Chapter 64 – Ming Xiao Must Die
October 10, 2004 = Sunday
~Eliza Flores~
Appearing where I last met Ming Xiao, I instead found two Asian men wielding dao who, though initially startled, swung on me. I ducked one, stepping around the second to grab him by the neck to lift him from the ground with my potence. He dropped his dao, his hands instead trying to grab at my arm. With a simple twist of a potence fueled wrist, I popped his neck while using his now limp body as a shield against his compatriot, then tossed the body aside.
The man looked at his dead friend in stark fear, then turned to bolt but I grabbed him by the shoulders and spun him. He tried to raise his sword, but I grabbed his wrist and squeezed it until it broke, the sword falling from now limp fingers. I stared hard into his frightened eyes, reading his mind. I found from his memories that there was an underground bunker under the main temple that guarded a portal of some sort, a portal Ming Xiao often opened with specialized jade statues.
Not needing the scaredy cat of a guard anymore, I released him to let him run for his life. I could here more yelling from outside, so I shifted into my shadow form just as more men entered the building. They looked scared at seeing their fallen comrade, but swallowed any fear as they looked around for me.
Ignoring them, I began to scan the shadows, jumping from shadow to shadow as I followed the guard's memories down the rabbit hole. I eventually came to the torchlit chamber that housed the portal and I stepped through the shadows to get there. No need to fight my way down and risk an accident.
The area where the portal was usually formed was currently empty, and the jade statues were missing as well. An approaching guard gave me an idea, and I popped out of the shadows in front of him. He was under my dominate before he could make a sound, and a quick peak into his mind told me everything I needed to know.
"Bring me the jade statues," I commanded him. "I need to open the portal to Ming Xiao."
"As you command," he said, then turned to walk away. I melted into shadow, awaiting his return, which took a while.
When he did return, he was leading eight others who in teams of two placed their statue on a pedestal. Once all four were placed, it opened some kind of rift in their midst which I assumed was the portal to where Ming Xiao had gone.
Dropping out of the shadow, I pulled a chakram from the shadows and threw it at one of the furthest guards, slitting his throat. The guards immediately dropped into battle poses, and I smiled at their stupidity.
"Flee or die," I told them. They all began to pull their swords, so I kicked the first into the portal and pounced his partner, quickly fastening my fangs into his neck and sucking him dry with a few quick gulps.
I dropped the now dead guard and ducked under the swing of another, the remaining guards ringing me. One brave soul charged in, and I danced back at his slash. The circle seemed to tighten around us, and when the guard thrust his sword forward, I grabbed his arm and used potence to break it.
The guard fell back, crying in pain, and another guard charged in to replace him. His high chop was easy caught, and again, I broke his arm before tossing him over the heads of the remaining guards.
Two guards charged me next, trying to overwhelm my defenses, but they were clunky in their execution. I dodged both of their high chops, slipping in between the pair and giving the one on my left a hard karate chop on his carotid artery that seemed to drop him. The other tried to bring his sword up to slice at me, but I grabbed him by the shoulders and introduced him violently to the wall, knocking him out.
The last four guards tried the tactic of the last pair, but as always the problem of coordinating an attack was that it needed to be coordinated. With everyone doing their own attack, it was easy to duck the first volley of attacks, then send a well timed kick into one guard's face to stun him.
Down to three, the guards tried to rally another attack, but fear was evident in their eyes. Having already downed or dropped six, the last three had to question their resolve. One guard gave me a lazy chop I was able to catch, then used potence to stab his fellow guard by pirouetting between the two and twisting the arm, dislocating it before letting go.
The last guard bolted around the statues, trying for the door and help but I pounced him. He screamed as I began to feast on his neck, the human's blood doing little to quench my thirst. I let him live, not taking it all, then turned to his friends. I fed from each of the surviving guards, rebuilding my blood strength as much as I could.
With nothing left to feast on, I went through the portal, finding it a mix of light and darkness. On the other side was a small dungeon lit by Chinese lanterns with a green/blue glow that seemed almost naturally occurring in their steady glow.
And at the far end, in front of a Buddha statue, stood Ming Xiao. Still dressed in a silk cheongsam with a flower pattern, she exuded confidence, and upon seeing me exit from the portal, deep-seated hatred.
"You've become a grace disappointment, kindred!" she yelled at me. "This was not meant to be your destination but your path will end here!"
"Don't give me that crap!" I yelled back at her, stepping down off the dais like platform the portal dropped me onto. "You don't know any more than the rest of us!"
"You were never more than a pawn," she countered. "A puppet of those who drew the boundaries on your horizon. It was I who sensed the power in you to right the balance in this city. It will give me no joy to bring you Final Death."
"Oh, don't mourn me," I said, letting my anger flow throughout the room. With each step from the dais forward, I made the room grow darker, making Ming Xiao look quickly around at the lanterns as they began to go dark, the light finally fading to nothing to plunge the room into absolute darkness only I could see through. "You on the other hand..."
