The Iron Will of Genie Lo

by F. C. Yee

  Xing Tian’s hands came plummeting down. In response, Guanyin whipped her arm upward, as if she were hurling a submarine fastball. Her motion ended with a snap of her fingers.

  The behemoth stopped where it was. But the stay of execution was short-lived. There was too much of Xing Tian, and it was too strong. It broke through Guanyin’s fourth-dimensional restraints, the only being I had ever seen do that, and resumed its deathblow.

  Guanyin seemed to have expected this. She hurled another invisible fireball of time at the hands coming to crush her, and they stopped again.

  This wasn’t a solution. Xing Tian kept powering through her magic, reaching her in stuttering steps like a buffering video stream. It truly could not be resisted. Guanyin’s barrage of time freezes lasted shorter and shorter, until the monster’s massive fists lay right over her. The skin on its chest was folded into a tortured caricature of rage.

  In her last moment, she reached up and placed her welcoming hands on Xing Tian’s. It was then I saw what had eluded everyone else but her—how much pain and suffering this creature was in.

  And that much pain, the Goddess of Mercy would never ignore.

  Guanyin released all of her good karma. All of it.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  To call the wave of energy similar to a bomb blast would have been an act of disrespect. There was nothing dangerous or hurtful about the glow that wrapped snugly around us. It was bliss. A state of grace. This was what the denizens of Hell must have experienced all those years ago when Guanyin’s freely given blessings washed away their sins.

  And the cruelest thing about it was that when the light receded, her body was still there. In a twisted way, I wanted her to be smashed to bits. Vaporized. If there was nothing left of her, then I could have struggled through the guilt of abandoning her to her fate.

  But she and Xing Tian were both present, motionless. The giant had been trying to crush her, but now, in its kneeling posture, with its hands clasped and extended, it looked like it was praying to the goddess for relief.

  Mercy had been granted. Xing Tian’s mockery of a face was no longer in agony. It was calm and still, as if it were an acolyte in the presence of its master.

  Guanyin stood before her supplicant. She was as perfect and beautiful and lifeless as the statue in a shrine. She was gone.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  I surged forward again, only to be caught by Quentin.

  “Genie,” he funeral-whispered. His face was wet against my side. “If we wake Xing Tian, her sacrifice will have meant nothing.”

  I pounded my fist on his back, hard enough to injure him. He made no noise as I hit him over and over again. Quentin only hugged me tighter and tighter as my strength sapped away. My arm fell on him one last time, and I broke down sobbing. My chest collapsed under the weight of despair, and I gasped without end.

  A large glow appeared in the air close to us, demonic purple instead of Heavenly amber, and a furry snout poked through.

  It was the fox. The one I’d seen saying goodbye to her mate, the werewolf who’d made the doomed last stand against Princess Iron Fan. She forced her way into this plane until her top half was visible. She extended her paws and beckoned us, asking for an embrace. Something about the way she couldn’t come any farther out of the newly formed rift made it seem as if she were restricted, tethered to safety by her legs. Other animal limbs—deer hooves and octopus tentacles and the like—peeked through around her. An entire zoo crammed into a phone booth.

  A little speck with a big voice perched on the fox’s head. “Of course you had to be in the last plane I looked!” Tiny said.

  I stared at her without comprehending her form or her words. She might have been offering me something. I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

  “We wouldn’t leave you stranded, not after what you’ve done for us!” the yaoguai queen said. “Now hurry! This portal spell is really hard to maintain!”

  28

  A rough, Chopper-Esque noise whipped quentin’s voice into froth.

  Genie! he might have been shouting.

  It was the pounding of blood in my own head. The fluorescent lights hurt my eyes.

  We’d been dumped unceremoniously in an empty lecture hall somewhere on campus. My body was draped across two different rows of seats. A great green chalkboard stared at us, judging.

  The fox and Tiny and the mass of her surviving yaoguai followers who’d lent the spiritual juice necessary to punch a new hole from Earth to Xing Tian’s lair were nowhere to be seen. Maybe they’d been hurled down a different fork in the road.

