Dark Serpent

He dropped his voice. ‘Well, you do now. I don’t have time to come to every charity event. You can represent the House in my place. You’re Princess of the House, it’s part of your duties.’

  ‘Emma …’ Simone pleaded.

  ‘About time you started taking part of the royal workload,’ I said.

  ‘Come on, Simone, don’t look like that,’ Bridget said. She took her arm to lead her away. ‘Making a career out of attending events like this isn’t so bad — there are plenty of lovely young men here for you to meet. Have you met my son Phillip?’

  ‘Isn’t he, like, fifteen?’ Simone said.

  ‘Nearly sixteen,’ Bridget said, and they were gone in the crush.

  ‘That was totally shameless,’ David said with amusement, ‘and I apologise on behalf of my wife.’

  ‘No need,’ John said. ‘I’m sure he’s a delightful young man.’ He moved closer to David, more serious. ‘I understand that you’ve been to my Mountain. The real one.’

  ‘I knew for a couple of years already, but it didn’t really hit home until we actually saw it,’ David said. He studied John carefully. ‘I could say the idea of you being a god is hard to take, but look at you. You look at least seventy.’

  ‘I’m just me,’ John said. He took a couple of mineral waters from a passing tray and handed one to me. ‘It’s advantageous for us to have liaisons on the Earthly, and I’m pleased that you’ll be one of them. It’s always been good to work with you.’

  David bowed slightly. ‘I thank you, Majesty.’

  ‘I’m a Highness,’ John said, amused. ‘The Jade Emperor’s His Majesty.’

  David bowed again, sharing the amusement. ‘Highness.’ He turned to me. ‘And you are a —’ He choked on the word, tried again and stopped, confused.

  ‘I’m being punished by the Jade Emperor,’ I said. ‘Nobody can use any sort of title except “Miss” when they talk to me.’

  ‘And that’s stopping me?’ David said.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘What did you do, if you don’t mind me asking? It must have been serious.’

  John and I shared a quick glance and he nodded slightly.

  I sighed. ‘It’s a long story.’

  I was about to continue when we were approached by a demon in human form. John stiffened; this was a really big one.

  ‘David, move away and stay away,’ John said as the demon drew nearer.

  ‘What?’ David said.

  ‘Go!’ I said, nudging him.

  He had the sense to walk away quickly but casually, although I could tell he was obviously more than a little scared. As the demon drew closer, it became clear that it was the King himself. He was in a human form slightly older than usual, mid-forties, and was shorter than me, slim and elegant. He walked gracefully towards us wearing an expensive made-to-measure maroon suit that complemented the dark red highlights in his gleaming shoulder-length hair.

  He bowed slightly to John. ‘Xuan Tian.’

  John bowed back. ‘Wong Mo.’

  The King turned to peruse the crowd. ‘Lovely group tonight, eh? Should raise quite a sum for the poor orphans.’ He saw the look on my face. ‘How big a donation would it take for you to come be with me for a while?’

  I answered without hesitation. ‘Let the Serpent go and swear that you won’t harm him or Simone and I’m yours.’

  ‘Oh, that’s tempting. I might just say yes to that.’

  ‘No!’ John said, glancing wide-eyed from the King to me.

  The Demon King grinned. ‘Just kidding, Ah Wu, it would take much more than that to free my favourite zoo exhibit.’ He eyed me appraisingly. ‘Are you seriously open to negotiation?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘No, Emma!’ John said loudly.

  ‘You shut up,’ the King said. ‘This is between the lady and myself.’ He turned back to me. ‘Do you still have my phone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Hold on to it. I’ll be in touch.’

  He disappeared and nobody around seemed to notice.

  John dropped his voice, looking around to ensure he wasn’t heard. ‘I forbid you from dealing with him. He already has me. I don’t want him taking you —’

  ‘I’m sorry, you what?’ I said sharply.

  He closed his mouth with a snap and took a deep breath. ‘Don’t deal with him; you don’t need to. He won’t kill my Serpent, he has to keep it alive. I can handle what he’s doing to me.’ He moved closer to me. ‘Trust me. We’ll find a way to pull the Serpent out without sacrificing anything. We can do this.’

