The Dragon Warrior

by Katie Zhao

  “Who are you and what have you done with Moli?” I spluttered.

  “I’m acting like I always do,” she snapped. “Stop staring at me like that.”

  “Okay, now you’re acting like you normally do.” I paused. “Fine. I’ll help, but you won’t learn nearly enough tonight to fight demons.”

  “That’s fine. If I get in trouble, I’ve got four horses that will stampede anything to death for me.”

  Another reason not to get on this girl’s bad side.

  “But I have one condition,” I warned.

  Moli’s expression soured. “What condition?”

  “The mean names you call me and Alex? Erase them from your vocabulary. And stop acting like we’re disgusting weaklings who are beneath you.”

  “That’s all?”

  Moli looked genuinely confused. A wave of anger rolled over me.

  Being treated like an outcast had kept me from doing what I wanted at the Jade Society. It was Mao’s excuse to wrap Alex and me around her finger. Moli’s reason for breaking up our friendship. Everyone’s excuse for ridiculing Alex and me.

  Moli thought being nicer was a small thing?

  “Okay, consider it done,” Moli said quickly.

  “Maybe the way you talk to us doesn’t mean anything to you or anyone else in the Jade Society,” I said, my throat tight with the sudden urge to cry, “but it’s always been a cruel sentence to Alex and me. Everything you always took for granted—nice things like friendship and horses—we never got to have.”

  “Well, at least you never had to go to school,” Moli protested.

  I stared at Moli coldly until she was forced to drop her gaze to the ground. “That’s just one more thing that made me feel like an outcast.”

  She reached a hand toward her other elbow and looked, for once, uncomfortable in her own skin. “Gosh, I … Faryn … I never meant to …”

  I didn’t even know why I’d bothered revealing to Moli how much pain all the names and bullying had caused my brother and me. I didn’t want to hear her half-hearted apology.

  And I didn’t want to help the girl who’d been so cruel to me for so long—but Moli learning to fight would definitely help us all out if she was going to keep tagging along on the quest.

  “Zai said there’s a training room around here somewhere,” I said abruptly. “C’mon.”

  Moli furrowed her brow at me. “C’mon, what?”

  “C’mon and I’ll teach you how to decapitate things.” I picked up Moli’s sword, which lay on the ground near her bed, and pressed it into her limp palm.

  “What? Now?”

  “No, after the whole planet is taken over by demons. Of course, now!”

  I guess Moli and I had an understanding after all, because after that, she shut up and followed me out the door.

  CHAPTER

  15

  I nearly stumbled over Ren and Alex, who were lying on the floor in the main room of our suite.

  “Where’re you going?” Alex asked, eyeing Moli’s sword.

  “Training,” Moli said shortly.

  “But the banquet’s just about to start,” my brother pointed out. “You’re going to miss all the food. And we’re planning to ask Chuangmu again about the second riddle.”

  I thought longingly of my favorite traditional New Year dishes: Mao’s dumplings, the Xiongs’ spicy noodles, Ye Ye’s nián gāo …

  No. Focus. “Okay, so here’s the plan,” I said. “We’ll split up to find clues for the second riddle—freeing the fallen beasts. You guys wheedle info from Chuangmu. Moli and I will scope out the hotel to see if we can find anything.”

  “So make sure you drill that goddess, and save us something good to eat. We’re busy.”

  Moli stepped out of the room, her long ponytail swishing behind her.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll save you a crumb. Maybe,” Alex said.

  I sighed and followed Moli. “Keep your eyes out for—”

  “—fallen beasts,” Moli finished. “Got it.”

  My mind was already whirring, attempting to decipher the second part of the riddle. Which beasts had fallen, and how were we supposed to save them? More important—were they friendly? Did they want to eat us? These things were good to know ahead of time.

  I kept my eyes peeled for anything beast-like, but it seemed as though there were strange human-sized creatures at every turn: snakes, lizards, and even rats.

  “I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming, I’m dreaming,” I muttered to myself. It was the only way I could keep moving forward without freaking out.

