Weed advanced while Pervert cracked his thick knuckles. She heard herself whimper and cursed herself for sounding so weak, but there was nothing she could do to change what was about to happen.
Until someone else changed it for her.
Suddenly, Pervert was thrown against the wall. All she’d seen was a white hand slip around and grab his shirt, then drag him aside. Weed barely turned his head before he received a blow to the face.
Max.
He moved into her view like a warrior god. His face wasn’t even distorted into fury. It was simply hard, cold, and implacable as stone.
She thought him beautiful.
He hauled Pervert backward by the neck, tripping the guard on purpose or by accident. Whatever he intended, Pervert went sprawling out the door where other white men grabbed him.
She hoped they killed him.
Meanwhile, Lao Gu grabbed her by the hair. She fought, but she could get no leverage. Her feet would not take any weight, and she had no control with her head jerked back and forth.
She saw Lao Gu draw his knife. She knew he meant to slit her throat. How many times had he threatened it? At least twice a day, but this time she believed him. This time, he had nothing left to lose and so she fought as an animal—with teeth and claws and every scrap of strength in her body.
She saw it happen as one must in a fight. The action seemed slow to her eyes and yet so large as to fill her whole vision. Max gripped Lao Gu’s arm despite the nearness of the blade. He twisted it with a savage grip, his knuckles white as they passed in front of her eyes. He made a sound full of dark fury—one that seemed to match and strengthen her own—and then his other fist plowed upward in a hard cut that snapped LaoGu’s head back.
Her tormenter flew backwards, the knife clattering from his hand. It landed near her feet hard enough to slice a dark line in her swollen flesh. She scrambled for it. This was the first weaponto come to her. The first time she could strike at the man who had reduced her to an animal.
So she acted like one. She grabbed the knife and plunged it straight into his heart. Blood welled up, thick and ugly. She knew its scent, knew its potency. And then, she gripped the handle with both fists and twisted.
Let the blade shred his black heart. And let his ghost pay for the crimes he committed.
“I curse you,” she said as she twisted the knife. “I curse you,” she repeated as it turned again. “I curse you to suffer under one such as you.”
It wasn’t elegant. It wasn’t even clever. But her grandmother had taught her how to curse with the power of all victims, and so she spun the words out now as she had been taught. She did not use her own weak qi, she called upon all the women who had died on the boat, the ones he had maimed and she’d treated, the ones who could never speak because of what he had done to them.
“Take him,” she called to them. “Take him and find peace, Su Lan.” She named the girl who had died on the boat. Then she named others who had been harmed by men in power. “Yuan Fu, Cai Jian, Xiao Xi…” She named every girl she had ever treated who had reason to curse a man. And she balled them all up in her mind and set them upon Lao Gu. And she didn’t stop until a white man’s large hand gently pulled her away.
It took a great deal of strength for him to stop her. Indeed, he couldn’t do it until she was pushed back upon her feet and pain shot through her mind. It interrupted her chant, and she collapsed. She felt her body drop into his hands as he struggled to manage her weight.
“What…feet?” he demanded. She couldn’t understand all the words, but his expression of horror was enough. He pointed toher swollen, ugly feet as he rounded on the others. “What…her feet?”
“The dog needed small feet!” bellowed Weed in Chinese.
Pervert didn’t deign to answer the demand. He cursed the white men as he fought against the two men holding him. It didn’t save him.
And indeed, while he drew breath to begin again, she finally found her voice. “I curse you now with their names. When they are done with Lao Gu, they will come for you.” Just as Lao Gu had done to her, she raised her hand and pointed at each of them. Blood dripped from her fingers, and she had the satisfaction of seeing them both go white with terror.
They knew, because she had told them, that her grandmother was skilled with curses. That all the women in her family knew how to turn ghosts into spirits of vengeance.
She grinned at them and threw the same names at them. “Eat their spirit!” she cried. “Have them, Su Lan, Yuan Fu, Cai Jian…” She kept repeating their names. She said them while Weed and Pervert stopped struggling with the white men. She threw names like daggers until they twisted out of the white men’s grip and ran.
She heard them scramble down the stairs. She heard their ragged breath and rapid feet as they fled the house. And still she cursed them until her voice was hoarse and her energy spent. And in that moment, she lost all the power within her.
Her last word before she lost consciousness stayed in her mind and echoed in her body, clinging to her because it was all she had to give.
“Curse.”
Chapter Seven
Max’s gorge roseup, all but choking him. Blood was everywhere. He breathed it in the air, saw it pouring across the carpet, and he swore he could hear it in his haggard breath. His body shuddered with horror, and yet he couldn’t make himself move. Yihui had collapsed at his feet. He should pick her up. He should do any number of things, but the blood… The knife… The dead…
What was he supposed to do?
