“Where?” Jian-Li demanded, also now close.
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know,” I chanted, feeling the pain at the same time feeling a panic that was so extreme, it was nearly consuming. I reached out a hand and clasped it on Chen’s biceps, curling it tight and yanking him to me even as I leaned his way. “We have to get to him.”
“You’ll guide me?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Let’s go,” he said, straightening and pulling me with him. We were both racing to the door when he called back to his mother. “Call Xun and Wei.”
“Of course,” she replied, her tone urgent, and we were out the door, up the stairs, and down the alley where he stopped me by a motorcycle.
The man they called Abel had a Harley Sportster.
Chen had crotch rocket.
My father rode a Harley. My father had ridden a Harley since before I was born. My father got a job at thirteen and worked it, saving every penny to buy his first broken-down Harley at the age of fifteen. And my father would disown me if he knew I did what I did next, that being jumping right on behind Chen after he mounted it and turned the ignition.
I wrapped my arms around his flat stomach and leaned deep, lips to his ear. “Left out of the alley, right at the next street. Hurry!”
We shot out of the alley and Chen turned left, then right at the next street.
The wind whipping my hair, Chen wasting no time, impossibly, since I didn’t know how I knew, I just knew that I knew, I said into his ear, “Right at the light.”
We hit the light and slung low, our bodies straining to the heavens, our knees nearly grazing the blacktop as he took the turn at the light.
“Alley, alley, alley!” I cried when he’d made the turn and righted us and the bike, then, “Left!”
He took us left and I nearly flew off the back of the bike and over his head when he braked so fast, the rear wheel came off the tarmac.
I looked around him and got what made him stop so fast.
Abel was fighting three men. Three huge men.
Three huge men with swords.
“Okay, my night just officially went off the charts, batshit crazy,” I breathed.
I nearly fell off the bike as Chen dismounted swiftly, a phone at his ear and him talking into it. “Alley behind Guzman’s. Hurry.”
I heard the loud clang when one of the guy’s swords crashed against the long length of pipe Abel was using to defend himself. I looked that way as Chen dashed toward the fray.
Unarmed.
“Chen!” I shrieked.
And I shrieked this just as a huge wolf came flying out of the shadows.
It was heading toward Chen.
It didn’t make it to him.
This was because Chen leaped incredibly high at the last second and grabbed hold of a pipe sticking straight out of the brick of the building. He did a loop-di-loop like he was a male gymnast on the horizontal bar, flew off, then fell, aiming and connecting a vicious kick into the wolf’s jaw before he landed. The wolf let out a canine howl and scuttled back three feet.
Chen didn’t waste even a second in recovery. Having landed in a deep squat with one leg out, both hands to the tarmac, he whirled in a flash to standing. Using his legs and clearly martial arts moves, he beat the wolf back with brutal kicks, even turning full around to get his momentum going, connecting, and the wolf flew to his side, cheek-first in the asphalt, and skidded away.
“Holy shitoly,” I whispered.
“Chen!” Abel bellowed, still defending himself and scarily retreating under the onslaught of three swords. “Get her to safety!”
“Kinda busy here, brother,” Chen replied, still kicking at the wolf.
“Get her…” Abel roared, rounding his pipe and connecting savagely up the side of one of his attacker’s heads, blood flowing out in a spray. The man fell down on a knee with one hand to the ground. “To safety!”
It occurred to me I was standing there, staring at this lunacy, and not doing anything.
So I did something.
But that something was not running away.
No.
That something was looking around for a weapon so I could help.
I hadn’t found anything when Abel thundered, “Move!”
Instinctively, I sensed he was talking to me and leaped out of the way, toward the wall of a building.
I did it in the nick of time. Two crotch rockets rounded into the alley and they did it fast.
And they did not stop.
One fell to its side, the rider rolling off, the motorcycle skidding uncontrollably, bowling over two of Abel’s attackers.
The other one stopped on a rear-end-whipping-around brake. The guy on it pulled out one of the two swords crisscrossed in a scabbard at his back, whipped it around, and lopped off the third attacker’s head, the one who was still knee to the ground.
I pressed into the wall.
The guy who did the skid was running toward Chen. He leaped, going high, hitch-kicking in the air like a long jumper, landed on top of the wolf, and started raining what could only be described as karate chops all over the wolf’s head and neck as Chen kept kicking the beast.
I heard a grunt of effort and looked back to Abel and the other guy. The other guy had unsheathed his second sword and was whipping them around his body so fast I could hear the blades slicing through the air. This was good, considering one of Abel’s attackers was flashing around him at inhuman speed, stopping, carving his sword toward his target only for it to glance off those whipping blades. Then he’d flash somewhere else and try again.
Through this, I saw that Abel somehow had the dead guy’s sword, and when he got his opening, he drove it into the other guy’s stomach. While the guy was bending over his injury, Abel let the sword go, lifted his hands to the guy’s head, twisted, and tore it clean from his body.