  ‘I know. Same as last time: it’s a last resort if there are no other options. It won’t happen.’

  He ran his hand over his forehead and took a deep breath. ‘Last time it did happen.’

  ‘This time it won’t.’

  ‘Then you don’t need to negotiate with him.’

  ‘Trying to work something out will keep him occupied,’ I said. ‘Here comes David again. Game faces.’

  ‘Game faces? What does that mean?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  ‘Who the hell was that?’ David asked roughly under his breath. ‘He scared the living daylights out of me.’

  ‘That was Kitty Kwok,’ I said.

  He stared at me.

  ‘Remember her? Ran a string of kindergartens? Had some serious Triad connections until the police shut it all down?’

  ‘I do, she was a nasty piece of work. But how could that man …’ He inhaled sharply. ‘She was a demon?’

  ‘That was the King of all the Demons,’ John said.

  ‘No way. Wait … Kitty Kwok was the Demon King? I sent my boys to one of her kindergartens. What if he did something to them?’

  ‘He took blood and tissue samples from them, but they won’t remember it,’ I said. ‘He used the children as donors to build all sorts of very nasty things out of demon essence. But he wouldn’t have hurt them otherwise.’

  David’s face went very grim. ‘I hope you track him down and do what needs to be done, John.’

  ‘It is possible that things will be worse before they are better,’ John said, looking around. He focused back on David. ‘I may have some of my people pay you a visit later and start a closer Earthly liaison.’

  David blanched. ‘We’re not in any danger here, are we?’

  ‘I protect you. I protect all of you,’ John said. ‘But while I was gone, the King worked hard to make himself very strong.’

  ‘Stronger than you?’ David said.

  ‘I am the force of yin, the essence of weak and soft,’ John said. ‘Yes, he is stronger than me. But I am the darkness that swallows all.’

  Threads of yin appeared in John’s hair and the air around him turned cold. David took a step back.

  ‘John, call that yin in,’ I said softly.

  The yin disappeared and John was a harmless old man again. He grinned ruefully. ‘Sorry. The presence of the King has made me a little uneasy.’

  ‘You protect all of us? Exactly how big a threat are they?’

  John didn’t reply.

  I answered for him. ‘The truth is that they would like to enslave all of humanity and conquer the Earth. Then they’d use us as an army and make a try for Heaven.’

  ‘You’re kidding,’ David said.

  ‘He will never succeed as long as I am here to protect you,’ John said. ‘I drove the demons off the face of the Earth once before, and if I must I will not hesitate to do it again.’ He sighed. ‘Ah, little Emma, always bringing things out into the open when there’s absolutely no need. You should not have told him that.’

  ‘Call me little again, old man, and I’ll call you out.’

  ‘Try me, little one. Your skills are as lacking as your ability to keep your silence.’

  ‘I’ll say what I want when I want, and when we get home it’s you and me, your choice of weapons.’

  ‘Deal.’

  ‘I appreciate the truth about the situation,’ David said. ‘And you two are standing her
e joking about it.’

  ‘Not a word of jest from either of us,’ John said.

  ‘Deadly serious,’ I said.

  ‘You challenge him to duels?’

  ‘All the time.’

  The bell rang for the movie to start.

  ‘We’re up,’ David said. He shook John’s hand, then kissed me on the cheek. ‘Talk to you later, okay? I like the idea of being a liaison for you; it would make my life way more interesting.’

  ‘You are a complete idiot,’ John said with wonder.

  ‘I know,’ David said, spreading his hands. ‘Isn’t it great?’

  John shook his head and clapped David on the shoulder. ‘Actually, yes it is. I’ll have our PR director contact you; she can set up the liaison for us. She’s around here somewhere, probably collecting business cards and … what’s the word?’

  ‘Schmoozing,’ I said.

  ‘That’s it.’

  ‘A god with a PR director,’ David said.

  ‘It was her idea, and she’s doing a great job,’ I said. ‘You may have seen the story about the local kids killed in the earthquake in China? That was us.’

  ‘Children were killed?’ David said, wide-eyed.

