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The noise of the traffic outside stopped and the only sound was the breeze whistling through the factory’s broken windows. All ten floors of the building were empty.
Someone shouted and a red and gold palanquin appeared in the entrance. About twenty young men surrounded it: demons in human form. All of them appeared to be in their early twenties, of all races, tall and muscular and wearing only skin-tight black bike shorts. They were all impossibly handsome. Some carried the sedan chair and others flanked it.
‘Is he insulting me?’ Leo said.
‘He’s probably insulting both of us,’ I said.
The Demon King stepped out of the sedan chair in Celestial Form. His perfectly white, strikingly beautiful face was surrounded by a huge mane of red hair that stood up on his head then fell down his back past his waist. His scaled armour and boots were red and gold.
The Tiger summoned an outdoor table and chairs, and I stepped forward to talk to the Demon King. He saluted me and I saluted back, then I gestured for him to sit. He bowed slightly and gestured for me to sit first.
I had an uncomfortable feeling of déjà vu and wished that John was doing this. Now that I was clear of the demon essence, I felt the King’s dark nature even more intensely. He was sinister and charismatic, and I just wanted this done and to get out of there.
I sat at the table, and my staff repositioned themselves to the optimal configuration. The King’s men moved to stand behind him, mirroring my own Retainers. The Demon King sat and smiled across the table at me, his face alight with warmth.
‘You failed,’ I said.
He raised one hand slightly. ‘I forgot for a moment it was you, and straight to the point as usual. You’re alive, Emma, and clear of the demon essence. I didn’t fail.’
‘If the Xuan Wu Serpent hadn’t intervened I would have died.’
He dropped his head slightly and an expression of remorse swept across his face. ‘I acknowledge that I caused you a great deal of suffering and that you nearly died.’ He raised his head and saluted me again. ‘I apologise most sincerely for my misjudgement, madam.’
‘You owe me one, George.’
He waved one hand to indicate the demons behind him. ‘These are a gift to make up for it. Enjoy them until they expire, then dispose of them.’
I glanced at the handsome young men. ‘I think you underestimate me, Wong Mo.’
He shrugged. ‘Okay. Worth a shot. Come and live with me and you can have as many of these as you like.’ He leaned over the table and grinned. ‘Three, four, at once, they’re remarkable. You should try. How about I send you one or two just for a sample?’
‘Give it up,’ I said.
He sighed theatrically, his shoulders moving with the sound. ‘Guess I’ll just have to give them to the Mothers then. That’s what they were originally bred for. I have to keep making them, they don’t last long.’
I inhaled sharply. ‘I’ll take them then.’
He waved me down. ‘No, no, if you’re not going to use them as sex toys then don’t bother. That’s all they’re good for, they can’t even speak.’
‘I’ll still take them.’
He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’ He waved the young men forward. ‘Serve the Dark Lady.’
The demons moved mechanically to stand behind my staff, seemingly unfazed by their fate.
‘Will you still bring me Kitty Kwok?’ he said. ‘She needs to be stopped, and she’s human. I can’t do it.’
I nodded once. ‘We made a deal. You cleared the essence from me; I agreed to bring her to you. You will have her.’
‘Is there anything else I can do to atone for the pain I caused you, Emma?’ he said, his face still warm and full of affection.
‘Yi Hao, Er Hao.’ I waved my two demon servants forward without looking behind me. ‘These are my demons from One Two Two’s nest. I want you to tell me if they are the original demons or copies; and if they are programmed to turn. I want your assurance that I am safe with them, because I love them dearly.’
He turned his attention to them and his face lit up. ‘If you can love these two demons then maybe there is room in your heart for one more.’
‘You said you’d love me as snake broth,’ I said.
He leaned back and his expression grew wry. ‘You’ll never let me forget that, will you? It was a spur of the moment thing, Emma, just competitive bullshit. You know I was talking out of my ass.’
‘Will you check my demons for me?’
‘I will.’ He waved them closer. ‘Come here, little ones, I will not harm you.’
‘Or hurt them,’ I said.
He nodded acquiescence. ‘Of course.’ He waved to them again and they sidled towards him. ‘I hear you were willing to sacrifice the Tiger’s wives — one of whom is your own best friend — for these two tiny demons.’
‘The wives had the Tiger’s whole army defending them. All these demons had was me,’ I said. ‘Any creature that chooses to seek humanity and attain the Tao is worthy of protection.’
‘You need to concentrate on the bigger picture, sweetie. Ah Wu would have protected the humans before any demon.’ He gestured towards the demons. ‘Kneel.’ They hesitated, and he spoke more brusquely. ‘Down!’
