The shockwave stopped and the gravel that had been flying around Simone dropped to the ground. She pulled her sword free, and walked back up the slope to the phoenix. The red warriors rose and checked the area; the demons had all been destroyed.
Simone shared a few short words with the phoenix, then they touched wing to hand, the flaming feathers doing her no damage. She nodded to the warriors, who saluted her, then she shot straight up into the air and disappeared towards the north, leaving behind a trail of vapour.
I thank you, Madam General, the phoenix said into my head. You and the Princess have saved my babies. I am your servant.
‘Tell her she’s welcome,’ I said to the stone, and the image of the phoenix snapped off.
‘Never ceases to amaze me how such a sweet young lass can kick so much serious arse,’ Edwards said.
One of the seniors called to us from the back of the bus. ‘A few of these girls don’t speak anything but Indonesian and Thai, and one is Vietnamese. We need your help, Masters.’
Sit moved to the back of the bus where he talked to the girls in Putonghua. Nevertheless, they all understood him.
‘I envy the Immortals,’ Edwards said.
‘Then you’ll never join them,’ I said.
He shook with a short, silent laugh. ‘I know.’
‘If you want to take the time to go and cultivate the Tao, it’s your choice,’ I said.
He considered for a moment. ‘One day maybe. They all encourage me to go and cultivate the Tao on the Mountain, living on pine nuts and spring water, but I don’t think I’m ready for the Art of Navel Gazing. I’m just having too much damn fun here.’
I nodded. ‘Just so you know. If you feel the time is right, then go. They will help you.’
‘Thanks, Emma,’ he said softly. He shifted to sit more upright. ‘Nearly there now. Let’s work out what to do with these poor girls.’
CHAPTER 2
The team who’d rescued the prostitutes gathered for a debriefing in the conference room on the ninth floor.
‘Four of them can’t go home; their families sold them into this and they won’t be wanted back,’ Sit said. ‘Of the seven who can go home, we found only three of their passports in the brothel, the other four passports are missing. We’ll have stones tap into the relevant immigration computers to extract their details and make duplicates for them. Something very interesting, ma’am—one of the girls appears to be half-dragon and completely unaware of her nature. One of our dragons recognised her.’
‘I’ll talk to her,’ I said. ‘Arrange for her and Amy to meet me in my office after this; and to bring along the four girls that can’t go home. But first let’s have a look at Mr Lee’s recording. I want to see this energy blast that injured the students.’
Lee folded up from human to stone form and drifted to sit in the middle of the table. We waited for him to produce the recording of the standoff with the demons, but nothing happened. He returned to human form after a couple of minutes, obviously puzzled.
‘The recording’s not there,’ he said.
‘It’s not in your matrix?’ I said.
He shook his head, bewildered. ‘That area of my structure is clear. Like nothing was ever there.’ He looked concerned. ‘I’ve been hacked.’
‘Not possible, they were just Mothers,’ the stone in my ring said. ‘Bring out what you have either side, let’s see.’
Lee rubbed his hands over his face. ‘There isn’t anything there. I recall arriving at the building, going up the stairs, then going into recording mode. Then the next segment of data is me back down in the bus. I’ve been wiped.’
‘Not possible!’ the stone said.
‘Has anything like this happened to you before?’ I said.
Lee shook his head. ‘Very disturbing.’
‘Time to go back and see what’s going on there,’ I said. ‘Lee, grab a couple of other stones, take a couple of Celestials. See if you can get a dragon if they’re free, and teleport directly in. Everybody take a recording. Someone take an old-fashioned video camera from stores; ask Lok for one. We’ll meet back here in a couple of hours and see what we can see.’
‘Ma’am.’ Lee lowered his head and disappeared.
‘Has anything like this ever happened before?’ I asked the stone.
‘It is possible for us to experience damage to part of the matrix, but usually we can piece together the undamaged parts to give us an idea of what went wrong,’ the stone said. ‘Being erased like that is unheard of.’
