by Kylie Chan
He’s right, Emma, the stone said. This is a demon matter. The demons in this nest haven’t attacked anyone as far as you know, and the King is within his rights to claim territory.
‘I’m well aware of that,’ I said.
I proceeded down the black stone ramp, ducked to pass under the floor and crouched until the ceiling of the tunnel was high enough to stand. The walls quickly closed in around me, leading to a narrow, low-ceilinged black stone passage, its sides unfinished and rough.
The King had brought Martin along. He stood behind him, waiting in the tunnel.
Simone hissed under her breath when she saw him. ‘I don’t want him here.’
‘My choice, Princess,’ the King said. ‘You don’t have much say in the matter, I’m afraid, dear.’
‘Don’t call me dear,’ Simone said, and moved to push past the King.
Martin leapt forward, hands out, to block her way. ‘Mei Mei, take care, we don’t know how much damage your touch will do to the King. Please stay back.’
Simone gestured angrily to push Martin away from her. ‘Don’t call me Mei Mei!’ Her eyes flashed black then returned to normal, still full of fury. ‘You are no brother of mine!’
The King’s and Martin’s faces went blank with shock, then Martin recovered and bowed slightly. ‘As you will, Princess. All I ask is that you take care with touching Wong Mo.’
‘Go then,’ Simone said, gesturing down the tunnel. ‘We can’t sense anything up ahead, so you first.’
The King and Martin turned and headed down the tunnel. It was just high enough for us to stand without bending, but the sides were so narrow that we had to squeeze through, the walls brushing against us.
‘I hope nobody’s claustrophobic,’ I said. ‘This is intense.’
I am, the stone said. This is awful.
The black tunnel carried us down and further in for a hundred metres, still not becoming any larger. The silent Disciples moved behind us in single file, with Michael bringing up the rear. As the light behind us receded the tunnel became darker.
‘I can’t see,’ I said. ‘I don’t have any sort of Inner Eye right now. And some of the Disciples are human, they’ll need light too. Simone, can you help?’
A glowing ball of light appeared just above Simone’s left shoulder, floating in the tunnel.
‘It’s cold light, you can touch it,’ she said. ‘Just walk right through it. I’ll leave a trail of them.’
Martin stopped in front of us. ‘There is something here.’
The King inhaled deeply. ‘Smell that, Emma.’
The tunnel was rich with the pungent aroma of spices and warm bread. I breathed deeply, savouring the scent. Even though I’d eaten before I left home, this food-rich fragrance struck something inside me and I felt a deep gnawing hunger that normal food would not satisfy.
Simone inhaled and gagged. ‘God!’
The Disciples made some distressed sounds behind us.
‘Does that smell awful to you?’ I said softly.
‘It’s like a combination of burning tyres and something that’s been dead for a long time,’ Simone said.
‘There is a dead demon here,’ Martin said.
The King wasn’t visible on the other side of Martin in the narrow tunnel. ‘Been dead a while. Don’t tread on it, it’s probably liquefied inside.’ His voice filled with amusement. ‘Can’t stop to eat right now, sorry, Emma.’
‘You are disgusting,’ Simone said, and moved forward. ‘Why didn’t it dissolve into essence?’ She picked her way past the corpse. ‘Ugh.’
The dead demon lay on the floor of the tunnel, an insect-type, about a metre long, looking like a large dead cockroach. It lay on its back with three of its legs curled up, the remaining legs detached and lying further down the tunnel. The delicious smell of bread and spices was coming from it, even stronger now that I was close, and the empty hungry feeling inside me became almost painful. I slapped it down.
‘Any idea why it didn’t dissolve?’ I said.
‘We’ll take it back later and study it,’ Liu said. ‘We’ll need some brave-hearted Disciples to handle that little job.’
‘I claim it,’ the King said. ‘It’s mine.’
‘Damn,’ I said under my breath. He was within his rights to claim any demons we encountered that didn’t attack us.
‘It was a guard,’ Martin said. ‘Here we are. Step carefully, there is a large hole here down to the nest.’
The tunnel led to a round room, about four metres across, made of the same black stone. The floor was nonexistent except for a ledge of about a metre wide around the perimeter of the room. We moved in and stood on the ledge around the central hole.
