Shanghai Immortal by A Y Chao EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Authors: A Y Chao
- Language: English
- Genre: Asian Myth & Legend eBooks
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
The De live ry
The steaming Shanghai night drapes heavy over my bare shoulders. I lean
against the door of a decrepit warehouse, gums aching, stomach grumbling,
and wait on Big Wang’s secret delivery. Cicadas scream all around me. With
a title like Lady Jing of Mount Kunlun and ancestry that includes the great
goddess Queen Mother of the West, running errands at 3 a.m. in this rotted
heat might be considered below my station. With such a title, you’d expect
me to be beautiful – all hair, ta-tas, and ass, held together with lashings of
poise and dignity. Well, I’ll disabuse you of that notion right now. I am a
degenerate mix of unfortunate genes and circumstances. From my dearly
departed mother – a hulijing, or ‘bitch of a fox-spirit’ as I prefer to call her – I
inherited my feral lack of charm; from my father – some leech-faced vampire
who couldn’t be bothered to stick around – a damned inconvenient
predilection for blood.
While 3 a.m. might be when the sodden heat is at its worst, twilight is
when the veil between the mortal world and the realms of Hell thins, making
it easier for mortal couriers to make their deliveries. Hot as it is, Big Wang
expects me to wait, so that’s what I do.
What’s Big Wang got to do with anything? Allow me to share my poor
orphan story: my darling mother also had a damned inconvenient
predilection. Hers was for diamonds the size of quail eggs, treasures a downand-out deity such as herself could ill afford. Rather than give up her
precious jewels, she pawned me as a whelp to Big Wang, a.k.a. the King of
Hell, to pay her shopping debts. And then she went and died before she could
claim me back.
Yeah, sob, sob, I know.
The swollen wood of the warehouse door creaks against my back. The red
brick building, one of a row of identical squat brick structures lining the
Whangpoo River, is past its prime, worn and weathered from the humidity. It
would be easy enough for Big Wang to make the warehouses shiny and new,
but he prefers them this way. Gives the place character, he says. I shimmy the
fine cotton qipao up my thighs and stand with my legs as wide as the form
fitting-dress will allow. It’s hotter than the Hearths of Hell out here. I run my
tongue over my gums, sore but still smooth, fantasising about the nice tall
glass of ice-cold blood I’ll earn for this errand. Three days old, my favourite
– when it gets just the right amount of pétillant tingle.
My feet ache so I slide one from its silk slipper – a tiny, tight, ridiculous
thing more useful as a torture instrument than an item of clothing – and
massage my cramping arch. Big Wang is probably expecting another of his
rotted collectables. One of his beloved tortoises maybe, or a koi for his pond,
but the damned delivery is late.
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