"And why do you think I"ll do a stupid thing like that?" she asked, her mouth twitching."Amazon, you can"t mean to abandon us?" the girl asked, alarmed.
"It"s your duty," her brother reiterated.
"No, it"s not. I don"t have to do anything at all. I don"t owe you anything. You said you knew grandmama but you could be lying, right? She"s not here to validate your word so, no, I don"t think so."
The twins looked at her, horrified.
"But we could help you find the people who did this to us. Don"t you realize how important it is that they must be found? They have the book of the Divine Words from Father which has been a guarded secret for centuries," the little girl argued.
"I don"t care," An Ning shrugged. "That book or you or this cult had nothing to do with me. I just want them found because they killed our friends and are holding captive the young girl you impersonated," she stopped and her eyes sharpened. "What did you do to that girl anyway? Where is she? And don"t lie to me. You wouldn"t like me when someone is lying to me."
"Ning Ning may be we should..." Nian Zhen said tactfully.
"We were not lying," the boy again interrupted in a rush. "We saw her and copied her because she looked very non-threatening and someone to be trusted. So we used her appearance to fool this guy who were beating up this other guy and we killed him. The other guy who was beaten up was barely alive. Well, we were hungry as we said and decided to eat them. That"s when you arrived."
"You wanted to eat me?" Tsai Po was enraged. "Just because you were hungry you wanted to eat people?"
"We didn"t want to," the girl said, suddenly provoked into showing her anger. "We don"t like eating humans either but we thought you were already dead so we thought why not eat you. You wouldn"t care anyway since you were dead and we were hungry!"
Tsai Po looked like he wanted to say another word but caught An Ning"s amused gaze. He controlled himself but his expression still showed his disgust when he asked, "You said you saw this girl? Where did you see her?"
"Someone with the guy we killed took her away before we got to her," the boy said. "She seemed to have been crying when we saw her though."
"Crying? She was crying?" was Tsai Po"s alarmed voice. "Where did you see her? Show me."
"We killed the man inside this room with a huge window. We saw the girl outside as she was being dragged away," the girl said. "Maybe that"s why we chose to impersonate her. Because she made an impression on us. She didn"t want to go with those people and maybe that was the reason why she was crying."
"Where were they going when you met them? Come, tell me!" Tsai Po commanded.
"The forest," the boy said.
"There was a fog last night," Nian Zhen suddenly
"So?" the boy asked, obviously perplexed.
"The fog was so thick and cold it practically covered everything on the island. Yet you said you saw the girl as you were looking out the window. But how can you have seen her as you said when visibility was poor because of the fog?"
Everyone seemed to understand what he was getting at because they suddenly looked at the twins with hostile eyes. An Ning perceptibly moved the strips of gauze so that it surrounded the group in a half circle while keeping the twins outside.
The twins looked at each other dumbfounded. The boy swallowed hard and looked beseechingly at An Ning, who returned his gaze without an expression on her face. The girl hesitated, sneaking a look at Nian Zhen who smiled coldly at her. The girl sighed then and nodded at her brother.
"Perhaps we should explain," the boy said, looking at them expectantly.
His audience was unmoved, merely narrowing their eyes at him with suspicion.
"You see," he began.
"You caused the fog because you were hungry after a long sleep and you wanted to eat everyone on the island. Is that the way you really want to play this act?" An Ning said coldly, her eyes staring at the twins with something dangerous and deadly in their depths. "You saw the girl from the window because you"re a snake with very sharp eyes. You impersonated her not because you saw her uncle being beaten by his cousin but because you didn"t want anyone to know what your true ident.i.ty is. The Nagas of the south. You are far from home, Nagini."
The twins gaped at her then quick as lightning their bodies melded together and they pounced on Nian Zhen as they transformed back into their serpentine form. An Ning, however, was quicker. Just as the girl was about to grab Nian Zhen by the neck, An Ning threw Hippolyta"s belt around the serpent"s body. The belt fastened itself around the serpent"s middle and started to emit a light that almost blinded everyone. The light was so bright that the serpent"s body glowed red-gold as if it was on fire. The snake screamed and howled and thrashed its body futilely in an effort to unbuckle the belt but it was fastened so firmly around its middle that it was almost choking the creature to death.
