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Dragon Rising, by MrsCogan
Norman, OK US

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Dragon Rising

Chapter 1

Go to Hell.

Its such a delicious phrase. I love to say it to certain people. I never thought Id want to go there myself.

All of that that leads to this question: How do you get a dragon out of Hell?

I know that question makes me sound like I need serious drugs. Most of you dont believe in dragons and most of you do believe in Hell.

Some of you are right and some of you are wrong.

Lazy Boy! Mrs. Chin bellowed. Bring me a beer! She didnt bother to learn their actual names. Mrs. Chins employees cycled through pretty fast. Its odd how even the poorest peasant wont work for very little pay and lots of abuse.

The current Lazy Boy had been with us most of a monthsome kind of record. Even so, Mrs. Chin wouldnt make the effort to learn his name. He carried a tray loaded with steaming bowls of noodles. The Happy Parrot Tea and Noodle shop was busy, crammed with sailors, stevedores, bachelors with nobody to go home to, and a handful of beggars with a few panhandled coins in their pockets. They all showed up around sunset for tea brewed within an inch of its life and hot noodles flavored with the mystery fish of the day.

The current Lazy Boy wasnt the usual skinny kid fresh off the farm or the fishing boat. This one was somewhere in his early 30s, arms rippling with ropey muscles. He wore a black eye patch pirate style and olive drab pants on their last legs. He only seemed to have one teeshirt. In almost illegible scrolly letters it read Kiss me Im Irish. He looked about as Irish as Chow Yun-fat. I forgot to mention that he has an extremely nice ass and a million-kilowatt smile.

He turned this last on me. Hey, Angie! he said. Can you get that?

Sure. I rubbed my eyes and got to my feet.

Usually people spend their entire lives avoiding a trip to Hell. Not me. Long-ju was down there and it was all my fault. He is the Silver Dragon, magnificent, legendary, a work of art. He had sacrificed himself for me and I am only & me. I had to put that right. I had to get him out of there. Nobody was going to help me with that, certainly not the other dragons.

So Id been reading childrens books. Now keep in mind I speak Chinese fluently but I can only read common phrases like keep out and employees only and shoplifters will be prosecuted. Therefore I had a Chinese-English dictionary and a stack of childrens books filled with colorful cartoon dragons and wizards. It was pathetic trying to research Hell in the Shaolong public library but I had nothing else to keep me busy.

I threaded my way through the mismatched collection of tables and earned a few growls when I blocked the view of the television bolted to the wall. Virtually every person in the entire place was glued to it. Football, aka soccer. Its a disease. Im immune.

Lollipop! Hurry up with my beer! Mrs. Chin probably doesnt remember my name either. Lollipop is an annoying reference to my hair which is an unfashionable shade of orangey red. Im a quarter Japanese but thats all buried under a mix of European genes. Im from LA. I hadnt seen those smoggy hills for a long time and probably wouldnt be seeing them again any time soon.

I headed for the cooler. The Happy Parrot doesnt actually sell beer. The cases of Blue Girl were all private stock for Mrs. Chin and her mahjong buddies. Mrs. Chin was old and fat and more than a little bit oblivious. She played mahjong every night with three old ladies who were all variations on the same theme. I popped open five beersthere was no point in making a second tripand set a bottle in front of each of the old harridans who were slapping down tiles and chattering a mile a minute. I carried the fifth bottle back to my table.

I flipped through the kids picture book that was on top of the stack.

If you want to get a dragon out of Hell, the first step is to figure out how to get there. I had searched for books based on old legends. Unfortunately, since these were childrens books, the dragons nearly always escaped and won in the end. Occasionally Id get a story where a sorcerer would call up a demon and then hijinks would ensue. Those were the most interesting and to the point, but they tended to be a little thin on how the demon was called up.

Most of it was trash. How can they read that stuff to kids? Maybe it was my translations that sucked. What I needed was to get somebody to read this stuff aloud to me. The problem was, most of my friendsall two of themwere dragons who would know in a heartbeat why I wanted to hear these stories.

And then theyd stop me. Which is damned annoying right there. I wasnt going to let them stop me. Nothing could do that.

By the time I finished flipping through the last of the books for the third or fourth time, the beer was gone. Over the last few weeks Id been through about fifty or sixty slim volumes of the kiddie stuff. It was useless. I needed adult literature on how to call up demons. Yeah, good luck with that. When I asked the librarian she just gave me a little look like I wasnt quite bright, but shed be nice to me anyway.

Lazy Boy swept up with an enormous tray of dirty cups and bowls. He grabbed the empty beer bottle. Want another? he said.

I glanced over at Mrs. Chin. The mahjong game was beginning to wear down. I shook my head.

I need to get out of here and do something useful, I said. Can you put these things in the storeroom? I indicated the stack of lurid kid lit.

Sure. He sounded a bit hesitant. Not that he wouldnt do it for me, but I knew he was super-curious about why I read these things. I had told him I was improving my reading skills but he obviously didnt believe me.

Lazy Boy! We both looked over at Mrs. Chin. She waggled her empty bottle meaningfully.

Yes Maam! he said with that flashy smile. He glanced back and favored me with a little one-eyebrow shrug.

I stood. Well, Im off, I said. Time to go to work.

I dont actually work. Not like youd think, anyway. Im a thief. I know thats not very nice. Im trying to taper off. These days I only steal from other thieves. At first it felt odd, but I eventually began to enjoy the challenge. I headed for my motorbike which was tethered to a no parking sign I was sure only applied to cars.

My work site is anywhere people congregate. Shaolong is an island way smaller than Taiwan but we still have over a million people and there are some very nicely populated dives in town. I had three favorites, the Pigeon House, the Red Fan and the Buffalo Bar and Grill. The last one is a tourist trap. Not much grilling goes on there. Thats where I was going.

