The Girl with Ghost Eyes (10 page)

Pinned under their weight, I couldn’t reach my weapons. I was winded, and my elbow was bleeding from the place where it hit the bricks. Then my father’s weight was lifted off of me all at once.

The hound yanked Father backward, and he half-dangled from its mouth. It shook him back and forth. It was trying to break Father’s neck.

Panic shot through me. I pushed myself up from the ground and drew my peachwood sword. Father was unarmed. He flailed his arms behind him uselessly.

My first objective was to protect Father, so I took a bagua sword stance instead of my usual taiji. Bagua was designed for bodyguards. Its stepping skills emphasized moving in arcs, like a whirlwind, to divide an attacker from his target. The stepping pattern draws the attacker after you, but when he strikes you’re already behind him and his attack lands in the void.

Father’s good eye was wide and desperate and the dog shook him from side to side as if he were a cloth doll. It hurt to see him helpless. Fast as an arrow I stepped in and slashed at the dog’s snout with my peachwood sword. A red cut opened on its maw. That was good. It could be wounded. I spun to the monster’s haunches.

It opened its jaws to snarl at me and my father slipped to the ground. He dropped like a coin in water and slumped on the street. He wasn’t moving, but I couldn’t see to him yet. Bagua stepping, I slipped between my father and the hound and made sure my steps drew it after me.

A foul smoke rose from the monster’s snout, green and black. I could taste it in the air. The dog spirit was growling, contaminated by madness. It bared its lips and snarled, and I saw large, sharp teeth. Yellow drool slobbered from its mouth, and I was afraid. I felt frail and small and inadequate, facing the monstrous dog.

It pounced, massive and deadly. It was fast; at that speed, and with its size, it could pulverize me. I hadn’t counted on it coming at me so fast.

I flowed to one side to avoid the dog, then coiled around to face it and added the momentum of my spin to a low swipe of my sword. The sword slashed the dog spirit along its hindquarters. The dog yelped in surprise but it continued plunging forward, out of my reach, before I could execute any further attacks.

The monster turned around and faced me. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but it seemed even angrier than before. A low cunning swept its features; the beast wanted to kill. I shuddered.

I glanced at my father on the ground. He was alive, but he wasn’t moving. I wanted him to get up. I wanted to hand him my peachwood sword and watch him dice the monster into cubes. He didn’t move.

I couldn’t fight the enormous dog monster with just a sword, so I began to cast a spell. I knew my magic held little sway over the spirits, but I was fighting for my life and I was willing to hit the beast with any weapon I could find. “
Tian, De, Ziran,
” I intoned, heaven, earth, nature, “
yao, qi, yao, qi, yao, qi
.” The incantation focused my will and transmitted it into commands over the spirit world. “
Quickly quickly,
” I finished, “
as it is the Law!
”

Thin tendrils of power spread from my spell. They reached toward the dog like fingers of starlight. My spell struck the hound and crumbled into useless whispers against its black fur. I cursed.

The spell had been made of my will alone, bound into syllables and sent out into the spirit world. A single will, amplified by no more than the Second Ordination. A Daoshi of the Sixth or Seventh could draw upon the willpower of all the Maoshan Daoshi who came before him. Eighty generations add a lot of gunpowder to a chant.

But Father was prone on the ground, unconscious, and his power was with him.

That gave me an idea.

Before I could act, the dog ran at me. I jabbed my wood sword down at its face but I was too slow. It caught my left sleeve in its teeth, and my stepping pattern broke.

Panicking, I swung the sword as hard as I could, desperate to get away. The sword cut an orange gash along its muzzle. I started to swing my peachwood sword again but the dog yanked me down to the ground.

With my sleeve caught in its mouth, I scrambled to my back on the cobblestones. I was terrified. Off-balance and in the power of something so big and vicious, I felt overwhelmed. Fear filled me, and I began to tremble. I couldn’t let the monster climb on top of me. If it pinned me down, I wouldn’t have a chance.

My pulses pounded in my head, so loud I could barely think. The beast had two weapons, its jaws and its mass. The hound had caught me with its mouth. I’d been taken down, lost my leverage, and I couldn’t strike with my left arm. But as long as the monster controlled me by the sleeve, its primary weapon was out of the fight.

The dog swung about, trying to land its weight on top of me, but I turned my legs and twisted my body away.

