Forty-Seven
Forty-Seven
The sun was setting.
In Zhabei, the streets were starting to fill with people again, so Juliette and Benedikt found no trouble hurrying through, passing soldiers without a second glance. The Nationalists could try as they wanted to keep this city under lock and key, but it was always too full, brimming with activity, and at the slightest whisper of a commotion, the people came out to seek it. Whispers were flying about the public execution. Word traveled fast among the workers, among the civilians who wanted a show, never mind where the political tide in this city turned. The only question was whether the Kuomintang had caught wind too. As nice as it would be if Dimitri Voronin was arrested and hauled in, Juliette had to hope that the Nationalists didn’t show up. Because then the Montagovs would be arrested alongside Dimitri, or simply shot.
“He gave you just one?” Benedikt asked now, his breath coming fast.
In sync, they swerved around a fallen rickshaw, Juliette circling left and Benedikt circling right, before meeting again and continuing onward on the street. There was a glow of light up ahead. The intersection of a street with a crowd gathered in thick.
“Only one,” Juliette replied, her hand patting her pocket to confirm. “I suspect he couldn’t produce more fast enough.”
“Damn Lourens for giving us something but not giving us enough,” Benedikt muttered begrudgingly. He sighted the scene up ahead too. “It does beg the question of us. We make use of the monsters for chaos . . . but what if they release their insects? In such proximity, it will be immediate death.”
That was the question Juliette had been mulling on since leaving the safe house, but slowly, something was beginning to formulate into shape. She looked up at the clouds once more and found them hazed with purple, dark and bruised. The deeper they walked into Zhabei, the more the storefronts around them changed, looking shabbier, less well kept. The foreign influence faded, the glamour receded.
“I have an idea,” Juliette said. “But can we hurry first? The fire station is some few streets away.”
They moved fast. When the station came into sight—its red tiled roof muted under the setting darkness and its smooth entrance lined with four gate-like arches—it was almost a surprise that the building was abandoned, given the supplies that sat awaiting inside. Perhaps the soldiers who had been asked to stand guard around the public facilities had all been redirected elsewhere, tending to the chaos around the city like a dozen little fires. They were in civil war. Communists popping up like moles from their hiding places and Nationalists desperately trying to thwack them back down so they could hold on to governance.
Juliette skidded into the station, immediately searching for what they needed. Her footsteps echoed loudly on the linoleum floor. Benedikt was making slower work, eyeing the labeled shelves while Juliette climbed atop one of the smaller firefighting cars to peruse the second floor. It didn’t seem like there was much up there, gauging by what she could see past the banisters.
“I can’t find a single damn weapon,” Juliette spat. “Not even an axe. In a fire station.”
“If this goes well, pray you don’t need a weapon.” Benedikt came around, showing her what he had found. A hose, looped around his arm, and two jugs of what Juliette had to guess was gasoline. “How are we supposed to carry this back there?”
Juliette jumped off the hood of the car. Then she looked at it again. “Can you drive?”
“No,” Benedikt answered immediately. “I’m not—”
Juliette was already opening the door into the passenger seat, reaching over and pressing the start button on the dashboard. The ignition came to life. As the night grew darker outside, the headlights flared a high beam, cutting a path ahead of them.
“Put the gasoline in the back,” Juliette said. “And drive.”
“Your idea is risky.”
“It’s a good idea. You cannot protest it merely because you have to stay behind.”
Benedikt shot her a glare from the driver’s seat, his foot on the pedal as the car inched down the road. They were almost at the intersection where the crowd had gathered. Now it was proper nightfall, the sky dark and the streets lit by gas lamps and torches, hot orange embers dotted among the people.
“It will guarantee their safety,” Juliette maintained. “You said it yourself—this whole execution business is symbolic. Dimitri is after Roma. He gains no extra points with Alisa. No extra points with Marshall. Second to Roma, there’s—stop here, stop here. We cannot go any closer.”
Benedikt pressed down on the brake, halting the car. A few steps forward, and they would be within view of the crowd.
“Second to Roma,” Juliette resumed quietly, “there’s only me.”
Gangster royalty, dead by his hands. The two empires of Shanghai’s underground—the heirs of families that had kept this city rumbling on capital and foreign trade, on hierarchy and nepotism—both fallen and executed under his bullet. It was too good to pass up. Too good for Dimitri to decline. Juliette was counting on it.