Yi Hao approached and knelt before him. He put one hand on the side of her head and concentrated; she remained rigid with fear as he studied her.
‘Demons are demons and they don’t have a real life at all,’ he said. ‘Even if they choose to turn and pursue the Way, they’re not worth anything.’
He snapped back, then waved Er Hao forward. She knelt and he touched her head as well, then released her. ‘They’re not copies. They’re nothing special. No programming.’ He glanced up at me. ‘How were you identifying the copies if these ones were suspect?’
‘Touch them loaded with shen energy …’ I hesitated. Had I told him too much?
‘Don’t worry, Emma, I don’t have access to shen energy. You can tell me.’
‘Touch them loaded with shen energy and you get a similar effect to a Shen touching them without protecting them. They go black.’
‘And these little ones go black in response to shen energy as well?’ the King said, turning his attention back to my demons.
‘They do.’
‘They shouldn’t do that. They are probably the result of some of Simon’s breeding experiments before his Mother was destroyed. Or …’ He leaned hungrily towards them. ‘Maybe they’re the spawn of that Mother he made himself.’ He grinned at me. ‘The one he made from your friend.’ He put his hands on his knees. ‘I would love to tear these two apart and see what’s inside. They’re fascinating.’
Yi Hao and Er Hao jumped to their feet and scurried to hide behind me.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said, putting my hands behind me to touch them without looking away from the King. ‘I won’t let him hurt you.’
‘We trust you, ma’am,’ Yi Hao said, but her voice quavered with fear.
‘Can I trust them?’ I said. ‘You said they were probably specially bred by One Two Two. Are they agents for Kitty or the Death Mother? Are they spies?’
‘They are tame demons, and they are yours. They have been tamed with the Fire Essence Pill and cannot turn on you. You can trust them.’
‘Go back to the others,’ I said, and they ran back to my group. ‘Tell the Tiger to summon tikuanyin tea for me.’
‘Allow me,’ the King said, and a pot and cups of priceless crackled green glaze appeared before us. He poured for both of us and raised his cup. ‘Warn the Celestial about the demons those two have created, the ones that are programmed to explode. I never thought I’d see the like again, and here they are. So wrong. Probably just a small part of their arsenal, Emma, be very careful. They may have copies that are undetectable even with shen.’
‘How badly do you want the Death Mother and Kitty taken down?’ I said.
He carefully replaced his cup on the table. ‘Badly enough to enlist your help. Particularly Kitty — she is an unknown quantity. I’ve never seen anyone do what she’s done; she’s well on the way to some sort of twisted Immortality. She can survive in Hell unassisted, but she’s still human enough that I can’t break my vow to Ah Wu and deal with her myself.’ He lifted his teacup again and studied it. ‘To be honest, she scares me. I think she has designs on my throne.’ He gazed at me over the rim of the cup. ‘She has links with the other Centres; being human, she has no limitations on her travel. She helped Six make those hybrid stone elementals using Western stones.’
‘Will you assist the forces of Heaven to find and stop them?’
His blood-coloured eyes were intense. ‘Are you speaking as a representative of the Celestial here? A simple ordinary human female, mortal, un-Raised, and only holding your title in a temporary capacity?’
I raised my teacup. ‘That I am, Wong Mo.’
He took a swig of his tea. ‘You’re doing it again.’
I sipped my own tea: perfectly normal tikuanyin. ‘Thank you.’
‘I will have to walk a very fine line, Dark Lady. Assist you too much and I will appear weak to my subjects; they will see me as a puppet of the Celestial and turn against me. If I do not assist you enough, these two bitches could threaten my throne.’ He placed the teacup on the table and turned it in his manicured fingers. ‘One of the most delicate dances I have ever performed.’
‘In this case we share a common goal,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to see either of them on your throne either.’
He put his hands on the table on either side of the cup and inhaled deeply, throwing his head back and closing his eyes. ‘Oh, but I would so like to see you on my side.’ He opened his eyes and they burned into me. ‘Even without the demon essence, you are so dark and powerful and destructive — so attractive and intriguing. No wonder Ah Wu found you irresistible; you appeal to both his demonic and Celestial sides.’
‘You could tell me what I am as a show of good faith,’ I said.
‘I could,’ he said. ‘But I’ve already cleared you of demon essence. I think that’s enough for now. I have your word.’ He picked up his teacup and drank again. ‘You have the phone. If I get any leads I’ll send you a text or something. Right now I think Kitty’s on the Earthly somewhere overseas, and the Death Mother is in Southeast Asia somewhere like Laos or Vietnam. You’re still weak anyway, Emma. Rest and send in agents, and we’ll both see what we can turn up on the intelligence side.’
