by Kylie Chan
Are the rest of the group okay and with us? I said.
They are.
We lurched sideways in the darkness, then fell almost straight down for two hundred and fifty metres. I clutched the flyer and it bent its head back to nip at my coils, then levelled out. I released it slightly and it took a huge breath.
Don’t strangle it, Emma, the stone said.
Hard not to when it feels like we’re falling out of the air.
Just try to relax, Simone said. I know it’s hard for you ’cause you can’t see, but it’s really very interesting for us who can—you should see all the stuff below us!
I raised my head and peered down past the flyer’s head, but I couldn’t see anything. It suddenly veered left, went up fifty metres, then veered right.
The tunnel disappeared, and I was in human form riding the Blue Dragon over the water towards the city of Kota Kinabalu. I was wearing a gorgeous pale blue cotton gi that the staff of Qing Long’s undersea palace had provided me with when John had ripped my clothes off in one of his enjoyable fits of passion. I leaned slightly right and looked down; John was sliding through the water below us, stretched out as if he was flying, matching our speed through the dark water. I straightened and looked up to see the star-filled sky.
‘Thank you, stone,’ I said.
‘Just remember to keep holding on tight, dear,’ the stone said. ‘I’m sharing this recording because I’m finding this whole dodging-blind-through-narrow-tunnels thing as distressing as you are.’
The Blue Dragon’s frill was like a soft chamois, glittering blue and silver in the moonlight.
‘Tell me, Qing Long,’ I shouted over the wind whistling in my ears.
‘You do not need to shout,’ the Dragon said, as if his mouth was next to my ear. ‘You are sitting close to my lizard ears and they just need the vibration of your voice for me to hear you. Talk normally.’
‘Lizard ears?’
‘I don’t know how they work, but they do. Ask your questions.’
‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘So tell me, you have an undersea palace, but your nature is wood?’
‘That it is, madam,’ the Dragon said. ‘All serpents are aligned with water. Some of us have wings, some of us have legs, but all of us are aligned with the life-giving rain that feeds the world.’
‘I’m a serpent too,’ I said. ‘Why are you so afraid of what you saw inside me?’
The Dragon stiffened slightly beneath me, then relaxed again. ‘What I saw was not pure serpent. Serpent is life-giving water, the rain that allows things to grow. Serpent is the power of healing and poisons to bring both life and death. Serpent is the weather that moves the world. What I saw was not like that. It was just destruction, not life-giving.’
‘Hopefully one day we can find out what it is—and remove it.’
‘I’m sure Ah Wu is working on it,’ the Dragon said.
‘So the serpent is the bringer of life. I can see the connection with wood, with growing things, now.’
‘I have a Wood Palace as well, same as the Phoenix has her Fire Palace,’ the Dragon said. ‘It is more in the East, off Japan. You must come and see it some day.’
‘I would love to,’ I said.
The Dragon flew lower, writhing with ease through the air and providing me with a completely smooth ride. John’s long hair flew behind him as he moved through the water just beneath the surface, the reflected light of the stars rippling above him. He saw me and smiled slightly; then lifted just out of the water and turned onto his back. Then he dived backwards under the water again.
I felt a pang of pain. I hadn’t spent every precious second that I could have with him; I’d spent far too much time working on my degree and teaching at the Academy. I’d wasted time that I could have spent with him, and it could be a very long time before I would see him again.
‘I am telling him that he would make a fine exhibit at Sea World,’ the Dragon said with amusement. ‘Do you like the gi?’
I raised one hand from the Dragon’s frill and touched the soft pale blue cotton of the gi. It was decorated with white stylised cherry blossoms, some as small as a centimetre across and others as wide as ten centimetres. It was held together with a wide sash—an obi—made of dark maroon silk with similar white cherry blossom patterns. ‘It is lovely,’ I said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Come visit my palace in Japan,’ the Dragon said. ‘I have many fine kimono and gi there. Some are worth a small fortune and have been worn by royalty.’
