He swept down to land in front of the temple. A pair of bollards held a ribbon across the entrance, and a large sign with ‘CLOSED’ scrawled on it in marker in English and Chinese was stuck to the door. John clasped his hands and bowed in front of it, then stepped over the tape, pushed the door open and strode inside.
Gold followed him, and I gasped when I saw the interior.
The gilt Buddha statue had been overturned and its head torn off, the body splattered with either blood or red paint. The altar had been tipped over and the table smashed, and sticky, fly-covered stains spread over everything in sight.
‘Is that urine?’ I said.
‘It is,’ Zara said. ‘They urinated on everything — which means there are some extremely high-level demons inside. Only the very biggest can do that.’ She dropped her voice. ‘Be careful, Gold.’
‘Stand back,’ John said, and raised his hands towards the toppled Buddha statue. A sphere of water appeared around it, then swept over the smashed furniture, washing it clean. The head of the Buddha reattached itself to the body, and John went to it, set it upright, and knelt to pay homage to it. Now that it was in one piece, I saw that it was an effigy of Kwan Yin herself.
‘Go get them, John,’ I said softly.
‘I cannot bring violence to this place, Emma.’
‘So what will you do?’
‘Seek.’
He walked past the altar to the back of the building, where the caretaker’s office was located. The caretaker — an elderly Chinese man in a plain grey cotton shirt and trousers — lay dead in his office, and had obviously been dead for a long time.
John walked out the back of the building into its tiny yard, and turned around as if sniffing the air. He walked back into the building and scouted around the edge, then stopped and put his hands on his hips. ‘Zhu.’
Zhu had already pulled out her mirror and was studying the floor. The floor moved, then heaved upwards, nearly knocking her over, and took the form of a fake stone elemental, towering close to the ceiling. Zhu stepped back, drew her sword and moved into a defensive stance.
John turned his head from side to side. ‘I presume this is a fake stone elemental,’ he said.
Ma moved next to him. ‘Let us handle this one. Stand back, Number Ones.’
The demon commanders moved back, then one took up a post at the front of the building, the other at the rear.
‘You presume?’ Zhu said, moving to one side so that John was standing between her and Ma.
‘I can’t see it,’ John said.
Ma flipped his left hand and the Seven Stars banner, a shimmering field of black, appeared in it. ‘Then let us handle it.’
The stone elemental was a collection of head-sized rocks floating in formation. It turned its faceless head as if it was studying them.
‘Put your weapons away. I’ll take it down without weapons; this is not the place for fighting,’ John said. ‘Last time we faced something like this, my Serpent possessed Emma and she took out a few of them single-handed — a sight to see.’
‘Scared you all to death,’ I said.
‘What? What’s happening?’ my mother said.
‘They’re in a temple, and they’re facing a stone elemental like the ones at Emma’s graduation all that time ago,’ Simone said.
John turned side-on to the elemental, opened his hands in front of him, then turned on the balls of his feet so that his palms were towards the elemental. He raised his hands slightly, but nothing happened.
The elemental swung at his head and he dodged it easily.
‘Ah Wu …’ Ma said.
‘Stand back, I have an idea,’ John said. ‘Give me about two metres.’
Ma and Zhu stood back and watched. Zhu put her sword away, but Ma still held his black banner.
John changed to True Form, his Turtle shape three metres long from its dragon-like head to tiny black tail. He stomped up to the elemental, stretched his head on its long neck, turned it sideways and bit one of the rocks. He proceeded to dismantle the demon rock by rock, spitting each one out, and the elemental seemed unable to do anything about it. When it was just a jumbled pile of rocks, the Turtle changed back to John, and he shook out his shoulders.
‘I nearly forgot I could do that, it’s been such a long time,’ he said.
He kicked some of the rocks to the side and looked down. Gold looked too: the fake elemental had been acting as a combined trapdoor and guard over a tunnel. Gold’s vision lurched and flowed across the floor, went into the hole and looked around.
