Journey to Wubang 01 - Earth to Hell (52 page)

Martin lowered the sword. ‘It still resonates.’

‘Daddy should never have taken that off you,’ Simone said with wonder.

‘He had his reasons,’ Martin said. He concentrated for a moment. ‘Our friends are still keeping most of the guards busy. Let’s find that demon and our Lion.’

We continued down the corridor, and nothing stopped us. The bells still rang throughout the complex, and occasionally there were yells and the sounds of doors banging in the distance. The corridor was still all white, glistening ceramic on the walls, floor and ceiling. At the end of the corridor, there was a sharp turn left and a small atrium with a lift.

‘There’s no up, so we have to go down,’ Simone said, and pressed the button. She looked up at the ceiling. ‘No security cameras. You’re right, Martin, this guy is up himself. How many floors are there?’

‘Only two, it’s mostly a horizontal facility,’ Martin said. ‘Spread out.’

‘Why is that?’ I said. ‘All the buildings in Hong Kong and China are more vertical; why is this one more horizontal?’

‘Less digging,’ Martin said.

The lift doors opened and we went in. The numbers on the buttons were in English: G then B1. I pressed B1 with my serpent nose and the lift went down extremely slowly then the doors opened.

We moved into a corridor that looked completely different from the floor above. Instead of white
ceramic, the walls and floor were all plain grey concrete. Five or six rusting galvanised-iron pipes ran along the corner of the ceiling from one end of the corridor to the other, with another few pipes along the corner of the floor. The floor was caked with sticky dirt, and the pipes were covered in a thick layer of dust. But the floor was only dirty in the corners; it was obviously often walked on.

Steel cabinets, each about a metre high and padlocked, with a thick layer of dust on the top, lined the left side of the corridor. Each cabinet door had a demon-proof seal, the complicated sigils painted by hand on the rectangular rice paper glued to the front.

Martin studied one of the seals. ‘This isn’t to hold demons,’ he said. ‘It is to hold Shen.’

Simone bent the bar of the padlock like plasticine and pulled it away so that she could open the door.

The cabinet was about fifteen centimetres deep and held two shelves with holes in them that looked like they were designed to hold wet umbrellas. The shelves, however, were empty. Simone closed the cabinet again, and we followed Martin down the hallway, moving as quietly as we could and listening for any sound.

At the end there was a T-intersection and we had a choice between going left or right. I flicked my tongue out, then quickly pointed left with my nose. ‘That way.’

‘Why?’ Simone said.

‘I can taste it. It went this way.’

Simone raised one hand and scraped her demon claw on the wall, leaving a slight mark. ‘Okay, let’s go.’

‘No need to do that, I can taste the way we came,’ I said.

Simone shrugged without replying.

This corridor had rooms on the left and right, each with a standard wooden door. Simone concentrated
then shook her head. ‘My Inner Eye isn’t blocked down here. All these rooms are empty. They look like barracks.’

‘That’s probably what they are,’ Martin said.

We walked down the corridor, which seemed to run the length of the facility; the end wasn’t visible. I flicked my tongue out every so often, tasting the air, and then stopped. ‘Leo.’

‘Where?’ Simone said, and concentrated. ‘I can’t see him.’

I raised my snout and flicked my tongue again. I moved my head left and right, tasting the air. ‘Further along somewhere. It’s so faint that I can’t get a good fix on it.’

‘Is your sense of taste really that sensitive?’ Simone asked.

‘I think it is,’ I said. ‘I can taste the Generals, far away. Six is around here somewhere, hiding. I can definitely taste Leo somewhere…’ I moved my head from side to side. ‘Up ahead. Let’s go.’

We moved down the corridor, both Martin and Simone checking inside the rooms with their Inner Eyes. The taste of Leo strengthened and I quickened my pace. Leo was getting stronger, but Six wasn’t; the demon was travelling away from us as fast as we were approaching him.

‘Six is running,’ I said.

‘Leo is our first priority,’ Martin said. ‘Without his source of energy, Six will eventually die anyway.’

‘I’d still like to take that demon’s head after all it did to those stones,’ Simone said, her voice mild.

‘We can always track it down later. Emma has the scent.’

We neared the end of the corridor. An occasional vibration shook the ceiling; they were fighting above us. I quickened my pace again; Leo was very close ahead.
His scent was coming from a large pair of double doors on the left, close to the end of the corridor, which turned right.