‘I would like to one day.’
I peered down at John, who was obviously enjoying this time in the unpolluted water. I looked up; the lights of Kota Kinabalu started to show over the curve of the earth before us, Mount Kinabalu a dark majestic shape behind the city.
‘We are nearly there,’ the Dragon said. ‘I hope you have enjoyed my hospitality.’
‘I have,’ I said.
‘Hurt my friend Xuan Wu and your life will be both painful and short,’ he said, his conversational tone not changing.
‘If I hurt him I would wish nothing else for myself,’ I said.
‘Then we are in agreement,’ the Dragon said, and we skimmed over the water in silence, John enjoying himself below us.
I have to bring you back now, Emma, the stone said. Be ready: it’ll go from smooth to rough, human to serpent.
Ready.
The change was like a drop of about ten metres, and I was a snake again. No time for regrets now, Emma, the tears of loss can come later; and besides, never forget that he’s promised to come back for you.
Snakes can’t close their eyes so I just held on.
The final tunnel was straight and narrow and we seemed to be travelling through it forever. I’d often joked that Hell was being stuck in one of Hong Kong’s interminable tunnels under the harbour in a traffic jam, choking on fumes, and this was an unpleasantly similar experience.
Another pressure wave deafened me as we shot out of the tunnel into a wide, low-ceilinged cavern. The cavern’s only feature was a concrete box, about a metre high and four hundred metres square. The flyers all descended quickly, landed in front of the box, and waited restlessly while we dismounted. I loosened my coils and slid off; the flyer took off before my tail was completely free of it.
We regrouped in front of the monolith.
‘Well?’ I asked Martin.
‘There are two entrances, front and back,’ Martin said without looking away from the concrete box. ‘While I was bound to the King, I would often spy for him, and one of my tasks was to see what they were doing inside here. I have some idea of the floor plan.’ He turned to speak to us. ‘We are not visible to them right now, but the minute we try to remove the stone child and Leo, they will know.’
‘So we need a diversion,’ I said.
Martin bowed his head slightly without speaking.
I turned to the Generals. ‘How about a loud violent attack from you guys in the front, while we sneak in the back?’
‘Sounds like a plan,’ General Ma said. He grimaced and dropped his voice. ‘Are you sure that Ming Gui is trustworthy in this? He could be leading you to your destruction while we are preoccupied.’
‘I once asked Xuan Wu if I could trust him,’ I said. I turned back to face the building. ‘He said yes.’
‘That’s good enough for me,’ General Ma said. He nodded to Martin. ‘Do you know where they are holding the Lion and the stone child?’
‘I have an idea,’ Martin said. ‘The King asked me to investigate the research they were carrying out. At the far end of the building, behind the residential quarters and breeding nest, there are some laboratories that they used for experimentation on stones. I believe that they will be in there.’
‘Leo wasn’t in there when you investigated before?’ I said.
‘No,’ Martin said. ‘If he had been, I would have tried to get him out.’
‘Let’s do this,’ the Tiger said. ‘We Immortals at the front door; we can fight to the death. Yo
u run round the back and someone let us know telepathically when to make a lot of noise.’
‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Martin, you can hide us right until we’re at the door?’
‘They don’t have any external guards. They think they’re impenetrable,’ Martin said. ‘Last time I went in and stayed inside for about thirty minutes undetected.’ He shrugged. ‘Six is up himself.’
‘He’ll be on his guard now that we’ve attacked the Guilin nest,’ the Tiger said. He raised one huge demon paw and his sword appeared in it. ‘We’ll stay back here and wait for your word. Let us know when to bring the roof down.’
I saluted the Immortals. ‘I’ll see you on the other side.’
They saluted me back.
Michael, Simone and I followed Martin to the back of the facility. Martin was right; there weren’t any exterior guards and there didn’t appear to be any surveillance cameras either.
The Tiger ran up behind us. ‘Wait for me,’ he said. We slowed so he could join us. ‘If anybody is getting killed in there, it’s me. If something happens, you guys get out as fast as you can. I don’t like the idea of leaving all of you with Mr Turtle here.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Martin said.
