"Branded Men In Chinatown"
May. 26th, 2022 02:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dochermes"Branded Men In Chinatown"
11/8/1940
I.
Laura Salerno had thought she was reasonably alert and difficult to take by surprise, but she gave a violent start and jumped back as a man in black stepped out of the narrowest of alleyways next to her. On this chilly November night, she was wearing an ankle-length black coat as part of her Sceptre outfit and her right hand whipped up from a pocket brandishing a strange device. One foot long, thin enough to wrap her hand around, it was a cylinder of copper-colored metal topped with a pale blue gem smaller than her fist. Laura held the Sceptre as if it packed the kick of a cattle prod.
The young man in a black chaffeur's uniform held up both leather-gloved hands in a placating gesture. Between the billed cap and the thick-lensed goggles, he was effectively disguised. "Easy. Steady there, Mrs Salerno. I'm a friend, not a threat."
"Oh yeah?" she retorted. "My friends don't jump out of the shadows and scare me out of my shoes!"
"Please, let us speak softly," he said. He seemed to be Asian, but not much of his face could be seen. "I have been searching for you. My boss says we are working on the same problem from different angles. It would be most productive if you and I helped each other."
Laura grudgingly lowered the Sceptre. In the light from a nearby streetlamp, she was revealed as a gorgeous woman about thirty, slightly above average height, with long wavy black hair down to her shoulder blades. As she had drawn her talisman, her coat had fallen back. She was wearing sky-blue slacks and a silk shirt of a bright canary-yellow hue, showing a solid bust ledge. Seeing Chen's eyes drawn to her breasts as if unwillingly, she smiled with wicked glee. "Oh, I think I know who you must be. You work with the Sting, right? You're called the Dragon of Twilight, no, Midnight. I've heard a LOT of gossip about you two."
"This is so. You have been prowling Chinatown for weeks now, trying to make alllies in your vigilante crusade." The Dragon of Midnight shook his head sadly. "I don't think you will ever get much deeper than you already have, Mrs Salerno. My people keep to themselves because of past injustice and they do not easily admit outsiders into their affairs."
"Wait. Who do you think I am again?"
"To the underworld and the police, you are called the Sceptre. But my boss has some skill at investigations. Your true name is Laura Salerno, widow of the late Ray Salerno who created that weapon you hold." He pointed a thumb at a black Lincoln parked on the next block down. "Will you accompany me? We have much to discuss. The threat of the Branded Men has brought us both out on this uneasy night."
"Hmph. I suppose." Laura placed her hands back into the deep pockets of her coat. "All right. I'll hear what you want to propose. Is that your car there?"
"Yes. The Dragonwing, it is called. Please."
The Dragon ushered her over and started to open the rear door for her, but the Sceptre went past it and got into the front passenger seat. "I'm not your boss," she explained, "Let's start off as equals."
As the Dragon of Midnight crossed around the long gleaming car to climb in behind the wheel, he said, "You might as well call me Chen. It might even be my real name, who can say?"
"Sure. I have to warn you that it's only fair if I find out who you and the mysterious Sting really are as well."
Chen Lee-Sun started up the engine, which ran so smoothly that Laura wasn't even sure it was on until the car eased away from the curb. On this foggy night with a faint cold mist in the air, few pedestrians were out and auto traffic was sparse. "It is a dangerous game we play, Mrs Salerno. Both you and my partner and I have made enemies who will kill us if they can."
"I'll tell the world," she said. "But please, call me Laura. I kept my married name after Ray died, but it sounds funny to hear someone call me that so often."
Watching him as he drove south past Central Park, the Sceptre smiled again with full red lips. "You're Chinese but to be honest you sound British to me? Are you from England?"
"Hong Kong. I suppose there is no harm in telling you that. When those damned Japanese started beating the drums of war, many Chinese tried to come here to America. I had lost my family. I had nothing keeping me at home, and I hoped to begin a second life here." He turned those unreadable goggled eyes on her as they turned a corner. "But I wish to hear more about you. That talisman you wield has this city's mobsters and petty crooks in an unroar. They're terrified."
"As well they should be," she said. "As you found out somehow, it was my husband who devised the Sceptre. Ray was a wild, roguish sort of fellow. I know he traveled all over, getting in and out of trouble. He was an explorer, a soldier of fortune, maybe a tomb robber. I suspect he had been married once before, or at least engaged. What he saw in mousy little me, I'll never know."
"Mousy...? Never mind. Please, go on about the Sceptre."
"Sure. Ray started accepting commissions from a man named Kenneth Dred. He's a scholar and expert on the occult. Ray sometimes went abroad to come back with rare books of mystic lore or odd little statues or ancient swords. On one of his trips, not longer after we had gotten married, he returned from God knows where with an Eldar travel crystal and a blasting rod made of Darthan gremthom."
"Really. Those are potent, each by themselves," the Dragon commented.
"You're telling me. Ray didn't know that the two types of magic don't mesh well at all. In fact, they're completely antagonistic. So naturally, being Ray, one night he fastened the Eldar jewel to the Darthan rod. Boom. After the explosion, when he stopped seeing double and could hear again, he found he had created something completely new in the Midnight War. The Sceptre. Occult experts say should have leveled our house, no one knows why the two power sources started to work together."
Pulling the device from her pocket again, Laura regarded it thoughtfully. Down one side was a series of five ivory buttons, and a rawhide strap had been added to its flat end to serve as a loop around her wrist. "Ray swore he should be able to move instantly from one place to another with it, but he never had the chance. So far, I've managed to make it emit different forms of energy... visible light, heat, even a concussion effect from kinetic energy. No teleportation, as the funny papers say. But I keep experimenting."
