Black Jade (8 page)

The Dragon nodded and took Celestial Form in his silver and blue scaled armour. ‘Have you made one yet?' he said.

I changed back to human, then concentrated, grew, and pulled my armour to me. I didn't have a Celestial Form as such, it felt too pretentious; but being bigger and stronger always helped. I held my hand out and summoned Dark Heavens.

‘Really not good enough, Emma. You can do a much better battle form than that, and you need to assert your individuality by getting your own damn sword,' the Dragon said.

He stopped at the bulkhead between the hangar bay and the aft room, put his hand on the door, then took the handle and turned it. It wasn't locked so he pushed the door open. We went through to a raised platform composed of steel grid suspended above the six-deck-high space. Below us stood hundreds of the black-skinned demons, silent and obviously parked. They needed the large space because they were close on five metres tall and all had leathery wings.

‘Majesty, Lady Emma,' said a male voice with a cultured English accent. It came from our left, behind the open door.

The Dragon pushed the door closed to reveal a smaller black-skinned demon standing behind it. I raised Dark Heavens, and the Dragon shifted position, readying himself.

The demon raised both clawed hands. ‘I will not harm you. I haven't been ordered to.'

It was the usual black-skinned Eastern-Western hybrid, two metres tall with long limbs, but its head was more of a bulge above its torso than a true head, and it had no neck. Its face made me step back: it was grotesquely small and disproportionate to the size of its head.

The Dragon made a small sound of disgust.

The demon bowed. ‘I apologise for my appearance, although I probably shouldn't as I have no control over the way I'm made. Don't try to attack me. You know you can't hurt us.'

‘Are you in charge?' I said.

‘No, I just mind the door. I think they forgot to tell us you were coming. We're not ordered to do anything.'

‘Most strange,' the Dragon said.

‘Want to turn?' I asked the demon. ‘I can give you a good home on the Mountain.'

It shrugged. ‘I appreciate the offer, but that is too far from my Centre. We are being shipped —' It raised its head. ‘You have permission to wander through, but if you linger anywhere I must move you along. So I ask you to go back through the door; there's nothing else here but us.'

‘What would happen to all of you if we were to sink the ship?' I said.

‘Please don't do that, Lady; it's a very long walk to shore.'

Its voice had the ring of truth. The Dragon opened the door and we went out of the room and back down the narrow metal corridor.

There are hundreds
— I began.

One at a time, not both together!
John shouted in my head.
I'm facing a single-digit demon here!

The Dragon and I shared an amused look. He gestured towards me to speak first.

There are hundreds of those black demons in the aft of the ship. Can you destroy them after you take out Nine?

I'd have to yin them and that would probably sink the ship.

Damn.
We couldn't risk hurting the human crew. Even if they evacuated the sinking ship, some could still be lost.
Finish up and let's go.

We swept through the rest of the ship and found no aircraft or other demons, just evidence of residence by the human crew. The Dragon carried me and we returned to our position floating over the bow of the ship.

John was keeping the demon busy without damaging it, and the demon was blowing heavily with effort. John blocked a blow from the broadsword, pushed it down and to the side, and slammed the
pommel of Seven Stars into the demon's face. The demon reeled back, stunned, and John swung and took its head off. It exploded into black streamers.

John put the sword away and strode to the aft of the ship. The Dragon floated us forward to land on the deck, and we followed John. He stopped in front of the sailors, still in Celestial Form.

The crew had been sitting on the deck, bored with the long fight. Now they jumped to their feet and all of them crowded away from him. He enhanced his voice to make it as intense and majestic as the rest of him.

‘You have witnessed a battle between the Shen of the Heavens and the demons of Hell,' he said, and their faces filled with wonder.

One of Nine's officers stepped forward and turned to speak to the sailors. ‘Don't believe what you see and hear. Remember the admiral said —'

His voice was choked off as John picked him up by the collar of his uniform and lifted him high above the deck, his legs dangling.

‘It is wise not to believe your eyes and ears sometimes. But if I were to drop you right now, hitting the deck would definitely hurt,' John said.

He spoke to the sailors, still holding the officer. ‘I apologise for the damage to the ship, but your admiral was on the wrong side.'

Some of the sailors were starting to believe John; it was in their faces. They were thrilled and terrified.