‘There he is, I see him—oh, there’s two,’ Simone said.

She threw the double doors open and we rushed in. The walls and floor were tiled with small square bathroom tiles, and the ceiling was bare concrete with a couple of unshaded neon tubes in the middle. There were two operating tables in the centre of the room, and both of them held bound Leos. Each Leo was completely identical and looked the same as when he’d been taken to be Judged eight years before. Both were lying on their stomachs, wearing pyjama pants and nothing else, their arms and legs bound to the edges of the table.

‘Don’t release them just yet,’ I said. ‘They may be more copies. Check their numbers.’

Martin and Simone went to each of the Leos and bent to see their wrists from underneath.

‘This is four,’ Simone said.

Leo Four came around. ‘Simone?’ he said, sounding groggy. ‘Is that you?’

‘Simone?’ the other Leo said.

‘This is number one,’ Martin said. ‘Should we destroy the four and take the one? Four is the one that attacked you.’

‘Why do you look like demons?’ Leo One said.

‘We’re sneaking in the back door, these are disguises,’ I said. ‘The serpent lady is Simone, the black demon is Martin, and I’m Emma.’

‘Kill me,’ Leo Four said. ‘I’m a copy.’

‘Kill both of us,’ Leo One said. ‘We’re both copies.’

‘Then where’s the real Leo?’ I said.

Neither replied.

‘Destroy Four, take One,’ Simone said.

‘We’re not sure!’ I said.

‘Destroy both of us, Emma,’ Leo Four said. ‘You can’t trust either of us. We’re both copies.’

‘That’s the best plan, guys,’ Leo One said. ‘Just kill us both. That would be the kindest thing to do to us; we’re demon copies anyway.’

‘How do you know that?’ I said.

Leo One gestured with his head as best he could towards Leo Four. ‘He told me what happened. You found him in a nest and took him home, and when Six turned up, he found he had to obey Six. He’s been beating himself up about it since, and asking Six to let him die.’

‘We don’t have time to mess around with this,’ I said. ‘Free them and take them with us. We’ll work out what to do with them later.’

‘Just take them to the Celestial,’ Martin said. ‘If they are demons, they will be destroyed.’

‘And if they both die?’ I said.

‘Then there’s an original around here somewhere,’ Simone said, ‘and we’re going to find him.’

‘Does Six have any other nests apart from this one?’ I asked Martin.

‘Not any more,’ Martin said. ‘You drove him out of his other two nests.’

‘And we’ve kept an eye on them and they’ve stayed vacant,’ I said. ‘Good. Any other Leos have to be somewhere in here. Let’s go.’

Martin and Simone freed the Leos and helped them off the tables. Both of them were slightly unsteady on their feet.

‘What is this one doing with you, Emma?’ Leo One said, gesturing towards Martin. ‘He betrayed you. I remember that much.’

‘He’s trying to make good,’ I said.

‘I hope you don’t trust him,’ Leo Four said.

‘No more than I trust you,’ I said. ‘I’m ready to destroy either of you the second you attempt anything.’

‘Good,’ both Leos said in unison.

‘This is very freaky,’ Simone said.

We went out of the room and back into the corridor that seemed to run the length of the facility. Doors opened on the right side but not the left, where there were more of the narrow cabinets against the wall. I lifted my snout and tasted the air. ‘Something’s dead around here.’

We went to the first set of doors on the right; the smell of death was coming from this room. ‘In here,’ I said.

There was a large stainless-steel vat in the centre of the room, much like a commercial-sized mixing or cooking vat, at least a metre tall and around. There were shelves all around the edge of the room, which was about four metres by three. The smell of death was almost overpowering, but it was tempered by the scent of something, like talcum powder.

Simone went to one of the shelves and studied its contents. ‘Stones,’ she said.

I moved to stand next to her. ‘These are what’s dead,’ I said. ‘They were once alive. I think they’re stone Shen.’

‘These are the missing stone Shen,’ the stone in my ring said quietly. ‘This is where he made the essence to line the walls and the stone tools he used. They’re all dead.’ Its voice went hoarse with grief. ‘They’re all dead!’

