The Demon and the City (12 page)

"Heaven's falling, Robin," it said, and the voice was now thin and old. Robin put the meteorite in her pocket.

"Are we going to the temple?"

"It's not a temple. It's an exchange." And Robin thought,
How stupid of me
. It was indeed a money-changing kiosk, with the little metal slot in its side through which a slip of paper was expelled after the completion of the transaction. Together, they walked to the exchange. Someone knocked on the door, from within; a ritual three times.

"Yes?" Robin's companion said.

"May I come out?" a very small voice asked. The animal looked at Robin, and smiled.

"Up to you, Robin."

Robin opened her mouth to call it forth, but she surprised herself. She heard her own voice from somewhere, high and frightened.

"No," she said, "No, you may not!" and her companion's smile vanished.

"Ask him to come
out,
Robin," it said. It sounded sweet, as sweet as the petals of the thousand-flower that now blew around them, a white whirling cloud to settle in Robin's hair. Robin felt a hand caress her spine, running lightly down the vertebrae, leaving a trail of warmth behind it.

"Ask, Robin, ask," and it was the experiment's voice murmuring in her ear, gentle, whispering. Do this for me, Robin . . .

"No, no!" Robin shouted, and broke away, running blindly through the graveyard. She caught her foot and fell, landing across a granite barrier. She felt a hot burst of pain shoot through her knee and something fiery licked her cheek. She thought that she had fallen against one of the votive lights, but then she felt it again and knew it for the animal's tongue, sliding affectionately across her face. It stung and she cried out.

"Get up, Robin," the creature said. Robin clambered to her feet and stumbled against the tilted stone, half-falling. She had broken her knee, she thought. The sensation seared through her, a pulsing lump of pain. Someone put their arm around her waist, and it was longer than a human arm, and stronger. She looked up fearfully. Her companion's voice rasped in her ear like a tongue.

"Ask,
Robin," and then suddenly it dropped her and sprang away through the snowy petals, a heavy, bolting form, four-legged. In the little exchange, someone started to weep, softly at first, and then louder, until it was a voice that boomed out across the graveyard, filling the sky and bringing down a hail of stars, hissing from the heavens into the damp soil of the cemetery. Robin cowered by the grave marker, her arms bent ineffectually over her head, pain throbbing in her knee. She felt hands beneath her and then someone lifted her up.

"No more," she cried, and struck out. A hand caught her wrist and held it.

"No more," someone agreed, and she relaxed. She was hurried from the cemetery, half-lifted to help her limping gait. Behind them, the green shoots of thousand-flower began to lift through the soil, in each place where a star had fallen.

After a long and difficult conversation with Captain Sung, Zhu Irzh had been given a couple of days off work. Long and difficult conversations with the captain were becoming a habit, he thought resentfully. Next morning, therefore, he locked up the houseboat and walked across to Haitan market. He needed provisions, after his time away from home, and he also wanted to consider Jhai Tserai. He had to admit that she was highly entertaining, whatever demonic bargains she might have been engaged in. He grinned to himself, causing the few fellow shoppers who could see him to shuffle nervously or find something unexpectedly fascinating on the fish counter at the opposite end of the row. Zhu Irzh didn't notice; he was too busy thinking about Jhai. His longing for her was, he reluctantly conceded, more than desire; it was opportunity.

Even if people could see him, they tended to find him sinister; including the not very alluring women who hung around the Ghenret go-downs and the slightly more attractive boys in Shaopeng tram station. If he allowed himself to become closer to Jhai, there might be an opportunity to find out more about whatever she had been doing. This, he decided, was a reasonable plan. Sung might have sidelined him in the course of the investigation, but that altered nothing. He was hot on the trail, he told himself. He was
dedicated
to upholding the right of the law. He forced away the knowledge that it was nothing more than an excuse.

The market was crowded today. Zhu Irzh was obliged to queue for everything, and submitted to being elbowed in the ribs by fierce elderly ladies. At last he came to his final purchases. He had bought enough for two or three days, a diet that emphasized meat, as befitted someone with Zhu Irzh's carnivorous teeth. The meat here always tasted slightly strange, not horrible, but a bit flat. He had seen cattle in the city, roaming through the vacant lots like huge, tethered shadows, and had been wary of them until Ma reminded him that they were herbivores. In Hell, nothing was a herbivore.

