Feng Shui Assassin
Chapter fifteen
'Wake up, Harvey. You have to roll over.' The small voice whispered to him. His sister? Perhaps it was Christmas morning and she had crept in to his bedroom, full of excitement.
There was a stampede close by. Growling and bellowing and the constant rumbling of large creatures charging along the road. The screech of brake, the blare of a horn. Traffic. Nearby.
Harvey snapped awake. Move!
The napa beads smashed into the tiles where his head had lay moments before. Harvey fought down the punch-drunk nausea and rolled under a table, scrabbling on all fours along the floor and stood up on the far side of the cafe.
People quickened past the wide windows, head down, intent on their journey. Nobody looked into the caf?. The low sun angled into the Starbucks coffee shop, casting intermittent shadows from the passing vehicles.
Harvey locked eyes with the yoga warrior, trying to pin her into inaction whilst his memory rewound his time within the caf?, desperately searching for anything that he may be able to use to create chi.
'Surprised?' Karen muttered sweetly. 'Nothing about me in your horoscope?'
The shock must have registered on Harvey's face, because Karen laughed aloud. 'Such a predictable nature. Such a sorry excuse for a man.'
'Man enough for this job.'
The yoga warrior sighed, swinging napa beads in a circle at her side. 'Such bravado. I'll have fun breaking you.'
She tread slowly between the tables, the beads entwined around her fingers, faster and faster until they were a blur. She eyed him carefully as she moved closer, step by bare step.
She struck suddenly, stepping forward and releasing a handful of beads at Harvey, cobra quick. The end bead caught him on the shoulder and knocked him into a glass pane. The window, like the bones in his shoulder, splintered but did not break.
Harvey dipped a hand into his pocket and flung three bagua tablets, wedged between his knuckles. They shot toward Karen and pinged from the spinning beads as she held it like a shield. Three more, then another three. The tablets bounced off in erratic directions.
'Don't you have anything else up your sleeve, Harvey?' Karen swung the beads like a lightweight morning star.
'Glock point four five,' Harvey said, pulling the automatic pistol from his jacket and shooting two rounds off at Karen. The bullets missed and she brought the whirring napa beads down on the gun, hammering a dent in the barrel and knocking it clean from Harvey's grip.
Harvey darted forward, moving in close to the Yoga Warrior and punching her hard in the face. Her head snapped back and she stumbled against a table. Harvey pressed his advantage and stabbed his fingers into her throat. She wheeled around and blocked the attack with her open palm. She spun on her heel and smashed her elbow into Harvey's nose, which split open and sprayed them both with blood.
Harvey grabbed her by the hair, pulling her forward and bringing his knee into her stomach. He held her down, his knee driving into her body like a piston. Karen lifted him up onto her shoulders and threw him across the room. Harvey turned in the air, protecting his crushed shoulder as he landed heavily onto a table.
'Some fight left in you yet.' Karen slapped her hands together and brought the fingertips up to her nose. She grinned at Harvey, a trickle of blood on her upper lip and unkempt hair loose and wild.
She struck a yogic pose, arms stretched out like the hands of a clock, and brought one leg up to prop against the other. A soft light formed around her midrift and in one swift movement Karen thrust her hands forward. Chakra energy shot out at Harvey and blasted the table that he stood behind.
'Hatha and Tantra combined to bring a perfect balance of mind, body and soul.' Karen spoke softly as she struck another pose. The warrior asana. Chakra flared in her chest and shot out like a beam. Harvey scrambled along the floor as the light scorched the rear wall, tracking him like a searchlight.
The beam stopped and Harvey could hear the Yoga Warrior giggling. He raised his head and saw her beckoning him with her hand.
'Let's make this quick,' she said. 'Have one last attempt and then let's get this over with.'
Harvey pulled himself up and felt around in his pockets. He placed the last bagua tablet on a nearby table, sliding it into a convenient pool of spilt vanilla latte. A weak thread of chi weaved out at the yoga warrior.
'You are going to have to come up with something a little more potent.'