I raised my head to see. There were at least two hundred stones, of all sizes and colours, on the shelves, and all dead. The mixing vat was full of what appeared to be white clay-like mud; the ceramic lining before it was baked and placed on the walls.

‘They weren’t using stone demons to make lining,’ the stone in my ring said. ‘They were using adult stone Shen.

‘We have to take them with us, to return them to the Grandmother. We can’t leave them here.’

‘Look around for something to put them in,’ Simone said.

Martin raised a bucket that had been sitting next to the vat. It was a typical cheap red plastic bucket used by many householders in China to hold trash. ‘This will do.’

‘This is most unfitting,’ the stone grumbled as Martin, Simone and the two Leos went around the shelves and carefully placed the dead stones in the bucket. I didn’t help, and nobody questioned me. They probably knew that I didn’t want the taste of dead things in my serpent mouth.

‘This building is kinda square, with a corridor all around the edge,’ Simone said as she put the last of the stones in the bucket. ‘I can see about twenty metres, and all the rooms are empty. The kiln’s two doors down.’

‘Let’s check everywhere else then,’ I said. ‘But Six’s scent has gone, he may have taken off already.’

Martin placed the lid on the bucket and we went back out of the room. We turned right and followed the corridor; there were still cabinets all along one side.

‘These cabinets are everywhere. What were they for?’ I said.

‘I think they held the stones,’ Simone said. ‘Kind of like little jail cells for them.’

‘And the seals held them in,’ I said, understanding.

‘But the cabinets are empty now. All the stones are dead,’ Martin said.

‘If you don’t mind, Emma, I would very much like for us to track this demon down later and rip its throat out,’ the stone in my ring said.

Martin and Simone stopped and both turned their unseeing heads to the right.

‘The kiln room,’ Simone said.

‘That’s where your students were,’ Martin said.

I tasted the air; it tasted of death and ash. We moved down the corridor and opened the door on the right. The room contained a large kiln of the type used for firing pottery, and a plastic storage bin stained black from holding ash.

‘That bin contained the remains of your students,’ Martin said. ‘They baked them and combined them with the stone Shen to make the ceramic lining.’

‘That’s what happened to the students that were replaced by the demon copies,’ Simon said. She wiped her eyes. ‘This demon needs to
die.
’

Heads up, I’m the only one left
, General Ma said into our heads.
There are about three big demons remaining, and I only have one working arm and internal injuries that will kill me in the next five minutes or so. I may lose consciousness and die soon, so I suggest you hurry it up and get out of here.

‘Let’s move,’ I said. ‘Sweep the corridor. Look with your Inner Eyes—above and this level. Let’s see if there’s anything left.’

We moved quickly down the corridor. Simone and Martin swept their heads from side to side, their eyes wide and unfocused. At the end of the corridor we turned right again, and walked as fast as we could down it. We reached the middle, which led to the lift lobby, and passed it.

‘Ma is down,’ Martin said.

‘Still nothing in any of the rooms,’ Simone said. ‘The demons are above us, they’ll be coming down in the lift any minute.’

We turned right again: final corridor. When we reached the middle, another corridor branched to the
right and three big humanoid demons charged down it towards us. Simone raised her hand and Dark Heavens appeared in it. Martin did the same with the Silver Serpent. I raised my head and opened my mouth, swinging my fangs out.

The demons were standard humanoids, about two-and-a-half metres tall and black with scales and tusks. They carried a sword in each hand, and at level seventy-five were a formidable challenge.

‘Leo stay back,’ I said. ‘Guard the rear. These are too big for you.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ both Leos said in unison.

Martin took the one in the centre. He filled the Silver Serpent with shen energy, making it sing, and swung it at the demon’s head. It blocked with both of its swords, swung Martin’s blade down, and attempted to take his head. Martin made a few fast attacks that unbalanced it slightly, making it give ground and move back along the corridor.

I raised my head to strike, watching the location and direction of the swords carefully. As the demon swept both swords left—obviously its strong side—I evaded them, went through underneath, opened my mouth as wide as I could and buried my fangs in its abdomen. I injected it with poison, then quickly released it and pulled back out of the way of the reverse swing of the swords.

The poison seemed to have no effect on the demon. I checked Simone—my eyes were on the sides of my serpent head—and she was battling her demon with no difficulty, just waiting for it to open its guard and allow her to finish it.