by Maren Smith
At one end of the bar, almost tucked behind it, a door suddenly swung open and the growl of a familiar voice caught Cullen’s attention.
“She knew the rules, John.” Gabe came out of that side office, pushing Chin ahead of him and talking back over his shoulder to a tall, thin, frowning man. In Gabe’s other hand, he carried a long strap.
Funny, the things Cullen locked in on in that blood-boiling moment. Like Chin’s too pale face. Her head was bowed and her cheeks were wet with tears. He saw Gabe’s hand on her arm, his fingers blockish and huge in comparison. That he would even dare to touch her sent a jolt of sheer violent intent sizzling up his back and down his arms into his clenched fists.
“So yeah,” Gabe continued, unaware that Cullen had stepped out of the doorway and was now heading straight for him. “I’m glad she’s back, and yeah, I’m glad she’s safe. But this place has been through hell and my chiquita cried, John—cried—to think she was dead.”
Cullen was halfway across the floor before Chin raised her head. Surprise rounded both her eyes and mouth when she saw him.
“If she wants to leave?” Gabe tightened his grip to prevent her struggles, not noticing that she wasn’t fighting him, but rather throwing her hands up in a belated attempt to block Cullen’s advance. “She can go anytime she wants. If she wants to come back, that’s fine too, but there’s a price to be paid for what she did. And I won’t take anything less than one lick for each of my precious Jewel’s tears.”
Gabe jumped when Cullen clamped onto his wrist, catching the arm that held Chin in a fearsome grip. Surprised, Gabe let her go.
“Wait!” Chin gasped. “Cullen, no!”
But he was beyond listening. This was the man who had controlled Chin through fear. This was the man she had cried to, begging at the height of her fevered dreams for him not to hurt her, and here he now stood, with no flooded wash between them to keep him safe. And he had a strap in his hand.
“Big mistake,” Cullen told him.
“What?” Gabe replied, confusion melting as recognition set in. “Drake?”
“You know the thing about big, mean, bad men?” Cullen asked.
“You want to let go of my arm, amigo,” Gabe growled back.
Deliberately, Cullen tightened his grip. “There’s always someone bigger, meaner, and more dangerous coming along. That someone’s me. Drop the fucking strap.”
“Cullen…” Chin pushed to get between them. This time it was Gabe who nudged her back. Whether he used a bit too much strength or whether her bad knee gave out mid-step, Cullen wouldn’t consider until much later. She fell. Gabe grabbed at her, and Cullen’s temper snapped its last restraining tether. He punched Gabe square in the mouth, snapping the other man’s head back and knocking him into the tall man, John.
Chin screamed. So did half a dozen others, and both Gabe and John fell. They sprawled in a tangle of arms and legs in the open office doorway.
“Cullen!” Struggling onto her knees, Chin grabbed after his hand. To him, it sounded as if she were crying out to him from another town. That she had to cry at all was enough to rile his temper all over again.
He felt her clutch at his pants as he stepped over both men’s legs to grab Gabe—stunned; shaking his head as if to clear it—by his shirt. John caught his arm, but Cullen yanked Gabe to his feet anyway. Heaving him out of the office and into the open brawling space of the Red Petticoat’s bar, he punched Gabe again. A chorus of horrified females cried out. The skin of his knuckles split, an old and familiar pain. The hurt was tempered by the immense satisfaction of cartilage crunching under them.
“Charlie!” a woman screamed. From somewhere in the bedrooms upstairs a thunder of footsteps came running.
Gabe fell along the bar’s interior edge, arms flailing to catch himself, sending trays of glasses and bottles crashing to the floor. Blood gushed from his nose into his mouth. Swiping at his face, Gabe looked at the smear of crimson on his fingers. Spitting to clear his mouth, he looked at Cullen next. “That, mi hermano, was a mistake.”
“Hermano. Gwailo.” Cullen shrugged out of his coat, tossing it aside. “Sometimes even dragon.” He smiled, thin and grim. “Yours was laying a hand on her.”
“Don’t! No!” Small hands grabbed at Cullen’s arm, but he shrugged out of it.
