Now...

“Twelve hundred dollars,” the young Puerto Rican girl said, counting out a number of bills into the outstretched hand before her. “That’s what we agreed, yes?”

The landlord, Clancy, was short and round and wearing an off-white vest beneath an old, plum-colored sports jacket. He chewed on the stub of a cheap cigar as he stared guiltily at the cash in his palm, unable to meet the gaze of the young woman standing before him in the dimly-lit foyer of his rundown tenement block. “Look, kid,” he drawled, exhaling twin plumes of smoke from his nostrils. “This ain’t right, y’know? I - ”

“My family pays its debts, Mr. Clancy. My uncle died owing you rent, I get the bill. It’s the way the world rolls.”

Clancy sighed. “Yeah, but even so. Your uncle… he was a good guy, y’know? Not like some’a these dirtbags who’d stick you in the eye soon as look at you, and trust me, I’ve met had than my fair share of those freaks come stinking up my halls. What happened to Hector… he deserved better.”

The girl’s eyes, dark as an encroaching summer’s storm, now flashed with warning. “I’d say most men deserve better than to be tortured and murdered, and for their butchered corpse to be dumped in Santa Monica Bay,” she replied sharply, before she caught herself and softened her tone. “I’m sorry,” she murmured. “It’s been a long haul out here from New York, and I’m tired. If there’s nothing else you need from me, Mr. Clancy, I’d like to see my uncle’s apartment.”

Clancy said nothing for a moment, his expression cheerless. Then, with a shrug, he fished a wad of keys from his jacket pocket and led the way along a narrow corridor. It was stifling - no air-conditioning - and ripe, and the route was lined with carpet of indistinguishable colour, worn away to the floorboards and lit by fizzing fluorescents. A slum hotel, populated by drug addicts, hookers and dregs. Clancy was right.

The late Hector Ayala had warranted a more dignified end than this.

The Puerto Rican was a striking girl, with cappuccino skin and rich, chocolate hair worn long and straight, and a boyish figure in shapeless black Levis and cream fleece jacket. Dark, sad eyes, the kind that stared back at you from the bottom of a glass. Surely no more than twenty years old. She didn’t belong here. The two of them stopped at a door marked with cracked paint and the number 419, and Clancy fitted one of the keys on his ring into the lock. As the catch turned he glanced back over his shoulder, his smile nervous, almost shy, through the haze of cigar smoke.

“So, your uncle… it’s true what they say, right? That he was… y’know, back in the day… that he was one’a them?”

The girl’s expression flickered, just briefly. Now it was her turn to avert her gaze. “Masks and costumes?” she mused. “Pitched battles with merchants of evil in the city skies? I’ll be honest with you. The last time I saw Uncle Hector I was twelve years old. He was gentle. He made me smile, laugh, whenever he’d visit. We read poetry together, translating from Spanish to English and back again simply because it pleased us to do so. That’s how I’ll remember him. Everything else Hector Ayala was – everything that happened – came after. And now he’s dead, and as next of kin I’m here to take charge of whatever possessions and memories he held on to in his final days on God’s Earth. That, Mr. Clancy, is all that matters.”

Fluorescents hummed. From somewhere in the building came a dull, relentless throb of music. Toothache drum n’ bass. Somewhere else a hungry child cried itself unconscious while its parents argued. Clancy cleared his throat, stamped out his cigar underfoot, and then nodded. He opened the door of Room 419. Inside it was like being presented with the aftermath of a localized tornado: upturned furniture, splintered wood, scattered books and magazines, shattered glass. A warm breeze stirred through a broken window, skewed in its frame with a busted lock. Clancy swore. The girl looked on, solemn, those unhappy eyes once more the bruised hue of gathering stormclouds. Clancy was apoplectic, launching into a tirade against crackhead kids breaking and entering into the premises of decent people and how the LAPD just couldn’t care a squit. The girl wasn’t listening.

“They killed you, didn’t they Hector?” she said to herself. “It wasn’t some random attack. Someone targeted you. And then they came here and tore your room apart. I wonder… did they find what they wanted? Or are they still looking?”

Her eyes narrowed then, and a line of poetry drifted through her memory.

