I stood up and shook my head. Big mistake. The room tried swimming a bit. I thought I’d had a big enough snack earlier to fix the trauma from earlier, but maybe I was just damned tired. I had been on the move for several days.

“You okay?”

I looked at Lisa and stepped back from her. She was pregnant. If my body decided to do something instinctual about feeding, I didn’t want to take a chance on her or her baby getting hurt. “I think I better leave. I don’t feel good.”

“Maybe you should sit down, John.” She looked worried.

“I can’t take any chances. You and the baby. You can’t be around me if things go wrong.”

She looked like she’d been slapped in the face when I said that.

Remember how I said Lisa doesn’t like to lie? She’s not good at it. She gets this guilty expression on her face that causes her no end of troubles. She not only doesn’t like to lie, she sucks at it. She got that guilty expression on her face as she looked at me.

“John. I’m so sorry.”

“What?” The room shifted on me, started tilting hard to the right and I had trouble focusing on her. Until that moment I thought I was just tired. It never once crossed my mind that I might be drugged. The beer in a glass. I should have known. Lisa was like me, much more likely to offer a bottle or a can than to pour it.

“I had to, John. They said they’d hurt the baby.” She was crying. Damn it, she was crying, there were tears in her eyes and her hands moved up to cover her mouth as I reached for her and missed.

I didn’t miss the table though. I caught the coffee table with my chin as I fell toward the ground. Didn’t miss the ground either. I hit it nice and hard with my face.

— 13 —

I woke up eventually. I don’t know how much time had passed, but I had a nasty headache and my jaw was sore. I was stripped down to my jeans, my feet were bare, my chest was bare. I was also hanging by my arms, and had been up there for a while judging by the pain in my shoulders. I couldn’t have told you where I was on a bet, but there was a smell of old blood and meat and it was cold. The building was brick and wood and had seen better days. Maybe it was an old slaughterhouse, they had a lot of those back in the day in Chicago. I remember that from high school at least. See my point? Not really a lot to go on. Oh, except for the small army of Chinese guys around me. They were a good hint. Chow Liu. It only took me a second to do the math on that one. His people were probably really, really pissed off about how their boss died. And really, one vampire is probably as good as the next when it comes to the blame game.

The dude that came over to give me the stink eye was all lean muscle and tattoos. A lot of tattoos. Looking at his arms, I wished I could read Mandarin because there were a lot of symbols and words and they maybe could have told me a little about the guy carrying the long knife in his left hand.

“I didn’t kill Chow Liu.” What else could I say?

He looked me in the eyes, careful to stay just out of range from where my feet could have kicked him. As I was hanging by the arms, this was maybe a good idea, or maybe a very generous belief in how athletic I was. Because I wasn’t really sure myself, I tried moving my legs and winced. I’d been out for a while and my old friend rigor mortis had come to visit. I could barely even start to bend my legs without wanting to scream.

Finally the man spoke to me. “We know.”

“Then why am I here?” He had me at a loss. I expected to be in trouble because their boss was dead, but if I wasn’t getting blamed, there had to be another reason.

“New boss wants you here, man.” He was maybe twenty-five years old, and on second glance I could also see that he was covered with scars under his tattoos. I didn’t know who he was, but the term badass motherfucker came to mind. Seriously, you don’t get scars like those unless you’ve been in a lot of fights and I’m guessing he won most of them.

“Who’s the new boss?”

“Hsi-Hsue-Kuei.” He smiled when he said it. Then he stepped around me, doing a slow circle. I was very aware of the really big knife in his hand as he moved behind me. I heal well. That might not mean as much if he stabbed me in the kidneys, or if he put that blade through my heart. Seriously, it was a big knife. The kind hunters use to make a clean kill and then to skin whatever they just finished gakking. “You really a hopping ghost?”

I shook my head. “Not a ghost, man. I’m just a guy.”

“Naw.” He was back in front of me and shaking his head. “You ain’t just a guy. You’re one of them. You’re a jiangshi.”

“You see me hopping anywhere?”

“I bet I can make you hop.” He sneered at me. I sneered back. Now and then you have to play at tough, even when you don’t feel it. I swung my legs a couple of times and he stepped back. While he was watching, I raised my legs to chest height — and I even did it without screaming. It hurt. That’s all I can say. My arms were already blood deprived from being suspended for so long and they weren’t happy with me after that. Felt like both of my legs were breaking and there were a lot of popping noises to go along with that thought. But when I put my legs back down the worst of the tendon problems were at least manageable. I wasn’t going to be running anywhere without doing some stretches, but I’d be able to stand at least.

