Red Phoenix

said. ‘Now I have you all.’ ‘Touch one hair on her head and I will make you suffer horribly for the rest of your short existence,’ I said loudly.
    ‘Oh, do come, Miss Emma,’ he said, his voice full of encouragement. ‘I guarantee there’s enough of me for both of you.’
    ‘What are you doing?’ Simone said. ‘I don’t like that.’ Her voice raised in pitch. ‘ Stop it !’
    ‘ You get your filthy hands off her !’ I roared, running towards her voice.
    ‘Help! Emma!’ she shrieked. ‘ Stop it !’
    ‘Shut up,’ he said grimly. ‘Keep still.’
    I couldn’t move fast enough on legs. I changed.
    I slithered forward on my black coils. Good. I could see better this way. The ground felt absolutely wonderful beneath my belly. I’d missed that so much. I could see them in the dark. I could taste them. Yuck. I could taste him. He tasted like shit.
    There they were. A large group of low-level demons stood between me and them. He stopped when he saw me. She saw me too. She screamed.
    I didn’t have time to reassure her. I took out the demons around me. They were easy. I bit some heads off, then took one in my mouth and shook it wildly, using it as a club to destroy the others. Great fun. They were much too slow for me.
    No more. I raised myself on my coils and carefully approached One Two Two and Simone. Good; it looked like he hadn’t gone very far with her. If he’d done anything to hurt her I would not make this quick.
    Simone stopped shrieking and sobbed.
    ‘Holy shit,’ he said, staring at me, stunned.
    I didn’t give him a chance to say anything more. I opened my mouth and my fangs sprang out with a spray of venom. The venom hit him in the face and he screamed. Good.
    I struck him right in the middle of the chest. My fangs went through the skin and into his chest cavity. Damn, it felt good. But he really did taste like shit.
    He fell. He convulsed under my head, making weird choking noises. Dead. Easy. I pulled my mouth free of him and checked Simone. I lowered my head to reassure her, but she had fainted. I nudged her with my nose.
    I shot up to sit upright in bed. I looked around. I was back in my room in Hong Kong.
    I was drenched in sweat. I checked my hands in the glow of the lights from the city coming through the crack in the curtains. Completely normal.
    I rose and quietly went through the door into Simone’s room. She was sleeping, her little face angelic. I sat on the bed and touched her face. She grimaced slightly but didn’t wake. She turned over. I stroked her hair.
    I went back into my own room and sat on the bed. I put my head in my hands.
    I heard them arguing as I approached the training room. They went silent when I entered.
    ‘Sifu,’ they all said, and saluted.
    ‘What’s up, guys? Why the big argument?’
    Alvin, the local kid from Guangdong Province, and Julie, a young American, shared an exasperated look.
    Finally it was Lai who broke the silence. ‘Alvin and Julie are arguing about how Master Leo was injured. We finally gathered enough nerve to ask him in the lesson we just finished, and he wouldn’t talk about it.’
    ‘I heard a Snake Mother did it,’ Julie said. ‘One of the fifth years told me that.’
    ‘Not possible,’ Alvin said. ‘Snake Mothers never leave Hell.’
    ‘Okay, guys, sit.’ I sat on the mats as well. ‘It took you two weeks to ask him? Most of the other students have already been ignored by him. Revision: Snake Mothers. Lai, you’re a Shen, you start.’
    Lai grimaced. ‘I’m a very small Shen, you know that, ma’am. And my mother won’t talk about Snake Mothers. It’s really strange. The minute I turned sixteen she’s telling me what to look for in a mate—’
    Julie swallowed a huge gulping laugh.
    Lai rounded on Julie. ‘It’s all very well for you to laugh, but do you have any idea how embarrassing it is? She’s such an old-fashioned old hen.’ She made her voice thin and wheezy. ‘Make sure he has a fine tail, and a good comb, a good comb is important in a cock—’
    Every English speaker in the class collapsed in laughter. Lai appeared bewildered. ‘What did I say?’
    ‘It’s the language charm,’ I said. ‘Cock. Cock. Two different meanings, depending on the way you say it. You heard the two meanings?’
    Lai thought about it, then she collapsed laughing as well.
    I spoke again when they’d regained a semblance of control. ‘Why won’t your mother talk about Snake Mothers? Everybody needs to be