‘Anything,’ I said.
He glanced away.
‘And I know you would too.’
I looked back up at the King. ‘Can you give me something so I can call you if I change my mind and decide to go to you?’
His beautiful face lit up and he nodded.
I put both hands in my lap and looked down at them. ‘Would you only hold me until Xuan Wu returns, so that I can keep my promise to him?’
‘I swear,’ he said.
I glanced up at him. ‘You could have a full-on try to convince me to stay with you. You could go for it. You’re very attractive, you know that? I could grow to like you.’
His smile widened. ‘I could give you more than you could ever possibly desire.’
I folded my hands together in my lap. ‘Do you solemnly vow not to give anybody any assistance in going after us? That you’ll stay out of this in the meantime?’
He nodded.
‘Stand up and do it right,’ I said sternly.
He rose and put his hand on the table. His face went hard and fierce. ‘I solemnly vow that I will not assist anyone in their efforts to harm the Dark Lord, Xuan Wu, or any member of his household. I hereby swear that if the Lady Emma chooses to come to me of her own free will, I will ensure that the Princess Simone remains safe for the rest of her natural life. If the Lady Emma comes to me of her own free will, I will only hold her until the Dark Lord returns, if that is her wish.’ He smiled kindly at me. ‘Will that do?’ He sat again.
‘What do you think, Bai Hu?’ I said without looking at the men on my side of the table.
John remained perfectly still, but it was obvious he hadn’t missed the significance of me not asking him.
‘I think you’ve covered all your bases there, my Lady,’ Bai Hu said softly. ‘Remind me to have you in next time I have to negotiate a treaty with one of my neighbours.’
‘I’m one of your neighbours,’ John said.
‘Sure, Tiger.’ I felt pain; my hands were held so tightly together my fingernails had drawn blood from my palms. I shook them to loosen them up, then looked up at the Demon King. Bastard. ‘Why do you want me so badly, King? I’m just an ordinary human female.’
‘He wants everything I possess,’ John said. ‘He wants all that I love. He wants my Mountain, he wants my Lady, he wants my daughter.’
‘One out of three already, Xuan Tian,’ the Demon King said. ‘I hear it will take you years to fix the damage we caused with our little party on top of your Mountain. Do you have any idea how many of my children are after your head?’
John stiffened very slightly. ‘I have caused him a great deal of grief over the centuries, and he would love to make me suffer.’
‘I love you dearly, Turtle.’ The Demon King smiled right into John’s eyes. ‘I would particularly love you stewed with vegetables in a hotpot. Right after,’ he smiled gently at me, ‘a large tureen of shredded snake broth with sliced pig’s ear. And,’ he looked at the Tiger, ‘braised tiger penis on yin-yang rice.’
‘You won’t be eating my dick, you’ll be sucking it,’ the Tiger said, very calm.
‘By the Ten Levels of Hell but I adore you, little pussy cat,’ the Demon King said with a gentle smile. ‘Eaten any unborn children lately?’
The Tiger didn’t reply.
‘Give me something so that I can call you,’ I said, ignoring them.
The King grinned and handed me a perfectly normal mobile phone. I checked the phone book: only one number stored.
‘Now piss off,’ I said. ‘Go away and leave us alone. Stay out of this. If I call you, I call you. I don’t ever intend to. But now you can’t stick your ugly red nose into our business.’
The Demon King threw his head back, roared with laughter, then rose. John and the Tiger stood as well. I remained sitting cross-legged on the table.
The King saluted John and the Tiger. They returned the salute perfectly politely. I ignored them.
As the King returned to the sedan chair I unfolded my legs and hopped down off the table to stand next to John.
The Demon King turned back before he entered the chair. ‘Oh,’ he said casually. ‘I forgot about this. This happened before I gave you my promise not to interfere, my Lady Emma, I do apologise. But my Ladies insisted, they said they had a score to settle.’
He gestured, and one of the Snake Mothers took full huge, ugly True Form. It slithered to the back of the sedan chair and opened a large trunk there. It reached in and pulled out Leo by one arm. He was unconscious and hung limply from its grip. Blood covered his face and his clothes.
