The Gravity Engine (9 page)

‘We had to set up our own communication network, the logistics were a nightmare,’ the King said as he turned the
tablet on. ‘But we have it working.’ He leaned back. ‘There you are.’

Rhonda and Clarissa appeared on
the screen, obviously in front of a webcam. Michael gasped; Clarissa appeared fine but Rhonda looked terrible. She’d lost weight, her eyes were sunken and had blackened rings around them, and her skin hung from her emaciated face.

Michael rounded on the King. ‘What
did you do to her?’

‘Nothing,’ the King said, raising his hands. ‘Being here in the Heavens isn’t good for her, probably because of her part-demon nature. She can’t survive here much longer, Prince Michael, you need to finish the engine so I can release her.’

Michael turned back to the screen. Rhonda looked terrible, but Clarissa looked okay? Maybe Rhonda was a copy and Clarissa was the original … He couldn’t risk it.

‘Mom? How are you holding up? You look unwell.’

‘I’m fine, really,’ Rhonda said with forced cheerfulness. ‘They’re looking after me but they say something about my nature doesn’t suit these Heavens.’ She leaned into the screen. ‘The King says you can take us home in three days?’

Michael touched the screen, wishing h
e could comfort them directly. ‘Three days and we’re out of here. I’ll take you home. I promise.’

‘We trust you,’ Clarissa said, and clutched Rhonda’s hand. ‘I always knew you would protect me, Michael. You’ll find us a way out of this.’

‘I will.’

‘All right, that’s enough,’ the King said. He turned the tablet off and folded it up. ‘If you hurry on this you can have them home with you in three days. I promise as well.’

‘My mother may not last three days!’ Michael said.

‘She’s fine. I’ve seen others like this
– it takes them years to fade. Really. You just need to pull her out of the Heavens and get her back on the Earthly where she belongs. Will you start work on the engine for me?’

‘Show me where the metal is,’ Michael said.

‘Right this way.’

When night fell, Michael moved the metal into the entry hall of the palace where it was warmer. Producing the cogs was fiddly and time-consuming, but once he had a few cast in the right shape his work sped up. It was deep into the night when one of the demons entered, left him a cup of something, and left again. He tasted it; some sort of warm grape juice, sweetened with honey. He drank it without really noticing as he worked on the gears, making sure that they fitted together perfectly.

He stopped to take a sip of the drink and something hit his mouth. Revolted, he peered into the cup and saw a packet in the bottom. He looked around; nobody nearby. He took the drink with him up to his room, ostensibly to use the bathroom, and
when he was inside he quickly untied the oilskin packet and read the message scribbled on it.

Three hundred kilometres north-north-west of you, in a large rectangular mansion on the coast between England and Wales. Follow coastline where the two regions join and you will find it easily.

He didn’t even need to do that; when he was fifty kilometres from them he’d be able to sense them. He raised his head. ‘Semias.’

Semias
appeared next to him. ‘I know. We need to go down into the engine room again, and compare the work we’ve done with what’s in place there.’

Michael put his hand out,
Semias took it, and they teleported into the engine room where they could talk freely.

‘I know that place
,’ Semias said. ‘There’s a large island off the west coast, and this estate is where the channel is at its narrowest. It’s surrounded by lawns and gardens. It’ll be a cleared area in the middle of a large forest; you can’t miss it.’

‘
It’s a long way away, can you carry me there?’ Michael said.

‘No. Best I can do is the edge of the city. Can you do the rest of the way?’

‘Of course.’ Michael put his hand out and Semias took it again. They landed on the glass wall that surrounded the city.

Michael slapped
Semias on the shoulder. ‘I will be back for you.’

‘You can’t take a whole city with you, lad,’
Semias said. ‘Just go and leave me to it. Free your family.’

‘I won’t forget what you’ve done for me,’ Michael said. ‘We will return and clear the demons from the European Heavens.’

‘Just go!’ Semias said with urgency. ‘They could return any time.’

Michael clasped
Semias’s hand then released it and flew up and west.

He kept flying west, though the cold night sky of the deserted Heavens. The Asian Heavens were full of the telepathic buzz and energy signatures of the Shen that lived there; these skies were eerily silent. The cold and emptiness bit into him, and he missed the warmth and camaraderie of his brothers and sisters back in the White Tiger’s palace. The skies blazed with stars overhead and he was glad for his ability to see in the dark.

It was obvious when he approached the estate where his family were being held – it registered as a seething mass of
demonkind. He approached the manor carefully and felt the women’s presence inside, on the top floor. Stupid demons, that was the easiest place to free them. Unless it was a trap for him, but he couldn’t see any reason for them to suspect he knew where the women were.

The manor was as
Semias had described – about a hundred metres long, three storeys high, with a tall ground floor that was double the height of the others. The land around it had been cleared and planted with a variety of domestic flowers, the gardens overgrown and tangled from neglect.

He landed silently on the roof and sent his senses down through it. Rhonda and Clarissa
were in the room directly below him, playing cards at a table in a bedroom they obviously shared. Demons filled every other room, all the way through the mansion, and some of the demons were enormous. His best bet was to sneak in the window, grab the women, and run back to Semias’s city where the spirit could open the gateway to Rotterdam for them. He made himself invisible and floated down to hover outside their window.

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. Whe
n 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.