Gentle Reader, this is the eighth book in this story. Although you can choose to start here, you may find it more rewarding to read the story from the beginning with the first novel,
White Tiger
.

In response to readers’ requests I’ve added a list of characters at the end.

Note for parents/teachers

My books are sometimes shelved as ‘Young Adult’. This novel contains adult themes that a less mature reader may find disturbing. Parental discretion is advised.

The Serpent drifts between torture and nightmare

Unconsciousness its only escape

It seeks the Turtle’s cool respite

Its cries receive no answer

The Turtle blocks the Serpent’s pain

The future looms with blood and death

Children scream with grief and rage

Their murdered parents do not respond
.

Zhenwu

John nodded in time to the music as he scanned through the spreadsheets. There was no way to avoid it: twenty-three of the newest Disciples had to go. No amount of training, even by the Shen Masters, would bring them up to a level where they could handle demons without mortal risk. He emailed the order through to Leo with a copy to the other Masters and Emma.

With a large group of the first-year students gone, the Mountain’s entire defensive force was reduced to less than two hundred. John put his chin on his hand and studied the list. One hundred of them were trained and equipped well enough to handle demons, but the eighty-nine more junior ones were underequipped, undertrained, young and mortal. They’d been brought in by Leo after the last huge losses when demon copies had devastated the Mountain army.

John rubbed his eyes and leaned back. The coming conflict could very well wipe out his beloved Mountain; not the physical Mountain, but the Disciples — the real heart of Wudang. He took a deep breath and went through the spreadsheets again. The Heavens must be defended; if necessary every single Disciple, Master, Celestial and himself would be thrown into the pyre to ensure that the Heavens did not fall.

He thought of Emma and Simone: young, human, mortal and deadly. The pyre would burn brightly with their brilliance in its flames.

Madam Emma and the Emperor of the West are here, my Lord
, Zara said from John’s office anteroom.

Turn that fucking awful noise off
, the Tiger said.

John muted his computer’s sound system and opened the office door for them without moving from his desk. Emma and the Tiger entered his office and sat across from him.

What the fuck have you been doing to her?
the Tiger said, indicating Emma with his head.
She looks fucking awful
.

Emma did look older than her forty-two years: her brown hair was shot with grey and her eyes mirrored the suffering she’d endured at the hands of the demons. More than that, she’d experienced more stress and violence since meeting him than any normal human could possibly handle and she was still fighting. Everybody had tried to talk her into taking time off to recover, but with typical stubborn resilience she’d ignored them all and thrown herself into helping him prepare for the inevitable approaching conflict.

She just needs time to heal from losing our child as well as all her reproductive organs
, John said,
and she won’t rest until the Heavens are secure
.

You two are a matched set
.

‘Both of you are amazingly bad-mannered sometimes,’ Emma said, and the Tiger and John shared an amused glance. ‘I’ll bet you’re even talking about me.’

‘He’s worried about you,’ John said.

She glared at the Tiger, her sharp blue eyes intense. ‘Don’t be. I’m fine. We have too much to do. Now show us what you have there — and it’d better not be another cat video — so I can go back to work.’

The Tiger put a tablet computer on top of the mess on John’s desk and flipped it up onto its stand. A photograph of a European man in a hound’s-tooth jacket was on the screen, and Emma jolted with alarm.

‘What?’ John said.

She pointed at the screen. ‘That’s the Western King of the demons.’

John turned his attention back to the screen. So that was him. He was dark and powerfully built, with bright intelligent blue eyes that were hard with cruelty.

‘He’s using the name Ineke Prochazka,’ the Tiger said. He swiped the screen and a new picture appeared. It showed a man-sized black marble monolith etched with what was obviously a transferred photograph of the Western Demon King — or someone who looked very much like him — in a double-breasted suit and standing in front of an expensive sports car.

‘Same man?’ John said.

‘This is the gravestone of a dead Russian gangster,’ the Tiger said. ‘Their Demon King appropriated his identity to take over his network.’

John leaned on his desk to study the photo. ‘Well done. How did you find him?’

‘Huge fuss, even as far as the west of my dominion, about how this Prochazka came back from the dead. Anyone who asks too many questions,’ he shrugged, ‘disappears.’

‘Can we move on him?’ Emma said.