“He will sense a trick.”
“He will,” Juliette said. “But by then it will be too late.”
She would offer to trade herself for Marshall and Alisa. Once Marshall and Alisa were away from the scene, Benedikt would activate the monsters, Juliette would give Roma the vaccine from Lourens, and even if all the insects came out, they would be safe, and they would leave, and that was that.
Easy as pie.
Juliette pulled off her coat, tossing it to the floor of the vehicle. When she reached for the door, Benedikt’s arm shot out suddenly, closing around her wrist.
“He’ll be safe,” Juliette promised before Benedikt could say anything. “Marshall and Alisa are the first order of priority.”
Benedikt shook his head. “I was only going to say be careful.” He let go, casting a look into the back of the car, where the hose sat awaiting.
Juliette took a deep breath and got out. The street was on a decline. When she started forward, the angle immediately gave Juliette a perfect view of the small crowd and a perfect view of what they were clustered around: Roma, being tied to a wooden pole, his hands behind his back, rope secured around his waist.
All she could do was put one foot in front of the other and keep walking, eyes pinned to the scene, to the armed workers under Dimitri’s command who were moving to finish up their final knot on Alisa next. Juliette wondered where the wooden poles had come from. It was that which her mind wandered to, of all places—whether the poles were nailed into the ground or wedged into the tram lines running down the middle of the road.
Her eyes scanned the waiting crowd. There weren’t many here—there couldn’t be, or the noise would stir trouble with the soldiers nearby. Twenty, maybe more, but twenty was all you needed for word to spread about Dimitri’s good deed. They appeared curious, unbothered as the armed workers walked their outer edges, rifles at the ready in case soldiers approached.
At the periphery of the crowd, Juliette sighted the man who had followed them onto the train. The French White Flower. Her blood started to run hot, pumping adrenaline into her body, keeping her warm even as the cold breeze blew on her sleeveless dress.
Juliette had shed her coat intentionally. She wanted immediate recognition in her bright and beaded getup the moment she approached the crowd.
And she got it.
Benedikt needed to work fast, but it was hard when his palms were slick with sweat. He pulled the end of the hose taut, then adjusted it on the roof edge, aimed at the scene beneath him. They had stolen dozens of gallons of gasoline. They could afford to be liberal. But it had to work. It had to flow properly through a very, very long tube, and he couldn’t screw this up.
Too much was riding on it.
“Okay,” Benedikt muttered. It looked set. On the street below, Juliette had reached the crowd, her arms held up, ignoring the whispers as her name echoed through like a chant.
“I come unarmed,” she called.
Benedikt stepped away from the rooftop, hurrying through the building and back to the gasoline in the car. He hadn’t prayed to God in years, but today he was going to start.
“Is that—”
Slowly, Juliette put up her hands, showing herself to be weaponless.
“I come unarmed,” she called. The crowd had fallen silent. Whatever Dimitri might have been in the midst of saying was cut off as he stared at her, eyes steely with consideration. To his side, Roma looked aghast. He did not speak, did not yell her name in horror. He knew that Juliette was up to something.
“Somehow, I find that hard to believe,” Dimitri said. He waved his hand. The nearest armed worker leveled his rifle at her.
“Pat me down and you’ll see I bring nothing. Only my life. In trade.”
Dimitri hooted with laughter. He threw his head back with the sound, drowning out the gasp that Roma made and the muttered confusion coming from Marshall.
“Miss Cai, what makes you think you have any trading power?” Dimitri demanded when he turned his attention back to her. “I can have you shot—”
“And then what?” Juliette asked. “Juliette Cai, Princess of Shanghai, killed by random worker. The textbooks on the revolution will be sure to mention it. I come to you, offering you my life side by side with my husband, and you throw it away?”
Dimitri tilted his head now. Her words registered.
“You mean to say—”
“I’m not trading my life for Roma’s,” she confirmed. “For Marshall Seo and Alisa Montagova. Let them go. They didn’t need to be dragged into this fight.”