This was a ground fight now, and as long as I continued fighting defensively, I could never gain a position of power. Eventually I was going to get tired. Bumping against the cobblestones would leave me worn out, and I’d be too exhausted, too shaken, to continue fighting. I had to take the offensive.

I kicked both legs out and the momentum drove me to my feet in a kip-up. I turned to face the big black dog with the white fire behind its eyes. It still had me by my sleeve, and it dropped its forequarters to the ground and began backing away. It dragged me along, stumbling.

I wondered what would happen if I removed my robe. Allowing myself a quick glance, I saw that a crowd had gathered. Maybe twenty men stood at a safe distance, warily watching the street battle. Dr. Wei and his apprentices were tending to Father, and Mr. Yanqiu looked ready to grab a weapon and attack the beast. In the back of my mind, I realized: everyone could see the dog monster.

There were so many people around. Removing my robe might save my life, and I knew it, but I would die before losing Father so much face. There had to be another way to get my sleeve out of the monster’s jaws.

Diving forward in a front-flip, I landed rolling to my back on the cobblestones and jammed my peachwood sword in between its teeth. Still rolling, I kicked my far leg up, as hard as I could, and used the momentum to flip myself up onto the beast’s back.

I touched it only for a split second, but in that moment, a horrible sensation coursed through me. It was boiling with death and fear and pain, and hunger. So much hunger. I wanted to vomit. I wanted to die. But momentum kept me going and gave me leverage on the sword in the dog’s mouth. My weight and momentum pried against its jaws. I only needed half an inch, a quarter inch….

Its jaws opened a little and snapped shut again, but the dog was too slow. My sleeve pulled free and I toppled off the dark beast’s back and landed, rolling, back on the street.

Fast as I could, I was on my feet again. The monster turned to face me, faster than I would have thought possible. But I was running toward it, and I jumped at just the right moment.

One foot landed on its back and I pushed off, and then the dog was behind me and I was running. The beast turned around again and ran after me. It was faster. I knew I couldn’t outrun it. But I didn’t need to.

I wasn’t trying to get away. Each step brought me closer to the door of Father’s temple.

And to the string of cloth talismans hanging over the door.

The dog was six steps behind me, and I began the processes of qinggong: lightness. Five steps behind, and I was transferring the weight at each step, making myself lighter. Four steps behind, and I was lifting each footstep higher, coordinating my qi with the Bubbling Spring energy centers in the soles of my feet. Three steps behind, and I placed a foot on the temple wall, then another, running two steps, three steps, up the wall. My arms stretched over my head, my hands desperately grabbing at the cloth, I felt my fingers touch it….

And the monstrous black dog crashed into me. Its mass knocked me hard against the brick wall, and I began to fall, stunned and out of breath. The dog’s hindquarters struck the brick and we fell together.

The hound recovered first. It turned and pounced on me while I was rolling onto my back. Its mouth opened, and I saw its sharp teeth coated with yellow saliva, smelled its foul breath.

I jammed the string of cloth talismans into its open mouth. The jaws closed, around the talismans and my arm. I felt its teeth puncture the skin on my forearm, and the pain made me cry out. Blood flowed from the wound.

I had little power over the spirit world. But my father had made those talismans. Talismans of warding, talismans of banishment, each of them amplified by the Seventh Ordination, reinforced by eighty generations of Maoshan Daoshi.

The monster’s eyes went wide and bright, like little moons. Wetness filled them and the beast began to whimper. Soon, I knew, the dog spirit would break down piece by piece into bloody hunks of meat. I’d seen animal spirits die before, and it wasn’t pretty. Over the course of hours, the meat would dissolve into a haze of spirit.

With my hand still caught in the dog’s jaws, I pulled myself to my feet and watched the spirit shudder and convulse. “Die already, you nasty devil.”

The dog monster coughed, once, and then something happened that I’d never seen before. The dog caught fire, as if from the inside. It burned like a thing of paper. Blazing bright, it was consumed in a few brief instants of flame, and then it was gone. I watched its head combust around my hand, but I felt no heat. Black ashes drifted onto the cobblestones.

A blue afterimage of the fire danced before my eyes. I looked at the ashes. They weren’t in the world of spirits. They were on the street, where anyone could see them. That was strange.

