Dark Serpent (11 page)

‘Uh, yeah,’ one of the guards said. ‘Come on, guys, let’s get out of here. The boss’ll be down on us hard if she finds us slacking around here.’

I waited until they were out of earshot, then quickly slithered to the bars of the cage. ‘You need to get out of here right now. He knows who you are and if he finds you he’ll have you. Go now.’

‘They all know who I am, little one,’ the Grandfather said, leaning on his staff. ‘I just move faster than they do.’

‘Those guards will be running to tell the King!’

He glanced back down the corridor. ‘I’ve done all of those ones a favour in the past. None of them would exist without me and they know it. They won’t do anything.’

‘What if he ordered them to tell him if you showed up?’

‘They would tell him; they have to. But they can take a couple of days thinking about whether or not it was really me.’ He reached through the bars to touch my nose and the warm feeling of comfort spread through me. ‘I am here if you need me, but sometimes I need to move away quickly.’ He raised his head. ‘Now is one of those times, I am sorry. I will return later if you are still here.’ He took his hand from my nose. ‘I will tell those who need to know what they need to know.’

‘No!’ I said urgently. ‘Don’t tell him where I am. He needs to find me —’

Da Shih Yeh disappeared.

‘— himself.’

There were sounds above him, but they didn’t break into his reverie. Then one loud noise did. Someone was calling ‘Father’. Simone?

‘Ah Ba! ’

He opened his eyes and saw the huge humans. They needed him. He pulled himself back into his shell and took human form.

‘Is it time to go?’ he said.

‘No, there’s a message for you. The fairy won’t give it to anyone else,’ Martin said.

The fairy floated to John and held out a piece of paper, carefully folded into four. He took the paper and opened it, then shot to his feet.

‘Who gave you this?’ he asked the fairy, and his tone made her flit backwards with fright. He waved the paper in front of her face. ‘Who has done this? Where did this come from?’

The fairy’s face went serene and a voice echoed around the courtyard, whispering with the sound of trees and water, ‘Buddha.’

‘Which Buddha?’

The fairy shook her head.

‘I suppose we all look the same to you. What did the Buddha look like?’

The fairy gestured towards the pond and an image of Kwan Yin appeared in the water.

John dropped his arm, suddenly limp. ‘I cannot believe she would do this to me.’

‘What does it say?’ Martin said.

John handed him the note and Martin glanced at it, then smiled broadly. ‘This is marvellous. It will mean much less searching.’ He glanced up at John. ‘Why are you unhappy? This is good news.’

The fairy had disappeared. John fell to sit cross-legged on the
grass again and checked his watch: 3 am. Still hours before he could see the Jade Emperor, and Kwan Yin had ruined it.

Leo glanced at the note. ‘Oh, that was a rotten thing to do. I understand how you feel.’

‘What?’ Martin said. ‘What am I missing?’

Leo gestured towards John. ‘He vowed to find her, Raise her and marry her. She’s lost in Hell, so if he finds her now it’s one of three, and they can stop worrying about being separated. It’s been driving both of them nuts.’

‘I don’t see what this has to do with it,’ Martin said.

Leo tapped the paper in Martin’s hand. ‘Kwan Yin found Emma first. And this tells him where Emma is; she’s not lost any more.’

‘If you go through that maze in level six to find Emma, you are still finding her,’ Martin said, confident. ‘Don’t be concerned, Father, this is nothing. I’m sure that finding her in Hell will fulfil your oath.’

John leaned the back of his head against the tree. ‘I sincerely hope so.’ He pulled himself to his feet. ‘I suppose I should try to sleep until we see the Jade Emperor. I suggest you two return to bed as well.’

Martin and Leo nodded and turned away. When they reached the doorway into their quarters, Martin stopped and turned back. ‘Do not be concerned, Father. You will find her.’

‘Thank you,’ John said.

He walked around the courtyard to his own bedroom, stripped off and fell onto the black silk sheets naked, too emotionally drained to change into sleep clothes. The fairies would just have to put up with him.

Later that night, it became quiet. The other residents of the cells were parked in the demon equivalent of sleep. I couldn’t sleep, so the stone retrieved the Archivist’s files and projected them into the air in front of the rocky overhang.

‘There’s so little to go on,’ I said, frustrated.

