By night, the Kodiak Club was a place of magic and mystery, a palace of glory and debauchery alike. Gaslight sparkled in crystal, making it come to life like diamonds with fire in their hearts. The rugs, the wallpaper, the art, by dim light they were luxurious.
By day, it was tawdry. The excitement, the passion, the magic were gone, leaving nothing but the cold chill of a place of business. Floors were mopped, tables were cleared, plates and glasses were washed, trash was removed, kitchens were restocked, fresh sand was laid down in the fighting pit.
Likewise, the door: by night it was a narrow opening in the building's stone facade, almost like a secret door in the Soho streets, and the passage beyond was a hidden tunnel, while by day it was just another nondescript door in a nondescript wall, not mysterious but just keeping a low enough profile that it didn't attract so much attention that the law had to step in. Convention, after all, was best flouted with discretion. It was the philosophy of the age that one could get away with almost anything if one was sufficiently quiet about it.
Quiet and discretion were not really words in Yang Xiao Long's vocabulary.
It wasn't that she didn't understand the concepts; she'd spent over half of her life in the household of an aristocrat, after all (and to give her dad full marks, always treated as one of the family despite being born on the wrong side of the blanket). She knew how the rules worked, she knew how some people followed them and how other people found the cracks in them for their own benefit. Yang just didn't care. She followed the rules she thought made sense and, as much as was possible, sought to ignore those that didn't.
Feminine attire, for example.
Ruby liked her combat skirt, and that was all fine, but Yang saw no point to it. When on business, she wore plain, lightweight cloth trousers that gave her legs full freedom of movement, sturdy boots that protected her feet and delivered a major impact when she kicked someone, and a plain shirt, open at the throat with a sunny yellow-orange scarf wound around her neck and a leather vest that provided some measure of protection against blows and slashes. Over it all she wore a full-length duster, like an American cowboy. This was basically her only concession to discretion: it kept her thighs and backside from being on display to people who'd spend their time squawking about it, and it kept the fact that she was using another American fashion statement from being too obvious: a LeMat .42 in a leather holster on her right hip.
The sleeves of the duster had been slashed open along their outer edges from shoulder to wrist, then held shut with laces. That was discretion, too, of a different kind.
She hammered on the door. A panel slid open, and eyes hidden behind red-tinted spectacles looked out.
"We're closed!"
The panel slammed shut.
Yang pounded her fist on the door again.
"C'mon, let me in!"
The panel snapped open.
"I said, we're closed. Beat it."
"I need to see Junior, and this is the only place he's ever at." Yang envied the door guard his tinted spectacles; the morning sun was stinging her eyes. That was a consequence of being up all night, of weeping over her sister without taking time to rest.
Rest was something that could come later.
"Hell, is that Xiao Long?"
"Do you know anyone else that looks this gorgeous?" She shot him a grin that she didn't feel.
"You should have just gone around back; they'd have let you in right off without any fuss. Front door's for guests."
"And today, I am a guest," she said.
It was weird, maybe, but she really hadn't wanted to go in through the back doors, the ones used by the staff, the servants, the pit fighters, and the suppliers. It would have felt wrong, somehow, like she was naming herself as one of them by taking that route. It would have felt like she was lying.
Today, she definitely was not one of them.
"All right, c'mon in. Just don't blame me if you get yelled at for prancing in the front way." Two heavy bolts clunked as they were slid back, and the door started to open.
Yang helped it along with a kick.
She felt the shock travel up her leg as the heavy door crashed hard into the man opening it. There was a grunt of pain, and Yang hit the door again, ramming it fully open as the guard reeled away. Before he could react she darted forward and hit him twice, once in the belly and once in the face. Blood and teeth sprayed, and he went over on his back, unmoving.
While Yang was a strong woman, the rather dramatic effect was not entirely due to just that. Fitted over her hands were part of an articulated harness, which set a metal plate across the back of her hand and a second one across the backs of her fingers between the first two knuckles; she wore fingerless gloves beneath the gauntlet-like devices to prevent chafing and bruising. These, and the thinner plates across the inside of her hand that held them in place, covered most of the striking surfaces with metal, so that she was wearing the equivalent of brass knuckles, only useful for more kinds of blows.