I moved to rush to him but John held out his arm to stop me.
‘Don’t make any sudden moves,’ John said quietly. ‘Stay very still, and let it give him back to us.’
The Snake Mother slithered to us, still dangling Leo. It dropped him in front of us, and he crumpled. The Snake Mother grinned viciously into my eyes.
‘We had a lot of fun with this little Lion,’ it hissed loudly. ‘But we did not kill it, because the King would not permit it. He said that you love it.’ The Snake Mother lowered itself on its coils so that its red eyes were level with mine. ‘Please do come and join us in Hell, my Lady. We have so many wonderful plans for you.’
It raised itself, then changed back to a slim, beautiful European girl with bright red hair. She smiled tightly at me and returned to position.
The small demons began to play the music. The Demon King gave me a friendly wave and boarded the sedan chair. The animal-headed demons picked it up, and the whole procession turned back down the alley and disappeared.
The silence continued for a few moments, then the noise of the cars and the people outside restarted.
John, the Tiger, Jade and Gold took human form. We all knelt around Leo. The other Immortals, with Simone and Michael, rushed to us.
Leo started to regain consciousness. He cast around, eyes wide, then saw us and collapsed back. He grimaced with pain.
‘Quickly, Leo, if you can tell us any major injuries you’ve sustained it will save us a great deal of time,’ John said urgently.
Leo winced. He shook his head, then turned away and spat out blood.
I became very calm. ‘Meredith, Liu, Michael, take Simone away where she won’t be able to see Leo, and turn her around. I don’t want her to see this. Michael, you too.’
‘No, Meredith, stay,’ John said. ‘Everybody else, do as Emma orders.’
I heard them move but didn’t look at them. I studied Leo and looked right into his eyes. ‘Oh dear Lord, Leo, they didn’t. No.’
‘Tell me, Leo,’ John said.
‘He can’t. He ripped out the Snake Mother’s tongue and killed it when you were on the Mountain, John.’ I turned back to Leo. ‘Did they take it completely out?’
Leo shook his head. He turned and spat out more blood, gagging. I knelt closer to him and took his hand; it was like ice. He grasped my hand fiercely and gazed into my eyes. I put my other hand on his bloodied cheek and whispered, ‘Show me.’
He shook his head, his mouth clamped shut.
‘Show me, that’s an order,’ I whispered again, my heart breaking.
He opened his bloodied mouth and showed us.
They had sliced his tongue in half right down the middle. He had a forked tongue exactly like they did.
‘No,’ John said quietly.
Meredith gasped behind me. ‘Oh, dear Lord.’ She moved quickly. ‘Turn him over, I need to reach the points on his back.’
Leo helped us to tip him over onto his stomach. Meredith ripped his shirt to reveal his back, then put her fingers over some of the energy points on the meridians down Leo’s back.
‘Over again,’ she said, and pulled the remains of the shirt from him after we’d turned him over. She concentrated on the energy points on his chest, up his neck, and across his face.
Leo relaxed and smiled with his eyes closed. Then he looked up at her and nodded, smiling, mouth still firmly shut.
&
nbsp; ‘You’re most welcome,’ Meredith said softly. ‘The anaesthetising effect will last for a few hours.’ ‘Well?’ John said.
‘I can’t do this by myself,’ Meredith said, ‘and none of the others has enough experience with energy. I’m sorry, my Lord, without another energy expert I simply can’t do it.’
‘Try Emma,’ John said.
‘She’s not Immortal,’ Meredith said. ‘You let your love cloud your judgement.’
‘No, I don’t,’ John said. ‘Try anyway. She can do shen work and she can use her Inner Eye. Try.’
Meredith stiffened and glanced sharply at me.
‘Please, Meredith, for Leo,’ I said. ‘Please.’
‘First we need to move him back to the house and somewhere comfortable,’ Meredith said. ‘This will take a while.’
