Hell to Heaven (49 page)

Simone raised Seven Stars above her head, the point towards the two humanoid demons. A flash of bright white light shot from the end of the sword and destroyed both of them.

‘Don’t do that, you’ll wear yourself out before we get to the hard ones!’ Michael shouted.

‘We are at the hard ones,’ Simone said. Her voice changed to menacing. ‘And I’m not nearly worn out yet.’

Martin strode into the room and stopped in front of me. He was in Celestial Form, with green and tan robes, his long brown hair held in a topknot by a jade green ribbon that flowed down to his feet. He carried the Silver Serpent.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ he said. ‘The Tiger was asking for help with his wives without telling anybody what was really going on.’

‘Are the Northern Heavens guarded sufficiently?’ I said.

‘Ma’am. All is secure.’

‘Good,’ I said.

The Snake Mothers waited at the doorway without attacking.

‘Is this everything?’ I said.

The Geek, the Death Mother and Kitty Kwok stepped through the doorway and stood just inside it.

‘That’s everything,’ Simone said grimly.

‘Oh, look, Emma’s a snake again,’ Kitty said. ‘But not as strong as last time. I wonder why? Might have something to do with all that demon essence I pumped into her.’

The Death Mother moved up to stand next to the three armed demons; she held a massive machine gun with one hand. ‘I’ll take the Princess,’ she said.

‘Black Lion,’ one of the Mothers said. ‘You three take the remaining ones.’

‘I’m a thinker, not a fighter,’ the Geek said, his voice wavering. He moved to stand behind Kitty. ‘Just kill them all.’

‘I want Emma alive!’ Kitty shouted. ‘The King’ll trade anything for her!’

‘Simone alive would be handy as well,’ the Death Mother said. ‘But I think it’s too dangerous to try to capture her; we should just take her head off.’

One of the other Mothers rose on her coils. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

I turned and moved back to the wall; I wasn’t big enough in serpent form to take these on. I lowered my nose to the ground, concentrated and the white jade disk appeared. I raised my head and turned back. The demons and Celestials were facing off, and the water encasing the fire elementals was beginning to boil again.

‘The fire elementals are escaping,’ Simone said.

Martin raised one hand and concentrated and the demons stopped moving. He’d bound them all. ‘I can’t hold this for long, and there are too many of them for us to fight,’ he said.

‘We can do it,’ Simone said.

‘Too risky,’ Martin said. ‘Ten of them, three of us—we can’t all survive that. The Bai Hu’s army is at the bottom waiting, they can help. We can’t do this alone.’

‘Can they move faster than us?’ Simone said.

‘Yes. But I can hold them. Run!’ Martin said, and pushed Simone behind him.

Leo grabbed Simone’s hand and pulled her towards the lift. Michael followed. I picked up the jade disk in my mouth and followed them.

‘Cowards!’ the Death Mother shouted. ‘When I can move, you are all dead!’

‘Go!’ Martin said, staring at the demons.

‘Shut the doors behind us,’ I said to Michael, my voice muffled by the disk in my mouth.

We went down in the lift to the guard room leading to the maze. The two guards were standing there uncertainly, holding their weapons.

‘Follow us,’ I said.

They nodded and stood on either side of the door. Michael opened it and we ran through the maze. The room at the other end held another three guards and I ordered them to follow us as well.

Michael opened the vault doors, we went through, and he closed them again. We were in the blank corridor where the Tiger and I had discussed my fan club.

‘That will hold them for a while,’ Michael said as the vault doors disappeared behind us. ‘No way will they get that open. They probably can’t even see it.’

A white-hot point of heat and light, so bright it burned into my retinas, appeared in the middle of the wall where the door was.

‘They can’t get it open?’ Leo said.

‘I’m not sure it’s a good idea taking them down to the hotel,’ I said. ‘I should just use this jade disk and be done with it.’

‘Only as a last resort,’ Simone said. ‘It’ll destroy the tame demons and the demon wives as well.’

‘And Emma!’ Leo shouted.

Simone glared at him. ‘You think I don’t know that? But she doesn’t give a damn about herself; she has as much of a death wish as you do.’ She slashed one hand through the air. ‘I want both of you alive, so only as a last resort!’