She looked down at the guard, plucking the laces loose from her duster sleeves. The cords that held them closed, though they crossed the sleeves in multiple places, were tied only once, at the wrists, so it was a matter of only a few seconds to undo the knots and pull them loose. She stuffed the leather cords away in her pocket, then shook her head.
Yang actually felt kind of guilty punching out the man. She didn't know him from Adam; he was just another one of Junior's faceless goons—an anonymity their boss encouraged by having them all dress in identical black suits and shirts, white ties, red spectacles, and when outside black-dyed boaters. He was basically an innocent bystander (all right, not innocent per se, the fact that he was one of Junior's men meant that by definition he was guilty of assorted crimes of violence and intimidation), without any direct involvement in what had happened to Ruby or the decision to help the Phantom Gentleman, and she'd just laid him out like a slab of meat.
On the other hand, when you took a job as a hatchet man for a crime lord, you pretty much assumed the risk that bad news was going to come calling sooner or later.
Spinning to her right, she stalked down the corridor. At night, there would be peepholes by which guards in hidden rooms could watch the door and ring an alarm in case of a fight, a police raid, or other trouble. Those watch-rooms were reached by other parts of the building; there was no direct access from the entry corridor on the principle that an alarm that couldn't be reached by the intruders was one that couldn't be silenced. If those rooms were manned now, there would be a welcoming committee waiting for her.
Good.
She stepped from the corridor through the door at the far end and into the antechamber. Here gentlemen and ladies could check their coats, boots, gloves and so on at the cloakroom if they chose. Had Yang been in a better mood, she might well have left her duster at the cloakroom just to see the attendant's face when she took it off, but there wasn't any attendant and she wasn't in the right frame of mind for jokes, anyway.
Instead, she stalked forward into the lounge.
"Hi, boys. All this for me?"
There were eight of them waiting for her as she entered the room. Some part of her was gratified to see them; there wouldn't have been that many if the watcher hadn't anticipated needing them. Even though Junior's basic principle, learned in his street days, was to spend half again as much force as he thought was required, it was still showing considerable respect.
Each one of them was dressed like the door guard, with only minor variations in hair color, facial hair, and the like, and carried a short-handled utility axe. The "hatchet men" could and did use firearms when they felt it necessary, but preferred the axe: simple, brutal, and intimidating in the way a gun was not.
"I'd advise you to turn around and walk out of here before things get ugly," said one, a clean-shaven thug whose eyebrows spiked up at the outer corners.
"That's not going to happen. I need to talk to Junior, and I'm not going away until I do."
"That's why you cold-cocked Sid?"
"Let's just say that I wanted to set the tone for this visit. I mean, I'm sure there's an etiquette for saying that I'm going to see him and anyone who gets in my way is getting their ass kicked, but I kinda skipped that class in finishing school. Actually, I skipped finishing school."
"Then I guess we'll just have to give you a lesson by finishing you off."
Yang rolled her eyes.
"Seriously, is that the best you can do? If Junior's going to be letting you boys talk, he needs to get someone with better wisecracks."
"Oh, and you think you could do better?" Eyebrows said, confirming that he was never going to rise above 'cheap thug' in this or any other organization by actually responding to her.
"I'll take a shot at it."
Yang flexed her right arm, and with a clank of metal demonstrated what her duster's slashed sleeves were for: an articulated bar swiveled around on a bolt below her elbow and swung the grip of the gun mounted on it into her palm.
Eyebrows' most distinctive feature rose sharply and his mouth made a round little O as he stared down the double barrels of the ten-gauge scattergun for a half-second, and then Yang shot him.
The thug was knocked over backward by the blast, and without missing a beat Yang shifted her aim and gunned down the man who'd been standing to Eyebrows' left.