“What?” Marshall exclaimed. “Juliette, you’re out of your mind—”
The nearest worker pressed his rifle into Marshall’s neck, shutting him up. Dimitri’s gaze, meanwhile, swiveled to his captured subjects, a notch appearing in his brow as he tried to consider the matter. He didn’t look like he was entirely buying it. Perhaps Juliette was not acting this right.
She met Roma’s gaze. He didn’t believe her either.
Perhaps the only way to convince Dimitri was to convince Roma first.
“I made a vow to you, Roma.” She took a step forward. No one stopped her. “Where you go, I go. I will not bear a day parted. I will take a dagger to my own heart if I must.”
Her shoes clicked down on the ground—on gravel, on tram-line metal, on a drain covering. With every step, the crowd continued to part and shuffle. There was confusion, hearing her words spoken to Roma, to her enemy. There was panic, not wanting to be caught in her path, fearful of her even when her hands were in the air, even with rifles pointed at her head from three different directions. It was as if she were partaking in the most bizarre wedding march, if the groom waiting on the other end of the aisle was Roma tied and bound for death.
“No,” Roma whispered.
“This city has been taken,” Juliette went on. The hitch in her voice was not feigned. The tears that rose to her eyes were not feigned. “All that is good is gone, or perhaps it never existed. The blood feud kept us apart, forced us onto different sides. I will not allow death to do the same.”
By then Juliette had come to a stop right before Roma. She could have tried to break him out in that moment, snatch a rifle and slash the sharp part over his rope bindings.
Instead, she leaned in and kissed him.
And from under her tongue, she pushed the vaccine into his mouth.
“Bite down,” she whispered, just before two of the armed workers yanked her away. The crowd around them murmured in utter bewilderment. This had been a public execution, and now it was appearing more like a ground for scandal.
Juliette whipped her hand out, closing her fingers around one of the rifle ends and pointing it straight at Dimitri. The workers scrambled to stop her, but Juliette wasn’t doing anything except keeping her hand near the barrel. She was nowhere near the trigger. The rest of the rifle remained strapped to the poor worker, who had frozen in confusion.
“You don’t know what I am capable of,” she said, her voice ringing loud in the night. “But I am honorable. Let them go. And I will not resist.”
The scene was still for a long moment. Then:
“I tire of these dramatics,” Dimitri announced. “Just tie her up. Let go of the other two.”
Alisa cried out softly in protest, her eyes drawn wide. Marshall, meanwhile, leaned forward with a vicious curse. His face would have been red with exertion if the light were better, wanting to fight Dimitri himself and put a stop to this.
“You cannot be serious. Juliette, you cannot trade your life. What’s wrong with you—”
Juliette said nothing. She said nothing as they untied Alisa and let her stumble away. She said nothing as Marshall was released from his bindings too, his expression utterly rattled, looking up at Juliette as they dragged her to the pole and looped her tightly to it. He was bouncing on his toes—a second away from lunging at Dimitri, all the armed workers be damned.
“You cannot be serious,” he said again. “You absolutely cannot—”
“Go, Marshall,” Roma said roughly. He didn’t know what he had swallowed, but he had to know now that it meant there was a plan. “Don’t make this all for nothing. Take Alisa and go.”
Go, Juliette wanted to add. Go, and Benedikt can explain everything.
Marshall visibly hesitated. Then he took Alisa’s hand and hurried away with her, charging through the crowd as if afraid that they would shoot him in the back as soon as he turned around. Juliette let out a breath when they disappeared from view.
She had almost been afraid they would shoot.
“And so this is how it ends.” A click of a pistol. Dimitri was loading in his bullets. “It shall truly be a new era.”
“Marshall!”
Marshall jolted, stopping dead in his tracks. He was breathing hard, the sound audible even before Benedikt tumbled out from the car. Marshall had never looked so horrified in his life. His expression flashed with surprise, then relief in sighting Benedikt, but it didn’t last long.
“Ben,” Marshall gasped. He hurried to him, clasping on to his hand. “Ben, Ben, we have to go help them. Roma and Juliette—”
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Benedikt reassured him, smoothing his other hand against Marshall’s neck. “I’ll explain. Alisa, get in the car. We need to be ready.”
“Freed from Scarlets. Freed from White Flowers,” Dimitri continued.
Juliette started to count, wondering when Benedikt would make his move. Surely, soon. Surely, very soon.
“Instead,” Roma said, “it is a city ruled by monsters.”
