"Like I said," said the old man. "Mere. Parlor. Tricks!"
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
He swung his arm to the side. Although he was not close to touching the wall, it caved into a big dent as if something big had hit it. And then he swung his arm the other way and a deep dent appeared on the other wall. Finally, he lifted his arm up and brought it down. His fingers were feet away from it, but the pavement in front became a crater with a diameter of five feet.
When the old man let go, Jackie could see lines of displaced water appear, as if massive fingers clawed at the wet pavement. To further cement their nature as fingers, the lines were accompanied by the scraping sound of scratching nails.
The man watched coldly from beneath the brim of his hat as the lines turned clockwise over to Jackie and the Gathering boys. And then he bent down and grabbed empty air near the ground, lifted his hand up and swung it back down.
BOOM!
Water droplets splashed up along with clouds of white mist and dust. Cracks from the crater spread.
The scratching continued, but pitifully slower.
Zak and his cronies stood, their faces aghast with fear. The man turned his gaze up towards them and they flinched back.
"You claim to have power, but it is not even your own. You merely use parlor tricks to bewitch creatures you could not possibly understand as you are now, who hold the real power but act the part of obedient circus monkeys. Pathetic!"
Venom flowed out of the man's mouth as he advanced towards the boys. He spat the last word and gave the space beside him a vicious stomp. Hot air suddenly blew out of nowhere and brushed against Jackie's face. It was a long flow. Jackie couldn't help but feel like it was a soundless scream of agony.
No, that was exactly what it was. A scream of agony. Whatever was there but could not be seen was feeling pain. A terrible amount of it. And Jackie could not let it continue.
He sprung up and yelled, "STOP! THAT'S ENOUGH!"
The man was about to stomp down again, but stopped and then threw Jackie a cold gaze. His foot, clad in a glistening black penny loafer, hovered over the space where the invisible creature lied.
Zak was the first of the Gathering trio to snap out of his stupor. And he was the first to turn and run. The pitter-patter of his feet awoke Ted and Marshall and they quickly followed after him.
Jackie and the man watched them go out of sight before returning their attention to each other. To Jackie's relief, the man gently lowered his foot back onto the pavement and resumed resting both hands atop his cane. However, Jackie cut his relief short when he turned his attention to the invisible monster and crawled over to it to ask, "Hey, you okay?"
He, of course, could not hear or see anything. And for a moment, all was quiet. Then came a short, hot breeze and slowly, splashes of water trailed off. Jackie took that as a sign his question was answered positively and let out a pleased, "Phew!"
"Why do you show concern for that thing?" the man asked Jackie. "It is a monster ordered to hurt you."
Jackie angrily glared back. "You said so yourself that it got bewitched to doing what those jerks want. It didn't deserve all that pummeling you gave it."
The man fired back, "It was a threat that needed to be eliminated."
"It's a living thing, not some kind of demon from Hell."
"You would not think that if you knew what it looked like."
Already fed up with the argument, Jackie tried to pivot the topic to something more important.
"Seriously, dude, who are you? Not to sound ungrateful or anything for saving my life just now, but I want answers and you're clearly someone who has them."
The man scoffed. "I do not need to tell you anything. But out of courtesy, as a gentleman, let me give you this warning: you are messing with forces beyond your understanding. Give up and stop, or meet a terrible fate."
"Thanks for the warning, dude," said Jackie, "but I've already heard it before. It never stopped me before. It's not gonna stop me now."
"Why go so far?"
"To find my friend."
"Is this friend so important to you that you would put yourself in danger for?
Jackie nodded in response.
The man turned his nose up. "Then I have nothing more to say."
"That's fine," said Jackie. "I learned plenty from you already."
The man raised an eyebrow and then turned around. He strolled away, making distinctly different tap noises with the soles of his shoes and the end of his cane.
Jackie watched until the man was gone, and then he started heading out as well. But instead of going home, he went straight back to Chinatown.
