Black Jade (23 page)

‘Now you and Buffy go into hiding while the Demon King's occupied with his new conquest,' I said. ‘You bought the plane tickets, didn't you?'

‘I didn't believe you,' he moaned. ‘I trusted the Jade Emperor. I was so sure we'd win.' He looked around. ‘Where's my goddamn wheelchair?'

‘Simone, can you take them onto an airplane and change their faces as well?' I said.

‘I can't leave you here,' she said.

‘Take me back to Persimmon Tree, then take Leo and Buffy to America.'

‘No,' Leo said. ‘Take Buffy. She'll be fine with my sister. I have to stay here and help.'

‘Leo, we
lost
,' I said. ‘The King will be after you. He's after all of us. You have to run!'

‘Martin needs me. He's in Hell alone and it will break him.'

‘He's not in Hell, he's in the Northern Heavens and still alive,' Simone said. ‘He'll never forgive you if you leave Buffy alone. I'll never forgive you either. Stay with her.'

‘Er Hao!' I called, and she came out of the hallway.

‘Is it finished?' she said. ‘We won?'

‘Pack for Buffy and yourself,' I said. ‘She's staying at her aunt's house in America.'

‘No!' Buffy shouted, and ran around Er Hao to her father. ‘I don't want to go. Aunty Elise is mean.'

‘Buffy, honey,' Leo said, taking her hands and gazing into her eyes, ‘it's not safe here any more. You saw all those bad people at the doorway?'

‘Demons,' she said. ‘You killed them. We're fine now.'

‘More are coming,' I said. ‘Lots more. More than all of us can fight. Stay with Aunty Elise while we kill them, then you can come back.'

‘I'll help,' she said, determined.

‘You can help by staying with Aunty Elise for a while,' Leo said. ‘Er Hao, pack bags for all of us. We're all going.'

‘Good.' I rose and put my hand out. ‘Quickly, Simone, take me back to the Mountain.'

‘No,' Simone said. ‘Go to America with Leo, Buffy and Er Hao.'

‘Don't be ridiculous. I need to be with my family to protect them. Take me up, Simone.'

‘Er Hao, pack for them while I guard the door,' Simone said, then rose and turned to face the front door.

‘Er Hao, where's my wheelchair?' Leo said.

‘I'll find it for you, sir,' Er Hao said. ‘I'll be right back.'

‘Simone, I need to be up at Persimmon Tree
right now
!' I shouted at her back. ‘The Demon King will torture my family!'

‘Here's your wheelchair, sir,' Er Hao said.

Leo pulled himself into it, wincing from the pain of his injuries. ‘Simone, bring Emma's family down. They can come too.'

‘I already did,' Simone said. ‘I put Matthew and Aunty Jen and Aunty Amanda on a plane to London.'

‘Take me back up,' I said. ‘The rest of my family need me. The whole Mountain needs me.'

‘I can't,' she said. She resummoned her blades. ‘I promised Pop that I'd take you out if we lost and keep you somewhere safe.'

‘I'm not a thing to be kept safe. I'm a human being and I need to protect my family.'

‘I gave my word, Emma,' she said, her voice mild.

‘You promised to leave them there?' I said, horrified.

She pulled her phone out of her jeans' pocket, speed-dialled, and looked at the screen. My father appeared on it.

‘Talk to her, she's being stupid,' she said, and handed the phone to me.

‘Did anything happen?' I asked him.

‘No. The Demon King hasn't come back and the guards haven't moved. From what we're hearing, he's busy in the Celestial Palace, putting human soldiers everywhere, rounding up the population, and executing every Immortal he finds.'

‘Has he found Martin?' Leo said.

My father hesitated, then said, ‘I'm sorry, Leo.'

‘No,' Leo said, and wheeled himself away.

‘It'll be a while before he bothers with us. He's busy consolidating his control and killing all the Immortals,' my father said. ‘The Mountain students are too junior for him to worry about.'

‘I must be there when the King discovers that Jen and Amanda are gone,' I said.

‘You
are
here,' he said. ‘Well, you were. Greg made himself look like you, and a demon with a really weird face came through, took Greg, and they cut his head off. The King thinks you're in Hell, so stay away and start organising the Resistance. Don't you dare go down without a fight. Gather as many people as you can and start harassing the Demon King so we can win the Heavens back.'

‘Fight him, Emma,' my mother said from behind my father. ‘There aren't many Immortals left who are free agents, and you and Simone are two of them.'

Mark came up behind her and nodded into the screen.