“Get back,” he ordered, stalking Gabe down the length of the bar. Gabe was retreating, but there was a glint in the dark of his eyes that said he had no intention of retreating forever. It tickled at the back of his mind that Gabe was doing it perhaps to distance Cullen from Chin. A protective move that, had he been a bit calmer, he might have stopped to wonder at. But he wasn’t calm, and when Gabe bumped into the rear of the bar, Cullen charged.
Gabe leapt over the top of the bar, getting even more space between Cullen and Chin as well as the freedom to move. Cullen scrambled after him, but no sooner did his feet touch floor than his back was hit by a warm, aggressive weight. Charlie, Cullen thought, hooking the thin pale arm that had locked around his throat and grabbing a fistful of long blonde hair. Woman, his brain identified, but his body, running on adrenaline and instinct, had already bucked her, flinging her forward over his shoulder.
“Jewel!” Gabe shouted, as Cullen threw her.
When he saw all that golden hair, the brightly colored skirts, the shocked and angry blue eyes of the madame from the mercantile, Cullen tried to stop it. To soften the inevitable impact, but he still broke a table with her. A back-aching landing that left her gasping breathlessly upon the splintered table’s remains.
“Pendejo!” Gabe tackled him. They broke another table as they went down, grappling, punching, kicking and rolling. Each swearing. Each fighting to get on top of the other.
Gabe landed three gut punches in swift succession before Cullen pinned him down. He drew back his fist just as another woman landed on his back. The trill of an Indian war-cry deafened his ear. That Gabe immediately switched from assault to defense, grabbing at Cullen’s arms to prevent him from throwing her off was something no bad man in Cullen’s experience had ever bothered with, and it surprised him, but only until the screeching banshee on his back locked her legs around his waist, her arm around his neck and fish-hooked him. Her clawing fingers hooked into his mouth and yanked. Cullen reared back, lessening the pain and the risk that she’d split his mouth, just in time to see the chair a redhead in pink petticoats swung at him.
Chin caught the legs before the other woman hit him face-first. “Stop!” she begged. “Please stop!”
Nobody listened. Jewel was rolling onto her stomach, still choking to get her lungs working again. A dark woman stood in the kitchen doorway, startled confusion and aggression at war upon her face as she alternately yelled for the other gems to get back and brandished her wooden spoon in defense of the two small children she tucked protectively behind her yellow skirts. The sun-bronzed fingers digging into the corner of his mouth felt like they were going to split right through his cheek, and Gabe was a dervish of bucking, swearing muscle arching to throw them both off so he could get his hands on Cullen again.
That was when Cullen heard it—above all the screams and the shouts and the wild Indian battle cry fixing to bust his eardrum—the much more familiar and welcome shout of his brother as he came leaping into the fray. “Yeeeehaaaa!”
Garrett tackled the woman off Cullen’s back, ripping her clawing fingers out of his mouth and freeing Cullen to fight again.
Right up until the gunshot that stopped it all.
“Je-sus Christ!” Sheriff Jeb Justice announced, six-iron still pointed at the ceiling. A thin line of smoke wisped from the muzzle, rising up to the hole he’d just created. “What. The hell. Is going on in here? Red.” He pointed to the redhead in the pink petticoat, snapping his fingers once to make her put down the chair she and Chin were wrestling over and then again as he pointed to a spot behind him. Ruby looked from him to Jewel to Gabe, and finally to Cullen. For a moment, it seemed she might not obey. Making a fac
e, she put the chair down and went to stand where she’d been told, well out of the fray near the wall.
“Jewel, honey.” Lowering his revolver but not holstering it, Justice went to help the breathless madame off the floor.
“Thank you,” she wheezed, holding her side, brushing at her dress when she thought about it. Mostly though, she glared at Cullen.
Patting her on the shoulder to get her moving out of the way, the sheriff ventured closer. He came to stand almost directly over Gabe and Cullen, motioning at them with his gun. Grudgingly, the two men disentangled. Eyeing one another, they stood.