  The bootleg portal had kicked my ass as thoroughly as Princess Iron Fan. But even if the journey had been bump-less, I wouldn’t have moved. I wanted to decompose, rot away. I’d given up my bones.

  “Genie!” Quentin shook me.

  Get up, Guanyin’s voice said to me. You still have work to do.

  I don’t. I can’t. Please don’t make me.

  You have to, Genie.

  “Genie! You have to get up!” Quentin shouted. “There’s traces of demons everywhere!”

  Yunie. I bolted upright. I had to save my friend. If it was still possible.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  The solemn, detached, Bodhisattva-like thoughts I’d had about honoring Guanyin’s lesson to me vanished the instant we hit the street outside the lecture hall. What replaced them was sheer human panic. A flailing fear of death that lacked any dignity whatsoever. I would beg the Universe not to take Yunie. I would offer it money, the toys from my childhood, my hair.

  Without Quentin’s earrings, the only lead we had was the glimpse of the street the Jade Emperor had shown me. I turned true sight on and spun around like a lighthouse, the least efficient way to use it but my best option right now.

  There. Not too far from Ji-Hyun’s apartment. The same unfinished building I’d seen through the portal. The fires of demonic energy blanked out anything behind them. I couldn’t spare the time to make out more details or describe the location to Quentin for a jump. Instead I ran.

  I ran like an animal. The lower I got, the more forward motion I could get into each step. I was nearly climbing on all fours, my hands dallying with the idea of yanking on the ground for more speed.

  Pushing myself over the ground like this made me incredibly fast. People noticed me—oh boy did they notice. The wind I created knocked over cups, startled dogs, set off car alarms. I didn’t care.

  Coming to a stop in front of the unfinished building required plowing a yard-long furrow into the asphalt. I hurled myself through the wall of insulation sheeting. The hallway was tissue paper as I scraped it into ruin. And then—

  There, in the largest room, was Yunie. Surrounded by demons.

  She was reading them a book.

  I’d made so much noise coming in that she and every other pair and trio and quintuple of reptilian, birdlike, and compound eyes stared at me.

  “Uh, hey,” she said. “Can you hang on for a second longer? We’re at a good part.”

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  Seeing that I was catatonic, Yunie remained the picture of calm. She finished up what she was doing with the yaoguai, got up, and silently took me by the hand. She led me out of the room.

  We passed demons who looked like they should have been slaughtering the B-movie cultists who’d arrogantly summoned them. They were already working on undoing the damage I’d caused to the building. A giant termite chewed at the wall studs I’d snapped, drooling glue-like saliva over the weakened points to hold them together.

  I walked arm in arm down the street with Yunie as if she were showing me how beautiful this day was. Quentin came around the corner and she nodded at him. You know, to be neighborly. He fell in beside us without a word, understanding that this was her show.

  Somewhere through the fuzz in my head, a bell jangled. We’d entered a nearby coffee shop. It was private in the way that only a really packed place could be. No one noticed the bat demon hanging from the ceiling, also wrapped in co
ncealment. It was licking a croissant.

  We sat down at a miraculously empty table without buying anything. It looked like it had been scavenged from one of the school libraries. I recognized the gray Formica from Ji-Hyun’s tour.

  “You and Quentin probably want to know what’s going on,” Yunie said.

  I didn’t nod.

  “It’ll be easier to show you than explain.” She reached into her purse and took out a giant phone the size of a small tablet. It wasn’t hers. She thumbed through the image library until she found a video. After plugging in some ear buds, she handed the phone to me. I pressed play.

  The recording was of a different building than the one we’d left. A small campus gym made out of aged brick, not one of the big glass-walled ones that was open all hours. The footage must have been shot by a neighbor across the street, maybe for a noise complaint because it was night. And a series of loud crashes came from the double door. The sound of a crowd running into locked pushbars.

  “What exactly is happening here?” I said.

  She looked glad I was speaking again. “After the demons came through the pool, they panicked and scattered everywhere across campus.”

