5
S he landed in a dimly lit and deserted underground cavern. The floor of this Hell was like the surface of the Moon—absolutely dry and covered with fine grey powder. No plants were present, and the walls were too distant to be seen. The invisible ceiling was like the night sky with no moon or stars, and without her enhanced senses it would have been too dark to see. Simone checked around and found no other source of chi energy—people, animals, plants, insects ... nothing. Emma could be anywhere, and if this Hell was as big as the Asian one, she could be searching for days.
She lifted off the ground and sent her senses out, trying to find her stepmother and failing. She sensed some demons a great distance away, so she flew towards them.
After flying towards the demon presence for ten minutes—without sensing Emma anywhere—Simone noticed a shape near the wall of the underground cavern and stopped. A massive stone throne—big enough to hold her father’s largest Celestial form—stood at the base of the wall. She landed in front of the throne to check it.
The ground was covered in footprints, but the throne itself looked untouched and was grey with dust. She lifted off the ground to study the wall behind the throne more closely and discovered that it was carved into a bas-relief all the way up, as far as she could see. The carving was eroded by time, and she summoned a light and moved closer, noticing that it had been filled with rich colours—red, blue and gold—a long time ago, but that they had worn away to nearly nothing.
She distinguished the curve of a jaw, traced it with her finger, and her touch filled the sculpture with light. Brilliant gold filled the short curly blond hair and tightly bound beard, and the radiant colours flooded the carving to form the image of a naked man standing side-on and wielding a thunderbolt in his hand. The entire figure was nearly as tall as her father’s eleven-storey apartment building.
‘Zeus,’ she said softly.
The colours shimmered across the wall, ignited by Simone’s energy, and showed Poseidon with his trident. He was dark-haired, bearded and also naked. As she worked out what she was seeing, she recognised more and more of the ancient European pantheon until she had revealed the brilliant images of nearly twenty gods, goddesses and titans. She drifted down to the throne again and studied its sides for more carved artwork—to find nothing. It was completely plain and featureless.
‘I wish you could have met my dad,’ she said to the throne. ‘He’s not into ornamentation either.’
When she touched down, the ground beneath her feet sprang to life. The dust around the throne receded to reveal mirror-shiny black-marble tiles, inlaid with decorative gold edging. The restoration worked its way up the throne, regenerating black marble, again inlaid with simple gold accents. She felt the tug of energy being pulled from her as a pile of purple and blood-red cushions appeared on the throne.
The floor tiles spread, until they reached a line of life-sized, brightly-painted marble statues along the sides of the tiled area—
Simone realised with horror that this Hell was draining her energy to reconstitute itself, and if she didn’t stop the drain, it would kill her. She might be mortal enough to die in this Hell and be stuck here.
She controlled her breathing as the life was sucked from her, lowered her head, and concentrated on her energy centres. The main drain was from her shen energy, her soul. This Hell was eating her soul ... She controlled her panic and concentrated again on stopping the drain. The location fought her, greedily grasping at her spirit, but she slowed the drain to a trickle, then nearly halted it. She made a massive effort to block the last leaking of energy and couldn’t. The place was killing her, but she had at least twenty-four hours before it would succeed. She could easily teleport out before the drain became critical.
Emma, on the other hand, didn’t have that level of control and could easily be ... eaten within a couple of hours.
She looked up at the mural, then shook her head. All of them gone. What a stupid thing to do, to decide you’ve caused enough damage to humanity and destroy yourselves. They hadn’t even ensured the safety of cross-regional visitors like herself—probably confident that no other regions’ residents would be able to travel this far.
She turned, ready to take off again, to find two European demons kneeling in front of her. They were really big ones; even kneeling they were as tall as her working form. They were human-shaped and black-skinned, with bat-like heads and wings and long claws on their hands. Their knees bent backwards, and their feet had similarly long, sharp claws.
The tiles emerged beneath their feet, and a row of planter boxes grew behind them, gradually expanding, black and shiny, and filling with purple-blossomed shrubbery.
‘Highness, we greet you,’ one of them said.
‘Do you wish to wait here for your Lord, or will you pass on immediately?’ the other asked.
‘My Lord?’ Simone asked. ‘Oh yeah, my father has been here before. But I’m looking for my stepmother.’