‘Are you passing it through the stone network?’
‘Quite a few stones have dropped what they’re doing and are going along with Lee. A few want to examine his matrix. We’re looking into it.’
‘Good,’ I said. ‘Sit, get a stone to make some duplicate passports for these girls, and let’s send them home. I’ll talk to the dragon and the four that can’t go home in my office. Other than that, I think we’re done here.’
‘Ma’am,’ Sit said, and disappeared.
‘I’m very concerned, Emma,’ the stone said.
‘You’re not the only one.’
‘So it’s your choice,’ I said to the five girls. ‘Go home to your own country, or stay here. If you stay, we can give you the right of abode and you can find a job and work here. We will give you somewhere to live. It is up to you.’
One of the girls sniffled. The others sat looking down at their hands, silent and disbelieving.
‘If you don’t know what you want to do, take your time,’ I said. ‘We will look after you; we won’t make you do sex work. We will train you to do office work if you like, and you can find yourselves good jobs back home.’
None of the girls moved or spoke.
‘My staff will show you where you’re going to live until you decide,’ I said. ‘The lady who brought you here is waiting for you outside the office. If you want to go, just tell her, she’ll take you home. If you’re not sure, then you can stay with us until you know.’
I called to Martha and she opened the door and came in. ‘I’ll do the rest,’ she said.
She smiled at the girls and folded her hands in front of her. ‘I will look after you, nobody will hurt you any more. I can take you home or you can stay here; either way you are safe.’
The girls sat without moving.
Martha put her hand out. ‘Come with me.’
The girls rose like automatons, still looking at the floor, and went out with Martha. One of them sniffled again and wiped her nose on her sleeve.
Martha gently put her hand out to stop one of the girls from leaving the room. ‘Not you, you stay here. Madam needs to talk to you.’
The girl stopped, still staring at the floor. The other girls went with Martha without looking back.
I checked my notes for her name. ‘Hien. Please sit again, and I’ll tell you a story.’
She returned to her seat and glanced up at me through her long fringe. I smiled. Actually looking at me was a promising step.
‘About eleven years ago, I took a job as nanny to a little girl named Simone. Her father was a wealthy Hong Kong businessman.’
Hien didn’t move.
‘After a while, I discovered that he wasn’t a businessman at all, but a god. He was Xuan Wu, the black Turtle Snake God of the North.’
Hien glanced at me through her fringe again.
‘I don’t know how much you know about the gods, but he was the North Wind, an Immortal. He married a human woman and had a child with her. It’s a long story, but because of his wife he was forced to stay in human form for a long time and this made him weak. His wife was murdered by a demon before I met him; that’s why he needed me to nanny. He and I fell in love and he died about three years after that, murdered by a demon. I’ve been looking after his daughter, Simone, ever since. I’ve also been given the job of looking after his martial arts academy and some other stuff related to him being Emperor of the Northern Heavens.’ I put my chin on my hand. ‘Not exactly what I was
intending to do with my life, but one day he’ll come back and we’ll get married.’
Hien clasped and unclasped her hands in her lap.
‘Yep, you’re probably thinking: more lies. But this is actually easy to prove because I can have any god or demon wander in here and take their True Form and scare you to death. I won’t do that though.’
She studied her hands carefully, still too traumatised to talk. This would take time.
‘Some of the staff and students here at the Martial Arts Academy are dragons,’ I went on. ‘Dragons are fierce fighters with impeccable honour and completely loyal to us. They are also incredibly fickle in love. They tend to love humans and then leave them without thought; not out of malice, just because that’s the way they are. We’ve been working here to explain to the dragons that this sort of behaviour isn’t really acceptable where humans are concerned. That if you produce a child with a human partner you’re expected to hang around and help care for it. Dragon children hatch fully able to care for themselves, but half-human dragons are generally the same as human babies.’
She sighed gently. I was boring her now.