I dropped my serpent head. ‘Okay.’ I turned to the tunnel. ‘Is the electricity still off?’

‘Yes,’ Michael said.

‘You go,’ one of the guards said. ‘When you’re at the bottom, I’ll turn it back on.’

‘Don’t you dare,’ Leo said. ‘If anyone stays, it should be me. I’m the only Immortal here.’

The air filled with acrid, metallic smoke.

‘Don’t argue with me, just go!’ the guard said. ‘My mother’s down there, and you are three times more powerful than anything we have. Losing you now would put my mother at risk. There’s an army at the bottom to help you. So go!’

The stone in my ring took human form. ‘Lovely sentiment, little man, but absolutely no need for it.’ He turned to us. ‘Off you go. I’ll do it.’

‘I’ll shout when we’re at the end,’ Simone said, and jumped off the edge into the tunnel.

We followed her.

‘Through!’ Simone shouted, and the stone floated through the air behind us and returned to the ring.

All of the doors were still open, and Michael closed them behind us as we went through. We reached the final vault doors to the lifts and Michael closed these as well. The lift doors hung open and we went in.

‘Be nice if that held them in,’ Simone said.

‘Where’s the limit of the teleportation lock?’ I asked one of the guards.

Michael concentrated. ‘Here. Once they’re here, they can teleport.’

‘I suppose it’s too much to ask that they’ll take what they came for and leave,’ Simone said.

The lift doors opened and we entered the lobby of the ski resort. Michael melted the lift doors open, effectively stopping the lifts from working.

‘I think they came for us,’ he said.

‘No, the Death Mother came for the Geek,’ I said as we went out to the forecourt. ‘She gave him something
when she kissed him—something that allowed them all to get in here.’

Simone inhaled sharply. ‘There are demons back there in the labs, looking at all your dad’s research,’ she said to Michael.

About half the wives had been evacuated, but half remained; they were sitting in the snow with fifty or so guards standing over them. The demons and their guards were visible next to the swimming pool on the ground floor of the residential wing of the resort.

‘This isn’t an army, there’s only ten or so guards here. What happened?’ I said.

Michael went to one of the guards and quickly embraced him. They slapped each other on the back. ‘We have a group of big demons following us,’ Michael told him when they released each other. ‘Where’s everybody else? When are the buses coming back up?’

‘Demons attacked us,’ the guard said. ‘A group of six or seven out of the lot that came down from the hotel. Never seen anything like it. They ran to us, and when they were close, they exploded. Like high-end incendiaries.’ He gestured with his head. ‘There’s fifty of us lying dead over there.’

‘I told them to watch those demons more carefully!’ I said.

‘They were tiny; how were we to know they’d do that?’ the guard said.

I slithered backwards and forwards with frustration. ‘I warned them. Why didn’t they listen?’

The guard glared at me. ‘We did listen. We watched them. But we’ve never seen a demon explode like that before. Where the
fuck
did that come from?’

‘It’s something they did in the past, but the current Demon King has outlawed it,’ I said.

‘Looks like the current King is on the way out then,’ the guard said, his face grim.

‘How soon can you get the wives out?’ Michael said.

‘The second transfer just left; we have a good hour before it’s back, and it can only take about forty of them,’ the guard said. ‘We’ll teleport the remainder while the bus returns for the rest of the tame demons.’

I dropped the jade disk in the forecourt and went into the swimming pool area. ‘Start walking now,’ I said to the demons. ‘Head down the hill. Walk on the road. Get at least two hundred metres away from here.’

‘You are
not
using that thing!’ Simone said behind me.

‘Not right now, no,’ I said, and returned to the forecourt.

She barked with frustration. ‘Smartass!’

‘Thank you,’ I said.

Michael had already instructed the guards to move the wives to the back of the building where they would be safer. I joined him there after the demons had started the march down the hill.

‘How many demon wives here? They should move away as well,’ I said.

They don’t want to identify themselves
, Michael said.
They’d rather die.

A huge crash resounded through the building.

‘That was the demons blowing up one of the elevator cars,’ Michael said. He shifted his grip on his sword and turned to the guards. ‘Mark, Andy, Ross, stay with the wives.’ He gestured with his sword. ‘Everybody else, with me.’