Both of the demons’ heads shot up. ‘You’re his child?’ one of them asked.
The other grinned. ‘A child!’ He grabbed the first demon’s shoulder. ‘They’re coming back. After all this time. Finally.’
‘I’m looking for my stepmother. White skin, brown hair, wearing armour? Have you seen her?’ Simone asked.
‘The Queen doesn’t usually wear armour,’ one of the demons said, confused.
The other demon studied Simone suspiciously. ‘You’re mixed race, with a lot of demon there, and you’re not from here. That’s not right.’
Simone wanted to shake them with frustration. ‘If there was another Celestial here, would you know? Where can I find her? How do I know if she’s here?’
‘Celestial?’ the first one asked, confused.
‘Someone like me!’
The second demon tilted its head. ‘We don’t call you “Celestials”, I’ve never heard that term before. You’re a strange demon mix. What are you?’
‘I think we need to tell the boss,’ the first one said. It rose to its feet and bowed to Simone with an extra flourish. ‘Ma’am. If you’d like to come with us?’
‘Yeah, I don’t think so,’ Simone said, and pulled her phone out of a pocket in her robes. It was difficult to unlock it with her long claws, but she didn’t change back to human. The phone had no signal: even the combination of the Blue Dragon’s advanced technology and the Golden Boy’s high-level magic couldn’t pick one up this far from anything.
She grunted with frustration and put the phone away again. The only way to be really sure that Emma was here, was to check the East and confirm that she wasn’t there. And if Simone left Europe, there was no guarantee that she would be able to break into European Hell again. Every time they’d made it into Heaven or Hell in the past, the door had been locked behind them when they left.
The demons were both standing now, and their attitudes had changed from obsequious to menacing. A number of other, smaller demons that looked similar—black, spikes, wings, horns and carrying spears—flew in to land behind the two big ones.
‘You’re going to attack me?’ Simone asked them, incredulous. ‘Look at me. I can take you all without even touching you. Are you really that stupid?’ She had a moment of disorientation when she realised that she sounded exactly like her father when he talked to idiot demons, then waved one hand at them. ‘Find your boss. Find the biggest demon here—hell, find the Celestial boss-God himself so I can talk to him. I want Emma Donahoe. If she isn’t here, I’ll leave without causing trouble.’
One of the big demons spun its spear in its hands and gestured for the others to attack.
‘Your technique is terrible !’ Simone shouted as she summoned her swords, and they didn’t come. She ducked beneath the demons as they ran for her, then did a couple of backwards somersaults with her robes flying around her and stopped to yell at them again. ‘I don’t want to destroy you. Cut it out!’
The smaller demons obviously had no choice but to follow the bigger ones’ orders. Simone summoned a few simple, low-grade chi balls and blew them up. The backlash was stronger than the chi return from Asian demons, and she gasped at the intensity of the energy rush. The area around her sparkled into life, triggered by the growth of the energy within her. The tiles glowed with dark purple luminescence, and more planters emerged from the ground.
She’d left the two biggest demons alive, and they stood holding their spears and staring at her.
She stormed up to them, stomping in time to her words. ‘Find. Me. Emma. Donahoe.’
One of the demons jabbed at her with its spear so she knocked the spear out its hand, grabbed the demon by the throat with her left hand, and lifted it. She held it with its feet dangling above the ground as it clutched at her hand, attempting to free itself.
The other demon ran at her with its spear lowered. Using her free hand, she grabbed the spear before it hit her, and flipped it so that the demon holding it was forced to do a near-perfect pole-vault over her head, flying off the spear and landing some distance away. Still holding the first demon with her left hand, she tossed the spear to turn it around, then threw it to impale the other demon before it could climb to its feet.
‘Now,’ she said glaring into the first demon’s eyes as they rolled with terror. ‘I’m going to lower you, and I won’t kill you if you take me to your boss.’
‘Yes, ma’am. Understood, ma’am,’ the demon said, its voice strangled.
She put it back on its feet and it fell to its knees. ‘I’ll take you to see the boss.’
‘How long will it take?’ she asked.
‘If you can fly, about ten minutes?’
‘I can.’ She waved one hand at it. ‘Up. Show me.’