"If you do not mind unasked-for advice, great power should be used sparingly."
"Oh, that's true enough," she said. "Ray kept the Sceptre pretty much a secret. After his death, though, I was looking for some purpose in life. My family is comfortable, you might even say well off, so I didn't have to work. And Ray left me the house on Staten Island, so I could have been idle. But the way the world is going... I kept reading about 'mystery men' in the newspapers. Mark Drum. The guy named Sulak. You and your partner. And here I had this miracle in my hand."
Chen slowed and pulled over to an empty space at the curb. They were near the corner of Mott Street. "Chinatown seems oddly deserted tonight, Laura. Even deserted. We should take that as a warning."
"Like when you're out in the wilderness and the birds suddenly go silent," she said.
II.
When the Dragon of Midnight opened his door, Laura got out as well. Something is definitely in the air, she thought. Her grandparents were Sicilian and she had grown up hearing scary stories about 'la Strega' and vengeful ghosts and prophetic dreams. Thinking about such things made her skin crawl right then and there. The potent Sceptre in her hand was a great comfort. "You seem to know what you're doing," she said after a shudder. "Mind filling a gal in a wee bit?"
"Certainly. Have you ever heard of Gung Fu, that is, Chinese boxing?'
"No. Never."
"It's an Oriental system of self-defense. Many styles. I myself studied Wing Chun and Hung Gar."
"Ohhh," she said. "Like Jiu-Jitsu!"
The Dragon made a sound of complete disgust. "Hardly. Gung Fu is thousands of years old, the Japanese merely stole some of it from us. As they steal everything they know. Be that as it may, I have met a local Sifu, a teacher of Choy Li Fut. His real living is made running his restaurant, though, and I believe he can point us to the monster behind the Branded Men."
"Okay. Just so we're clear on this," Laura said, "the Branded Men are a bit of a mystery themselves. Some local Asians have started smuggling drugs, importing happy girls and doing serious robberies. A few of them have been found to have a weird sort of brand burned somewhere on them. Is that what you're after?"
"You have your sources, too, I see. Yes."
When she buttoned the front of her dark coat to cover the bright yellow shirt, then turned up her collar, the Sceptre was only dim dark shape in the night, as her new friend was. She had warmed up to this Dragon of Midnight quickly, she realized. He seemed a little stiff and uncomfortable with her, which she found endearing. Like a nervous boy on a first date. But then she had already done research on him and on the Sting when she had decided to join the amateur crimefighters' club. The pair had broken up more gangs and smashed more rackets than the public realized, working behind the scenes and not seeking publicity. "Okay then, Mr Dragon. I'm ready if you are."
"Come. This way. Let us duck into this doorway." They stepped back into the unlit recess of a gift shop that had evidently gone out of business. "Observe the restaurant across the street."
"Yeah, the...Crimson Bat? I've never eaten there. Being out all night chasing crooks has ruined my social life," she said.
"It is a name of good omen," Chen said. "In Cantonese belief, red is a color of luck and the bat brings health. Yet, when I last visited the restaurant, my hair stood up. I felt as if ghosts were floating around me. I was unnerved, and the owner could tell. So I decided to come back tonight and do some prowling. Are you with me?"
"Yes sure, but let me be honest. I've got a bad case of the willies myself. Something creepy is out and about tonight, no doubt about it."
The Dragon of Midnight surprised her by placing a hand on her shoulder. "Trust your instincts. We will stay alert. Observe the blackout curtains on the second floor?"
"Yeah, but there's a teeny bit of light peeking out of the window at the east corner. A hole, maybe. Someone is up at three in the morning."
"Follow me if you will." Chen darted nimbly across the empty street and flattened up against the restaurant wall near a small side door. Laura was right behind him. Next to a dent garbage can and some empty cardboard boxes, they waited and listened but no one seemed to be in the area. After a minute, she took a breath of relief and watched the Dragon take a ring of keys from inside the front flap of his chaffeur's jacket. "Schlage, very common," he said. There was a click and he pulled the door open to reveal complete darkness.
Slowly and carefully to make no sound, Laura and Chen entered. The Dragon of Midnight pressed a stud on his cap and his goggles showed a vague purple shimmer. The tiny bulb in the front of his chaffeur's cap ran on a battery and was not very powerful, but it gave off sufficient ultra-violet light that he could see well enough through the treated goggles. He reached behind him to take Laura's hand and she willingly went along with him. But she had given him her left hand. In her right, she grasped the Sceptre.
III.
At the top of the rickety wooden stairs, they heard noises of human activity. Footsteps, low voices, the rasp of metal scraping against metal. Under the door in front of then, a thin yellow line of light showed. After listening for a few minutes, Chen clicked off the ultra-violet projector in the his cap, turned the unlocked knob and strode into the room beyond as boldly as if he had been invited.
They entered a small cubbyhole which had been made by hanging heavy drapes from wall to wall. Seated at a desk, carving a piece of ebony with a thin curved blade under the brilliant light of a naked bulb, sat an elderly Asian man. His beard was a mere wisp hanging from his chin, and the hair on his head was also only tufts behind the ears and across the nape of his neck. Perhaps to compensate, a black skullcap covered his dome down to the shaggy eyebrows. He was also wrapped in a heavy cardigan sweater. The wizened face swung up to smile at the intruder.
"Ah, Fang Lung," he whispered. "Midnight Dragon. Somehow i am not surprised to see you appear before me."