‘Geez, Gold,’ I said.
‘Sorry, stretched my neck out to have a look inside,’ Gold said. His vision returned to above-ground. ‘There’s a long tunnel, heading north. Can’t see the end.’
John jumped down into the hole, then stopped and concentrated. ‘Again, I can’t see anything, but there may be more of those fake elementals on the way.’
He gestured for the others to follow him, then changed into a Turtle again.
‘Gold, how much time did he spend in True Form before he was unable to?’ I said. ‘Will he spend more time as an animal now he can do it?’
‘I don’t know, ma’am. He’d already made his promise to Lady Michelle when I joined the household.’
The Turtle spoke in John’s voice as it led them along the tunnel, the top of its shell brushing the ceiling. ‘It depends on the circumstances. Please don’t make me swear not to take True Form again, Emma. I think it would kill me.’
‘I won’t. I think your Turtle form is extremely cute,’ I said.
‘Wait until you see the combined creature,’ Gold said. ‘That’s never been called cute. First time I saw it, it scared me to death.’
‘Quiet. There’s something up ahead,’ John said. ‘Cover your eyes.’
There were a few heavy footsteps up ahead: another stone elemental. John opened his mouth, sending out a stream of shen energy towards the end of the tunnel. The elemental absorbed the shen energy, glowing with white brilliance, until it became too bright to look at and completely shattered.
The ground rumbled and Gold’s vision shook.
‘They heard us, they’re running,’ John said.
He changed back to human form and ran to the end of the tunnel, which was unblocked now the elemental was gone. He jumped up to the floor above, the other members of the team following.
‘Call the demon soldiers,’ John said.
As Gold jumped out of the hole, we saw what appeared to be a warehouse with a series of five-metre-high pitched roofs. Light shone in through windows randomly placed along the wall, and the floor was bare concrete. The space was divided into smaller areas with two-metre high screens, so all that was immediately visible from Gold’s view was a three-by-three-metre room with walls, no ceiling and a hole in the floor.
The whole building echoed with the sound of the demons running in terror from John. He jumped high into the air, and Gold followed, floating just below the pitched roof and viewing the interior as if it were a laboratory rat maze. The way the demons were running, it could have been. The tunnel appeared to be the only exit. The demons, in their panic to get away from John and the Generals, were crushing each other in the corners of the building.
‘Send the two demon cohorts to round them up,’ John said. He raised his voice to cut through the sound of the demons’ terror. ‘Turn and we will spare you.’
The Celestial demon soldiers started to emerge from the tunnel, causing even more panic.
John rotated in the air. ‘Now to find the one who’s in charge of all of this.’
‘There, my Lord,’ Gold said, pointing towards the corner of the building the furthest from them.
A small group was pushing its way out of an ordinary household front door set into a section of wall filled with biotech and computer equipment. The group included Kitty Kwok and the Death Mother, along with a few demon guards.
Simone squeaked when she saw the half-dozen demons they’d left behind. T
hey were unlike anything I’d seen before: three-metre-long, headless snake skeletons; rows of ribs along a central bony spine. They lifted their front ends and rattled at John and Gold, then rushed them.
John didn’t mess around; he just raised his hands and sent a blast of chi through them, turning in place to take them all out. He ran through the door, closely followed by the others.
They stopped on the other side: they were in a suburban street. Night had fallen and the streetlights were on. They quickly reduced to human form, and checked up and down the street.
It was one of the enclaves that passed for suburbia in some parts of Asia: tiny two-storey houses, each only four by five metres, packed side by side along narrow streets. All the houses had originally been identical, but many were now painted in gaudy colours or decorated with awnings, stonework and elaborate windows, giving the street a festive air. They all had high steel-spike fences and electric driveway gates, and some had cars parked diagonally to fit in their front yards. Cars lined the street as well, making it only just wide enough to drive through.
The door they’d exited was the front door of one of these houses. It seemed all the houses on that block were joined together inside: a single massive building masquerading as houses. The building’s internal light shone from all the windows.
