The Dragon Warrior

by Katie Zhao

  Ba had drawn a star next to Phoenix, Arizona, with an arrow that connected it to another starred destination somewhere in the Midwest, but the words he’d labeled it with had been smudged so I couldn’t read them. No wonder Alex was stuck, too.

  “Do any of Ba’s anecdotes say anything about what this second destination could be?” I demanded. “Like … I dunno, another Chinatown, maybe?”

  My brother blinked, his eyes focusing on me as though he’d been pulled out of a reverie. “Chinatown … huh. Can’t believe I didn’t think of that! Hold on. I think you’re actually onto something.”

  “What do you mean, actually onto something?”

  Alex snatched the book out of my hands and flipped rapidly through the pages. “Here. It’s the passage that comes after Ba’s accounts of Phoenix. Says … in Chicago’s Chinatown, he held off demons with the help of Chuangmu, the goddess of love, and—” Alex gasped and snatched the book out of my hands.

  “Goddess of what?”

  “The next word is smudged but … I think it says she’s also the goddess of sleep,” he finished, showing me a page full of more characters I couldn’t read. “See? It’s the right number of characters long.”

  “Yeah, of course,” I said, nodding like I had any clue what they said.

  Alex snapped the book shut. “Chuangmu must be the one we’re looking for. Moli! We’re headed to Chicago’s Chinatown! I’ll help you navigate.”

  “If we die there like we almost did in Phoenix, I’ll kill you both,” Moli snarled.

  “That isn’t even possible,” Ren pointed out, removing his earphones.

  “You’re on my list too, buddy.” Moli swung her leg over the side of the chariot, landed in her seat, and yanked on the horses’ reins. “Jià!”

  When we lifted off, I only slightly felt like puking my insides out, a major improvement from the last time we’d ascended. I looked over at Ren to see how he’d take his first chariot-flying experience, but he seemed too distracted by his music and hóng bāo to care. He kept pulling the huge crossbow out of the tiny paper package and then shoving it back in.

  “Magic,” he murmured each time the bow shrunk to fit.

  I fiddled with my pin and tried to forget Ren’s words about his family, his haunted look.

  After a short while, Alex surprised me by reaching over and tapping Ren on the shoulder. “Hey, you want a turn at this while I help Moli?”

  He held up something—his handheld video-game device, which was emitting the pleasant sounds of automated demon shrieks and the squelches of decapitation.

  “You brought a video game along on the biggest quest of the century?” I spluttered.

  Alex flexed his thumbs and grinned. “I can’t let these joints get out of practice.”

  Unbelievable.

  Ren looked down at the screen and then gave Alex a strange look. “How’d you know I play Warfate?”

  “Come on. Every kid plays Warfate.”

  “I don’t play,” I pointed out.

  “Every cool, non-loser-older-sister kid,” he amended.

  “Hey!”

  They both ignored me. Next thing I knew, Ren was sitting next to Alex, taking a turn with his video game.

  Boys. But at least they were getting along now.

  We flew on through the darkening skies, on the lookout for storms or demons. The minutes turned into hours, and the hours turned into days. The four of us took shifts sleeping and directing the horses, although every time something went wrong, we’d have to wake Moli and get her to help. By the second day since we’d left Phoenix, we were definitely in a state of disarray. The chariot floor was littered with empty beef jerky and Choco Pie wrappers, and Moli and her bloodshot eyes looked ready to kill one—or all—of us.

  We were running out of food and energy, and we’d need to stop—and soon.

  “I’m so hungry, I could eat a horse,” Moli cried. The horses before her whinnied in protest, and the chariot tilted from side to side. “Sorry. It’s just an expression.”

  Suddenly, a bolt of lightning crashed down from the sky. It whizzed so close to our chariot that the heat scorched the air and my hair stood on end.

  The horses bucked against Moli’s control, jolting the chariot. “I’ll give you carrots!” she yelled. “Sugar cubes!” More rocking. “Dumplings! Oh, c’mon. Everyone loves dumplings.”

  The chariot dipped, and my stomach swooped.

  Thunder boomed again, so loud and close that it shook me to my core. The chariot veered farther off course.