One of the workers nudged his rifle hard into Roma’s head, shutting him up. Dimitri maintained a neutral stare. He was still pretending.
“What convenience that you bring it up,” Dimitri said. He looked the picture of innocence. “Then I shall reveal to the city that I present to it two gifts. The end of gangster tyranny, and—” He gestured to several bags on the ground by his feet. Juliette hadn’t noticed them before, but they looked like the sort used to store flour or rice, found in multitudes at the food markets. These were tied up at the ends with string, the cotton fabric looking like it would fray at any second to give way for whatever was bulging inside.
“—a vaccine, distributed to all who are loyal to me.”
A murmur spread through the crowd, and Juliette’s gaze flickered up with surprise. So that was how he was going to play it. Exactly as the Larkspur had done: set ruin on the people with one hand and offer salvation with the other.
The wind blew cold against Juliette’s cheek, and she let it—she let the seconds draw long, squirming against the rope around her waist. They hadn’t bothered securing it very tightly because she was supposed to be dead in seconds. Her hands were still freed. Within reaching distance of the worker to her right, his rifle in line with her face.
Dimitri raised his gun. “The history books will mark today momentously.”
“Yes,” Juliette said. “They will.”
A gurgling noise came from above. That was the only warning that rang into the night. In the next second, a rain of gasoline was showering down, covering the crowd, the workers, the entire street side. It stung her eyes dreadfully, but Juliette had the advantage of knowing what was coming. The worker keeping guard next to her screamed out and covered his eyes with his hands, leaving his rifle free for the snatching. Juliette spared no time in yanking it from him and turning the point down, slashing the sharp end on the rope around her waist. Her hip stung; it had caught a cut, running fresh blood, but Juliette didn’t pay it any mind. She coughed hard against what had trickled into her mouth and turned to Roma.
“Open your eyes, my love. You’ll need to see if we’re going to escape.”
Roma’s eyes flew open just as Juliette sawed through the rope on his arms.
“What is this?” he demanded, shaking the slickness off his arms.
Juliette nodded out into the crowd. She cut through his waist bindings too. “Look.”
Before their very eyes, five monsters burst into shape. The screaming was immediate—the chaos that Juliette had expected. The civilians scattered in all directions; the workers abandoned their posts as monsters roared up into the night. With a brutal curse, Dimitri finally forced his eyes open just as the gasoline came to a stop, screaming, “Release!”
It was too late. Dimitri was too late. Even as the insects poured out, Juliette dropped the rifle and reached for Roma’s hand, tugging him forward, searching for a good pathway. Just as she started to move, there was a click from behind them, and faster than Juliette could react, Roma yanked her down, narrowly avoiding a bullet that skimmed the concrete ground.
They turned around. Dimitri was holding his pistol out. “You should be dead,” he seethed at Roma. A clump of black ran over his shoe. “The insects should be killing you.”
“It would take more than that to kill me,” Roma replied.
Dimitri tightened his grip on the pistol. Destruction tore through the scene before he could shoot: a bloodbath, infecting those who hadn’t run fast enough. Juliette’s eyes swiveled to the side. A woman: dropping to her knees, fingers sinking into her neck and pulling without any hesitation. A scream—a figure, running to her. Her husband: cradled over her corpse and keening a loud, desolate noise. Then he too gouged at his own throat and fell to the ground.
It was utter confusion and pandemonium. Dimitri kept swiveling around, trying to push away the workers who came to dive in front of him. They were all begging, using their last gasp of control to entreat Dimitri to save them, before he shoved them out of the way and they gouged themselves to death.
“Roma,” Juliette whispered. “I thought I was rescuing you, but I don’t know if we can walk away from this.”
Chaos. Complete chaos. Save for Dimitri, only Roma and Juliette stood immune, the three of them like combatant gods in the midst of primordial chaos, and wasn’t this exactly what was wrong with this place? Deciding who deserved to be saved and who deserved to be abandoned. Letting the whole place rot and fester so long as the top was not touched, so long as there was no inconvenience within sight.
Juliette glanced at Roma. He was already watching her.
They could walk away in the physical sense. Could bolt while Dimitri was distracted, take a bullet or two in carelessness and still live to tell the tale. But for as long as Dimitri was alive and these monsters moved under his thumb, how could they ever be free? She would always be thinking about this city, these people—her people—suffering from something she could have stopped.
