1940

The uneven chopping of the rickety old fan was never enough to beat back the heat of a San Diego summer. I've been meaning to install a new one, but business hasn't been too good for me since the big depression started. Most workdays see me baking in my little office for hours, waiting for a call, a visit, or anything else to liven things up. So far as the morning was proceeding, today looked like it wasn't going to be much different from the usual.

I was ready to pour myself a glass of lukewarm bourbon for the slightest refreshment when Lizzie, my petite blonde secretary, chimed in with an announcement and a pearly smile. "Someone's here to see you, Mr. O'Sullivan."

I straightened myself in my chair and wiped the sweat off my brow. She held the door open, and there shuffled in a gentleman in a white robe with a tiny gold cross hanging from his neck. He was balding at the top, the hair on the side fading from black to gray, and his tawny complexion was typical for a Mexican or other mestizo. I don't normally receive clients from the swarthier races, but my family's always been Catholic, so as far as I was concerned, he would have been a brother by faith if not by blood.

"Well, well, it's not every day I have a man of the cloth come down to my humble workplace," I said. "Not that it's an unwelcome change of pace, to be honest. How can I help you?"

The old priest entwined his hands with a calm smile. "Good morning to you, Señor O'Sullivan. Call me Father Manuel, of the Mission Santa Isabella, a little out into the countryside east of town. It's small as the old missions go, I will admit, and not very remarkable until recently."

"Until recently? How so?"

"I know a Frenchman by the name of Pierre Dupont who is like an explorer or antiquarian. He was in the Belgian Congo a year ago, and he was kind enough to donate to our establishment a special relic he'd uncovered there. But first, Señor, have you heard of the legend of Prester John?"

I scratched the back of my head. "Can't say I recall the name."

"They say he was descended from one the three wise men who visited baby Christ, ruling over a Christian kingdom hidden somewhere in the Orient. At first, people thought he was in India or perhaps Central Asia, but then the Portuguese started looking for him in darkest Africa. And now my friend Pierre believes he has located the ruins of Prester John's kingdom, whence he obtained this."

Father Manuel laid a photograph on my desk. Despite the picture's murky quality, I could make out a dark artifact shaped like a thick cross or arithmetic plus sign, with an ovular human face sculpted in its center, standing on a stone altar amidst tropical vegetation. The face's exaggerated features resembled those of a native African mask or idol, but situated on a cross like that, it did nonetheless recall the Crucifixion.

"Imagine, this holy Christian icon has lain rotting in the jungle, surrounded by pagan ignorance, for who knows how many centuries!" the priest said. "It is only by the grace of God that my friend Pierre has found it, brought it back to civilization, and entrusted our mission with protecting it. And protect it we have, until it went missing last night."

I leaned forward. "Went missing? Any idea where it could have gone, Father?"

"That is where you come in, Señor. At first, we tried contacting the police, but they told us they were stretched too thin, and you know how they are with brown folk like us anyway. So, it is to you we turn. We need your keen eyes to examine the scene of the crime and find who may have taken the cross and why. If you can get it back, the mission would be most grateful."

Father Manuel bowed his head with palms together as if in prayer. His case was more serious than what I usually received. This cross of his wouldn't have been the first stolen article I'd been asked to retrieve, but it sounded much more significant than, say, a fancy necklace or a missing cat. The Lord Himself might judge me if I refused.

"I would be more than happy to help, but it'll cost you a bit," I said. "Nothing personal, it's just business."

"Oh, I expected as much, my child," he replied. "How does five thousand sound?"

I could not help but grin like a schoolboy examining a shiny new toy he'd gotten for Christmas. "It's more than what most folks offer me."

"Excellent! You are truly blessed, Señor O'Sullivan. I must warn you, though, the scene is a bit grisly."

For once, despite the summertime temperature, I felt a tingling chill in my back.

##

The Mission Santa Isabella may not have been large, as Father Manuel had described it, but it wasn't unattractive. Resting on a hill framed by citrus groves, its Spanish colonial architecture blazed bright with alabaster walls and scarlet-red roofing as it faced the afternoon sun. After passing through its eastern gate, which reared like a medieval fortress toward the sky, we enjoyed cool relief under the palm, olive, eucalyptus, and fig trees that shaded its front plaza. The profusion of well-watered foliage gave off a fresh fragrance that would have soothed me had my nose not detected another, less pleasant odor underneath it.

