Jenn Bennett - Bitter Spirits

“You will. Dull needles are painful. Sit still.” Very delicately, Yip inspected the injury, prodding the skin around it and asking Winter questions about his range of movement. He rotated Winter’s arm until he grunted in pain. Yip seemed to be happy about this. “Ligaments injured. The bruise is bad, but superficial. I will help you. Relax.”

Winter looked ill. Legs spread, he hunched over, bracing his good arm on his knee while the herbalist used a small metal tube to hold a needle at the top of his shoulder. He tapped it with one finger. Winter closed his eyes. Aida cringed. The needle wobbled, standing proud on Winter’s shoulder like an errant dart.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it,” Yip confirmed.

Winter grinned at Aida. “It doesn’t hurt.”

Half a minute later, five more needles porcupined his arm. Winter moaned.

“Feeling drowsy?”

“You didn’t tip these needles in poison, did you?”

Yip laughed. “What you’re feeling is your qi flowing. Natural energy. When it is blocked, you have pain. I’ve opened up a channel for your energy to flow. Just relax and enjoy it for a few minutes.”

A telephone rang. The doctor excused himself and went behind the counter up front to answer it, speaking in quick Cantonese.

Sandalwood smoke wafted from a dozen joss sticks standing in the brass bowl near Aida. “That looks like your arm right now,” she said, pointing to the incense stand.

“I feel . . . drunk,” he said, closing his eyes.

“In a good way?”

“In a very good way.”

Bells jingled again near the entrance. “Don’t pass out. I don’t think I could carry you to a taxi.”

“Mmm.” He took several breaths through his nose, and then murmured, “Do you think it’s really our guy? Black Star?”

“I hope so. Though, I was thinking, if he’s such a popular fortune-teller, I wonder why Bo hasn’t been able to turn up his name? Seems to me—”

“Aida.”

“—that if he’s working at one of the temples—”

“Aida,” he said sharply.

“Yes?”

“Come stand behind me.” Winter’s voice was strained, his gaze fixed behind her. “Now.”

She started to ask why, started to turn around to see what he was looking at, but an arm wrapped around her shoulders and yanked her backward. Winter’s clothes spilled out of her lap as her body lifted into the air. Her ankles knocked against the rungs of the chair. A man’s foot kicked it out from under her, and her back slammed against someone’s chest.

It happened so fast.

Winter charged, a snarl on his face, but another approaching voice gave him a rough command as a gun and a second man appeared at her side. “Sit back down.”

Winter held up his hands in surrender and sat. Doctor Yip stumbled past her with his hands up, as well.

She struggled to get away, clawing at the arm around her shoulders. His grip tightened painfully. She gasped for air and dug her nails into her assailant’s arm. He shoved her head to the side. Low Cantonese grated against her ear. His arm was beefy. Not as tall as Winter, judging from the way he felt against her, but solid enough. Her initial shock and confusion trickled into a deeper panic.

Winter addressed the man standing next to her in a barely restrained rumble. “You just made the biggest mistake of your life.”

“No, you did, Magnusson. This is Ju’s territory.”

“Did Ju send you here?”

“Ju hears Bo Yeung poking around, asking questions. Now you show up? He won’t be happy to hear we found you here. Not at all. Maybe you think now that your daddy is gone, you’ll get your hands on tong business.” The man took a step toward Winter. His black suit was creased. A bowler was perched crookedly atop his head. His ear was cauliflowered—bulbous and protruding around the upper shell. An old injury. “Why are you in Ju’s territory?”

“None of your goddamn business.”

“Why is Bo sniffing around?”

“Call off your dog and let her go. Then we can talk.”

The man said something in Cantonese that made her captor laugh. Fat fingers clamped over a breast and squeezed. Aida struggled to pull away. “Get your hands off of me.”

Winter lurched to his feet. “You dirty fucking pig—”

The cauliflower-eared man shoved the muzzle of the gun against Winter’s forehead as he grabbed one of his acupuncture needles and jammed it farther into Winter’s shoulder. He shouted incoherent blasphemies as his eyes watered.

“Do not spill blood!” Doctor Yip cried out. “This is a holy place.”

The man ignored the doctor. “Sit down,” he repeated to Winter.

Winter complied.

Aida’s panic shifted into anger. She could continue to stand by and do nothing while Winter got hurt—or killed! Or she could do something and help him.

