Erlang Shen and I both started to say something about him being too rough, but Guanyin didn’t pull away. Quentin shoved her unseasonably long sleeve up to her elbow, exposing her wrist and forearm. It was covered in burns.
The wounds had healed, but they’d been bad. Really bad. The vicious, blood-colored splotches shone under the ceiling light. Against the rest of Guanyin’s beautiful skin the injuries looked like an act of vandalism.
Without a word Quentin led Guanyin out of the kitchen, never letting go of her hand. The goddess followed him into the hallway, where she gestured over their heads. I could feel something come down around them, similar to Tawny Lion’s spell of concealment, only the two of them were still visible.
Quentin’s wild-eyed screaming, however, was completely muted. He and Guanyin began noiselessly going at each other.
“So, uh, what’s going on?” I asked Erlang Shen.
“During his journey with Xuanzang to recover the sutras, the monkey faced an exceptionally powerful demon named Red Boy,” Erlang Shen said. He watched the proceedings with an unreadable look on his face. “Red Boy had the ability to breathe True Samadhi Fire, which no substance, mortal or divine, could resist. The monkey tried to defeat him several times but could not.”
I didn’t know there was anyone Sun Wukong flat-out couldn’t beat in a fight. I’d assumed even Erlang Shen was a coin flip.
“He asked the Lady Guanyin for assistance. With her magic, she captured Red Boy and bound his limbs. The monkey wanted to slay him, but Guanyin pushed for mercy.”
“Well that sort of makes sense, given she’s the Goddess of—”
“Three times,” Erlang Shen interrupted. “Three times Guanyin released Red Boy after he swore to give up fighting. Three times he went back on his word and attacked her.”
“Wait, he attacked her? After she took his side?”
“Yes.” Erlang Shen’s mask of dispassion slipped a little, and I could see how upset he was underneath. “Guanyin finally subdued Red Boy for good. In order to receive the clemency he’d thrown away so carelessly before, he promised to become her disciple. Instead of being thrown into Hell, he was given an acolyte’s position on a small island shrine in the middle of a Heavenly ocean—isolated from other spirits, but still a paradise compared to what he deserved.
“Over the years he served faithfully. He appeared to have reformed. But the last time Guanyin was with him, he attacked her yet again and fled. That was when she suffered those wounds.”
No wonder they were screaming up a storm. Nothing to light a fire under an argument like an “I told you so.”
“Red Boy wants revenge against everyone that he believes wronged him,” Erlang Shen said. “Springing the other demons from Hell is his return stroke against Guanyin and Sun Wukong. A personal message. All the events that have transpired so far are his doing, ultimately.”
“You’re certain of this?”
Erlang Shen nodded. “There aren’t that many ways out of Hell before your sentence is up. You can either get out on borrowed karma from someone like Guanyin, or you can make an escape route if you’re powerful enough. Red Boy is that powerful.”
“But if that’s the case, why’d he wait until now to make his move?”
“He must have caught word that the Ruyi Jingu Bang was no longer the fearsome weapon of the Monkey King,” he said, making a valiant attempt to keep the irony levels in his voice from reaching critical mass. “The fighting power of his enemies has been reduced immeasurably. Now is the perfect time for him to exact his vengeance.”
Erlang Shen didn’t go so far as to say this whole deal was my fault. Which was good, because if he had I would have blown my stack from here all the way to Canada. The god seemed to be learning where to toe the line with me much faster than Quentin had.
“How strong is he exactly?” I asked. I had a tough time placing supernatural beings on a relative power scale. “Like if the Demon King of Confusion is a ‘one’ then Red Boy—”
“Red Boy once burned a country to the ground,” Erlang Shen said curtly, without a trace of exaggeration.
I hesitated. “Wouldn’t that have been noticed in history somewhere?”
Erlang Shen shook his head. “He really burned it to the ground.”
“Holy crap. You know, this is the kind of news you should lead with. Seems a little important not to mention right away.”
His response was to gesture at Guanyin and Quentin tearing each other apart. “If I had, there would have been no chance whatsoever of a reasonable conversation afterward.”
Touché, I guess.
Quentin and Guanyin must have reached a tipping point in their monumental argument, because the goddess left the zone of silence and came back to the kitchen. On the way she ran her hand over my backpack, which had been lying on the countertop.
“Mind if I borrow these?” she asked. I didn’t know what she was referring to until she opened her hands. My earrings rested in her palm.
“Those are actually kind of important to me,” I said.