She snarled as she began to morph, growing multiple arms that shifted to tentacles as she became some sort of monster that slithered around. I didn't even know what to call her as she roared and one of her tentacles came for me. I wondered briefly if she could see me in the dark room, getting my answer as I jumped over the sweeping tentacle and the monster seeming to sweep the room as she searched for me.
Smiling at her hapless circumstance, I pulled a large axe from the shadows and waited until I got behind the blind monster. Once I was ready, I jumped on her back and plunged the axe into her back, making her shriek in pain. Tentacles seemed to coil back on themselves as they searched for me, so leaving the axe I rolled free.
Tentacles pulled my axe from her back, making her roar again in pain, but I already had another axe in my hands as I kept myself positioned behind her. When she seemed to have pinpointed my location as in front of her, I dove in again and hit her hard with a potence fueled swing, this time cleaving the axe deep inter her body.
Ming roared and tried to buck me off, but I held on with my left hand on the axe as I pulled a third axe from the shadows. I buried it next to the second, then wrenched that one free just as Ming Xiao rolled.
Unable to stay on her back, I pulled the second axe free and faced her in the pitch black room. She tried to wrench the third axe from her back, but her strength had failed and it stayed buried in her back. With her preoccupied on the axe, I saw my chance to end the fight. Dashing in, I swung my axe, not in a high handed chop but in a baseball worthy swing that would have made that little leather-wrapped ball sail for miles.
My timing paid off, my swing perfect on a nearly still target as my axe bit into Ming Xiao's chest. A scream ripped from her, and her tentacles were swift to clear the area in front of her. Unable to get to safety, I was thrown across the room but a quick roll had me on my feet before any attack could land.
As I looked back at Ming Xiao, I found my fears unwarranted. Unable to wrench the axe free from her back, and another in her chest, she began to contort her body. I approached cautiously, but is was soon evident she was changing back to her normal form, the axes falling free without a large body to cleave into.
Ming Xiao stumbled backwards at the sound of my bootheels, fear evident on her face as she hit the wall. With nowhere to go, she stopped, then turned her head and coughed. If only for my shadow-vision I could see the dark stain left behind on the ground as I approached, stopping to pick up one of my axes from where it fell.
"Still thinking your path is greater than mine?" I taunted as I allowed light to again touch the room. Ming Xiao cringed at seeing the hefty axe in my hand, then her eyes darted to the portal that was behind me.
"It," she began to say before coughing again, specks of blood staining her dress.
"The key?" I asked her, and her eyes went to the Buddha statue.
"Take it," she told me, her eyes going again to the portal. "And leave me."
"And leave a snake to bite another?" I asked her, shifting the axe in my hand. The fear in her deepened, and then she tried to bolt for the portal. I stopped her with a kick to her legs, and she lost her footing and fell. As she tried to get to her feet, I put a boot into her ribs, flipping her on her back. She tried to roll over, but a foot on her chest pinned her, and she looked up in horror.
"Your path ends here," I said, raising the axe. Ming Xiao screamed as I brought the axe down, but even the hand she put up to protect her neck wasn't enough to stop the axe's meeting with her neck. The blade sank deep, cleaving her head from her body. I expected her to fall into ash, but her body just relaxed in death. A second cleaving into her body brought no reaction, so I had to figure she was dead.
"Huh," I said, letting go of the shadows. I'd always assumed that Kue Jin were like kindred in that they left no corpse behind when they died, but apparently that wasn't true. It made me wonder why that one at the warehouse in Santa Monica crumbled into ash, then decided it had to be a fluke, or maybe whatever made a Kue Jin infected a vampire or was infected by a vampire. Either way was unusual.
I grabbed the key before leaving, the heavy stone cylinder intricately carved with grooves and holes. Key in hand, I went back up to the temple grounds, finding it was wringed with about seven Asian men and women. They looked angry, and one look at the key in my hand had them all pulling swords and knives.
I smiled, then drew on the shadows to create a myriad a tentacles. They began to crawl over the support beams, scaring the seven Kue Jin around me. When the temple fell, they took the hint that their time was over and turned to flee, but I was faster. Pulling a shadow-blade out of the shadows, I cut him down as he tried to flee.
A figure jumping over the wall stopped one as they tried to flee, his blade cutting the Kue Jin in half as they fell to the ground. Another figure coming over the wall caught my eye, this one leveling a gun at an Asian woman who was scaling the wall. The gun roared, and she fell back into the compound in four pieces leaving a spray of blood temporarily hanging where she had been.
More figures began appearing over the wall, and deciding that the Camarilla had come calling decided that it was time to vamoose. I tried to jump to LaCroix tower, but found myself unable to enter the shadows and go there. Blowing out a sigh of frustration, I tried the parking garage but found it blocked as well.
"LaCroix you wily bastard," I muttered as I figured he had went to Strauss to block my teleport ability. Seeing as I teleported out of the hole Ming Xiao had created, I had to figure it wasn't over the entire city, so I imagined the spot a few blocks away where I met Fat Larry and stepped into the shadows, soon finding myself at the spot.
Smiling, I began walking down the street to LaCroix tower with the key to the Ankaran Sarcophagus in hand. I had a date to keep, after all.
A date with destiny.
Author's Note: One more chapter, ladies and gentlemen!