The Red Heart of Jade

by Marjorie M. Liu

  MARJORIE M. LIU

  THE RED HEART

  OF JADE

  CRITICS ARE WILD FOR USA TODAY BESTSELLER MARJORIE M. LIU!

  “A star is born! …Liu is an amazing new voice: ingenious, fresh and utterly spellbinding.”

  —RT BOOKclub

  SHADOW TOUCH

  “Liu’s screenplay-worthy dialogue, vivid action and gift for the punchy, unexpected metaphor rockets her tale high above the pack. Readers of early Laurell K. Hamilton, Charlaine Harris and the best thrillers out there should try Liu now and catch a rising star.”

  —Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

  “Artur and Elena’s relationship is one of the smartest and most mature love affairs to grace the pages of romance. If you have yet to add Liu to your must-read list, you’re doing yourself—and your patrons—a disservice.”

  —Booklist (Starred, Boxed Review)

  “Book Two in this mind-blowing series proves that Liu is a world-class talent. Her stories are filled with extraordinary characters, and plotlines that are ingenious and riveting. Waiting for the next book in the series will be torture!”

  —RT BOOKclub (Top Pick)

  “Even if you don’t like stories involving the supernatural or paranormal, you will like this one. It consists of everything you need for a perfect read—intrigue, suspense, mystery, romance, humor, love, sacrifice, sadness, and characters you just have to know. It’s amazing.”

  —Romance Reader at Heart

  “[A] towering talent, Marjorie M. Liu makes Shadow Touch a thrilling, heart-touching, taut read. Buy it. Read it. You won’t be disappointed.”

  —Revision 14

  “Ms. Liu is simply one of the best new writers to appear on the romance scene in quite a while.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  MORE PRAISE FOR MARJORIE M. LIU!

  A TASTE OF CRIMSON

  “Passionate, intense and gritty, this paranormal thriller is a truly enthralling read.”

  —RT BOOKclub (Top Pick)

  “Liu has a knack for making far-fetched circumstances seem feasible, and she draws characters with such precision…they practically step off the page.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  TIGER EYE

  “The romance between Delilah and Hari tantalizingly builds until it culminates in a sensual love scene…. [An appealing and] striking paranormal romance.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The mystical meets the magical in Tiger Eye, and is sure to captivate lovers of paranormal romance.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “I didn’t just like this book, I LOVED this book. [Marjorie M. Liu] has a great new voice, a fresh premise, everything I love to read. Anyone who loves my work should love hers.”

  —New York Times Bestselling Author Christine Feehan

  “A groundbreaking new paranormal novel. Author Marjorie M. Liu has crafted a stunning tour de force that combines raw action, unbelievable phenomena, and deep passion…. A definite keeper!”

  —A Romance Review

  “Tiger Eye reads like the offspring of a Feehan novel and an X-Men comic, and it is loads of fun…the most promising debut I’ve read in a long time…original, sensual, and action-packed.”

  —All About Romance

  “Marjorie M. Liu writes an action-packed novel that will keep your attention from start to finish.”

  —Romance Junkies

  IN MORTAL PERIL

  “They’re names of the other victims,” Koni said. “And a few extras, maybe people who haven’t died yet. It’s all there, along with some pictures.”

  Dean set down the metal box. It was locked, but he hammered the bolt with the butt of his gun. It fell off. He opened the lid. Inside lay a gun.

  “Huh,” Dean said, and took the paperwork. It was true—all the names on the list were those who had been murdered. Names, addresses, phone numbers. Written in English, not Chinese.

  Beneath it all, he felt something glossy. A photograph. He pulled it out for a look and saw a candid moment of a woman sitting in a chair in a coffee shop. A woman he’d loved, a woman he’d thought already dead.

  Mirabelle Lee.

  Other Love Spell books by Marjorie M. Liu:

  SHADOW TOUCH

  A TASTE OF CRIMSON (Crimson City Series)

  TIGER EYE

  To my Yeh-Yeh.

  1913–2006

  Because of you, my flowerlike fair,

  The swift years like waters flow—

  I have sought you everywhere,

  And at last I find you here,

  In a dark room full of woe—

  —Tang Xianzu (1550–1616)

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Ninteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  In the moments before Dean Campbell opened his eyes to the fire burning him alive, he found himself lost within a dream of stone and light, where bones crunched underfoot and a chain pressed hard around his ankle, binding him tight within the center of a raggedy sand circle. A deep dream, an old dream, the kind he rarely had anymore, and it was only the scent of roasting meats that pulled him from the mystery of shadows inside his mind. Pulled him free and floating, consciousness returning with a hard peeling light that became, after a moment’s confusion, an inferno, a sheet of pure heat washing over his naked body.

  Fire. He was on fire.

  Dean screamed. He screamed until his eyes bulged, but he made no sound. His throat was hostage. And like his voice, his body refused him. He could not move. Paralyzed, or maybe he was already dead and this was hell: forced to watch himself burn to ash, his life given up like a paper doll to a matchstick, some human sacrifice to the white-hot beast licking his eyes, melting his mouth, pushing deep inside his ears to roar like thunder; a sound to ride his terror upon as he silently screamed, screamed and screamed until something broke inside his head and shattered.

  He felt hands on his body. Real hands, the kind he had not felt in years. Small and female, delicate. Moving against his chest, sinking into his splitting flesh. Scratching. Cutting. Carving an incision above his heart. He felt no pain, no—nerve endings melting, sloughing away like old skin— but he sensed those fingers—oh God, oh God— slide into his body past bone to wrap tight around his hammering heart, and he thought, This is it, I’m gonna die, I’m already dead, what a loser, what a goddamn way to end it. But as the hand squeezed inside his chest, fingers unforgiving, another voice intruded on Dean’s mind, a voice loud and clear and unfamiliar, and he heard a man say, No, not yet, not again.

