by Kylie Chan
They pulled into the driveway of the hotel and Alex recognised two of Scarlet’s goons from previous encounters. They loitered just inside the lobby. ‘Shit!’
‘What’s the matter?’
‘How did he know where I was staying?’
‘This Scarlet fellow?’ Welby asked.
Alex gestured to the hotel. ‘Two of his men are in there. Maybe more I can’t see.’
Welby slowed the car to a crawl. ‘He’s not playing games, is he?’
‘No.’
‘You can stay at my place,’ Welby said. ‘I have a flat here in Sydney.’
Alex stared through the tall, plate-glass windows, his brow furrowed. ‘My stuff is in my room, my car parked underneath.’
‘I daresay they’ve got that covered. He seems to have some influence.’
‘Drive into the car park. There’s not much in my room, I was only going to be here overnight. Fuck it. I’ll drive myself home now and sort things out tomorrow.’
Welby nodded and headed for the garage doors. He used Alex’s room key to access the basement car park and drove down the winding concrete path. As they reached the second level, Alex cursed when he saw his car at the other end, the tyres slashed, lights and windows smashed, ugly scratches scarring every surface. Two men in suits stood nearby.
Alex slipped out of his seatbelt and dropped into the footwell, curling up out of sight. ‘Keep driving,’ he hissed.
Welby said nothing. He reached back and pulled a jacket off the back seat and dropped it over Alex. From under its edge Alex watched his face, impassive as he drove by. At the end he turned and the car began travelling up, spiralling back towards street level. ‘We’re clear,’ the old man said.
Alex sat up into his seat. ‘My car! What the hell is wrong with these people?’
‘You must be costing this Scarlet a lot of money. He’s taking things very seriously.’
‘Maybe you setting his man on fire hasn’t helped!’
Welby looked contrite. ‘I’m sorry. I was trying to save you.’
Alex sighed. ‘I know, I’m sorry. It’s not your fault.’
‘You want to go to my flat while you decide what to do?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’ Alex’s fury boiled deep in his gut. ‘Thanks,’ he said through gritted teeth.
The flat was stylish. ‘Can’t be cheap to keep a place in Double Bay,’ Alex said.
Welby closed the door, dropped his keys into a bowl on a mahogany bookshelf. ‘I’m very fortunate when it comes to money. Old family fortunes and all that.’
‘How long have you lived here?’
‘Oh, I don’t live here. I have a few places around the world. I tend to travel a lot. People pay good money to lease places like this for a few days or a week at a time and it gives me somewhere readily available when I need it. They pretty much pay for themselves.’
Alex made a noise of derision. ‘If you have the money to get them in the first place.’
‘Well, yes. But let’s not talk about money. It’s an ugly subject.’
‘Fair enough.’
Welby seemed uncomfortable. Alex let him wallow in it. Given how strange this evening had been already and how freaked out he was by it, he certainly wasn’t about to make things easy for this weirdo. He realised on some level he wasn’t being fair to Welby, but nothing seemed very fair right now.
Welby cleared his throat nervously. ‘Listen, Alex, I am sorry. I’m aware this whole turn of events must be incredibly unsettling.’
‘You could say that.’
‘What do you plan to do?’
‘It’s late and I’m tired. If you don’t mind me crashing here, I’ll make some calls in the morning. I’ve had enough for now.’
‘Not a problem. And please, consider my offer to come to London. I mean it when I say you have much to gain from this. Knowledge is the most valuable thing in the world and I can give you a lot of it.’
Alex made a wry expression. ‘Knowledge can be a dangerous thing.’
‘Of course. I’m going to go to bed now, leave you to think and have some space. That door leads to the guest bedroom. Make yourself at home.’
‘All right then.’
Welby pointed to the pocket of Alex’s olive-green combat surplus jacket. ‘Have a look at that grimoire before you go to sleep. Read about the elements.’
‘Maybe I will.’
‘Good. Night then.’
Welby turned and strode across the room, disappearing behind a dark oak door. Alex slumped down on the soft leather sofa. A remote sat on the coffee table and he reached for it, flicked on the oversize television. A few channel skips found a mindless late night American chat show. He watched vacuous Hollywood celebrities trying to convince an equally vacuous audience they really did have causes they believed in. Empty programming that gave him something to stare at while his mind ticked over.