When I was young, they lay me soft…

---

Then... e days earlier…

As Hector Ayala appraised his surroundings it occurred to him that, if he were to die tonight, it would at least be in the midst of beauty. The thought made him smile. When a man sinks to a certain depth of rank in life he clings to the frailest of condolences.

The parlor was furnished in a hundred shades of gold and green, bright and shining in delicate candlelight, with walls and ceiling adorned with drapes of gauzy vermilion silk. The ivory floor was scattered with scarlet rose petals and apple blossom, and the scent of the blossom mingled with the vapors of sandalwood and chestnut that smoldered gently in incense wells positioned artfully about the room. The air was warm and murmured with the whisper of running water emanating from a pair of understated fountains on marble plinths. Peeking between the drapes were glimpses of paneled tapestries, canvas and wood stretched between pale green bamboo posts. Hector studied each new feature in turn, a calmness enveloping his heart in spite of his misgivings. Perhaps he had misjudged the woman who’d summoned him to this location with a mysterious message delivered via an emissary… or perhaps it was simply difficult to accept the unpalatable fact that evil wasn’t always a beast cloaked in ugliness and shadow.

The door through which Hector had entered the parlor had been closed and locked behind him. Now a second door opened opposite and two Japanese women, slight and of indeterminate age, arrived bearing a small wooden table and a wide tray laden with teapot, jug, saucers and bowls, all of a fine bone china. The women were dressed in white kimonos embroidered with elaborate images of gold, blue and crimson, their black hair styled to the contours of their faces in swirling knots pinned with blue seashell clasps. They set the table, quickly but effortlessly, then withdrew, to be replaced by another Japanese woman flanked by a swarthy, rakish man.

The man had shoulder-length black hair, his fringe swept back from his face by a red headband. His skin was sallow, his eyes deep and dark beneath thick brows. There was much of the polecat about him, Hector mused. He wore khaki fatigues and black leather boots and gloves. A black baldric was slung quite carelessly from left shoulder to right hip, and Hector counted no less then eight daggers in sheathes buckled into the strap-weave. The man also wore a belt, with four more scabbards each containing larger weapons. The shape and fit of the scabbards suggested machetes.

The woman, in contrast, was a picture of elegance in a trailing kimono of blue upon blue: sapphire, cobalt, Persian, cerulean. Kingfisher. The colors were a tide of silken shimmer that fell from her slight shoulders, her arms crossed before her and hidden beneath voluminous sleeves. She wore her hair, again inky black, in a similar knot to the serving girls, although where they had kept their faces dipped low this woman regarded Hector with a direct gaze. Her expression was icily serene, her eyes black against skin rendered snow-pale with rice-powder base, her top lip painted with a glisten of deep red. She did not smile.

As the woman sat cross-legged on the floor behind the table so the candlelight caught gold in her eyes like fireflies.

“We shall take tea, Señor Ayala,” she said, softly, “and we shall talk of faerie tales.”

At first Hector didn’t move. There was an evident anxiety about him, and his manner suggested a man who recognized that he was currently both out of his depth and out of place. Hispanic, a Puerto Rican immigrant, he’d lived a rough and often unrewarding life in New York City and now here in Los Angeles, and the extravagant finery of this environment was alien to him. His hardships were manifest in his face, young in years but aged with weariness, a dark reflection of the woman in the kimono of myriad blues who was waiting patiently for his response.

Eventually Hector sat, seeing no alternative and resigned to his fate. The woman bowed respectfully then smiled, just slightly, and commenced to pouring tea from the pot into two bowls. The liquid had an olive tinge and steamed with a tang of mint. When the woman spoke it was with a precise voice that was gentle yet without frailty.

“In the eyes of the western world the eastern nations are often integrated into a singular entity, an indistinct Oriental society,” she said. “This casual ignorance diminishes the ancient and entirely disparate cultures of China and Japan especially, as well as scores of other Asian and Pacific countries. It would undoubtedly astonish you for me to list the numerous discrepancies in custom and tradition, but it is enough for you to know that the tale I now relate is rooted deeply in Chinese folklore rather than that of my own heritage.”