‘One of your parents took off when you were a small child, Hien, leaving the other to care for you. Was it your mother or father who left you?’
She frowned slightly but didn’t reply.
‘Please answer me, Hien. Was it your mother or your father that left you when you were a small child?’
She tilted her head slightly, still hiding under her long fringe. ‘Mother,’ she whispered.
‘Your mother left when you were little. Your father probably has nothing but good things to say about her, and says that she left because that’s the way she was. He might even say that he still loves her.’
She glanced up at me through her hair.
‘Your mother is a dragon, Hien.’
She looked down again. Lost her.
‘You’re a dragon too, if you can learn to transform. You can be very powerful, able to swim and fly. But you must make this hidden dragon nature emerge. If you can, you will never again have to worry about anybody harming you.’
She remained still and silent.
‘I have one of the Academy dragons outside the door, Hien. She’s been translating for me. I can’t speak a word of Vietnamese.’
A small lie, but worthwhile in the circumstances. Amy wasn’t translating for me; all languages were understood within the walls of the Academy.
‘Right now she looks like an ordinary young woman. She can transform into a dragon to show you, if you like, and then you can decide whether you want to be a dragon and learn what you are capable of, or whether you would just like to go home.’
Hien sat unmoving, thinking about it.
‘Come on in, Amy,’ I said.
Amy opened the door and Hien jumped. Amy smiled reassuringly at her, and sat in the other visitor’s chair.
‘I know this is shocking for you,’ she told the girl. ‘I didn’t know I was a dragon until I was twenty-five years old; my father never told me he was a dragon too. We have a community of dragons here at the Academy and we go out and swim and fly together. It’s great fun. And we’re fierce fighters too; we never have to worry about being hurt.’
‘Amy will look after you now, Hien,’ I said, ‘and introduce you to some other dragons. All of them will be in human form. When you’re ready, you can ask her to show you her dragon form, her True Form. Take a few days, meet the other dragons, then at the end of the time decide whether you would like to learn to become a dragon yourself, or whether you’d like to go home.’
Amy held her hand out to Hien. ‘Come with me, I’ll look after you. Nobody’s going to hurt you any more.’
‘Go with her, Hien,’ I said. ‘And good luck. I hope one day I see you in dragon form. I’d like to see what colour dragon you are. Amy is the most beautiful black dragon with gold fins that I have ever seen.’
I nodded to Amy and she smiled back at me. As she gently guided Hien out, she turned back to me. ‘Don’t worry, Emma, I think we’ll bring her round.’
‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘She’s had a lot of bad stuff happen in her life. It would be nice to see something good happen.’
I was about halfway through the end-of-year leave requests when there was a knock on the door. ‘Enter.’
Lee came in, looking grim, with Silver, one of the Academy dragons. They took the visitors’ chairs and Silver placed the Academy’s video camera on the desk.
‘What did you find?’ I asked.
They both shook their heads.
‘Nothing,’ Lee said. ‘I wasn’t wiped this time. In fact, nothing at all happened. We went right through the place and didn’t find anything. You can watch the video, but it’s basically a tour of a down-market Mong Kok brothel. Four stones and Master Sit came with us, and absolutely nothing happened.’
‘Let’s see,’ I said.
Lee picked the camera up off the desk, flipped open the LCD screen and turned it on. He glanced down at the screen and his face filled with shock.
Silver leapt to his feet and changed to Celestial Form—nearly two metres tall with long, flowing, shining grey hair and scaled silver armour. He summoned a spear and held it to one side in the small office.
‘Don’t attack,’ Lee said to Silver without looking away from the screen. ‘That’s Lady Emma’s serpent form.’
‘What?’ I said.
Lee turned the LCD screen around so that it faced the same way as the lens. I could see myself in the screen; the camera was on record mode, not playback.
I stared at myself. ‘Holy shit.’
Silver changed back to human form, but his hair remained long and grey. ‘The Dark Lady is a serpent?’