The Buffalo made a pathetic attempt to convince the customers that it was a gentlemans club or an upscale gastropub with waitresses falling out of their teensy tiny bikinis. Its a great place to be invisible. I wear way too many clothes and dont apply make up with a trowel. The bouncer knew me by sight and, like most of the employees, ignored me. They knew there was a chance Id give them a nice tip out of the proceeds. The employees all assumed I boosted wallets from the out-of-towners. That is not the case. I like to take wallets from pickpockets. Where is the challenge lifting the wallet off a shit-faced dentist on vacation from Tainan? I let the amateurs do that. When I can, and this doesnt happen every time I go on the hunt, I like to take it from the pickpocket, extract the cash and slip the wallet back into the dentists pocket. That way hes still got his credit cards and pictures of the wife and kids. Almost everybody goes home happy.

But I digress. This particular night I showed up at the Buffalo and something seemed off about the place. I couldnt put my finger on it. When I say it felt dark I dont mean the lights were out. It was always dark. It was a bar. People didnt want to see each other clearly. Even the background music seemed more muted than usual.

When I entered, I nodded to the bouncer and he didnt smile back. Hes not exactly Chuckles the Clown anyway, so that wasnt too odd. The waitresses avoided me, but they always did, knowing that I was immune to a push-up bra. The bartender got my scotch and soda without comment. I forked over enough bills to cover it and turned around to see if I could figure out what was going on.

People were talking. There was the usual forced laughter and boozy conversation. There were the girls giggling at totally not funny jokes.

I spotted a guy whose pockets looked like he had too many wallets. He had one in his hip pocket, one in his right front pocket and one stuffed into the waistband of his pants under a loose Hawaiian shirt. He was clearly this evenings lucky mark. I tossed off the watery drink and ditched the glass. Then I casually circulated around as if looking for someplace to sit. All the little tables were full. There were places at the bar, but I wasnt interested in those. Finally the guy in the Hawaiian shirt headed for the bathroom and that was the signal to make my move.

Id crowd close enough to him to force him to bump into someone else and thats when Id take the wallet out of his front pocket. A little more challenging than the hip pocket, but the one in front would most likely belong to the hypothetical vacationing dentist.

It was even darker over by the mens room. Bulbs were burning, but they were giving out no wattage to speak of. It didnt matter. I crowded him and he bumped into a beefy guy with no neck &

... who whirled around and knocked the Hawaiian shirt guy flat down on the ground.

Hey, what The exclamation froze in my throat.

The guy standing in front of me was built like a Humvee with fists. Big fists. He was in a black hoodie but it didnt make him look fashionable. It merely added to the feeling of menace that radiated out from him.

Mr. Humvee reeked of Hell. He wasnt a demon. He wasnt Hell-spawn, or at least I didnt think he was. He wasnt an archvillain. He was really more of an evil minion.

And he recognized me in the same instant that I recognized him. I uttered a little shriek and ran. I knew if he touched me, hed kill me. Id killed his compatriot and helped send his boss to the very same Hell I was trying to get into. He had lots of reasons to strike me off his Christmas card list.

I ran through the crowd pushing aside drunks and nearly naked ladies, leaving a flood of squeals and curses behind me. I only made it to the door because the bouncer delayed Mr. Humvee for a couple of seconds. Poor bouncer. Im sure someone will drive him to the emergency room.

The couple of seconds was enough. I was out the door and around the corner and on my bike, stomping on the starter before he made it to the street. The motorbike came to life. I put it in gear and fed it gas.

The Buffalo isnt in a well-lit part of town, but suddenly it was even darker. The lights dimmed and my bike lost power.

What the hell.

I gave it more gas and it varoomed but it inched forward as if it was going through thick mud. It was like one of those nightmares where the bad guy is chasing you and the air is like treacle and you cant move your limbs or make any headway. This was exactly like that except I was awake and able to enjoy every detail to the fullest.

I glanced back expecting a human tank to be reaching out for me. He wasnt. He was standing in the street, a shadow darker than the other shadows around him. His hands were raised above his head as he pulled energy from everythingfrom the streetlights, from the air. And obviously from my bike.

I shouldnt have been able to see his eyes, but I could. They radiated soft corpse light, the phosphorescent glow of dead things. That sight was enough to get me cursing at the motorbike to encourage it back to life. But that wasnt working. The motor raced, but the power wasnt getting to the wheels. Humvee was somehow sucking it dry. I was going so slowly, the machine was going to tip over if I didnt put my feet down.

I got off the bike and parked it. My mind was a babble of incoherent profanity, but I couldnt make my arms and legs move any faster. Was he draining my energy too? How far did this go?

Mr. Humvee just stood there staring at me, patiently waiting for hell only knows what. The streetlights were still lit. I could see them, but they were shedding less and less light. The street was empty. There was no traffic and there should have been. Somehow the world knew to steer clear of this place for a while. Nobody came out of the bar. Nobody showed up to go in.

I needed to be running but I couldnt manage it. I could barely walk in any direction but toward him. In spite of that I forced my limbs to move in the all-important away direction. This left me backing down the street slowly.

An irregular luminescent puddle started to form at Mr. Humvees feet. The street was developing a glowy patch. The energy that had been drained out of everything around him was puddling up in one spot.

Eventually, I could no longer force my legs to move. In fact, I was being dragged toward him. I should have been afraid. If I was smart I would have been stark raving terrified. But the sight of that light at Humvees feet got my heart pounding. I knew what that puddle was. I could feel it. I could smell it.

Hell.

He was opening a hole into Hell.

Description: How do you spring a dragon out of Hell?

Photo Posted: May 07,2013 Photo Viewed: 383

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