‘As soon as this business with our Demon King is sorted I’m sending a squad in,’ the Tiger said. ‘Your people are more than welcome to come along, Ah Wu.’

‘We’re allowed?’ she said.

The Tiger emitted a growl that was more feline than human. ‘Eastern Russia is in my territory. Fucking straight we can move on him, and it would be very much my pleasure.’

‘Any sign of our Demon King over there?’ John said.

‘Both of them are all over the place. Bio labs everywhere. The operation’s so massive I have three good people tracking it all down.’

He swiped the screen again and it changed to a bad photograph of Kitty Kwok and the Western Demon King in front of a café, both of them trying to avoid the camera.

‘Where is that?’ John said.

‘Amsterdam,’ the Tiger said. ‘They have a lab there.’

‘UK, Russia, Amsterdam … Damn, that’s huge,’ Emma said.

‘When was it?’ John said.

‘Six weeks ago. Second.’ The Tiger flipped to a graphic image of a body opened wide for autopsy, revealing its internal organs. He glanced at Emma. ‘You okay with this?’

She nodded silently.

John studied her: she really was completely unfazed. Fifteen years ago she’d fainted at the sight of gore and now she was unaffected. Something inside him died a little at her growing immunity to the violent life they led.

‘This is a Western demon,’ the Tiger said.

‘No way,’ Emma said.

‘How much demon essence was in it? What level? How did it die?’ John raised his hand. ‘I know. One at a time.’

‘Demon essence: as far as we could tell, none. Level: no idea. How it died: my Number Three stuck an extremely nice rapier through its head and it died like a living thing.’

‘If it had no demon essence then it
was
a living thing,’ Emma said.

‘It sounds like a natural human,’ John said.

‘Yeah, she thought she’d made a mistake, but look.’ He swept his hand across the screen and the same autopsy table appeared, covered in black sticky goo. ‘Same corpse twenty-four hours later. The humans think it’s some sort of flesh-eating superbug, but we know better. Fucking demon, all right.’

‘Was it a Number One?’ Emma said. ‘Only a Number One has bones and internal organs.’

The Tiger leaned his elbow on the desk and his chin in his hand. ‘That’s what I wanted to ask you, Ah Wu. You were talking about having two Number Ones. Could these demons have that as well? Because this is the second one we’ve encountered. My Number Three was on her way home to show me photos of the first which was identical when she ran into this one.’

John stared at the image, considering the implications. In the East, only the Demon King’s Number One had blood, bones and internal organs, but in the West things could be completely different. A whole range of possibilities opened up if there was more than one Western demon that was equivalent in power to a Number One …

The Tiger turned to Emma. ‘You were there. Did you see the Western King’s Number One?’

‘No. He had a few extremely high-level demons in his closest circle — they were insanely powerful — but I never saw a Duke or a Mother. In fact, I never saw anything analogous to our demon hierarchy.’

‘Possible,’ John said, leaning back but still studying the disturbing picture. ‘There’s no reason their hierarchy should mirror ours.’

‘Two Number Ones?’ the Tiger said.

‘I’d say several Number One equivalents, but no single Number One,’ John said. ‘More of a Western-style flat structure than our heavily hierarchical bureaucracy.’

‘Would that be more efficient in a war setting?’ the Tiger said, intrigued.

John thought about it, then shook his head. ‘No. In a war situation, you need a structured hierarchy where orders are followed immediately and without question. Your personnel are divided into small manageable groups all reporting to a higher-up. A flat structure would allow for too much questioning and feedback. Communication would be slower and more cumbersome. It would be weaker.’

‘They’d have to know that and compensate,’ Emma said.

‘Of course,’ John said. ‘But this information is invaluable. I’m glad you ran into two of them. We now know that taking out a senior demon with human characteristics isn’t removing their Number One.’

‘If there was no demon essence, then what prompted your Number Three to kill it?’ Emma asked the Tiger. ‘She’d see it as human and wouldn’t attack.’

‘Number Three was in Siberia tracking down Prochazka,’ the Tiger said. ‘She found the location of one of his villas, and went in.’ He picked up the tablet, swiped the pictures away and pulled up a video. ‘She’s wearing a headcam.’

The view swung from side to side as Number Three walked through the crunching snow towards a grey stone house surrounded by dark leafless trees.