Chen stepped forward. In the ominous black chaffeur outfit, his smooth movement hinted at strength and speed. "Ho Tat-Wing. You have dipped your toes in dark waters before."
"I seem to recognize your Gwei-lo companion as well. A most remarkable woman, from all I have heard. Please take these words to heart. Listen to an old man who has seen too much death and horror. Go home. Live long and peaceful lives."
"I wish," laughed the Sceptre.
"We are going through that curtain one way or another," Chen added. He clenched his hands together and made fists that crackled as the knuckles tightened. "There is no choice for us."
"Sigh. Very well. You will meet someone who can deal with your questions. I only hope you find the answers worth the price." Without rising, Ho swung his swivel chair and pulled a tasseled cord to drew the curtains aside to reveal the training hall. A single high-ceiling room of burnished plain wood, the Kwoon had a few thin mats on the floor but no other furniture. Along the far wall was a rack holding traditional weapons like staffs, tiger forks and spears. The only decoration was a framed painting of three ideograms and the outline of a rearing Mantis.
Eight young Asian spun around furiously at being revealed. They wore baggy silk pants and were bare from the waist up. Lean hard muscles gleamed with sweat. Two had been doing the 'sticky hands' exercise and their forearms were still pressed together. Two others held the wide-bladed Butterfly Knives. Those had made the faint clanging noise a second earlier. All glared at the intruders.
But Chen and Laura hardly noticed the students. It was the towering man over against the far wall who held their full attention as completely as if a snarling tiger had been crouched in that room.
Wu Lung was tall even for a Northern Chinese, wide-shouldered and deep-chested in a beautifully suit of brown silk. The legendary Dragon of War had an imposing leonine face under thick black hair slicked straight back. The long cat-green eyes narrowed and he smiled the true predatory leer of anticipation.
"You show unbearable gall in taking the name Dragon of Midnight," announced the sorcerer. His voice broke the tension which had held everyone motionless and the eight students moved into stances better suited to attack the intruders. "It is a name long honored in tradition! What is worse, you do not even hold the Dragon Pendant, which has been usurped by those filthy Brumal..."
"It is wisely said the Dragon Pendant seeks a worthy hand," Chen answered. He held up a gloved fist to make its point. "In time..."
The warlock took a single step forward and, although they were not aware of it, both Laura and Chen cringed back. The ancient spirit which inhabited the body calling itself Wu lung carried a charge of malevolent gralic force which crackled in the air like static electricity. Even his own followers gulped nervously and averted their eyes downward. "Ho!" he roared. "Come here."
At this time, the old man stepped into the training chamber and sank to one knee. "Forgive me, master. I thought it best to present these pups to you for your judgement."
"This I do not understand," said the Dragon of Midnight. "You were a man of honor, Ho. Black Mantis was a respected school. Why do you serve this tyrant? How did he break you?"
"Ah, it is not the elder's fault," Wu Lung interrupted. "Show him, Ho."
Meekly, the old man tugged off the black skullcap. There, high up on the bald forehead, a symbol had been burned into the skin to leave a permanent scar... a four-pointed star within a vertical diamond.
"Hah!" Wu Lung barked harshly. "You may go , Ho. As for you two, I know you have not heard of the Brand of Submission. Like the Dragon Pendant, it was missing for many years but now it is in hands which will use it well. Those I mark with its welt surrender their free will. They willingly obey my every word, slaves more subjugated than whip or starvation could equal. I will claim the two of you... the presumptuous youth who calls himself Dragon of Midnight and the weak white female known as the Sceptre. You will be useful indeed."
"In. Your. Dreams," Laura told him with deliberation. "It'll never happen." But as the last word passed her lips, the cold edge of a Butterfly Knife pressed up against her throat. One of the Black Mantis fighters had lunged up behind her and now held her with a strong arm around her right arm and with the sharp steel just nicking her skin over the carotid artery. Laura Salerno took in a breath but dared not move. With her arm pinned down against her side, she realized she could not use the Sceptre without blasting away her own leg.
"First, you will surrender that Sceptre to me," said the ancient sorcerer. "It is rare that a new talisman of great power enters the Midnight War. I wish to learn its possibilities. Imagine a Branded army under my command, absolutely obedient, swarming into a city in Europe or America, each man wielding a Sceptre! Give it to me."
"Wait..." she said. "Give me a second..."
"Your blood will paint the floor if you do not obey!" bellowed Wu Lung. "Halarim! Have I survived these thousands of years to banter with the likes of you?" He raised his hands, and around them haloes of lurid red energy hissed and swirled. The raw gralic force seemed eager to break loose and char Laura to a cinder.
"All right! All right. You made your point already. Sheesh." She reached over with her left hand to slip the rawhide loop from her right wrist. With an insolent twirl, she flung the Sceptre toward their enemy and Wu Lung deftly caught as if he had practiced doing so thousands of times.
"No! NO!" yelled Chen, still not daring to move as long as the Black Mantis fighter held that blade to his teammate's neck. "Do you realize what you've done?"
"She will learn soon enough." Wu Lung hefted the Sceptre in both hands, studying the delicate facets of the aquamarine-toned gem, the esoteric emblems etched into the coppery tube. He pressed down on one of the row of buttons to hear a click but no other result happened.
"Oh my God, wait a second!" screamed Laura. "You'll blow this whole building to hell and back. Wait. To use it safely, first you have to twist the jewel counter-clockwise one half turn. That's the safety."