The Japanese woman sipped at her tea, her dark eyes holding Hector’s gaze as if with a physical grasp. “Deep in the Himalayan peaks of Tibet there is a magical city that by turns exists and does not exist,” she said. “On the occasions that it appears it emerges from the snow and fog as if afire, a body of blazing towers and turrets, gold and bronze against the ice and slate of the mountains. This city is named K’un L’un, and those who reside there are not of this earthly realm: not human and not god but something in-between. These people live by codes we could never understand, and magic – such powerful magic – flows among them like rainbows and diamond dust. K’un L’un and its otherworldly boundary are also home to a shape-shifting breed we have come to know as dragons.

“In times past – although the passing of ages within the margins of the city is perhaps as alien to us as its mysticism – one of these dragon-kind, named in certain texts as Chiantang, sought to destroy K’un L’un whilst in a frenzy of madness and rage. During the beast’s rampage a ceremonial idol, carved from jade and magic in the representation of a leaping tiger, was one of many such artifacts destroyed, but it this instance three fragments of the idol found their way into the earthly realm. Here they were crafted into amulets – two claws and one tiger’s head – that retained a measure of their sorcerous essence.

“The magic of the amulets granted whoever wore them certain powers, channeling the spirit of the sacred tiger into a human body to augment physical prowess and to instill a warrior’s spirit. Regrettably the amulets were also seemingly cursed, bringing ill fortune to any individual who possessed one or all three of them. Of course, this is something you are all too familiar with, Señor Ayala… after all, custody of the amulets has torn your life apart piece by piece, has it not?”

Hector bowed his head, the candlelight casting his eyes in deep shadow. Suddenly the scents of the tea and the incense were overpowering. A sheen of sweat glistened upon his forehead, where his dark hair was prematurely receding.

“You readily adopted the persona of the tiger,” the woman continued, her voice still so calm and sweet. “But misfortune has never been far from your side. You never once achieved the adulation nor the sense of purpose you desired. You were shamed by one adversary, unmasked and displayed for all to see… another foe hunted you and mercilessly slaughtered your family for his own ends. You are a broken man, Señor Ayala. Alone. Destitute. You have tried to rid yourself of the amulets and their curse yet their pull is too strong, always too strong. But now I can offer you salvation…”

Hector could hardly breathe. The smell of the incense was cloying, thickening in his throat and nose like rust.

“The passage of the amulets, from one hand to another, cannot be forced through bartering or theft,” the woman said, her tone now sharp as steel. “Magic flourishes through the workings of serendipity. But destiny can be guided by a skilled hand. I make you an offer, Señor Ayala: a deposit of five million US dollars in a bank account of your choosing, not for the artifacts themselves but rather for you to vacate the city without them.”

Hector raised his head then, and the glow of the candles touched eyes that were filled with tears.

“You think that’s how it works?” he croaked, the first time his deeply accented voice had been heard since his arrival at the parlor. “It’s that easy? I hit the road, ‘accidentally’ leaving the amulets behind, and you come along and pick them up?”

“Precisely like that, yes. You would be free of your curse, rich, still relatively young. You can put your life back together, pull yourself up from the pit you currently find yourself wallowing in…”

“And you?” Hector asked. “What’ll you do with the amulets?”

The woman in the kimono of infinite blues inclined her head then, just ever so slightly, but enough that Hector glimpsed something brief but terrible in her countenance – a contortion, a flash of fire and scale, there and then gone like an overlaid apparition – that caused a wild shiver to worm its way along his spine.

“That… would be none of your concern, Señor Ayala,” she breathed. “Now, do we have a deal?”

Hector licked his lips, then glanced across at the man in the khaki and leather who remained standing, silent and motionless, at the back of the room. “What happens if I refuse?”

The man smiled, cruelly, his dark eyes glinting like splinters of glass. He touched a hand to his array of knives in their sheathes.

“Señor Lopez is a mercenary of great pedigree, commonly known by the name of his signature weapon,” the woman in the kimono stated. The man’s hand moved to his belt, grasped a hilt, and then withdrew a thick wedge of blade. Machete. “He can kill a rival in the blink of an eye by a hundred different methods, and has done so in every corner of the globe. He has a penchant for gutting and skinning, as a hunter would. Sometimes a situation calls for him to do this before death. He enjoys his work. And, I must confess… I enjoy to watch.”