We went back around to the forecourt.

‘Me at point,’ Leo said. ‘Simone, Michael. Emma, guards, to the rear.’

We moved into the defensive formation with Leo at the front.

Leo readied himself. ‘Me on point—feels kinda weird.’

‘It shouldn’t, it’s where you belong,’ Michael said. ‘Here we go,’ he added as the demons came out of the building.

The three Snake Mothers approached us, with the Death Mother at the front.

‘I’ll take the big one,’ Leo said.

‘Left,’ Michael said.

‘Centre,’ Simone said. ‘You guards take the right. Emma, stay back, and don’t, whatever you do, use that stone.’

The fire elementals didn’t come out; they stayed in the hotel and ignited everything—furniture, carpets, curtains. Heat and smoke billowed out of the building and we were forced to move back. The wives screamed and ran, the guards guiding them down the hill.

The Death Mother slithered towards Simone, raising the gun. Simone concentrated with Seven Stars in one hand. The Mother shook the gun a few times, checked the load mechanism and dropped it. Simone had made it useless.

Leo attacked the Death Mother with Dark Heavens, swinging at her, but she avoided his blows, moving with disturbing speed. She lashed out at him and struck him across the throat and he reeled back. He wiped his face and readied himself.

Michael was an even match with the Mother he was facing. He had loaded his sword with shen energy and
moved as fast as she did, but neither of them could break through each other’s guard.

The second Snake Mother attacked the guards, sweeping five of them away in one hit. She grabbed a sixth with a hand at each end of his torso, broke his spine with an audible crack and tossed him aside. She turned to the other five guards and killed them with relish, breaking their bodies and tearing out their throats.

Simone swung Seven Stars at the Mother she’d called and cut it in two, ducking under its arms as they flailed towards her. The demon exploded and she rushed to attack the Mother that had killed the guards. She didn’t load the sword with energy; she was obviously tiring.

I went to the injured guard, took his arm in my mouth and dragged him back away from the fight. I touched my nose to him; the damage was severe and I couldn’t fix him. I did what I could to relieve his pain then raised my head to check the battle.

Leo was losing. The Death Mother had broken his left arm and he was blocking her blows with difficulty.

Michael kept checking on Leo and Simone, which proved his undoing. The Snake Mother he was facing saw him look away and hit him squarely on the side of the head, knocking him down. She moved to assist the Mother attacking Simone.

Leo fell to one knee, keeping the Death Mother away by sheer stubbornness. It was only a matter of time before she finished him or he lost the use of his legs from exhaustion.

Simone was now facing two Mothers at once, and they were working together to get through her guard. They had already drawn blood—her uniform was
torn on one side and wet with it. She raised the sword, concentrated and sent a blast of shen energy out of the sword and through both of them, dissipating them. She rushed to help Leo with the Death Mother.

I dragged Michael back to where the crippled guard was lying. He wasn’t severely injured this time; only concussion—his brain had hit the inside of his skull and there was bruising but not a major haemorrhage like the last time. He’d be fine.

The Death Mother backed up when faced with both Leo and Simone. Simone sent a blast of shen at the Mother and she deflected it into the ground, then grimaced with satisfaction. The fire elementals strode out of the building towards her. I could feel their heat from fifty metres away, and they melted the snow in a ten-metre radius around them. These were much bigger than the ones we’d faced back in Europe.

Simone and Leo hesitated. The Death Mother backed up—carefully keeping a good distance—to allow the elementals to come to the front. The Geek appeared in the entrance of the burning hotel and crossed his arms over his chest.

Simone threw a ball of shen energy at one of the elementals but it travelled straight through it. She summoned a group of water elementals, which tried to surround the fire, but they were vaporised as they touched it.

She’s weakened by exhaustion and blood loss
, the stone said.

The stone didn’t need to tell me that. Simone was in mortal danger and the damn turtle wasn’t showing up to help her.

I think he used everything he had to get you off the First Platform
, the stone said.
That would be enough
to flatten anybody for weeks. Ma was usually out of action for a month after going to the First.

Wonderful. I looked behind me for the jade disk and picked it up.