Dark_Serpent

26




Margaret parked in a car park at the end of the bike trail and they got out of the car. The land around was low treeless rolling hills with the outskirts of the town behind them. There was a small group of houses nearby, and the occasional passing car was audible from the motorway a hundred metres away. They followed the bike track, which ran parallel to a row of metre-tall standing stones, each spaced ten metres apart over a kilometre. They passed a few people walking dogs or strolling, who looked at them curiously.

The burial chamber was on top of a low hill. A group of teenage boys and girls were sitting with their backs against the stone, smoking and sharing a six-pack of beer. They scrambled to their feet when they saw John and Margaret approaching.

‘Heads up,’ one of them said loudly, then they all dropped their stuff and ran into the trees.

‘Oh shit,’ a voice said loudly, and a girl and boy, half-dressed, rushed out of the chamber and into the trees as well.

‘I hope you’re using a condom, Tiffany and Stuart!’ Margaret yelled after them. ‘I’m not here to fix your mistakes.’

She dropped her voice to speak to John. ‘Like I said, we used to come down here and mess around. The archaeologists hated us; we used to move the smaller stones to piss them off.’ She gestured towards the chamber. ‘This is it. I never saw it as anything unusual before, just a pile of rocks.’

The chamber wasn’t big: only a metre high, the same wide and two metres deep. John had to crouch to go inside.

‘Make the back wall invisible, you say?’ he said.

‘That’s what it said.’

He crawled back out of the stone chamber and stood up, pulling his wallet out of his back pocket. ‘I don’t know how long I’ll be. Will you do something for me while I’m gone?’

‘What?’ she said, eyeing his wallet suspiciously.

He pulled out a wad of fifty-pound notes. ‘Buy me a phone. I don’t care what it is or what plan it’s on. I’ll only need it as long as I’m in the UK, so put the contract in your name and you can have it when I’m done.’ He handed her the money. ‘Keep the change, just get me a phone.’

‘How long should I wait for you?’

He glanced back at the stones. These ones were definitely alive, but not sentient.

‘If I’m not back by nightfall, call my house in Kensington and tell them where I went.’ He told her the number and she recorded it on her phone.

He turned back to the burial chamber, crawled to the end and put his hand on the wall. He closed his eyes and made it invisible, and the transition was easy.

He landed on an island in a Hell that looked very much like Eastern Hell, except it was devoid of buildings or plants. The only life — if it could be called life — was a long line of defeated-looking individuals waiting to pass a couple of bored-looking guard demons to access what appeared to be the gateway to rebirth.

He approached the demons and they studied him curiously.

‘What the hell’s going on?’ he said, doing his best to sound irritated. ‘I wasn’t supposed to be here. I have a job to do.’

One of the guards gestured with his spear. ‘Just get back in line.’

John snorted with derision. ‘You have me mistaken for one of them, my friend.’

‘Whoops,’ the other demon said with amusement.

‘Sorry,’ the first demon said. ‘Where are you supposed to be?’

‘On a mission for the f*cking King himself, something to do with that new Eastern ally,’ John said, taking a gamble. ‘And I ended up here. Someone’s in serious trouble.’

A woman broke from the line and ran to them. ‘I’m not supposed to be here!’ she said. ‘This isn’t Heaven! I did everything I was supposed to so why aren’t I in Heaven? Someone’s made a terrible mistake.’

‘No mistake, my love,’ the first demon said. ‘Heaven’s a place for better people than you.’

‘But I promised my faith and my soul,’ she said.

‘Yeah, and you probably weren’t a terribly good person,’ the second demon said. He saw her face. ‘You know I’m right.’

‘It doesn’t matter whether you’re good or bad because you’re forgiven,’ she said, her voice becoming desperate. ‘As long as you have faith, it doesn’t matter how nasty you are to anyone …’

‘Yeah, doesn’t work like that,’ the second demon said. He pointed his spear at the woman. ‘Now get back in line like a good little girl, drink what they give you and be on your way.’

‘It’s not poison, is it?’

