Page 38 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
He ran, bearing her weight with grace.
The triad enforcers chased. Bao tore up the nearest set of stairs, seeking higher ground. Mercy clung on for life, shouting at pedestrians to get out of the way. Yelling apologies and dodging curses as they burst past. Over one balcony edge, along the eaves, jump the gap—a different street, now. Angling toward one of the gates. If Bao could just get into wider Hong Kong—
Her luck ran out. Bao halted abruptly and Mercy lost her grip. She tumbled to the ground, staggering to her feet in chagrin. They were at a dead end.
The main road leading to the southern gates was blocked off. Someone—likely the ghost, in Cobra Lily’s body—had erected a barricade. Enforcers waited on the other side of it, holding menacing choppers. More triad men leaned out of windows and from walkways, and the ones behind her would catch up in a minute or less.
Shit.
Realistically, she was dead. So dead. There was too much city and too many triad assholes. She had no way of getting out.
Mercy looked at Bao.
“If you have any ideas,” she said, “now would be a great time.”
The ghost cat turned his gaze on the blocked alley, swiveled to look at the advancing enforcers, then back at Mercy. Still in his demon form, he licked her bruised forehead with an ephemeral tongue, gentle as a kitten.
Then he turned and fled through a crack in the barricade, oozing his spirit self away to safety.
Mercy was truly alone.
“You selfish feline bastard,” she said, incredulous, and began to laugh.
She was still laughing helplessly at her disloyal cat when the swarm of enforcers caught up to her at last and tackled her to the ground.
13THE NIGHT OF THE HUNGRY GHOST FESTIVAL
August 21, 1975
“Why did you murder the executive councilor?”
“I didn’t. Cobra Lily killed her. She’s even in Cobra Lily’s flat.”
“Stabbed withyourknife through her throat, Chan! How do you explain that?”
“I already have, in eight different ways,” Mercy said, irritably.
A knuckly fist swung at her jaw.
Mercy fell sideways, teeth rattling in their sockets from the blow. She could do nothing to avoid it; her hands and feet were bound. The sensation was there, but it did not swarm her. She had already moved to a place in her head where pain was a distant cousin banging on a locked door, and was determined not to let it in.
Even so, the blow put bursts of light across her vision. She found it harder to think and form words than she had at the start of this “talk.”
“Get up,” the vanguard said. “Answer the question, and don’t be fucking rude. It’s your fault the government are about to bear down on us!”
With agonized effort, Mercy struggled back to kneeling position, the weight of her body resting on her aching knees.
“I did answer,” she said, wearily, when more or less upright again. “Cobra Lily is dead. So is Kit Ling. Their bodies have been possessed at different times by some kind of demon, probably a ghost. It moves between skins like a hand between gloves. Right now, it is wearing Cobra Lily, because that serves its purpose. Go back to Red Bird’s room, climb into those tunnels. I know you know where they are, you were standing guard when I—”
“What our boss keeps in those tunnels is her business,” the vanguard said, stooping to her level to meet her gaze. “I’m not going to poke around in her personal property! Do you think I’m stupid?”
“Your own mother thinks you’re stupid.” She grinned at him through a blood-streaked face, lips burst and cheeks bruised.
He hit her again, far too hard. Like she wanted. Mercy leaned into the blow and let it knock her into blissful oblivion for a while.
Not nearly long enough, sadly. She awoke when they emptied ice water over her head, some uncertain number of minutes later.
“Stop being a coward and kill me,” she said, trying blearily to focus on the ceiling. But her vision was blurred and she couldn’t open one of her eyes from the swelling. She spat blood in lieu of gagging on it.
