Jade Dragon Read Online Free Page A

who’s gonna stop him?
    Well, shit, we found out who.
    There’s this
pop
and the roof grows a new skylight, just like that.
Down comes this dark fella—yeah, that’s him—and he sends Dooley straight
to hell. Bam-bam-bam, never laid a shot on this guy. He had this sword,
see. Blade so sharp you could cut the virtue from an angel. Dooley’s
carbine, he slices that sucker in two, takes the boy’s hands off into
the bargain. Walt… Well, by now he’s got his irons… What? Oh, they
were some nickel-plated sissy guns. Anyhoo. Walt shoots at him, the dark
fella, he does a gorram back flip and nails Walt with a crossbow. A
crossbow! Like what they used in olden times, for Kylie’s sake!
    Well sir, by this here time I’m filling the air wit’ lead and can I hit
this boy? Can I hell! He’s on me like white on rice, breaks this arm and
shoots me in the leg. Takes the Mossbach just as polite as you like,
puts me on the dirt. Now, I’m thinkin’ that this is the end for ol’
Billy, but your man just reaches in a pocket and gives me a card. Like
offa poker deck, ’cept it’s got a pitcher on it. A pitcher of a dancin’
loon and the guy smiles at me, he says: “The Fool. This is your lucky
day, William. ”And he lets me live.
    Off he goes. He caps Bloom… He seemed real angry about the way the
Doc was treatin’ the pigs. Leaves me for the marshals with this here
card. Lookit. Y’see? It’s what them there boys call tarrow. Tarrow cards
or somethin‘. One o’ the marshals tole me that these things got,
whatchacall, mojo on ’em, black magic. Well, shit. I unloaded a hun-nerd
rounds at that boy and never nicked him one time. If that ain’t black
magic, then I dunno what is.
     
    William “Big” Buettner, arrest suspect #6575FG, Fresno State Militia
Service. Subject brought to book by Sanctioned Operative Joshua Fixx
(independent), serial number 1800979.
     
    For more information on any of the weapons systems mentioned during this
transcript, Touch Here for Hyperlinx. This RealTime Interrogation is a
WKIL-TV program, sponsored by Turner, Harvest and Ramirez.

2. Full Throttle
    The Vector held to the road like it was in love with it. This being a
weeknight and the hour somewhat late, the Northern Lantau Expressway was
sparse with traffic. Ko pressed the accelerator hard to the floor and
let the gunmetal sedan eat up the asphalt. Angry hoots from the drivers
he slipstreamed fell away in strangled chugs of Doppler-shifted noise,
the Mercedes sliding effortlessly around the other road users as if they
were static islands in a shimmering river of mercury. The speed limit
signs blurred past him. Each used a laser ranger to bounce off oncoming
vehicles and flash up their kilometres-per-hour on the big holograph
displays that floated over the highway. If you kept to the limit or
below it, it beamed out a cartoon smiley face. If you overshot, you were
given a grimacing scowl. Ko’s speed was so high that the signs were
throwing up skulls and crossbones.
    “This is unnatural,” said Feng, jamming a cigarette in his mouth. The
guardsman held himself tight, arms braced about the cuirass on his
chest. Ko threw him a look and Feng stabbed a finger at the road. “Don’t
turn away! You’ll crash this thing into someone and kill them, and I
don’t want any company!”
    “Yeah, if I die, who’d you haunt then?” The driver chuckled. “You don’t
need to be here,” said Ko. “Do your thing, go away and come back later.”
    “I can’t always do it. Not just like that, not on demand.”
    “Oh.” Ko grinned. “Pity. For you, I mean.”
    The next holosign he passed had a string of text on it: “Authorities
Informed. Speed Reduction Measures Initiated.”
    “Uh-oh.”
    “What?” demanded Feng.
    “Tanglers.”
     
    Five kilometres further up the expressway, a crack opened in the surface
of the road, the polymerised blacktop peeling back like a lipless mouth.
Two prongs, blinking with warning strobes, extended