The Curse of the Dragon God (37 page)

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Authors: Geoffrey Knight

Tags: #Mystery, #Suspense, #Adventure, #Gay

BOOK: The Curse of the Dragon God
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He knew he had to trigger the fail-safe mechanism on the bomb, he had to activate the 10-minute countdown, and he had to hit that bomb with something hard to do it. And he couldn’t think of anything harder in this room than Mya Chan.
“Oh, I’ll give it to you, all right.”
Suddenly Will took three steps back, then ran at the bomb as if he was about to kick the goal of his college career.
His boot slammed into the silver ball. Mya tried to jab the letter opener into Bradley’s throat as he did so, but the letter opener slipped harmlessly down her greasy palm. Bradley dropped to the floor.
The silver bomb soared through the air until—
CLUNK!
It hit Mya Chan directly in the forehead, instantly triggering the 10-minute countdown and knocking her clean off her feet. She was out cold before she even hit the Persian carpet.
At the same time, the bomb bounced across the car, its red digits now racing toward certain doom.
Bradley pulled himself off the floor. “What just happened?”
“We just saved Beijing,” Will answered. “Now help me save everyone else’s asses, including ours!”
“How?”
Will grabbed Bradley and pointed out the window, through the ice-covered trees, to the frozen lake. “We need to derail this train. Now!”
The remaining three smashed and burning cars of the Zhang Diamond Express raced through the snow and curved around the lake. Inside, with the unconscious body of Mya Chan lying on the floor, Bradley opened the front door of the master carriage while Will tipped over one of the Louis chairs and pushed it out the door. The chair fell between the master carriage and the coal car and splintered apart under the hot spinning wheels.
Will looked at Bradley. “We’re gonna need something bigger.”
He pushed one of the Parisian lounges out through the door. The wheels of the train devoured it with little more effort than the parlor chair.
They would soon pass the lake. Will looked around the car desperately, then his eyes came to rest on the lifeless bronze eyes of the statue of Zhang Sen. He got behind the statue and pushed it to the floor. As he started to put his back into it and push it across the carpet, Bradley joined in and helped. As the blazing train veered around the frozen lake, Will and Bradley pushed the heavy bronze statue closer to the door, inching it out over the edge toward the speeding tracks, until finally—
—the statue tipped.
The head of Zhang Sen hit the tracks first and cracked off. The body hit the wheels. The car bounced upward, lifting the coal car with it, then the flaming engine. The three cars jackknifed in the air.
Will grabbed Bradley and the two of them hit the floor of the master carriage, holding on to one another as tight as they could.
The cars flew up into the air and came down with a crash, but not on the tracks. They landed in an explosion of snow on the steep embankment heading down toward the frozen lake, the cars twisting around each other, spitting out chunks of steel and buckled wheels, taking out trees as they smashed their way through the forest before hitting the frozen lake. All three cars tipped on their side as momentum sent them sliding clear across the lake’s icy surface.
The engine continued to shoot its jet of orange flames, now blasting horizontally, turning the top layer of frosty ice to glistening glass as the train skimmed across the lake.
The tipped master carriage left a trail of shattered glass and scattered diamonds all the way from the shore to the middle of the frozen lake, where the three cars eventually skidded to a stop, fire erupting from the burst engine and quickly melting the frozen surface.
The first crack appeared within seconds.
Will was the first to pull himself together, pushing the remaining Louis parlor chair off of him. The ceiling was now a row of broken windows, their red velvet curtains hanging down through the car. He saw snow falling in through the shattered windows above and realized the car was on its side now. Quickly he looked down. Underneath him was another row of smashed windows. And beneath that—cracking ice. Starting with a series of small streaks, sprinkling across the white surface of the lake.
“Bradley!” Will uttered urgently, reaching across to shake Bradley’s shoulder, unable to take his eyes off the ice.
The streaks spread. There was a loud
crunch!
And suddenly, like a thunderbolt, a giant crack shot across the frozen surface directly beneath the shattered windows. And the freezing waters of the lake started to gush upward.
“Bradley!”
Crack!
“Bradley, get up!”
Crack-crack!
The split turned into a delta, cutting across the surface of the lake in a dozen different directions.
As the freezing water rushed inward, Bradley began to stir, then he was suddenly hauled to his feet by Will, who had jumped over the unconscious body of Mya and was now dragging Bradley to the door of the car, now dangling open at the far end, its hinges busted.
“We gotta get outta here!” Will cried. He pulled Bradley past the zidium device as its counter ticked down past the three-minute mark.
Then, suddenly, Bradley saw something else on the floor: The Eye. The Eye of Fucanglong. It had fallen from Mya’s bosom in the crash and was now resting beside the ticking bomb. Shining. Shimmering. Calling. Bradley pulled back on Will’s hand.
“What are you doing?” Will asked, feeling Bradley’s hand leave his.
But Bradley was no longer looking at Will. He was looking into the Eye of Fucanglong. “The diamond,” he breathed.
Suddenly there was another deafening
CRACK!
A huge sheet of ice directly beneath the car gave way. One end of the car dropped into the lake and the other end sank into the rushing water, dragged down by the weight of the engine and coal car. The icy currents rushed upon Mya, whose confused eyes shot open as she spluttered and coughed and slid under the rushing water.
From outside came several explosions of steam as the lake snapped and broke apart, ice erupting in violent cloudbursts as the blazing fire battled the freezing water.
The hypothermic currents swirled around the bomb—its timer now down to
2:16
—and carried the silver orb down into the depths, rolling toward one end of the sinking car.