‘I am Zhenwu, Supreme Emperor of the Northern Heavens, the Destroyer of Demons,' he said. ‘I have just destroyed your admiral. Think on that, and think on the nature of the creatures that stand in the space below us.'

He lowered the officer to the deck. The officer staggered but remained on his feet, then took a few steps back and glared, furious, at John.

John turned away. ‘Let's go.'

Stay human, Emma,
the Dragon said.
I'll give you a lift.

The Dragon raised us ten metres and changed to his most massive True Form, a fifty-metre-long dragon. He produced a glowing nimbus of shen energy around us that reflected off his scales and made shifting patterns of light on the grey deck of
the ship. The sailors shaded their eyes and made loud sounds of astonishment.

John floated up next to us. ‘Make sure you are on the right side in the coming battle, humans,' he said.

Then the three of us shot straight up so fast that the breath was knocked out of me.

John summoned a cloud, floated to stand on it, and put his hand out to pull me in to join him. He held me close, my back against his chest and his arm around me, as he carried me through the interface between the Earthly and the Heavens.

The air became sweeter and purer as we arrived in the crystalline sky of the Celestial Plane. We went straight to the Tree, and landed on the large open area around her base, already covered with the refugees from the Palace Under the Sea. They mobbed the Dragon when we landed, all talking at once, and he changed to human form to embrace his wives, children and grandchildren.

John shrank to human form and went to Jade and Yue Gui. They were standing to one side with Gold, who was projecting an array of names and numbers in front of him.

‘We need to protect the Tree at all costs,' Yue Gui said. ‘If the Eastern Bastion falls, we won't have enough space to hold the remaining refugees.'

‘We don't have enough space now,' Gold said, studying the list scrolling in front of him. ‘The food will run out soon, even with the supplies we're purchasing on the Earthly.'

Jade was watching the list as well. ‘We have to move some to the Earthly. There's no other way.' She glanced at us. ‘I'll start chasing humans out of the Earthly Follies.'

‘Not secure enough,' John said. ‘The demons are well aware of the locations of the Follies. Without me down there to protect the buildings, the demons will probably destroy them as soon as they're occupied.'

‘Destroy the buildings?' Jade's eyes widened. ‘They would too.'

‘The hotels,' Gold said. The list changed to known properties owned by the Four Winds. ‘The Tiger has a variety of hotels scattered throughout the world. If he can give me the locations of all of them, we can accommodate many people there.'

‘Jade?' I said.

‘We can do it,' she said. ‘Gold, can you find me a stone to do the room allocations?'

‘There's an international computer system that will do it,' Gold began, then, ‘Never mind, the demons will be in it. We'll have to set up false identities for everybody. I'll see what I can do.' He made a soft sound of frustration. ‘We don't have enough people to organise everything!'

Someone screamed and we all turned to see. The Dragon was standing rigid, his arms out and his eyes wide as he stared down at himself. Smoke billowed from his abdomen, and everybody stepped back. We ran to him as flames spurted from his blue robes.

John put his hands out and summoned a bubble of water, and laid it against the fire. Flames continued to spray from the Dragon's abdomen within the bubble.

‘Not me. Not me!' The Dragon jabbed one finger up to the left. ‘Save her!'

‘What?' I said, and looked where he'd pointed.

A dot of light, too bright to focus on, was causing smoke and shooting flames from the Tree's trunk.

‘What is it?' I said. I turned to the Dragon; the same flames were coming from him, inside the water bubble. ‘Ah Qing, what is it?'

‘I don't know,' the Dragon wailed, then collapsed into a ball on the ground. ‘Save her!'

The spot of light was moving across the Tree, cutting through her. The smoke billowed in large clouds and her bark popped and sizzled.

‘What's happening?' Jade said, distraught. She fell to sit next to Qing Long and put his head in her lap. He clutched at her. ‘Ah
Qing, talk to us.' She brushed her hands over his face and bent over him. ‘What's hurting you?'

‘Hold me, Jade,' he said. ‘It burns.'

‘It's a laser!' I shouted. ‘John, take True Form and put yourself between the Tree and the source.'

‘Won't that kill me?' John said.

‘Probably, but it'll give us time to work out how to block it.'

‘Where's it coming from?' Jade said. She put her hand over the flames on the Dragon's abdomen, then jerked it away. ‘Why is there no beam to see?'

