before, bitch. You didn’t do that on your own.”

“I was verbally tormenting her, which can add vigor to anyone’s fighting style. On the other hand, I’m Sath, too. I’m
not
collared. And for the moment, all I’m taking is half of the four grand she’s got shoved in her shirt.” He glanced at Silence with a salacious yet annoyingly charming grin. “Don’t think I hadn’t noticed.”

“Not a chance,” said the Pendray. “Neither of you is getting out of here with my money.”

“Forget it, you Reaper piece of shit, or I’ll prove that I’m an
outstanding
Thief.” In a heartbeat, Hark’s smile became fixed and cadaverous. The tension in his lean body shimmered in waves she could almost feel. Cold waves. Powerful waves. “You’re not getting any of our cash, so fuck off and get out of the way.”

Silence had collected initial reasons to dislike the Sath stranger, but her respect for him increased tenfold. She permitted a tight grin and prepared for another fight—one that would make their tournament fight look like a good-natured scrap. Because despite outward appearances, this man Hark was no fool.

3

T
hey could kill the tall asshole. Hark enjoyed taking down arrogant idiots as much as the next guy, but what was the point? There were simply too few Dragon Kings left in the world. Maybe a couple thousand? Tops? The Five Clans were so secretive. To admit that his hesitation was a lingering kernel of morality irked him, probably as much as it irked the intriguing mute to fall on her ass.

“Forget it, Konnor,” said one of the human sycophants. “We want drinks and women.”

Another man, with meaty forearms and
really
unattractive chrome dental work, nodded like a lobotomized guard dog. “Yeah, these two won’t get far when Wu puts out word he’s pissed as all hell.”

Hark grinned, feeling bold and way too reckless. “Step out of the way, or this gets as ugly as the lot of you. My current favorite thought is crushing your pelvis and both femurs.” He met the Pendray named Konnor face-to-face. “Then . . . you’d be shorter than me because you’d be confined to a wheelchair. I’ll apologize now in case I don’t have the chance later—you know, when I’m laughing too much.”

“How the hell do you expect to do that?”

“I hid a
nighnor
in the alley. It’s the best. Who doesn’t love a skull encased in iron? It’s the weapon that keeps on giving for about three thousand years.” He shook his head sadly. “Those poor Egyptian slave bastards.”

“In the alley.”

“Yeah.”

“Outside the door I’m standing in front of?”

“You have a keen grasp of spatial dynamics.”

“And how are you going to get there, you thieving little fuck?”

“Dragon damn, you’re thick.” Hark glanced at the quiet woman, who had raised her brows in obvious interest. For her, that was practically flirting. “I just went four hundred rounds with this wild child, and we’re growing
very angry
.”

The Pendray growled with an animalistic power that began to coalesce in Hark’s bloodstream. A cloud of silken gray mist was gathering at the corners of his vision. He grinned when the woman adjusted her shield. Very nice. Defensive. Ready to do awesome, violent things. The best part was how her smile was broader now. That was like calling one tear a river, but it was a smile nonetheless.

“Anyway, I want a steak,” Hark said, ticking off the list. “A bed. This woman in bed with me. And I want a really good long fuck. So, I could rip your powers from your head while she castrates your buddies here. Or you can shrink away like teeny tiny cowards. Either way, let’s get on with it. She’s gonna be much harder work than the lot of you. I might need all night.”

The man had a fast swing. Hark would admit that. More like, he
had
to give him that after one punch sent him sprawling.

He rubbed his jaw, which hurt like a motherfucker, and laughed. Dragon damn, he loved making people lose control. Nothing better in the world.

That included sex. After all, what was sex but losing control?

However, a couple serious beatings hadn’t been on his agenda for the evening—if he was ever so stupid as to make agendas. Konnor drew back his leg. The kick was stopped dead with the clunk of heavy leather against metal. Boot against shield. The woman followed up the defensive move with a spin that landed her on the offensive. She caught one man after another across the mouth. The jagged shark-tooth serration made them
very
ugly and
very
bloody in short order.

