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“Sounds good to me,” Marla said.
The snakes began to devour one another, the circle constricting, and Ch’ang Hao and
Marla stepped over them. The snakes somehow, impossibly, devoured one another
completely, until no sign of them remained.
“My blade is back at the hotel,” Marla said. “Come back with us?”
Ch’ang Hao frowned. “I am not properly attired for human company.”
“What, because you’re wearing a bloody harness of leather straps?” Marla said. She
waved her hand. “Please. This is San Francisco.”
“She’s got a point,” Rondeau said. “But I’ll loan you my jacket, just in case.”
Seeing Ch’ang Hao in the mundanity of a hotel room was oddly disconcerting. Marla
had experienced the same sense of fundamental dislocation in the past, during her few
brushes with non-human intelligent entities. It wasn’t so bad talking to him outside, in
the night, but having this ancient creature sit calmly on the edge of the bed while Marla
sliced through the individual silver lines connecting him to his master…that was
bizarre. She could feel Ch’ang Hao’s age, radiating from him like the heat of a star.
Most people would take him for human, as Marla had at first, but now that she knew, it
was different. Standing beside him was like standing close to a lion—a mixture of awe,
fear, and wonder. All that despite the fact that Ch’ang Hao was dressed in one of
Rondeau’s T-shirts and a pair of his flannel boxer-shorts.
Rondeau was unbothered, sitting up in bed watching a reality show about strippers on
HBO. Maybe the fact that Rondeau was, at core, non-human himself made him more
comfortable around beings like Ch’ang Hao. Or maybe he was just being Rondeau.
Marla’s dagger of office cut cleanly through the last silvery thread, and the trailing ends
that still touched Ch’ang Hao’s back disintegrated into silver sparkles, then disappeared.
The longer ends, trailing out through the walls back to their friend in Chinatown, turned
black and melted away.
Ch’ang Hao stood up, turned slowly around, and bowed to Marla. “For the first time in
decades, I do not feel the weight of the chain on me.”
“I guess our friend in Chinatown knows you’re not his lapdog anymore, right?”
“He, too, will feel that the connection has been severed.”
“So is he going to try to kill us again?” Rondeau said. “Like, before morning? Because I
could use some sleep. Watching Marla fight tires me out.”
“My…former master…will be otherwise occupied for some time, I think,” Ch’ang Hao
said. “I may still be muzzled, as Marla says, but I am not without resources, and I may
now turn those powers against my former master.”