  ‘By kids she means young adults, students of the Mountain,’ John said. ‘Jade will explain.’

  ‘Your students die?’

  ‘Not if I can help it, but they’re an army, and it’s part of what they do,’ John said. ‘There’s Bridget and Simone, let’s go in.’

  14

  The movie was a romantic comedy. Simone and Jade seemed to enjoy it, but John and I dozed on each other’s shoulder, bored to death.

  About halfway through the film, John had a massive coughing fit, wheezing as if he couldn’t breathe. People around us asked about him, concerned. He pulled himself out of his seat, still coughing, and headed for the door. Once we were all in the lobby, he raced to the bar and I ordered a glass of water for him. It seemed to settle when he had something to drink. As soon as the bartender had moved away, John stopped wheezing and put the glass down.

  ‘Thanks, Daddy,’ Simone said, grabbing his arm and leaning into him. ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘I was enjoying it,’ Jade said, disappointed.

  ‘Oh, come on, Jade, it was boring,’ Simone said. She saw my face. ‘Sorry, Emma, I didn’t think you’d hear me talking over the coughing.’ She nudged John. ‘Let’s go buy some lanterns up at the market.’

  My phone went off with a text message. It was from David. Is he all right?

  I replied. He’s fine, it was a sham. They were bored.

  The phone dinged again. Damn, should have told us, we could have escaped with you.

  Catch you later, we’ll be in touch, I replied.

  Gotcha.

  ‘David wanted to come with us,’ I said.

  ‘Half the cinema wanted to come with us,’ Simone said. ‘Haven’t we seen that plot in another movie not long ago?’

  ‘It’s a good story!’ Jade said. ‘And that actor is so cute.’

  ‘You can go back in if you like,’ I said.

  ‘No, I want to come to the market with you,’ Jade said. ‘I’ll come back with Winnie to see it another time.’

  ‘You okay, Daddy?’ Simone said. ‘You can go young again now.’

  ‘Wait until we’re further away,’ John said. ‘How about we leave the car here and walk down to the market? It’s not far and there’s no parking down there.’

  We walked the couple of kilometres along the main road, which was still busy with pedestrians and shoppers even though it was late. Autumn had started, but the weather was still warm and humid with no hint of the coolness to come. The air was thick with exhaust fumes from the diesel taxis and trucks; many of them used cheap contaminated fuel from across the border.

  John grew younger as we approached the market, gradually changing his Western suit to a pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt, but leaving his hair long and in a topknot.

  We reached the market behind the hospital: a maze of narrow streets, with shopfronts on either side selling brightly coloured fruit and vegetables that shone under the harsh hanging bulbs with their transparent red plastic shades. Plastic buckets and basins hung from hooks on the awning of a kitchenware shop, and fresh fish, still flapping, lay on the ice-covered foam trays of a fishmonger.

  We passed a butcher, where glistening arms hung from the vicious hooks, the hands dangling, their fingernails blackened with dried blood. The world lurched around me and I gripped John’s arm to hold me up.

  He looked down at me, concerned. ‘Are you all right? Did you see something?’

  Simone came around her father to stand next to me and Jade moved to cover our backs.

  ‘You look like you saw a ghost, Emma.’ Simone glanced around. ‘I don’t see anything.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’ I released John’s arm and straightened; I wouldn’t let this spoil our evening. I took deep breaths and didn’t look at the butcher stall. ‘I’m fine.’

  You will tell me later, John said.

  I nodded.

  We worked our way around a group of people in front of a shop that sold medicinal soup. A metre-and-a-half tall urn and ceramic bowls stood on a table; each bowl had a plastic cover. Patrons paid for the bowl, drank the bitter, medicinal soup to ward off chills, then returned the bowl to be washed. A sugar-cane drink vendor nearby was grinding cane stalks in his machine to make the hot juice, and Jade quickly pounced on a paper cup. She sipped the sweet juice with pleasure as we walked.