‘Got it, Liu?’ I said.
‘Yep,’ Liu said. ‘Only two require carrying.’
‘How deep, Simone?’ I said.
‘I can see down about twenty metres,’ Simone said. ‘I can’t see the bottom.’
‘Same here,’ Michael said. ‘I’d like to know what’s blocking our vision.’
‘How far can you see, George?’ I said.
‘About the same,’ the King said. ‘Let’s go, shall we? I’m sure there’s a bottom to this hole eventually.’
I stepped off the ledge and into the darkness. One of Simone’s glowing light balls followed me. The sides of the hole glittered with crystalline fragments that sparkled in the light, and a fresh breeze, again full of the fragrance of mown grass and spring blossoms, blew up from the bottom into my face. This had to be one of the most beautiful places I had ever been; the fragrance, the cool darkness and the sparkling walls all called to me, welcoming me home. I felt that I would never want to leave.
We fell at a steady rate, all together, two of the Disciples guided by Celestials that held their hands.
Did Simon Wong’s nest smell this bad? Simone said into my head.
Tell her no, I said to the stone, not wanting to share that the whole place smelled warm, welcoming, and homely to me.
It’s your demon nature, Emma, the stone said. We need to get this stuff out of you.
I know, I said.
We fell about fifty metres and the floor loomed below us, black rough stone, the same as the walls. We drifted to the bottom.
A single bare fluorescent tube hung on the wall above a square entrance on the side of the hole. As Michael approached the tube, it flickered into life.
The warm bread aroma hit me again; there was another dead demon here. Simone sent the glowing ball into the tunnel and the dead cockroach-type came into view.
‘I can’t sense any demons here,’ Simone said. ‘My vision is still partially blocked though.’
‘Anybody else?’ I said.
‘I think there is something further inside. Some of mine,’ the Demon King said. ‘If you want, I can just tell them all to die.’
‘We always give them a chance to turn first,’ I said. ‘And you swore not to interfere.’
‘That I did,’ the King said. ‘They are all yours.’
‘I haven’t killed a demon in nearly six months. My skills are rusty,’ Michael said. ‘Let’s go.’
The tunnel with the cockroach was larger than the tunnel above, but with the same black stone walls. It was high and wide enough to walk three abreast. We passed openings on either side that led to more corridors to the right and left, each of which appeared to go for about five metres and then turn a corner.
‘Let’s split up,’ Michael said. ‘We can cover the ground faster.’
‘Humph,’ Liu said. ‘You have been spending too much time in the United States watching Hollywood movies, my friend. We will spend some time on tactics later.’
‘Both Simone and I are capable of taking anything we find down here,’ Michael said, indignant. ‘We can each take a group and keep in touch.’
‘Let’s just stick together for now,’ I said. ‘The fact that your vision isn’t clear is a bad sign, and I wouldn’t want us to lose contact.’
‘Ma’am,�
� Michael said.
We slowed as we reached the end of the corridor, about twenty metres from the bottom of the hole. The change in the texture of the air allowed us to feel what we couldn’t see: the room beyond was a huge cavern with a ceiling so high it was invisible. The sides curved away from the corridor, their angle suggesting that they would meet again at the other end of the room fifty or sixty metres away.
Simone gasped softly. ‘A nest cavern.’
‘I can’t sense any Mothers, but there may be other stuff here,’ the Demon King said. ‘I think it’s abandoned.’ He moved to the end of the corridor, stopped and looked around. ‘Nice nest though. Some of my smaller Mothers would like it.’ He turned to me and his maroon eyes glittered. ‘Want to join them?’
We moved forward, a couple of Simone’s glowing lights following us. The cavern had indentations in the floor where the Mothers would tend their eggs. Each indentation was five metres across, and they were ten metres away from each other, a total of five indentations in the whole cavern. The first indentation had a couple of eggs in it, and I approached them.
The eggs were round, sixty centimetres across, and had transparent shells. The demons inside were visible through the milky shells, appearing as small humans. The shells were wrinkled and dull and the demons inside were obviously dead.
