The Gravity Engine

  He landed silently on the roof and sent his senses down through it. Rhonda and Clarissa were in the room directly below him, playing cards at a table in a bedroom they obviously shared. Demons filled every other room, all the way through the mansion, and some of the demons were enormous. His best bet was to sneak in the window, grab the women, and run back to Semias’s city where the spirit could open the gateway to Rotterdam for them. He made himself invisible and floated down to hover outside their window.

  Mom, he said. Don’t say anything, but I’m just outside the window. I’m here to get you out.

  Rhonda looked up and nodded.

  There are demons everywhere. All around you. Just a sec, I’ll tell Clarissa. He changed to Clarissa. Hello, my darling, I’m here to get you. I just spoke to Mom. Don’t say anything but I’m floating outside the window. Nod if you understand.

  Both women were nodding now, smiling conspiratorially. Clarissa shivered with delight.

  Careful, he said. They’re watching you. Can you open the window, Mom?

  Rhonda shook her head.

  Okay. Can both of you move closer to it?

  Clarissa and Rhonda put their cards down, wandered to the window and made a show of looking out.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ Clarissa said. ‘I wish they’d let us out to go for a walk or something. Anything.’

  ‘I know. It’s awful being cooped up,’ Rhonda said.

  Both of you get Best Actress trophies when we’re home, Michael said, and the women shared another grin. That’s too close, I’m going to break it. Either side against the wall, on three.

  He counted to three, the women moved, and he burst through the window and landed in the middle of the room amid a shower of glass. He took a few seconds to heal the cuts – he didn’t need to be losing blood while they were on the run – then scooped the women up, one on each arm, and jumped out the window again. He’d grabbed them clumsily and both were in danger of slipping out of his grasp, so he flew as fast as he could for a hundred metres then landed.

  ‘Just need to get a better grip on you,’ he said, releasing them to shift his hold. There was a loud bang, something smacked him on the shoulder and he reeled forward. The demons had shot him. He grabbed Clarissa with his left arm but his right wouldn’t move – his shoulder joint was shattered and his right arm hung uselessly, the fabric of his robe torn and bloody. He didn’t have time to heal something that big; it could take hours. He blocked the nerve endings before the pain really hit and tried to ignore it.

  ‘Leave me and take Clarissa,’ Rhonda said. ‘I’m a copy.’

  ‘No, I’m taking you both,’ Michael said. ‘Clarissa, on my back. Mom, in my left arm. I can do it.’

  He turned so that Clarissa could climb onto his back and stopped. The demon with the gun was standing three metres away, pointing it at them. At least twenty other demons, some also with firearms, stood behind it. He checked the other way and it was clear.

  Quick, hop on, he said to Clarissa, but she didn’t move, frozen with terror at the gun pointed at her head.

  This was the same as when he’d been in the nest and his brothers had been shot, and he knew what he had to do. He’d had weeks to think about what he should have done: in the nest, he hadn’t had the common sense to open his Inner Eye on the demons and destroy the lot before they could hurt anybody. Well, now he did. He pushed the women behind him, then raised his left hand in surrender.

  ‘We’ll come quietly,’ he said. ‘Don’t hurt them.’

  The demon lowered the weapon slightly and he did it. He opened his Inner Eye on them and they all shredded in the blast of the unshielded vision of his Immortal soul. None of them was big enough to resist it. All gone.

  ‘Okay,’ he said, smiling. He turned back to Clarissa and Rhonda. ‘Quickly, before more come. Let’s go.’

  He had a horrified moment of realisation as he looked straight into Rhonda’s disbelieving face, then she and Clarissa were destroyed as well. He closed his Eye but it was too late. They were gone.

  He fell to his knees on the grass, too shocked to think. He needed to go back and do that again, and this time close his Inner Eye. He hadn’t done that. It didn’t happen. He put his head in his hands. They were demon copies anyway – but what did that matter when they thought they were real? He’d destroyed them with a look. He was a monster. He wanted to kill himself. So stupid. Couldn’t he go back and do that again? He felt a rush of nausea, and wanted to curl up into a ball and die. Well, good luck with that one, Mister Immortal, no dying for you.

