Journey to Wubang 01 - Earth to Hell (63 page)

She leaned on the table. ‘You can try.’

‘Maybe when you’re back.’ I nodded to her. ‘Thank you, Master Liu.’

‘No problem at all,’ Meredith said, and disappeared.

‘If you don’t mind me saying, ma’am,’ Men Jiu said, her voice weak with wonder. ‘You kick ass.’

‘Not as much as Meredith does,’ I said. ‘Your Council won’t know what hit them by the time she finishes with them.’

She saluted me. ‘I thank you.’

‘Better run, Rabbit,’ the stone said. ‘You have a class in five minutes.’

‘Oh!’ She jumped up and quickly saluted me again. ‘I do! Thank you, Lady Emma!’ She saluted me again, bobbed her head, and ran out.

‘Ask Yi Hao who’s next,’ I said.

The intercom popped and Yi Hao said, ‘They need you in training room seven right now, ma’am. There’s been an injury.’

‘What about Edwin? I’m not a doctor!’ I said.

‘Dammit, Jim!’ the stone said, and I rapped it on the desk. ‘Ow!’

‘Edwin’s there,’ Yi Hao said. ‘Please, ma’am, they say they need you.’

We need you, ma’am
, Master Park said into my head.

I went out to the stairwell and floated down from the twenty-sixth to the seventh floor. I stopped at the fire door. ‘That was easier.’

‘I do believe that being a snake has cleared some of the demon essence from you,’ the stone said.

‘I must have Meredith check me out,’ I said. ‘That is good news!’

In training room seven, Master Park had been holding a weapons lesson with blades, and one of the students had been injured. He lay on the floor, bleeding. I went to him and knelt. Edwin was there, examining the wound, with Master Park beside him. Meredith appeared on the other side of the student, and shooed the rest of the class back out of the way.

The student had made a common mistake, guarding
too close to the body, and the blade had rebounded off a fellow student’s dagger and sliced him in the thigh. The wound was deep and long, the length of his thigh, and bleeding profusely.

‘Oh my God,’ I said, and quickly changed to a snake. The kid had hit his femoral artery, one of the biggest blood vessels in his body. He would bleed to death within minutes if it wasn’t contained. Edwin was holding the wound closed with both hands, but blood continued to pump out of it.

When they saw the snake, a number of the students reeled back with shock. I touched my nose to the wound: he’d already lost so much blood. I quickly healed the artery, making sure that there was no leakage. I concentrated, making sure that the artery was strong enough to contain the pressure of the blood.

‘She did it,’ Edwin said in wonder.

‘He needs a transfusion,’ I said. ‘Edwin, I suggest you set one up, and get a stretcher while I fix the rest.’

‘You can fix this?’ Edwin said.

I knitted the muscles of the thigh, working carefully and thoroughly from bottom to top and ensuring that the long fibres of the muscle tissue lined up exactly. It was delicate, finicky work and I had to concentrate. This wound was at least thirty-five centimetres long; any longer than that and I wouldn’t be able to heal it all.

‘I can stop him from dying right now, but he’s lost a good half of his total blood supply and he needs topping up
now
with fluids and then with blood to make sure that his organs aren’t deprived of oxygen by the loss in pressure,’ I said. I stopped and raised my nose. ‘How did I know that?’

‘Understood, ma’am. We have his blood type in the infirmary, we just need to get him down there quickly and infuse him,’ Edwin said.

Some students arrived with a stretcher, eased the injured student onto it and took him out to the lifts.

‘Stay here and do as Lady Emma says,’ Master Park called back from the lift as the door closed.

The students gathered around me, studying me with curiosity. One of them touched me and I jerked back, and so did she. I moved forward again, my head at the height of the students’ eyes.

‘This is Lady Emma?’ one of them said.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ I said.

‘She just saved Sean’s life,’ Meredith said. ‘I can heal, but I can’t stop blood loss as quickly and effectively as that.’

‘Serpents are healers, we learned that,’ another student said. She came closer to me. ‘Can you cure my pimples?’

‘Let me touch your face with my nose,’ I said.

She closed her eyes and pressed her face towards me. I put my nose to her skin; the pores were filling with excess oil, and the oil provided a home for bacteria, which caused infection in the pores, leading to the acne. I killed the bacteria and reduced some of the redness and swelling, but I couldn’t provide a permanent cure.