Both demons doubled over with laughter.

John feigned joining in the merriment. ‘Do you seriously think that matters now?’ he said. ‘Just do as the guards say and you’ll move on to the next life. And this time, try to be a better person — you know, help those less fortunate, work for equality and justice, detach yourself from worldly needs, stuff like that.’

‘Communist propaganda,’ she spat at him, but returned to the line anyway.

‘I love those ones,’ the first demon said, wiping his eyes. He turned to John. ‘So where are you supposed to be?’

‘Heaven.’

‘A mission from the King himself,’ the other demon said with awe. ‘Did you actually meet him?’

‘No,’ John said. ‘I hatched, and they told me what I had to do and sent me out and I landed here. I’m supposed to be in Heaven.’

‘This isn’t it,’ the demon said.

‘Obviously. Do you know where I’m supposed to be? The building with all the glass? I have no clue.’

‘Don’t ask us, we just poke these people with our pointy sticks. Why do you look like an Oriental?’

‘Need to know, my friend,’ John said.

‘He mentioned the new Eastern ally,’ the other demon said.

‘I never said anything about that,’ John said urgently. ‘Don’t talk about it, or I’m in serious shit.’

The demons nodded; this they understood.

One of them shrugged. ‘Well, I can call the boss if you like, although he’ll be pissed. If you can make your own way back up …’ He gestured towards the gateway with his spear. ‘Just go on through, head back to where you started and make them deliver you where you’re supposed to be.’

John put his hands in his pockets and surveyed the bleak landscape. ‘I might hang around here a bit before I go, just to have a look around.’

The demons seemed incredulous. ‘Really? There’s nothing to see here but us.’

‘You know in Asia, everyone’s judged, and if they were real dicks when they were alive, they’re punished? Keeps the demons occupied. Hell over there is full of games.’

‘Sounds like fun, but pretty pointless, if you ask me,’ one of the guards said. ‘They forget anyway, don’t they?’

‘Does knowing what’s coming stop them from being dicks when they’re up top?’ the other demon said, pointing its spear towards the ceiling.

‘Nope,’ John said, digging one heel into the ground. He shrugged. ‘Pointless fun — doesn’t get much better than that, eh? They should do the same thing here.’

He winced inside as he spoke. It was he who was responsible for the punishments in Eastern Hell; it was one of the terms of surrender he’d brokered all that time ago with the demons. They’d agreed to stay in Hell on the condition that they could play with those condemned by the Courts. At the time it had seemed completely logical to torture the wicked, but times had changed.

‘Our relief will be here soon,’ one of the guards said. ‘You can stay and ask them if you like. We’ll be parked.’

‘Point me at the gateway to Heaven before you leave?’ John said. ‘I’ll try to make it there myself.’

The demons shrugged. ‘No idea.’

‘Will your boss know?’

‘Don’t think so. We’re down here from the day we hatch. Your best bet is to go back up through the gate and kick some heads until they send you to the right place.’

‘Here comes the boss,’ the other one said.

The boss was a bigger demon in True Form, three metres tall with a bat-like head and many protruding uneven teeth. It saw John and stopped, staring, then summoned a weapon and ran towards them.

‘What’s wrong with him?’ one of the demons said.

John didn’t hesitate; he didn’t want the demons to know he’d been there. He grabbed the spear out of the closest guard’s hand, filled it with shen energy and ran it through him, making him explode. The second guard raised his spear in defence, but John pushed it aside and ran the spear he was holding through the demon’s head. He turned and threw the spear through the head of the oncoming demon boss. As he checked that they were all destroyed, a siren started to wail.

He ran through the line of people, knocking some over, and out the gate.

It was nearly dusk when he charged out of the burial chamber. He thought Margaret had gone, then saw her sitting with her back to the rocks, reading a book.

She stood up when she saw him. ‘So did you really go to Hell?’

‘Yes.’

‘What’s it like?’

‘I can’t tell you. Did you find me a phone?’

She handed him a mobile.