I picked up the cloth talismans and examined them. A kind of spirit slime stuck to them, but their power was burning it away. They were intact. So the ashes had not come from the talismans.

Mr. Yanqiu wobbled over. “Are you all right, Li-lin?” he asked, and concern choked his voice.

“Yes,” I said. Blood was trickling down my arm, and my body was sore all over. The fight with the dog had been brutal, but I was all right. “How is Father?”

“I heard Dr. Wei say he’d recover,” the eyeball said.

Relief washed through me, and I nodded.

I turned to look at my father. There was blood on the street, but Dr. Wei and his apprentices were seeing to his care with focused medical attention. A memory flashed in my mind: Dr. Wei bent over my husband on the street, trying to stop the bleeding. My world ended so quickly, without warning. There could never be enough wailing for what I lost that day.

I wiped tears from my eyes. I had failed to protect my husband, but maybe I had managed to keep my father alive.

I turned my attention back to the monster’s ashes. Physical ashes. That monster had nearly killed me, and I had no idea what it was. Father would, though.

12

“You Xians,” Dr. Wei muttered, wiping his spectacles onto a cloth. “You will be the death of me.”

Father smiled from the cot and threw an infirmary pillow at his friend. Dr. Wei managed to catch it.

“I will be fighting ghosts and goblins until my bones are smuggled back to China,” Father told him, “and you will be healing my wounds.”

“What was that monster?” I asked. “Was it a demon?” I knew it was rude to speak without being addressed, but I needed to know.

Father tried to shake his head, but the plaster cast immobilized his neck. “No,” he said, and the word was filled with more disapproval than anyone else could have managed to pack into one word. The word told me I was a fool, I should have known better than to ask, and I shouldn’t have spoken to my elders without being addressed. “That wasn’t a demon, or a yaoguai, or a spirit. It was a quanshen.”

Dr. Wei’s face was as blank as mine. “A dog spirit?” I asked. It didn’t seem right; the beast had been nothing like the fox spirits I’d learned about, or the cat spirit I knew. “But why did it burst into flames?”

Father’s lips were pursed in a severe expression. “A quanshen isn’t a spirit,” he said. “It’s a spell.” He glanced at his friend. “Let me speak with my daughter alone.”

Dr. Wei rose in a huff, pushing his spectacles higher on his nose. “I need to see to my other patients anyway,” he said, and he strode out through the door.

“Father,” I said, slowly, “was it one of Liu Qiang’s paper figures?”

He tried to shake his head, but the neck brace immobilized him again, and he winced. A look of distaste crossed my father’s face, and he continued. “This isn’t any form of Daoist magic, or even soulstealing, Ah Li,” he said, using a diminutive of my name. “It’s yao shu, filthy magic. The spell comes from Japan, where they call that kind of beast an ‘inugami.’” He grimaced, as if the Japanese word caused him pain. “I do not believe Liu Qiang capable of making a quanshen.”

I didn’t understand. “Someone made that dog?”

“Let me speak, Ah Li,” my father said, looking cross. “Quanshen are a kind of spirit servant.”

“Like the Five Ghosts?”

Father scowled at me. “Yes, you could say so. The Five Ghosts are my spirit servants. They will obey any Daoshi of the Seventh.”

“But the Five Ghosts are orthodox warrior spirits of the Dao,” I said.

“No more interruptions,” my father said, giving me a harsh look. I bit my lip to keep myself from speaking again. “The Five Ghosts are upright beyond question. But there are filthy sorcerers,” he went on. “Sorcerers who do not follow the Dao, and they have … other ways … of waging spirit war.” That look of disgust had returned.

“To make a quanshen,” Father continued, looking away, “a sorcerer begins by preparing a special blue paper for talisman-making. And then he … he takes a dog. Chains it up. The sorcerer puts a bowl of fresh meat just beyond where the dog can reach it. Then he … lets the dog starve. For days. Twice a day he puts out a fresh bowl of meat, and the dog strains at its chains, trying to get something to eat.”

I understood Father’s look of disgust. He continued, “Can you imagine that, Li-lin? All that hunger and desperation. Smelling the meat all day, so close. When the dog is out of its mind with rage and starvation, the sorcerer cuts off its head. He dips a reed brush into the dog’s blood while it’s still fresh, and he uses it like ink. He paints a victim’s name on the blue paper, trapping the dog’s spirit into the talisman.”