The Iron Will of Genie Lo (The Epic Crush of Genie Lo 2)

With both eyes, she blasted Nezha at point-blank range.

The young god was completely enveloped by the vortex of clouds. If he screamed, we didn’t hear it. Next to him, Guan Yu bucked with every ounce of his might, trying to get closer to the deadly wind, as if he might be able to pull Nezha out of harm’s way using his teeth.

Quentin was right. His friend was a good man. But Guan Yu’s efforts were in vain. When Princess Iron Fan ceased her attack, there was nothing left where Nezha had been.

The demon didn’t pick another victim from us immediately. She waited again, dissatisfied, until her winds brought one more figure into her floating gallery of targets. Guanyin, who’d been briefly separated from us at the start of the fight.

“Ah,” Princess Iron Fan whispered. “Better.” She elevated the Goddess of Mercy and brought her closer like she’d done to Nezha.

“Wait!” I shouted.

I was still so dizzy that yelling made me want to puke. I swallowed down my bile and shouted the most distracting thing I could think of. “I killed your son!”

Princess Iron Fan pushed Guanyin away and looked at me. This entire time she’d been serene and imperturbable, but now her face was locked in a frown.

“Red Boy’s your son, right?” I had no plan, no goal here other than to get the demon to focus on me instead of my friends. I fought the instinct to struggle and tried to hurt her back the only way I could. “I’m the one who ended him.”

Princess Iron Fan jerked me closer, until her fingers closed around my neck. She could have applied more pressure using her wind magic, but I’d made her angry. I was getting in her head.

“Your son was a rat bastard,” I snarled. “I buried him. I buried him in the dirt with only worms to keep him company. No air for his fire. And the last thing I saw in his eyes as I put him under, was that he was scared and wanted his mommy.”

I couldn’t believe how evil I sounded. But Red Boy was a murderous wretch who’d nearly blown up an entire city. I’d had no regrets. Until now.

Princess Iron Fan took in what I’d said. Mulled over her options. And then she curled her tongue and whistled. A long, low tone that a human could have produced. A swirl of wind, a little doodle of a cyclone sprang into being above my head.

As she kept going, her whistle became shriller and shriller. The cone whirled faster and faster. She didn’t stop for breath the whole time.

The narrow bottom of the white funnel began squiggling and extending like a living snake, searching for material to burrow into. It closed into a sharp spike the width of an ice pick and arced around until it found the right path. Straight toward my left ear canal.

Princess Iron Fan’s whistle was now the high-speed whine of a dentist’s drill. I couldn’t hear anything else. The tip of the cyclone reached closer.

The tiny spear of air caressed the outside of my ear, as if to taunt me one last time, and then dipped inside. I gnashed my teeth and screamed so that the last thing I would ever hear would at least be the sound of my own voice.

But then nothing happened.

I was too afraid to turn my neck to see, so I craned my eyeballs. The little storm that threatened to skewer through my earholes had stopped. So had the whistling.

When I looked back at Princess Iron Fan, she was recovering her balance, like she’d been punched. She angrily wiped something off her face.

It was water.

The demon straightened up, flicked her fingers dry, and glared at Erlang Shen.

The rain god hovered before her. He was both supported and shielded by a continuously flowing geyser of water that reached all the way back to an opening in the ground below. The vertical river encased most of his body, keeping him stable in the buffeting winds. The drops torn off by the storm were easily replaced with reserves from what must have been a massive underground aquifer.

“I found what I was looking for,” he announced to us with a grin.

Princess Iron Fan’s blank, vapory eyes took on an expression of rage. She suddenly thrust her hands forward, concentrating her energy into a single dimensionless point. At the same time, Erlang Shen mirrored her movements, down to the very last crook of his fingers.

It was more than simple mockery. His needle of water met her spike of air head-on, and in this clash of elements, the least compressible state of matter won. Erlang Shen’s thin jet of water pierced its way through Princess Iron Fan’s attack and straight into her body.

The yaoguai looked down at the rapier blade that had run her through, impaling her right in the heart.

Her imminent death amused her. Then it really amused her. Then it became downright hilarious. She tilted her head back and began cackling in laughter, her high-pitched voice echoing off the walls of the continuing storm.

In between her howls she managed to trade a few words to Erlang Shen. I couldn’t hear them this time. But whatever she said was enough to make his eyes grow wide. Princess Iron Fan’s suit sudden

ly ballooned out to spherical proportions.