It was the coppery scent of bloodshed.

I followed it to one of the hedges to the side near the mission's entrance, where I found four bodies piled on the grass. Two were human, both Mexican-looking by race and uniformed like security personnel, their guns still holstered on their hips. Gashes over both their gullets trickled crimson fluid. The other two corpses were dogs, German shepherds by breed, with one having its whole head hacked off and the other with a hideous stab wound in the back of its skull.

Sickening nausea filled my insides. Never had I been given a case with the loss of life involved, let alone with more than one dead. And to see man's best friend brutalized as badly as man himself ripped my heart apart.

By the look of their wounds, both the guards and their canine companions had been slain with something bladed rather than gunfire. That made sense. If you were going to kill someone on your way to stealing a sacred relic, a knife made less noise than a gunshot. Still, two men and two dogs were an awful lot for one man to kill.

"Were you at your quarters on site last night?" I asked Father Manuel.

He nodded. "I might have heard the dogs bark while I was in bed, but they do that at least once every night. And our quarters are on the other side of the mission anyway."

"Even so, our culprit—or culprits, as I suspect—must have mastered the art of stealth to have taken out at least two men and their pets and gotten away with it. Now, where did you keep the cross before they took it?"

The priest pointed to the church building which towered over the other buildings at the far end of the mission and waved for me to follow him. As we walked across the plaza, leaving the dead behind, there sounded a soft crack like a twig being stepped on. I froze in mid-stride, the hairs on the nape of my neck prickling. I could have sworn I'd seen a shadow flash through the branches of the trees above me.

It might have been a bird. I shrugged and moved on to the church with the priest.

Even after we entered the church, the stench of death did not go away. In the aisle between the pews lay another body, a third security guard whose glassy eyes stared at the vaulted ceiling while a long knife stuck out of his chest.

After I yanked the weapon out, not daring to look at the dead while I did so, I observed that it was more like a sword or scimitar, the blade broad and curved at the tip. Inscribed into it was a string of Chinese characters.

"Seems we have our murder weapon here," I said.

In front of the altar, under the watch of the sculpted likenesses of saints and Christ Himself on the wall, stood a pedestal of black granite with shards of shattered glass littered around its base. A tiny gold label on the pedestal claimed that the Cross of Prester John had rested on top, like an exhibit in a glass case at a museum, but there was nothing there.

I searched the church's hallway for additional clues. Footprints, blood trails, anything the culprits might have dropped by accident. It was obvious what had happened that night, but I needed a suspect to have done it. Someone who could have taken out three guards and a couple of dogs and left behind a sword marked with Chinese text. Even after an hour, I couldn't find anything I hadn't already found.

"Have you seen anyone suspicious hanging around these parts before last night?" I asked.

"Not that I can think of," Father Manuel said. "We do receive a few visitors every day, but no one who stood out has come recently."

I tapped the Chinese characters on the sword. "Anyone Chinese?"

"Well, there might have been one Oriental visitor or two, but we get a few of those every so often. And I wouldn't be able to tell whether they were Chinese, Japanese, Korean, or whatever without asking anyway. Honestly, they all look the same to me."

I had a guilty chuckle at that. It wasn't the kindest thing to say about the Asiatic people, but then they probably thought the same about white men like me, or the mestizos.

"Well, this sword appears to be a Chinese dao," I said. "So, I'm thinking the Chinese gangsters had something to do with our crime."

"But why would they take a Christian cross from the Congo?" the old priest asked.

"Beats me. Probably think it's like any other piece of ancient junk and want to sell it on the black market. Anyway, I'll be digging around Chinatown for our answers tonight. Pray for me I get out of there alive."

I patted the holster where I stored my trusty revolver. I had never used it on a case before, but I'd done enough target practice with it, and you should always be prepared if you're in my line of work.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw through one of the church windows another shadow that darted into the greenery outside until it disappeared. Exiting the church and surveying the mission grounds one more time, my hand dangling over my gun, I did not see it again. All I heard was the twitter of birds, the buzzing of insects, and a faint rustling of bushes.