Her mind raced. Her lower arms were free. The man holding her was becoming lazy as he watched his friend torment Winter. Doctor Yip was huddled against the far wall, talking silently to himself. Praying to his spirits, maybe. She hoped like hell they were listening.

The overpowering scent of sandalwood was making her ill. She glanced down at it in irritation. The brass incense bowl was within her reach, the tips of the sticks glowing orange.

Ah . . .

Fast as she could, she whipped her arm out and grabbed several sticks in one swoop. She felt the gripping arm tighten around her shoulders, but he wasn’t fast enough. She stabbed backward over her shoulder using all her strength, aiming the joss sticks for what she hoped was his face.

THE STICKS JAMMED INTO FLESH. HER CAPTOR’S SCREAM PIERCED her ear.

She fell forward, stumbling away from him.

Distracted by his friend’s screaming, the cauliflower-eared man let his guard down for one heartbeat too long. Winter flew off the bench. In two beautiful movements, he snatched the gun from the man’s hand as he jabbed an angry fist square in the middle of his face. It was brute strength, skillfully wielded—she’d never seen such a violent motion delivered so precisely. The punch made a sickening crack! like a bat hitting a ball. The man’s body flew backward and collapsed on the floor.

His muffled cries were pained and feral as the copper-bright scent of blood wafted in the air. He was not going to get up again. Aida’s attention flew to her captor. Both hands covered his cheek. She’d missed his eye by centimeters. A shame.

“Get down!” Winter bellowed at the man, loud enough to rattle Aida’s nerves. He was savage—the devil himself. And Aida was, all at once, frightened and strangely thrilled.

Winter stepped between her and her captor and motioned with the gun. The man dropped to his knees.

Lying on his side, the cauliflower-eared man loosely held his hands over his nose and took desperate gasps of air through his open mouth. Blood seeped between his fingers.

“No shame in crying.” Winter told him in a calmer voice. “That nose is broken and probably hurts like hell. You might want to have someone set it, or it’s going to look ugly when it heals.”

The man twisted in place to shoot Winter a hateful look.

Winter clucked his tongue. “You’ve got nerve, coming in here today to question me without Ju’s permission. I can only imagine what you were thinking. But let’s get some things straight. I’m not interested in Ju’s territory, or any of the other tongs’. We do not have overlapping interests. Never will. Secondly, this cul-de-sac is not technically Ju’s. It’s free territory.”

The man shuddered, rolled onto his shoulder, and spat blood out of his mouth.

“And if Ju has a problem with Bo ‘sniffing around,’ as you put it, then he will come talk to me directly. I don’t do business with peons.”

Her captor was saying something in Cantonese. His partner didn’t answer.

“But let me make one thing clear. If either of you lay a finger on Bo, I will hunt you down and break every bone in your body. And if you or any other man so much as even stands too close to her ever again, I will blame you personally”—he tapped the man’s elbow with his shoe—“and I will put a bullet in both your brains. Do you understand?”

The cauliflower-eared man made a short grunting noise in confirmation.

“I’m going to send word to Ju that the two of you assaulted us without provocation. I’ll let him dole out your punishment. Now get the hell out of here before I change my mind and take you out into the alley.”

Fifteen minutes later—after Winter had made promises to Doctor Yip about ensuring his protection—Aida scooted across the backseat of a taxi to make room for his big body. She decided it was better to drop her off at Gris-Gris, as there wasn’t time for her to return to her apartment. He instructed the driver, and soon they were pulling out onto a rain-slicked street, away from tong territory.

“That was a stupid thing to do, burning that man in the face,” Winter said staring out the window. “He could’ve hurt you.”

“But he didn’t.”

He turned and looked at her. “Did you think I wouldn’t protect you?” His tone was intimidating, his mouth stern. Was he angry, or was his male pride wounded?

“I wasn’t thinking about anything at all,” she protested. “I just acted on instinct.” When she got no response to that, she asked, “Would you have done worse to them if I wasn’t there?”

“I don’t go around killing everyone who threatens me. I’m not a thug.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

He didn’t answer, which hurt her feelings.

Fine. He could be mad at her and brood in the corner all he wanted. Only, there wasn’t a corner in the taxi, and he filled up every inch of the space with his enormous body, the scent of his clothes, and the dark cloud of emotions radiating from him. She squirmed, trying to cram herself against the door.