John raised his head and spoke loudly. ‘Immortals, carry. Jade, Emma. Gold, Simone. Tiger, Michael. Meredith, Leo. I will walk. Back to the house. Liu, dismissed. Report.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The world blinked out, then I was next to the bed in Leo’s room. I fell over, but strong arms hoisted me into a chair. The world stopped spinning and I saw Meredith holding me.
‘It will go away very quickly,’ she said. ‘It was just a short distance.’
Somebody pushed a glass of water into my hand but I shoved it away. I threw myself up, ignoring the dizziness, and stumbled to Leo’s bedside to hold his hand. He smiled at me, his mouth carefully closed. His expression went strange.
‘Somebody get him a bowl, very quickly,’ I said, but Meredith was already shoving one in front of him from the other side of the bed. He spat out blood. He gagged on it, and more came out.
‘How much healing energy work have you done, Emma?’ Meredith said softly without turning away from Leo.
‘Apart from using the phoenix feather on Leo last time a demon injured him, none at all.’ I shook my head with remorse. ‘I wish I’d brought it with me.’
‘Waste of time.’ Meredith put the bowl on the bedside table. ‘You’d need at least two feathers to fix this.’
‘Damn.’
‘Let’s see if we can do this. You will be a receptacle.’ Meredith took both of Leo’s hands. ‘You don’t really need to do anything, just be able to hold enough chi.’ She put her hand on my shoulder and studied me closely. ‘You’ll do.’ She turned back to Leo. ‘Has anybody ever done energy healing on you before?’
Leo shook his head without opening his mouth.
‘Then you will find this a most interesting experience. Don’t panic, it won’t hurt. If you feel like you’re suffocating on your tongue at all, just breathe. That’s normal. You won’t suffocate, I promise. Do you understand?’
Leo nodded, perfectly calm.
‘Right, then,’ Meredith said crisply, sounding like an English matron. ‘Let’s get started. Emma, hold my hand.’ She took my left hand in her right. ‘Stay very still and keep your mind clear. Feel free to follow along; you might find this enlightening. You may learn something. Leo.’ She took Leo’s right hand in her left. ‘Just breathe. You won’t suffocate, despite what it feels like. Relax. Don’t worry if you feel sleepy, just let yourself doze off, it will make the procedure go faster for you. Okay, people, let’s do this.’ Her voice softened as she reached inside Leo and his energy meridians lit up like Christmas tree lights. ‘You are in a great deal of serious trouble, young Emma.’ She moved the energy through Leo. ‘I don’t want to be anywhere around when Lord Xuan finally sits you down; he is going to go quite spare.’
John and Gold were waiting in the hall when we came out of the room. Both of us were exhausted. John had a face like thunder; rigid with control.
‘Don’t bother getting stuck into her right now,’ Meredith said to John. ‘She won’t hear you, she’s absolutely exhausted, and so am I. Both of us are going to our rooms to collapse and sleep for a week. When we come round we will be starving, so be ready for us with a great deal of fresh food. After that you can feel free to kill missy Emma if you like.’
She was right. I was too exhausted even to say something cutting.
‘What about Leo?’ John said.
‘Leo will live. I did my best. He has lost an awful lot of blood. You were right about Emma. She is remarkable.’
‘You owe me a gold coin,’ I whispered.
Meredith continued, ignoring me. ‘But Leo will have a serious speech impediment. He will sound like he is profoundly deaf. And when I wake up again, I am going to go out and kill something.’
John looked like he was about to say something, then changed his mind. He gestured down the hallway. ‘Go.’
I was asleep before my head hit the pillow.
I woke up. I was paralysed. I knew this: sleep paralysis. It happened when you were exhausted but something woke you. Your body was still asleep. It was still paralysed, like when you were asleep. But your mind was awake.
Wonderful. I hoped nothing was there to get me, ‘cause I really couldn’t move.
My consciousness struggled upwards. My body was made of lead.
Oh my God. Turtle hotpot with vegetables. Roast tiger penis on yin-yang rice. Shredded snake broth with sliced pig’s ear. He looked at me when he said that. I needed to remember that.
My consciousness drifted back down again.