‘So use your brains and Simone's muscles and start working on a way to win this back for us,' my mother finished.

‘I have an agreement with the King —'

My father cut me off. ‘I don't care if he owns your soul. He won't kill us; he wants us for our genetic material. He won't torture us if we cooperate. He thinks you're in Hell; and he's stuck here consolidating his rule in Heaven, so he won't know for a while that it's really Greg. So stay away and start looking for ways to fight back. You were somehow mentally joined with John, so use his experience and
start fighting back
.'

‘We love you, sweetheart,' my mother said. ‘Now go and fight that bastard and win the Heavens back.'

‘Get him,' David growled, and the screen cut off.

Leo wheeled himself into the room with a duffel bag on his lap. Er Hao stood next to him, holding Buffy's hand.

Simone took her phone back and quickly flipped through it. She studied a variety of things for nearly five minutes and I grew impatient.

‘What —'

‘I'm not checking my Facebook, if that's what you think,' she said. ‘Found one.' She looked up at Leo. ‘I'll be right back.' She disappeared.

‘Oh, she's finding a flight for you,' I said, and summoned Dark Heavens. I turned to the door to defend it.

‘Ma'am,' Er Hao said quietly as she came up behind me.

‘Did you pack for yourself? It will be cold in Chicago,' I said.

‘I cannot go. It is too far from my Centre,' she said. ‘I am too small, so leave me here and I will slow them down.'

‘Not happening,' I said.

‘Please.' She lowered her voice. ‘I cannot go with the family. I beg you, destroy me now so that they will not find me.'

‘We'll hide you somewhere else,' I said.

‘Ma'am,' she began, but Simone's reappearance cut her off.

‘All three of you to the centre of the room,' Simone said. Freddo appeared next to the windows. ‘Buffy on Freddo, and Leo and Er Hao with me.'

‘I cannot go, Princess,' Er Hao said. ‘It is too far from my Centre.' She closed her eyes. ‘Destroy me now so they cannot take me.'

‘Come back and take Er Hao somewhere else,' Freddo said. He tossed his head. ‘More demons coming, Simmony.'

Er Hao faced the door. ‘I will hold them off. You go.'

Simone took my shoulder and the Peak apartment disappeared.

* * *

We reappeared on the second floor of a mouldy deserted concrete building with the wind whistling through it. The ceiling had fallen in, and a dead dog lay on a rotting couch nearby, its corpse so desiccated it no longer smelled. Large smashed windows overlooked a dry overgrown swimming pool and a tennis court, then a narrow beach and the flat ocean on the other side of a high chain-link fence.

‘Sea Ranch?' I said.

‘I'll be right back.' She disappeared.

I picked my way through the fallen masonry to sit on the ground next to the broken windows, wrapping my hands around my knees.

Only accessible by boat from the rest of Hong Kong, Sea Ranch had been an attempt to build a millionaires' enclave,
with a luxurious clubhouse and low-rise buildings with spacious apartments facing the ocean. But the project had died, and most of the apartments were now used for weekend rentals to kids who came to play mah jongg, make barbecues on the beach and indulge in the rare chance to have sex in privacy. During the week the mouldering development was deserted, except for a few diehard original investors who refused to leave their expensive tumbledown condominiums.

I pulled my phone out and checked my messages. None.

I opened my social media pages and everybody was sharing questions about the status of the Heavens, until a post by Gold that read:

Gold McGolderson: Everybody go dark. Get off social media and throw away your phones. You can be tracked through your posts, and even if your GPS is off, your location is easily triangulated through the cellular network. They're breaking into my Celestial network as well. I'm trying to keep them out but it's only a matter of time. Every post you put up here will be a marker to where you are. Once they're into the network they'll be able to hack into your phone's GPS and find you. If you're free, throw your phone away, disconnect all your electronics, and stay very quiet.

The social media pages after that were deserted.

I hesitated, looking at my phone, then placed it on the ground next to me and blasted it with energy. When the heat hit the battery it exploded, producing a cloud of foul-smelling smoke.

Simone reappeared and sat on the ground next to me. ‘Leo and Buffy will be in America tomorrow.' She saw the remains of my phone. ‘What did you do?'

‘Blew my phone up. Gold says we can be tracked by them and we need to get rid of them.'

‘Even his specials?'

‘They're taking over his network,' I said.

Simone pulled her phone out and stared at it. ‘How will we contact each other in an emergency?' she said as she put it on the carpet.

‘Telepathy.'