Hector stared at the woman as she sipped once more at her bowl of tea. She was elegant and beautiful, her intonation polite and so desperately sweet. In so many ways the antithesis of a spider in its web. Hector believed that he’d seen the face of evil in his time, believed that he would always recognize it in any form. He’d been wrong. He thought of the amulets and their power, the spirit of the tiger, and he thought of that power in this woman’s hands.

“Well then,” he said, finally, with a quietude that he certainly did not feel. “I guess there isn’t much alternative, is there?”

When I was young, they lay me soft
Upon a snow-white tiger skin…

---

Now...

Angela Del Toro still remembered the day her Uncle Hector had been publicly unmasked as a superhero with perfect clarity. She had been ten years old, and when Hector’s familiar face had suddenly appeared on her television screen she had been both surprised and thrilled. However, then she’d noticed that what she was watching was a man in pain, and in peril, and suddenly the spectacle hadn’t been that thrilling any more.

Hector Ayala had been a student at Empire State University in Manhattan back then. A raving lunatic calling himself The Lightmaster had convinced himself that Hector was the costumed adventurer known as Spider-Man, and had attacked and kidnapped his enemy, intending to reveal his secret identity nationwide via live broadcast. Hector wasn’t Spider-Man, of course. But The Lightmaster’s deductions had at least been based upon credible evidence, for Hector was a hero; it was just that he operated under a different name.

The White Tiger. Or El Tigre Blanco as he was hailed by the Hispanic people who took this man - one of their own - to their hearts on that day when his secret was revealed.

Regrettably Hector’s own family had been less inclined towards worship and more towards embarrassment, and fear. What if one of The White Tiger’s psychotic adversaries came after them, they’d said? Had Hector’s foolishness placed them in danger? Angela was so young, so vulnerable…

Hector had been ostracized, and only his niece had kept in regular contact with him, albeit without the knowledge of her parents, her mother Awilda being Hector’s sister. It soon transpired that the extended Ayala family had been right to be concerned. Some time after Hector’s exposure another deranged criminal, a man named Gideon Mace, had mercilessly slaughtered a number of Hector’s relations in his attempts to locate and butcher The White Tiger. By then, Angela Del Toro had turned twelve - the age, as she’d told the landlord Clancy, that she’d been when she’d last seen her Uncle Hector. That sorrowful parting had occurred at her mother’s funeral, seven years before. And now here she was, aged nineteen.

As Clancy bustled away, muttering something about contacting the cops - although they both knew nothing would come of such a pointless course of action - Angela moved sadly through the small apartment. There was nothing here that would have been of any particular value even before some unknown interloper had broken in through the fourth-story window and trashed everything at hand. However, Angela wasn’t concerned with assessing the financial merits of Hector’s possessions. She was only interested in anything that might prove to be of sentimental worth. She had loved her uncle, after all. It had taken her years to forgive, to accept that what had happened wasn’t his fault, but eventually she’d realized that love and blood were stronger than anything. A tragedy, then, that there’d never been an opportunity to find him and tell him that…

There was an overturned bookcase, one side of the frame splintered and bearing a mark that appeared to have been inflicted by a sharp, heavy impact. A blade of some kind. Books were strewn all over the floor. Angela bent down and began sifting through them. Some novels, some texts. A lot of poetry. Angela smiled, then frowned. Her casual exploration abruptly became a more purposeful search. There was one book she remembered from those days when Hector had used to visit and they’d read together. A hardcover volume of modern works, many attributed to anonymous authors. The line of verse that had drifted through her head before now returned as she recalled an old favorite in its entirety.

When I was young, they lay me soft
Upon a snow-white tiger skin.
Now I’m old, and this I know:
That tiger’s nature works within.

Simple, beautiful, evocative. And, of course, so perfectly appropriate considering Hector’s alter ego. Was that book here…?

A rush of tears stung her eyes. Yes. Yes, it was. She found the volume she was looking for in the pile and pulled it free. This was what she’d come for. She hadn’t known until now, but this was it. This was enough. She’d arrange for all these other possessions to be removed, farmed out to charity shops where she could, but this one item she would keep for herself, to remember her uncle. She stood, flicking through the pages, seeking out that old poem - and then, suddenly, she froze, the book almost tumbling from her hands.