‘There,’ John said, and took off running down the street.
The Generals sprinted after him, and Gold was hard-pressed to keep up.
John turned right at the end of the street, past a bemused resident who was watering the pot plants in her front yard. Gold reached the corner a few seconds after him, and followed him down another street. John stopped in the middle of the street, and had to jump out of the way of an oncoming car. The Generals pulled up beside him; Gold caught up with them a few seconds later.
‘How’s the mopping up going?’ John said without looking away from the end of the street.
‘There are strange hybrids and elementals among the demons, my Lord,’ Ma said. He raised one hand. ‘I suggest we move off the road before someone hits you and destroys their car.’
They moved to the side.
‘Some of these demons are too much for the brigades to handle: we are losing our soldiers,’ Zhu said. ‘Permission to return and lead them.’
John raised his hand behind him, still not looking away from the end of the street. ‘Granted. Return and bolster your armies. Call upon Xun or Zhou if required. I am summoning Guan and Zhao to go with me; these two are moving extremely fast. Gold, stay here. They’re running too quickly for you to keep up.’
He shot straight up into the air, leaving a visible blast of dust behind him, and disappeared.
I thumped the arm of the chair. ‘Dammit!’
‘What, Emma?’ my father said.
‘Kitty and the Death Mother took off and they’re moving too fast for Gold to keep up. John’s gone off with Zhao Gong Ming and Guan Yu to take them down, and I can’t see what’s happening.’
‘Those are two of the biggest Generals, aren’t they?’ my mother said.
‘Only Ma himself is bigger than those two guys,’ I said. ‘It’s serious if John has taken Guan off gate duty.’
‘Those demons were so gross,’ Simone said weakly.
‘What did they look like?’ Colin said. I hadn’t seen him return with the rest of the group.
‘Bones,’ I said. ‘Living snake bones. Horrible.’
Gold turned back and followed Zhu and Ma towards the row of houses that was a front for the Death Mother’s operation. They went to the end house and through the front door into the facility, then flew up to hover below the ceiling to get an overview.
The screams of the panicked demons echoed through the building, bouncing off the ceiling. They were trying to escape down the tunnel, and were crushing each other in the stampede. The floor was black with demon essence. Demon warriors from John’s army were pulling them out of the crush, clubbing them unconscious and throwing them to one side without destroying them.
Zhu pulled the Shadow Sword from its scabbard and raised it horizontally above her head. Lightning flashed from the sword through the massed demons, knocking them senseless. She did this three more times, each time disabling another wave of demons.
One of the demon officers, in three-metre-tall True Form with black scales and tusks, floated up to Zhu and saluted her. ‘Southeast corner, ma’am — Fifty-Seven is having some difficulty there. We can handle these now.’
Zhu turned and flew to the area he’d mentioned: a large open space, twenty metres long and five wide, bounded on two sides by the external walls and on the other two by the internal screens. Rows of benches filled the space.
Ma and Gold joined Zhu, and they flew down to take a look. The benches held octagonal ornamental fish tanks, full of thick, black, bubbling demon essence instead of water. The Generals’ demon soldiers were battling a group of water elementals and losing. The water elementals formed water blades that sliced through the demon soldiers, easily destroying them.
Zhu raised her sword and sent a blast of lightning through a couple of elementals. They staggered back then retaliated, shooting balls of ice at the Generals.
‘None of us is equipped to deal with these,’ Ma said. ‘Zhu is thunder and I’m fire; these water things are immune to both of us.’
‘Fall back, hold your ground,’ I said. ‘I’ll send Simone.’ I turned to speak to her, but she wasn’t there. ‘Where’d she go?’
‘I don’t know. She disappeared a while ago,’ my father said.
‘That’s her, there she is,’ Gold said.