"Really?" mumbled the warlock. He closed his long spidery fingers down over the blue gem and grasped it. Fifteen feet away, Laura Salerno smirked and concentrated the full force of her will. A shattering blast of lightning detonated in that chamber, turning everything incandescent blue, deafening and blinding everyone who had been watching. Thunder boomed back and forth between the walls. Thrown entirely off his feet, his hand mangled and torn, half his face seared away, Wu Lung slid on his back across the floor to slam up against the weapons rack.
III.
Releasing both his hold around Laura and his grip on his knife, the Black Mantis man cried out and pawed at his eyes. The Sceptre had turned her head away and opened her mouth wide to minimize the effects of the gralic blast. She tore away from her captor and dove headlong across the room, rolling on the floor as she seized her talisman from where Wu Lung had dropped it and she hopped back up again with the potent device in her grip.
But Chen had also burst into action. His eyes had been protected somewhat by his treated goggles. Although white spots danced in his vision and he head rang, he could function well enough to attack while the Black Mantis fighters were at a disadvantage. Fighting eighting trained martial artists was beyond any resonable hope, but with his opponents still confused and half-stunned, he had a chance. The Dragon of Midnight moved in close, grasping a man's hair and yanking his head to one side to expose the side of the neck. Chen's rigid hand went up and then chopped hard against that neck like an axe blade. Flinging the already dying fighter aside, Chen blasted a front snap kick to the next man's crotch that happened to connect perfectly. Doubled up in unbearable pain, that Black Mantis fighter fell to the floor and was out of the fight.
But the last student near him had by chance been looking away when the Sceptre had exploded. He had his senses. This man dropped into a back-leaning cat stance, his hands raised in claws ready to tear. Getting into that stance had been a mistake, though, because Chen was already moving forward and kicked at the ankle of the weight-bearing leg. Down went the Black Mantis man in a graceless thud, and even as he was leaping back up, the Dragon of Midnight met him with a tight backfist that snapped the man's head around one hundred and eighty degrees.
All of this had taken only a few seconds. Laura Salerno had backpedaled until she bumped up against a wall. In her hand, the Sceptre shimmered with a faint bluish gleam. The remaining Black Mantis fighters were forming a circle around her, two of them brandishing the long staffs and one swinging a pair of the wide Butterfly Knives. Their faces were taut and furious as they advanced a step closer.
"I'm not taking any chances with you jokers," she shouted. "You guys are dangerous. This is your only warn--" But in the middle of that word, she saw the martial artists rush directly at her. Laura swung the talisman in an arc from left to right. Again, the intolerable flash of gralic force detonated to throw the oncoming men backward in broken heaps. She lowered the device and her mouth hung open in dismay. They were all dead. Smoke curled up from their contorted bodies.
"I...I didn't really want to do that," she said but she couldn't hear her own voice. Her head was pounding so hard she felt dizzy.
Chen stumbled, fell to his knees and painfully got up again. He had seen her raise the Sceptre and had covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, but even so he felt as if he had been run over by a city bus. "I don't think my hearing is ever going to be the same," he thought he said but he couldn't be sure. The Dragon of Midnight swung to look around the chamber and saw through the open curtain that the hallway door had been left open. Wu Lung and Ho had fled during the brief violence.
Sagging in sudden weariness, Laura took Chen by one arm and gestured that they should leave too. Someone in the neighborhood must surely have reported loud explosions in the Red Bat restaurant, she thought. The Dragon raised one finger and quickly began searching the training hall. She could not figure out his purpose in her exhausted state, but she also began digging around. There was not much in the way of furnishings, only a short table with a lamp on it. Then she remembered the desk in the front nook and went to check.
There, in the wide shallow center drawer of that desk, rested a thin metal bar less than a foot long, with tough burlap tied around its lower end. Set perpendicular to the bar at the top was a round disc with a raised emblem of a four-pointed star within a diamond shape. It was crafted from the same cursed Gremthom metal as Laura's sceptre. It was a branding iron. In his pain and distress, Wu Lung had forgotten to take him with him.
Blinking because her vision still troubled her, she offered the Brand of Submission to Chen, who wrapped it in the linen cloth on which it had sat. He smiled at her and jerked a thumb toward the door. Laura preceded him out as quickly as she could manage. They trotted down the steps and out onto the predawn streets. She was immensely grateful to see the black Lincoln waiting and she tumbled rather than sat down in the front passenger seat. Chen started the powerful motor and the Dragonwing pulled away and around the next corner a second before the flashing lights on oncoming police cars could be glimpsed behind them.
They rode in silence back uptown, and after a few minutes she tried speaking again. Her voice sounded hollow and spooky to herself, but at least she saw that her new teammate could understand her. "The Brand. We need to take it to Kenneth Dred."
"Yes. You are right." Chen rubbed his hand over his ears and yawned vigorously to clear them. "The Sting told me that Dred has a secure Vault. He has many dangerous items locked away there." The Dragon paused at a stop sign, tugged off his billed cap and yanked the goggles up off his head. The face revealed was that of a handsome young man, despite with the sweat-matted hair and deep weariness on his face. "I think you have earned my trust. My name is Chen Lee-Sun. The Sting, as much my boss as my partner to be honest, is Robert Hawk. You will be meeting him."
Maybe it was the relief of feeling the stress and anxiety lifted from her thoughts as they sped away toward a safe home, but Laura laughed out loud. "I have to confess. I am in disguise, too. My real hair is short and curly. This blouse is, well, definitely padded. Without the wig and the red lipstick and the foam rubber, I look entirely different."
