So I did.
“Damn it, Dory.” Fin scurried up as I walked around the bar and knelt by the still smoking corpse. The owner was a Skogstroll, a kind of Norwegian forest troll, although to my knowledge the closest he’d ever gotten to the land of his ancestors was a PBS documentary. But it meant he didn’t have to bend down to examine the damage the shotgun he kept behind the counter had done to the bar. “That’s going on your tab!”
“No problem,” I said, showing him the contents of the guy’s wallet.
“No way.” He started backing up, but tripped on his beard. “I’m not touching Tiger money! Not if the whole place burned down!”
I frisked the guy, but of course, there was no ID. Assassins didn’t carry it, as a rule. I did find one thing of interest, though.
“Raymond,” I said, with feeling.
“Is that his name?” Fin asked, staring at the book of matches I’d found in the not-so-recently deceased’s coat pocket.
“No. Tell me about—,” I began, when the body started twitching. So he wasn’t just a regular old vamp, who would have been killed by that shot as sure as a human. Dumb as a rock or not, he was a master. Cheung really wanted me to get the message.
Whatever the hell it was.
“Don’t do it, Dory,” Fin warned, his tiny blue eyes worried. “You kill one, and they’ll all be hunting you. That’s how these guys operate.”
“I’m not planning to kill anyone,” I squawked, because the vamp had grabbed me around the throat. So I stuck a knife through his, pinning him securely to the wood.
Fin’s glare intensified. “Dory!”
“Relax, it won’t kill him. I’d have to take the whole head for that.” I sat back on my heels. “And when did you become so squeamish?”
“I’m not! But you don’t want to mess with these guys.”
“I haven’t been,” I said, exasperated. “I had a run-in with his boss recently, but we cleared that up.” Or so I’d thought.
Fin didn’t look convinced. “He sent a master to screw with you for no reason?”
“Let’s find out,” I said, wrenching the knife out.
But even though I’d taken care to miss the vocal cords, it looked like the vamp had lost interest in conversation. An arm sent me skidding on my back into the forest of tables, reducing a few of the battered old pieces to kindling. I leapt back to my feet, but the vamp didn’t press his advantage. He was gone between one blink and the next, out the door and up the stairs, despite the fact that, in vamp terms, sunlight + major blood loss = bar-be-cue.
If I was lucky, anyway.
Fin hopped about, contorting his body to avoid the shaft of light spilling over the old boards. Older trolls could withstand direct sun, and even those Fin’s age didn’t actually turn to stone. But he said it gave him hives.
“And stay out!” he shouted, flipping the door shut with his toe.
I picked myself up and assessed the damage. Other than for some bruised ribs and a jacket full of splinters, I was unharmed. The same couldn’t be said for my cell phone, which had been in my back pocket. I fished out a few pieces of plastic and some metal innards, extracted the memory chip, and threw the rest in the trash.
It could have been worse; it could have been my head. And maybe next time it would be. Because it was a little hard to stop doing whatever was pissing Cheung off when I didn’t even know what it was.
I walked back over and retrieved the guy’s wallet. “You going to tell me what you know?” I asked Fin.
“It isn’t much,” he said, eyeing the fat sheaf of banknotes peeking out of the natty eel-skin cover. “They call themselves Leaping Tigers, and they’re new. The first of them showed up about a month ago, but they operate out of Chinatown, not here. I heard they pretty much destroyed a couple gangs over there, setting up house. They’re bad news.”
Tell me something I don’t know, I thought cynically. “And this house would be where?”