‘Yours isn't terribly reliable.'

She blasted the phone with shen energy and it burst into a blinding white flame.

‘What did you do about Er Hao?' I said. ‘Is she safe?'

‘I parked her in one of the tunnels in Western, where Martin hid me all that time ago. She's dormant. I don't think anyone except me and Martin know where they are.'

‘Thank you,' I said with relief. ‘Now what do we do?'

‘Do you have any ideas?'

‘Take me back to the Mountain,' I said.

‘I can't. I promised. We need to find a place here on the Earthly to set up a centre of operations and do what your family said — start the Resistance. So where can we go? Do you have any ideas?'

‘The Mountain,' I said.

‘Emma, I
promised
.'

I turned away to look out the window.

‘We can't stay here. If they tracked our phones, this was our last location,' Simone said. She rose. ‘I'll go find a deserted village. We can start from there.'

‘It won't be sealed,' I said. ‘The Earthly is infested with demons and they'll be able to come straight in. We need to find somewhere sealed so we can sleep at night.'

‘Do you know how to seal buildings?' she said. ‘I don't.'

‘No, I'm too small.'

‘If only Ronnie —' She raised her head. ‘I'll be right back.' She disappeared.

John?
I said.

There was no reply.

Simone returned five minutes later and crouched next to me. I didn't look up.

‘Don't you dare give up now,' she said fiercely. ‘I've found us somewhere they won't think to look — Ronnie's old flat. They obviously can't break in, because it's never been touched. It's sealed up tight. Emma!'

I looked up from my knees.

‘Let's go set ourselves up and start contacting everybody who escaped. The Demon King will be too busy to look for us — he probably doesn't have any demons left after what Nu Wa did — so let's take advantage of the breathing space and move.'

‘I promised the Demon King I'd take Frankie to Heaven for him,' I said. ‘If he asks me to do it, I have to go.'

‘He won't risk Frankie until the Heavens are secure. He'll need to hatch a new demon army to do that — the Heavens are too large to hold with that human force. We have a while before he sees Greg in Hell and realises he isn't you. Let's take advantage of the opportunity.' She patted my shoulder. ‘Up you get. You can't stop now, Dark Lady, the Heavens still need you. Get to work.'

I sighed, wiped my eyes, and rose, dusting my hands on the pants of my Mountain uniform. ‘Are Buffy and Leo okay?'

‘They'll be in the US tomorrow.'

She held her hand out to me and I took it. We landed across the road from the concrete apartment building. The block was from the fifties: five storeys high, stained with exhaust fumes, and with narrow windows overlooking the street. The three-metre-wide ground floor was taken up by Ronnie's shop, with a small metal gated entrance at one side.

I looked up and down the street while Simone concentrated, checking inside the building. Its walls glowed in shafts of sunlight that streamed across the road, bringing the bare ugly concrete into bright contrast.

‘What the hell,' I said, and looked up. There wasn't a cloud in the sky — and it was blue. ‘The sky's
clear
. No pollution. I haven't seen it like that in years.'

Simone glanced up. ‘Oh, so that's what's different. I was wondering.' We went across the road to the building. ‘The King's taken all the demons to occupy Heaven. There's hardly any left here except for the executive copies.'

She stood in front of Ronnie's shop and studied it. The roller door was closed and plastered with movie posters in a layer that was five centimetres thick and peeling at the corners. No ‘For Sale' or ‘To Let' signs though. Ronnie had owned the shop and the flat above it.

‘Everything's still inside the shop,' Simone said. We went to the barred steel gate that led to the stairs to the flats. ‘They really can't get in.'

‘Or they just didn't bother,' I said.

Six letterboxes sat on a piece of wood next to the door, with buttons for the apartment intercoms, which were black with dirt. Simone concentrated and the door unlocked. I pulled it open and we carefully walked up the stairs, both of us alert.

We reached the first floor and stopped at Ronnie's flat. Simone unlocked the gate and the door inside. Just as we were about to enter, a family came up the stairs and stopped on the landing: a couple, with a boy of about five and a two-year-old girl.

Human,
Simone said.

‘Call Aunty-la,' the woman said, seeing me, a European.

‘Aunty,' the children said loudly in unison.

‘Hello,' I said. I gestured with my head towards Ronnie's flat. ‘We're friends of Ronnie's.'

‘Wah, your Cantonese is very good,' the man said. ‘We haven't seen Ronnie in a while.'

‘He's in China visiting his family,' Simone said. ‘He said we could use his flat. We're his relatives from Canada.'