We went around the corner to the back of the building. Martin led us about halfway along, stopped, and put one hand on the wall. The wall slid towards him, like a cube coming out of the side of the building. It extended a metre and a half, then stopped. It seemed to be made of the same featureless concrete as the rest of the building.
Martin went to one side, then walked straight into it. ‘It is an illusion,’ he said. ‘This is the entrance…’ And then he grunted loudly.
We rushed to follow him. He was right: the concrete was an illusion, and on the other side was a white room with smooth walls and floor, about three metres square. Martin was battling two stone fake elementals in the middle of it. The fake elementals were roughly human-shaped and made of skull-sized rocks that floated in the form, without visible faces or hands.
Michael changed to human form but Simone remained a demon, summoning Dark Heavens and holding it in her clawed, scaled hand. Michael, Martin and the Tiger slashed ineffectually at the stone elementals, not even chipping them with their weapons. Simone held Dark Heavens point up in front of her, lowered her head and concentrated for a moment, then slashed the sword sideways through one of the elementals. It fell into two pieces and collapsed into its component stone parts on the floor, some of the stones rolling to the sides of the room.
Simone raised the sword to do the same thing to the second one, but I was faster. Finally, I was able to fight a demon myself without worrying about absorbing any demon essence. I slithered to the demon, climbed up its body, wrapped myself around it and ripped its head off with my mouth. I spat the head to the side of the room, then proceeded to dismantle it piece by piece, extracting the demon essence from each piece before I discarded it. It quickly turned to a similar lifeless pile of rock.
The men stood there panting, watching us. Then Michael said, ‘Nice.’ He turned to Martin. ‘Where to next?’
Martin gestured towards the door. ‘This way.’
I tasted the floor with my tongue. ‘This is very similar to the lining of the walls and floor of the nest in Kowloon City.’
‘It’s infused with stone babies?’ Simone said with horror.
I rolled onto my back, giving the embedded stone a closer look at the floor.
‘No,’ the stone said. ‘It isn’t infused the same way that nest was, but it is still a very unusual ceramic material that blocks my senses.’
‘Would you say that it’s a type of baked stone demon?’ I said, righting myself.
‘That’s exactly what it seems to be,’ the stone said.
‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘The Phoenix would adore it.’
‘I heard she prefers her demons barbecued rather than baked,’ Simone said. She went to the door, put her hand on it and concentrated. She shook her head. ‘Can’t see a damn thing.’
‘Language, missy,’ the Tiger said. He hoisted his sword, gestured for us to move to the sides, then pulled the door open, theatrically hiding behind it like something out of a Hollywood movie.
‘That was completely unnecessary,’ Martin said. ‘There is only a corridor on the other side of this, that leads to the holding cells and the laboratory.’
‘Holding cells? We’d better shut down all the trash compactors in the detention level,’ Michael said with amusement as he followed Martin.
‘Trash compactors?’ Martin said, confused.
Michael waved him on. ‘Just a lame fanboy joke.’
‘Extremely lame,’ Simone said, rolling her eyes.
‘Oh, I dunno, I have a very bad feeling about this,’ the Tiger said.
‘We’re surrounded by lame fanboys, Simone,’ I said.
‘That you are, ma’am,’ the Tiger growled, bringing up the rear.
The corridor had three cell doors on either side that looked like something out of a horror movie version of a lunatic asylum—small barred windows and thick metal rims. Michael pulled at the first door on the left but it didn’t open. Simone grabbed the handle, hesitated for a moment, then pulled the door completely out of the doorframe. She stood for a moment holding it as if she didn’t know what to do with it, then placed it against the wall next to the open doorway. The cell was empty.
Simone and the Tiger went from door to door wrenching them open, pulling some of them completely off their hinges. Each cell was empty. When we’d opened the last cell, we all shared a look.
