by Kylie Chan
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.
‘Stay back,’ the Shen said to us without turning away from the young European. ‘Leave now. I will protect you.’
The older man put one hand out. ‘There’s nothing to protect anybody against. My son won’t hurt you. Please, whatever you are, just let us go.’
‘I don’t want any trouble,’ the younger man said. ‘I won’t hurt anyone, I promise.’
I stepped forward to stand next to the Shen. ‘Stand down,’ I said without looking at him. ‘I’m Emma Donahoe, Regent of the Northern Heavens, First Heavenly General. This is Princess Simone Chen and Lord Leo Alexander. We’ll handle this demon, you don’t need to destroy it.’
The Shen stared at me. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘I’m not a demon!’ the young man shouted, his face fierce with fury. ‘I’m not … I’m not …’
His father put his hand on the young man’s shoulder and spoke soothingly. ‘Don’t lose it, Tom, deep breaths, you can do it. Hold on, lad, you can’t change here. These people know what you are!’
The Shen and I both stepped back as the skin on the young man’s face disappeared.
‘Snake Mother,’ Leo whispered behind us.
‘Can’t be,’ Simone said. ‘The only male Mother-type is the King himself.’
‘What the hell are you people talking about?’ the Shen said, turning to glare at me again.
I raised both hands. ‘Okay. You.’ I pointed at the older man. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Ben O’Breen,’ he said. He pressed his hand harder into Tom’s shoulder and the young man’s face returned to normal. ‘I’m his father, and he won’t hurt anybody.’
I raised one hand towards the Shen. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Vincent Pang,’ the Shen said. ‘Your name is Emma? You know what I am?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you probably know more about me than I do.’
I turned back to the Europeans. ‘Ben, do you know what your son is?’
‘I know that his mother was something vicious and powerful, and that we had to get away from her before our son turned into something similar,’ Ben said.
‘Was she Chinese or European?’ I said, noticing Tom’s slightly Eurasian features.
‘Chinese,’ Ben said. ‘Do you know what she was? What he is?’ His face filled with hope. ‘Can you help us?’
‘None of them has any idea what they are?’ Simone said, incredulous.
‘Strange as it sounds, I think that’s the case,’ I said. ‘Tom’s half demon. Vincent attacked him because that’s his nature, being what he is.’
‘What am I?’ Vincent said.
‘You’re half Shen, and probably my half-brother,’ Simone said.
He turned to stare at her. ‘You can see what I really am?’ He took a couple of steps back and appeared ready to run.
‘Don’t be ashamed,’ I said quickly. ‘Your father — if you share the same father with her — is the most powerful Shen in the Heavens, second only to the Jade Emperor himself.’
‘All that stuff is real?’ he said.
‘Have you changed to a turtle or snake?’ I said.
He hesitated. Admitting to changing to either was huge; it was understandable that he’d prefer not to share.
‘Do you change, Vincent?’
He nodded once sharply.
‘And you ask me if the Shen are real?’
He sagged against the wall and looked as if he was about to cry. ‘I thought I was an experiment or something. I change into this horrible thing, and I have this urge to kill people like him.’ He bent and put his head in his hands. ‘I’m not a monster at all!’
Simone went to him and pulled him into a fierce hug, and he let go into her shoulder.
I turned back to Ben and Tom. ‘Now, what to do with you two? Tom, when you change, what do you change into?’
‘Can we take this somewhere where we can sit, rather than standing around here talking about it?’ Simone said. She patted Vincent on the back. ‘He’s broken down and he’s heavy.’ She pulled back to look into Vincent’s face. ‘You have a family now, we can help you. Come with us.’
‘Anywhere but the Shang,’ I said.
Leo concentrated. ‘Coffee shop upstairs at the Conrad is empty.’
‘Ask LK Pak to join us, please,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’
CHAPTER 2
We took the glass lift up to the hotel and all entered the coffee shop. The staff were setting out the central display for the lunchtime buffet, moving quietly and with precision. A couple of foreign businessmen sat at a table next to the window, but apart from that the café was deserted.
