Journey to Wudang

  ‘It looks like a bunch of arm and leg pieces joined together with metal rings,’ I said.

  The staff shared a look.

  ‘It is. Making pieces to fit from scratch takes a couple of months,’ the Tiger said. ‘Putting these together took a couple of days.’

  ‘It has metal ring joints between the soft fabric to allow you to move,’ another scientist said. ‘Whether or not you will actually be able to move in it is another matter.’

  ‘Would you like to try it on, ma’am?’ the first scientist said.

  ‘All right,’ I said.

  ‘We’d appreciate it if you could stretch out full-length on the table. That way we can see if we have enough pieces.’

  ‘What about life support?’ I said.

  ‘That’s an issue we haven’t dealt with yet. We may have to add a hard central core to attach it to.’

  ‘I doubt I’ll be able to move in something like that,’ I said.

  ‘Grow legs,’ the Tiger said.

  I put my chin on the table, then pushed my head forward so I was able to slither up onto it. I stretched out alongside the suit feeling unpleasantly exposed.

  One of the Tiger’s staff pulled out a tape measure and measured me. There was a soft discussion, then someone began to shuffle around in the equipment boxes.

  ‘Need a couple more pieces,’ the Tiger said. ‘Can you make yourself smaller?’

  ‘Not comfortably,’ I said.

  ‘Find any?’ the Tiger called to the woman who was digging around in the boxes.

  ‘Got a couple, they can go on the tail end,’ she called back. She returned with a few more arm pieces. ‘Perfect. Let’s try it for fit without the under suit.’

  They unlatched the pieces and slid them along my body from my tail to my head, locking them together as they went. My body sagged uncomfortably between the rings, but I waited patiently for them to put all the pieces together.

  ‘All the bits except the helmet are in place,’ the Tiger said.

  ‘Raise your head, please, ma’am,’ one of them said.

  I lifted my head, the heavy suit limiting my movement. The rings slid down over my body and clattered together at my tail, leaving me uncovered.

  ‘We need to put the helmet on to make it stay put,’ one of the staff said.

  The Tiger raised one hand to lift me into the air and I glided off the table onto the floor. One staff member held the helmet while the others gently shifted the rings back up towards my head. I helped them as much as I could. When all the rings were back in place, they put the helmet on my head and locked the rings. I was enclosed in fabric, the helmet just millimetres from the end of my snout.

  ‘This is very claustrophobic,’ I said.

  Someone attached a hose to the side of the suit and stale-smelling cool air entered the helmet.

  ‘Try to move,’ the Tiger said.

  The rings and the friction from the fabric made movement possible only with a massive amount of effort. I moved my body from side to side as I normally would, but only every second or third movement gripped the ground enough to push me forward. I managed to cross the room, then stopped to rest, dropping my head and panting.

  ‘Is it that hard?’ one of them said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Well, she won’t be in microgravity so this obviously won’t work,’ the Tiger said. ‘Time for plan B.’

  He raised me onto the table again and the staff unlocked the rings, releasing me into the extremely fresh air of the room.

  ‘What’s plan B?’ I said as I slithered off the table and onto the floor. The rings had bruised me and movement was uncomfortable, but the discomfort would disappear as soon as I changed back to human form.

  ‘A hard suit with wheels, like a mobility chair,’ the Tiger said.

  I hesitated a moment, then said, ‘Make sure it has one of those flags on the back.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, we’ll find a suitable bumper sticker,’ he said. He nodded to the staff. ‘Good job, but it doesn’t work. Back to the drawing board.’

  ‘My Lord,’ the staff said, and stood quietly waiting to be dismissed.

  ‘Want to see some of the other stuff happening here?’ he asked me. ‘Come and check out the lab where we have your blood sample. My kids have been having a field day with it, and they want at least a litre more.’

  ‘Have you cloned me yet?’

  ‘Not for want of trying.’ He turned to the staff. ‘It’s late. Start again tomorrow. I’ll make the fibreglass foundry available to you.’ He winked at one of the women. ‘When are you on next, Doriene?’

  She blushed. ‘Next week, sir.’