  We skirted past a pair of female servants who had seized a large, ugly person—no, I realized, a brown toad. He wore a scholar’s hat and blue silk coat. He pleaded the whole way as they marched him down the hall, the wooden floorboards creaking under their feet.

  “I’ll come up with a way to pay the fees somehow. My boss is King Yama. That’s King Yama, the ruler of Diyu. You’ll regret this!”

  “King Yama?” one of the girls said. “Perfect. Tell him Chuangmu niáng niang, our mistress, sends her regards.”

  Together, the girls unceremoniously flung the toad off the patio. He screamed curses the whole way down. The servants dusted their hands off and bustled back down the hall as though nothing had happened.

  Moli raised her eyebrows at me. “Do you think one of the fallen beasts we’re supposed to save is that toad thing?”

  Something told me that was a definite no.

  “You can jump after him, if you want,” I said.

  Moli glared at me.

  We found two great golden elevators at the end of the hall. A queue of nine or ten people gathered around them. Human scholars and servants. Humanoid creatures who looked like lizards and weasels, wearing fine silk robes. A weasel man caught Moli’s eye and winked. The look she gave him could have incinerated steel.

  “Okay, if these aren’t fallen beasts, then are we sure they aren’t demons?” Moli whispered.

  I shrugged again. “Sometimes the deities and scholars look more demonic than the demons.”

  We took the elevator down to the basement. The doors parted to reveal a huge, empty room with walls lined with ancient pieces of armor: silver helmets, bronze chest plates, metal swords. Grass covered the floor beneath our feet. Moonlight shone through a small window at the end of the room. The only sign of modern technology was a small flat-screen TV that hung from one corner of the ceiling. On it, a woman with blue skin and long, black hair reported the weather, holding a mirror in each hand.

  “Is this the gods’ TV channel?” Moli gasped, her jaw dropping.

  I grabbed her arm and tugged her along. “C’mon. We don’t have a moment to waste if we want to train, solve the riddle, and hunt demons tomorrow,” I warned. “Man, we’d better get an interview on a celebrity talk show after going through all this.”

  Moli’s thoughts must’ve been far away, because she actually snapped to attention and held out her sword.

  “When was the last time you picked up a sword?” I asked. Her grip was all off. I rearranged her fingers so her thumb, middle finger, and ring finger gripped the handle.

  “Must’ve been … when our fathers used to teach us swordplay together.”

  I froze. “That was four years ago. I thought you’d forgotten.”

  “How could I? Those lessons were my favorite …”

  The memories of our childhood rushed back. Ba and Mr. Zhao sneaking Alex, Moli, and me into the training hall whenever they could. Back then, they’d trained us with wooden sticks that were as big as we were.

  I shook my head to clear the memory. “Forget it.” I shifted Fenghuang into a spear. Its golden shaft glinted under the moonlight, drawing Moli’s wide eyes. “There’s no way you’ll be close to ready by the end of tonight, and I can’t waste time on you. I’ve got my own practice to do.”

  “We had a deal,” Moli pleaded—her voice surprisingly more desperate than angry. “No more name-calling. Now you have to train me.” S
he averted her eyes. “Please,” she added quietly.

  “What was that?”

  “I said, please,” Moli huffed.

  I could count on one hand how many times I’d heard such a polite word pass through Moli’s lips. I guess she really, really wanted to learn swordplay.

  “Fine. We’ll try this again.”

  I imagined my grandfather smiling down proudly from Heaven. The idea fueled me to push Moli harder.

  An hour later, Moli could block my thrusts almost half the time, and she got in some sharp jabs of her own. I knew it wouldn’t be enough to beat a demon—not by a long shot. But at the very least, Moli would last three minutes and not make a complete fool out of herself.

  Training Moli stirred an almost-forgotten memory. The two of us at eight years old, giggling and sneaking into the training hall, handling weapons half our size. My throat closed.

  “That’s all you’ve got?” Moli asked. She was panting, and her hair had fallen into loose waves around her shoulders.

  “I … I’ll have to show you the rest another time.” The promise tumbled out of my mouth before I could stop it.

