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  Turning, Goro charged again; this time, Kung Lao waited, then dropped flat on his back, elbows bent up, palms flat on the ground beside his head. Pushing off with his hands, he kicked out with his stiff legs, driving them hard into Goro’s abdomen.

  A small puff of breath escaped the Prince’s gash of a mouth – but Kung Lao knew, from the mass of muscle he’d struck, that Goro hadn’t been hurt by the blow. Worse, before he was able to retract his legs, four massive hands closed around them from either side. Lifting Kung Lao into the air, his back toward him, Goro kicked the martial arts master hard between the shoulder blades.

  The blow knocked the wind out of him, and Kung Lao knew he couldn’t take another. When Goro kicked out again, Kung Lao felt the rush of air and quickly arched forward, grabbed his own ankles, and – still hanging from Goro’s hands – pulled himself up and over the outstretched foot. Seizing Goro’s momentary imbalance, Kung Lao yanked his feet down hard, freeing himself from the giant’s grip and coming down hard on the Prince’s still-extended leg.

  Goro howled with pain, the crowd roared with approval, as Kung Lao landed; the Order of Light priest simultaneously used the leg as a springboard to jump up and away from Goro. He landed beside his foe, a bit battered but with his arms crossed in front of him, still ready to fight.

  The Prince turned toward him, but Kung Lao was quick and drove the bottom of his foot into Goro’s right knee. The giant buckled – but again, there was the advantage of those four powerful arms and extraordinary reach. Even as he fell, Goro was able to grab Kung Lao’s arms. Goro drew the champion down with him, leaving Kung Lao no offensive maneuver other than to throw a scissor-lock around Goro’s neck. The Outworld denizen released Kung Lao’s arms and easily pried his legs away – and kept pulling, as though his victim were a dried tree branch.

  Shrieking pain shot through Kung Lao’s inner thighs, and managing to get his arms under himself, he pushed off with one, twisting himself around like a corkscrew and managing to worm himself from Goro’s grasp.

  The angry giant pounded the ground with all four fists, in succession, then reached for Kung Lao, who by this time was struggling to stand on legs that felt as sturdy as marsh reeds.

  But stand he did, and when Goro came at him, head bowed and charging like an animal, Kung Lao backflipped away – then stopped while he was still standing on his hands and suddenly flung himself feet-first toward the titan. His feet landed on the back of Goro’s neck, driving his chin into the hard tile of the dragon symbol and drawing greenish blood.

  Goro stood, the red eyes coal-hot and wide, and Kung Lao knew that hurting his foe without being able to deliver a final blow had been a mistake.

  Swinging his head around furiously, Goro whipped his queue around so fast that, if it connected, Kung Lao suspected it would break his back. Jumping back repeatedly, Kung Lao found himself backed against the lowest row of seats on the southern side of the arena. While the onlookers scurried, and Kung Lao tried to avoid the whirling hair, Goro drove all four fists ahead of him. Three connected with the stone, cracking it; the fourth caught Kung Lao in the left shoulder while he jumped to the side to avoid the other three.

  The champion moaned as the hard flesh and harder bone pinned him to the stone. Holding Kung Lao there, Goro brought his other three fists around and pounded him mercilessly. Though Kung Lao was able to move his face out of the way of some blows, and was able to deflect others with the strong side of his hand, many found their targets on the torso, abdomen, legs, and shoulders.

  Aching everywhere, Kung Lao found his reflexes slowing, his senses numb. More blows landed, but he only felt the thudding, not the pain. Through blood-soaked eyes, he saw Shang Tsung standing in front of his throne, watching his servant pummel Kung Lao, his own hands balled into fists, as he apparently wished that it were he instead of Goro who was administering the punishment.

  “Kill him!” Kung Lao heard someone shout. Was it Shang Tsung? “His heart…,” he heard. “Give me his heart!”

  Suddenly the pummeling stopped.

  Kung Lao staggered forward, and with superhuman effort managed to keep his feet under him.

  Don’t be a dog, he told himself. He stood there, his body weaving above the knees, his arms raised in a futile defense, his bleary eyes watching, throbbing ears listening for Goro to move in again.