John took True Form and flew up to the Tree. He positioned himself in front of the spot of light and it hit him instead. He generated a circle of yin to absorb it.

How long do we have?
I asked him.

Ten minutes at the most before I lose control of it and do more damage than the laser.

‘It's a laser beam!' I shouted at the Tree. ‘Move away from it.'

The Tree's branches thrashed as she shifted, and the ground moved. People were knocked off their feet, and tiles clattered from the roof of the Dragon's Palace. The point of the laser skidded across the Tree's trunk and disappeared.

‘I can't believe I didn't think of that,' the Dragon said as Jade helped him to his feet.

John changed to human form and floated down to join us. ‘Are you all right?' he asked the Dragon.

‘Give me a moment . . .' the Dragon said, and collapsed again.

‘No,' Jade said, and knelt next to him. She gathered him in her arms and held him as smoke came from his robes.

The Tree screamed and tilted sideways as she moved again. The buildings trembled but none of them fell. The point of the laser shifted on her trunk, then moved across her and resettled to its original spot, resuming burning a hole through her. She kept moving and the laser followed her, leaving a trail of black charring across her trunk. It was seriously damaging her: there were deep furrows in her wood where it hit.

The Dragon moaned with pain and Jade sobbed into the top of his head.

‘They have some way of tracking us,' Gold said. ‘How do they know where it is?'

‘Tree!' I shouted. ‘Down. Lose altitude.'

The Tree's branches thrashed again as she plummeted towards the ground, then stopped, knocking more people off their feet.

I staggered and righted myself. ‘The laser cannon generating this is probably at the Western Palace — the Tiger was building something like it,' I said. ‘If you can go low enough, the curve of the Earth will block the beam.'

‘What beam? There isn't any beam!' Jade said.

‘That's how it works,' I said. ‘You can't see it.'

The red dot reappeared on the trunk.

‘Further down!' I yelled.

We screamed towards the sea's surface again and stopped. The horizon was now visible over the edge of the Tree's platform. We all waited with our breath held for the dot to reappear, and it didn't.

Jade helped the Dragon to his feet again, and he embraced her. They stood silently, holding each other.

John grabbed my hand and we clicked together, sharing our consciousness. I passed all the information I had about the laser cannons to him and he nodded, then released my hand and turned away.

‘Gold!' he said. ‘Straight line beam, now below the curve of the earth — you saw it cut across the tree. Can you triangulate it?'

‘Diameter of the Earth . . .' Gold said. ‘Accessing. Processing.' His expression cleared. ‘Yeah, you're right. The source is where the Western Palace used to be.'

The Dragon pulled away from Jade. ‘I must go,' he said to her.

She nodded. ‘Go.'

He kissed her and turned to John. ‘Ah Wu?'

‘Let's go,' John said.

‘Faster if you don't come along, Emma,' the Dragon said.

‘I'll stay here and help sort out the refugees.'

John changed to True Form, and the two of them rocketed into the air, moving so fast that the ground recoiled beneath us.

‘Can the hotels carry all the refugees?' I asked Gold.

‘The Northern Heavens are full, we don't have a choice,' Yue Gui said. She looked pensive. ‘I wonder if the Grandmother would help?'

‘We'll find a way,' I said. ‘Defending them is another issue.' I felt a vibration through the breeze. ‘What's that?'

‘I don't . . .' Gold said, but Jade's face went strange.

‘My lizard ears hear a sound,' she said. She changed to dragon form and flicked her tongue, much the same way I did in snake form. ‘It sounds like . . .' She changed back to human and yelled, ‘Insects! Move everybody inside!' She raised her arms and strode through the crowd. ‘Everybody inside — there are insects coming!'

The refugees rushed to the buildings that clustered at the base of the Tree. A few children cried with alarm, and adults lifted them and carried them to safety.

‘Dragons and any who can fight, out on the concourse with me!' I shouted, and summoned Dark Heavens. I turned back to see the sky; it appeared to be clear. ‘Can you see anything, Tree?' I said.

John, come back. There are insects,
I added silently.

Already,
he said.

‘There,' the Tree said above us, her leaves rustling.

The insects became visible: a dark cloud like a flock of birds. The buzzing grew louder and more intense.