**********
Daisy was in the middle of tallying the day's sales when a loud banging at the steel rolled-down gate startled her. She jumped and whirled around. Her hand grabbed the metal baseball bat leaning against the cabinet next to her. But then a familiar voice called to her from outside and she relaxed a little.
"Hey! Daisy! It's Jackie! I need to talk to you!"
Still annoyed, however, Daisy marched over to the front red doors, pulled them open and peeked through the outer gate's spy hole. Sure enough, there was Jackie standing outside. He banged the gate one more time and called out, "Hey!"
Daisy quickly jabbed the white intercom button with her thumb and snapped, "Quit it! You're disturbing the neighbors! What do you want?"
"I need to talk to you," Jackie said again.
"Can't it wait until tomorrow? It's Seven o'clock already. You should be home by now!"
But Jackie replied, "No, it can't."
Daisy considered telling him to go away, but then he reached into his pocket, pulled out a piece of paper, unfolded it and held it up.
"What's this?" Daisy asked. To her, it looked like a pencil drawing of a small circle stuck beside a bigger circle with two squiggly lines drawn across.
"It's a tortoise with a snake around its shell," Jackie explained.
"Congratulations," said Daisy. "You drew Xuanwu. What about it?"
"I remember you keep a big medallion hanging on you computer monitor with that tortoise on it," Jackie said.
"Xuanwu is a big part of Chinese culture," Daisy pointed out. "I got lots of things with the tortoise on it."
"Yeah, but the medallion's design is just like the design on that old dude's cane."
Daisy's blood ran cold.
"Did you just say 'cane'?"
Jackie nodded. "Yeah."
There was a short pause and then instructions for Jackie to come in by the back entrance. He did as told and strolled over to the back of the building where he was greeted by another steel gate. The door behind the gate sung open spilling out light. Daisy pushed the door all the way to the wall but opened the gate just a crack wide enough for Jackie to slip in.
The door was a direct entrance into the kitchen. A small space from the beginning, it was absolutely cramped with the round dining table in the middle. Three chairs surrounded it, one of which Daisy drew out for Jackie to sit. She took the other.
As this was his first time in the kitchen ever, Jackie looked around in wonder. It was just an ordinary, maybe slightly dirty kitchen, but he could not help but be curious.
"Where's . . .?"
He was going to ask where Daisy's daughter was, but Daisy abruptly cut him off with the answer. "She's in the living room, drawing. Dinner's usually another thirty minutes from now so I haven't got the table set yet. But enough about her."
She locked her eyes on Jackie's.
"Start talking."
So Jackie recounted to the shopkeep his encounter with Zak, Ted and Marshall. He left nothing out. Not how he was chased by an invisible monster, nor what happened to that monster when the man with the cane showed up.
Daisy rubbed her temples, suffering from a great big headache the story had caused.
"And then he said, 'Then I have nothing more to say.' And I said back, 'That's fine, I learned plenty from you already.' And that's because I remembered where I saw that carving on his cane before. It was an exact match for the carving on a medallion you sometimes had with you. Which means you and that guy are connected somehow. I'm guessing because of that, you can do the same kind of things he can, see invisible monsters and beat them up."
"Let's . . . put aside all that crazy invisible monster talk for now," Daisy suggested.
But Jackie was having none of it. "No, I don't think so. You have special eyes just like Alice. Or you at least know something about them. I'm sure you also have some way to track down the Gathering."
"The same Gathering that just attacked you half an hour ago? You still want to find them after that?"
"If Alice is where they are, then yeah," said Jackie.
"Are you being serious right now? No, don't tell me. I can tell by the look on your face you really mean it."
With a sigh, Daisy leaned back, facing up at the ceiling with her hands pressed over her eyes. And then she sighed and straightened up.
"Fine," she said. "I'll tell you everything."
She gave the door to the living room a quick glance, and then took a deep breath before confessing.
"I was once a member of the Black Tortoise Order."
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