It rose and cocked its spiked head at her. ‘If you don’t mind, ma’am? I need wing space.’
Simone lifted off the ground and hovered above it. It spread its massive bat-like wings and with a couple of powerful thrusts, lifted into the air, then gestured for her to follow it as it flew in the direction she had been travelling.
She followed it for another ten minutes, unable to move close enough to it to ask questions because of the spread of its flapping wings. They arrived at a crumbling, ruined building with its rear wall set hard against the stone walls of Hell. Its front portico was held up with columns—Simone’s perception shifted, and she realised she was seeing a traditional Greek or Roman temple, as large as the Parthenon in Athens, but it was obviously falling apart. She followed the demon to land in front of the temple. The area around the temple appeared to be paved with white stone for some distance, but it was covered in the dust. Similarly, the planter boxes and gardens arranged around the temple in a geometric design were filled with nothing but dust.
Simone’s touch brought the surroundings to life, and the white tiles emerged from the dust. The tiles had veins through them like marble, and each tile was etched with gold patterns in geometric designs. The repair flowed up the stairs towards the temple, each tread healing to a similar white marble. The columns reassembled themselves, and long black and purple banners with complicated motifs on them fell from the temple’s gable to flank its entrance.
A European man in his mid-forties, short and plump, trotted down the stairs with a huge smile on his face. He wore a standard modern business suit and stopped at the bottom of the stairs to stand clasping his hands in front of his chest.
‘Princess Simone, is it? The King of the Demons warned me you might come. Welcome, welcome!’ he said. He gestured at the temple. ‘Please, come inside, I hope you can help us.’
‘Where’s the River Lethe?’ Simone asked him as he went back up the stairs. ‘I’m here to make sure you don’t remove my stepmother’s memory. Has she come through? White woman, brown hair, Immortal, wearing armour?’
He turned at the stop of the stairs and smiled down at her. ‘I don’t think she’s here, ma’am, but once the formalities are taken care of, it won’t make a difference.’ He turned back to the temple and entered it.
‘No wait!’ she called after him, but he had gone inside. She followed him up the stairs.
The temple continued to reassemble itself as she went inside. The ceiling had collapsed, leaving a pile of rubble in one corner on the vague outline of the tiled floor beneath the grey dust. The dust rose from the floor and the columns flew into the air to became fluted white pillars with delicate carvings at the top, their features picked out in bright hues and gold leaf. The ceiling solidified and became embossed with brilliant colours in more geometric designs high above her.
The demon spread his hands and beamed up at the roof. ‘So long since it has been this beautiful.’ He lowered his hands and bowed Western-style to Simone. ‘I thank you, Highness.’
Gilt benches with red cushions appeared against the walls, and a large desk emerged from the far end of the room, in front of an imposing blood-red chair big enough to hold her father’s Celestial Form.
A big conference-style table, made of white marble, appeared in the centre of the room, and a three-dimensional image coalesced above it, like a hologram from a movie. It showed three tiers of landscape: the lower one fiery, then one that was obviously the grey emptiness she was in, topped by an idyllic forested level with grass and trees.
Stone tables coalesced from the dust in the air, and plates of fruit—grapes, pomegranates and figs—and steaming tureens full of pungent roast meat that smelled like goat or mutton appeared on their tops. The demon pulled a knife from the back of its suit, saw Simone’s face and raised it along with its other hand.
‘I haven’t had food in eons,’ it said. ‘I eat the old-fashioned way—if you don’t mind? Come, and I’ll show you your new dominion while we eat.’
She waved one hand at the demon as she passed it to approach the desk at the end of the room. The surface of the desk vibrated, and an enormous scroll—at least thirty centimetres high on each rolled side—erupted from it, sending a shower of dust into the air.
The demon was busy carving pieces of meat, skewering them with the knife and eating the pieces from the blade. It spoke with its mouth full. ‘Would you like some, ma’am?’