From his position on the ground, Hark took a deep breath and let his gift take over. He became a Thief, which meant he gathered the Pendray’s berserker rage into every cell. Vaulting from the barroom floor, he landed square against Konnor’s chest. Momentum propelled them through the exit. They collided body to body on the brick alley. Hark scrambled away and stood. He never lied about something as precautionary as keeping his
nighnor
within reach of a gangbang-waiting-to-happen. People didn’t believe him because the ancient weapons were so rare, and because he sounded like a man prone to bluffing rather than brawling.

Too bad for them.

The skull felt right in his hand. Solid. Heavy. Deadly.

Konnor took one look at it and stumbled back, then loped down the alley.

“Toldja,” Hark said to himself, most satisfied by having broken the man’s pride.

The gray haze of Konnor’s rage obscured the neon techno-glitz of a thousand signs in Chinese and English, which advertised everything from ice to underage boys. Nothing in Kowloon was ever dark, which was a fine, fine thing.

He hated the dark.

Standing in the doorway with a different smile—perhaps genuine amusement—the woman watched him with her head tipped to the side. She’d strapped the shield across her back. Her body was haloed as if by the bloody rays of a metallic sun. The men she’d fought were nowhere to be seen.

“
Now
you show up. Take down a couple humans, did you? That’s all? While I was out here on my own, making a full-grown Pendray pee his panties and run away.”

She stepped out of the doorway. Without her silhouette, dingy light from the back of the bar spilled into the alley. She was ridiculously graceful. And calm. And self-possessed. Basically, despite the fact they’d been born to the same clan, they were entirely opposite. Manic to quiet. Blue eyes to black.

Man to woman.

Well, that had nothing to do with their shared clan.

“Time for that steak,” he said. “Or pig. Or whatever dead animal we can scrounge. You up for it? Wanna troll these bright and nasty streets for something tasty?” He lifted his brows. “Or maybe you want to find a hotel and
do
something tasty?”

She met him with as much arrogance and confidence as she had when facing Konnor. Her ankle must have been killing her, and would for at least another couple hours as supercharged cells and ancient magic took hold. Hark wasn’t hurting anymore. Damn, it was good to be a freak on the edge of extinction.

She smelled as bad as he did, which wasn’t particularly sexy. Sawdust and blood and metal. Yet she kept her black eyes on him as if she could solve any puzzle simply by staring it to death. Maybe she could. He’d seen stranger things, but he didn’t feel like being her experiment. Neither did he want her to leave. Leading with his dick wasn’t usually his MO. Their fight, however, had started the launch sequence. As soon as he’d mentioned fucking her, he hadn’t been able to get his mind off thoughts of making her gasp, moan, cry out.

The triumph of it.

At last she dropped her gaze. It felt like . . . relief. She’d elevated that spooky intimidation thing to the realm of pure genius. Instead she studied the
nighnor
. It was stupidly heavy. He liked the surprise of using it against opponents who assumed a wiry fuck like him couldn’t hold it, let alone wield it with any skill. Those opponents were now cripples.

She ran her hand over the weapon’s seductively glossy surface. A wistful look softened her angular features until she appeared less like an angered goddess and more like a woman, lovely and approachable. But if she was so approachable, why was he riveted to the spot, waiting for her to make the next move?

He rolled the unique weapon in his hands, petting it as she did. The iron surface was worn smooth by countless palms over unknowable years. A family relic—in that it must’ve belonged to some family, at some time.

Not his, naturally. His brother was long dead, and Hark’s only inheritance had been a bag of random junk and one fuck-you-up
nighnor
. Dragon damn, he hated being Sath. The other clans called them Thieves, but they might as well have dubbed them “Hoarders.” Trinkets, bobbles, artifacts—things he’d stolen and things he’d acquired legitimately, only to have a deal go through. He liked to reassure himself that his debts wouldn’t be debts anymore if he could bear to part with the junk. The truth was he owed more than he could pay without sacrificing life and limb. He hadn’t been fighting in that lowlife bar as a masochistic hobby.

The woman’s fingertips brushed his. This was way better than trying to buzz each other’s limbs off while writhing among lowly deceased rodents. Most things were. But this was especially . . .

Huh. The word was slow to come to mind.

Pleasant?

His thoughts had turned so damn syrupy that he expected a sweet taste when he swallowed.