‘Thank you.’ He quickly called Peta to find Simone’s number and called Simone.

‘Hello?’ Simone said, sounding suspicious.

‘It’s me. I have a new phone, this is the number.’

‘Oh my god, where have you been? We haven’t been able to contact you telepathically —’

‘Stop.’

‘We’ve had people looking everywhere for you. Emma’s still gone —’

‘Stop.’

‘It’s chaos up here and they expect me to make decisions for them —’

‘Simone, stop.’

She was silent.

‘Thank you. I am looking for Emma. Stay close to the Mountain and stay safe. Are there any major developments that I need to be updated on?’

‘No, not really. We just need you to find Emma.’

‘Has the stone checked in?’

‘No. The stones here are going crazy. Gold came back up from setting up house on the Earthly. He’s worried about his kids.’

‘Everybody is. Liaise with the Lius on running the Mountain —’

‘Dad,’ she said, interrupting, ‘Actually, you don’t need to worry about the Mountain. I’m handling things here; me and the Lius are looking after it. Ge Ge and Jie Jie are managing the North. Everything’s under control. I was just really worried about you.’

‘I’m fine.’ He let the frustration leak into his voice. ‘I’m running out of leads. I need you to contact the Archivist and find me a gateway to Western Heaven. It looks like demons have taken over the Heaven here and I need to get up there.’

‘Will do.’

‘This is my new number if anybody needs to call me, but tell them to only call if it’s an emergency. I’m blocked from direct communication; I don’t have the strength. I’ll only take direct calls from you.’

‘Understood. I’ll let everybody know. Don’t worry about things here — we have it under control.’

‘I’m so proud of you, Simone.’

‘Just find Emma for us,’ she said, her voice strained, and hung up.

He turned the phone to silent. Within the next hour he would receive at least twenty phone calls and messages that he didn’t need.

He turned back to Margaret. ‘Thank you for your help.’

She held her hand out, full of fifty-pound notes. ‘Change.’

‘Keep it.’

‘I’d prefer not to.’

He took the money, and as he did she brushed her fingers over the back of his hand, then moved closer. He didn’t move at all.

‘In another situation, I would be both flattered and tempted, Margaret. But my wife is out there, and I will remain completely loyal to her as long as she lives.’

She stepped back. ‘She’s your wife? I didn’t know.’

‘She is to me.’ He raised one hand and made a portrait of Emma appear in the air. ‘This is what she looks like. If you see her, please call me.’

Margaret studied the picture. ‘Can you give me a hard copy of that? I’ll help you look for her. Someone might have seen her.’

‘I’ll have my daughter text one to you.’

‘Thank you. Where are you going next?’

‘The black house Ruby told us about. Could you do me a favour?’

‘Anything.’

‘Search your database for a building in Heaven — a tower with big windows, lots of glass. That’s my only other lead.’

Her face went strange. ‘Lots of glass?’

‘That’s what the demon said.’

‘That could be Caer Wydr, the Glass Citadel. Let me look it up for you and see if I can find a way there.’

He bowed slightly to her. ‘Thank you. I also have a name: Lord Semias.’

She frowned. ‘That’s not possible, he’s one of the Great Fathers.’

‘That’s what Emma said. Do you know about him?’

‘There are four cities in Heaven, and each has a Castellan — an administrator — who runs things. Semias is one of the Castellans …’ Her brows knitted. ‘I think it’s the northern city. Gorias? Finneas? I’ll look it up for you.’ She shook her head. ‘Up until you arrived, this was all second-hand, more folklore than real. Ruby was our only genuine touch of the supernatural.’

‘That gives me an idea. Can you email me the locations of any really old stone circles in this region?’

‘There’s one up behind the school,’ she said.

‘I’ll go there first.’

‘I can take you.’

‘I’m sure you have better things to do than traipse around with me.’

She smiled slightly. ‘Right now I don’t think so.’

‘Don’t you have patients?’

She pulled a phone out of her pocket and checked it. ‘Yes, I have forty-three messages from the surgery.’

‘Then they come first.’