The inside of the volume had been hollowed out, the paper blocking carved through to create a hidden cavity. And inside this secret niche there lay a prize, altogether unexpected.

A set of amulets. A jade tiger’s head, its maw twisted into a snarl, plus two identical casts of claws, all threaded upon entwined loops of silver chain.

“Oh my God,” Angela breathed. “Oh my God.”

The amulets shone. So beautiful, so perfect. For a moment she didn’t move, didn’t dare. Then, almost as if she was unable to help herself, she brushed the fingers of one hand forward and she touched the cool, polished jade… and, in response, the amulets began to glow.

“Gracias, cariña. My employer had a feeling that keeping this apartment under surveillance would be worthwhile, and in this - as in so many things - the intuition of Lady Kingfisher has proved correct…”

Angela turned at the sound of the voice, her eyes widening as she saw a man crouched in the splintered frame of the window. A swarthy, rakish fellow with much of the polecat about him. She could almost hear her uncle’s voice whispering at her ear. Run, little one. Save yourself. Else he’ll butcher you as he did me.

The man slid gracefully into the room, the rats’ tails of his black hair flickering in the breeze. His smile was reprehensibly mean. He said, “Give me the amulets and I’ll let you live,” but the both of them knew that was a lie; the man would slaughter her in cold blood with the gleaming machete currently clutched in his fist. Angela understood this… and thus she was also aware of what must come next if she instead wished to survive.

The jade amulets burned in her palm. She felt pain and joy, a thrill rippling upon her dark skin, arousing a shiver of gooseflesh. You can refuse, murmured the ghost of Hector Ayala. In this moment the choice still belongs to you.

“Then that’s no choice at all,” Angela breathed in reply. “Because our family pays its debts, and that’s just the way the world rolls.”

Angela Del Toro closed her fingers about hot crystal and closed her eyes - and in that instant, time froze. She felt the power flood through her in a quivering rush - light, heat, the spike of an electrical charge - and then there came the roar, a sudden and deafening holler of anger and pride that frightened her in the same way that a first encounter with a caged animal might terrify a small child. The world was dark, then white, then dark again, and in the shadows there loomed a pair of ferocious green eyes. There was the sound of claws on wood, the shifting of muscle, the resonance of a heavy, breathless purr…

…and then the passage of time ignited once more with a jolt, and Angela gasped, staggering backwards. She stepped down on something, some broken shaft of furniture, and her ankle began to turn - but then she instinctively shifted her weight to compensate, her balance so precise she barely registered what she’d done. A normal person would have stumbled or fallen, left herself vulnerable. But Angela was no longer normal. She looked to the window and saw that her enemy was hesitating, his expression stricken - and with good reason.

Angela glanced down at herself.

It was still her; still her body, her boyish figure so lean and sharp; but instead of Levi’s and fleece jacket she was now sheathed in a figure-hugging outfit of some strange fabric that was midway between hide and fur, all of it a brilliant snow white save for a series of black stripes about her hips and midriff, the tops of her thighs, and also her shoulders. The glowing jade amulets were now looped about her throat upon their chain, and when Angela raised her hands to her face she traced the outline of a half-mask, rigid at the temples and brow to sweep her hair back from her eyes. She saw that her hands were gloved in the same icy white as the rest of her, and that her fingers were tipped with ivory claws, each approximately two inches in length. She heard a low rumbling sound and only after a moment’s pause did she realize that it was her, the snarl of her breath in the back of her throat.

Animal, yes. But not caged. Let loose.

And this I know: That tiger’s nature works within.

“Hector Ayala conjured the beast on the last night he was alive,” said Ferdinand Lopez, the man otherwise named Machete. His sneer returned now as he regained his composure. “It didn’t prevent me from shearing the flesh from his bones. He was too old, in spirit. Too wearied.”

“Hector was my uncle,” Angela breathed. “He was a proud and gentle man, and for that I loved him. But you face a new White Tiger now, you murderous hijo de puta.”

Machete flinched, then growled. And then he threw himself forward, slashing with the flattened blade of the weapon in his right hand whilst snatching a dagger from his hip belt with his left and letting fly. Angela Del Toro, heir to the legacy of the White Tiger, didn’t shy away; instead she moved in to meet the man’s attack with a roar of her own, whipping out one hand to deflect the low trajectory of the dagger whilst rolling her opposite shoulder, head ducked to slide beneath the arc of her enemy’s cleaver. She slammed into Machete’s midriff and twisted her weight with the impact, effortlessly dislodging the man’s footing and flinging him into the air despite his greater mass and strength.

