Kylie Chan - Heaven to Wudang

‘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.’