  He heard the sound of their feet approaching.

  ‘He seems incapacitated. Let’s take him back to the King,’ one of the demons said.

  ‘Fuck you,’ Michael said, and blew his brains out with a blast of his own Shen energy.

  He landed in Court Ten in front of Judge Clear Skies Pao the Incorruptible. He sagged with relief and grief; he was home. He knelt in front of the judge high above him on the dais and bowed his head, wiping his eyes.

  ‘Where have you been?’ Judge Pao said.

  ‘I’ve been in the European Heavens failing my duty and my allegiance,’ Michael said. ‘Don’t be lenient on me.’

  Pao rose from his desk. ‘I will judge the prisoner in my private rooms. Bring him.’ He stomped down the stairs off the dais and the guards grabbed Michael by the arms and pulled him to his feet to follow. They led Michael up the stairs to the judge’s private quarters, dropped him on the rug in front of Pao’s desk, and waited.

  ‘Dismissed,’ Pao said, sitting behind the desk.

  The guards went out. Michael bent over his knees, feeling that his centre had been torn from his body. He was empty.

  ‘Where were you, lad?’ Pao said.

  ‘In the European Heavens,’ Michael said. ‘Failing the Celestial. You know that.’

  ‘The European Heavens are outside my jurisdiction,’ Pao said. ‘Tell me everything that happened. No, wait.’ He raised one hand and his eyes unfocussed. ‘Present yourself to Minor Hearing Room Four immediately. The Celestial will question you himself.’ Pao rapped the desk. ‘The Jade Emperor wants to talk to you, boy. Move.’

  Michael rubbed his hands over his face and teleported to the Celestial Palace. The gigantic main gates had a small door at the base that opened to let him through. When he was inside the compound he took a step forward. ‘Hearing Room Four.’

  He walked into a small, high-walled courtyard with an ornamental bonsai tree on a carved rock in its centre. He stepped up on to the wooden veranda, then entered the small hearing room. The Jade Emperor and his father, the White Tiger of the West, were both present, and he fell to his knees in front of them and chanted the Imperial Obeisance.

  The Jade Emperor waved him forward. ‘Come and sit with us and tell us all you learnt.’

  Michael rose and sat on the third couch, across from the two Emperors. ‘I’ve been there for two weeks and learned next to nothing.’

  ‘Tell us all,’ the Jade Emperor said.

  Michael put it together in his head, then gave them a short summary without mentioning Rhonda and Clarissa. He told them about the city, the gravity engine and Semias.

  ‘So where are the blueprints to the gravity engine?’ the Tiger said. ‘That could be extremely useful.’

  ‘I left them behind,’ Michael said.

  ‘How could you leave them behind? You spent two weeks drawing them up and left them there?’

  Michael nodded silently.

  ‘You were in their libraries and saw all their gathered wisdom and brought back none of it?’ the Jade Emperor said.

  ‘I learned that the Shen are all gone and the demons have invaded the European Heavens,’ Michael said.

  ‘We knew that already,’ the Tiger said. ‘The Dark Lord has been there for two days and learned more than you did in two weeks. He knows about the demons and Shen and he’s looking for a way in as well. I sent Three and Four to Rotterdam, but the entrance through the cathedral is cl
osed.’

  Michael remained silent.

  The Tiger threw himself back on the sofa. ‘What a fucking waste of time.’ He nodded to the Jade Emperor. ‘Apologies.’ He turned back to Michael. ‘Two weeks there and you gained us nothing. Why the hell didn’t you come home and report the minute you knew the way in? Why did you hang around there and fucking help them with this gravity engine and then forget it? You should have come back down straight away and showed us how to break in! Dammit, Number One.’ He sighed loudly. ‘I should demote you.’

  ‘Go right ahead,’ Michael said, his voice hoarse. ‘Please. Demote me. I’m not competent to be your Number One.’

  ‘What aren’t you telling us?’ the Jade Emperor said.

  The Tiger eyed Michael, waiting for his reply.