“You could at least tell me your name. In my head I’m just calling you
her
,
she
,
that chick
, and some shit you probably don’t want to hear. Or more like, I don’t want to say them because, at last, we’ve achieved peace and harmony. It’s so new to me. I might be getting light-headed. Say something shocking so I can return to the unpredictable chaos of my life.”

She grabbed his hair with one hand, then slapped his cheek. “I’m called Silence,” she grated out. “Now please, for the love of the Dragon in the fiery Chasm, shut the fuck up.”

Hark opened his mouth to laugh. Another shadow in the doorway cut off what should’ve been a glorious release of tension and giddy triumph. Kang. And Wu. And another seven thousand guys. This woman Silence had probably shoved the limbs of Konnor’s comrades into boxes posted to Zimbabwe—guaranteeing a little alone time—but these hard-asses were a reminder that they’d lingered too long. They’d practically been holding hands in the shadows.

Hardly. Her fingers clenched his hair like talons, down to his scalp, and his cheek stung with a surprisingly erotic burn.

“Go,” she snapped, giving him a shove.

This time Hark
did
laugh. He laughed all the way down the alley.

Silence had noiseless footfalls, which was no surprise. She was agile, tall, and willowy, and she even managed to keep her shield quiet. The bruisers behind them were not so fleet of foot. Hark led the way out of the narrow crevice between buildings, which leaned like crooked teeth. Adrenaline became another wild ride. Fight or flight was a cliché, too, but it was well and truly true. Better to run than risk another beating. Beatings were no fun.

Well, except for that slap. Was she the type to crave a bit of rough?

He’d put faith in his luck when facing far riskier prospects.

For a reason he might never comprehend, Silence followed him when he veered sharply left. Maybe she knew Sham Shui Po, too. That was practical. Maybe she ran in a path that happened to match his. That would mean coincidence or destiny. He was willing to believe in his own luck, because most of the time he made shit happen by his own hard—or devious—work. But he wouldn’t
ever
give up his belief in free will. No one controlled his fate.

Maybe she just wanted a steak, a bed, and a fuck as much as he did.

He smiled again, dodging a pair of hookers in pigtails and four-inch thigh-high boots. A night full of neon beacons became his means of measuring progress and staving off the specters of the darkness. He hadn’t returned to his homeland in Egypt since he was a little kid, but he remembered its vivid glare. There, the sun became more than the sun,
greater
than the sun, as it reflected off mica, sand, and blindingly white buildings. Cairo didn’t know the meaning of the word
silence
—the constant chatter of a city. Kowloon, however frenzied, contained housing complexes so high and all-encompassing that sunlight never made it down through the towers.

No thanks.

He counted three streets up, two over, then past a hotel he knew housed a hentai fetish club in the basement. His lungs pumped exhaust-filled air. Silence ran like a gazelle at his side, perhaps in pure spite of her injury. He really hoped she had
some
weakness, other than an obvious phobia of vocal cords. The woman was too Snow White for his tastes, if Snow White looked like a warrior princess with spiked white-blond hair, a collar, and a sawblade shield across her back. Her golden pale skin practically glittered under the high-speed rainbows of flashing, smeared neon.

Sure, he had a destination in mind, but it was more fun to see if Silence—
how very original
—would follow him there. Or how long she’d run with him at all. Or if she’d call out, asking him questions.

So many possibilities. This had turned into an unexpectedly entertaining evening. He’d enjoy it while it lasted, pay off the most influential and violent of his loan sharks, and never step foot in fucking Hong Kong again.

He slipped to a stop on the far side of a pokey noodle shop that reeked of salt. And chicken.

“Our feast awaits.” He gestured to the eight-foot-wide concession stand trailer. “Only the best after a hard night of defying the odds.”

He stashed the
nighnor
in the knapsack he kept strapped beneath his faux army fatigues—the knapsack that hid all his magpie treasures. How many would he be forced to part with to get away from a city that sucked at him like quicksand?

Silence only shook her head, appearing as confused as he was. Why was she still there?

Hark didn’t know if he cared, so long as she stayed.

They had seven hours before dawn. She’d spoken, and he would get her to do it again.