The Dragons of Heaven Read Online Free

American Dream with the race and sexual politics swept under the table. It’s more like he encourages people to embrace what the Forties wanted to be. That’s what I think adventure heroes can offer. They’re… inspirational. You know, like one person can make a difference.”
    I blinked. I’d spent the past six months polling everyone I knew for their views on adventure heroes and got disillusion across the board, but there was something in her earnestness that echoed my own yearning for a less complex world where what you did mattered. I cocked my head. “Who are you, masked woman, advocate for uninsured patients and underappreciated Aces?”
    She laughed and reached a hand across the aisle. “I’m Shimizu. Gail Shimizu, but I go by my last name ’cause I hate my first.”
    â€œMissy. And I don’t use my last name for pretty much the same reason. Sorry if I got a little intense on you.”
    â€œHey, don’t apologize for being passionate. In my line of work, I don’t see enough of it. Apathy is worse than any supervillain.”
    The lights flickered and dimmed.
    â€œAnd that’s my cue to shut-up.” I slid down to sit properly in my seat and slanted her a rakish grin. “Are you ready?”
    â€œReady?” she growled, though there was laughter in it. “I was born ready.”
    The lights cut out, the screen flashed to life, and I sat back, happy to escape to the easy Good vs Evil of Jack Burton’s Chinatown.
----
    O ur group scattered after the film. We lost Shimizu to the specter of work, but she gave me her card and made me promise – with a minimum of arm-twisting – to show her around all the best secondhand stores. The rest of my friends split three directions on where to grab food for the film postmortem. I would have joined Andrew and the dim sum crowd, but it was late, and I had other obligations. I waved them farewell as they tromped off in the direction of the Dragon Gate, then I slipped into the alley behind the theater.
    The alley was typical of San Francisco: bright, upscale shops not a block away, but here all was dank and urine-scented, with homeless people nesting in stoops. The emergency exit was just as I’d left it – rolled up bit of cardboard keeping the latch from fully catching. I slipped inside and used my pinkie to pry the cardboard free so some keen-eyed employee wouldn’t notice it and decide to look for intruders.
    There were plenty of shadows backstage for me to manage a quick costume change. If I was determined to continue with this idiotic crusade, I was going to have to figure out a better way to handle the costume issue. Or else not go out with friends on a “work night”.
    Checking to make sure the house was empty, I shrugged on my backpack and crept up the side aisle. With each step I took, I slid a little more into the shadows. I hated this part and approached it with all the trepidation of a swimmer entering cold water.
    No. Not cold water. Slimy, leech-ridden, eel-infested waters. That’s what shadow felt like to me: a living thing wrapping about my limbs like it would devour me if it could just get a firm enough grip.
    I shuddered at the thought and shook a little too free of the shadows’ grip.
    â€œHello?” came a voice from the projection booth. The silhouette of a head obscured the window. I pressed back deeper into the shadows, pulled them about me like a safe blanket, let them test and taste me, just so long as they obscured me from the curious projectionist.
    The head disappeared, and there came the sounds of laughter and ghost noises.
    That was fine. Let them think the strange flicker in the shadows was a ghost, if it would make them leave more quickly. I slipped out of the house and into the lobby.
    A few more employees gabbed at the concession stand with the last stragglers of the audience. They didn’t notice me as I skimmed along the front