  He beckoned her towards him. ‘Come here, lovely.’

  She approached him shyly and he grabbed her around the waist, pulled her in and kissed her long and hard. He released her and she fell back, breathless and bright-eyed.

  He grinned at her. ‘See you next week, sweetheart.’

  ‘I cannot believe your own wives call you sir,’ I grumbled as we went out the double doors and down the corridor to the next room.

  The Tiger stopped and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘So when you were training with Ah Wu and he was teaching you the arts, you never called him sir? Student to Master?’

  I rose on my coils. ‘Once we were out in the open about our feelings, no. If I did, he’d correct me.’

  He shook his head and turned away. ‘Stupid bastard.’

  ‘Up yours, Devil Tiger.’

  He turned back to me and spread his hands, irritated. ‘What is this thing with the devil tiger? In the last twelve months it seems everybody’s saying that! Where did it come from?’

  ‘Lok talks.’

  ‘That dog needs his balls cut off.’

  ‘So, my friend, do you.’

  ‘Humph,’ he said, and opened the next set of doors.

  This was a pathology lab, with benches holding rows of glass test tubes and chromatic DNA tests. A centrifuge, loaded with more test tubes, spun in one corner.

  ‘One Twenty-Eight’s on your case,’ the Tiger said.

  The son heard us and came out from behind the barrel of an electron microscope. He appeared to be about twenty, but something about him suggested he was much older. He was Chinese, but with a shock of pure white hair and the tawny eyes of his father. He smiled with the same charismatic roguishness and I shook my head.

  ‘You have been cloning,’ I said.

  ‘Nope, just the occasional sapling falling not too far from the tree,’ the Tiger said.

  One Twenty-Eight strode to his father and clasped his arm around his shoulder; he was about twenty centimetres shorter than the Tiger. They shared a brief embrace then turned to me, both grinning the Tiger’s little-boy grin.

  ‘Asshole overload,’ I said.

  They bowed at exactly the same time, their grins not shifting. One Twenty-Eight fell to one knee to me, then jumped up and returned to the centrifuge, beckoning me to join him.

  He pressed a button and the unit stopped. He flipped open the lid of one of the chambers and pulled a test tube out with a long pair of callipers. ‘This is your blood,’ he said, moving the test tube so I could see it more clearly. ‘Normally, when you centrifuge human blood, the platelets sink to the bottom as a red layer and the clear plasma fills the rest of the tube. In your case … well, see for yourself.’

  The top half of the test tube contained plasma, the next quarter held red blood cells, but the bottom quarter was black, oily demon essence.

  One Twenty-Eight became serious. ‘How do you control that?’

  ‘That was after I’d spent some time on the Celestial as a snake,’ I said. ‘Usually the demon essence is about half.’

  He shook his head and returned the test tube to the centrifuge. ‘With that much essence in your blood you should change to demon the minute you return to the Earthly. I don’t know how you manage.’

  ‘The stone helps me,’ I said. ‘I also have help from Kwan Yin.’

&nb
sp; ‘Ah,’ One Twenty-Eight said, understanding. ‘That explains it.’

  I couldn’t help it; I smiled even though I knew it wasn’t a good look. ‘You’re a scientist. What she does is so far removed from science it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘I research what I can, and then just accept wonders like her. I let her be her and don’t worry about how she does what she does. That’s the essence of the Tao.’

  ‘You’ve attained the Tao, you’re an Immortal,’ I said with wonder. ‘You should be a single-digit son.’

  ‘No, he shouldn’t,’ the Tiger said.

  One Twenty-Eight shook his head. ‘It’s a long story, but who cares anyway. What I care about is how we can change you back. How long does it take you to reduce from half to a quarter demon essence?’

  ‘Two weeks.’

  ‘So if you stayed on the Celestial for a month, it would vanish completely?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘The process slows down; it reduces by a fraction of its existing amount. It’ll go down by half each week. At the end of six weeks, the amount that it reduces by is negligible.’

  ‘You’ll never completely remove it if that’s the case,’ he said.

  ‘And I’ll never walk the Celestial Plane as a human.’