  Kung Lao could only vaguely make out the giant bronze shape in front of him, and the red eyes were lost entirely in the blood and sweat through which Kung Lao gazed.

  He saw Goro’s mouth open wide, saw the blurry mass of cruel white teeth.

  White on gold, Kung Lao thought as Goro’s shape shifted and oozed due to the perspiration and blood in Kung Lao’s own eyes. Just like the amulet.

  The strange, enduring duality of all things was the last thought no Kung Lao’s mind as three of Goro’s mighty hands grabbed him and the fourth came toward his chest, fingers outstretched, ready to claim their prize – not the benediction from Shang Tsung, but the great and noble heart of the High Priest of the Order of Light….

  Nearly six hundred miles away, in a hut by a construction bridge that was rapidly nearing completion, a strong young woman watched as his wife gave birth to their baby son.

  Covered with blood, the boy wailed when the elderly midwife smacked him on his bottom and scooped the remnants of afterbirth from his mouth.

  She laid the baby in a soft blanket and folded it around him, then handed the child to his mother. The elderly woman smiled at the young woman, then scowled at the baby’s father.

  “You should be smacked yourself for having brought her here in this condition,” she said.

  Chan Lao smiled. “I – smacked? It was my wife who insisted on coming with me while I work on this bridge. I asked her to stay behind.”

  “Asked,” huffed the old woman. “What is it with young women today?” She wagged a finger at Chan Lao. “You should tell her what to do, and she should do as she is told.”

  “That is not the way in our family,” Mie Lao said softly. She kissed her baby on his damp ear and brushed back his head of black hair. “We have always respected one another equally.” Her eyes found those of her husband. “Didn’t you always say your elder brother treated you as his equal, despite the difference in your years?”

  “In work as well as in play,” Chan Lao remarked, “there was none fairer than Kung Lao.”

  As the midwife finished cleaning up, the young man walked over to his wife. He embraced Mie and their son.

  Mie smiled. “I was right and you were wrong,” she said. “We have a son, Chan. My father is still alive – can we name him Wing Lao, after your father?”

  Chan looked down at the new life he had helped to create. Despite the excitement at seeing his firstborn cuddled in the arms of his wife, Chan felt a sudden, inexplicable chill.

  “Would you mind, Mie, if we saved that name for our second son?”

  “Second?” Mie laughed. “Must you always be the engineer, looking ahead to the next project?”

  “It isn’t that,” Chan said. “But I suddenly feel – compelled for some reason to name the boy after my brother.”

  Mie’s features darkened. “But you haven’t seen him for fifteen years. He ran off to find – what was it again?”

  “A god,” Chan said dryly. “At least, that’s what my poor aunt said. She never recovered from losing him and died a year after his departure.”

  “A god,” Mie said. “You want to name your son after someone who was mad enough to go looking for a god.”

  Chan nodded. “Yes. I don’t know why, but I do.”

  “If that is what you want,” she said, “then I agree. We will name our son Kung Lao.”

  When she spoke the name, the baby quieted.

  And somewhere in the distance, thunder rolled.

  PART TWO

  The Tianjin District, China: The Present

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  It was one of the most idiotic stories Kano had ever heard. M
aybe that’s why the damn thing made no sense, and why after another long day of walking, after four long days of walking, they were lost in a place so remote it made nowhere look like somewhere.

  Mercenary, extortionist, bully-for-hire, and member of the dreaded Black Dragon gang, the Japanese-born American shook his head as he and his small band of hired thugs made their way through the dark woods and thick underbrush in a chilly, mountainous region of China – woods he was sure that nothing with two legs had crossed since Confucius was in diapers. Especially not the loon who’d given him this map when he hired Kano.

  A map drawn by a baby. Puh-lease. Maybe it was dictated by a dog who heard about it from a pigeon.

  It was stupid, all right, but then Kano had heard some peaches during his thirty-five years, thirty of which had been devoted to crime. As his team grumbled behind him, he entertained himself by thinking back to some of the stories. Like the time he’d been sent to collect some overdue loans from a macho TV star who’d fallen on hard times.

  The prop department took my money instead of the fake money we were using in the scene, the actor had said as Kano held him by the lapels of his jacket. Just give me till tomorrow, I’ll have it!