  Lightning flashed again. The panicked horses bolted. We raced through a misty, muggy patch of gray clouds, emerging drenched and cold at the other end—only to run into a blur of orange and white. A hú lì jīng riding on a cloud.

  The horses neighed and snorted in protest, jerking the chariot so hard I almost fell over the side. Moli screamed. It was all I could do to hang on. Alex let out a yell and slashed his blade through the demon. It disappeared in a wisp of smoke.

  “Did you see that?” Alex shouted, giving me a look full of excitement and pride. “Who’s the freaking man?”

  “Look out, freaking man!” I shouted.

  Alex turned around, just in time for a thundering cloud—an army of hú lì jīng—to shoot toward us.

  “Ǎn ma ne bā mī hōng,” I said, shifting Fenghuang into a spear. But the demons dove downward, the wind from their sudden descent blowing my hair back.

  “You’re not going to escape me!” cried an unfamiliar child’s voice.

  Moli yanked the horses’ reins to the left hard, narrowly avoiding a head-on collision. “Oh great. Don’t these demons ever take a day off?” she shouted.

  But the glowing figure riding toward us wasn’t a demon … and something about her was familiar, but I couldn’t place why. She had two buns tying up half of her long black hair. She wore a red dress with intricate gold designs on it, and a sash of red fabric floated around her arms and waist. Two red hoops circled her ankles, and two fiery golden wheels lay beneath her feet. In one hand, the girl gripped a red javelin with a flaming red tip—an actual flaming tip—and in the other, she held a large hoop.

  The creature she rode looked like something out of a nightmare—or Ye Ye’s book. Had I seen a drawing of it there before? It had the body of a lion, the wingspan of a majestic bird, and the head of a lion crossed with the fangs of a dragon. Instead of ears, one lone antler rested on its head.

  “That creature is a pí xiū,” gasped Alex. “Does that mean this is—?”

  The girl jerked to a stop before slamming into our golden chariot and threw us an annoyed look. “Didn’t expect to find warriors all the way up here. Earth is that way.” She pointed downward. The flames grew higher as the volume of her voice increased. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to chase some—”

  “Wait,” Alex interjected, staring wide-eyed at the fiery girl. “You’re—!”

  “I am Nezha,” she declared. “Third Lotus Prince. Protective deity. He who shields humans from danger with a pí xiū by his side.”

  Of course! An image of the altar and statue back at the Jade Society temple swam before my mind. But that Nezha, with purple skin, looked different from the real one.

  “Oh!” I said. “You’re, uh, wearing a different outfit than your temple statue does.”

  The flames in Nezha’s eyes flared. Thunder boomed again overhead, causing the pí xiū to roar and buck its short, stubby legs impatiently.

  “I like this outfit better,” I added hastily. “It really brings out the … um … fire … in your eyes.”

  Nezha’s face softened, but the flames danced even brighter in his pupils. “Why, thank you! Always nice to meet a fan who can appreciate my destructive sense of fashion. I’d love to talk more, but I’m on an urgent mission to hunt those demons and protect humans like you. Jià!”

  Nezha kicked his boots against the pí xiū and made to swoop past us. He turned the creature back away from the demon.

  �
��Oh, deities,” Ren breathed.

  Behind us stood a male deity with curly black hair, wielding a flaming sword in his right hand. He sat on a huge, ferocious-looking blue lion with sharp claws and teeth, its mouth curled into a snarl.

  Nezha bowed his head toward the other deity, though he didn’t look happy about it. “Nezha, are you causing a ruckus in Heaven again?” boomed the slow and sonorous voice of the deity.

  The boy god straightened. “Wenshu, I’m protecting humans from the hú lì jīng.”

  Wenshu. God of wisdom and enlightenment. And, according to Guanyin, Ye Ye’s new shī fù.

  Alex’s face reflected my own confusion and uncertainty. Should we ask about our grandfather? And Guanyin had mentioned Nezha when she’d visited us in the Jade Society. Did that have something to do with this tension between Nezha and Wenshu?

  “The Golden War is coming,” the god of wisdom declared, thrusting his sword at Nezha. “You need to heed the Jade Emperor and recognize your role on the battlefield. That means stopping all this childish silliness.”

  “Protecting humans from the threat of demons isn’t childish nonsense,” Nezha fired back.