The King approached an egg and turned it over. The demon inside remained curled up in the same position as the egg moved.
‘Interesting,’ the King said. ‘This appears to be a copy of Simone.’
Simone moved forward quickly and studied the demon inside the egg. ‘Oh my God,’ she said quietly.
The King summoned a dagger and split the shell open. The contents were like a watery jelly, oozing from it and spreading over the ground. The strong fragrance of jasmine and sweet lemon came from it.
Simone covered her nose and moved back quickly. ‘Did you have to do that?’
‘Dammit, why does everything down here smell like shit?’ Michael said, exasperated.
‘Doesn’t smell bad at all to us demons,’ the King said with pleasure. He grinned at me. ‘Right, Emma?’ He sucked some of the gel off his fingers. ‘Not too bad at all.’ He glanced down at the demon. ‘Now let’s have a look at this.’
He pulled the tiny demon from the shell. It was only forty centimetres tall, a miniature and perfectly formed copy of Simone when she was around twelve years old.
‘It’s so tiny,’ Simone whispered.
‘Interesting,’ the King said. ‘Obviously designed to grow to full size outside the egg. Love to see the Mother they used to make this.’ He rose, wiped his hands on his jeans and looked around the cavern. ‘All gone though — looks like they were tipped off.’ He grinned at Simone. ‘You were very pretty when you were twelve, Simone. You’re even more beautiful now. Wonder if there’s any naked fourteen-year-old Simones around here?’
Simone blanched and I opened my mouth to protest, but Martin interrupted me. ‘There is a dead Mother here,’ he said from further into the cavern. ‘My Lord.’
The dead Mother lay sprawled across the floor of the cavern, stretched out in True Form. Her back end was the usual large black snake tail, but her front end was different: she appeared as an ordinary Chinese human female, naked from the waist up, her pale skin shining eerily in the darkness of the cavern.
‘Oh, now this is interesting,’ the Demon King said, and crouched to study her.
‘Was she in transition to human form?’ I asked.
‘No, this is her True Form all right. Never seen anything like her,’ the Demon King said. ‘I claim.’
‘Dammit!’ Michael said softly behind me.
Something whispered above our heads, the flutter of large wings, and we all quickly stood and looked up.
‘Flyers up there, Emma,’ the King said. ‘We usually keep flyers in the nest ventilation shafts to stop anything from trying to get in. I’d say they’d be pretty hungry by now. They haven’t tried this Mother, she’s too big for them to eat.’ He looked from the Mother to me. ‘Does she smell like food to you?’
Leo’s deep voice drifted across the floor of the nest from the other side. ‘Emma?’
‘Lion,’ Martin gasped, and raced towards the voice, the rest of us trailing him. As we ran there was a clatter of wings above us and the flyers attacked.
I summoned the Murasame and stepped back to face them. The air flashed brilliantly white and gold as Simone used shen and Michael used chi energy in destructive blasts. There were about fifteen of them, appearing like black dragons with glowing red eyes, wings and four legs. They were each about a metre long. One of them swooped down on me, raising its legs to rake my face with its claws, but I sliced it in half with the Destroyer before it could reach me. It disappeared into black feathery streamers; at last we’d found some demons that were behaving as they were supposed to. I moved back quickly to avoid being hit by the demon essence.
The students dealt with a couple of flyers on the floor, one holding the demon down and the other using bare-handed techniques to break its shell with swift punches and make it dissipate. Simone and Michael handled the last couple with energy, and they were all gone.
‘Emma,’ Leo said. I turned and Leo grabbed me, pulling me into a fierce hug. ‘Thank God you’re here. I thought you’d never come.’
I pulled back to see him, grinning like an idiot, then my smile disappeared as I realised what I was seeing. It was Leo, but he was naked and didn’t seem to know it. He looked the same age as he had been when he’d been taken by Kwan Yin, and he was walking and speaking without any impediment.
He raced to Simone and engulfed her in a massive embrace, pulling Michael in to hold him as well. ‘Look at you kids, all grown-up. Damn, but I missed you guys.’
‘Yep, one of mine, Emma,’ the King said with compassion. ‘Demon copy.’