‘But you don’t know where the circle is,’ she said.

He put his index finger on her forehead. ‘Think about its location.’

The information flowed into him, together with the unfortunate fact that she had developed an extremely strong attraction to him. It was understandable: he was a powerful, good-looking mystery man who’d dropped out of the sky.

‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I know where to go now.’

‘That’s amazing,’ she said, wide-eyed. ‘Do you need a lift?’

‘No, I can make my own way there faster.’

She nodded. ‘You’re a very impressive man, and I don’t even know your name.’

‘John Chen.’

‘Is that your real name or just an English version?’

‘I have many real names. My true name is Xuan Wu.’

She repeated it, tasting the strange consonants.

He saluted her, but she obviously didn’t understand the gesture. ‘I appreciate your help, Margaret.’

‘If I find something, I’ll let you know.’

He nodded to her, then shot straight up into the air and headed for the stone circle.

When he arrived at the school playground, it was obvious that the stones had been stolen. Only indentations remained in the dirt, some of them up to sixty centimetres deep. The demons must have been desperate to take a circle of stones from such a public area.

He put his hand on one of the indentations, hoping to find a trace of what had happened, and heard a tiny click. He rose and looked around; the sound had come from the other side of the circle. He walked the ten metres across and put his hand in one of the indentations on that side. This time the click sounded like a sharp intake of breath right behind him. He stood and turned, looking for the source of the noise, and saw nothing. He stretched his senses out and heard something very much like a small child’s sob.

He examined the indentation again and found what he was looking for — a small stone, barely more than a pebble, half-buried in the dirt but obviously alive. He didn’t touch it; he just crouched to speak to it.

‘What happened here?’

The stone didn’t reply.

‘I can see you, I know you’re there,’ John said. ‘You’re a little stone, I won’t hurt you. I have friends who are stones, I know all about you. I want to protect you.’

‘They’ll come back,’ the stone said in a child’s voice, scarcely more than a whisper.

‘If they do, I will be here and I will protect you,’ John said.

The child’s voice filled with hope. ‘You will?’

‘Yes. What happened? Was your parent here?’

‘Yes. When the bad people came, my parent dropped me and buried me so they wouldn’t find me. Can you help me find my parent?’

‘I ’m here to look for all of them.’ John held his hand out. ‘What ’s your name?’

‘I don’t have a name yet,’ the stone said, floating out of the ground to settle on his palm. ‘Please help me find my parent. Those were bad people.’

‘Can you take a human form?’

‘I’m not big enough yet.’

‘Do you have any idea where they took the rest of these stones?’

‘Up?’

‘More than that?’

The little stone sounded embarrassed. ‘I don’t know.’

‘Do you know if there are any other stone circles around here?’

‘There are others?’

‘I see.’ John stood up and looked around. ‘The places I’m going will be too dangerous for you. Do you have family that can care for you while I look for your parent?’

‘All my family were here in this circle,’ the stone said, forlorn.

‘Can you call the Grandmother? She can look after you.’

‘I have been calling her. But my parent said that the Grandmother is … slow.’

John understood. The Grandmother worked on geological rather than biological time, and was a thousand times slower than any living thing. For her, an immediate reply could take a couple of weeks.

‘Can I put you in my pocket until I find someone to look after you? You’ll need to stay quiet if anything happens.’

‘I want my parent,’ the stone said.

‘I know you do, little one. And I will find your parent. You can help me, all right?’

‘All right.’

John put the little stone in his pocket and flew towards the black house.

The house was modern, built at most in the last century, and sat proudly on its own small promontory overlooking the water. Its two storeys had a multitude of chimneys and gables, giving the impression of a single large mansion. It was constructed entirely of dark stone, making it almost black, and John admired the colour scheme.

He made himself invisible and teleported inside. The entry hall looked completely normal: a tiled floor and a staircase with a wooden banister. There were two doors with numbers on them on this level, and two more on the landing above: the house had been divided into apartments. The letterboxes inside the lobby were stuffed with advertising pamphlets that had overflowed onto the floor — all of the letterboxes, not just one. The whole area smelled of death. Something had died in here, and more than a couple of days ago.