Chen laughed as well.
11/18/2018
11/8/1940
I.
Laura Salerno had thought she was reasonably alert and difficult to take by surprise, but she gave a violent start and jumped back as a man in black stepped out of the narrowest of alleyways next to her. On this chilly November night, she was wearing an ankle-length black coat as part of her Sceptre outfit and her right hand whipped up from a pocket brandishing a strange device. One foot long, thin enough to wrap her hand around, it was a cylinder of copper-colored metal topped with a pale blue gem smaller than her fist. Laura held the Sceptre as if it packed the kick of a cattle prod.
The young man in a black chaffeur's uniform held up both leather-gloved hands in a placating gesture. Between the billed cap and the thick-lensed goggles, he was effectively disguised. "Easy. Steady there, Mrs Salerno. I'm a friend, not a threat."
"Oh yeah?" she retorted. "My friends don't jump out of the shadows and scare me out of my shoes!"
"Please, let us speak softly," he said. He seemed to be Asian, but not much of his face could be seen. "I have been searching for you. My boss says we are working on the same problem from different angles. It would be most productive if you and I helped each other."
Laura grudgingly lowered the Sceptre. In the light from a nearby streetlamp, she was revealed as a gorgeous woman about thirty, slightly above average height, with long wavy black hair down to her shoulder blades. As she had drawn her talisman, her coat had fallen back. She was wearing sky-blue slacks and a silk shirt of a bright canary-yellow hue, showing a solid bust ledge. Seeing Chen's eyes drawn to her breasts as if unwillingly, she smiled with wicked glee. "Oh, I think I know who you must be. You work with the Sting, right? You're called the Dragon of Twilight, no, Midnight. I've heard a LOT of gossip about you two."
"This is so. You have been prowling Chinatown for weeks now, trying to make alllies in your vigilante crusade." The Dragon of Midnight shook his head sadly. "I don't think you will ever get much deeper than you already have, Mrs Salerno. My people keep to themselves because of past injustice and they do not easily admit outsiders into their affairs."
"Wait. Who do you think I am again?"
"To the underworld and the police, you are called the Sceptre. But my boss has some skill at investigations. Your true name is Laura Salerno, widow of the late Ray Salerno who created that weapon you hold." He pointed a thumb at a black Lincoln parked on the next block down. "Will you accompany me? We have much to discuss. The threat of the Branded Men has brought us both out on this uneasy night."
"Hmph. I suppose." Laura placed her hands back into the deep pockets of her coat. "All right. I'll hear what you want to propose. Is that your car there?"
"Yes. The Dragonwing, it is called. Please."
The Dragon ushered her over and started to open the rear door for her, but the Sceptre went past it and got into the front passenger seat. "I'm not your boss," she explained, "Let's start off as equals."
As the Dragon of Midnight crossed around the long gleaming car to climb in behind the wheel, he said, "You might as well call me Chen. It might even be my real name, who can say?"
"Sure. I have to warn you that it's only fair if I find out who you and the mysterious Sting really are as well."
Chen Lee-Sun started up the engine, which ran so smoothly that Laura wasn't even sure it was on until the car eased away from the curb. On this foggy night with a faint cold mist in the air, few pedestrians were out and auto traffic was sparse. "It is a dangerous game we play, Mrs Salerno. Both you and my partner and I have made enemies who will kill us if they can."
"I'll tell the world," she said. "But please, call me Laura. I kept my married name after Ray died, but it sounds funny to hear someone call me that so often."
Watching him as he drove south past Central Park, the Sceptre smiled again with full red lips. "You're Chinese but to be honest you sound British to me? Are you from England?"
"Hong Kong. I suppose there is no harm in telling you that. When those damned Japanese started beating the drums of war, many Chinese tried to come here to America. I had lost my family. I had nothing keeping me at home, and I hoped to begin a second life here." He turned those unreadable goggled eyes on her as they turned a corner. "But I wish to hear more about you. That talisman you wield has this city's mobsters and petty crooks in an unroar. They're terrified."
"As well they should be," she said. "As you found out somehow, it was my husband who devised the Sceptre. Ray was a wild, roguish sort of fellow. I know he traveled all over, getting in and out of trouble. He was an explorer, a soldier of fortune, maybe a tomb robber. I suspect he had been married once before, or at least engaged. What he saw in mousy little me, I'll never know."
"Mousy...? Never mind. Please, go on about the Sceptre."
"Sure. Ray started accepting commissions from a man named Kenneth Dred. He's a scholar and expert on the occult. Ray sometimes went abroad to come back with rare books of mystic lore or odd little statues or ancient swords. On one of his trips, not longer after we had gotten married, he returned from God knows where with an Eldar travel crystal and a blasting rod made of Darthan gremthom."
"Really. Those are potent, each by themselves," the Dragon commented.
"You're telling me. Ray didn't know that the two types of magic don't mesh well at all. In fact, they're completely antagonistic. So naturally, being Ray, one night he fastened the Eldar jewel to the Darthan rod. Boom. After the explosion, when he stopped seeing double and could hear again, he found he had created something completely new in the Midnight War. The Sceptre. Occult experts say should have leveled our house, no one knows why the two power sources started to work together."
Pulling the device from her pocket again, Laura regarded it thoughtfully. Down one side was a series of five ivory buttons, and a rawhide strap had been added to its flat end to serve as a loop around her wrist. "Ray swore he should be able to move instantly from one place to another with it, but he never had the chance. So far, I've managed to make it emit different forms of energy... visible light, heat, even a concussion effect from kinetic energy. No teleportation, as the funny papers say. But I keep experimenting."
