Alex was there one moment, Fenghuang held high in his hands. Then, with a spark of light, my brother simply vanished.
CHAPTER
28
I don’t know how long I stood there on a cloud, struggling to comprehend the events of the past hour or so. Erlang Shen had betrayed us. Alex had almost returned to my side—and then changed his mind.
Xiong had warned me before I left that I’d lose someone dear to me yet again. Now I knew what he’d meant. I was sure, even if only for a second, that I’d had Alex back—and then he left me once more.
After what might have been moments or hours, I felt a familiar warmth near me. Guanyin. I knew even before looking up into the goddess’s kind black eyes.
“You did well, warrior.” She cast her gaze around at the battered monkeys and warriors, plus two black dragons. “You all did well.”
“Where’s Erlang Shen?” I asked.
“Gone back to Heaven with the rest of ’em.” Nezha popped up behind Guanyin. The scowl on his boyish face revealed his deep disgust. He twirled his flaming hoop through the air and caused a few nearby monkeys to edge away nervously. “We’ll have to pay him back another time. Soon.”
“For now, we must leave you all to regroup,” Guanyin said. She and Nezha exchanged a brief but heavy look.
“We’ll meet again soon. Don’t worry,” Nezha reassured me. I blushed. I guess my inner panic must have shown up on my face.
With that, the gods ascended on their clouds. In moments they were gone, as quickly as they’d come.
I turned to Ren. “Ren. My mother—I know how to find her. My nai nai said my mother is down in Diyu, betrothed to a Demon King.”
Ren’s jaw dropped. “Betrothed to what?”
“We have to rescue her.”
Ren nodded. “And Ashley.”
“So … should we do an icebreaker?” Jordan interrupted.
Ren and I stared at him in confusion. “Icebreaker? Like the mint?” Ren asked.
“No, I mean the icebreaker that, like, breaks the ice between strangers? To avoid awkward situations like … this.” Jordan gestured behind us.
Sun Wukong and his swarm of monkeys sat on a gigantic cloud, behind our chariot. Several of the monkeys were nursing injuries, but on the whole, they seemed to have made it out of the battle all right. Mr. Zhao sat next to the monkeys. He appeared quite unharmed, although he wasn’t smiling like he usually was. Hovering near the monkeys, looking completely out of place, were the two dragons I’d somehow managed to convince to join our side.
“I don’t think any number of icebreakers will break this awkwardness,” I said.
Jordan considered this a moment, frowning. “That’s fair.”
After Sun Wukong had realized that the Mountain of Flowers and Fruit was now an unsalvageable wreck, he’d reacted with much greater calmness than I’d have expected, given his reputation. I guess hundreds of years hiding away in a peaceful mountain had mellowed him out after all. He’d just seemed … tired. And sad. He hadn’t even given chase to the Heavenly warriors and instead focused his attention on attending to his wounded monkeys. We must’ve looked like a really big, ugly parade float.
“You’re sure this … warrior mountain will be suitable for my monkeys?” Sun Wukong called.
“The New Order is a warrior society, not a mountain,” Jordan corrected. “We’ve hosted other warrior societies there in the past for tournaments. So there’s definitely enough space.”
“Tournaments?” Ren and I both said.
“Oh, yeah. Used to be really big in the past. Then people got busy, and demon hunting became less important, and tournaments are super expensive in the first place …” Jordan’s voice trailed off. “Anyway, there’s room at the New Order for all of us. Just tell those monkeys to stay the heck away from my video games.”
It was early morning now. The sky was painted a brilliant orange and pink. I followed Ye Ye’s compass, which pointed toward the horizon. We’d been traveling about an hour now, but we still had at least another couple of hours to go before reaching Manhattan’s Chinatown.
“So,” Jordan said after a long moment of silence. “Who exactly was that punk with bad hair? You called him brother, Faryn.”
Much as I didn’t want to talk or even think about Alex, I could tell this was a conversation we were going to have at some point or another. I did owe Jordan an explanation, anyway.
“Listen, as far as little siblings go, you’ve got it easy with Ashley,” I told Jordan. “At least she hasn’t tried to kill you yet.”
I gave Jordan the rundown of everything that had happened between the Lunar New Year and now. Ren added any details or facts that I’d forgotten.
“Whoa,” Jordan said when I was finished giving him the my-brother-turned-into-devil-spawn spiel. “Suddenly I’m missing Ashley a lot …”
“Little brothers are the worst,” I grumbled. “One moment they’re breaking your dolls. Next moment they’re plotting world domination and destroying you.”
“But Alex failed, right?” Ren gave us a tentative, hopeful smile. “His goal was to destroy all of us, including Sun Wukong. All he managed to do was destroy the mountain. That’s a win for us, right?”
I didn’t want to burst Ren’s bubble, but it was hard to say. “Dunno. I guess we’ll have to find out when we report back to the New Order.”
“Right.” Jordan nodded. “We’ll report back to the Elders and then go on a new quest to the Underworld.”
“Another quest?” Ren groaned. “We just finished one and almost died, and you want to go on another one?”
Jordan’s face turned beet red. “My sister’s still down there!”
“Yeah, but you know the terms of the deal,” I told him as gently as I could. “We won’t get Ashley back until we’re finished with the Ruyi Jingu Bang. Do you really think you’ll be able to get that any time soon?” Jordan said nothing, just crossed his arms over his chest with a sulking expression on his face. “Trust me. I want to go get Ashley, too, but we’ll probably have to sit tight for