##

When I asked the taxi driver to take me to Chinatown, he cocked his eyebrow above a wary glare at me. Not that I'd blame the man. There aren't a whole lot of white men, let alone ginger Irishmen like me, who want to go down to the Chinese district, and most of the few who dare venture there are interested only in the whorehouses. At first, I was tempted to assuage the driver's concerns with an alibi that sounded noble, even though I didn't want to give away my whole agenda since you never know who will rat you out. In the end, however, it was a fat tip that put his conscience to rest.

The moment I got out of the taxi, I tilted my fedora down to hide my face as I wove my way through the local populace. Like any American Chinatown, the one in San Diego wasn't the most glamorous neighborhood in the city, with its moldy apartment blocks and dusty streets strewn with trash, but at least it was well lit that evening. The gas lamps dressed up like Chinese lanterns and the electric lights on the shopkeepers' signs gave the place a warm glow that suited the floating redolence of roasting poultry and other Oriental delicacies. The bustling chatter and the growls and honks of automobiles passing through were like the pulse of a heart giving the district life even after sundown.

With all these innocent civilians carrying out their business, this wasn't the ideal hour to hunt for criminal elements out in the open, but it was at least relatively safe. What I had to look for was wherever the seedier types would frequent. A bar, a saloon, or whatever the Chinese equivalent was.

One of the signs ahead of me displayed the image of a white tiger crouching over bold Chinese text, tail lashing behind as if ready to pounce. Underneath the Chinese print was a line of smaller English text which read, "Den of the White Tiger".

Which, you must admit, is a rather impressive name for any establishment.

Stepping into this "den", I expected a whiff of opium to flow into my nostrils, but all I could smell were the more familiar odors of alcohol and tobacco, with the smoke thick enough to sting my eyes. The stout middle-aged bartender greeted me with a squinting stare when I approached his counter.

"You looking for the nearest brothel, white man?" he asked. "I can't tell you where it is, but I can tell you it's nowhere near here."

I took a seat in front of him. "Oh, I'm not interested in that. I've much more important business. But first, why don't you pour me one bourbon?"

After I paid him, he went right to work while I looked around. There were plenty of men elsewhere in the room, gambling and drinking while their girlfriends looked on, but you can never tell whether a man is a gangster just by looking at him. They wouldn't wear it on their sleeves for all the world to see.

"So, what is this 'important business' you're talking about?" the bartender asked. "What business could a white man have in Chinatown that doesn't involve taking advantage of our women?"

I took out from my coat's pocket the photograph Father Manuel had shown me of Prester John's Cross. "This 'cross' was in the Santa Isabella mission out east until it went missing last night. Whoever took it, they left behind three dead, plus two dogs. And we found this sword in one of the dead. Know what these characters say?"

When I revealed the dao, the bartender's light brown face blanched. He uttered something in Chinese while reading the characters on the blade. "Power, wealth, and glory…that's the slogan of the Gold Dragons! You need to get out of here. If they know you're in Chinatown, they'll…"

"That's precisely why I'm here," I said. "Name's Patrick O'Sullivan, private eye. The mission wants me to recover that old artifact for them, and by God, I'm going to help them however I can. What I need to know is where these 'Gold Dragons' would be hiding it."

"You don't understand, you can't just barge into their lair by yourself. Nobody even knows where their lair even is. I sure don't know!"

Someone tapped me on the shoulder from behind. "I do."

It was a tall young man with hair cut short enough to see his scalp underneath. The bartender and I both blinked at him.

"The Dragons killed my brother, and I've been tracking them down ever since," the young man said. "I can take you to them."

That was convenient. Too convenient. But it could have been a blessing after all. They say the Lord works in mysterious ways, and besides, He would have been more invested in reclaiming something sacred to him than most other quests.

I tossed the sword over to the youth. "If you're going to help me, you might need this."

He slid the dao under his belt and nodded for me to follow him. We huddled close to each other as we headed out and went down the street. I kept my hand close to my revolver, and my pulse throbbed faster as we walked. Even though the heat of the day had already given way to the breezy chill of night, sweat still clung to my brow.