Legally, Yang didn't have a case for self-defense, even though the hatchet men were threatening her with those very lethal-looking axes of theirs. She was a trespasser on private property—an armed trespasser who'd made a violent entry—and they were well within their rights to defend it against her assault. But she didn't have to worry about that, because her scattergun's ammunition wasn't designed to kill. Each round consisted of a small padded bag filled with lead shot, basically a sap or blackjack launched by the gun, using the weight of the shot to inflict blunt force trauma without allowing it to penetrate. That wasn't to say that they couldn't be lethal with bad luck—a blow to the head that caused a skull fracture, for example, or a broken rib that pierced vital organs. The risk was relatively small, though, and probably not much worse than that posed by the kind of beatings she could hand out with her fists.
She was still outnumbered six to one, though, so she immediately moved as soon as she'd fired the second shot, taking advantage of the men's momentary paralysis at the shock. Yang flicked the gun back up against her arm as she spun to her left, taking a quick step towards the goon on the far side of the circle. She grabbed the forearm of his weapon-hand, pulled his arm up, and punched him in the midsection to stun him with more than just surprise. She stepped in, bending to grab up between his legs, hoisting his body up across her shoulders and over in a two-hundred-seventy degree flip to slam him onto the lounge floor on his back. Whirling, she kicked the next man over on the point of his hip, making him stagger, then stepped in with a fast one-two combination that sent him tumbling away.
By this time the other hatchet men had shaken off their paralysis and were charging in on that attack. Yang whirled, and a second gun swung into her hand from an identical rig on the left side. She fired twice, dropping one man and clipping another in the side, and then they were upon her.
"You people really don't make it easy to have a conversation with someone, do you?" she muttered, pivoting out of the way of an overhand swing. They were seriously trying to kill her! Which is what happens when you start shooting people, Yang reflected as she whipped her heel against the back of the second man's knee. They haven't figured out that I'm shooting sandbags instead of shells.
On the other hand, if they knew the tone she was intending to take with their boss, they might have been trying to kill her anyway. Guys like Junior were funny like that, which is to say that they had zero sense of humor at their own expense.
The man she'd winged didn't try to close on her; maybe he'd seen her in the pit and figured going toe-to-toe with Yang wasn't the best idea. Instead, he flung his hatchet at her, the red-painted head spinning to make it look like the rim of a wheel as it flew towards her. Yang's now-empty left hand shot out and the handle slapped into her palm.
"Thanks; don't mind if I borrow this."
The thug who'd swung at her tried again, chopping down like her skull was a log he wanted to split. This time she didn't dodge but shot her right forearm up to crash against his own. She then whipped the blunt side of the axe she'd stolen hard into his side below the ribs to jar him, then grabbed his head and pulled him forward while he was off-balance, his face meeting her rapidly rising knee with a crunch.
The last man standing was the one who'd thrown the axe at her. It didn't take him long to realize that being in this fight without a weapon was a really bad idea. He backpedaled rapidly, creating space between them that Yang would have to cover if she wanted to take him down, while at the same time plunging his hand beneath his jacket. Yang saw the butt of a gun and flung the axe at him.
Hatchet-throwing wasn't one of the huntress's skills; she wasn't like one of those guys at the county fairs who could bury the edge into the center of a target every time. Since there was no chance she could count on hitting the thug with the blunt side, she threw high and wide instead of trying to hit him. It did make him duck down and away from the weapon, and the distraction allowed her to turn and bolt towards the bar off to the left side of the room, diving behind it as two shots shattered several of the liquor bottles on the shelves. Alcohol fumes filled the air as liquid poured down the mahogany fittings to puddle on the floor as Yang crouched behind the bar out of sight.
She wasn't sure if the bar would stop a bullet; while it had felt pretty substantial during the times she'd leaned on it, that would depend on how thick it was and the type of weapon being used. That didn't really matter, though, since it was twenty feet long and there was no way for the hatchet man to tell where she was behind it, and just flinging bullets randomly at her wasn't likely to accomplish anything for him.
A medley of groans and curses told her that the men who'd merely been knocked down instead of out were starting to get to their feet. She figured that was at least two, maybe up to five of them who were hurting but not incapacitated. Yang glanced up at the mirror over the bar, using it to see out into the lounge as heads began to rise, counting a total of four men in addition to the shooter. Geez, I've got to stop going easy on them!
