Chapter 15

  

San Francisco, 1903

  

The scream sounded almost inhuman. But the voices laughing were very human.

“What was that?” Anand asked as he pulled his coat on outside the doors of The Siren’s Anchor. In the month since Anand had met Li, the two had become good friends, frequently visiting the welcoming saloon.

“It’s best not to concern yourself with other peoples’ business,” Li said.

Another scream sounded. It was definitely human. A child. Anand ran down the dark alley without thinking.

“What are you doing?” Li shouted behind him. He swore something in Chinese that Anand didn’t understand, but Anand heard his footsteps following.

The Chinese boy couldn’t have been more than twelve years old. He lay sprawled on the ground, leaning on his elbow as he tried to push himself up. Blood flowed from his mouth and nose. One of his arms fell at an unnatural angle.

Four grown men stood above the boy. One of them held a metal bar in his hand. They looked up as Anand’s feet came to a stop on the gravelly back street. Li followed seconds later, bumping into Anand in the poor light.

The man with the metal bar squinted at Anand and Li. The other men looked to their leader. The boy on the ground whimpered.

“This doesn’t concern you,” the man said in a slow, measured voice, with the hint of an accent Anand did not recognize.

“He’s only a boy,” Anand said, thinking of his own brother, Vishwan.

“The boy is a thief. You and your chink friend have five seconds to turn around before you’ll be very sorry.”

“I am never sorry,” Anand said. “I have already died, and here I am. I have no fear of death. But I am guessing you do. I am going to give you and your friends those five seconds to leave, or it is you who will be very sorry.”

Li gasped, as did two of the leader’s men. The mouth of the man with the metal bar hung open, but he didn’t make a sound.

“One,” Anand said. “Two.”

The smallest of the four men ran away.

“Stop!” the leader shouted after him. He turned his gaze to Anand. “Nobody tells me what to do.” He lifted the weapon over his head.

Anand pushed Li out of the way, and ran past the man to help the boy off the ground. But the other two men began to move. One of them grabbed Anand’s arms while the other one punched him in the stomach. He knew pain was meaningless, but it still hurt like hell. He would have fallen to the ground had it not been for the man holding his arms.

Li tackled the man with the weapon, wrapping his arms around the man’s mid-section from behind, but the man was twice his size. Li was but a minor annoyance as the man stepped toward Anand, dragging Li with him.

“This doesn’t look like a fair fight,” said a new voice. It was the voice of an Irishman. He stood on the other side of the alley. Anand looked up and caught a glimpse of the newcomer just as a punch hit the side of his face. Pain seared from his jaw. He tried to focus his vision.

“Jesus Christ,” the leader said. “What the hell is this? A party?”

“Just evening the score,” the newcomer said. He took what looked like a step backward, but Anand saw what he was doing. His foot connected with a pile of dirt. He kicked up the dirt into a cloud of dust. The Irishman ran forward through the distracting dust cloud.

A smile crossed Anand’s face right before another punch landed on his jaw.

  

Anand woke up choking. The sound of rain beat down, but Anand didn’t feel the rain on his body. He lay on a soft surface. Pain pulsed through his head and midsection. For a moment, he was fifteen years old again, unsure of his surroundings but sure he was close to death. But this time was different. His unconscious sleep had not shown him a peaceful light. Only darkness punctuated by the taste of dirt and blood.

Now he tasted whisky on his tongue.

“I told you it would work,” an Irish voice said.

“Anand,” Li said. “Can you hear us?”

“Nobody’s dead,” the Irishman said. “So you can open your eyes and stop faking it.”

Anand opened his eyes to glare at the Irishman. His expression softened when he saw the badly swollen eye that dominated the man’s face.

“This is Samuel,” Li said. “He was a boxer in Ireland before catching a steamer out this way for the Alaska Gold Rush in ’99.”

“I thought that ended in ’98,” Anand said, pushing himself into an upright position. Until he spoke, he hadn’t realized how parched he was. He wondered if his own face looked as bad as Samuel’s.

“The news didn’t reach me until I was already in San Francisco,” Samuel said, handing Anand a half-empty bottle of whisky.

Anand took a drink to moisten his throat. Looking around, he saw he was in a boarding house room, but not his own.

“And now you patrol the streets of San Francisco doing good deeds?” Anand said.

“I like fair fights. This one was not.”

“How long have I been unconscious?”

“Only an hour.”

“Where are we?”

“My place,” Samuel said. “It’s right around the corner from the alley. Your friend helped me carry you here. Nothing is broken, so your friend didn’t want to take you to a doctor.”

Anand nodded. Pain shot through his jaw from the movement. He raised his hand to his face and felt a solid bump. But Samuel was right. Nothing appeared to be broken.

“What about the boy?” Anand asked.

“Ran off home,” Li said. “He whispered something to you before he ran away, but I think you were already unconscious.”

“Yes,” Anand said, nodding more carefully this time.

“You saved his life, my friend,” Li said. “Don’t make a habit of it.”