  I killed her, Dad, Michael said to himself. My mother, your wife. I killed the only woman you would give up all the others for. The one you wanted to make your Empress. I found her, and I killed her. The two most important women I’ve ever known, two fragile humans who were counting on this powerful Shen to protect them, and I murdered them with my stupidity. I killed them.

  ‘Nothing,’ Michael said.

  ‘Go home to the Western Palace, and come back when you are willing to share the rest,’ the Jade Emperor said.

  ‘Am I demoted?’ Michael said.

  ‘No,’ the Tiger said. ‘I need your administrative skills in the Palace. But in future let your brothers and sisters handle the battle and tactics, you’re restricted to paperwork where you won’t do any more damage. You led a team of fifteen of my best Horsemen to their deaths, boy, and that’s the most minor failure in this whole disappointing episode.’ He waved Michael away. ‘Dismissed.’

  Michael rose from the couch, knelt to salute them, and teleported back to his apartment in the Western Palace. He headed straight for the kitchen to find something to drink, the stronger the better.

  He didn’t know how much later it was. He was lying on the couch, one arm over his eyes and the other holding the coffee mug full of bourbon, when there was a rap on the door. He ignored it, and the rapping turned to knocking. The knocks escalated into bangs, then the door unlocked by itself. He didn’t move from the couch when the door opened.

  ‘Immortal or not, that’s a breach of privacy.’

  ‘Michael,’ Rohan said. ‘You’ve been in here for hours, man. What’s going on?’

  ‘Did Dad send you?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Rohan came into the living room. ‘Good bourbon. Got another cup?’

  Michael waved towards the kitchen.

  Rohan came back, filled his coffee mug from the bourbon bottle, and sat on the other couch. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Something serious happened, man. Share.’

  ‘No.’

  Rohan took a swig from his cup, then coughed. ‘You were gone for two weeks and won’t tell anyone what happened. Did they torture you? Why’d you stay there, when you could just kill yourself and come back? Did they have a way of holding you so you couldn’t kill yourself? If they did, you have to tell us about it.’ His voice became more intense. ‘What the fuck happened to you?’

  Michael looked down at his hands holding the bourbon-filled mug and had another drink, feeling the comforting burn down to his belly. ‘I thought I’d be able to gather some information while I was there. You know, do something really worthwhile and finally gain some parental approval. Prove that I’m worthy of the position of Number One Son, shit like that. I wasn’t up to it, which isn’t surprising. If it was you there, with your two-hundred-odd years of training and experience, you’d probably bring home the head of the Demon King himself.’

  ‘Three hundred,’ Rohan said into his bourbon. ‘But I doubt it. Look at what happened in that nest: we all died straight away and you fought them off.’

  ‘I didn’t fight them off. They wanted me for my half-European heritage, and saved me for it.’ Michael lay back on the sofa again. ‘I’m not good enough.’

  Rohan lay back as well. ‘Dad thinks you are.’

  ‘Dad thinks I’m the only one stupid enough to put up with being his Number One.’

  Rohan chuckled. ‘Oh no, he knows for sure that you’re the only one stupid enough to put up with it. So tell me about the European Heavens. How do they compare to ours?’

  ‘Oh, Rohan,’ Michael said with feeling. ‘Let me tell you about one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been, and I’ve been in the Celestial Palace itself.’

  Late the next morning, he lay in bed looking at the ceiling for nearly an hour, untying the knots in his aching head. When he couldn’t stand the inactivity any more he washed, dressed, grabbed a cup of coffee out of his apartment’s little kitchen, and teleported to his office. He fell into the chair behind his desk and opened the email program, then winced when he saw how many messages he had.

  There were a pile of notes on his desk as well; several from William.

  He contacted his brother telepathically. William?

  Oh, hey Mike, welcome back, William said. We all missed your rampant assholery around here, Rohan had to fill in and he’s not nearly as much of a total bastard.

  It’s good to be back, Michael said.

  So what happened to you? You were gone for a while, man.

  I did some stupid shit and failed my mission, Michael said. He changed the subject. Hey, did that dragon you were dating get back to you? We still have a hundred tonnes of gold to shift.