  Simone stopped us at a toy shop that was swathed in lanterns, hundreds of them, hanging from the awning in front of the shop as well as stands set up around the entrance. Most were made of inflatable plastic, with a small electric light at the top illuminating them from inside, and a cord leading from the globe to a battery-powered handle that sometimes played a tinny, annoying tune. Others were traditional style: bamboo frames covered in cellophane with simple designs of good-luck fish and animals. Boxes of cheap red candles to go inside the traditional lanterns were stacked around the front door, with a government sign pasted above them warning people about the illegality of burning wax. During the Mid-Autumn Festival, people would stand a whole box of candles in a bunch on the ground and light them all at once so the wax itself caught alight, causing a mini fireball that left a huge molten blob of solidified wax on the ground that was impossible to clean away.

  Simone stopped perusing the lanterns and moved her head from side to side. ‘Heads up, demons just up the street,’ she said. She turned to look. ‘The lolis?’

  ‘They’re ours,’ I said. ‘They live in our building in Spring Garden Lane.’

  ‘Oh,’ John said, understanding.

  ‘I’ve never seen them before; I didn’t even know we owned a building there,’ Simone said. ‘They are so cute! I wish I had the nerve to dress up like that. Ha! They’re stopping traffic.’

  The demons were two girls in their late teens or early twenties, both wearing knee-length dresses with so many petticoats underneath that they looked like Little Bo Peep. One had on a bright pink curled wig, and her dress was cream with small strawberries all over it and a multitude of pink petticoats underneath. The look was finished off with a long hot pink pair of Doc Martens boots. The other loli was full-on goth: she wore a black wig with a tiny top hat perched on top of it, a black lacy ruffled dress with black lacy petticoats, thigh-high purple and black stockings and chunky platform mary janes.

  The lolis really had stopped traffic. The narrow street allowed parking on one side and was blanketed with cars, leaving only one lane for the taxis and trucks to creep through. An old woman had stopped to berate the lolis; she was wagging her finger at them, unaware that she was blocking a taxi from passing by. Eventually one of the lolis pulled her gently to the side and waved to the taxi driver, who cheerfully waved back.

  The pink loli saw us and hesitated, then she nodded and both of them turned and smartly walked away from us, their full sk
irts swinging.

  ‘Oh, I wanted to say hello, and ask where they bought their dresses,’ Simone said, disappointed.

  John made a show of looking at the lanterns. ‘We should buy some for Amy and Gold’s children, and your children too, Jade.’

  ‘My children are spending the festival with their father, so you don’t need to buy them any,’ Jade said.

  ‘Are you going too?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ Jade said, studying the lanterns.

  ‘It’s a holiday, there’s nothing to stop you from spending the time with the father of your children.’

  She frowned. ‘I wish everybody would stop trying to throw us together. It will never happen and he knows it.’

  ‘What, you and Qing Long?’ Simone said with horrified fascination. ‘How could you even think of having anything with him? He’s so …’ She searched for the words. ‘I don’t know how you can have kids with him in the first place, Jade.’

  Jade raised her eyebrows at me and I shook my head slightly. Simone didn’t know about the Blue Dragon’s true nature; that the self-serving asshole thing was just an act.

  ‘That’s right, Simone, not happening,’ Jade said, turning back to the lanterns. ‘My children don’t need any, but Gold’s little ones are just old enough to understand, and they should enjoy it.’

  ‘What do you think they’d like?’ John pulled one out. ‘That’s boring, it’s just a yellow rectangle with a big face.’

  ‘Spongebob, little Richie loves him, we should get it,’ Simone said.

  ‘The demons are coming back,’ Jade said. Her voice became more urgent. ‘They can’t run in those shoes!’

  She was right, the lolis were tearing down the street towards us, the one in the mary-janes having some difficulty with her platform shoes. We moved into the street to see what was chasing them. The demons reached us and both hid behind me, one on either side. I put my hands on their waists to steady them and they grabbed my shoulders.

  A couple of beautiful tall women in designer suits strolled down the street, pointedly ignoring everyone. The crowd parted around them, people grimacing with discomfort if they got too close. The women stopped when they saw us, and looked the lolis up and down.

  ‘We’ll find you later,’ one of them said. She grinned with menace. ‘You look like strawberry candy.’