Page 37 of The Girl with a Thousand Faces
“We are nothing alike!” She readied herself to throw her knife, angling her body ever so slightly.
“Interesting. Do you still not recognize yourself? Your lost memories… your lost life. Don’t you remember?”
“Why don’t you tell me, since you seem so keen for me to recall,” Mercy retorted, silently willing the ghost to tilt her head up. Just a smidge more.
“I know some part of you still remembers.” The ghost wet its lips with the tip of its tongue. “The island. The girl by the sea.The temple.” She gestured widely. “All of this is because of you, Mei Chi. Cobra Lily’s death, my quest to destroyHong Kong and Kowloon… it is all connected to you, and whatyoucan’t remember. Whatyourefuse to apologize for!”
“If you want my apology, then ask. You didn’t have to kill people to get my attention.” Mercy let her mouth do the talking, concentrating on lining up the shot. She would only have one chance.
“No! I needed you to remember first, so that you can suffer. An apology without true understanding is meaningless,” the ghost hissed, tilting its chin up at last. “I need you to lose absolutely everything, by inches and degrees, including the city you call home—”
“Shut up.” Mercy threw her dagger at that exposed neck.
It was a good throw: almost fifteen feet across open water. The blade buried itself in the former phoenix sister’s throat. She staggered back with a gurgle. Blood jetted from the wound in uneven gouts as Mercy launched across the stepping stones in a sprint.
Fear and shock swirled like a storm inside her head. She squashed it down, forcefully holding the emotions at bay. Get away first, survive, get out. Later, when she was safe, there would be time to process the horror of Cobra Lily being dead, of all these people being dead, of the thing that inhabited her boss’s skin and swapped bodies the way a child swapped shirts. And the strange things it said to her, which filled her with deep anxiety.
Red Bird’s body slumped to a heap, bleeding out even as Mercy took the last shaky jump from stepping stone to concrete corridor. She botched the landing and was just scrabbling to her feet when the phoenix sister’s body split open like a ripened pea pod.
Bodies were not clean, tidy things. Blood and viscera spattered the walls, the ceiling, Mercy’s face and clothes. She threw her hands up, lowering them in time to see a blood-covered shape oozing out, sliding over the edge of the platform and into the water.
Thousand-Faced Girl was going for another body.
It was too dangerous to wait here. Mercy stopped to wrench the knife from Red Bird’s neck, and fled up the tunnel. Back toward the rungs, the chute, the weird flat.
From somewhere in the cavern, a loud sigh echoed. Cobra Lily’s voice rang out, clear as a gong, “You cannot run from me, stupid little rat! Justice is coming for you!”
Mercy ran anyway.
She burst into the tunnel like a flood, ready to fling herself up those rungs as fast as she possibly could.
Except the way was blocked. A couple of triad enforcers were crouched above the open storm drain, peering in. When she skidded into view, their eyes widened and they began shouting.
Thousand-Faced Girl had set an excellent trap.
Mercy didn’t waste time trying to get past them. Instead, she kept running, and hoped Erika had been canny enough to get away. She sprinted straight past the entrance, following the tunnel northward. Farther underneath Kowloon. Behind her, the sounds of pursuit; ahead of her, the tunnel yawning into greater and greater darkness.
In her youth, Mercy had been fit enough to run or jog most of the night, all in the service of passing messages between different resistance groups. But she was fifty-three, now, and it had been at least a decade or two since she’d had to run like this.
By the time she saw a second pair of rungs leading to a closed storm drain, she was badly out of breath and her chest had knotted up. Mercy flung herself up the metal ladder, despite every groaning protest of her body.
No time to rest. From down in the tunnels below, she could still hear shouting, and sounds of pursuit.
The storm drain lid was heavy, but she was desperate. Mercy shoved it up and away, hauling herself onto the busy streets of Kowloon Walled City. Rain poured heavily; the weather had not relented since this morning.
She was in a side alley, just off the central courtyard. The only part of Kowloon where the sky was routinely visible. A pair of triad enforcers were waiting in the courtyard, in plain sight. They turned toward her, eyes narrowing. Thousand-Faced Girl had come prepared.
“Wonderful,” Mercy said.
Two more enforcers joined them, making that four against one. Mercy didn’t rate her odds in this fight.
She fled, shouting, “Bao, where the hell are you!”
With a roar thatdidstop pedestrians and enforcers alike, the ghost cat came barreling through the crowds, lion sized and gleaming white. He was at her side in an instant, matching her flagging pace with his supernatural energy.
“Stop her!” Cobra Lily was climbing out of the same drain, hair sodden and dripping. She had been impossibly fast. “Don’t let her get away!”
Mercy flung her arms around Bao, and held tight. She didn’t often ask him for a ride, but this was a serious emergency.