The Eye of Fucanglong bounced and rolled down the length of the shattered, fast-flooding car, teetering in slow motion as it was dragged under.
Will tried to grab Bradley, but before he could reach him Bradley dived into the freezing water after the diamond. There was another ear-splitting
crack
, and another ice shelf outside split and dropped them further toward a frozen grave.
“Bradley!”
Will pushed his way through the water and found an arm. But it wasn’t Bradley he pulled to the surface—
It was Mya.
“Where’s the diamond?!” she hissed.
“Where’s Bradley?!”
In the same instant they both turned and dived into the sinking car. Beneath the water Bradley was running out of air, bubbles billowing from his mouth as he tried to dig beneath the sliding desk and broken Parisian lounges to the far corner of the car where the Eye of Fucanglong concealed itself.
Suddenly Mya appeared next to him. She elbowed him in the chest and forced the last bubbles of air from his lungs, then pulled at his arms, fighting him for the diamond. She didn’t have to fight for long; behind both of them Will grabbed the seat of Bradley’s trousers and hauled him back to the surface.
Will and Bradley both came up gasping.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Will spat water, shouting over the splintering sound of ice cracking.
“You don’t understand!” Bradley snapped back.
The car groaned perilously. “Understand what?”
Bradley panted, still trying to fill his lungs with oxygen. “Don’t you get it? That diamond! It’s the only thing that’s left of my family.”
Will grabbed Bradley fiercely by the back of his head and held his face close. “No!
You’re
the only thing that’s left of your family. Don’t die for a stupid rock!”
There was another monstrous
SNAP
of ice outside. The car dropped further into the water. Bradley slid backward, teetering back toward the deep. But Will reached for him.
“Take my hand and don’t let go.”
As he began to fall backward into the water, Bradley slapped his palm against Will’s. Their hands locked. With all his strength, Will began to drag Bradley from the sinking, burning train wreck.
Under the water, Mya’s air began to run out. She pushed past the desk and the lounge and dug her arm deep beneath the pile of splintered, sunken furniture, until finally she reached the diamond. She couldn’t see it, but she could feel it. Small. Cold. Sharp. Just like Mya herself. She gripped it in her fist. Then suddenly another section of ice cracked and the car dropped even deeper into its watery grave, tipping on even more of an angle.
The desk slid down further, trapping Mya’s hand. Then came the silver ball. Rolling through the water, bouncing to a stop directly in front of Mya’s face. Its red digits were ticking down faster than ever.
0:56
0:55
0:54
She tried desperately to pull her arm free, but it was stuck. Her lungs pushed out plumes of bubbles.
At the other end of the car, the water rushed up through the open door, pushing Will and Bradley up through the hole. Will looked around quickly. They were in the middle of the lake, 600 feet or more from shore. The jet of fire from the overturned engine was quickly melting the ice, forming a black hole of freezing water in the center of the lake. All around them the ice plates were cracking and exploding.
Will jumped from the edge of the sinking car onto a dipping, tilting sheet of ice. Bradley quickly followed. Behind them, air, steam, and bubbling water gushed from the three connected cars.
Will and Bradley leapt from one floating ice sheet to the next until they were no longer standing on broken, floating ice. But they were still too far from shore.
“We’ll never make it,” Will said, glancing back at the sinking train.
That’s when he heard Bradley say, “Take my hand and don’t let go!”
Will looked at him.
Bradley simply held out his hand. “Never give up. Right?”
Will nodded, smiled, then put his hand in Bradley’s and watched, confused, as Bradley began stomping his boots into the ice.
Suddenly Will realized—it wasn’t the ice Bradley was stomping on. It was the trail of diamonds left behind from the crash, the diamonds that had been thrown from Mya’s black velvet bags, now scattered from the shore to the sinking train. Will followed suit and he and Bradley pounded their shoes down on every last diamond they could see.
As the frozen surface of the lake collapsed behind them, Bradley tightened his grip on Will’s hand. Then, with dozens of razor-sharp diamonds embedded in their soles and Will in tow, Bradley began skating.
He skated faster than he had ever skated in his life, his family’s diamonds cutting across the ice, his legs pumping toward the shore, thighs burning, left shoe sliding far and strong, then the right, one hand behind him clinging tightly to a precariously sliding Will.
Behind them the center of the lake split apart completely. Fractured chunks of ice sent water and steam ballooning into the air as the train and its fiery engine finally plunged into the freezing water. The train spiraled into the deep dark of the lake.
In the master carriage, her arm stuck and clinging to the diamond, the red digits of the bomb counting down in her face, Mya Chan released the last bubble of air from her lungs and smiled.
If the diamond couldn’t belong to her, it would belong to no one.
As she sucked in her first lungful of frozen water, her body spasmed and the red digits on the bomb finished their countdown.
0:00:02
0:00:01
0:00:00
Bradley and Will were halfway to shore when the icy lake erupted like a volcano behind them, shattered ice blasting upward, forcing the snow that fell from the heavens back into the sky.
Will glanced behind him and saw giant sheets of ice flip into the air before the cracks of destruction ripped across the lake toward them.
Bradley heard it; he didn’t have to look back. With more power and strength than any Olympian could muster, he shot across the frozen surface, pulling Will behind him. Cutting long strides in the ice. Moving as fast as he could.
Faster. Faster still! The entire lake was rupturing from its epicenter. Bradley felt the surface beneath his diamond-studded shoes pitch and tilt. He kept skating.
The fracturing white around him broke up completely. The shore came closer and closer until—

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