Mom, he said. Don’t say anything, but I’m just outside the window. I’m here to get you out.
Rhonda looked up and nodded.
There are demons everywhere. All around you. Just a sec, I’ll tell Clarissa. He changed to Clarissa. Hello, my darling, I’m here to get you. I just spoke to Mom. Don’t say anything but I’m floating outside the window. Nod if you understand.
Both women were nodding now, smiling conspiratorially. Clarissa shivered with delight.
Careful, he said. They’re watching you. Can you open the window, Mom?
Rhonda shook her head.
Okay. Can both of you move closer to it?
Clarissa and Rhonda put their cards down, wandered to the window and made a show of looking out.
‘It’s so beautiful here,’ Clarissa said. ‘I wish they’d let us out to go for a walk or something. Anything.’
‘I know. It’s awful being cooped up,’ Rhonda said.
Both of you get Best Actress trophies when we’re home, Michael said, and the women shared another grin. That’s too close, I’m going to break it. Either side against the wall, on three.
He counted to three, the women moved, and he burst through the window and landed in the middle of the room amid a shower of glass. He took a few seconds to heal the cuts – he didn’t need to be losing blood while they were on the run – then scooped the women up, one on each arm, and jumped out the window again. He’d grabbed them clumsily and both were in danger of slipping out of his grasp, so he flew as fast as he could for a hundred metres then landed.
‘Just need to get a better grip on you,’ he said, releasing them to shift his hold. There was a loud bang, something smacked him on the shoulder and he reeled forward. The demons had shot him. He grabbed Clarissa with his left arm but his right wouldn’t move – his shoulder joint was shattered and his right arm hung uselessly, the fabric of his robe torn and bloody. He didn’t have time to heal something that big; it could take hours. He blocked the nerve endings before the pain really hit and tried to ignore it.
‘Leave me and take Clarissa,’ Rhonda said. ‘I’m a copy.’
‘No, I’m taking you both,’ Michael said. ‘Clarissa, on my back. Mom, in my left arm. I can do it.’
He turned so that Clarissa could climb onto his back and stopped. The demon with the gun was standing three metres away, pointing it at them. At least twenty other demons, some also with firearms, stood behind it. He checked the other way and it was clear.
Quick, hop on, he said to Clarissa, but she didn’t move, frozen with terror at the gun pointed at her head.
This was the same as when he’d been in the nest and his brothers had been shot, and he knew what he had to do. He’d had weeks to think about what he should have done: in the nest, he hadn’t had the common sense to open his Inner Eye on the demons and destroy the lot before they could hurt anybody. Well, now he did. He pushed the women behind him, then raised his left hand in surrender.
‘We’ll come quietly,’ he said. ‘Don’t hurt them.’
The demon lowered the weapon slightly and he did it. He opened his Inner Eye on them and they all shredded in the blast of the unshielded vision of his Immortal soul. None of them was big enough to resist it. All gone.
‘Okay,’ he said, smiling. He turned back to Clarissa and Rhonda. ‘Quickly, before more come. Let’s go.’
He had a horrified moment of realisation as he looked straight into Rhonda’s disbelieving face, then she and Clarissa were destroyed as well. He closed his Eye but it was too late. They were gone.
He fell to his knees on the grass, too shocked to think. He needed to go back and do that again, and this time close his Inner Eye. He hadn’t done that. It didn’t happen. He put his head in his hands. They were demon copies anyway – but what did that matter when they thought they were real? He’d destroyed them with a look. He was a monster. He wanted to kill himself. So stupid. Couldn’t he go back and do that again? He felt a rush of nausea, and wanted to curl up into a ball and die. Well, good luck with that one, Mister Immortal, no dying for you.
He heard the sound of their feet approaching.
‘He seems incapacitated. Let’s take him back to the King,’ one of the demons said.
‘Fuck you,’ Michael said, and blew his brains out with a blast of his own Shen energy.
He landed in Court Ten in front of Judge Clear Skies Pao the Incorruptible. He sagged with relief and grief; he was home. He knelt in front of the judge high above him on the dais and bowed his head, wiping his eyes.
‘Where have you been?’ Judge Pao said.
‘I’ve been in the European Heavens failing my duty and my allegiance,’ Michael said. ‘Don’t be lenient on me.’
Pao rose from his desk. ‘I will judge the prisoner in my private rooms. Bring him.’ He stomped down the stairs off the dais and the guards grabbed Michael by the arms and pulled him to his feet to follow. They led Michael up the stairs to the judge’s private quarters, dropped him on the rug in front of Pao’s desk, and waited.
‘Dismissed,’ Pao said, sitting behind the desk.
The guards went out. Michael bent over his knees, feeling that his centre had been torn from his body. He was empty.
‘Where were you, lad?’ Pao said.
‘In the European Heavens,’ Michael said. ‘Failing the Celestial. You know that.’
‘The European Heavens are outside my jurisdiction,’ Pao said. ‘Tell me everything that happened. No, wait.’ He raised one hand and his eyes unfocussed. ‘Present yourself to Minor Hearing Room Four immediately. The Celestial will question you himself.’ Pao rapped the desk. ‘The Jade Emperor wants to talk to you, boy. Move.’
Michael rubbed his hands over his face and teleported to the Celestial Palace. The gigantic main gates had a small door at the base that opened to let him through. When he was inside the compound he took a step forward. ‘Hearing Room Four.’
He walked into a small, high-walled courtyard with an ornamental bonsai tree on a carved rock in its centre. He stepped up on to the wooden veranda, then entered the small hearing room. The Jade Emperor and his father, the White Tiger of the West, were both present, and he fell to his knees in front of them and chanted the Imperial Obeisance.
The Jade Emperor waved him forward. ‘Come and sit with us and tell us all you learnt.’
Michael rose and sat on the third couch, across from the two Emperors. ‘I’ve been there for two weeks and learned next to nothing.’
‘Tell us all,’ the Jade Emperor said.
Michael put it together in his head, then gave them a short summary without mentioning Rhonda and Clarissa. He told them about the city, the gravity engine and Semias.
‘So where are the blueprints to the gravity engine?’ the Tiger said. ‘That could be extremely useful.’
‘I left them behind,’ Michael said.
‘How could you leave them behind? You spent two weeks drawing them up and left them there?’
Michael nodded silently.
‘You were in their libraries and saw all their gathered wisdom and brought back none of it?’ the Jade Emperor said.
‘I learned that the Shen are all gone and the demons have invaded the European Heavens,’ Michael said.