I squeezed my nose between my palms. Partly out of frustration and partly to keep the stench of the Demon King of Confusion from flooding back into my nostrils. Closing my eyes only brought the image of Tawny Lion’s gaping, distended jaws back to the forefront of my mind. Monsters like these couldn’t be left alone.
Guanyin sensed her victory was near. “I can tell deep down that you want to help,” she said. “You’re the type of person who takes matters into her own hands. You’re like me in that regard.”
I remembered some of Guanyin’s legend. The story went that she was once a mortal girl who was so pure, kind, and enlightened that she easily attained Buddhahood in her youth. Just like that, in a relative snap, she accomplished what some holy men couldn’t in lifetimes of training.
But as she was about to leave the planes of Heaven and Earth entirely for the ultimate nirvana, she looked back and heard the cries of the suffering and downtrodden. Her compassion led her to stay behind as a Bodhisattva, a lesser divine being, so that she could do her best to relieve the pain of humanity and guide it to its own enlightenment. She was a figure of self-sacrifice and humility. I couldn’t see how we compared.
This sucked.
This sucked so goddamn much.
“Fine,” I said, in a grouchy harrumph that was very un-Bodhisattva-like. “I’ll do what I can.”
20
Guanyin’s eyes sparkled at
me. It was too pretty to look at, and I wanted to sneeze.
The sunbeams of her countenance traveled around my kitchen until they found Quentin, still the only one of us who hadn’t taken a seat at my table.
“What about you, dear?” she asked.
“Sure,” he replied with a shrug. “I have my reputation to think about. Sun Wukong doesn’t shy away from a fight.”
Maybe I was reading into it too much, but that was a pretty weaksauce reason to go along with everything, even for someone as prideful as Quentin. Which meant he was taking up this burden to protect the little people, like in the old stories. Or he was doing it simply to have my back.
It was a nice feeling either way. The cockles of my heart and such.
“So do you have names?” Quentin asked. “Or do we have to wait until every yaoguai shakes our hands and reintroduces themselves?”
“Baigujing,” Erlang Shen answered. “The Immortals of Tiger, Deer, and Goat. Linggandaiwang. The Hundred-Eyed Demon Lord. Huangpaogui. General Yin. The Wolf of the Twentieth Mansion . . .”
He went on. And on.
And on.
Quentin’s frown grew more and more profound with each successive name until finally he threw his hands into the air.
“Tamade!” he shouted, interrupting the roll call. “What’s the point of having a Hell in the first place if you’re going to let every asshole walk free?”
“What’s the total count of escapees?” I said. “Or do you not know how many?”
“We know how many.” Erlang Shen squared his shoulders like an accountant about to report to his boss that the whole company was insolvent. “It’s one hundred and eight.”
“A HUNDRED AND EIGHT?”
“Well a hundred now, after today’s events,” Erlang Shen said. “If it gives you any reassurance, I can almost guarantee you won’t have to fight them all at once.”
I could certainly guarantee him that it did not. A wedding guest list’s worth of demons. A Roman centuria. Enough demons to create a half a professional soccer league, without substitutions.
While my fretting brain coped by forming worse and worse analogies, Quentin laughed bitterly.
“A hundred and eight,” he said, shaking his head. “A hundred and eight! If it had been a handful of the small fry slipping through the cracks, I could have chalked this up to your uncle’s usual negligence! You want to tell me how every demon from Chang’an to Vulture Peak managed to parade through the gate?”
“We think Red Boy broke them out,” Guanyin said.
Quentin immediately went silent. He stood where he was for a brief second, and then stormed over to her. He grabbed her arm.