  “Why do you know this?” I shrieked.

  “Shhh,” Yunie said. “Keep watching.”

  Another crash, this time with sparks. The sign of concealment failing. “Holy mother!” the person recording yelled. “Look at this!”

  I was. The picture was incredible, the camera phone expensive. The operator a good shot. I could make out with perfect clarity the doors bursting open and a horde of demons piling into the street.

  It was a testament to the videographer’s modern priorities that they didn’t run away or hide. They screamed and swore but kept recording, even when one of the slavering demons spotted the human holding a funny metal rectangle. It opened its crocodilian jaws and got ready to pounce.

  “Jesus, is this person dead?” I said. I looked around the underside of the phone for blood.

  “You’re going to miss the best part!” Yunie hissed. She turned it back over.

  “Stop right there!” a very familiar voice said in the recording. The camera panned to the side, catching a blob of light before focusing on a very familiar face. Yunie’s.

  In the video, my friend rode a majestic white horse. The stallion had antlers and armor encasing its flanks. I recognized the proud, strong shine in its eyes. It was Ao Guang.

  I remembered my Journey to the West. Dragons could turn into horses. The Guardian of the Eastern Sea had transformed into a mount for my friend.

  He reared up on two feet and neighed ferociously. Yunie stayed in perfect control. She looked like a Valkyrie, come to collect the souls of the fallen.

  “Wow,” she said, examining the yaoguai from her perch atop the dragon horse. “You—you are an eclectic-looking bunch, aren’t you?”

  She pointed at a feathered, raptor-y one in the front. “Are you like a dinosaur? Are demons allowed to come in dinosaur? How does that work, paleontologically speaking?”

  The yaoguai went mad, half at her flippancy and half from her spiritual presence. I’d been told repeatedly that my friend was the type of person that yaoguai liked to eat best, but it was startling and horrifying to see the effect Yunie had on them. Drool went flying. Teeth snapped together. They rushed at her and Ao Guang with such hunger that I had to look up at the Yunie next to me to assure myself she’d survived.

  Yunie in the recording faced the demon charge with poise. She reached into a bejeweled saddlebag and pulled out a scroll. With only a few feet left to go before they reached her, she unfurled it.

  A wash of light burst forth from the scroll’s contents. The yaoguai recoiled, spitting and screaming like vampires in the sun.

  “All right, listen up, assholes!” she yelled. “My name is Eugenia Park, and I bear the seal of my friend Eugenia Lo Pei-Yi, the Divine Guardian of California! I carry her mandate, which demands and compels your obedience!”

  I could make out writing on the scroll. Long, flowing classical strokes that glowed in amber. The characters were steeped in Guanyin’s magic. And on the bottom, shining white-hot like cigarette burns, were my chop seals.

  Yunie was holding the scroll I’d stamped before I left. Guanyin had done a bit of reverse-forgery and laid out the terms of the truce I’d negotiated with Tiny on the blank paper, sealing the whole deal with powerful magic. She must have given the contract to Yunie during that brief period where she’d disappeared to check the Earth end of Ao Guang’s rift.

  “You will get back inside, calm down, and stay there until further notice!” Video Yunie roared. She was really in her element. “The Shouhushen has given her word that you will be cared for so long as you follow her rules! Disobey and you’ll be in for a world of hurt!”

  My friend sounded so confident and authoritative that I doubted she needed the protection of the scroll. The demons’ momentum had been broken. They were confused as hell.

  “I know my friend and what she’s capable of,” Yunie said. “Ask yourselves if you want to make her angry. Ask yourselves if you want to make me angry.”

  If there were two things yaoguai respected, it was fearlessness and the threat of force. Both of which Yunie had provided in spades. They gave up. The yaoguai turned around and shuffled back into the gym. Yunie watched them and nodded in satisfaction, scratching Ao Guang’s horse ears as she maintained her vigil.

  “Wow,” the person recording muttered.

  The noise caught Yunie’s attention. She wheeled Ao Guang around. “You!” she yelled, pointing straight at the camera. She spurred her mount into a furious charge across the street.