"If you do not mind unasked-for advice, great power should be used sparingly."
"Oh, that's true enough," she said. "Ray kept the Sceptre pretty much a secret. After his death, though, I was looking for some purpose in life. My family is comfortable, you might even say well off, so I didn't have to work. And Ray left me the house on Staten Island, so I could have been idle. But the way the world is going... I kept reading about 'mystery men' in the newspapers. Mark Drum. The guy named Sulak. You and your partner. And here I had this miracle in my hand."
Chen slowed and pulled over to an empty space at the curb. They were near the corner of Mott Street. "Chinatown seems oddly deserted tonight, Laura. Even deserted. We should take that as a warning."
"Like when you're out in the wilderness and the birds suddenly go silent," she said.
II.
When the Dragon of Midnight opened his door, Laura got out as well. Something is definitely in the air, she thought. Her grandparents were Sicilian and she had grown up hearing scary stories about 'la Strega' and vengeful ghosts and prophetic dreams. Thinking about such things made her skin crawl right then and there. The potent Sceptre in her hand was a great comfort. "You seem to know what you're doing," she said after a shudder. "Mind filling a gal in a wee bit?"
"Certainly. Have you ever heard of Gung Fu, that is, Chinese boxing?'
"No. Never."
"It's an Oriental system of self-defense. Many styles. I myself studied Wing Chun and Hung Gar."
"Ohhh," she said. "Like Jiu-Jitsu!"
The Dragon made a sound of complete disgust. "Hardly. Gung Fu is thousands of years old, the Japanese merely stole some of it from us. As they steal everything they know. Be that as it may, I have met a local Sifu, a teacher of Choy Li Fut. His real living is made running his restaurant, though, and I believe he can point us to the monster behind the Branded Men."
"Okay. Just so we're clear on this," Laura said, "the Branded Men are a bit of a mystery themselves. Some local Asians have started smuggling drugs, importing happy girls and doing serious robberies. A few of them have been found to have a weird sort of brand burned somewhere on them. Is that what you're after?"
"You have your sources, too, I see. Yes."
When she buttoned the front of her dark coat to cover the bright yellow shirt, then turned up her collar, the Sceptre was only dim dark shape in the night, as her new friend was. She had warmed up to this Dragon of Midnight quickly, she realized. He seemed a little stiff and uncomfortable with her, which she found endearing. Like a nervous boy on a first date. But then she had already done research on him and on the Sting when she had decided to join the amateur crimefighters' club. The pair had broken up more gangs and smashed more rackets than the public realized, working behind the scenes and not seeking publicity. "Okay then, Mr Dragon. I'm ready if you are."
"Come. This way. Let us duck into this doorway." They stepped back into the unlit recess of a gift shop that had evidently gone out of business. "Observe the restaurant across the street."
"Yeah, the...Crimson Bat? I've never eaten there. Being out all night chasing crooks has ruined my social life," she said.
"It is a name of good omen," Chen said. "In Cantonese belief, red is a color of luck and the bat brings health. Yet, when I last visited the restaurant, my hair stood up. I felt as if ghosts were floating around me. I was unnerved, and the owner could tell. So I decided to come back tonight and do some prowling. Are you with me?"
"Yes sure, but let me be honest. I've got a bad case of the willies myself. Something creepy is out and about tonight, no doubt about it."
The Dragon of Midnight surprised her by placing a hand on her shoulder. "Trust your instincts. We will stay alert. Observe the blackout curtains on the second floor?"
"Yeah, but there's a teeny bit of light peeking out of the window at the east corner. A hole, maybe. Someone is up at three in the morning."
"Follow me if you will." Chen darted nimbly across the empty street and flattened up against the restaurant wall near a small side door. Laura was right behind him. Next to a dent garbage can and some empty cardboard boxes, they waited and listened but no one seemed to be in the area. After a minute, she took a breath of relief and watched the Dragon take a ring of keys from inside the front flap of his chaffeur's jacket. "Schlage, very common," he said. There was a click and he pulled the door open to reveal complete darkness.
Slowly and carefully to make no sound, Laura and Chen entered. The Dragon of Midnight pressed a stud on his cap and his goggles showed a vague purple shimmer. The tiny bulb in the front of his chaffeur's cap ran on a battery and was not very powerful, but it gave off sufficient ultra-violet light that he could see well enough through the treated goggles. He reached behind him to take Laura's hand and she willingly went along with him. But she had given him her left hand. In her right, she grasped the Sceptre.
III.
At the top of the rickety wooden stairs, they heard noises of human activity. Footsteps, low voices, the rasp of metal scraping against metal. Under the door in front of then, a thin yellow line of light showed. After listening for a few minutes, Chen clicked off the ultra-violet projector in the his cap, turned the unlocked knob and strode into the room beyond as boldly as if he had been invited.
They entered a small cubbyhole which had been made by hanging heavy drapes from wall to wall. Seated at a desk, carving a piece of ebony with a thin curved blade under the brilliant light of a naked bulb, sat an elderly Asian man. His beard was a mere wisp hanging from his chin, and the hair on his head was also only tufts behind the ears and across the nape of his neck. Perhaps to compensate, a black skullcap covered his dome down to the shaggy eyebrows. He was also wrapped in a heavy cardigan sweater. The wizened face swung up to smile at the intruder.
"Ah, Fang Lung," he whispered. "Midnight Dragon. Somehow i am not surprised to see you appear before me."