  ‘Can you remove it?’ the Tiger asked his son.

  One Twenty-Eight paused, thoughtful. He opened the canister on the centrifuge, pulled out the test tube containing my blood and studied it again. Then he put it back and shook his head. ‘No. Nobody on the Celestial can fix this. The only one who would have even a remote chance is the Demon King himself. He may be able to manipulate the demon essence and clear her blood.’ He turned to us. ‘Have you tried to negotiate something with him?’

  ‘He wants to impregnate me in exchange,’ I said.

  One Twenty-Eight sucked in a quick breath. ‘Spawn of you and the King? That would be very bad.’

  ‘How bad?’ the Tiger said.

  ‘I’m not even considering it, so it doesn’t matter how bad!’ I snapped.

  ‘Lady Emma’s been taught by the Dark Lord himself; he’s given her advanced skills in energy control,’ One Twenty-Eight said.

  ‘Lot of good it does me with my blood full of shit,’ I said irritably. ‘I can’t do anything with energy while I’m in human form.’

  ‘What about serpent form?’ One Twenty-Eight said.

  I hesitated, then: ‘The energy is different.’

  ‘Beside the point, ma’am. Your cauldrons have been sparked and your gates have been opened; this is near impossible in a normal human. You’re a powerful demon, I can see that, and you are one step closer to Celestial than anything the King has access to. Spawn from you and the King would have unique skills and an edge over anything else in Hell.’

  ‘Yep, that sounds bad,’ the Tiger said.

  ‘He wouldn’t spawn anything more powerful than he is,’ I said. ‘He’d have to be completely stupid to do that. The minute the spawn were aware of their power they’d try to depose him and take his place.’

  ‘I know. It’s an interesting dilemma,’ One Twenty-Eight said. ‘I’d love to know what he really wants out of this; it’s possible he doesn’t want your spawn at all. He’s always been exceptionally devious in his dealings.’

  ‘His word is good,’ I said, protesting.

  ‘Doesn’t stop him from being exceptionally devious,’ One Twenty-Eight repeated.

  ‘Keep at it, find a way,’ the Tiger said. He turned to the DNA tests on the counters. ‘Anything show up on these?’

  ‘Nothing at all,’ One Twenty-Eight said. ‘The technology isn’t advanced enough for us to do a general search without knowing specifically what we’re looking for. It looks normal. Normal human DNA.’

  ‘Take some now while she’s a snake and compare,’ the Tiger said.

  ‘I was going to ask that,’ One Twenty-Eight said. ‘Ma’am, do you mind?’

  ‘If there’s any chance of finding out what I am, take as much as you like,’ I said; then hesitated when he approached me with a large syringe. ‘Whoa, wait a minute — that thing’s as big as a milk bottle.’

  ‘You have about three times as much blood in serpent form, ma’am, won’t hurt you to take a little more,’ he said.

  I hissed with pain as he slipped the needle into my skin between the scales then drained me from the back of my neck. ‘Hurry up, this hurts.’

  He pulled the syringe free, stabbing me with pain again, and wiped the wound with a bandage. ‘Thank you, ma’am. If anything shows up I’ll be sure to let you know immediately.’

  The Tiger spoke without looking at me as we made our way back out. ‘If the Demon King is the only one who can fix you, perhaps you should be trying to work something out with him.’

  ‘John said Nu Wa and the Three Purities — remember that,’ I said.

  ‘I doubt they’ll be able to help you, babe. Nu Wa is an unknown quantity, and the Three Purities are more like an unknowable quantity.’

  I stopped and lowered my voice. ‘The Demon King offered me a list of possible trades I could make for having the essence cleared.’

  ‘Well, that’s a start. What were they?’

  I looked around. ‘I’ll only tell you in a place where nobody can listen in.’

  He turned in the other direction and held his hand out. ‘This way, ma’am.’

  He led me away from the lifts to an empty room at the end of the corridor. It was an operating theatre, complete with a surgery light that, from below, looked like a face.

  I turned away. ‘I’m not hanging around in here.’

  ‘Wait,’ he said, and touched the back of my neck. ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘This looks very much like the place where I was injected with demon essence and turned into something that should be destroyed on sight.’