After some searching through my bag I found a packet of tissues and handed them to Vincent. He took them with a nod and wiped his eyes, then blew his nose.
The waiter took our orders, and when he was gone I leaned on the table.
‘Vincent, your case is simple,’ I said. ‘You’re a lost reptile Shen and we’ll take you in and give you a home. You have a family now.’
‘I already have a family,’ Vincent said. ‘My parents brought me up in a housing estate in Lam Tin.’
‘Both parents?’ Simone said.
‘Of course. When I was about fifteen, I changed. They were … They threw me out, they said I was evil. My father tried to kill me.’
‘A Shen wouldn’t do that,’ Simone said. ‘They’d be proud, not scared. I wonder why your parents reacted like that? Maybe one of them isn’t your real parent?’
‘We’ll find out later. Whatever you are, you’re safe and you have a home now,’ I said. ‘We will look after you.’
He bobbed his head. ‘You’ve given me reason to live.’
‘I hope that’s not true,’ Simone said.
‘I had given up,’ he said. ‘I finally gave in to this horrible urge to hurt people and followed this poor boy and his father in the hope that the boy would end it for me.’
‘Th
at’s our nature, to destroy demons,’ Simone said. ‘You were all lucky that we found you when we did.’
‘Is that what I am?’ Tom said. ‘A demon?’
‘You are something new and different and frankly more than a little scary,’ I said. ‘What do you change into, Tom?’
‘I’ve done a lot of research into it,’ he said. ‘The closest thing I’ve seen is a thing called a lamia: front end of a woman, back end of a snake. I’m something like that — but they’re always female, and I’m not.’
‘You have the top half of a man and the bottom half of a snake, and the human part has no skin?’ I said.
He nodded, his face full of misery.
‘Simone, have a look at Ben, just to be sure that he’s human,’ I said.
Simone touched Ben’s hand and focused on him. He didn’t appear to be concerned by it.
‘Not hurting him, and I’m touching him with shen energy,’ Simone said. ‘He’s completely human.’
She stood and reached for Tom and I raised my hand. ‘Wait until LK gets here. He’s the expert.’
She nodded and sat again.
‘You said your name’s O’Breen?’ I asked Ben. ‘That’s unusual, it sounds like O’Brien.’
‘It’s an ancient form of O’Brien,’ Ben said, obviously something he’d said many times before. ‘It’s spelt differently —’
‘Because it’s an older form and slightly different,’ I finished for him. ‘I have the same issue. My surname’s Donahoe, and I’m always telling people how to spell it because —’
This time it was Ben who finished for me. ‘Because there’s only one letter different.’
‘Freaky,’ Simone said.
‘My dad’s doing our family tree,’ I said. ‘He reckons our family originally came from Wales, though, not Ireland.’
‘Same here,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not Irish, I’m actually Welsh.’
‘Seriously freaky,’ Simone said.
‘Tell me about Tom’s mother,’ I said. ‘She was Chinese, and cruel? What was she like?’
‘I met her when I was here in Hong Kong on business,’ Ben said. ‘About twenty years ago. She was small and sweet and smiled all the time, and I was completely smitten. We married and I took her back to Wales with me, and the minute Tom was born, she changed. She turned into the opposite of what she’d been here; she was manipulative, angry and — there’s no other word for it — she was straight-up evil. I left her after I came home one day to find that she’d stolen the next-door neighbour’s dog, butchered the poor beast on the dining table and was drinking its blood. Tom was with her, she was holding him, and their faces, their hands, were covered in blood…’ He leaned on the table and put his head in his hands. ‘Tom was only two years old. I grabbed him and ran. We went to London, but she found us and nearly stole him back. I ran further — I lived in Singapore for ten years until she found us again, then Kuala Lumpur, then Sydney, then back here. We’ve been on the run ever since. I just pray to God she never finds him because I know that if she does, she’ll change him into something like her.’