Chen stepped forward. In the ominous black chaffeur outfit, his smooth movement hinted at strength and speed. "Ho Tat-Wing. You have dipped your toes in dark waters before."
"I seem to recognize your Gwei-lo companion as well. A most remarkable woman, from all I have heard. Please take these words to heart. Listen to an old man who has seen too much death and horror. Go home. Live long and peaceful lives."
"I wish," laughed the Sceptre.
"We are going through that curtain one way or another," Chen added. He clenched his hands together and made fists that crackled as the knuckles tightened. "There is no choice for us."
"Sigh. Very well. You will meet someone who can deal with your questions. I only hope you find the answers worth the price." Without rising, Ho swung his swivel chair and pulled a tasseled cord to drew the curtains aside to reveal the training hall. A single high-ceiling room of burnished plain wood, the Kwoon had a few thin mats on the floor but no other furniture. Along the far wall was a rack holding traditional weapons like staffs, tiger forks and spears. The only decoration was a framed painting of three ideograms and the outline of a rearing Mantis.
Eight young Asian spun around furiously at being revealed. They wore baggy silk pants and were bare from the waist up. Lean hard muscles gleamed with sweat. Two had been doing the 'sticky hands' exercise and their forearms were still pressed together. Two others held the wide-bladed Butterfly Knives. Those had made the faint clanging noise a second earlier. All glared at the intruders.
But Chen and Laura hardly noticed the students. It was the towering man over against the far wall who held their full attention as completely as if a snarling tiger had been crouched in that room.
Wu Lung was tall even for a Northern Chinese, wide-shouldered and deep-chested in a beautifully suit of brown silk. The legendary Dragon of War had an imposing leonine face under thick black hair slicked straight back. The long cat-green eyes narrowed and he smiled the true predatory leer of anticipation.
"You show unbearable gall in taking the name Dragon of Midnight," announced the sorcerer. His voice broke the tension which had held everyone motionless and the eight students moved into stances better suited to attack the intruders. "It is a name long honored in tradition! What is worse, you do not even hold the Dragon Pendant, which has been usurped by those filthy Brumal..."
"It is wisely said the Dragon Pendant seeks a worthy hand," Chen answered. He held up a gloved fist to make its point. "In time..."
The warlock took a single step forward and, although they were not aware of it, both Laura and Chen cringed back. The ancient spirit which inhabited the body calling itself Wu lung carried a charge of malevolent gralic force which crackled in the air like static electricity. Even his own followers gulped nervously and averted their eyes downward. "Ho!" he roared. "Come here."
At this time, the old man stepped into the training chamber and sank to one knee. "Forgive me, master. I thought it best to present these pups to you for your judgement."
"This I do not understand," said the Dragon of Midnight. "You were a man of honor, Ho. Black Mantis was a respected school. Why do you serve this tyrant? How did he break you?"
"Ah, it is not the elder's fault," Wu Lung interrupted. "Show him, Ho."
Meekly, the old man tugged off the black skullcap. There, high up on the bald forehead, a symbol had been burned into the skin to leave a permanent scar... a four-pointed star within a vertical diamond.
"Hah!" Wu Lung barked harshly. "You may go , Ho. As for you two, I know you have not heard of the Brand of Submission. Like the Dragon Pendant, it was missing for many years but now it is in hands which will use it well. Those I mark with its welt surrender their free will. They willingly obey my every word, slaves more subjugated than whip or starvation could equal. I will claim the two of you... the presumptuous youth who calls himself Dragon of Midnight and the weak white female known as the Sceptre. You will be useful indeed."
"In. Your. Dreams," Laura told him with deliberation. "It'll never happen." But as the last word passed her lips, the cold edge of a Butterfly Knife pressed up against her throat. One of the Black Mantis fighters had lunged up behind her and now held her with a strong arm around her right arm and with the sharp steel just nicking her skin over the carotid artery. Laura Salerno took in a breath but dared not move. With her arm pinned down against her side, she realized she could not use the Sceptre without blasting away her own leg.
"First, you will surrender that Sceptre to me," said the ancient sorcerer. "It is rare that a new talisman of great power enters the Midnight War. I wish to learn its possibilities. Imagine a Branded army under my command, absolutely obedient, swarming into a city in Europe or America, each man wielding a Sceptre! Give it to me."
"Wait..." she said. "Give me a second..."
"Your blood will paint the floor if you do not obey!" bellowed Wu Lung. "Halarim! Have I survived these thousands of years to banter with the likes of you?" He raised his hands, and around them haloes of lurid red energy hissed and swirled. The raw gralic force seemed eager to break loose and char Laura to a cinder.
"All right! All right. You made your point already. Sheesh." She reached over with her left hand to slip the rawhide loop from her right wrist. With an insolent twirl, she flung the Sceptre toward their enemy and Wu Lung deftly caught as if he had practiced doing so thousands of times.
"No! NO!" yelled Chen, still not daring to move as long as the Black Mantis fighter held that blade to his teammate's neck. "Do you realize what you've done?"
"She will learn soon enough." Wu Lung hefted the Sceptre in both hands, studying the delicate facets of the aquamarine-toned gem, the esoteric emblems etched into the coppery tube. He pressed down on one of the row of buttons to hear a click but no other result happened.
"Oh my God, wait a second!" screamed Laura. "You'll blow this whole building to hell and back. Wait. To use it safely, first you have to twist the jewel counter-clockwise one half turn. That's the safety."