Harvey was desperate. Without any major chi influences around the yoga warrior had the upper hand. Open or closed. It was a well made trap and he was powerless. He had nothing, and the warrior was tougher, stronger and more efficient than he was. And she meant to kill him.
He clunked against a table and felt the Bagua mirror in his jacket. A terrible idea struck him, an idea that was liable to kill them both.
Harvey pulled the octagonal mirror from his jacket, gripped it with both hands and cracked the glass against the edge of a table. The area instantly festered with karma, buzzing like a cloud of plague flies, centred on the broken mirror.
At last, the smile slipped from Karen's face.
Rancid chi poured from the cracks in the mirror, it ran across the reflective surface and gathered at the rim and dripped onto the floor in a torrent of foul smelling karma.
The glass exploded and an enormous black claw hooked up and out of the mirror. A scaly hand quickly followed, digging into a nearby table and pulling itself from the tiny portal from its world into this.
'Have you gone mad?' Karen screamed, recognising the danger immediately.
Harvey held the mirror with both hands, shaking with the effort as the nether creature squeezed through. It scrabbled for purchase amongst the tables, dragging its huge form into the cafe, belching filthy smoke with the effort.
The demon shambled blindly around the floor, dragging behind it a hind paw that was still tethered to the mirror, and to Harvey, who desperately turned the thing towards the yoga warrior. The demon's snout swayed toward Karen and it groaned in hunger. Saliva dripped from its enormous, slack jaw.
Karen backed away to the counter, took a deep breath, half closed her eyes, and struck the sun worshipper asana. She intoned a low chant and colours began to spiral from her midriff, colliding into one another and spinning outwards, like a kaleidoscopic rainbow.
The beast slowly turned to the pulsing chakra and reared up, its head scraping the ceiling. It breathed softly, corrosive wisps steaming from between its teeth, leaning closely to the revolving colours. The demon hesitated, then moved to the source, opening its maw wide, its fetid, acidic breath spoiling the colours and shrivelling Karen's hair to short black, twigs.
Karen concentrated on the mantra, the left side of her face sizzling on contact with the cloud of acid, squeezing her eyes shut. She whirled from the demon, pulled a large Om symbol from her kaftan, and struck through the colourful display of Chakra. The Om symbol sliced through the air, the chakra and the fabric of the air before her.
A small, square rift flapped open in the air between the demon and Karen. A tear curling over on itself like a dog-eared page.
Harvey struggled with the broken mirror, keeping a tight hold in case the demon turned its attention onto him. The yoga warrior wasn't so lucky. The skin on the left side of her face and shoulder was blackened crisp, ravaged by the demon's caustic breath.
Movement rippled around the rift in the air and a blunt spike of ivory protruded through the tear, pushing the edges back as a massive tusk slid into view. There was a moment's pause, the demon teetering on one hind leg, tentatively sniffing at the tusk, when the rift ripped wider apart and an enormous elephant head squeezed itself through the gap, followed by a muscular human torso.
The entire being was bright blue, standing waist deep in the rift. It shook its elephant head, ears flapping and trunk snorting like a beast breaking the surface of a river and needing to orientate itself.
'Ganesha, my Lord.' Karen kneeled before the huge elephant headed figure
. 'Save me,' she pleaded.
Ganesha squinted, thick blue skin creasing around black orb eyes. He said something, the words tumbling from his thick lips, falling to the floor like weights. He turned to the demon and grappled it in his mighty arms, fastening powerful fingers around its neck. With omnipotent strength, Ganesha dragged the demon toward the rift.
The demon, yelping and squealing like an injured puppy, clawed at the tables in a desperate attempt to wrestle itself free. Chairs tore away from their fixings and tables bent at the stem. But it was useless. Ganesha pulled the demon into the tear, which stretched to accept them both, then snapped shut, leaving a severed talon and a curl of black smoke.
Both combatants looked at each other, each visibly worn and tired, panting to catch breath. Karen tenderly touched at the burnt side of her face, fingers tracing her stubble skull where her hair had been, moving over her wasted ear and down where the acid had melted her skin. She held onto the counter for support. Shaking her head she moved toward Harvey, pulling her napa beads taught like a garrotte.
