Ghoulies Abroad by Julie Steimle (bts book recommendations txt) 📖

in and out through that Chinese doughboy façade. “People are watching. They will see you.”

Shaking his head, Chen clenched his teeth and immediately transformed into a lean tiger, dropping his coat and springing upon the monk with one wide-jawed bite. The ‘monk’ was dead in seconds.

Rick picked up Chen’s coat, hastily tucking it under his arm. No one could tell if the tiger had been one of them or had come out of nowhere. And as Chen-the-tiger ran down the path, leaving his clothes to be picked up after him, the crowds scattered screaming “Tiger” in several languages.

And that was not the last of the monks attacking them either. Tom clobbered two who went after Rick. Sun Laoshi took out five. Those he could throw off the mountain, he did—and he didn’t care who was watching. In fact, Sun Laoshi gave way once more to Sun Wukong who emerged out of his suit like something desperate to shed his mortal skin and become the immortal he had once been. Tourists who had initially watched Sum Wukong battle thought it was a show, until he cracked the skull of one attacker—clearly killing the monk. The only consolation was that soon after those ‘monks’ died they returned to their hideous demonic forms, giving plenty of reason for people to shy away from them.

They reached Sanyuan Palace where they caught up with the rest of the Seven.

The demon hordes were everywhere. They spotted that lousy Hunshi Mo Wang limping in the distance, whom Sun Wukong immediately singled out and B-lined for, leaving Chen-the-tiger with Tom and Rick.

Tom and Rick shared a look, and Rick immediately went wolf. Tom picked up his cast off clothes, tucking them into the backpack Rick had dropped when he had changed. Tom followed after, slinging the backpack onto his back as if it weighed nothing.

Mid-battle, overhead, they heard a helicopter. Everyone’s head looked up. Most wondered if it was a police helicopter, but it was way too high above them to see for certain. And someone jumped out of it, parachuting down—a black suited someone like special ops.

“Holy….” Eddie gazed skyward, stunned—wondering if the CIA was sending somebody in. It was so James Bond. He and James Peterson stared until a demon came at them and they had to fight it off.

When the man in the parachute landed, he did it at a jog, quickly unbuckling his straps and dropping them to the ground, kicking his restraints off. At a run, he drew a long purple sword.

“Sir Long Shanks!” Daniel cried out, grinning while thrusting his rusty looking sword through the gut of a demon. “Glad you could make it!”

“Sorry I’m late!” Michael Toms said, swiping at one demon with a slash and whacking off the head of another.

“Better late than never!” Semour laughed slicing two demons at once, the last one losing a hand.

“Did you bring Jessica or Peter with you?” Andy asked, dodging a cudgel from a rather large troll-like monster.

Shaking his head while breathlessly ducking under the staff of a ‘monk’ with a hideous face, Michael replied, “‘Fraid not…. They were unavailable.”

Andy frowned and gored the demon he was fighting.

“One out of three is not bad, though,” Semour said, knocking down the demon in his way to the demon who was about stab Rick who was biting another demon who had tried to attack Daniel from the back. He stopped the one after Rick with a stab through his neck.

Among the red walled and dark roofed buildings topped with snow and frost, the police darted in then pulled back. One raised a pistol and fired it into the air.

The demons scattered.

Daniel blinked then chased after the one he was just battling.

“We should have brought guns.” Eddie laughed, looking around at the demonic reaction. Rick had instinctively run for cover. So had Chen.

“Remind me to buy one,” James called back, chasing after his lot.

“Shouqi!”

The Seven made chase after the demons, scattering down two paths. Michael caught his breath next to the gingko trees in the courtyard then rushed on. Tom jogged slower after them. Then, with a gaze eastward toward the distant stone images of Tang Sanzang and Sun Wukong on a cliff across the valley, he decided to follow the group going directly south. Tom meandered through the cars in the parking lot slowly, keeping an eye out for demons. Rick the wolf, and now Chen-the-dog trotted low after him, going in the same direction. They had no idea where Sun Wukong had gone.

Everyone else ran eastward down the path into the valley. The demons they were chasing split off somewhere around the Pines on the map, one group heading south east toward the Garden of Grotesque Rock Formations and the other going to the Seventy-Two Caves where Sun Wukong had wanted them to go anyway.

“You do not belong here!” shouted back an angry elf among the demons whom Michael’s group was chasing into the bizarre rock garden, throwing a rock at him.

Michael dodged. “We were hired to come here!”

“We don’t want you here! This is our land!” another angry elf shouted, chucking a spear at James who deflected it with his sword.

“That’s not what Sun Wukong says!” James shot back.

The elf spat out angry Chinese words, his face contorting toward demonic loathing then drew a longbow out of nothing. It looked like it had just formed out of a vine, string and all. He pulled the bronze tipped arrow back. “That lousy stone monkey abandoned this mountain!” He let his arrow fly.

Eddie swiped the arrow out of the air with his blade, dodging after the demon he and been chasing. “Do you actually think that?”

The elves cursed at them, causing the ground to sink near Eddie’s feet. He jumped onto stone, climbing up. He was exposed but he was no longer sinking.

“He should have stayed!” one elf shouted.

“Not gallivanting after sutras!” the other chimed in.

Michael pulled back. “What the blazes are you talking about? I thought we were hired by a monk?”

He then deflected an attack from the side, spinning around. He also had to scramble onto rock to keep from sinking into the earth. James had already crawled onto stone, extracting his ankle-deep feet out of the ground.

