Jade Dragon (33 page)

When Ko looked back at the Korvette there was only Nikita, sleeping
fitfully in the back seat.

He took the road over Tai Mo Shan at twice the posted speed limit,
turning into corners and switchbacks until Hong Kong vanished beneath
the tree line. The Korvette blazed through warning signs shouting to
slow down. Ko ignored them all, a wolfish grin forming on his lips as
the needle on the dashboard moved inexorably toward the redline.
Skirting the fake folk villages and tourista snares, he aimed the black
bullet of the car at the Shenzhen border crossing, allowing the
vehicle’s on-board navigator system to construct a route deeper into
China. “Guangzhou,” he told the drive-brain. “Plot us a speed course to
the airport there. I don’t want to stop for anything.” He saw strobes in
the rear-view as two APRC jeeps struggled to catch up with him.

“Ko?” said a sleepy voice. “Where are we going?” Nikita shifted on the
edge of wakefulness.

“Just a little country drive, Niki,” he told her, “Everything’s fine.”

She pointed out through the windscreen. “Look, Ko,” she said dreamily.
“I can see blue. ”

Above, through the clouds, he saw it too; a pale cobalt sky, drawing
them towards it. “Yeah. That’s where we’re going.”

Ko pressed the accelerator to the floor and left the jeeps choking on
exhaust fumes.

Colonel Tsang walked gingerly through the cavernous interior of the
wrecked building; the engineers assured him the stone stub that was all
that remained of the Yuk Lung tower was in no danger of collapsing.
Still, he was wary. The ruined skyscraper reminded him of an ancient
burial mound, heavy with dust and the scent of death. There were pieces
of torn cloth everywhere, and his boots crunched on shards of plastic.
He nudged something with his toe; it appeared to be part of a porcelain
mask. Tsang glanced at the sergeant and his men, each bearing a rifle
and a sensor wand. “Anything?”

The sergeant frowned at the scanning device in his hand. “Sir, I’m not
sure.”

The man came apart in a ripping shower of gore, cut in two. Tsang cried
out in shock as a tattered shape like a heap of rags flashed through the
other greenjackets, cutting them down. The colonel was rigid with shock,
his hand an inch from his holstered pistol.

The thing slowed and approached him. It was human, after a fashion, a
broken agglomeration of smashed skeleton and torn flesh. Tsang’s stomach
twisted as he realised that the attacker was using a blade made from the
bones of its right arm. The thing replaced the makeshift sword and
flexed it experimentally. With care, it knelt and tore off the
sergeant’s face, chewing on it.

Finally, Tsang’s instincts caught up with him and he grabbed at his
pistol, but there were a mouthful of teeth in his neck before the gun
ever cleared leather.

For a while there was only the sound of eating and tearing. Then through
damaged and torn lips, the killer spoke aloud. “The Path of Joseph,”
said Heywood Ropé, “is
thorny
.”

James Swallow’s novels include the Warhammer 40,000 novels
Faith and
Fire, Deus Encarmine
and
Deus Sanguinius;
among his other works are
the
Sundowners
series of “steampunk” Westerns,
the Judge Dredd
novels
Eclipse
and
Whiteout, Rogue Trooper: Blood Relative
and the
novelization of
The Butterfly Effect.
His non-fiction features
Dark
Eye: The Films of David Fincher
and books on genre television and
animation; his other credits include writing for
Star Trek Voyager,
Doctor Who,
scripts for videogames and audio dramas. He lives in
London, and is currently working on his next book.