I waited for John in his office on the first floor of the Kensington house. He came in, quietly closed the door and then stood with his hands clasped behind his back. He strode over to the desk and stood behind his office chair. He leaned his arms on the back of the chair. The sunshine streamed through the first-floor window behind him and lit up his dark hair.
I sat silently. I took a sip of the tea. I was perfectly calm.
‘Sometimes, Emma, I think you want to take a trip through the Ten Levels of Hell,’ John said. ‘What’s the big attraction?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. Simone is the reason I do everything I do.’ I stopped and glared up at him. ‘I’ll make a trip through there anyway. I’m well aware of that.’
He seemed surprised. ‘How come you know this?’
‘You people don’t keep your activities too much of a secret from the world at large, Xuan Wu,’ I said. ‘All I had to do was some research. There’s a great deal of misguided claptrap, but a lot of truth out there. I’ve been reading. I know.’
‘And you would still face that by choice?’
I shrugged. ‘For Simone.’
‘He would try to win you over, you know,’ John said, looking me in the eyes, his voice still very mild. ‘But when he sees it is a waste of time, he will throw you to the Mothers.’
‘Simone would be safe.’
‘I would return to a gibbering husk of a woman with a mind pummelled into imbecility by their torture. What they did to Leo was just a tiny taste of their capabilities.’
‘Simone would still be safe,’ I said. ‘Look me right in the eye and tell me you wouldn’t have done exactly the same thing.’
He sighed and sat across from me. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a gold coin, and slid it across the desk to me. He put his head in his hands, then rubbed his hands over his face. He leaned back to retie his hair.
We were both thinking: I love you so damn much. One day this will all come together for us.
‘None of this would ever have happened if I had never married Michelle,’ he said. ‘If I had met you first, it could have been completely different. I would have been at full strength, able to train you and defend you. In a short time you would have had the capability to handle any demon. We would be Dark Lord and Dark Lady together on the undamaged Mountain. We would not be in this situation.’
‘How dare you!’ I shouted, furious. I leaned forward and thumped the table, making the tea slop out of the cup onto some of his papers. ‘If you had never married Michelle you would have never had Simone. I can see what Michelle was like, there’s a lot of her in Simone! She must have been a remarkable woman!’ My voice thickened. ‘You are
such a bastard sometimes. How could you say such a thing?’
He watched me silently for a while. Then he slid another gold coin to me.
He smiled slightly. ‘You know, I am the one who is supposed to be cross with you.’ He leaned back and put his palms on the table. ‘Well, now you have this pact with the King, I suppose we both just have to make sure that you never use it.’
‘But it’s nice to know that it’s there just in case. And to know that red-headed bastard will keep his ugly nose out of this.’
His face was still expressionless. ‘Will you still be this impossible after we’re married?’
‘Probably,’ I said, matching his even tone. ‘Will you?’ He smiled slightly. Words weren’t necessary.
‘Gold has appeared outside. He says there is something important he needs to discuss with us.’
‘Tell him to come in, if you’re finished with me,’ I said, still very calm. I stopped. There was something I needed to talk to him about as well, but for the life of me I couldn’t remember what it was. Oh well, it would come to me. Couldn’t be that important if I couldn’t remember it.
There was a tap at the door and Gold came in with a sheaf of papers under his arm. He was back to his normal human form, sharp tan suit and everything. He sat down next to me and dropped the papers onto the table. ‘My Lord, my Lady.’
He knew what I’d done. I certainly didn’t look like I’d just been chewed out; I was sitting there calmly drinking tea. He saw the gold coins on the desk in front of me and smiled slightly.
‘My Lord, you have put this house in Kensington on the market. I suggest that you withdraw it immediately, because you can’t sell it.’
‘Why not?’ John said.
‘How long have you owned this house, my Lord?’ Gold said.
‘About a hundred and fifty years,’ John said.
‘The house has been in your name the entire time?’
John stopped. We shared a look.
‘As long as I paid the rates, nobody looked very closely at the deeds,’ John said. ‘The house hasn’t changed hands in that entire time. Not even passed down. Damn.’