‘No thanks,’ Simone said, standing behind the desk to study the scroll. It was so high that in her normal form she wouldn’t have been able to see over it, but in this form she was as big as her father’s largest Celestial Form. The writing on the scroll was all in capitals and there were no spaces between the words, but she knew exactly what it was—the list of judgements of people who had died in this region, and where they were sent. She placed her hand over the flat paper between the massive end rolls and ordered it to search for ‘Emma Donahoe’. The scroll rolled until a list came up of hundreds of names and their associated notations. Many were marked as ‘Given the waters of the River Lethe and returned’—the European version of reincarnation, but some very early ones from thousands of years ago had been ‘Granted a place in the Elysium Fields’ or ‘Sentenced to a hundred years in Tartarus’—an interesting European analogue to the Ten Levels of Hell that she was familiar with from Asia. She wondered where all the souls in this Hell had gone and had the unpleasant realisation that since the gods had left, everybody had their memory erased and were reincarnated by default, never having the opportunity to achieve a higher plane of existence.
She narrowed the search to only the current day, and nearly collapsed with relief when the scroll rolled to a blank page. Emma was in Asian Hell, and her premonition had been wrong—that sometimes happened when the timeline changed and the future was redirected.
‘Find what you’re looking for, ma’am?’ the demon asked, waving the meat-skewered knife at the hologram. ‘Would you like to see your palace? I can show you more of your administrative areas and the other two zones of this region’s Hell, if you like. We have a great deal of work to do.’
‘No thank you,’ Simone said. ‘I found what I needed, and I have a doctoral prospectus to present later this week.’
She changed back to human form in jeans in a sweater and teleported out of Hell and back to the Earthly plane, landing inside the ruins of the Parthenon in Athens. A couple of tourists studied her with the confused expression that humans used in the presence of Shen abilities. They knew something had happened, but they weren’t sure what.
Simone jumped onto the top of the temple and pulled out her phone. It took a maddening few seconds to connect to the network and establish its Celestial roaming service—and then forty-three missed calls and dozens of messages popped up. She scrolled through the messages and fell to sit on the top of the structure with her legs dangling to study them.
There were nearly twenty from her father, frantically concerned about her safety. Some were from other members of the Celestial family, and there was even one from that ancient ugly bastard, Er Lang, the Second Heavenly General, stiffly notifying her that he was worried about her as well. She raised her head to the early morning sunshine and concentrated.
Daddy, I’m fine.
What happened? Are you all right? Where are you? Katie said that you went to European Hell—
Is Emma okay? Is she in our Hell?
Yes ... Judge Pao is making her sit in the cells awaiting trial, and I was just about to go down and give him a piece of my mind ...
Simone wiped the tears of relief from her eyes. I’m in Athens now, but Katie’s right and I travelled into European Hell. I’m on my way back, and wow! Do I have a great deal of information about it. Hold tight and I’ll see you when I get there.
I love you , he said.
Uh ... Daddy, please let the rest of the Celestial know that I’m okay, because I have a bunch of missed messages and I’ll be going too fast for my phone to keep up.
Will do.
Simone rose, stepped off the beam, and screamed towards Asia, carefully waiting until she was over the ocean before she sped up enough to break the sound barrier. The sonic boom made clouds of condensation appear around her. The premonition struck her so hard that she dropped in the air and nearly hit the water. She would be returning this way again but crippled with grief and loss and so full of fury that the air would burn around her. The knowledge was like a punch in the chest.
In Europe, in the near future, she would lose someone immensely important to her. Again .
*
T he family were waiting for her when she arrived back at the Peak two hours later. She charged through the window without damaging the glass, and threw herself into Emma’s arms.
‘I’m so glad Pao let you go,’ she said into Emma’s shoulder as her father patted her back and Frankie wrapped himself around her waist. ‘I’m sorry I was too slow to save you.’
Emma pulled back to smile at her. ‘It all worked out in the end. You were in European Hell? I want to hear all about it.’ She glanced down at Frankie. ‘Back to bed, young man. You have school tomorrow.’
‘I want to hear about their Hell,’ Frankie whined.
‘I’ll tell you tomorrow. It’s the middle of the night, and I need to quickly bring Mum and Dad up to speed ...’ Simone saw Emma’s warm smile at being called ‘Mum’ and her voice softened. ‘And then I need to go to bed too. I’ll come in and tuck you in later. Okay?’
‘Okay,’ Frankie said. He gave them hugs all around and went to his room.
Simone followed Emma into her office and Emma sat behind her tidy desk while Xuan Wu and Simone sat in her visitor chairs.