  “Oh shi—” was the last sound the person made before they dropped their phone and the video cut out.

  ▪ ▪ ▪

  “So yeah,” Yunie said. She sounded a little apologetic.

  “What in Heaven’s name did I just watch?” Quentin said. He didn’t have the benefit of sound. Or being there when the video was taken.

  “While you guys were on your voyage to Mordor or whatever, Guanyin came to me and asked if I could act as your last line of defense,” Yunie explained. “She told me exactly what to do and when to do it in case you didn’t come back right away. Wrote me out a checklist of trouble signs and emergency contacts and everything. I just followed her instructions to the letter.”

  I said nothing.

  Yunie glanced at Quentin and back at me, nervous. “Ao Guang and his crew helped out a lot. They managed to sneak most of the new arrivals into your forest preserve. He was really glad to be lending a hand, too. He kept screaming ‘For the Shouhushen!’ and ‘As the Shouhushen wills it!’ Guy’s a little intense for someone his age.”

  It was like she was speaking a third language. A tongue that was unfamiliar, coming from her.

  “The rest I checked up on, gave them human food, that sort of thing,” she said. “There were a few mishaps, but nothing a ton of forget and conceal spells couldn’t fix. And I stole that guy’s phone, I guess. I look a lot better in that video because it was the third time that night I gave that speech. The first time I did it I was so scared I nearly crapped myself.”

  When I still remained silent, she got truly worried.

  “Genie, I’m sorry I went behind your back,” she said. “Guanyin told me you’d flip if you found out I was helping with magic stuff. She said it was like your biggest fear, so we kept it secret. You’re not mad at me, are you? Say something. Please.”

  “I didn’t know you could ride a horse,” I murmured.

  She squinted at me and then looked away in embarrassment. “I learned at summer camp. I never told you because I was afraid you’d think I was a snob.”

  That was what set me over the edge. I burst into fresh, heaving sobs and hugged Yunie to my chest. My tears ran down my face and into her hair.

  They would always look out for me to the very end. Guanyin and Yunie. My two sisters. My Heaven and Earth.

  Yun
ie squeezed me back, not caring about the scene I was making. “Apparently the magic wouldn’t have worked if you weren’t a really good Shouhushen,” she said. “And the reason I was able to channel your authority was because I’m the reincarnation of some powerful soul. At least that’s what Guanyin told me.”

  She patted my head. “Where is Guanyin, anyway?”

  29

  We trod up the stairs to Ji-Hyun’s apartment in silence, a mourning procession. Yunie had taken the news about Guanyin much worse than I thought she would. I remembered reading a psychology article saying that you tended to like someone more after doing them a favor, and my friend had done the goddess and me the mother of all solids.

  Ji-Hyun met us at the door. “Your grandpa from the country is here,” she said to me. “He mentioned something about losing a family member. I’m sorry.”

  The older girl slipped into the hallway. “I’ll give you guys some privacy.”

  “Ji-Hyun, wait.” Tossing aside any worries about whether we were close enough yet, I leaned in and wrapped up Yunie’s older cousin in a hug. “Thank you,” I said. “For everything.”

  Ji-Hyun grunted in the affirmative. “Any time, Stretch.”

  After she left, the three of us filed in. An amazing sight waited for us. The apartment was clean. Clean-er. Ish. The booze refuse had been scraped off a dining table. Around it, a perimeter of mopped floor. The space that wasn’t completely vile looked like a castle holding out in a siege.

  The Great White Planet sat at the table. He held a cup of steaming tea between his hands. A consummate host, Ji-Hyun.

  On some level I expected him. My wizard headmaster needed to come and explain to me what on god’s green earth had happened. “So you’re going around showing yourself to humans now?” I said.

  The old man shrugged. “Does it matter? I see you’ve opened your circle as well.” He tilted his head at Yunie.

  “She gets the biggest pass in the history of all passes,” I said. “You ought to make her an honorary goddess for what she’s done.”