She didn't say a word as she moved around the fallen tables. A murderous glint in her one bright eye.
Harvey wiped a trail of blood from his upper lip, gripped the mirror hard and felt around his body for another weapon. There was none. Karen leapt on him, wrapped the beads around his neck and pulled them tight.
Harvey grasped at the beads, but couldn't prise his fingers beneath the cord. He wrenched at Karen's fingers, tried to pry them away as the beads choked him, but her hands were like iron, unmoveable. Try as he might, there was no give in her grip. He clutched at her, ripping at her kaftan, but she laughed quietly in his ear, oblivious to his attempts to break free.
The beads choked him and he coughed, trying to draw breath but unable to force any air into his lungs from the pressure on his throat. He gouged his fingers into her face, aiming for her eyes or to hook into her mouth, but she jerked back and tightened her grip on the garrotte.
Dark speckles floated before his eyes and the pain around his throat mixed with the elated calmness of oxygen starvation.
His vision failing, he reached for the cracked octagon mirror that lay on a table. He feebly smashed the mirror against Karen's grip. The hands flexed tighter still and the beads drew the final moments of life from Harvey. The darkness of pre-death was kept at bay by the eclipsed sunlight shining directly into his eyes. The sun dipping between the buildings at the end of the road.
A thin trail of negative chi, grey and wavering, created from a cup in spilled coffee, led along the sun's path, out of the shop and along the length of the junction.
Harvey angled the mirror in his hands, moments from finally sinking into blackness, and caught the dying rays of the sun, reflecting them back into the road and the oncoming traffic.
The Eddie Stobart lorry sailed through the green light. Larry Cook, the driver, blipped the accelerator, taking advantage of a two-car space in traffic. The dazzling reflection from the broken mirror in the Starbucks caf? caught Larry just after a bout of sneezes, and, already disorientated, he brought his hand up to shield his eyes, shifting the wheel slightly with his other hand. The slight shift brought the lorry tracking along the weak trail of chi from the cafe, and with the reflection still catching his eyes, Larry sped up to get past the momentary distraction. The chi acted like a runway to the lorry, and with no awareness of the impending building, Larry Cook drove straight through the broad windows of Starbucks.
Harvey saw the HGV bearing down on the caf?, saw the driver was blinded and realised that this was the end. With one almighty heave he spun around, the Yoga Warrior spinning with him, hanging tightly onto the strangling necklace, until it slackened at the sound of twelve tonnes of lorry smashing through the windows at forty miles an hour.
Karen was caught on the grill of the vehicle, whipped away from Harvey in an instant and crushed against the far wall. Harvey bounced from the side door, caught by the wing mirror and was thrown across the caf? floor.
At first he thought his throat had been crushed beyond repair, lying on the floor under a table, partially protected as the ceiling collapsed in stages around him. But then a sweet trickle of air filled his lungs and he breathed deep. A strip light smashed next to his head and Harvey huddled closer to the central table leg, watching the coffee shop collapse around him, debris from the initial crash settling as the shock wave destabilised the building. The windows suddenly blew inwards as the roof sagged, chunks of glass shrapnel tearing at everything within.
People ran to the scene of destruction, screaming, yelling, and gawping as they approached. Braver souls entered the area, calling out for survivors, but wary of the unstable ceiling, nervous with every creak.
Harvey called out, a weak croak from his damaged throat. Two office workers ventured far enough into the shop to find Harvey and help him out of the danger area.
Being helped from the coffee shop, through the empty window spaces, Harvey wondered where the Yoga Warrior had come from? What did this mean?
He sat on the central reservation, all traffic now at a halt. People leant close to him, asking questions and offering reassurance. He took an offered cigarette, lit the end and watched the grey column replace the white.
At that moment, from the open office window where he had a perfect view of the entire fight, Duncan tracked Harvey through the scope of his origami sniper rifle. He settled on a spot between the assassin's shoulder blades and squeezed the trigger.
Bang.
Harvey was knocked back by the blow of the bullet and collapsed on the glass-strewn street.