When Simone had finished telling them about her European escapade, Emma spoke.
‘So, the big question is: is she Immortal?’ she asked Xuan Wu. ‘We’re still not sure what affect all the demon essence is having on her soul.’
‘She didn’t die, so we still don’t know,’ Xuan Wu said.
‘But I teleported out of their Hell,’ Simone said.
Xuan Wu spread his hands. ‘It’s a good sign.’ He moved his hands to his knees. ‘But keep yourself safe, because it’s not absolute proof. Na Zha did it before he was made Immortal.’
Emma ran her hands through her hair. ‘Damn Immortals and their non-answers. So frustrating sometimes ...’ She smiled wryly. ‘Yeah, I know.’
‘And the demons were positive that there was one Celestial remaining in Europe?’ Xuan Wu asked Simone.
‘The European Demon King and the demon in their Hell claimed it, but we all know how much they lie,’ Simone said. ‘It could be a ploy to have me go there and have all my energy sucked away, because I’m such a threat to them.’
‘That’s the most interesting part of this—the way it was draining your life force,’ he said. ‘European Hell didn’t do it to me when I went in there. So it’s your unique heritage.’ He turned to Emma and opened his mouth.
‘No,’ Emma said without looking at him, ‘and don’t even think about it. I have too much happening and a small, traumatised child to care for. I will not let myself slowly die so you can rebuild their Hell and bring back the Western Shen.’
‘Europe’s managed for two millennia without any gods,’ Simone said. ‘They can wait until Michael’s kids are grown, and he can go and investigate. Now if you don’t mind,’ she stood. ‘It’s the middle of the night, I’m covered in Hell dust, and I have a meeting with my supervisor first thing tomorrow morning.’
Xuan Wu rose and kissed the top of her head. ‘You saved those European children. Be proud, Simone.’
‘Is Katie okay?’
Emma nodded. ‘She’s still on her way back, as she can’t move nearly as fast as you. She provided a full report—and as your father said, Simone, well done. Now that those two demons posing as the President and his son are dead, there’s a political power vacuum that the Tiger is facilitating towards democracy. We’ve sent info on the inter-demon conflict through to the Higher Ups in the administration, and they’re working out a strategy to exploit it.’
‘Which means I’ll be pulled into another interminable meeting with them,’ Xuan Wu said.
‘You’re one of them, don’t deny it, Your Highness. So come on,’ Emma said, took his hand and pulled him out of the office. ‘It’s nearly three am, Simone, get some sleep. Mission accomplished, and you did great.’
‘What she said,’ Xuan Wu said.
They went to their bedroom at the end of the hallway, and Simone opened the door to her own, next to Emma’s office.
‘Wait!’ Simone said as Emma opened their bedroom door. ‘How did the talk with Graham go after I left?’
‘I reassured him that you won’t be doing any more of this,’ Xuan Wu said. ‘He understands, and he trusts you, but asked for some time and space to put his head back together.’
Emma had gone into their bedroom and poked her head back out into the hallway. ‘If he returns to you, he’s worth it,’ she said. ‘If he doesn’t, he isn’t.’ Her face went strange. ‘Well, that wasn’t helpful at all. Damn Immortals.’ She smiled at Simone and tugged Xuan Wu inside their bedroom.
Simone went into her own bedroom and saw the red box on her desk. Maybe if she opened it this time, it would disappear for good—because she’d finally done as that ancient bastard had ordered her to.
She placed her thumb on the clasp and the lid of the box flipped up. She opened the scroll to find that the text had changed.
The Princess Simone is commended for her actions in the European Centre. She is ordered to contact the Celestial administration immediately with regard to the destruction of another demon in that region of the world— ’
She growled under her breath, tossed the scroll back into the box, and closed the lid. Unbelievable—she’d done as he asked and now he was asking for more. Whatever. She decided to ignore the box. Time for her to move her concentration down from Heavenly to Earthly matters, take a shower, worry about finishing and presenting her prospectus, and try to save her relationship with her boyfriend.
Are you okay ? Frankie asked her.
I’m just fine and not going anywhere, Squirt. I need a shower and then I’ll come and check on you.
His voice sounded sleepy and content. I love you, Simone.
I love you too, Frankie.