She spun out her right-hand scattergun again, broke it open, and pulled out the spent shells, replacing them with fresh ones from her belt. The loops on her belt all held shotgun cartridges; not only did they need reloading more often but it was a basic principle in her work that if she needed more than the nine rounds of standard ammunition the LeMat held, the job had gone to hell way beyond any ability to plan for it anyway. She was about to reload the other gun as well when she saw two of the hatchet men break for opposite ends of the bar.
Damn, they'll have me flanked! She heard a couple of shots thud into the bar, one of which punched through about four feet away from her.
Yang wanted to grab for the LeMat and its additional firepower, but shoved the urge down. She couldn't risk live fire; if she killed anybody she'd hang, presuming that Junior's men didn't get her first. I wish someone would tell them that!
Taking a risk, she popped up only as far as necessary to see, aim and fire, blowing one of the flankers off his feet. Shots whipped around her; Yang dropped the instant the shot was away, but didn't just curl up. Instead, she rolled to her right, putting distance between herself and the spot she'd appeared at. It was a good thing; two more bullets found soft spots, punching through the bar at her, and if she hadn't moved she'd have been hit.
The second would-be flanker reached the other end of the bar but found Yang waiting; she nailed him dead-center with her remaining shot.
"The mirror!" one of them shouted. "She's using the mirror to see us!" It might have helped them more to have noticed that before they'd lost another couple of men trying to move in, but when the hurled axes crashed into it a moment later, bringing down a massive shower of silvered glass it was still a problem. Yang was barely able to throw her arms over her face to protect against the shrapnel.
At this rate, things were going to end badly if Yang didn't do something fast. She scooped up one of the spilled bottles of liquor, knocked the neck off, then grabbed a cleaning rag from under the bar and stuffed it in the gap. She yanked a Dust-powered lighter out of her pocket, snapped it open and set fire to the rag, then pitched the improvised firebomb over the bar in the general direction of where the last three men had been standing. She heard the glass shatter on the floor and the sudden roar as the spilled alcohol caught flame. Even as the hatchet men were gasping in shock, Yang was already reaching up to grab the edge of the bar and vault over it. She somersaulted through the air, coming down feet-first, and hit the ground running.
She was on the men before they could react, doubling one up with a knee to the belly, then doubling her fists and bringing them down on the back of his neck. A kick-and-punch combination floored the second man. The third was on the far side of the spreading pool of flames, so she was already swinging her left-hand scattergun into her hand even while kicking the second one off his feet.
"How lucky do you feel?" she asked the man, leveling the gun at him. It was empty, of course, but she was hoping that he hadn't been counting shots—or if he had, that he was aware she'd reloaded the other gun at least once when she was behind the bar, and would draw the conclusion that she'd done so again.
It was hard to make out his expression given his sunglasses and the smoke, and a couple of seconds ticked by. Yang rolled his eyes.
"I'm not in the best mood, here, so could you move it along?"
His revolver dropped to the floor.
"Smart boy. Now, here's what's going to happen. I'm going to go up and see Junior, and you're going to go get that nifty azure-Dust fire suppression cylinder I saw behind the bar and keep this place from burning down around everyone's ears. Got it?"
His head bobbed up and down, and he scurried around the pool of fire towards the bar. Yang's gaze swept across the fallen hatchet men, making sure that those who looked out actually were, and those groaning in pain genuinely incapacitated and not going to pop up and put a bullet in her back. Seeing nothing that would suggest she was leaving any surprises behind her, she spun on her heel and marched towards the door to the stairs. Junior was probably aware of the situation by now; if the alarm from the front door hadn't told him, the gunfire and general din from the fight surely had.
Reloading as she walked, Yang smiled. It wasn't the usual look she had when she was in a fight, the grin of someone having boisterous fun. Rather, it was the smile of a wolf about to close its teeth in its prey's throat.
She found herself really, really hoping that he wouldn't want to talk without a fight.