‘Well?’ Simone said to Martin. ‘Is this all the cells? And if it isn’t here, then where is it?’
‘It may be in the laboratory,’ Martin said. ‘These are the only cells.’ He gestured towards the end of the hallway. ‘Through there.’
We went through the door and stopped. It was another white room, covered in shiny white tiles on the floor, walls and ceiling. The room was about five by three metres, with green metal cabinets along the walls and a more modern electron microscope than in the Guilin nest in one corner. A large stainless-steel workbench littered with a variety of tools, including scalpels, rasps, hammers and hacksaws, stood in the middle of the room.
Six was there, in the form of a young twenty-something Chinese with a short ponytail. He was wearing a white coverall with a clear safety screen over his entire face, and holding what appeared to be a circular saw over something held in a vice on the table. Gold’s child!
His partner, the Snake Mother Three, was in the form of a teenage girl wearing a micro-mini, a bikini top and a pair of moon boots all in black. ‘Fuck!’ she cried, went to the side of the room and pressed a fire alarm button. Bells started ringing outside the room.
Snakes can’t jump, much as I tried. Instead I moved as fast as I could, launched my head at Six and slammed into his midriff, knocking him flat. He brought the circular saw up and tried to take my head with it, but I evaded him, moving my head out of the way with each swipe of the saw. He released one hand from the saw and grabbed me by the throat, holding me tight, then moved the saw to try and take my head with it again. I swayed back, fighting his grip, then opened my mouth and spat poison in his face, moving with the pull of his hand. I tried to bring my fangs out and bury them in him, but it was no good; the poison didn’t seem to have any effect on him except make his grip stronger. He easily held me off, shifted his grip so that it was slightly tighter, then raised himself with difficulty, leaning on his elbow to get up. He was still holding the buzzing circular saw next to my head.
‘I think you should stop now,’ he said, ‘or the snake will lose her eyes.’
I couldn’t see what was happening behind me but I heard the weapons hit the floor and hissed with frustration.
‘Let go of Three,’ Six said. ‘Slowly, please. Thank you.’
Three came to stand behind Six facing me, still in the form of a teenager.
‘You disappoint me, Emma,’ Six said. �
��I’d heard you were unbeatable, particularly in snake form.’
‘Stories always grow with retelling. I’m actually not that powerful in any form. I get my ass regularly kicked by both demons and Celestials,’ I said.
‘What are we going to do now?’ Three said. ‘We need that damn stone! We’ll die without it!’
‘We’ll die if we try and take it,’ Six said. ‘You guys have been such a nuisance. You destroyed our little stone farm under Guilin, and now you’re here ruining our last chance at a life outside Hell. You really are a pain in the ass, you know that?’
‘If you turn, you will be safe,’ the Tiger said.
Three barked with laughter. ‘If we turn we’ll be dead the minute we step outside your doors. Slavery? No thanks, we had enough of that in Hell. When my lovely Six was born, I was already tired of the nests and catering to the whims of the King. My son is a better lover than the King ever was, so we ran away together.’
‘It’s a terrible shame that my darling Three is too big for me to sire spawn on,’ Six said with regret.
‘You things are sickening,’ Simone said. ‘You’re mother and son, how can you do that?’
‘Emma should have told you, dear. Very common among demons. Frankly, we’re all related. It makes no difference to us. Most of the King’s harem are his aunts and cousins. A couple of them are his daughters. Of course, he killed his mother and all his brothers and sisters when he became King.’
‘How many times has the King tried to kill you, Three?’ I said.
‘He stopped the serious attempts after about two dozen, Emma. He’ll still have the occasional go at me when he’s in a bad mood.’
‘We are a powerful partnership,’ Six said. ‘Only problem is the issue we have with being outside Hell.’
‘Let’s cut some sort of deal here,’ Three said. ‘How about we trade the stone for the Lion?’
‘No,’ Simone and I said in unison.
Six tightened his grip around my throat. ‘How about a trade of the snake’s life and the Lion’s for the little stone?’