  “Insolence.” Wenshu’s lion pawed at the air and growled. “Most of those miscreants aren’t worth saving.”

  Okay, that seemed a little harsh. Was Ye Ye really fine serving as this Lord Rude’s disciple?

  Nezha’s face reddened. “You’re lucky Guanyin isn’t here. The goddess of mercy wouldn’t be so merciful to you if she heard those words.”

  “Guanyin is a fool,” Wenshu said calmly, “and so are you.”

  “Who’s a fool?” With a gust of wind, another deity arrived on the scene next to Nezha: Guanyin herself. She stood on a large lotus, a flower formed by white petals and a green stem.

  Guanyin and Nezha. Nezha and Guanyin. My head spun as I looked from deity to deity, trying to make the connection. How were these two linked?

  Could we still trust them?

  “Guanyin,” Wenshu sneered. “How unusual for you to be up here instead of fraternizing with those sniveling humans. Do you really think preening in front of them will earn their prayers?”

  Guanyin’s eyes narrowed. “Nezha and I have important business to attend to.”

  “Let me guess. Protecting humans?” growled the god of wisdom. When neither deity responded, he let out a mirthless laugh. “I knew it. Defying the Jade Emperor’s orders. Now, that I can’t allow.”

  “Huh?” I blurted out. My heart hammered when the three gods turned their eyes to me. Wenshu’s flaming sword and lion looked more threatening than ever. “Th-that can’t be right. The Jade Emperor w-would want the gods to protect h-humans.”

  Wenshu’s eyes flashed. “You dare question a god? Go back where you came from, little girl.”

  “Go!” shouted Nezha. “This isn’t your fight.”

  “But—” I protested.

  “But we’re leaving,” Moli announced, her voice an octave higher than usual. “Jià!” The horses jerked us down in their haste to get away. Roars and metal clashing on metal told me they’d begun fighting.

  A sudden blast of wind knocked us off course, and the chariot careened out of control. I screamed as we plummeted toward the ground. We couldn’t die here—our journey had only just begun. And plus, I wanted to die somewhere cool, like Timbuktu or Narnia. Who the heck dies in Nowheresville, USA?

  I didn’t have incense, food, or even a statue of a god. The thought of using Ye Ye’s prayer note crossed my mind, before I remembered I still had something at my disposal— Fenghuang.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, tightened my hold on my spear, and prayed. Whoever hears this prayer, please take us to safety. To Chicago’s Chinatown.

  A low feminine voice, smooth and deep, entered my head.

  As you wish, Heaven Breaker.

  My spear burned white-hot in my palm, and the world around me was consumed by a flash of light.

  CHAPTER

  13

  The light faded, and the chariot landed on solid ground.

  “I am awesome,” Moli said, breaking the shocked silence. “Did you see that? I teleported us to safety. Amazing.”

  For the moment, I didn’t care if Moli took the credit. I was just glad we were all in one piece. My fingers curled around the hóng bāo I had tucked into my jeans, containing Ye Ye’s prayer note. I could’ve used it and saved us a lot of panic, but selfishly, I wanted to save it for later.

  The next time I saw my grandfather might be the last.

  Alex had recovered from the shock of our landing already, though I couldn’t say the same for his hair, which now stood on end like a brown broom. “That—that was—that was so—”

  “Terrifying?” I supplied.

  “No, that was cool,” Alex breathed. “Wenshu versus Guanyin and Nezha.”

  “That’s a dream Warfate matchup,” Moli said. Then she slapped a hand over her mouth.

  “You play Warfate?” Alex asked.

  “No!” Moli said too quickly.

  My brother’s smile faded slightly. “Man, I’d give my right arm to go back and watch that outcome in real life.”

  “If we’d stayed, it would’ve cost you more than that,” I said darkly. Something serious was happening, driving a wedge between the gods. Did it have to do with the demons? Did it have to do with us?

  Ren’s face was almost as white as his hair, and he gasped for breath like he’d just run a marathon. “I should’ve … stayed home …”

  The rain kept pouring down. I shivered, drenched to the bone. The horses trotted down the street, past a red welcome gate and a shadow wall carved with huge dragons.