“Well now.” Justice looked around. “Isn’t this a mess?” He turned both gun and eyes on Cullen. “Someone want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Ask him,” Cullen spat, wiping the blood from his mouth. His lip was split in two places and he could feel his right eye swelling shut. “He’s the damn killer.”
Breathing heavily, every bit as battered, Gabe’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about?”
“The family you murdered!” Cullen snapped, fists balled to hit him again if only the sheriff weren’t standing right there, pistol pointed at the wrong man. “Chin’s parents. Her brothers.”
Behind him, Chin made a sound, something strangled, not quite a gasp or a cry.
Gabe’s eyes stayed hard, but a tickle of that confusion was etching back into the lines around his eyes. Tight lipped, he said, “I never met Jade’s family.”
“The hell you say!”
“The hell I don’t!”
Sheriff present or not, Cullen was about to hit him again. He took a single ominous step toward Gabe, who did not back away. “Three days,” he breathed, dangerous and low. “Three days she was sick with fever. Three days where I didn’t know if she was going to live or die, and all I could do was sit there, listening while she cried your name and relived the horror of watching you kill everyone she ever loved!”
“No,” Chin moaned. He felt her hand on his back before she wedged herself between him and Gabe. She pushed him back, shaking her head. “No. Not Gabe. It wasn’t him.”
“No, it wasn’t,” added a calm voice from behind them all.
Startled, everyone turned to stare at the three Oriental men standing just inside the swinging saloon doors. Dressed impeccably in a grey suit and tie, the man in the middle stepped forward, leaving the other two, dressed all in black, behind him. He removed his hat, holding it loose at his side while he walked as far as the center of the room. He was within ten feet of Chin when he stopped again. His dark eyes never left her face as softly, without expression, he confessed, “It was me.”
Chapter Fifteen
Quan Ji had to pick up his own chair before he could sit. He placed it near the table Jewel was putting back to rights before she pulled two other chairs for both the sheriff and Gabe. Cullen preferred to stand and he did it in front of Chin, with one of her small hands tucked protectively into his own. He squeezed gently, letting her know he was there for her. Giving her the strength she didn’t think she had just to stand here, this close to the most terrifying person she had ever known in her life. This was the man she had feared since she was fourteen, when he and his father rode in to her family’s courtyard with the Emperor’s soldiers at their back.
He was smaller than she remembered him being. He looked refined in his expensive clothes, but beneath that, he looked every bit as weary as she also felt. Crossing his legs, he folded his hands upon his knee. In plain sight. A benefit he no doubt offered for the armed men surrounding him. It was the only benefit. Beyond that, however, he didn’t so much as give them his slightest glance.
The Red Petticoat was closed. Garrett had been sent outside to guard the swinging doors and ensure they weren’t disturbed. All around them, people were cleaning up the mess. Quan Ji didn’t look at them either. His steady, unassuming gaze was fixed on her and her alone. It made her knees weak. Even the one that wasn’t hurt had to fight not to buckle.
“This is one of the most civilized murder confessions I do believe I’ve ever been a part of,” Justice noted as he took one of the beers Ruby brought to the table. She glared at Cullen, snubbing him to pass out drinks to Gabe and even to Quan Ji. He didn’t touch it, but she still flounced away with her head held high.
“His name was Tang Kun,” Ji began. “He was…” He dipped his head in pardon. “A man of too much drink and an ill-placed acceptance of his own self-worth. One night, after finding the bottom of too many empty cups, he began to speak of things all in China know best to leave alone. He did it loudly and he did it in the Emperor’s city, mere streets from the gates of the Forbidden Palace, the most holy of holy places, built long centuries ago by the hands of nothing less than the sons of dragons. Perhaps, had Tang done his boasting in his own squalid village tavern none of his troublesome words would have reached the Great Dragon’s ear, but he did not. And they did. He was arrested. They brought him before the Emperor and he was yet drunk enough to utter the same treason. For this, he was condemned to Ling-chi, the death of a thousand cuts. A traitor’s death and… a most unpleasant thing to endure.”
“They usually are,” Cullen said flatly.