I figured a little small talk would distract me from the building dread. "If you don't mind me asking, what would your name be, young fellow?"

The boy took a turn around a corner which led us into a narrow alleyway covered in pure darkness like a cavern. "Everyone calls me Lee."

I was looking up at the moon, a waning crescent in the black heavens, when something tiny and dark hopped from the top of one building to another across the street. Or so I thought. "You sure we're not being followed?"

"You never know in this part of town."

As we went deeper into the alley, the bustle of the street died down, replaced by a silence comparable to that of the church back at the mission. It was only the scuffing of our shoes on the pavement, and my anxious breathing, that echoed within this man-made canyon. And it was only the silver light reflected by the moon that let us see anything in these shadowed depths.

It was barely enough for me to spot the glint of steel emerging up ahead of us.

They came from all directions until they merged into a tight ring entrapping us. All had their hair cut short as Lee's, and all wielded dao like the one I had given him, right down to the inscriptions on their blades. They grinned with bared teeth that gleamed with gold fillings.

I started fingering out my revolver. "I think they found us before we found them."

Swiping his sword out, Lee gave me a toothy smile every bit as golden as the others. "Correction, my friend, we found you. And thank you for returning my sword."

By then I had the gun out, but it slipped out of my hand and plummeted to the ground as I stood there, petrified. "How in the hell? How did you lot even know I was coming down here?"

"Our mistress can see far beyond her eyes," Lee said. "There is nothing you can hide from her. Now, let us first be diplomatic like civilized men. You give up your pursuit of this 'Cross of Prester John', and you can come out of this alive."

I was outnumbered, surrounded, and my revolver was on the ground. It wouldn't have been hard for me to surrender and then tell Father Manuel I'd failed to locate the cross despite my best efforts. The gentleman had already paid up front, so I could walk out of this alive with enough money to get my office a new ceiling fan, among other comforts. No longer would I be baking under the heat every summer day.

Instead, I'd be baking under the Lord's judgment once my time had come, and all because I would have chickened out and lied to a brother by faith.

I thrust my hand toward my gun. Before I could reach it, Lee kicked it away, and it spun like a saucer over the pavement until it flew outside the ring of men.

He and his minions laughed together. "Now are you ready to surrender?"

I flung a fist at him. Swifter than a fencer parrying his opponent's rapier, Lee batted my forearm aside with his own. I was reeling from the blow when he sliced at me with his sword, cutting through my coat down to the skin. Pain stung hot on my chest where he had nicked it. I crumpled onto my knees, overwhelmed, while he and his friends closed in.

I butted my head into one of the thugs' shins. His staggering back opened a gap in the circle of men, and I shoved my way through it and snatched my revolver. It was my turn to cackle as I banged away, taking out three more of the hoodlums as they charged at me with brandished swords. Upon catching up to me, another gangster cleaved at my gun-arm, but I dodged and elbowed him in the teeth before finishing the whore's son off with a fourth round.

A second shot of sharp pain ran down my shoulder. Behind me, Lee had his already bloodied dao drawn for a third attack. I pressed my revolver's trigger, aiming at his forehead, but the cylinder clicked empty. I had to duck under the sweep of his blade, only to find his knee smashing into my brow. The world turned into a murky blur as my back slammed onto the stone-hard alley floor, with the gangsters looming over me like a pack of tigers ready to tear into a wounded buffalo.

A shrill whoosh through the air, and one of the men froze where he stood and toppled down. Piercing the back of his skull was a knife-like weapon with its blade forking into multiple prongs. It reminded me of something I'd seen in the African wing at a museum once.

Afterward rang a quick succession of gunshots, felling more of the punks until only Lee was left standing. From one of the overhanging metal balconies attached to an apartment building dropped a dark figure which pounced on him, flurrying down beatings until it was his turn to collapse. With all the gold-toothed gangsters fallen, silence returned to the alley with only my rescuer and I gazing at one another.

Underneath the moonlight, perspiration gave her black skin a radiant luster worthy of an angel. Even the thick braid of kinky hair that encircled her head recalled a halo. A brown dress decorated with rows of triangular patterning clung to the curves of her figure as she approached me. With a smile of her plump and glossy lips, she extended her arm to me.