‘I’ve eased it a little,’ I said. ‘But the secret for you is to keep it very clean with a mild cleanser that won’t irritate your skin, and to avoid food that makes it worse.’

She opened her eyes and pulled back slightly. ‘That’s exactly what the doctor said.’

‘Lady Emma did make it better,’ one of the other students said. She gestured with her head towards the lobby. ‘Go and look in the mirror in the toilet. It’s gone down a
lot.
’

The student with the acne smiled broadly, bobbed her head to me, and rushed out.

‘I have some appointments still lined up outside my office,’ I said. I looked around. ‘Is everybody okay?’

‘Thank you
so
much for saving Sean,’ one of the students said. ‘We thought he was going to die.’ She pointed at the floor. ‘Look at how much blood he lost!’

The mats were soaked in blood. I desperately wanted to taste it, but I didn’t have the grinding need that usually filled me when I was faced with blood. The serpent form was helping me to control every aspect of the demon infusion.

‘He did lose a lot,’ I said. ‘When Master Park comes back from the infirmary, he can arrange for it to be cleaned. In the meantime, head to the cafeteria and take a break for a short while.’

The students nodded, some of them obviously still shocked by what had happened, and filed out.

‘I’ll keep an eye on them,’ Meredith said. ‘You go back to what you were doing.’ She turned to me. ‘Now that you have this skill, you are going to save us a great deal of trouble.’

‘Maybe I should move my office to the infirmary,’ I said. I started to slither out the door.

‘Aren’t you going to change back to human?’ Meredith said.

‘Not so close to all that blood. I’ll change further away from it.’

‘Good idea,’ Meredith said as I went out.

Scott and Tymen and Tymen’s mother were waiting for me outside my office when I returned. They rose when they saw me.

I went to Tymen’s mother and took her hands. ‘How are you feeling?’

My senses were still heightened from being a snake and I could sense her status without being told. Although she was still desperately weak, she was clean. The cancer was gone. All she needed now was rest.

‘I will not be sure until I have returned to the Netherlands and my doctors have checked me over,’ she said in her charming Dutch accent. ‘But I somehow
feel
more well. I think that the big snake cured me.’

‘Did the boys explain to you what happened?’ I said.

She nodded, her eyes bright. ‘I could not believe it was true. I was touched by a God? Of course not the good Christian God, so some smaller healing spirit, or angel…’

‘That is exactly correct,’ I said. ‘A spirit of healing.’

She nodded. ‘I am blessed.’

She turned to look at Scott and Tymen. ‘And my son is blessed to have such a good friend.’ She touched Scott’s arm. ‘One day I hope my son finds a man as good as you.’

Both Scott and Tymen rolled their eyes.

‘Stop trying to set me up!’ Tymen said.

‘Well, one day, if you find the right person, you may be able to bring me some grandchildren. Your own or adopted, I don’t care.’ She spread her arms. ‘And now I will live to see them!’

Scott turned to me. ‘You see that? She doesn’t care if her son shacks up with another guy, she doesn’t care
who
that guy is, provided there are kids in the equation. I swear, all mothers are the same.’

‘You get this from your mother too?’ Tymen’s mother said.

‘Yes!’ Scott said with force. He turned back to me. ‘We just wanted to say thank you, Lady Emma. Tymen’s mom is going home in a few days, and then later in the year we’re going to visit her in the Netherlands.’ He shrugged. ‘I’m trying to get Cindy to come too.’

‘And I want you to come with someone too,’ Tymen’s mother said, patting Tymen on the arm. ‘You have been too long alone, Tyty.’

Tymen leaned down to speak to his mother; she was a good twenty centimetres shorter than him. ‘I will never bring anyone unless you promise to stop embarrassing me.’

‘Oh, pfft.’ She waved him down. ‘We are going to lunch, Emma. Would you like to come along?’

‘I would love to, but today I am visiting a close friend in the hospital,’ I said.

‘Well, you wish your friend the very best from us, and tell him that if he is touched by a snake, he is very lucky.’

‘He was already touched by a snake, and that’s the only reason he’s alive,’ I said.

‘I never thought of snakes as having this wonderful healing power,’ she said. ‘You have changed the way I see you.’

‘I’m not…’ I started, then gave up. ‘Thank you.’

They went out, waving cheerfully. I waved back.

‘Being a snake isn’t such a bad thing after all,’ I said as I went into my office to check my email before Simone came to take me to visit Michael.