I glanced behind me. A small group of dragons — only twenty or thirty — stood in True Form, together with Gold in his battle form. The King of the Dragons had transformed as well, and towered over the rest of the group. I backed up to be with them.

John appeared next to me in True Form, and the Serpent separated from the Turtle. The Dragon floated above us in True Form as well.

‘There are thousands of them,' the Dragon said softly.

‘I know,' the Dragon King said. ‘We won't have time to evacuate everybody before they arrive.'

The Blue Dragon spun in the air and headed towards the buildings at the base of the Tree. The Tree's branches thrashed and we dropped again. She moved sideways as well; she was taking us to land so that when she fell she wouldn't kill the mortals. Unfortunately her motion carried us towards the insects rather than away from them, and the buzzing became almost maddening in its intensity.

The black cloud thickened — they were right on top of us — but then they weren't.

I realised with shock that the lack of contrast in the light had fooled me. I'd thought the insects were twenty centimetres long and close to us, when actually they were twenty metres long — and some were three or four times that length, with grotesquely elongated pulsing white bodies and multiple sets of double wings down their backs.

They followed the Tree towards the ground, blackening the sky above us. The dragons leapt into the air to fight them.

The smaller insects, each a metre long, flew to the Tree — thousands of them. They latched onto her trunk and she screamed again as she turned into a black mass of shining wings and shells.

The dragons attacked the insects, but immediately fell, limp and unconscious — the insects had deadly stingers. The remaining dragons threw energy from the air at the insects, but it had no effect.

A dozen larger insects — sixty metres long from mandibles to stinger — floated above the ground, their many pairs of wings humming. The dragons attacked these instead.

One dragon ripped off an insect's head, but the body remained hovering. The white pulsing abdomen split open lengthwise along its belly, and a mass of writhing worm demons tumbled out onto the ground. All of the bigger insects had now split, and hundreds of worms, each two metres long, squirmed over the ground in a puddle of toxic goo. The dragons landed to fight them.

I ran to them with Dark Heavens, and the worms closest to me raised their front ends to spit poison. I couldn't avoid all the poison, but it didn't matter. I swiped as best I could, taking heads off as the green burning slime hit me. A gob of goo hit my left eye, and the side of my face melted away, blinding me in that eye. I blocked the pain and continued to attack.

John had taken human form to fight with Seven Stars and swung the loaded blade next to me. We killed more than a hundred of the worms, cutting them to pieces that continued to wriggle, but the rest were gone. They'd burnt a hole through the paving and tunnelled into the earth around the Tree.

John and I shared a look.

‘Do you need help with that?' he said.

‘No, I have it.' I wiped the poison off what remained of my face with my sleeve. The dragons who'd fought the worms lay on the ground, motionless. ‘Save the dragons.'

‘It's too late for them. I'll heal everybody still alive when this is done.' He pointed up at the Tree. ‘We have bigger things to worry about.'

The insects were eating her. They had opened great holes in her trunk and it was only a matter of time before she fell. The Dragon was gone; he'd carried as many children as he could but there was still a huddled group of more than a hundred terrified mortals cowering next to his Palace.

A great cracking sound erupted beneath our feet and the ground trembled.

John changed back to True Form and grew until each of his two animals was fifty metres long. The Turtle stomped to the terrified people and they cowered away from him.

‘Onto my back,' he said. ‘Climb on!'

People screamed and scurried away from it, but the Serpent grabbed them in its mouth and lifted them onto the Turtle's shell.

I ran to help, picking people up and hoisting them so they could climb up to the edge of his shell, three metres from the ground. Blood dripped from the wounds where the poison had burnt holes through my skin, but I fought the weakness. I lifted a young woman holding a screaming child, her face white with fear but full of determination. My remaining vision blurred and I forced myself on; I could succumb to the poison later. Right now there were people to save.

The ground shook again and tilted. The top of the Tree leaned as her trunk splintered away from the hole the insects were eating. A ridge appeared along her base, running three hundred metres from her trunk, popping out the pavers. The ridge grew and expanded, and a great root, covered in worms, surged out of the ground.

I felt more than heard the sound of the wood separating, and more roots surged into the air. The ground tilted, and the people who weren't on the Turtle slid away from us over the smooth pavers.

The top of the Tree fell with a vast crack that made the ground shudder, and John's Turtle lifted off the ground to stay horizontal and hold its passengers.