Earth to Hell. Kylie Chan

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      ‘I have one of the Academy dragons outside the door, Hien. She’s been translating for me. I can’t speak a word of Vietnamese.’

      A small lie, but worthwhile in the circumstances. Amy wasn’t translating for me; all languages were understood within the walls of the Academy.

      ‘Right now she looks like an ordinary young woman. She can transform into a dragon to show you, if you like, and then you can decide whether you want to be a dragon and learn what you are capable of, or whether you would just like to go home.’

      Hien sat unmoving, thinking about it.

      ‘Come on in, Amy,’ I said.

      Amy opened the door and Hien jumped. Amy smiled reassuringly at her, and sat in the other visitor’s chair.

      ‘I know this is shocking for you,’ she told the girl. ‘I didn’t know I was a dragon until I was twenty-five years old; my father never told me he was a dragon too. We have a community of dragons here at the Academy and we go out and swim and fly together. It’s great fun. And we’re fierce fighters too; we never have to worry about being hurt.’

      ‘Amy will look after you now, Hien,’ I said, ‘and introduce you to some other dragons. All of them will be in human form. When you’re ready, you can ask her to show you her dragon form, her True Form. Take a few days, meet the other dragons, then at the end of the time decide whether you would like to learn to become a dragon yourself, or whether you’d like to go home.’

      Amy held her hand out to Hien. ‘Come with me, I’ll look after you. Nobody’s going to hurt you any more.’

      ‘Go with her, Hien,’ I said. ‘And good luck. I hope one day I see you in dragon form. I’d like to see what colour dragon you are. Amy is the most beautiful black dragon with gold fins that I have ever seen.’

      I nodded to Amy and she smiled back at me. As she gently guided Hien out, she turned back to me. ‘Don’t worry, Emma, I think we’ll bring her round.’

      ‘I hope so,’ I said. ‘She’s had a lot of bad stuff happen in her life. It would be nice to see something good happen.’

      I was about halfway through the end-of-year leave requests when there was a knock on the door. ‘Enter.’

      Lee came in, looking grim, with Silver, one of the Academy dragons. They took the visitors’ chairs and Silver placed the Academy’s video camera on the desk.

      ‘What did you find?’ I asked.

      They both shook their heads.

      ‘Nothing,’ Lee said. ‘I wasn’t wiped this time. In fact, nothing at all happened. We went right through the place and didn’t find anything. You can watch the video, but it’s basically a tour of a down-market Mong Kok brothel. Four stones and Master Sit came with us, and absolutely nothing happened.’

      ‘Let’s see,’ I said.

      Lee picked the camera up off the desk, flipped open the LCD screen and turned it on. He glanced down at the screen and his face filled with shock.

      Silver leapt to his feet and changed to Celestial Form — nearly two metres tall with long, flowing, shining grey hair and scaled silver armour. He summoned a spear and held it to one side in the small office.

      ‘Don’t attack,’ Lee said to Silver without looking away from the screen. ‘That’s Lady Emma’s serpent form.’

      ‘What?’ I said.

      Lee turned the LCD screen around so that it faced the same way as the lens. I could see myself in the screen; the camera was on record mode, not playback.

      I stared at myself. ‘Holy shit.’

      Silver changed back to human form, but his hair remained long and grey. ‘The Dark Lady is a serpent?’

      ‘Nobody knows why, but I can change into a big black snake. Not many people know about it, Silver,’ I said, watching with fascination as the enormous black serpent in the tiny screen also opened its mouth to speak. ‘We’d prefer not to freak out the students.’

      I took the camera from Lee and watched myself. ‘I never knew I’d look like that on video; on still cameras I appear human. Wait!’ I looked up. ‘Stone, Simone took a home video about six months ago when we went to London and I was human in that. What the hell?’

      ‘No idea, Emma,’ the stone said. ‘Your guess is as good as mine.’

      ‘This information isn’t to be shared,’ Lee said to Silver. ‘Many of the human students would probably take it quite badly.’

      Silver nodded. ‘I understand. How long have you been able to do this, Lady Emma?’

      I paused, embarrassed.

      Lee glanced at Silver, obviously sharing the information by telepathy, and Silver’s face cleared. ‘Sharing mind and body with the Dark Lord. That could very well bring out an inherent serpent nature.’

      I could feel my face growing red, and Silver grinned. ‘In this respect you are still very human, ma’am.’

      ‘And I’d like to stay that way, thank you very much,’ I said.

      I changed the camera to playback and watched as Lee and Silver swept through the brothel, pausing to focus on the untidy metal beds in each room with their cheap polyester quilts. ‘You were right. Down-market.’

      ‘Very,’ Lee said. ‘But we didn’t find anything.’

      ‘I had a serious look around for anything that would give us more detailed information on the nature of these demons,’ Silver said, ‘and I too came up blank. No paperwork, no messages, nothing. I’d say it was stripped clean but they never came back to do it. Which means there was never anything there to link the demons to the operation in the first place.’

      ‘Credit card machine? EFTPOS?’ I said. ‘Any cables you could hook into to get information, Lee?’

      ‘They had an EFTPOS line to the Hong Kong Bank. I traced it back and it was listed to a company registered at the brothel’s address, but with names of nonexistent people as the directors,’ Lee said. ‘Drawing a blank, ma’am. We have nothing.’

      ‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Let’s leave it for now. Warn the third years, and keep an eye on the criminal operations for these demons.’

      ‘They’ll probably keep a low profile for a while now,’ Lee said. ‘But I’d really like to know what they did to me.’

      ‘Are you okay?’ I said.

      ‘I’ve been checked over, I’m fine.’ His mouth tweaked in a small smile. ‘I’ve just been erased.’

      ‘We’ll let the others know. The stone network is on the lookout. That’s basically all we can do,’ Silver said.

      ‘Thanks, guys,’ I said.

      They stood patiently СКАЧАТЬ