‘Middle of nowhere,’ the Tiger said.

The Tiger’s Number Three spoke softly and her hands appeared in the camera’s view as she ordered her squad into position. ‘Two
left. Three right. You two to the back door, and you to cover our backs.’

‘You did me a huge favour when you talked me into promoting her,’ the Tiger said.

‘I shouldn’t have needed to,’ Emma said.

John hushed them without looking away from the screen. Number Three had hesitated at the front door, her hand poised over the door knocker. Then she obviously changed her mind and kicked the door in.

‘Police!’ she shouted as she stormed into the entry. She checked the side doors and up the stairs in front of her. ‘There have been reports of a disturbance. Please cooperate peacefully.’

The house was completely silent. She lowered her gun and it disappeared from the camera’s view.

‘Checking silently. Back door clear,’ she said for the benefit of those watching.

‘She’s good,’ the Tiger said with admiration.

She turned left and checked the living room. It was sparsely furnished, the sofas covered in bright pink towelling bedspreads that were threadbare and stained. One of Number Three’s people met her at the door to the kitchen and they went together into the dining room on the other side.

‘Clear,’ someone said from the front of the house.

‘Three and four upstairs.’ Number Three moved around the chipped dining table. ‘I can’t sense anything up there but make sure.’ The camera view swung around. ‘There’s something alive below me and I can sense demons …’

A man appeared in the doorway between the dining room and entrance hall and she raised her weapon at him.

‘Put your hands on your head and turn around,’ she said.

Two more men appeared behind the first, all of them Europeans. They were tall and well-muscled and similar in appearance to the Western demons that had attacked John and Emma in the UK.

The man in front raised his hands and smiled. ‘What’s going on? Why did you break my door?’

‘Stand still and keep your hands where I can see them,’ Number Three said.

There were now five men. The front one pulled a pistol out of a holster under his jacket, still grinning. He raised it and emptied the clip at her, and the microphone on her headset went silent from the overload of noise.

‘She has metal. Did nothing,’ the Tiger said.

Number Three raised her gun and shot the man. He didn’t stop moving towards her, his grin still frozen on his face. The gun clicked in his hand. The four men behind him pulled guns out as well and emptied them at her, with similar grins on their faces. More men appeared behind them, all copies of each other. There were only three different faces within the group.

Number Three switched her rifle to full auto and strafed them, again deafening the camera’s microphone. The bullets went straight through without harming them. Demons.

‘Fuck,’ she said, and there was the sound of fabric against the microphone and the rasp of a sword being drawn.

Her squad drew their swords as well.

The Tiger grabbed the tablet and hit the fast-forward button. ‘They took them all out. She was quite sure they were hypnotised humans right up until her bullets went through them without doing anything.’

‘I would like to see that skirmish later,’ John said.

The Tiger growled softly. ‘The last thing she needs is you picking her technique to pieces. They took the demons down and achieved their objective. Leave her alone.’

‘What he said,’ Emma said to John.

John smiled slightly. ‘Very well.’

The Tiger stopped the fast forward. Number Three was standing in the entry hall. She glanced back to show the rest of her squad, men and women, moving the pieces of the dead demons into the dining room.

‘Once again: bones, blood and internal organs,’ the Tiger said. ‘If she hadn’t seen the bullets go straight through them she would probably be beating herself up for killing humans.’

Number Three turned back to the entry hall. ‘There’s something underneath here … I can sense it. There are humans below me.’ She looked back at the rest of her squad. ‘Everybody into the kitchen. I’m going to yang it.’

‘She has yang?’ John said.

‘I’m thinking of doing the same thing as you and promoting her to joint Number One,’ the Tiger said as the screen went completely white. ‘She has two hundred years’ experience on young Michael and would be excellent backup for him.’

‘No,’ Emma said, as the screen cleared to show a hole in the middle of the entry floor. ‘Michael would be an excellent backup for
her
.’

‘Didn’t think of it that way,’ the Tiger said. ‘Maybe you’re right; it isn’t deliberate discrimination at all.’

‘I think in your case it is,’ Emma said.

John raised his hand and hushed them again, and Emma reached across the desk to tap his arm. He ignored her scolding. The Tiger grinned.

BOOK: Demon Child

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