“Technically, the Monkey King,” James said to him, catching his breath between attacks.

Michael stared. “What?”

“A Chinese elf,” Eddie snapped, fighting off another demon.

“A legendary Chinese hero,” James interjected, battling off two demons who had ganged up on him. He spun around with his foot low and knocked both of them off his feet. He stabbed each in succession in the chest.

The elves backed away, shuddering. “How dare you enter and desecrate our land with your carnage.”

“Then stop attacking us!” Eddie snapped back.

Three more demons went after them. The others ran south.

Further north, at the Seventy-Two Caves, Andy was battling it out against a cadre of demons with Daniel. Sun Wukong staggered out of one of the caves looking bloody, ragged and angry, but triumphant. He shouted into the cave, “Yeah? Ni ma ma shi cangshu!”

“Did you get him?” Daniel called to him.

“No!” Peevish, Sun Wukong shot back. “The bloody demon keeps evading me! I should just wall him in these caves like that Buddha did to me! Put a mountain on him!”

“That actually happened?” Daniel dodged a swipe from some really sharp claws.

Nodding Sun Wukong jumped into the fray. He immediately took out ten demons with his staff. He landed smartly on the ground, still spry. “Yeah. It was pretty humiliating.”

“You don’t mean Buddha Buddha, do you?” Daniel asked. “Siddhārtha Gautama from India?”

Shaking his head, taking out three more demons and an angry elf who grabbed his staff and hung on, Sun Wukong said, “No. I mean a Buddha who ran around here as an enlightened one—a god-elf under divine direction to keep extremely dangerous elves in check. It’s a title which I later earned, if you forget.”

Andy charged in whacking away the elf still clinging to Sun Wukong’s staff. He turned, breathless. “That’s right. Weren’t you called something like the battle Buddha or something?”

“Or something,” Sun Wukong rolled his eyes. “You might call them destroying angels or guardian angels, though ones mortals can see are rare these days.”

Hunshi Mowang charged out of the caverns with a huge battle axe in his arms, swinging it high.

Bearing down, spreading his feet to prepare for the attack, Sun Wukong braced his staff in his clenched fists. Hunshi Mowang bore down on him, heavily bringing the axe down. Dodging the axe itself, Sun Wukong, dived through Hunshi Mowang’s legs and attacked his crotch with a whop of his staff. The demon collapsed as Sun Wukong skidded through on his knees. Sun Wukong popped up, spinning around on one foot and whopped the demon on his back, forcing him down onto his own axe, face forward.

“Ugh!” Andy and Daniel both cringed—as well as the demons around them.

The demons scattered.

“Man!” Daniel chased after the one he was just fighting, going north into the trees.

Andy chased the ones he had been battling into the caves.

Sun Wukong looked about, breathing hard in triumph then he followed Daniel north.

Daniel took out three demons near a huge stone with red carved writing in it. Sun Wukong joined in, getting rid of the rest.

“Is that all of them?” Sun Wukong looked around searching, while panting, his armor splattered with demon blood.

Daniel shrugged, breathing hard. His side ached and he was getting incredibly tired. It had been ages since he had been in a real battle. At least five years, though it felt longer. Both of them winded, Sun Wukong gestured for them to go back to the caves to help Andy—but as they did, Daniel pointed up to the writing on the stone. “What is with all this writing on the rocks? Is it some kind of high form of graffiti? Is that something famous you said?”

Glancing at that inscribed rock disdainfully, Sun Wukong replied, “No. Somebody else’s words.”

Raising his eyebrows, noticing how much Sun Wukong disregarded this place in comparison to the other paces they had been through, he decided not to respond. It seemed a sore subject for the Monkey King, this one rock.

But Sun Wukong said, “Everyone wants to leave their mark on my homeland. So yeah, it is a kind of graffiti.”

He stormed off.

They hurried back to the caves.

Going in, they kept their eyes peeled for demons. And they saw them. One dead here. Another sprawled there. And a cluster quite dead in a corner.

“Red?” Daniel called out, searching around for him.

“In here,” they heard Andy’s voice echo against the stone. “Come quick. You got to see this.”

Sun Wukong set a hand on Daniel’s shoulder to keep him from impulsively rushing ahead. It could be a demon faking Andy’s voice after all.

However, they ended up following the sound into a huge cavernous space. And in the center of it was what looked like a giant, gilded, cricket cage. And in it was a giant cricket.

“No way…” Daniel murmured, staring up at it.

“What do you make of this?” Andy pointed at the cage with his sword. Around him were several dead demons, clearly the guards. The cricket was singing, its chirruping voice echoing in the cavern much like music. It got excited when it saw Sun Wukong.

Sun Wukong approached it cautiously.

Daniel walked to Andy, feeling out to make sure the person before him was his friend and comrade of the Seven.

He was. Andy had a scrape on the side of his face and his hand was glowing white hot.

“My hand doesn’t hurt,” Andy said, nodding to the cricket. “But that is magic.”

Daniel looked to the cricket cage.

Sun Wukong stared at it. “Ni shi shei?”

The cricket chirruped back.

“Zhen de ma?” Sun Wukong pulled back, looking surprised.

The giant cricket chirruped in response.

“You can understand it?” Andy leaned away from him to get a better look.

“Of course I can!” Sun Wukong replied. “I’m an elf.” He immediately struck the lock to the cage with the end of his staff.

The lock broke open. The door slid wide,