At the center of her gold necklace was a cross shape with a stylized human face on it, a shape that had become all too familiar to me by now.

"You're…not from around here either, are you?" I asked after she pulled me up.

She chuckled. "You can call me Mavika. Mavika of Nsi Oro."

"Nsi Oro? Never heard of that."

"Not many of your people have, mundele—that is, white man. Our kingdom lies within the Congo, right in the heart of Africa."

"Really? Quite a trip you've gone on, then. What brought you all the way here to San Diego?"

Mavika pinched the little cross on her necklace. "Something sacred to our people, shaped like this but carved from black stone, was stolen from our ancestors' tombs not long ago. My father, the King of Nsi Oro, has sent me to recover it."

The pieces were all coming together. The fleeting shadows I saw at the mission, the one hopping between the rooftops before I entered this alley…those had not been illusions of my paranoid imagination after all. At least not if she was after what I thought she was after.

I gave her Father Manuel's photograph. "You wouldn't happen to be referring to this old artifact, would you? Because my client thought it was a Christian cross left behind by someone legendary named Prester John."

Her eyes widened over the picture. "Is that what you think it is? Sorry, mundele, but that is not a Christian cross at all! It shows the four moments of the sun, from morning to nightfall, as it appears to go around our world. It is a symbol of the cycling of life, or what you might call the circle of life."

I took a focused squint at the cross in the photo. Each of its four ends did, in fact, have an image of the sun inscribed in it. The human face in the middle must have represented the world of human beings as the sun seemed to soar around it, much as it went around the earth in the minds of Copernicus's medieval predecessors.

"If only the French bastard who found it knew that before he carried it off here!" I spoke. "Though, knowing how we 'mundele' can be, he probably didn't think to ask. Though, that raises the question, why did these Chinese crooks want it?"

Mavika yanked out her multi-pronged throwing knife from the body of the man it had brought down. "You think they've taken it too?"

"We found one of their swords back at the church." I pointed at Lee's body. "I believe it belonged to this fellow over here."

Lee's jaw moved, letting out a moan as he lifted an arm to rub the purple bruises on his scalp. Mavika and I set both our revolvers' sights on him, but he raised his empty hands up while holding his head down.

"I can…take you to our leader…for real, this time…" Lee croaked. "All I ask…is that you let me live…and I'll leave this life of crime. I…only joined the Gold Dragons…because I had nothing. It isn't…it's not easy to get by in this country…if you're a Chinaman like me…"

Any contempt or hatred I had left for the poor fellow melted away when I saw the wet shine of his eyes. America had always prided itself as a land of opportunity, yet the cruel truth was that anyone who didn't look or talk the right way found the road rockier than the more privileged classes could imagine. Even my Irish forefathers, upon coming to this country, were forced into struggle until the powers that be decided we were white men after all. I didn't know if young Lee would fare any better out of the crime life than within it, but he had to start somewhere.

I lowered my hand to his. "Tell you what, I'll give you at least three grand as a bonus if you can help us. Deal?"

He gripped me firm. "Deal."

##

We left the alley from the end opposite the one we had entered. The street it opened onto was quieter than the other, with nary a soul in sight other than us, at least as far as the gas lamps could illuminate. Nonetheless, I made sure to reload my revolver, as did Mavika. Even if there was nobody else nearby, I had no way to tell how many more of these Gold Dragons awaited us. For all we knew, we might have slain merely a thousandth of their membership.

Lee knelt over a manhole in the street, inserted a finger beside the notch in the lid's edge, and pried it open, releasing a waft of malodorous air. "I hope you don't mind going underground for a while."

Mavika's facial muscles bunched into a grimace. "By my ancestors, your hideout is down there?"

"What can I say, it's a great place to hide."

I would have exploded into boyish laughter at his retort were I not busy wrinkling my nose from the stench. As it happened, I could still manage a snicker.

The princess of Nsi Oro regarded me with narrowed eyes. "You men are all so gross."

"I dunno, you were willing to make quite a mess back there in the alley, Your Majesty," I said. "Are shit and piss really that much more disgusting than bloodshed?"