‘He could be the real Leo,’ I said. ‘They could have healed him.’
‘And kept him the same age for eight years?’ the King said. ‘I sincerely doubt it. And I thought that spinal injuries like his were beyond anyone but the Dark Lord’s Serpent.’
‘I can’t tell, Emma,’ Simone said. ‘He seems human to me.’
‘He’s a demon, and I can prove it,’ the King said. ‘He should come with me.’
‘The Hell I’m a demon,’ Leo said. ‘I’m Leo goddamn Alexander from Chicago, and they’ve been holding me here for ages. These kids,’ he gestured towards Simone and Michael, ‘are like my own children, and Emma here is like a sister to me. You’re not taking me. I’m going home with them, to serve them and the Dark Lord. I’m a sworn Retainer of the House of the North.’ He turned to me and became more serious. ‘Is Mr Chen still here, Emma? Is he okay? He still has some time, doesn’t he? Why didn’t he come with you?’
‘Leo, take Emma’s sword,’ the King said.
Leo strode to me, grabbed my sword hand with one hand and attempted to pull the Murasame from it with the other.
‘Don’t try to take it, Leo, it’ll hurt you,’ I said.
‘I don’t have a choice,’ Leo said, his face blank with shock. ‘Give me the sword.’
I pulled my hand away and moved back, but Leo followed me. He made a few quick attempts to grab the sword by the blade, and I moved quickly enough to evade him.
‘Give me the sword!’ Leo said. ‘I’m going to take the blade if you don’t give me the handle!’
I flipped the sword in my hand so that he could take the handle, and he wrenched it from me. He howled with pain, then went silent, panting, holding the blade. He gritted his teeth, but a small sound of pain escaped him.
‘Give me the sword back, Leo,’ I said. ‘It hurts anybody who tries to hold it.’
‘I can’t!’ Leo said. He shook his hand that was holding the blade. ‘Dammit! It hurts!’
‘Kill Simone,’ the King said.
Leo spun and made a lightning-fast swing at Simone’s head. She easily evaded him, stepping out of the way. He swung the sw
ord the other way to take her in the midsection, and she blocked his sword arm with her forearm without difficulty. She took his arm in both hands, twisted, and dropped him onto his back on the floor. Then she slid my sword from his hands, grimaced with pain, and threw it to me.
Leo struggled beneath her and she held him down.
‘Let me go!’ Leo gasped. ‘I need the sword!’
‘Leo, sleep,’ the King said.
Leo flopped unconscious.
‘As I said, one of mine,’ the King said. ‘I’ll take it.’
‘It’s ours,’ I said. ‘It attacked Simone.’
‘Oh, damn, you’re right,’ the King said, chagrined. ‘Shouldn’t have told him to do that, should I? That was dumb of me.’
Martin knelt to study Leo. ‘It doesn’t appear to be a demon to me, my Lord. I see it as human.’
‘I do too,’ Simone said. ‘But the King can control him, so he has to be a demon.’
‘I don’t believe anything to do with you, George,’ I said. ‘There’s a chance that this is the real Leo.’
The King snorted with derision. ‘Look at it. It’s not injured, it hasn’t aged a day, it’s naked in a nest where they were making copies, and it obeys me. That’s four strikes. I’d say three strikes and we have a demon. Don’t take it with you, Emma, it’s probably a construct controlled by whoever held this nest. It’ll turn on you later. Leave it with me; it’s too dangerous.’
‘You’re not having it,’ I said. I turned to Liu. ‘Can you summon some clothes for him? Let’s keep moving and see what else we can find.’
‘Wake up, Leo honey,’ the King said.
Leo grunted and shook his head, then rose from the floor. ‘What happened?’ He saw me and his face split into a huge grin. ‘Emma! Finally! Where have you been? I’ve been stuck down here for ages!’
Liu handed Leo a pair of black cotton pants and a black jacket, the traditional Mountain training uniform. Leo put them on unselfconsciously, not seeming to notice that he had been naked in front of everybody.
‘Whoa, I must have been in a coma or something,’ he said. ‘Is that you, Simone?’ He looked around. ‘Michael? What the hell is happening here? What am I doing here?’