  Moli flashed me a rare smile. “Deal.”

  She wiped away a sheen of sweat that glistened on her forehead. Disheveled, she reminded me of the young girl who’d once trained with Alex and me.

  Something passed through the air between us. Begrudging respect—and regret.

  I tugged at the end of my hair. Once, the edges had been ruined when some Jade Society girls had tried out a hair-dyeing experiment on me three years ago. The memory stung like a slap as it resurfaced in my mind. Moli had just stood by and watched as the girls dunked my head in the black liquid. It had gotten everywhere. Up my nostrils. In my pores. Even after the damage had been done, the other girls mocked me until the dye faded into a stain of ugly memories on my hair.

  “What … happened?” I asked Moli.

  “I came two seconds away from kicking your—”

  “I’m not talking about training just now. Why did everything change? What happened to us?”

  Silently, I thought, And why have you been so mean to me all these years?

  Moli dug the point of her sword into the ground and leaned against the hilt. “After your father disappeared, my bà ba refused to pick up another sword. He couldn’t imagine training without his best friend, so he forbade me from training, too. But I—I …” Her hand tightened around her sword handle. “I would’ve loved to have kept learning.”

  “Ye Ye would have been happy to train you, too, you know.”

  Moli gave me a smile that didn’t meet her eyes. “I didn’t know. I guess I was … jealous of you.”

  “Jealous. You. Of me.”

  “Sure, Mao might’ve isolated your family, but you got to be different from the other girls. You could train, and you never had to worry about impressing Mao, and—”

  “—and I never went to public school, or got to feel normal.” Heart hammering, I blinked away furious tears. “Everyone in the Jade Society hates me, Moli. Including you.”

  “I don’t, though. And I don’t think the adults hate you, either,” Moli said quietly. “My father certainly doesn’t. I’m sure everyone is too afraid of Mao and those gangsters to speak up.”

  “That’s just as bad,” I spat. How could a bunch of adults let one mad old hag and a couple of tattooed meatheads push them around? “And that’s why I hate it when you’re rude to me and call me names.”

  “I won’t call you those names ever again,” said Moli. “And I … I’m not proud of how I treated you. If I could turn back time, maybe—”

  The sound of screaming from the TV cut her off. The segment, on one of the gods’ channels, had cut abruptly to footage airing from a deserted-looking Chinatown filled with boarded-up shops and barren streets.

  “Washington, D.C., lies in quiet ruins, thanks to increased demon activity,” said the meteorologist. “And the situation on the West Coast isn’t much better. Handing it over to me, Leizi, the goddess of weather, reporting live from northern California.”

  The footage jumped to another scene with Leizi, only now she stood in front of a different Chinatown.

  “Thanks, me,” Leizi said. “As you can see here …”

  My pulse quickened. This was a familiar Chinatown, decorated with the red-and-gold colors of Lunar New Year. It was pretty except for the minor detail that demons—humanoid creatures with huge fangs and red-and-black skin—yanked down paper streamers left and right, setting fire to the town.

  “That’s—” I gasped.

  “San Francisco,” Moli finished.

  We raced to the elevator.

  CHAPTER

  16

  A vaguely familiar Mandopop song played in the elevator. The bellhop, a squat man with a disproportionately large moustache, hummed along to the soft tune, ignoring the panicking kids with him.

  “We have to head back to San Francisco,” Moli said, waving her sword through the air and slicing off part of the bellhop’s sleeve. His expression remained serene. “My father’s there.”

  “Okay, let’s think calmly about this—” I said.

  “My father is in danger, Faryn! How am I supposed to be calm?” Moli turned on the bellhop. “You! Where’s the nearest army? I need it dispatched to San Francisco, stat.”

  “Army? Haven’t got one. We have complimentary herbal tea and eye masks in the lobby, though,” the bellhop told us with a bright smile. “Enjoy your stay.”

  We reached our floor with a ding. The doors slid open. Ren and Alex stood in front of us, still chewing on some dumplings. Alex’s hand hovered over the elevator button.