“Together or not at all, dorogaya,” Roma whispered back. “I’m with you if we run. I’m with you if we fight.”
Dimitri gave a vicious shout and fired on a worker with his pistol, killing the woman before she could prostrate herself at his feet a moment longer. The screams around them were fading. This was one small crowd infected with madness. In days, weeks, months, there could be more crowds in other cities, across the whole country, across the whole world. In the end, the only ones who would ever pay for such destruction, in blood and in guts, were the people.
Keep fighting for love.
Juliette had wanted to be selfish, had wanted to run. But this was their love—violent and bloody. This city was their love. They couldn’t deny their upbringing as the heirs of Shanghai, as two pieces of a throne. What was left of their love if they rejected that? How could they live with themselves, look at each other, knowing they had been presented a choice and gone against who they were at their core?
They couldn’t. And Juliette knew—the Roma she loved wouldn’t let her leave like this.
“We must move fast.” Juliette brought out her lighter from her pocket. “Do you understand me?”
It wasn’t just Dimitri who needed to die. That was the easy part. That only required picking up one of the fallen rifles.
It was the monsters that needed to be destroyed.
A split second passed. Roma looked to the scene around them. The workers in front of Dimitri had at last all collapsed.
“Always, Juliette.”
In a flash, Roma lunged at Dimitri. Before Dimitri could gather his bearings and recover from the pleas of the workers, Roma was distracting him again by turning his pistol skyward, the trigger squeezing and shooting a bullet right up into the air. Juliette, taking the chance, raced forward and tore open one of the bags near Dimitri’s feet. She turned it upside down, scattering the clumps of blue all across the other bags, spread evenly upon every single one of them.
A heavy grunt. Dimitri—writhing out of Roma’s hold. In the tussle, the pistol flew three feet away, clattering into a pool of blood, but instead of chasing after it, Dimitri only spun around, heaving with his hatred. He pushed Roma hard, almost slamming him to the ground. Then, before Juliette could get out of the way, he sighted her with the bags, and his boot collided with her stomach.
Juliette landed sharply on the gravel, wincing when it tore scratches into her elbows. The gasoline on the ground soaked into the wounds. Roma hurried to her aid and hauled her upright again, but it was no matter. The scene was set. Behind Dimitri, the monsters started to lumber near.
They needed to come closer. Just a little closer.
Roma reached for Juliette’s hand. Something about it felt entirely natural even as the world stuttered to a halt around them. It would always be that same feeling as when they were fifteen: invincible, untouchable, as long as they were together. His fingers, solid and steady while they were entwined with hers.
With her other hand, Juliette flipped open the lighter. She met Roma’s eyes, asked him in silence one last time if they were truly to do this. He showed no fear. He was gazing at her as one would gaze out into the sea, like she was this vast, momentous wonder that he was glad simply to bear witness upon.
“To have and to hold, where even death cannot part us,” Juliette whispered.
The monsters howled into the night. Loomed closer.
“In this life and the next,” Roma returned, “for however long our souls remain, mine will always find yours.”
Juliette squeezed his hand. In that action, she tried to communicate everything she couldn’t put into words, everything that didn’t have a spoken form other than I love you. I love you. I love you.
When Dimitri stepped forward, when the monsters finally approached within good range, Juliette turned the spark wheel on her lighter.
“Don’t miss,” Roma said.
“I never do,” Juliette replied.
And with Roma’s nod, she threw the burning flame onto the bags of highly flammable vaccine.
“What could be taking so long?” Benedikt demanded. He had his foot on the pedal. They needed to be ready to go the very second Roma and Juliette appeared.
Alisa whimpered from the back seat. Marshall strained against the rear window, waiting to see if anyone was coming up the street and within sight.
The ground beneath them seemed to shudder. One thump. Another.
Then Marshall turned around, swearing so loudly his voice cracked. “Go, Benedikt, go!”
“What? But—”
“Drive!”
Benedikt pressed down on the accelerator, the car tearing through the street so suddenly that its wheels shrieked into the night.
Behind them, with gasoline drenched into every square inch of the pavement, the explosion rang so loud and hot that all of Shanghai rocked with the blow.