  ‘Well, get over it and tell me what the Demon King offered.’

  I struggled with my serpent energy centres to remain calm in that awful place. ‘Vow to me you won’t pass this information on to anyone. Anyone. Understood?’

  He hesitated. ‘That’s awfully dramatic.’

  ‘Promise!’

  ‘I vow I will not share this information with anyone.’

  I dropped onto my coils and wound them more comfortably. ‘I can’t remember all of them, but you’ll get the gist of it after only a couple. Your incarceration in a Celestial Jade cage for a thousand years.’

  He stepped back slightly. ‘Whoa.’

  ‘Either of the other two Winds in a similar situation. The life of Michael MacLaren; actually he asked for his head.’

  ‘Damn!’

  ‘Liu Cheng Rong held on the tenth level for ten thousand years. Or Meredith; either would do.’

  ‘You can stop now —’

  ‘Simone’s powers locked out for the rest of her life; reduce her to a normal human girl.’

  ‘That would remove our greatest fighter …’

  ‘All your wives.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘All the demon armies of the Thirty-Six returned.’

  ‘This is crazy. Are all the options as stupid as that?’

  ‘Yes. And they’re all about other people suffering to clear me of this. That’s why you can’t tell anyone; I’m scared someone might actually do what he asks.’

  ‘I’ll give him my wives,’ the Tiger said, thoughtful. ‘Easily done.’

  I slithered away and back again. ‘And that’s exactly why I don’t want anyone to know! Do you have any idea what he’ll do to them? You can’t do that, and that’s an order. You are not to offer the Demon King anything in return for my humanity.’

  He paused, then: ‘Yes, ma’am.’

  ‘Some of your wives are Shen. Some are demons who changed sides. If the Demon King were to get his hands on them — or their children from you — he would have an army to use against us. Don’t even think about it.’

  ‘Your words have been trailing my thoughts,’ he said, and nodded on
ce, sharply. ‘I’ll keep it quiet.’

  ‘Good,’ I said, and headed towards the lifts again. ‘Let’s go, I have work to do.’

  ‘Delegate! It will leave you more time for —’

  ‘Eating and screwing. Yes, I know. There are never enough hours in the day for your quota of eating and screwing.’

  ‘You got that one right, baby.’

  CHAPTER 18

  When I arrived home, I heard a bang from Simone’s room then a hissing that sounded as if she was hushing someone. I went to the door and tapped on it. ‘Hey, Simone, can I come in?’

  ‘Just a second!’ she called urgently, and there was more hushed discussion.

  ‘Do you have a boy in there?’ I said. ‘Michael, is that you?’

  Simone opened the door a crack. ‘Nobody here but me.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Simone, you really suck at it. Who’s in there? I’d like to say hello. You don’t need to hide anything, sweethear —’ I swallowed the word. ‘Simone.’

  She smiled tightly. ‘Nobody here but me. I’m watching a video, that’s all.’ Then came the sound of water hitting carpet and she squealed. ‘No, Freddo, bad boy! Not here on the carpet …’ Her voice changed to a moan. ‘Oh damn.’

  I opened the door wider and saw the demon foal in the middle of the room, ears back, eyes half-closed, back legs stretched out wide, urinating in a high-pressure stream onto Simone’s bedroom carpet. The smell was so strong that my eyes watered.

  Simone grabbed Freddo around his middle and they both disappeared.

  I went to the kitchen to find Monica. ‘You’ll never believe what’s happened, Monica. Can you get some carpet cleaners up here? We have something of an emergency.’

  Fifteen minutes later, Simone returned, cowed and sheepish. She came into the office and sat across the desk from me. ‘Sorry, Emma. I’ll clean it up, I promise.’

  ‘Him piddling on the carpet was worse than him pooping on it, I swear. The whole flat reeks of it.’

  ‘I’ll have the water elementals flush the carpet for me.’

  ‘Carpet cleaners are on their way to steam-clean it.’

  She thought for a moment, then concentrated. ‘I told Monica to cancel them. I can make the elementals steam.’