‘Serves them right for not writing anything down,’ the stone said. ‘Oral tradition. That’s nearly as bad as the way kids learn by recitation rather than understanding.’

‘I didn’t know you were pro education reform,’ I said. ‘I would have thought you’d support the way it’s always been done.’

‘One of my children helped start the Native English Teacher Scheme,’ the stone said with pride. ‘Look how that’s improved the standard of English in the Territory. When they made all the schooling in native language, he said —’

‘Psst! Snake lady!’ someone hissed at the door of the cage.

The stone blinked the projections off and I poked my head out of the overhang. It was a snake demon; a small one, about level thirty.

‘What do you want?’ I said.

He dropped his head. He had many similarities to a natural snake, but his scales jutted out in spiked disarray, his head had horns and there were pointed projections under his chin.

‘Can I ask you something?’ he said.

‘What?’

He looked around furtively, then back to me. ‘Come closer. I don’t want anybody to hear.’

Are there any other demons close by?

No.

I slithered out of my alcove and approached the bars, but stayed well back.

‘Go ahead,’ I said from two metres away.

‘You have a crown,’ he said in awe.

‘It’s to hold my engagement stone. It’s pretty, isn’t it? The Tiger made it for me.’

‘Is it silver?’

‘Platinum.’

‘I love the work they put into it,’ he said. ‘It’s all twisted wires, so lovely.’

I dropped my head slightly. ‘Thank you. Is that what you wanted to ask?’

He looked around again, then moved closer to the bars. ‘Can you give me a lesson?’

‘A lesson in what?’

He dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘Kung fu.’

‘Why do you want to learn?’ I said with interest.

‘You must have seen what happened earlier. That Mother grabbed my sister and ate her. I don’t want that to happen to me.’ He raised his head and spoke with dignity. ‘I want to be a Mother too one day. There has to be more to life than torturing adulterers.’

‘You torture adulterers?’

Don’t ask, Emma, you really don’t want to know
, the stone said.

‘Not all of them,’ the demon said. ‘Just the ones the judges send here, which is only a small fraction of them. The boss keeps complaining that the judges are too lenient, whatever that means. We only get the really bad ones — you know, the ones who messed with little kids, or hurt other people physically or mentally. Some of the people we get down here are really nasty pieces of work.’ He dropped his head. ‘I can’t believe how cruel humans are sometimes. They put our efforts to shame.’ He looked back down the hallway. ‘Had one evil bastard here for close on ten years and every day we made him scream. I enjoyed every second of that, until they took him to the Hell of Red-Hot Grates next level down.’ He cocked his head at me. ‘So will you teach me? I don’t want to die like my sister did.’

‘I can’t teach you,’ I said.

‘Could you just tell me what to do?’

‘No. The Jade Emperor’s locked me out from teaching as punishment. I can’t teach anyone.’

‘He has no jurisdiction down here,’ he said.

‘His Edict applies to me wherever I am.’

‘Okay.’ He sounded disappointed. ‘Hey, it’s been nice talking to you anyway, Emma. I hope we never meet again.’

‘Thanks. So do I. What’s your name?’

‘Rocky.’ He took human form: a young, round-faced Chinese boy with dyed blond hair, wearing the white shirt and pants that served as a school uniform in China. ‘What do you think of my human form? I’ve been working on it for a while.’

‘You need to either make your head smaller or the rest of you taller,’ I said. ‘Your head’s slightly too big so it looks a little strange. Apart from that, it’s very fetching.’

‘Thank you,’ he said shyly.

There was a loud hiss down the corridor. He looked and his face filled with terror. He backed towards the wall. ‘Oh shit, no, a Mother. No, no, no.’

He spun towards the cell across from me, which was empty, and frantically worked at the door. ‘Let me in! Let me in!’

The door wouldn’t open and he huddled against the wall.

I went to the door of my cell and opened it. ‘Come in here. Quickly! You’ll be safe.’

No, Emma!
the stone said, but I ignored it.

Rocky raced into my cell and I slammed the door shut, flipping the latch across just as the Mother appeared on the other side of it. She was in True Form: massive snake back end with human front end.

‘You two having some sexy times?’ she said. ‘Don’t stop on my account.’

I backed away from the door. ‘We were just talking.’