Zhu Irzh reached the boat and fumbled the round key out of his pocket. Inside, the boat was dim and stuffy. The badger-teakettle sat on its shelf, in its inanimate form. Zhu Irzh watched it warily for a moment, trying to work out whether it had moved since the morning. It seemed to have given up being a badger, at least while he was around. He opened all the windows, arranged the food in the small refrigerator, then swung himself up onto the windowsill to watch the regular Tevereya ferry sailing past, silently across the sunlit bay. The coins of the
I Ching
rattled in his pocket; fishing them out in a sudden whim, he shook, and threw, and threw again. The sunlight flashed up from the water, dazzling him, and for a moment he could not tell whether the light had come from the sea or from the coins that now lay so innocently beneath his hand. It was the configuration of
Hsiao Kuo. The Small Get By
.

Encouraged by this, Zhu Irzh went to the cupboard and found a bottle of Hell's finest brandy, which he had been saving for medicinal purposes. He was feeling a little off-color still, not quite himself. This, he thought, was as medicinal as it got. The liquor seared an icy trail down his throat, bringing a semblance of clarity in its wake.

"What is wrong?" asked a thick voice behind him. It was as though Earth had spoken. Zhu Irzh turned to see the badger-teakettle, Inari's family familiar, standing four-square on the deck.

"I attacked someone today," Zhu Irzh muttered. "For no reason, with no warning, and in an embarrassingly uncontrolled manner. I'm never going to live this down." And what would Chen say? The demon realized with a degree of amazement that he actually cared what a human thought of him. He groped for the bottle and poured another measure.

"You do not know why?" The badger's dark gaze was as opaque as obsidian.

"I haven't the faintest."

"Perhaps you are changing."

"Changing? What do you mean?"

"Those who have visited the lower levels find that their form begins to alter after a while. A demon countenance forms a muzzle, small eyes, thicker blood. Humans change, too, become more bestial."

"I know, but I've come to Earth from Hell. If any changes were to occur, you'd think I'd become more human—oh." Zhu Irzh stopped.

"Is that not what humans do? Demons are cruel, rarefied, cunning. They devise magnificent punishments, vindictive and baroque. Is that not the very essence of Hell? While humans are merely slaves to their instincts. Perhaps your instincts are changing."

"Perhaps," Zhu Irzh said dubiously. It was a possibility, but not one that he really wanted to entertain. He gestured toward the bottle.

"Want some?"

The badger's pointed head shook from side to side.

"I do not take such drinks. Only blood."

Zhu Irzh regarded the creature with a sudden spark of speculation.

"Human blood?"

But the badger did not reply. Change shimmered the air, and Zhu Irzh blinked.

When the demon once more opened his eyes, there was only an old iron teakettle sitting on the deck.

"Suit yourself," Zhu Irzh remarked to the weighty air, and turned disconsolately back to the bottle.

When she got back to the penthouse, Jhai went straight to the bathroom and spent twenty minutes in the jacuzzi, soaking away the day. Then she walked slowly into the dim expanse of her bedroom and stood before the mirror. Her reflection captured her movements, and nothing more, but in the depths of her own gaze, she could see something golden and old. She smiled, a quick grimace, knowing that Zhu Irzh had seen it, too. She could still feel the warmth of his hand on her cheek.

"For fuck's sake," she said aloud, disgusted with herself. She'd realized what Zhu Irzh was as soon as she'd set eyes on him: a combination of things, all intriguing.

A potential enemy: the person who could, if he chose, bring all of her plans crashing down around her.

A possible ally: the person who could, again if he chose, secure those plans and help them become real.

A hunter: uniquely placed to track down the missing experiment that Robin Yuan had so disastrously let slip through Paugeng's fingers. Whatever Zhu Irzh might be, Jhai knew that he would be of use. How stupid Ei had been to capture him and attempt to bluster. Jhai had been furious to discover this on her return from Beijing.