“For many long months after the silencing of his treacherous tongue, the words he spoke haunted the Great Dragon. He summoned a counsel of advisors and put to them a single question: What should be done? My father was a member of that counsel and with him that day attended his only son, a foolish boy of fifteen years.”
“You?” Gabe guessed.
Ji bowed his head. “Each in that counsel gave the answer he thought fair, but none could be made to agree with his fellow advisor. The answers they gave ranged wildly from the forgiving: Even the most noble tree has but one worm-ridden branch; to zhū lián jiǔ zú.”
The sheriff cocked his ear. “What in hell does that mean?”
“Family execution,” Ji replied, as easily as if he were ordering coffee. “The sanctioned execution of nine relations and their families, following the bloodline as far back as necessary to assure the removal of all potential traitors.”
The sheriff tapped his finger on the table. “And this Tang Kun was…”
“My uncle,” Chin quavered. She swallowed hard, hating that she could no more stop her trembling voice than she could any part of the rest of her.
“By marriage,” Ji agreed with a nod. “Nine relations were chosen. Their lineage was traced back three patriarchs; Tung, his father, grandfather, and great grandfather, all men of honorable standing. Eventually, their bloodline was connected to that of your own, the noble house of Chen.”
“And you’re the one who suggested the execution,” Cullen said, his grip on her hand tightening. Maybe that was because Chin’s trembling had grown more pronounced. It was hard to pay attention to what was being said. In her mind, she could hear the screaming of the servants, horses and pigs as everything went before the sword.
“It was my father’s suggestion,” Ji said softly. “But, because there was no unity among the answers, or perhaps for reasons only another emperor would know, the Great Dragon turned to me, a boy who until that moment had lived the whole of his life centered only upon what would make his father proud. When he asked me the question, I echoed my father’s answer. It is because of me that the Chen family, along with eight others, was wiped from China’s history.”
Chin felt her legs give way. Cullen shifted his grip to her elbow and somehow she stayed standing. The whole room began to swim. She blinked, hard and fast, fighting to keep from crying. Not now. Not in front of him.
“I was there,” Ji said, once more looking only at her. “I was there for the slaughter of all. I rode with the soldiers behind my father into your father’s courtyard. I watched him come out to meet us. I watched the proclamation as it was read and the sentence delivered. And I was there, watching while your father unbuckled his sword and offered it up with courage and humility to the Emperor. Do you know what his last words were?”
Mute, Chin shook her head. That slight motion was all it took for the first tear to escape. It trickled down her cheek, making it halfway to her chin before she swiped it away on the back of her hand.
“I have lived my life for the Emperor,” Ji told her. “Gladly would I give to him my death.”
Chin opened her mouth, struggling to breathe slow and even. Her nose was starting to run. She’d lived too long among the gwailo. Surreptitiously, she wiped it on her sleeve.
Polite enough to pretend he didn’t notice, Ji turned his head and spoke to his bodyguard, who vanished out the doorway, returning but a moment later with a sword encased in an ivory sheath. It was a perfect match to the dagger Chin already had.
“Hold it right there.” Sheriff Justice found his feet when the bodyguard neared enough to present the sword to Ji. “I don’t think I’m comfortable with you being armed at this particular juncture.”
“It is not mine,” Ji told him. “It is the sword her father presented to mine before he was executed. My father gave it to the Great Dragon, who presented it back to him in royal gratitude. My father, in turn, gave it to me the day I left China. He did so not because I made him proud, but so that I would always be reminded of the courage and honor I lacked for leaving.” The sword balanced between his hands, Ji turned to Cullen. “May I approach?”
“Only if you want to eat my gun,” Cullen replied, but already Chin was slipping her hand from his. It took everything she had to come out from behind him. She managed one step, just one. It was all her watery legs could support, and even then she had to hold on to the back of Gabe’s chair or she never would have remained standing.
“Give it to me,” she ordered, but it came out sounding more as if she were begging.
Gabe stood now too as, cautiously, Ji closed the distance between himself and Chin. He did not offer her the sword. Not at first.