He leaned in, secretive. “I didn’t track down the monkey’s aura, you know. I followed yours. The original feud between me and Sun Wukong started because I tried to take the Ruyi Jingu Bang once before. Why do you think he hates me beyond all proportion?”
I strained against the bindings, hoping to find more room to breathe. “I thought—it was because—you’re a pompous piece of trash.”
Tawny Lion laughed. “Well get used to it. This pompous piece of trash is going to be your new master now. Whoever controls the staff of the Monkey King controls enough power to take Heaven by force. Once I figure out a way to strip that pesky human form from you, I’ll have the gods kissing my feet.”
The demon’s attention turned away from me to someone I’d forgotten about the whole time.
“You know what?” Tawny Lion said. He walked over to the counter and bent down behind it. “Given how much I have to celebrate, I think I’m going to cheat on my diet a little.”
He reappeared holding the girl who had been working the register. She dangled limply in his arms. Her bandana had fallen off and tresses of wavy red hair covered her face.
I expended the last of my air. “But you said you didn’t eat—”
“I lied. I’m a lion, you fool. Did you think I was a frugivore?”
Tawny Lion cha-cha’ed with the girl’s unconscious body out to the center of the room, swaying his hips to the radio song trickling through the barrier’s muting effect. He dipped her toward me and her head lolled back, her pupils dilated and unseeing.
“Ah,” he said, “This one has a surprising amount of spiritual energy. I’d bet she has excellent gongfu. A talented artist, maybe? She looks like the type.”
He sniffed her exposed neck. “Great bouquet, too. Xuanzangesque, you might say.”
I thrashed back and forth, desperately hoping that I could wriggle free by sheer oscillating force.
Come on! I shrieked inwardly at myself, wishing more than anything that I hadn’t treated Quentin’s catalog of powers so lightly before. Strength, magic, kick in! PLEASE!
The demon grasped the girl by her shoulders. He opened his jaws wide, exposing a pink, ridged throat and rows of pointed carnivore’s teeth. His mouth kept impossibly distending, reaching an angle so obtuse he resembled a lamprey more than a cat. He drew her head into his bite radius, working his lips forward as if he meant to crunch the top half of her skull off in one try, like a child impatient to get at the bubblegum in the center of a lollipop.
“Da ge!” shouted one of the men in the back. “The monkey!”
Quentin had slipped free. He hurled himself at the invisible wall between us. A loud whump rattled the store as his shoulder made contact—a hockey player crashing into the Plexiglas.
The barrier held, but Tawny Lion stumbled. I felt the constriction around me loosen.
The demon quickly drew his mouth away, unraveling his jaws from the girl’s head with the insulted air of someone whose phone had rung during dinner. He threw her into the nearest chair, where she sprawled out, unharmed for the moment. I squeezed my elbows outward with all my might and felt the magic give.
“One thing, you idiots!” he yelled, his words distorted and jowly from speaking before his mouth shrunk fully back to normal. “I ask for just one thing!”
He took a stance and raised his hands like he was going to recast the spell that was keeping Quentin away. But right now he had something bigger than the Monkey King to worry about.
Me.
17
I’d tried gymnastics as a child. This was when I still had a chance of fitting between the uneven bars, so that tells you how long ago it was.
The coach explained to us that when yo
u weren’t used to doing a sudden move like a handspring or flip, it was common to lose your vision for a second or two in the middle of it. Your eyes wouldn’t be able to process the motion without practice, so you could be watching your own limbs the whole time without really seeing them.
That’s what happened to me. I couldn’t visualize my surroundings clearly.
But I was doing something.
And then suddenly, there I was. Out of breath. Panting and sweating in the middle of the room with no one around.
The men who’d been fighting with Quentin now littered the corners of the café, crumpled and discarded like straw wrappers. They hadn’t been beaten. They’d been caved in, wrecked to the point where they weren’t even twitching.
The remnants of a broken chair lay at my feet instead of theirs, and there were splinters in my hair. If I didn’t know any better, I would think someone had smashed the heavy piece of furniture over my head. But I didn’t feel a thing. No lumps, no bruises.