  We passed by a sign that told us we’d landed in Chicago’s Chinatown. Ren sniffed the evening air. I sniffed, too, and caught whiffs of fried food.

  “Smell any bad guys?” Alex asked anxiously.

  “Yeah. Smells like gym shorts and stinky tofu.”

  “Really?”

  “No.” Ren rolled his eyes. “I’m not a dog. I can’t just smell a bad guy.”

  “I knew that.”

  “Plus, demons smell like stinky tofu and pickle juice,” I pointed out. “If you need a refresher, just get under Alex’s armpit sometime and—” Alex elbowed me in the ribs. “Oof!”

  Ren scanned the Chinatown area as though he expected a demon stampede at any moment. I thought of Nezha’s and Guanyin’s words, how they’d been determined to get down to the Earth to protect the humans from demons. Had they been headed here?

  “Chicago’s Chinatown is supposed to be one of the biggest in the country,” Alex said, flipping through his notebook again and using one arm to shield the pages from rain. “Theoretically, I think that means it would attract tons of demons, too.”

  I swallowed. “Awesome.”

  “Ba spent weeks defending the people from demons here. He recommended pages of restaurants. And Chuangmu, the goddess who owes him a favor, supposedly lives here. The goddess who brings sleep, from the riddle.”

  “So where is … everyone?” Moli asked.

  Forget goddesses. There weren’t even any people in this Chinatown. A large parking lot sprawled under suspended train tracks, empty except for a few cars. The bright-red, scattered remains of firecrackers littered the streets, along with paper lanterns that had fallen from roofs. I saw a green tiled wall at the entrance with dragons carved onto it, and a huge mural with portraits of people—Chinese immigrants, maybe. I gawked at the mural as we passed by. There was so much history in this Chinatown, and it was too bad I didn’t have enough time to actually learn about it.

  If we didn’t get a move on, there wouldn’t be a Chinatown—or any history—left to admire, I reminded myself. Shaking my head, I turned away.

  Restaurants, grocery stores, and Asian barber shops lined the streets, but with hardly any customers inside them. The few adults out practically jogged down the sidewalk as though running away from an invisible pursuant. Maybe the wind. Maybe something more sinister
.

  I wasn’t sure if I was just being paranoid or not, but I couldn’t shake the sense that someone—or something—was following us. Only the near-empty street lay behind me.

  “There’s got to be demons here,” said Alex. “Ren. Smell anything?”

  “Like I said, I can’t just—” Ren’s nose wrinkled. He lifted it up into the air, frowning. “Huh. I smell stinky tofu and … pickle juice.”

  “Ha! What did I tell you? Demons,” Alex said.

  “Or someone’s lunch,” I pointed out.

  Alex shook his head. “Can’t be. Nobody actually eats stinky tofu.”

  “Hey, I do,” I said indignantly. “And I like it!”

  I wanted to urge the people on the streets to go home. But I couldn’t exactly tell them there were demons running around. We could only wait out the demons and finish them off ourselves.

  My heart raced as I imagined another battle between us and some ugly, fierce demons. But I couldn’t back down. Ye Ye or Ba wouldn’t have, either.

  The chariot came to a stop in front of a store named Meng’s Market.

  Moli wiped long strands of wet hair out of her face. “The horses are exhausted. I’m starving, wet, and miserable, and you three look like drowned rats and smell even worse. We’re going inside this store to get away from the rain, stock up on food, and figure out where to find this goddess.”

  “Did Zhao Fu rest his chariot when he pulled King Mu to the Kunlun Mountains in Heaven?” Alex asked.

  Wrong question.

  “No, he didn’t,” said Moli “But you’re not King Mu. You’re some geeky—some geeky—” She bit her lip and turned red, as though searching for a bad enough name to call my brother. “Book-obsessed, sniveling weakling.”

  “Hey,” Alex protested.

  “And I’m not Zhao Fu. I’m Zhao Moli. I actually care about animal rights, and I say my horses and I need rest, preferably at a spa. If you guys want to go kill demons, be my guest. But don’t you dare drag me into it. Tīng dǒng le ma?”

  Alex conceded with a scowl. “Yeah, I understood you perfectly fine. We’ll hunt demons—tomorrow. If … that’s okay with you, Faryn?”