I glanced at her and she shrugged.

‘I know Ronnie has family in Canada,' the man said. ‘It's good you're looking after it for him. We were worried.'

‘He's caring for his sick mother, we don't know how long he'll be,' I said.

‘Tell him we hope she's better soon,' the woman said. ‘We have his mail up at 5A. Come and collect it any time.'

‘Thank you,' I said.

The man hefted the little girl in his arms. ‘Charlotte, Ricky, time to go.'

‘Goodbye, Aunty,' the children said in unison, and the whole family cheerfully waved and went up the next flight of stairs. I watched the little girl cling to her father's shoulder as he carried her, their blissful normality making my heart ache.

‘Canada?' I said as we went into the flat.

‘Always a fifty-fifty bet that anyone who's lived overseas has been in Canada,' Simone said.

‘The other fifty-fifty is Australia.'

‘Yeah,' she said. She saw the state of the apartment, untouched for months. ‘Oh, dear.'

Everything was covered in a thick layer of greasy dust. I ran one finger over the top of the television and it came away black.

‘No demons to clean up after you, Simone, we'll have to do this ourselves,' I said.

‘I'm no stranger to cleaning,' she huffed. ‘I helped out at Sweetie Peachy in Spring Garden Lane, remember?' Her voice went wistful. ‘God, I hope all the workers at Eighty-Eight are okay.'

‘We can sneak in and check on them later.'

I went into the tiny kitchen, only two metres long and a metre wide, and looked around. The stove had a gas bottle under the ledge and I felt it — still nearly full. I went back into the living room, opened the fridge and instantly regretted it.

‘Can you yin this?' I said.

‘I won't yin anything unless it's life or death,' she said, wrinkling her nose at the smell. ‘Wow, science experiment — some of that stuff is completely unrecognisable. Wait, is that a pig's head?' She choked. ‘Yin's too dangerous to use on a whim. We have to do this the old-fashioned way.'

I went into the main bedroom. Ronnie had a double bed jammed against the wall with very little space around it. There was no bed linen. The other bedroom was even smaller, not even enough room for a double bed, and was piled to the ceiling with stock from the shop below: Hell money, incense, and paper offerings.

‘If the people upstairs knew all this death-related stuff was in here they'd have a fit,' Simone said, picking up a plastic-wrapped wad of gold-painted paper that would be folded at a funeral into gold bars. ‘So much bad luck.' She tossed it back onto the pile. ‘Is there any cleaning stuff anywhere?'

I opened the accordion door to the bathroom, which was a metre and a half long and less than a metre wide. A cheap pink plastic showerhead hung on a string over the toilet. The ugly green tiles were black with dirt and mould.

‘There's bleach and things stacked in the corner here,' I said, ‘but we might need some heavy-duty stuff. I saw a supermarket down the street — I'll go and buy some.'

‘No, you won't,' she said over my shoulder. ‘You'll stay here where it's safe and I'll steal them. It's too dangerous for you to go alone. And besides, we don't have any money.'

I opened my mouth to argue and closed it again.

‘Ronnie's seals were the best anywhere. You're safe here,' she said. ‘Yell if anything happens. I'll be right back.' She disappeared.

I went into the living room and sat on the tired black leather couch facing the television. We didn't have any extra clothes, and Ronnie obviously did his laundry somewhere else.

I put my head in my hands. I couldn't even talk to John. I had no idea what to do next, beyond cleaning the flat and making it liveable for Simone. I only had a short time before the Demon King demanded I honour my vow to him. I considered turning myself in to avoid any retaliation against my family, and decided that once
Simone was settled, I'd sneak out, walk into a police station and surrender to the Superintendent Cheung copy.

Emma, Michael's here. Let him in.

My head shot up and I raced to the door to open it.

Michael's white-haired head appeared on the stairs. He smiled when he saw me, gave me a quick hug, and pushed me into the apartment, closing the door behind us.

‘I can't stay long, they're on to me,' he said. ‘It's only a matter of time before they hunt me down.'

‘You're Number One Son —'

‘Yeah, that doesn't work any more,' he said, interrupting me. ‘Dad's fallen. I'm back to being just me, not Number anything. I'm powerful, but they're stronger — really weird-looking demons with tiny faces that are impossible to fight.'

‘What about Clarissa?'

‘Can she stay with you?'

‘Of course she can! Where is she?'

‘She's hiding on top of Tai Mo Shan. I just told Simone where she is so she can pick her up. Simone says you're out of cash.' He looked around. ‘We need to find something quickly.'