  William’s voice sounded sheepish. You know how you warned me about dating dragons?

  He was cheating on you?

  He didn’t understand why I had an issue with it! He even invited me for a threesome. With a woman!

  Ooh, tasty. So did you do it? Tell me all!

  No! For fuck’s sake, Michael, what the hell … William’s voice petered out. Oh, very funny. I can see your face now. Well, too bad, I’m not seeing him any more and there’s your financial figures gone. So there. William shut off communication.

  Michael tossed the notes in the waste basket and turned back to the emails. Many of them weren’t directly for him; they were panic-stricken Celestials sharing concern about the Dark Lord’s foray into the European Heavens and the unpleasant scenario he was discovering – of imminent war with the demons. Fortunately nobody was interested in Michael’s own little misadventure.

  More than twenty messages were from his father, with the same subject: DEAL. He thought for a moment that the email program had glitched and sent him the same message multiple times, then he opened the first few.

  His father had been receiving desperate messages from other Heavenly Bastions, begging him for weapons-grade steel. Every time the Tiger received one, he forwarded it to Michael with the subject changed to DEAL. Michael opened the messages, one at a time, and jotted down how much steel the Celestials needed. Some of the more senior Celestial residents were offering ridiculously generous amounts of Celestial Jade for weapons-quality steel spun with energy to make it a more effective demon killer, something that only the Tiger’s children could produce.

  He gave up with pencil and paper and opened a spreadsheet to calculate the amounts. The total of the requests was more than the gold they were holding, so he’d need to find even more metal after he’d had the gold transformed into steel by several of his senior brothers and sisters. He smiled grimly as he added everything up. Even with the discounted sale price he would offer the Celestials because of the war effort, the Western Heavens were about to see a sudden and much needed surge in Celestial income.

  He wished he had Clarissa’s expertise with the technology as he worked through the figures. He checked the clock on his desk as he did every day; it was nearly time for her to come out for her walk in the garden. He felt a shock down to his feet – it was two weeks and one day since the psychologist had spoken to him. He threw himself out of his chair and bolted to the door. Just as he reached it the phone rang.

  He raced back to his desk and answered i
t.

  ‘Michael, my boy.’ Enzio sounded particularly smug. ‘Two weeks, where have you been?’

  ‘Look, Enzio,’ Michael said with exasperation. ‘You know what? Clarissa was twenty times the financial manager that I will ever be, and you treated her like shit because she’s a woman. I’m not coming back.’

  ‘I never treated her badly, Michael, that’s all in your mind. Young Clarissa was talented, yes, but she didn’t have the aggression, the hunger, that you have. I can offer you a serious pay rise, much better than anything your father can —’

  Michael cut him off. ‘Enzio, you sexist piece of shit? Go find something long, hard and sharp, and stick it a very long way up your ass, and while you’re at it, never call me again.’

  Enzio’s voice gained a cruel edge. ‘You’re more man than that, aren’t you? Look at you, a slave to a woman, pussy-whipped into submission by a little —’

  ‘Fuck. You.’ Michael slammed the phone down and raced out to the garden.

  He threw himself to sit on the same bench and tried to calm his breathing as he waited. He didn’t pretend to read a book; either she would see him and approach, or … He didn’t think about the rest.

  The carer wheeled her into the garden and his heart leapt. She saw him; their eyes met. She looked up to speak to her carer and he felt even more excitement. She frowned slightly and spoke again, and the carer replied. The carer wheeled her out of the garden and he slumped with disappointment.

  Okay. He had plenty to do. Plenty. Busy. He needed to keep busy. He teleported back to his office and sat behind his desk. He fiddled with the spreadsheet but the numbers didn’t mean anything. He shoved the keyboard away, put his arms on the desk and rested his head on them. This was the third time he’d lost her.

  He heard a metallic clatter outside his office, and rose to see what was happening. He stopped with shock when he saw that Clarissa was attempting to wheel herself into the building, her clawed hands having difficulty gaining traction on the wheels as she tried to push herself through the doorway. She hadn’t seen him; she was concentrating on coming through the door, hitting the frame with a metallic rattle with each attempt.