‘What the hell sort of accent is that?’ She moved closer to me and I backed further away. ‘You don’t belong here. What are you?’

Rocky changed back to snake and moved next to me; we were of a similar size.

‘This is the Dark Lady herself, Ninety-Four, so piss off. We were just talking, and if you hurt her the King will rip your scales off.’

‘So this is her. She smells delicious,’ the Mother said, then focused on Rocky. ‘So do you.’

Rocky’s voice squeaked with effort. ‘You can’t hurt us.’

‘I’m bigger than you,’ she said, her voice silky. ‘Come to me, my darling.’

Rocky swayed as if mesmerised, then slithered towards the door.

The Mother pulled at the door and grimaced with frustration when it didn’t open. ‘Oh, it’s locked on the inside. Open the door for me, honey.’

There’s nothing you can do for him, Emma, back up!
the stone said.

I slithered under the stone ledge as Rocky pulled the latch across and opened the door. I poked my head out and watched with frustration as the Mother reached in and picked him up by the base of his neck. She opened her mouth impossibly wide and shoved his head in, biting it off and sucking the demon essence out of him.

When she was done, she dropped on her coils and leered at me. ‘Your turn.’

She came into the cell and grabbed me with one hand, dragging me out from under the overhang. She held me around the throat hard enough to cut off my air and I thrashed against her, trying to suck in enough to breathe. She raised me to her face and dropped me. The cell walls spun around me in a dizzying spiral and the floor slammed into my head.

When I came around, it was to a jumbled vision of blackness and a shiny silver needle, different in each eye. I lurched up to see what was happening, hitting whatever was standing over me.

‘I told you she was coming round,’ a woman said.

A group of demons were crowded into my cell: a small black-skinned one with a bulbous head and impossibly skinny body and limbs, holding a syringe; and a humanoid guard carrying weapons, with two similar guards behind it.

The small black demon put its hands up. ‘I was just treating you. I’m not here to do any damage.’ It sounded like a middle-aged man.

I hesitated, swaying my head in front of them.

It’s speaking the truth,
the stone said.
They destroyed the Mother before she could eat you, then they called a doctor. They were worried you were poisoned.

The skinny demon spoke to the guards without looking away from me. ‘I’d say she’ll be fine, but I really have no idea. I’ve never seen anything like her before. Keep an eye on her, and if she complains about anything at all let me know.’

He tossed the syringe into a physician’s bag sitting next to him, then nodded to me. ‘Dark Lady. It has been an honour to meet you. I hope you survive whatever it is that His Loathsome Majesty has in store for you.’

‘I apologise for hitting you,’ I said. ‘A disadvantage of having no eyelids is that when I wake up I see everything right in front of my face.’

‘You aren’t the first,’ he said.

The guards parted and allowed him to walk out of the cell, lugging the big bag with him.

The head guard turned back to me and spoke in a gruff woman’s voice. ‘The King’s put us here to guard you. Apparently
the Mothers know about you and they all want to see you.’ She looked down the hallway. ‘Three of us should be able to handle any of them.’ She turned back to me and raised her axe in front of her gleaming, black-scaled face. ‘I hear the Dark Lord is coming for you. I hope he’ll do me the honour of letting me take a swing at him before he destroys me.’

She nodded over her shoulder to the other two humanoids, and the three of them took up position outside my cage.

‘Turn and he won’t destroy you,’ I said. ‘Pledge to me and I’ll make sure you’re treated well.’

She gestured with her chin towards the ceiling. ‘Can’t turn while Grandad’s watching us.’

I moved closer to the bars and looked where she’d indicated. A slime demon, more than a metre across, was stuck to the ceiling. It was made of bright orange and green filaments that writhed over each other, and was completely covered in glassy opaque eyes of all sizes, blinking and moving over its liquid surface. When it saw me looking, it made some sticky hissing noises.

‘Grandad says hi, and sorry about the Mothers,’ the guard demon translated for me. ‘He says, how do you like the security camera? Oh, he wants me to tell you how he made it.’ She grinned, revealing gleaming white tusks. ‘He grabs the eyes out of any demon that has displeased him, and holds them in shape while the rest of the demon explodes. Then he pokes the eyes into that thing so it can keep watch for him.’