This situation had become serious, but there was nothing to be done right now. Some calls would hopefully start to put things right. Perhaps he would have to avoid Sydney for a while. There were plenty of other venues. It pissed him off that Scarlet was making his life difficult.
His thoughts drifted back to Welby’s water trick in the car, the uncanny, beautiful moving sculpture the old man had conjured. It was mind-blowing. Something seemingly simple that obviously wasn’t stage trickery.
A new part of him had woken up. His ability seemed so much more than he had ever imagined. And the fact he knew, absolutely, positively knew, that he had felt people practising magic before, weighed heavily on his mind. He hadn’t recognised it for what it was. What else did the world have to offer? What else had been concealed under this patina of normality? He remembered his father, sitting with him in a sunny garden. It had been mid-summer, hot and bright. He had been barely in school. This world is an amazing place, son, full of fascinating things. Take a moment once in a while to look around and take it all in. His father spoke a deeper truth than either of them could have realised at the time. The familiar old rock in his gut grew heavy, as it always did when he thought about his parents. It brought with it the usual melancholy and cold rage.
He pulled his leatherbound book from the pocket of his jacket. Welby was certainly trying to buy his favour. For a long time he held it, watched the drift of magesign around it, gently swirling and twisting, mesmerising. He realised there had been times in the past when he’d seen magesign, only he’d had no idea what it was. And not knowing meant he hadn’t really seen it properly, hadn’t focused on it. The thought made him uncomfortable, made him feel like a fool. Perhaps the world was peppered with people laughing at folks like him, Look at the blind idiots, stumbling through life. But he wasn’t blind any more. A veil had lifted. Now he planned to spend every minute with his eyes wide open.
He turned to the first page and began to read. It took a moment for the words to become clear, like adjusting a pair of binoculars until the image sharpened, but once through it stayed. He read it as easily as a newspaper. It described the nature of the elemental forces in the world, the physical and magical properties of water, air, fire and earth. It talked of their personalities and how they could be manipulated, conjured, controlled with the fifth element of will. Magic.
He read for a long time until his eyelids grew heavy and he began to blink long and slow. He was keen to read on, but his tiredness outgunned his resolve. The knowledge seemed to settle deep in his brain, more than words, mere information. He realised the book contained more than the script on the pages. It imparted magic directly to the reader. ‘Fuck me,’ he breathed.
This is an extract from Bound by Alan Baxter, first published by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia. Copyright © Alan Baxter 2014.
About the Author
In 1985 Kylie Chan married a Hong Kong national in a traditional Chinese wedding ceremony. She lived in the Chinese community in Australia for eight years and in Hong Kong for ten years and now lives in Brisbane. Kylie has studied Kung Fu (Wing Chun and Sou
thern Chow Clan styles) as well as Tai Chi and is a senior belt in both forms. She has also made an intensive study of Buddhist and Taoist philosophy and has brought all of these together into her storytelling.
Voyager has published her Dark Heavens and Journey to Wudang series.
Other Books by Kylie Chan
DARK HEAVENS
White Tiger (1)
Red Phoenix (2)
Blue Dragon (3)
JOURNEY TO WUDANG
Earth to Hell (1)
Hell to Heaven (2)
Heaven to Wudang (3)
CELESTIAL BATTLE
Dark Serpent (1)
Demon Child (2)
Copyright
HARPERVoyager
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers
First published in Australia in 2014
This edition published in 2014
by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited
ABN 36 009 913 517
harpercollins.com.au
Copyright © Kylie Chan 2014
The right of Kylie Chan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000.
This work is copyright.
Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
HarperCollinsPublishers
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National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication data:
Chan, Kylie, 1964-
Demon child / Kylie Chan.
ISBN: 978 0 7322 9441 0 (pbk.)
ISBN: 978 0 7304 9880 3 (epub)
Series: Celestial battle; Book 2
Speculative fiction.
Demonology – Fiction.
A823.4
Cover design by Darren Holt, HarperCollins Design Studio
Cover images by shutterstock.com
Author photograph by Adam Hauldren