‘If you start doing it all the time, can we put a ring on your tail to hold me?’ the stone said. ‘I
hate
being in your muscle tissue like that.’

‘How about a collar?’ I said. ‘I’ll talk to some of the other transforming Shen about how they work that. Maybe I could change to a snake, have a collar fitted and have a setting in it for you.’

‘You wouldn’t feel like you’re wearing a dog collar?’ the stone said.

‘Not if I don’t choose to. And if it’s more comfortable for you, so much the better.’

‘Gold or silver?’ the stone said.

‘I’m black—so silver.’

‘Platinum. Filigree.’ The stone was silent for a moment. ‘I like the direction this is going. How about
something that goes over your head as well, like a filigree crown?’

‘Oh God, not too complicated. Just a collar will do.’

‘Do you mind if I work something out with the other stones? I think a few of them would like to thank you for stopping Six, and this could be a way of doing it.’

‘Six is still out there, and we haven’t had word from any of our agents.’

‘You’ll find him. So…Can I make this platinum collar for you?’

‘Go right ahead.’

‘It might take me a couple of days to find something suitably elegant for a stone as majestic as me.’

‘Oh, I’m sure it will.’

Simone wheeled Leo into my office an hour later. ‘Coming, Emma?’ she said.

‘Absolutely, just let me get my bag,’ I said, then stopped. ‘Uh, okay, no hands, no bag. Will Leo be all right to go to the Celestial Plane?’

‘Yeah, he’ll be fine. He’s already so damaged that it really can’t hurt him more,’ Simone said. ‘The Tiger wants to have a look at him while we’re in his medical centre.’

‘And I say the Tiger can keep his goddamn paws off me,’ Leo said.

‘He may be able to help,’ I said.

‘We’ll see,’ Leo said.

‘That was the most
hands off me
“we’ll see” I’ve ever heard,’ Simone said. She nodded to me. ‘Change, Emma, and I’ll take us.’

‘Can I stay behind?’ the stone said.

‘No way,’ Simone said. ‘Apparently there’s an opal there that hasn’t seen you in ages and wants to catch up with you.’

‘Oh,’ the stone said. ‘That’s different.’

‘Come on, Emma, chop chop,’ Simone said. ‘Snake, please.’

‘Can I take the normal big size? The small one is much harder,’ I said.

‘Big is okay,’ Simone said, and I changed.

‘That seems easier every time you do it,’ she said.

‘It is. It’s almost like second nature now. My chi is flowing again, and the stone says that the demon essence is a little less every time I do it.’

‘You should spend time at home as a snake then,’ Simone said. She came to me and touched the back of my neck. ‘I can touch you and give you hugs. We’ll put a beanbag and a ray lamp in your room.’

I was about to protest, then said, ‘Ray lamp?’

‘Real big warm one,’ she said.

‘Actually, that sounds pretty good.’

We landed outside the hospital wing of the Western Palace. The building was two-storey, built of the same red stone as the rest of the Palace. A desert garden with winding paths surrounded it, and a large hedge provided some privacy.

‘Leo passed out,’ I said.

‘That’s what used to happen to you all the time,’ Simone said. ‘We should get you some training in teleportation; you could probably do it.’

‘Your father was very excited the first time he saw the snake,’ I said. ‘I don’t know if you remember, but he was thrilled at how powerful it was, and thought we would even be able to touch.’

‘Did you try? To see if you could?’

I just looked at her.

‘Okay, stupid question.’

She wheeled Leo to the entrance. It looked very much like a small private hospital, with a blue vinyl
floor and modern, bright furniture. A demon in the form of a young woman stood behind the reception desk.

‘They need a doorkeeper?’ I said.

‘All the wives come here to have their babies,’ Simone said. ‘And they visit each other. Sometimes too many at a time.’

‘I can imagine,’ I said.

We approached the reception desk, the demon watching me like a rabbit in headlights.

‘We’re here to see Michael,’ Simone said.

The demon checked the register on the computer, still looking at me now and then.

‘Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you,’ I said, and the demon jumped.

She turned back to Simone. ‘No Michael here.’

‘Uh…’ Simone began.

‘Three One Five,’ I said.

‘Oh, the good one,’ the demon said. She gestured to indicate the corridor behind her. ‘Upstairs, ward four.’

Leo shifted in the wheelchair and Simone moved to crouch in front of him, holding his hand. ‘Leo?’