Mavika shrugged. "I suppose not. But I am going to take a long bath after this."

It was a small mercy that, after we descended the ladder that ran down from the manhole, the sewage at the bottom amounted to little more than a shallow trickle, even if it was a pungent one. The foul water didn't even reach halfway to the princess's ankles, luckily for her. A much more significant and unexpected source of relief was that, unlike the alleyway, the tunnel had lighting in it. Dim flickering light from Chinese paper lanterns that dangled from the ceiling, with a reddish-yellow tint like the bowels of an inferno, but preferable by far to unbroken pitch blackness.

"I take it that these show you the way to the hideout?" I asked Lee.

"It's not so simple like that," Lee said. "We have them all over the sewers in this part of town, to throw any intruders off. They're more for our own benefit than outsiders'."

We stuck close together as we tiptoed down the tunnel, careful not to splash into the sewage with each step. The light of the lanterns weakened over time, the shadowed spaces between them darkening as the flames' flickering grew more erratic. Muggy like a swamp as it may have been down there, I shivered under my coat.

A faint squeak. I halted to whip out my revolver with a clammy hand, eyes on the shadows before us, my heart drumming in a frenzy. From behind a corner in the tunnel, it scurried past our feet. It was only a common sewer rat.

"We're almost there," Lee said after we took the next turn. "Only one more bend to go."

Over the gurgling of the stream rose the droning chant of a female voice. A soft whisper at first, it loudened with every further step we took, the pitch growing shriller as well, until it reached a piercing resonance within the tunnel. The light coming from the other side of the upcoming corner turned a pulsing jade green unlike that of the lanterns.

The chanting stopped in mid-crescendo, and all the lanterns in the sewer went out. Only the green glow remained to show the way.

"What the hell was that?" I said under my breath.

Seeing his jaw drop wide open, I could tell that Lee had little more idea than I or Mavika did. I knew the boy had mentioned their "mistress" being able to see "beyond her eyes", but whatever that meant, there must have been something more to her that even he and his cohorts had not known.

With his sword drawn out, young Lee tilted his head past the bend in the tunnel. With a whoosh through the air, something whirled into his head like Mavika's throwing knife had that other thug, knocking him down onto the sewer floor. It was a dao like his own that had hit him, with his blood darkening the sewage underneath a body that had been robbed of life too young.

The two of us that remained stood there in wait for his killer to pop into view and attack us next. After a minute of silence, without so much as a figure's shadow showing up on the tunnel wall, they spoke.

"You can come over now." It was the voice of a woman with a lilting accent. "I will answer all your questions."

After we rounded that last bend in the sewer, it opened into a chamber at least as voluminous as the mission church's hallway had been. A concrete platform jutted up a foot high from its floor like a dais in an emperor's throne room, and on this sat with crossed legs a young Chinese woman in a gold hanfu robe. There hung from her neck a ring of luminous jade spheres.

Arranged in a semicircle behind her was an audience of idols and graven images from every corner of the world, all gleaming from the glow of the jade orbs. Christian crucifixes, seated likenesses of the Buddha, Hindu deities prancing with their many limbs, bronze Greek sculptures of Zeus and Poseidon, scowling South Pacific tiki, animal-headed Egyptian gods as well as assorted masks and figurines from elsewhere in Africa…and then, sitting at one end of the semicircle, was the cross of black stone I had thought to be Prester John's.

The Chinese woman bowed her head as she faced us. "Welcome to my den, Patrick O'Sullivan and Mavika of Nsi Oro."

"Let's cut to the chase," I said. "Who are you, and how do you know our names?"

Our host's sneer broadened. "They know me as Long Wei. As for your second question, it is as my treasonous subordinate said. I can see far beyond my eyes, and hear far beyond my ears, all courtesy of this special necklace of mine."

"So, why do you have all those statues behind you?" Mavika asked. "You know those are sacred to people around the world, don't you?"

"Precisely, which is why my necklace has the power it does. With every sacred artifact I can collect, I can extract its spiritual energy to add to the necklace's power. And the more power I can gather, the more I am able to do."