A screaming sound, like a jet engine, came from outside the row of houses. The demons stopped fighting and cowered as the whole building shook. The roof peeled away and Simone dropped inside, landing in a low defensive stance in front of the fake water elementals. She stood up, raised her hands, and all of the fake elementals turned to ice. She clenched her fists and ripped her hands backwards, and they shattered.
She dropped her hands. ‘Anything else I need to worry about?’
A tentacle lashed out of one of the fish tanks, wrapped itself around her throat and jerked her towards the tank. She was pulled along for a moment, then concentrated: the entire fish tank exploded in a shower of glass and demon essence. The tentacle fell, lifeless, from her neck.
‘That was some sort of plant hybrid,’ I said. ‘The Celestial plants will be furious.’
Simone put her hand to the side of her throat and staggered backwards. ‘Take care, everybody, those things are poisonous.’ She fell to sit on the floor, still with her hand on her throat.
I jumped to my feet. ‘Gold she’s poisoned.’
‘I know, ma’am,’ Gold said. He knelt next to her and put his hand on her arm, then concentrated. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this before.’
‘It’s okay, I learnt how to deal with this in school,’ Simone said, then bent over and retched. ‘I can handle it.’
Zhu and Ma crouched next to her as well. Another tentacle lashed out of a second tank, but Ma summoned his sword and cut it off before it could touch them. It withdrew into the tank.
Gold’s view returned to Simone and I gasped. She was unconscious, her face pale and swollen.
‘Call John back,’ I said. ‘Quickly!’
A deeper, booming scream sounded overhead and John shot through the opened roof to land next to Simone. He pushed Zhu and Ma away, knelt next to her and lifted her head into his lap. He put one hand on her forehead and his expression went grim.
I took half a step forward, but the projection became more difficult to see at close range, so I moved back and sat again, helpless.
John gently lowered Simone to the ground again. Her head lolled, her eyes open but unseeing. He pulled Seven Stars from his back and handed it to Ma, then changed to Turtle.
Zhu jumped up and began searching the benches, carefully staying out of range of the plant demons in the tanks. She found what she was looking for — a glass
beaker — and returned to John and Ma.
John raised his front left foot and closed his eyes, his Turtle face serene. Zhu held the beaker below the foot, and Ma cut it off. A stream of blood flowed from the stump and Zhu collected it in the beaker. When it was half-full, she turned and dribbled the blood into Simone’s mouth.
‘One of the demons poisoned Simone.’ I swallowed hard. ‘She looks really bad. They’re giving her John’s blood to drink — it’s a healing agent.’
Simone inhaled loudly and gasped, then coughed. John changed back to human form, missing his left hand, and held her. Zhu and Ma cut some strips from Ma’s robe, and Gold wrapped them around the stump of John’s wrist. John didn’t seem aware of them working; he concentrated on Simone.
‘Can he grow it back?’ I said.
‘Sorry; busy,’ Gold said.
‘I understand.’
Zhu moved to take Simone’s head in her lap. John rose, turned, and Ma handed Seven Stars to him. John held it easily in one hand, raised it and loaded it with his chakra energy. The seven holes in the blade sang as they filled with different-coloured lights; then John pointed the blade at the aquariums and dark energy shot out to spread around him, shattering their glass. The demons inside looked like grassy plants: all long, narrow blades, some with yellow flowers. The tentacles weren’t visible at first, curled up inside the leaves, but then the demons lashed out towards John, trying to hit him with the tentacles’ poisonous spiny ends. John lowered the sword and held out the stump of his left hand towards them, then grimaced and dropped it.
Ma stepped forward, pushed his hands palms out towards the plant demons and enveloped them in a gush of flames. The demons blackened, shrivelled and died.
John turned back to Simone, and Zhu moved out of the way so that he could hold her again. He placed the sword on the ground next to him and put his hand on her forehead.
She opened her eyes and smiled up at him. ‘That tasted absolutely awful.’
‘I know,’ he said. He looked up at Ma, and his eyes unfocused. ‘Is that all there is here?’
‘No. My commander reports that there are some humans in cages at the other end of the building,’ Zhu said.