  Kano gave him three seconds to fall on more than hard times has he dropped him from the top of Coldwater Canyon onto a roof about two hundred feet below. And wouldn’t you know it? The hero-sized dude landed in such a way that the house, one of those stilt jobbers, fell down the rest of the cliff, swallowing the actor in a big cloud of debris and smoke. The next day, the papers were all full of “Actor Brings Down House” and “Star Dies; Hairpiece Survives.”

  Then there was the political candidate who borrowed a bundle to get elected. When Kano came to collect, the lady said Kano’s employer would have to wait; she’d spent it on a voodoo priestess to ensure prosperity for her district. Kano let her live because she was a lady, but he took the James McNeill Whistler painting that hung in her office. His boss liked the portrait of somebody’s dog Cerberus, and everyone was happy – except the lady, who was accused of stealing and got booted out of office. Funny thing was, her district ended up real prosperous.

  But this story… this one took the Nutburger of the Year award. Fifteen hundred years ago, a baby who can barely say two words sticks his finger in a bowl full of ink his father’s using to draw a dam or whatever the hell this thing under the map is. The kid draws away, and when the father returns from going to the bathroom or whatever he was off doing, he sees the map all finished… on this very piece of goatskin. And then it really got weird. The father was convinced the map was dictated to the baby by a dead guy, and the whole family goes off searching for whatever was marked with a little fingerprint high upon this stinking mountain. No one knows what happened to them, or how the map got into the hands of the guy who hired Kano. But the old dude, Shang Tsung, paid him two million American up front, so who was he to say, “Nah… yer story’s right outta ‘The X Files’.”

  Kano scowled as one of the four men and one woman behind him began complaining that he’d stepped in some kind of goat patty.

  “Hey!” Kano said, turning his grizzled face toward the man. “Cut it out! I hate to hear yammerin’ when I’m thinkin’.”

  “Like your thinkin’ is doin’ us any good?” the short, long-haired young man shot back.

  Kano’s muscles tensed beneath his white windbreaker. “What d’ya mean by that?”

  “I mean, Chief,” said Moriarty, “could we be more lost than we are?”

  The sentence was not quite out of the man’s mouth when Kano spun and, with a cry, swung a roundhouse kick at his jaw. Moriarty barely avoided it by arching back, his arms pinwheeling as he tried desperately to keep his balance on the sharply inclined slope. Kano landed and simply glared at him as he struggled. The boss’s left eye, the normal brown one, was angry, but his right eye, the infrared-vision artificial eye that was held in place by a metal faceplate, glowed with fury.

  One of Moriarty’s companions, Michael Schneider, finally reached out a hairy paw, grabbed him by the front of his sweaty and foodstain-covered Jet Li sweatshirt, and pulled him back.

  “Thanks, Schnides,” Moriarty said, glancing back at the drop. Had he fallen, he would have slid through about two hundred yards of woods and then dropped off a cliff into the river below.

  “Don’t mention it,” said the bespectacled Schneider, balding save for a short, gray ponytail. “Just remember that you owe me, is all.”

  “I won’t forget,” Moriarty said. “Unlike some jokers, I know the lay of the land.”

  Kano was still giving his man the hot-eye. His hands were tight fists, and even his brown buzzcut and two-day-old stubble seemed to bristle. “If that was meant to be a parting dig,” Kano said, “I spit on it. An’ the next time ya try and tell me what to do, Moriarty, I’ll knock yer flat head into the next Columbus Day. Got that?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Moriarty mumbled. The M44 carbine had slipped from his shoulder to his elbow. After hitching it back, and checking the Sterling MK4 submachine gun slung around the other, he glowered back at Kano. “But ya didn’t have to do that, ya freakin’ cyclops. I wasn’t lyin’. We are lost, ain’t we?”

  “You bet,” Kano agreed, “but it’s this crummy map’s fault, not mine. I didn’t see anybody here beef when I said we come this way. You all looked at this rag.” He shook the map. “It didn’t make sense to any o’ you either. An’ no, bonehead – I didn’t need to take a swipe atcha. I did it ‘cause I wanted to. I liked seein’ ya do yer little aerobics thing.”