"Really?" mumbled the warlock. He closed his long spidery fingers down over the blue gem and grasped it. Fifteen feet away, Laura Salerno smirked and concentrated the full force of her will. A shattering blast of lightning detonated in that chamber, turning everything incandescent blue, deafening and blinding everyone who had been watching. Thunder boomed back and forth between the walls. Thrown entirely off his feet, his hand mangled and torn, half his face seared away, Wu Lung slid on his back across the floor to slam up against the weapons rack.
III.
Releasing both his hold around Laura and his grip on his knife, the Black Mantis man cried out and pawed at his eyes. The Sceptre had turned her head away and opened her mouth wide to minimize the effects of the gralic blast. She tore away from her captor and dove headlong across the room, rolling on the floor as she seized her talisman from where Wu Lung had dropped it and she hopped back up again with the potent device in her grip.
But Chen had also burst into action. His eyes had been protected somewhat by his treated goggles. Although white spots danced in his vision and he head rang, he could function well enough to attack while the Black Mantis fighters were at a disadvantage. Fighting eighting trained martial artists was beyond any resonable hope, but with his opponents still confused and half-stunned, he had a chance. The Dragon of Midnight moved in close, grasping a man's hair and yanking his head to one side to expose the side of the neck. Chen's rigid hand went up and then chopped hard against that neck like an axe blade. Flinging the already dying fighter aside, Chen blasted a front snap kick to the next man's crotch that happened to connect perfectly. Doubled up in unbearable pain, that Black Mantis fighter fell to the floor and was out of the fight.
But the last student near him had by chance been looking away when the Sceptre had exploded. He had his senses. This man dropped into a back-leaning cat stance, his hands raised in claws ready to tear. Getting into that stance had been a mistake, though, because Chen was already moving forward and kicked at the ankle of the weight-bearing leg. Down went the Black Mantis man in a graceless thud, and even as he was leaping back up, the Dragon of Midnight met him with a tight backfist that snapped the man's head around one hundred and eighty degrees.
All of this had taken only a few seconds. Laura Salerno had backpedaled until she bumped up against a wall. In her hand, the Sceptre shimmered with a faint bluish gleam. The remaining Black Mantis fighters were forming a circle around her, two of them brandishing the long staffs and one swinging a pair of the wide Butterfly Knives. Their faces were taut and furious as they advanced a step closer.
"I'm not taking any chances with you jokers," she shouted. "You guys are dangerous. This is your only warn--" But in the middle of that word, she saw the martial artists rush directly at her. Laura swung the talisman in an arc from left to right. Again, the intolerable flash of gralic force detonated to throw the oncoming men backward in broken heaps. She lowered the device and her mouth hung open in dismay. They were all dead. Smoke curled up from their contorted bodies.
"I...I didn't really want to do that," she said but she couldn't hear her own voice. Her head was pounding so hard she felt dizzy.
Chen stumbled, fell to his knees and painfully got up again. He had seen her raise the Sceptre and had covered his ears and squeezed his eyes shut as tightly as he could, but even so he felt as if he had been run over by a city bus. "I don't think my hearing is ever going to be the same," he thought he said but he couldn't be sure. The Dragon of Midnight swung to look around the chamber and saw through the open curtain that the hallway door had been left open. Wu Lung and Ho had fled during the brief violence.
Sagging in sudden weariness, Laura took Chen by one arm and gestured that they should leave too. Someone in the neighborhood must surely have reported loud explosions in the Red Bat restaurant, she thought. The Dragon raised one finger and quickly began searching the training hall. She could not figure out his purpose in her exhausted state, but she also began digging around. There was not much in the way of furnishings, only a short table with a lamp on it. Then she remembered the desk in the front nook and went to check.
There, in the wide shallow center drawer of that desk, rested a thin metal bar less than a foot long, with tough burlap tied around its lower end. Set perpendicular to the bar at the top was a round disc with a raised emblem of a four-pointed star within a diamond shape. It was crafted from the same cursed Gremthom metal as Laura's sceptre. It was a branding iron. In his pain and distress, Wu Lung had forgotten to take him with him.
Blinking because her vision still troubled her, she offered the Brand of Submission to Chen, who wrapped it in the linen cloth on which it had sat. He smiled at her and jerked a thumb toward the door. Laura preceded him out as quickly as she could manage. They trotted down the steps and out onto the predawn streets. She was immensely grateful to see the black Lincoln waiting and she tumbled rather than sat down in the front passenger seat. Chen started the powerful motor and the Dragonwing pulled away and around the next corner a second before the flashing lights on oncoming police cars could be glimpsed behind them.
They rode in silence back uptown, and after a few minutes she tried speaking again. Her voice sounded hollow and spooky to herself, but at least she saw that her new teammate could understand her. "The Brand. We need to take it to Kenneth Dred."
"Yes. You are right." Chen rubbed his hand over his ears and yawned vigorously to clear them. "The Sting told me that Dred has a secure Vault. He has many dangerous items locked away there." The Dragon paused at a stop sign, tugged off his billed cap and yanked the goggles up off his head. The face revealed was that of a handsome young man, despite with the sweat-matted hair and deep weariness on his face. "I think you have earned my trust. My name is Chen Lee-Sun. The Sting, as much my boss as my partner to be honest, is Robert Hawk. You will be meeting him."
Maybe it was the relief of feeling the stress and anxiety lifted from her thoughts as they sped away toward a safe home, but Laura laughed out loud. "I have to confess. I am in disguise, too. My real hair is short and curly. This blouse is, well, definitely padded. Without the wig and the red lipstick and the foam rubber, I look entirely different."
Chen laughed as well.
11/18/2018
