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Bahram and Louis-Cesare made quick work of them, which was good as I was busy accepting the fact that we were lost.
“God damn it,” I muttered, and fished the map out of my jeans again.
I’d had the guy at the rickshaw place print it out for me, because my phone’s tiny screen was hard to read, but it didn’t help much. Especially not here. I stared around, looking for a reading light, and wondering where all the animated ads had gone.
Once upon a time, the skies would have been full of transparent fish swimming across the darkness, their glowing sides advertising sushi bars and sashimi places, or if said fish was also wearing a monocle, possibly fish and chips shops. There would have been cuties in miniskirts waving from the sides of buildings, trying to lure people into clubs and karaoke bars; fake, neon rain pattering down for half a block, only to have a swirl of branded umbrellas come flying to the rescue; and actual, physical ads jumping off their billboards to harangue passersby.
You haven’t really lived until you’ve been chased down a sidewalk by a human-sized bowl of noodles that is brandishing chopsticks menacingly.
But there was nothing like that now. There were still billboards scattered around, what looked like hundreds of them. But most contained script only, without an image in sight. And many were completely empty, with just a few, ragged pieces of paper fluttering in the breeze.
It made me wonder why anybody would bother to remove old ads in a time of war, but there was no one to ask, at least not until we figured out where we were going.
I finally parked us by a huge, neon yellow sign advertising beer. It was a human-style LED variety, of the type that was still spotting the darkness here and there. But while it was bright, it kept switching things up every minute or so, sending alternately yellow, blue, pink and aqua tinted light dancing over the car, and making the map almost impossible to read. And that was before a passing rickshaw clipped us and sent us spinning into the stream of traffic again.
Rashid gave a sharp little scream when I abruptly dropped us the hell out of there and looked for another bolt hole. That wasn’t easy as my requirements were: no crumbling buildings, no neon, and no pirates, which left out eighty percent of the city. But I finally located one under a levitating restaurant with festoons of lights draped along the balcony, and got my map out again.
The problem was that nothing in this city was fixed anymore. The damaged buildings had left plenty of people homeless, and that had only been exacerbated by the fact that the battle had done a number on the shield that kept this place safely wedged in non-space. The fighting had torn holes in it in places and weakened others, leading people to worry about their block suddenly being consumed by a new fissure.
As a result, thousands had fled their homes for the skies, living above the city rather than in it. That wasn’t as unusual here as it would have been most places, as supernatural Hong Kong had always been a city of bridges. Forced to grow up instead of out due to the constraints of the shield, it had long had the habit of parking shops, eateries, and even housing on the thousands of bridges that connected many of the buildings.
I guessed it wasn’t much of a stretch to go from living on a bridge over a big drop to just living over the drop, but it was damned inconvenient for us. It meant that, not only were there crazy, repurposed vehicles flying around, but also repurposed housing. Not that most of the houses were flying, but they were definitely in the way.
“There’s another one,” Rashid said, excitedly pointing off to the right. “That’s what I saw before. Are people really living there?”
“Looks like it.”
I could kind of understand his surprise. Floating off to our left was a group of old, rusted out buses that had been gutted and turned into makeshift apartments. They had curtains, window boxes, and somebody’s deck chair on a roof, and were surrounded by a bulwark of worn out tires. They were linked together by some walkways made out of wooden siding and the whole thing had been tethered to a burnt-out skyscraper so, I assumed, that it wouldn’t float away.
The sky was full of similar rough-and-ready living spaces that hadn’t been there when my map was written. To make matters worse, where people went, others had followed to cater to them. Meaning that I also had to dodge floating restaurants, bars and snack shops.
Some of those were fairly compact, with just a counter in front where you flew up to get your order. Others boasted stools affixed to the bottoms of the counters, leaving the patrons’ feet dangling over nothing at all. And a few were taking alfresco dining to a whole new level, by parking levitating platforms out from their cookshops for those who wanted a better view and a shorter lifespan.
Yet there were people eating at them, and more ordering take-out, with vehicles of all descriptions buzzing about like flies, probably because most of the makeshift apartments didn’t have stove tops.
Louis-Cesare waved one of the returning take out guys over and got a menu. He perused it while I tried to read the damned useless map by the light of a swag of bare bulbs hanging off the diner’s balcony. I tugged them down a little lower, but it didn’t help much, yet I didn’t dare move further up.
Hong Kong was currently the Wild, Wild East, and I didn’t want to get decapitated while trying to figure out where the hell we were!
“Is there a problem?” Rashid asked, his voice making it clear that he already knew the answer.
“No,” I said, not needing help from the backseat driver, who I hadn’t planned to bring along anyway.
That had been Hassani’s idea, probably to protect his interests. And since we were currently such good friends, I didn’t see how I could turn him down. Especially since the Middle Eastern Mr. Clean back there and his bearded buddy hadn’t exactly asked. They’d shown up on the tarmac with bags packed.
So they could damned well keep their opinions to themselves!
“Then why did we stop?” he asked, tempting fate.
“I’m hungry.” It was true; dhampir metabolisms were a bitch.
Of course, it was also true that I didn’t know where to find a floating whorehouse in all this, despite the fact that I’d read the map right. It was supposed to be right here! But there was nothing of the kind in view, at least not as far as I could tell.
But the skies were busy with neon, zipping with rickshaws, and crowded with floating apartments, so who the hell knew? How anybody was supposed to find anything in this, I didn’t know. And that was assuming our destination hadn’t just floated off to moor somewhere else.
“Give me the map,” Rashid demanded.
“Get your own.”