Long Wei reached over to stroke the black stone cross, her long fingernails scratching its surface. "And now that I have collected my two hundredth artifact, my power is all but limitless. No longer shall I content myself with petty crime as before. No, all the nations of the world, with all their armies and their statesmen, shall tremble before me! But first, a demonstration of what I have finally attained…"

Her eyes scintillated red like embers, their pupils contracting into slits like those of serpents. The jade stones around her neck expanded their glow until it flooded the entire chamber with light more blinding than the sun itself, with broiling heat to match. Her malevolent laughter resounded throughout the sewer until it transformed into bestial screeching.

Once the light subsided, Long Wei was no more. Up from where she had sat, there reared an Oriental dragon no less gigantic than the Tyrannosaurus of yore, with gold scales as big as warriors' shields coating its coiling length. Only the string of jade orbs around its neck, somehow longer than before, gave away that this reptilian titan was one and the same as the woman we had just met.

Parting open jaws lined with blade-like tusks, the dragon shook the entire sewer with an ear-splitting shriek, breaking off chunks of the ceiling that tumbled to the floor. As if the force of its voice had not done enough damage, it rammed its antlered head into what remained of the concrete above, with the night sky already visible though some of the cracks.

We fired our revolvers at its breast. The bullets bounced off without so much as denting the underside scales. I shot a second time on reflex, and the beast's foreleg swooped to pluck me off the floor, squeezing my torso between taloned fingers. Boiling hot vapor cascaded from its maw, scalding my face, before it tossed me back into the sewage at the bottom.

Sore and dripping wet all over, I hauled myself back up to hear Mavika scream as the dragon seized her in its jaws. I fired my third round at its eye. It must have been a lucky shot or a miracle, for the gold-scaled monster dropped her with a wailing cry, a torrent of blood pouring from where its eye had been. I hurried to catch her in my arms, but its thrashing tail smacked us both into the wall on the chamber's far side.

"You think our little guns are enough to take her down?" I said with an anguished groan.

Despite the scrapes she had collected, Mavika gave me a determined smirk. "There is one way they can. Aim for her necklace!"

I did as she suggested. Not one of the glowing stones shattered as I had hoped, but my bullet must have severed the cord that held them together, for the necklace fell off the creature's neck. Shrieking with fury, the dragon snapped its jaws after me, backing me into a corner as it exhaled more sizzling hot steam.

Another explosion of light and warmth filling the depths of the sewer. Afterward echoed another terrific bestial cry, but this one was a deeper, more booming roar than that of the gold dragon.

Where Mavika had been, there towered a second reptile every bit as colossal as the first, but this one had a thicker body with a pebbly brown hide studded with spikes. With its long serpentine neck and twirling whiplash tail, I would have taken it for a Brontosaurus were it not for the serrated beak, scimitar talons, and flaring cobra's hood. And it had on the same necklace of luminous jade that Long Wei had worn earlier.

The earth shook with a rumble as the two dragons crashed into one another. Claws cut across scaled hides, jaws snapped and chomped, tails slapped and whipped and battered against the walls. Giant feet pounded onto the wet sewer floor, throwing up buckets of polluted water that had been dyed crimson.

An even bigger splash washed over me when the body of the gold dragon went down with a thunderous slam beneath the weight of its spiky brown adversary. The gold clawed after the other's necklace with squirming forelegs as it clamped its teeth onto the brown's neck. With blood squirting out of the brown monster's beak, the first dragon shoved itself so that it rolled onto the top position, its talons stabbing deep into the second one's breast.

I fired at the gold. I probably hadn't hit it this time, but the report was enough to send it lunging after me again. One of its tusks grazed my arm, and the gun flew out of my grip. I did not bother to pick it up even as the gold dragon's steaming maw filled my field of vision once more.

Bone cracked, and the huge jaws closed. The gold dragon's head plopped onto the floor of the sewer chamber, the rest of the body falling limp in suit. The brown dragon was standing over it, with the gold's neck hanging from its blood-soaked beak.

With a scratch over the base of its own neck, the brown dragon cast the necklace of glowing jade off. All the stones shattered on landing, the light evaporating from them into the air, and the two mighty monsters were no more. The body of Long Wei, now back to human, lay every bit as dead as her dragon form, with a panting Mavika standing over her.