He disappeared.
I rose and turned back to our group and the table also disappeared.
I sighed. ‘Now what do I do with these demons?’
‘Start a massage parlour for the Hong Kong ladies that pop across the border on the weekends to have their nails done. You’d make a fortune,’ Leo said.
‘Liu,’ I said loudly. ‘Find something for these demons to do, will you?’
‘Sure thing, Emma. We’ll use them for binding practice until they expire.’
I studied one of the young men carefully. Liu was right: the demon was so tiny, he would last a maximum of six weeks; and from the blank look in his eyes, he wasn’t even aware enough to care.
The next morning Leo, Simone and I went shopping together in Pacific Place. Some things just couldn’t be bought in Heaven, fashionable shoes among them. Simone told stories about school as we drove, seemingly uncaring as to whether anyone was listening.
‘And so I told her that there’s only one vampire left in the world, and he’s a Retainer of the House of the North and lives in a graveyard in London,’ she said. ‘You should use the disabled space, Leo, you have the right. Use the label.’
‘I’m not disabled,’ Leo said, turning the car into a vacant spot in the Pacific Place car park.
Simone continued talking as we got out of the car. ‘So she said, “Is he hot?” and I said, “If you like your guys short, skinny and old.”’
‘What did she say?’ I said.
‘She said, “But vampires are gorgeous!” I told her, “Never have been, and the last one left looks like a ferret.”’
‘He doesn’t look like a ferret!’ I said, then stopped. ‘Okay, maybe he does.’
‘You’re being rude to poor Franklin behind his back,’ Leo said as the wheelchair floated out of the boot of the car and unfolded itself.
‘She’s going over to London to take a look,’ Simone said.
‘Isn’t that too far from her Centre?’ Leo said as he levitated to sit in the chair, then wheeled it next to us.
‘Nah, she’s one of the Tiger’s kids, she’ll go with her dad on the next wife trip,’ Simone said. ‘So I have to warn Franklin: here comes another one, be ready with the girl repellent.’
‘It’d be better if you just didn’t tell people about him,’ I said as we walked out towards the shopping centre.
‘He asked me to,’ she said. ‘He loves blowing their romantic brainless little notions out of the water. He says it’s the most fun he’s had since he swore off, and that’s more than two hundred years.’
‘He’s a vegetarian vampire,’ I said with amusement.
‘And he’s not into girls,’ Simone said.
‘Well, not so much not into girls as not into anything,’ I said. ‘He’s just asexual, Simone, he isn’t interested at all. Most of them were like that. The sexy vampire thing is just the mythology that’s grown around them.’
‘That explains why he has no looks, charm or charisma,’ Simone said.
‘Not even any gay sparkle,’ Leo said.
‘Gay sparkle?’ I said with disbelief.
‘Gayer than me, and that’s saying a lot,’ Leo said.
‘We are evil,’ I said.
‘No,’ Simone said. Her face went slack and her eyes turned inwards, then she took Leo’s and my hands. ‘That’s evil.’
She shared what she was seeing with her touch. Somewhere up ahead and below us in a maintenance area of the shopping centre, there were two large forces facing off with a third entity standing panic-stricken nearby. One force was dark and cold; one was demonic; and the third seemed to be human and scared out of its wits. We dropped our hands and ran towards it. Whatever was happening, the human was in peril.
We entered the underground corridor between the car park and the shopping mall. A stairway on the left led up to ground level; the standoff was below us. We went down the stairs, Leo making his chair float above them. At the bottom there was a door, and a grimy mop and bucket leaning against the wall. The area smelled of stale cigarettes and urine.
Simone pulled at the door; it was locked. She raised both hands with palms towards the door.
I put one hand on her arm. ‘If you can unlock it without blowing it off its hinges, we’ll have the element of surprise.’
She put one hand over the lock and the door opened. ‘Blowing it off its hinges works both as a surprise and a warning.’
There was a corridor on the other side of the door, with plain concrete walls and floor and bare white-painted pipes through the ceiling. At the end of the corridor and facing towards us was a young European of about sixteen. He was the same height as Michael, with sandy brown hair, and didn’t appear anything special. An older European man stood behind him, taller and slimmer with the same colour hair — probably his father. The third person was a young Chinese man, the same height as the younger European and heavily-muscled; he stood with his back to us in a long defensive stance.
Older man is human. European kid is a demon type I’ve never seen before. The one facing away from us is a half-Shen, seems reptile, may be one of Daddy’s, Simone said.