‘Nobody knows why, but I can change into a big black snake. Not many people know about it, Silver,’ I said, watching with fascination as the enormous black serpent in the tiny screen also opened its mouth to speak. ‘We’d prefer not to freak out the students.’
I took the camera from Lee and watched myself. ‘I never knew I’d look like that on video; on still cameras I appear human. Wait!’ I looked up. ‘Stone, Simone took a home video about six months ago when we went to London and I was human in that. What the hell?’
‘No idea, Emma,’ the stone said. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’
‘This information isn’t to be shared,’ Lee said to Silver. ‘Many of the human students would probably take it quite badly.’
Silver nodded. ‘I understand. How long have you been able to do this, Lady Emma?’
I paused, embarrassed.
Lee glanced at Silver, obviously sharing the information by telepathy, and Silver’s face cleared. ‘Sharing mind and body with the Dark Lord. That could very well bring out an inherent serpent nature.’
I could feel my face growing red, and Silver grinned. ‘In this respect you are still very human, ma’am.’
‘And I’d like to stay that way, thank you very much,’ I said.
I changed the camera to playback and watched as Lee and Silver swept through the brothel, pausing to focus on the untidy metal beds in each room with their cheap polyester quilts. ‘You were right. Down-market.’
‘Very,’ Lee said. ‘But we didn’t find anything.’
‘I had a serious look around for anything that would give us more detailed information on the nature of these demons,’ Silver said, ‘and I too came up blank. No paperwork, no messages, nothing. I’d say it was stripped clean but they never came back to do it. Which means there was never anything there to link the demons to the operation in the first place.’
‘Credit card machine? EFTPOS?’ I said. ‘Any cables you could hook into to get information, Lee?’
‘They had an EFTPOS line to the Hong Kong Bank. I traced it back and it was listed to a company registered at the brothel’s address, but with names of nonexistent people as the directors,’ Lee said. ‘Drawing a blank, ma’am. We have nothing.’
‘Okay,’ I said.
‘Let’s leave it for now. Warn the third years, and keep an eye on the criminal operations for these demons.’
‘They’ll probably keep a low profile for a while now,’ Lee said. ‘But I’d really like to know what they did to me.’
‘Are you okay?’ I said.
‘I’ve been checked over, I’m fine.’ His mouth tweaked in a small smile. ‘I’ve just been erased.’
‘We’ll let the others know. The stone network is on the lookout. That’s basically all we can do,’ Silver said.
‘Thanks, guys,’ I said.
They stood patiently in front of my desk.
‘Dismissed!’ I said. ‘And you know you don’t need to wait for it!’
Silver bowed slightly, grinning knowingly. ‘Serpent Lady.’
‘And don’t call me that!’
They both disappeared.
CHAPTER 3
I’d just finished the last of the end-of-year leave forms when I heard a soft sound and a red box materialised on my desk. Thank you very much, Heavenly Bureaucracy: 7 pm, a hell of a day, and this lands on my desk. I hoped it wasn’t urgent.
I pressed my thumb to the elaborate gold filigree clasp on the front of the box. Inside was a single scroll, dun-coloured vellum tied with a red ribbon. I opened it and perused the black Chinese characters. Not written in red, so not an edict from the Jade Emperor, but from the complexity of the large square seal at the bottom of the document it was from someone quite high up. I couldn’t read the flowing Chinese calligraphic characters but the Celestial nature of the scroll made their meaning apparent as I scanned them. My heart leapt when I saw Leo’s name.
Lady Emma Donahoe, Grand Master (Acting), New Wudang Academy of Martial Arts; Probational Regent of the Northern Heavens
Madam,
Your application to attend to the matter of your Retainer Leo Gerald Alexander has been reviewed by the Office.
In light of the nature of the circumstances it has been decided that this matter will be forwarded to the Secretary for Underworld Affairs for further consultation.