But all those useful things that Zhu Irzh might be had completely gone out the window, now, because . . . Jhai sat heavily down on the bed and put her head in her hands. How ironic. She knew what the demon must be thinking: she'd used some form of pheromonal glamour, hormone enhancement, on him in a calculated attempt at teasing seduction to throw him off balance. She had done it before, after all; the city was littered with Jhai's conquests, male and female. She'd gained the reputation of South China's most heartless flirt, bringing entire boardrooms to their knees. Literally, in some cases. But boardrooms weren't bedrooms, Jhai reflected bitterly. This time, the glamour with which she'd dazzled Zhu Irzh had not been intentional; he had summoned it forth all by himself, and there was nothing she could do about it.

On the few times when she had allowed relationships to get as far as the actual bedroom, her abilities had deserted her. She'd had to pretend, to avoid the threat of a rumor that she was nothing more than a frigid cock-tease. It was the drug, of course, that held her power, and therefore her sexuality, in check. Without the drug, she could be as uninhibited as she chose, but without the drug, she wouldn't be quite human any longer, either. She knew what her ancestresses had been, long ago in ancient India. They had been
devas
: demon courtesans, wielding enough sexual and sensual power to control emperors. In the Hell that corresponded to Singapore Three, Jhai would be an Imperial whore. Here on Earth, if she gave her powers their full rein, she could have an empire of her own to control. It was illegal for demonkind to live unlicensed on Earth, yet Jhai knew for a fact that there were more than a few magnates who possessed unnatural concubines. But such a role wasn't good enough for Jai. She wanted her own empire; not just to be an adjunct, some kind of supernatural
grande horizontale
 . . . And now that Paugeng was established as one of the principal corporations of Asia—and perhaps, if her plans came to pass, the world—Jhai was about to blow it completely by getting involved with a policeman.
No, she wasn't,
she told herself sternly. Zhu Irzh was dangerous: to Jhai, to Paugeng, to the schemes that she was so carefully nurturing. She would stay well away from Zhu Irzh in the future, if she had any sense.

She got up from the bed and crossed to the wardrobe.

"Open," she murmured, and the doors slid smoothly aside. Her saris hung in a neat, multicolored line along one end of the spacious closet; she preferred them for work. The Indian dress was like a badge, setting her aside from the mainly Chinese personnel. But she had plenty of Western clothes, too, ordered from New York and Paris over the Net. She would not be wanting any of those tonight, Jhai thought. Soon, she would be going back down to the office, and working. Her hand snaked out and plucked a little spangled dress from its perfumed hanger. Thousands of tiny beads rustled as she pulled it over her head. Unbidden, the image of Zhu Irzh sidled into her mind: pale, handsome face alight with amusement, the gilded gaze fixed on her face and leaving no doubt as to what was going through his mind. He was taller than Jhai, too; surrounded by short men, she had reason to appreciate the fact. And he as a demon . . .she'd heard stories, erotic and disturbing. A policeman, Jhai thought, shaking her head. How in all the worlds did someone like that get to be a
policeman?
He looked as though he should be propping up a couch in some seraglio. Her thoughts drifted away into uncharted territory. She took some trouble over her make-up.

When she had finished, Jhai looked at herself and abandoned all pretence that she had any intention of working. Before she left, she looked in on her mother, dressing for the opera.

"You're dressed very smartly tonight," Opal had replied, without even looking round. How did she do that? It unnerved Jhai.

"I've got a meeting with someone. Anyway, I think it's good for company morale if I dress for the evening." It was a pathetic excuse, an attempt to stave off the lecture which inevitably followed.

"This is foolish! He is a demon, like—well, anyway, not a stupid man, even if he is not on our level, Jhai. He knows what you are doing."

Her daughter took a deep breath. Once again, her mother, who had been nowhere near recent events at Paugeng, had proved that she knew exactly what Jhai was up to. "I know what I'm doing."

"There is nothing there for you—just lust. It is not clever." Opal segued into the wider argument, a hardy perennial these days. "You should find a nice girl and settle down."

"Oh, for God's sake, Mother!"

"You're twenty-nine years old."

"I'm sorry, Opal, who did you say was primitive?"

"I am talking about a political connection."

"I know what you're talking about. You want to fix me up with Aily Pardua. Last year, I seem to recall, it was Beth Murriday from that oil company, and look what happened to that. I'm not going to be a laughingstock just because you start parading every available young woman in town in front of me."