“Do they really think I’m Chinese?” he’d asked Tenzin one night, just after they’d passed another weigh station where they’d been inspected.
“They think you’re Uyghur. Most of the population here has never been to Xinjiang,” she’d explained. “It’s the perfect cover for you. They know your accent is different, but they assume it’s because you’re from so far west. You look Caucasian, but so do many of the people in Xinjiang.”
“That’s convenient.”
She squirmed in the truck. “None of this is convenient. I could be in Shanghai in half the time if I was flying.”
“Oh well,” he said, slipping his phone into his pocket. “Then I’d be bored.”
Tenzin gave him a dirty look, but at least she’d stopped complaining about his driving every second of every night.
“What was that beeping sound?”
“My voicemail.”
“Did someone call you?”
He shrugged. “Another message from Cheng’s guy. He wanted to know if the papers worked.”
“If they didn’t, I certainly wouldn’t tell Kesan.”
“You wouldn’t?”
“Not without a knife to his throat.”
“You might want to work on your communication techniques, Tiny.”
Mountains and villages flew by, harsh terrain gradually giving over to soft green. As they drove, the air grew softer, too. Cold dry nights bled into warmer ones.
Nanyang and Xinyang, where the air became so humid it wrapped around his throat every time he left the sanctuary of the truck.
But the green. The emerald mountains and hills of Henan province almost brought him to tears, they were so beautiful. There was nothing in his experience that equaled the sheer size and grandeur of the Chinese landscape. Vast was too small a word to capture it. And the people, the cities. Ben didn’t think he’d ever been to a country more dynamic. It was ancient and new at the same time.
Somewhere past Nanyang, Tenzin said, “We’re in Cheng’s territory now.”
“Oh?”
“Which means if we have a problem, we can’t rely on my connection to Penglai to solve it.”
Tenzin’s sire was one of the Eight Immortal Elders who ruled Penglai Island near Beijing.
“Tell me about Cheng.”
She frowned. “Our relationship—”
“Not that,” he quickly interrupted her. “Just him. Is he really a threat to Penglai? I thought the Elders ruled all of China.”
She shrugged. “Officially? Yes. But Cheng has been consolidating power for the last hundred years or so. He was a pirate and he now holds vast shipping interests. He’s a close associate of Beatrice’s grandfather, actually. But he has… what is the word?” She switched to English. “He’s diversified now. The Elders consider him nothing more than a nuisance, so they leave him alone as long as he gives them the appearance of respect.”
“Does he?”
“What?”
“Respect them?”
“He respects their power. But he has no interest in their traditions. I think he considers them the old China. And he is the new.”
“That makes sense.”
She grinned, and her fangs pressed against her lips. “Things are much more interesting in Shanghai than they are in Beijing.”
“So does Cheng like you because of you, or because liking you pisses your sire off?”
“For me, of course.” She propped her feet up on the dashboard. “I’m wonderful.”
“And so humble.”
“I never understood the purpose of humility. It seems too close to false modesty for me.”
“And you have neither.”
She gave him a guileless look. “I have very little of any kind of modesty. You know that.”
Time to change the subject.
Ben stretched his arms up. “I’m so ready to be out of this truck.”
“Only one more night,” she said. “Then Shanghai.”
She sounded excited, so why did he get the sense she wasn’t looking forward to it?
Tenzin hated Shanghai. She hadn’t minded it so much several hundred years ago when it was just a port town, but it had grown so crowded. Skyscrapers towered over the city. The skyline was constantly changing. There was no quiet. No rest. It was build the new and damn the past. Part of its energy appealed to her. She couldn’t deny that. But there were simply too many humans anymore. A lush menu if she needed to eat often, but as old as she was, Tenzin needed little blood to survive. The blood of her own kind was far more nourishing to her anyway.
It didn’t escape her notice—or the notice of the Elders—that many of the younger immortals in China flocked to Shanghai, eager to enjoy the more lax supervision of Cheng’s patronage. He was going to have to be careful eventually. She didn’t want to be the one to remind him. Then again, if Tenzin remembered correctly, pragmatism was Jonathan’s job.
Tenzin was loath to bring Ben among Cheng’s people when he’d already attracted Kesan’s attention. The wily earth vampire would have told Cheng about the human she’d brought with her. Told him Ben was more than a lackey.
Inconvenient.
But not insurmountable.
Cheng still owed her a number of favors. And their continued friendship was one of the things holding the Elders back from interfering with his business. Her father considered Cheng one of his daughter’s odd friends, which was fine with Tenzin. She had many odd friends. So Cheng could only push her so far. But if he started threatening Ben…