Machete swore, legs kicking and arms flailing, but then his head snapped back and blood and teeth guttered from his ruined mouth as a stiff, white arm shot up and clubbed him square beneath the angle of his jaw. That same hand then reversed its strike, claws raking down Machete’s face on the backward glide, literally ripping his lower lip away from his cheeks like a strip of jerky.

Machete mewled and staggered, blood spilling from his horrific wound. The White Tiger looked on with black, stormcloud eyes, feeling no pity and not inclined to falter. This bastard had inflicted worse upon her uncle - and as far as she was concerned retribution for that crime was far from served.

The Tiger snapped forward, claws slashing. Even through the mist of his blood and pain, however, Machete was a man of immense skill and poise. He dodged his enemy’s attack and jabbed a crooked elbow into her ribs, then turned on his heel and lashed a kick against the back of her legs. The White Tiger saw the strike and bent low, taking her weight in her knees and then flipping backwards as Machete’s boot brushed past her calves. Machete struck again, a savage stamp, and then unleashed a high kick towards the Tiger’s face, but she pulled back and twisted aside to avoid both assaults with a half-second to spare.

“Fast, bruja,” Machete hissed. “But I only need to slit your throat once…”

The villain snatched another of his signature weapons from his baldric, then palmed a dagger in his free hand. He ducked and feinted, pushing in close, then suddenly straightened and executed a reverse slice over his own shoulder with the cleaver whilst stabbing back with the dagger at hip-height. The White Tiger swayed to avoid the first strike but the second blade skidded across her waist, penetrating the snowy hide of her costume and drawing blood beneath. She hissed at the flare of pain but didn’t recoil; instead she embedded a set of ivory claws into the nape of her foe’s neck and shredded his swarthy flesh all the way down to the base of his spine in one movement, leaving behind four parallel scores of glistening scarlet.

Machete screamed and pitched forwards - towards the window. The White Tiger’s eyes flashed.

“No!” she snarled. “No, you do not get away. Not from me.”

As Machete’s momentum saw him lurch helplessly across the threshold of the broken window frame so the White Tiger threw herself into his bleeding back with all her strength, pushing the villain out into thin air before he could stop himself. The narrow alley the fourth-floor window overlooked was a significant distance below. Given the opportunity Machete could have jumped for the underhang of a fire escape overhead, from where it would have been easy enough for him to reach the rooftops if so inclined. No, the Tiger repeated in her mind. No escape.

She pulled her enemy away from safety even as he grasped desperately for a handhold, then curled her body about him and angled him in a new direction. The pair of them slammed into the brick wall of the building opposite, Machete first. His nose burst on impact, joining his ruined mouth, and one leg snapped outwards at the knee with a ruptured cruciate. The villain exhaled a burbling shriek through a veil of blood. And then they fell.

Machete hit the ground with a sickening crunch of breaking bones. The White Tiger landed not on her feet, as the proverbial cat, but instead with a perfectly executed tuck and roll that not only absorbed her impact without incurring damage but also carried her clear of her enemy’s blood splatter. She stood, eyes bright and breath even, and strode across to where Machete lay.

The man was barely conscious, delirious in his pain, but he was still alive. There was no fight left in him, however. And, regrettably, there would be no information forthcoming from that ruined mouth of his.

“You mentioned an employer,” the Tiger said. “A Lady Kingfisher, yes? Which would make you the human equivalent of one your weapons; a blade to be brandished, to spill blood, but at the order of another. And so I’ll learn who this little river bird is, this hag who decreed that Hector Ayala should die and who so desperately craves these amulets that now belong to me. I’ll find her, and I’ll do to her what she commanded you do to my uncle. And as for you…”

The White Tiger bent low over her fallen enemy and gently rested the points of her ivory claws across his brow. “I would guess there’s little market for a blind assassin,” she purred. And then she flexed her wrist, and there was a gelatinous pop and another spurt of blood, and the man known as Machete screamed anew.