The two heads were almost insane with fury and pain, thrashing back and forth and angrily hissing and baring their fangs, causing everyone to jump out of its way. The belt around the snake"s body prevented it from reverting back to its ma.s.sive form so that it looked helpless and somewhat pitiful struggling and choking on the wet ground of the deck. Everyone watching it though was aware of how vicious it still was even on the point of death. The twins were gurgling sounds they knew were profanities just by looking at the ugliness of the expressions on the red and blue heads. Although the faces were still human, the cast of the eyes were slit-like, the skin starting to acquire the greenish and mossy scale of its serpentine nature.
The red head suddenly focused on Nian Zhen, the expression on its face so ugly and vile that it almost stopped everyone on their tracks. Castor and Pollux instinctively burrowed deeper into their father"s embrace, their faces pale and scared, as the red head flung its head and tried to slither its way to where the three of them were standing, only to be dragged viciously back by the strips of gauze that started to wind themselves around the thrashing and slimy body like a mummy.
Nian Zhen"s face had drained of all color. He was so pale and his skin looked so waxy that he resembled a corpse about to be collected by death itself. For the first time since An Ning had known him, Nian Zhen suddenly looked plain and ordinary, his beauty totally eclipsed by the look of profound fear and shock on his face.
Something like a mocking chuckle emitted from the depths of the blue head"s throat. Its slitted lids rolled in an ugly parody of a wink as its sister flung its head back and howled in laughter.
The mocking laughter though ended in a choking sound of distress as the strips finally finished winding its way around the snake"s scaly body and started pulling in on itself, slowly and viciously strangling the serpent in its ever tightening embrace.
An Ning zoomed high above tied to one of the strips, her eyes scanning the horizon. Then she dropped down at an astonishing speed that left everyone gawking at her. Seeing her return, the snake heads again howled and screeched, the sound so startling and so jarring it almost set everybody"s teeth on edge.
"You wanted to sleep and never see the world again, didn"t you? Then that"s what you"ll do. Sleep and if you wake up to not see light ever again," An Ning said, dropping to the ground and reaching out a hand to pull the snake up.
But the snake was not done struggling yet. It suddenly twisted its body like a pretzel then rolled on the deck, aiming straight for Nian Zhen, who immediately pushed Castor and Pollux far away from him. But the snake was not interested in anything or anybody but its target. The two heads head-b.u.t.ted Nian Zhen with such force that he staggered backwards into the ship"s railing. One of the heads then quickly looped around his knees then forcibly tossed him overboard where his body fell with a loud splash onto the waters below.
Before everyone could even blink from astonishment, the snake followed after him. An Ning took one bound off the ship and jumped after the snake. Everyone ran to the railings and leaned out to see what was happening below.
Nian Zhen was trying to swim onto sh.o.r.e but he was too slow. The snake was just seconds away and bearing down on him grimly and purposely. Before the snake could do anything though, An Ning landed on the head with the red crown and tightly pulled the strip keeping it in place. The strips controlling the other end swiftly formed a crude propeller-projectile thing around it which started to turn faster and faster, propelling the snake to fly off the surface of the water like a boat.
As the people on the ship"s railings watched astonished, An Ning drove the snake now turned speeding boat towards a giant whirlpool which mysteriously started to form as soon as An NIng was about to vanquish the snake twins.
At the sight of this whirlpool, the head which An Ning controlled, renewed its vigorous resistance, twisting and thrashing its mummified body like a school of fish about to be devoured by sharks. The red head gave out such a piercing wail that the blue head on the other end echoed its pathos with a cry that seemed to come from the bowels of its soul.
"Amazon!" the red head squeaked. "Stop! I beg you to stop!"
But An Ning was blind to entreaties. She had been weighing the pros and cons of giving the snake twins a break but that changed when she finally caught on to what was happening. When Hippolyta handed her the belt which proclaimed her legitimacy as the one and true heir, she not only shared with her the power of her legendary status but the memory imbued within the belt, generations of it in fact.
Delving into that particular memory unexpected allowed An Ning to zero in on the Nagas, the demi-G.o.d race of snakes that legend had it guarded the entrance to the Underworld. Legend also said that Nagas had the ability to shrug off its scales and transform into any human they first had contact with especially after awakening from a long hibernation.
But what was a Naga doing here, in this dimension? In Chengdi?
An Ning thought grimly as the whirlpool drew nearer and the cry and howl and screeching of the two-headed snake intensified its volume.