He went to the door in front of him — apartment one — and held his ear next to it. Nothing. He pushed his senses to the other side of the wood, hoping not to trip any alarms, but sensed nothing.

Stay very quiet, he said to the stone.

Okay.

He put his hand on the doorknob and pressed his palm against the deadlock above it. He moved the tumblers inside, then realised that the door was open. He pulled it towards him to open it a crack, then pushed his senses inside. Nothing.

He opened the door to five centimetres, crouched and put one eye to the opening. All he could see was the white wall of the apartment’s entry. He summoned Dark Heavens and pulled the door open slightly further. The white hallway had no furniture.

He stood, hefted his sword and eased himself around the door and into the hallway. He stopped and listened: nothing. He sensed no life and no demons.

He moved silently to the end of the hall and opened the door a crack. This door opened away from him and again he crouched and put his eye to the opening. The smell of death was much stronger here and he saw the corpses on the ground.

Don’t look. Close your eyes, he said to the stone.

I don’t have eyes, the stone said, bewildered. What do I do?

Just don’t look.

The apartment doors were a sham. The interior of the house had been drastically altered to make a nest. The ceiling rose two floors above him; they’d taken out the internal floor, but had done the job roughly and the edges of the floor still ran around the sides of the large single space. The doors on the landing above led to empty air. The floor coverings had been removed and the floor reduced to bare concrete. The walls and windows were splashed with black demon essence, with what appeared to be dried blood crusted in the corners of the floor. Splashes of blood and essence had sprayed onto the ceiling. Clumps of mud ran across the floor from the door to the office area on the left. The office held three desks, one of them overturned.

The rest of the interior of the house was taken up by three large nest hollows. Two held dead Mothers and clutches of eggs. He went to the first and saw that the Mother’s top half was a copy of Simone. He resisted the urge to run his hand over her honey-coloured hair, and moved one of the eggs, watching the dead demon shift inside the shell. It was another copy of Simone.

The second nest’s Mother was an Emma copy. He quickly knelt, his heart thumping, to make sure that it was a copy of Emma and not her Snake Mother form. He rose, relieved. It was another copy. Her eggs held copies of herself.

The third nest had just eggs in it, all containing Michael copies. From the staining around the nest, it was possible that this demon had exploded rather than dying without dissipating as the others had.

He went to the desk and rifled through the drawers, but found nothing except a few ballpoint pens and paperclips. They’d killed the Mothers and taken everything. An inter-demon coup? Possible.

He exited through one of the large windows that overlooked the ocean and searched for the rubbish bins. He found them on a rear terrace, melted down to nothing. The demons had filled them with paper and some sort of accelerant and set them alight.

He returned to the interior and went to each nest in turn, yinning the Mothers and eggs. He had to lean against the wall when he’d finished. The control needed to stop the yin from destroying everything was exhausting.

He teleported out onto the pebbled beach of the promontory, where the low waves of the cold, black sea called to him, and pulled out the phone. There were about twenty messages from people on the Mountain and in the Heavens asking him to call back urgently. He ignored them. No messages from the Lius or his children. He called Margaret.

‘John,’ she said, sounding relieved. ‘Did you find anything yet?’

‘That stone circle behind the school has been stolen. The black house had dead demon nests in it; it was an abandoned demon base.’

‘There were demons there?’

‘Yes. They probably wouldn’t leave their eggs, so they were destroyed. The postal workers must know the house is deserted but they didn’t report it. I’m not surprised considering what was in there. You need to call the police and tell them about the house. Do you have any leads on the gateway to Heaven?’

‘Yes. I think I have a way for you to reach the Western Watchtower.’

‘Where are you?’

‘In the town hall.’

‘I’ll be right there. Do you have children, Margaret?’

‘What? No. Why do you ask?’

‘I need you to stone-sit.’

‘To what?’

‘I’ll explain when I get there.’