  “Yeah?” Moriarty said. He took a few steps forward and looking into Kano’s human eye. “Well, we may be Black Dragon brothers and all that, but if ya try puttin’ yer foot on me again, ya better make it count. Otherwise, I’m comin’ at you.”

  “Are ya, tough guy?” Kano yelled. He stuffed the map into the belt of his jeans. “Come at me, then. Hands or blades, whatever you want. Let’s see if you’re Black Dragon enough to take on yer leader.”

  Before Moriarty had a chance to move, the red-eyed killer threw a high, savage air-kick to the right shoulder – well aware that Moriarty was a lefty and not wanting to hurt his trigger hand. This place was so far from any kind of civilization that Kano figured he’d have to find a Yeti to replace Moriarty.

  Unlike the earlier kick, this one caught Moriarty, who hit the ground and slid down the slope for several yards on his backpack.

  “You stinkin’ son of a louse!” he snarled, scrambling to try and reach the MK4 that was beneath him.

  “Don’t!” Kano yelled as he leapt down the slope and landed with his leg bent at the knee, his toe pointed under the mercenary’s jaw. “Not unless ya want me practicin’ field goals with yer noggin.”

  Kano felt a prick against the back of his neck. “If you try,” a woman’s voice said, “we’ll have the kickoff with your head.”

  Kano rolled his eyes toward Gilda Stahl. The statuesque, blond-haired ex-ballet dancer from the U.S. had the tip of her nine-inch hunting knife pressed to his flesh. He had heard, from the man who recommended her for this job, that she could deliver on her promise: the guy said he’d seen her once decapitate an enemy with a single stroke of this very same blade, and kick his still-bleeding head a remarkable seventy yards.

  “Back off, Gilly,” Kano said warily. “This ain’t yer business.”

  “You’re right,” she said, her voice firm, her large brown eyes disapproving. “But finding that amulet, getting you to the island, and collecting the payoff is my business, and you and your playmate are holding up the works.”

  “I’m defendin’ my honor.”

  Gilda snorted. “Your honor’s in the same file folder with your good looks and your Ph.D. brain – the one marked ‘Wishful thinking’.”

  “Watch it, ladykins. Now you’re messing with my honor–”

  “Ooooo,” she cooed, “how dare I? So why don’t you exculpate it? Or better yet, why don’t you try spelling exculpate?” She turne
d the blade so it rested lengthwise against the nape of his neck, then leaned closer until her full lips were right beside his ear. He could feel her breath hot in his flesh as she said, “Admit it, you big, bad boy…. You just like to fight.”

  “Yeah,” he hissed. “I like to fight.” His brows lowered sternly, narrowing the glow from the artificial eye. The mixture of natural light and infrared light pouring into his brain made him feel like a tiger-man, and his claws itched to lash out. “I like it a lot.”

  “Then take some advice,” Gilda whispered, her lips nearer to his ear now, the knife moving along his jaw and around to his throat. “Do it on your own time, when we’re not working. Remember, Kano – ladies don’t like guys who aren’t gentlemen… and professionals.”

  Kano swallowed hard, felt the edge of the knife pressing against his Adam’s apple. He looked down at Moriarty. The metal tip of Kano’s boot still pointed at soft flesh under the thug’s chin.

  “Awright,” he said, reluctantly putting his foot down. “Get up, custard brain.”

  Kano turned away, and after offering the fallen man her hand and helping him up, Gilda rejoined the group.

  “Gilly!” Kano called after her.

  She stopped, and turned her had back halfway. Her sleek green tights glistened in the setting sun, a dramatic contrast to her weather-beaten leather flight jacket.

  “Don’t think that just ‘cause you’re a lady, I won’t take you on,” Kano warned. “Ya pulled a knife on me. I won’t forget that.”

  “Good,” Gilda said, and continued walking. “That means I won’t have to do it again.”

  Smart-mouthed huss! Kano thought, determined to teach her a lesson – though not here, and not now. He already had Moriarty and Schneider ready to turn on him, and he didn’t want to press his luck. Senny and Woo might get it in their thick heads to do the math and throw in with them to take his lion’s share cut.