The sacred cross of Nsi Oro remained on the dais along with the other idols, not even scuffed from the havoc that had ended only minutes before. For that matter, not even the sewer walls and ceiling were missing any of the big hunks of concrete that had been broken off before. In destroying the necklace, we must have undone all the damage it had wrought. Even the lanterns back in the tunnel connecting to the chamber were lit once more, providing the only way we could see down here now that the jade necklace had been destroyed.

"How on Earth were you able to control that necklace the way she did?" I asked.

Mavika massaged her temples with her fingers. "I figured all it took was your mind."

She staggered over to her people's sacred symbol and embraced it like it were a missing family member, murmuring something in what I took to be her native tongue. "Time for you to come home."

I laid my hand on her shoulder. "There's still the problem of the gentlemen over at the mission. They might need some persuading."

"Why should we bother? My people have had enough stolen from our lands."

"Even so, there's still a misunderstanding we need to clear up. Once you and I get patched up, why don't we settle it at my office?"

##

My office was hot as always the day we came back, but for once, I didn't mind. I had Mavika and Father Manuel both seated before me, with the cross of black stone waiting for its rightful claimant behind them. I'd been holding the artifact there since the night we found it, and I had to admit it must have given the otherwise drab room an exotic tang while it stood in the corner. Regardless, it was taking up space and more than one individual I knew wanted to bring it home.

I took a sip of my bourbon, no less lukewarm than usual, but a welcome refreshment after I'd recovered from my wounds. "Alright, so here's the deal. I've gotten the cross back, Father Manuel, but there's a catch. You see, the lovely dame to your side is from the country your French amigo Pierre found it in, and she tells me it's sacred to her people instead. For her, it's not a Christian cross at all."

The priest trembled where he sat. "What? But what use would those savage pagans have for a cross? What religion other than Christianity holds the cross as significant?"

"First off, don't you dare call my people 'savage pagans'!" the princess of Nsi Oro said. "Our faith is no less real for us than yours is for you. As for the cross, each of its ends represents a different phase of the sun as it appears to go around the human world across the day, from morning until night. It's a symbol of how life is like an ongoing cycle for us, or a circle if you will."

Father Manuel turned to look at the cross. "Well, it does have images of the sun etched on its ends, I'll give you that. But then why did Señor Dupont claim it was a Christian icon?"

"The same reason we as white men often get things wrong about everyone else in the world," I said, "We don't listen before we claim shit."

I don't think I've ever seen a woman erupt into a fit of laughter the way Mavika did when I said that. Even Father Manuel chortled alongside her.

"That much is true," the priest said. "As much as I appreciate how much attention having it brought to our humble mission, I suppose it behooves us to renounce our claim on it. Young señorita, your people may have it back instead."

"Don't feel too bad over losing it, Father," I replied. "You can always use that little disagreement as your publicity itself. You may not be the mission with the Cross of Prester John, but you will be the one that thought they had it."

"Indeed, and if your God exists, they must be willing to thank you for doing the right thing no matter what," Mavika said. "Just as I thank you for what you and Mr. O'Sullivan have done for my people."

Standing up with his fingertips touching one another, Father Manuel nodded to both me and her. "Then you are welcome. May God on High, or whatever gods you worship instead, watch over you both. Farewell and adios!"

After casting one final glance at the black cross, he shuffled his way out of my office, leaving me alone with Mavika. And so, our case was closed.

Considering all the punishment she had taken in that sewer a few days back, Mavika had healed wonderfully, with nary a blemish remaining on her figure. She didn't even smell like the place anymore, although maybe her perfume was hiding it. As her eyes bore into mine, they twinkled with an even keener shine than her gold necklace or any of her other jewelry.

"Why don't you come over to my place for a drink, Your Majesty?" I spoke. "You could use some rest."

Leaning over my desk toward me, she batted her lashes with a giggle. "Is that all you want, my handsome mundele?"

A gentle warmth flushed in my cheeks, not to mention between my loins. "Well, you have to start somewhere."

The face on the black cross of Nsi Oro watched as our lips drew toward each other. That was when I noticed for the first time that it was smiling.