‘I have just the thing,' I said, and showed him into the second bedroom.

‘Heh,' he said, lifting one of the packets of paper clothing that would be burnt for relatives in Heaven, ‘this works.'

He put the clothes down and picked up a stack of Hell money in its plastic wrapper. He opened it and separated out a wad of notes a centimetre thick, then ripped it in half crosswise to make a square. He passed the rest to me, and I held them as he concentrated and changed the square to a bar of gold.

He tossed it onto the bed. ‘Unfortunately I can't do a hallmark on it, so it's blank. A small family jeweller will buy it without asking too many questions, particularly if you offer it for less than the market price.'

‘Wait,' I said as he reached for the rest of the notes. ‘If that's the case, make it into a melted lump of gold that looks like it was in a house fire. Simone can take the form of an old lady and pretend it was all the jewellery she kept in a shoebox under her bed, and it was caught in the fire.'

‘Perfect.' He picked up the bar he'd just made, softened it, and pulled at it like play-doh until it appeared to have melted. He made a few more and placed them on the bed. ‘That should keep you going for a while.'

He put his arm around my shoulders and landed a quick kiss on my cheek. ‘Thanks for looking after Clarissa.' He raised his head. ‘They're close. I'll lead them away.'

He disappeared.

Simone opened the apartment door and came in holding a couple of shopping bags. ‘Here's all the cleaning stuff we need. Don't do it all before I'm back with Clarissa.' She went out again, closing both doors behind her.

I took a plastic garbage bag and a pair of rubber gloves out of one of the shopping bags, ready to tackle the fridge.

A couple of minutes later Simone returned with Clarissa, who'd obviously been crying; her eyes were red and swollen. I went to her and embraced her, and she sobbed into my shoulder. I didn't join in her tears. Something inside me was blank and empty. Instead of grief I felt . . . nothing.

‘So what's the plan now, Emma?' Clarissa said when she'd calmed down. ‘What will you do?'

‘Settle in, then decide. I never thought we'd end up like this.' I looked around. ‘Simone?' She was gone.

‘I hope she can find more people who escaped,' Clarissa said. She sat on the couch. ‘I feel so guilty. Everybody else is held in the Heavens and I'm here.'

‘Don't feel guilty,' I said. ‘You can help us. We need to find everybody who escaped and start a network.'

Simone reappeared fifteen minutes later with my carry-on suitcase. ‘Smally put together some clothes for you.'

‘You went back up there?' I said. ‘How are they? What happened? Is everybody okay?'

‘Not much has happened,' she said. ‘The Demon King's establishing his control. All the Immortals have been executed, and since the Heavens belong to the demons, our side of Hell does as well.' She nodded to Clarissa. ‘You're not supposed to know about any of this.'

‘Too late,' Clarissa said.

‘Anyway, all the Immortals have been executed and they're in cells in Hell. The mortals are under curfew inside their homes while the King consolidates control. Anyone found out of doors without a really good reason is taken to the main square of the Celestial Palace and executed in front of a CCTV system that's feeding through the entire Heavens.'

‘He's executing
mortals
?' I said, horrified. ‘I have to go back up and stop it!'

‘You'll just be executed too,' Simone said. ‘He's using Hell as a prisoner-of-war camp for the Immortals — none of them can escape the cells.'

‘John can,' I said.

‘Daddy . . .' Her voice broke. ‘He and the Jade Emperor are in cells at the bottom of Level Nine where they keep the mad Kings. They can't escape.'

‘How are my family holding up?' I said.

‘Our family,' Simone said. ‘The King hasn't had time to do anything with them. He's much too busy allocating living accommodation for his human soldiers in the Celestial Palace and arranging the guard rotations on the other Palaces. It'll be a while before he's secure enough to start experimenting again. We have time.'

I leaned on the wall next to the fridge and stared out the window, feeling blank inside.

Clarissa turned on the television.

‘After the coup, the new regime is consolidating its hold,'
the reporter said.

‘What?' I said, and moved around to see.

‘The general in charge has called for calm, but pockets of protest against the takeover are still occurring. The military is using tear gas and rubber bullets to subdue the crowds —'

‘That's happening in three or four Asian countries right now,' Simone said. ‘Reflections on the Earthly of what's happening in the Celestial. Demons are in control.'

‘Will it happen in China?' Clarissa said.

‘It happened a long time ago,' Simone said. ‘So what now?'

‘I don't know,' I said. ‘I need time to think.'