“I can maybe hop on my own.” I looked above me at the rope that was holding my wrists. It had been tied to a wooden rafter two stories above me. “Want to see?”

I heard the deep voice that called out coming from behind me and felt the hairs on my neck rise in protest. I hadn’t smelled it, hadn’t heard it, but the green ape was there. “Stop beating your chest and get to this.” The words weren’t for me. I am convinced of that.

“Get to what?” I didn’t like the sound of this, not one little bit.

“Boss says I cut your heart out, it proves I’m loyal.” The guy smiled at me. “I got no problem with cutting your heart out. Nothing personal, just what I have to do.”

I nodded my head. I could see his point. Maybe if I didn’t have my sister and my family to think about, I could be as cold as him, but I hoped not.

Here’s the thing; I’m not a gymnast, and I’m not even all that flexible, but I am a changed man. I’m a vampire, whatever that really means. Here’s the parts that matter: faster, stronger, tougher. Get me?

I shifted my hands so I was holding onto the ropes above me, and then I pulled with all my strength. I didn’t hop so much as I launched myself toward the sky. My legs weren’t a hundred percent, my arms were screaming at me, but I was up and out of range of the dude’s knife for a moment. Long enough. I twisted my body and landed on the rafter. My arms weren’t fast enough, but my legs caught on. Next thing I know, I’m hanging upside down, fifteen feet off the ground, and doing my best not to cry like a baby because everything hurts so much. The rope was still around my wrists. I didn’t have the time to work my arms until I felt the blood flowing properly again. If I’d had that sort of time, I could have probably snapped the ropes after a couple of minutes. We’re talking nylon and the stuff was meant to hold a lot of weight, but like I said, I’m strong these days. Also like I said, no time, so I went all monster-face and did the next best thing. I tore the ropes apart with my teeth. They tasted like crap, but I wasn’t there for a meal. I was there to get free.

They were all screaming after that, the tattooed guy, his friends and the green ape. I tore my hands free, spit out the pieces of rope that weren’t wedged between my teeth, and shook my arms to get the blood where it needed to be, all the while hanging upside down and praying my legs would hold me.

A couple of the toughs were screaming about how they had a clear shot, but Tattoo wasn’t having any of that. I knew the score, of course. He had to prove himself. I don’t know exactly what went down in the town, but I could do the basic math. The ogre wanted to take over. Tattoo was cool with that, he might have even helped the ogre get to Chow Liu, but he still had to prove himself to the new boss if he wanted to be the second in command. Anyone else helping would make him lose face in front of the new boss. Guess what? That’s not the sort of thing you do if you want to show how tough you are in the Triads.

So he had to take me out all by himself, or he maybe had to die trying.

Guess which one I preferred.

I was so busy looking at him that I didn’t even look for the green ogre. I mean, I’d just heard it, right? How far could it go?

Of course, it had jumped to the second floor balcony earlier. I should have remembered that. I heard someone let out a shocked scream and as I was looking toward the screamer, I felt the beam I was on shudder. Then the green paw was on me and yanking my leg away from the rafter. It could have killed me right then — it could have killed me earlier, too — but instead it let me fall. I landed on my feet again, and tried to bend my knees to take in the impact. Only my legs still weren’t a hundred percent and instead of taking in the impact, my legs just gave out under me and I hit the ground.

The pain was gigantic. Listen, the big green thing had busted me up earlier and I’d gotten back up and run away before the cops could get to me. But I’d done my stretching and I’d been prepared then and now my legs were already in pain and I had probably ripped a few tendons when I tried landing. I fell flat and screamed, a hard screech that echoes off the walls around me and had half the men in the room covering their ears. My scream isn’t normal anymore; it’s loud and unsettling. Not everyone freaked out, but a lot of them did.

Tattoo was not among them. While his friends were freaking out and I was trying to recover from the pain tearing through me, he moved in fast and hard and kicked me in the face. I said he looked hard, but I didn’t know the half of it. Listen, I’m not bragging but even before the change I’d have placed good money on me holding my own against almost anyone. This is a fact: before the change, he’d have killed me with that first kick. And the sad part? That wasn’t even his best shot. While I was falling backward and trying to recover from what felt like a mule bucking its hooves into my face, he came around fast and drove the damned big knife of his into my stomach. I felt it slice through muscles, cut into my internal organs, and I grabbed his arm because I could see him tensing. He was about to pull upward and disembowel me. That’s all there is to it. He was about to kill me. The pain I was feeling went away, lost in a tide of adrenaline that let me keep going when I should have been falling down.