Read Online Hunt Among the Killers of Men by Gabriel Hunt - Free Book Online

judiciously.
    Wick-smoke twisted ceilingward and the sudden light of the flame made his head throb. The chamber was roughly circular, the walls formed of ancient cut stone blocks.
    There was a dressing on his head. He touched it gingerly. He didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore, which was nice. He figured the bullet must’ve come closer than he’d realized, must have hit him a glancing blow, perhaps scoring a neat groove in his thick skull. He’d made it a while on adrenaline alone, but when that had run out…
    He tried to stand up and experienced whirling vertigo. At first he thought it was from his injury but a moment later he realized that the floor of the room actually was slanted, and a moment after that he realized it was necessary to compensate for the incline of the building itself. The effect was disorienting, though he suddenly knew where he was: in one of the leaning pagodas outside Shanghai.
    Through a small alcove he caught sight of the temple ruins outside.
    He was halfway up a mountainside, inside snaggletoothed fortifications choked by wild foliage. The leaning pagoda jutted crookedly toward the stars, like Pisa.
    Several centuries ago temples like this had served as waystations for travelers as well as locations for worship and ritual. They generally consisted of three sequential courtyards, each with its own shrine. He made his way through an overgrown courtyard to the nearest of the shrine rooms. It was so large Gabriel could see clusters of bird nests near the holes in thedomed ceiling. It was mustier in here where the damp had gotten through to the limestone. Vines had claimed the walls.
    Gabriel saw Qingzhao toss a packet of ceremonial money into the flames licking up from an iron urn. Greasy smoke corkscrewed into the air.
    He cleared his throat and Qingzhao’s free hand shot up holding a gun whose barrel looked a foot long. Gabriel tried not to react. Turning her head his way, Qingzhao recognized him and gestured idly toward a small cookstove—pointing with the gun, of course.
    “Coffee. All Americans like coffee,” she said, her voice having an almost African lilt concealed within it.
    She saw him look at the money she was burning. “You wonder why I would burn—”
    “For the dead to use in the next world,” said Gabriel. “Don’t burn enough, and you’re considered cheap. That’s the superstition, anyway. How much have you burned?”
    “You can never burn enough.”
    She offered him a tin cup of strong coffee that smelled just the way Nirvana is supposed to.
    Gabriel’s eyes had adjusted to the sputtering light long enough for him to now make out a mural of a frothing demon on the far wall, obscured by wear and time and the overgrowth of underbrush. He touched the bandage on his head while Qingzhao, apparently, read his mind.
    “You are embarrassed,” she said. “You are a strong American man, it is your job to save the girl, and here I have saved you instead.” She almost smiled. Almost. “I will not tell anyone and thus embarrass you further.”
    Gabriel was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Why did you bring me with you?”
    “I think you and I wish to kill the same man.”
    “Sorry to say, lady, you’ve got that wrong. I’m not here to kill anybody.”
    She stopped what she was doing and regarded him.
    “I came here to find someone in trouble who needed help,” he said. “She jumped the gun and came here sloppy. Emotions on high-burn, full up with revenge. She didn’t even have a plan worthy of the name.”
    “The blonde woman at the Zongchang.”
    Gabriel nodded. “Now she did want to kill the same man you do—she believed Cheung murdered her sister in New York City, or had her murdered.”
    “I sensed we had a connection,” Qingzhao said quietly.
    “Wanting to kill Cheung? I think you’ve probably got that in common with quite a few people.”
    “No. Something deeper. This woman wished to avenge her sister, who has been murdered.” She tossed some