  “Oh, hey,” my brother said. He raised a brown paper bag in one hand. “We were just about to bring you some of this foo— Whoa, what’re you doing?”

  Moli dragged him by the sleeve down the hall. “Vacation’s over. We’re returning to the Jade Society. Now. San Francisco’s in big trouble.”

  Once I explained what Moli and I had seen on the TV, Ren’s eyes widened. “We’ve gotta go back and rescue your friends, then.”

  “They’re not my friends,” I said quickly. “And we can’t just abandon this quest. Did you guys find the fallen beasts?”

  “No,” Alex admitted.

  I turned to Ren. “And what about your curse?”

  “Some things are more important than that. Like saving people’s lives.”

  I hesitated, even though my head screamed that Ren was right. Nothing outweighed saving people’s lives. But what if saving some lives came at the cost of other people’s lives?

  Ren grabbed my hand. “C’mon.”

  Shaking my head, I allowed Ren to pull me along. Ye Ye would’ve been furious to find out I’d even considered abandoning the warriors in their time of need. But I was the Heaven Breaker. I had to fulfill my quest.

  We barreled past servants and scholars who gave us disgruntled looks as Moli all but pushed them out of the way. She rounded a corner—and stopped, nearly causing me to run right into her.

  “Chuangmu,” Moli said, kneeling down.

  The goddess wrapped a red robe more tightly around herself as we paid our respects to her on our hands and knees. “Going somewhere?”

  Alex stammered, “J-just headed over y-yonder, back to the—”

  “Home,” Moli interrupted. “San Francisco’s in trouble. We have to save our city.”

  Chuangmu’s smile widened, her white teeth glinting in the light. “Surely you can stay a little longer, warriors. You’ve just arrived.”

  “Yeah, Moli,” Alex urged. “Maybe we can stay a—”

  “Thank you for your hospitality, but we’ll be on our way now.” Moli rose to her feet and made to push past the immortal beings.

  “In that case, allow me to give you a goodbye present. A hóng bāo of sorts, if you will.”

  Chuangmu snapped her fingers. Two female servants floated down on either side of the goddess, grasping something behind their backs. T
he goddess of love pointed a perfectly manicured, blood-red fingernail at us and smiled.

  “Seize them.”

  Before I could process her words or the shock of betrayal, the servants swooped in and bound our hands with rope.

  Apparently, Chuangmu tortured prisoners by forcing them to watch awful reruns of The Heavenly Voice.

  “You don’t like this show?” The goddess lounged in her golden throne while we knelt at her feet. She pointed her remote up at the four huge flat-screen TVs that hung above her head. A pudgy, middle-aged man with thinning gray hair dodged her remote before it whacked his face. “But this is the highlight reel from season one of The Heavenly Voice. Biggest hit in Heaven, you know.”

  If this was the highlight reel, I hoped no one would ever force me to sit through the bloopers.

  “Why have you taken our weapons and tied us up?” Moli demanded.

  “My sister and I are the children of Liu Bo,” Alex added indignantly. “Liu Bo, the man who helped you. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

  “When you can find your father and bring him to me, I’ll let you know.”

  I gritted my teeth against the sting of Chuangmu’s lofty words. “Oh, don’t take it personally,” the goddess said. “Backstabbing happens all the time. This is the day and age of moral corrupt—um, I mean, business. And I am a businesswoman, after all.”

  “That’s not what it says in Demons and Deities through the Dynasties,” Alex protested.

  “Times have changed. As humans adapt to society’s changes, so do the gods.”

  “But what does you being a businesswoman have to do with us?” I spluttered.

  “There is quite a bit of demand for your kind in the market right now.” The goddess rubbed her hands together. “Especially for a dragon boy. Dragons are very valuable, you know. They are majestic and well-respected creatures.”

  Chuangmu leaned forward and examined Ren, licking her lips. “What a sweet face. I could eat you up. Or sell you.”

  Ren’s face was flaming red. “I …”

  A protective feeling surged inside me.

  The man behind her frowned. “Not as handsome as me, bǎo bèi.”