  And just like that, the fire boomed, puffed, the pressure eased. The world collapsed into darkness.

  Screams. Dean heard terrible screams. He thought someone else must be hurt, dying—get up, get up, get your gun and fight— but after a moment of dazed horrified wonder he realized that it was him—his voice, finally working—and what a beautiful, awful sound. He could not shut his mouth. He could not stop his body from writhing as the paralysis eased. Yet still, blindness; a darkness absolute … until Dean raised a shaking hand a
nd touched his face.

  He opened his eyes. The world came into softly lit focus: a white ceiling, creamy walls, a darkened window covered in ivory sheers. Hotel finery at its best. Clean and perfect and not on fire.

  Not on fire.

  He sucked in his breath and closed his eyes. Gripped the rumpled sheets between his fists to steady himself before slowly, carefully, touching his body. He was naked, covered in sweat, but his skin was smooth and he felt no pain. He was whole. Intact. Still had a penis and all the other bits that went with it. No bad smells, like meat or smoke. Just the light, sweet scent of orchids.

  So. Just a dream, then. A goddamn dream.

  Dean sat up. Cold metal spilled from the hollow of his throat; a woman’s locket, hanging from a thin chain around his neck. He gripped the necklace hard, savoring the rounded edge that cut into his palm. Gulped down long cold breaths that did nothing to slow his heart. He felt woozy, nauseated. Tried to imagine the fire as a dream and could not. The heat was still too real.

  His knuckles brushed against his chest, the skin above his heart. He felt a scar, but that was familiar, old news. Except, just below it he touched something else, a ridge that should not be, and Dean opened his eyes.

  There was a mark. A curving red line, like a welt or bloody tattoo, the afterthought of a sharp knife. Dean pressed his fingers against it, tracing the edges. He felt pain. The first pain since opening his eyes to the fire, the dream.

  Or maybe not a dream at all. Dean remembered those small hands, the sensation of fingers pushing, pushing so damn hard into his chest, wrapping around his heart. Squeezing. He remembered that voice in his head. He remembered fire.

  All of it, so real. Real enough to kill. Real enough to almost make sense, considering what he had been chasing for the past three days. Which, given his luck, meant one thing only.

  He was in some very deep shit.

  Night in Taipei. It brought out a different crowd. Dean rode the hotel elevator down to the main lobby, surrounded on all sides by the sleek and dazzling, men and women glittering at a high sheen like polished diamonds, airbrushed and ready for an evening of pretend fun and deadly earnest networking. Little games of the rich, with a wineglass in hand. Do a little dance, sing a little song. Get down tonight.

  Dean felt like the odd duck in a cage of swans. Un-shaved, unpressed, almost unhinged; just jeans and dirty sneakers, with highbrow brownie points deducted for his threadbare Transformers T-shirt and scuffed denim jacket. High fashion, Wal-Mart style. Not even a shower, and God, he figured he needed one by now. Three days into his current assignment, running the streets like a hound on the hunt, and in Taiwan’s summer heat. Like doing the Iron Man in a sauna, with no time to stop, no time to rest. At least, not until day—and Dean thought he would have been better off staying awake.

  Nausea swarmed his throat. He pushed it down.

  Smile, he told himself grimly. Not now, because it’ll freak out the pretty people, but smile. Get a fucking smile in your motherfucking heart, you son of a bitch.

  Because that was the only way he was going to have the strength to get out of this elevator, walk out of this hotel, and face the rest of this night. No other option. If a man did not smile he just might cry—or lie down and die—and that was just no way to carry on. Dean had things to do. He had to keep on trucking. People were depending on him, lives had to be saved, and if that meant being the most cheerful son of a bitch on this planet, then goddammit, he was going to be that man even if it killed him.

  Which it might. His chest still throbbed. Dean curled his hand against his thigh; he wanted to keep prodding the mysterious injury, had spent the past thirty minutes in front of a mirror, naked, doing just that. Staring at the curling incision, staring and staring until it was all he could see. No way to shrug it off, either. Might be he had witnessed enough shit over the past three days to qualify for nightmares, but this was physical, real, not self-inflicted. Dean’s nails were clean, and there was nothing around his bed that could have made that incision. Nothing to cut, nothing to scratch, not unless his mind was playing tricks. Riding high on insane.

  The elevator doors opened. Dean entered an octagon-shaped alcove framed by dark marble and golden globe lights made of glass. He smelled orchids, lilies; the air tinkled with the fine murmur of quiet voices, the low melody of piano, the click of high heels, and the chime of fine china. The ceiling floated more than one hundred feet above his head, emanating a sheer warm glow from tiny lights set like baubles in speckled white. Beyond the elevators, in a wide hall leading directly into the main lobby, men and women mingled in suits and evening gowns, casual chic; dressed for nights on the town, for the tropical heat, for the elegance demanded by wealth and good breeding and lives far from the street, the universal gutter with which Dean was so familiar: violence and poverty and good old-fashioned dirt.

  Some of the people looked at Dean like he was dirt. Which was fine. He knew the score. Expected nothing less. He did not look like a nice man. He did not look rich. Of course, that was the entire point.

  The guns strapped to his ankles chafed. The rig beneath his T-shirt was not much better. Three illegal weapons, smuggled into the country, loaded and ready to go. Dean could already feel them in his hands—natural and perfect extensions. Practically the best parts of him. Right up there with his mind.

  He let go of his control as he walked through the lobby, taking a circular path that led him directly through the crowd. His shields dropped, the world shifting as flesh melted into light, bodies quivering into comet trails, pillars of energy, leaving wakes in the air like strings and threads. Footprints, fingerprints, soul prints—echoes of the living, lingering vibrations quivering to some quantum jazz, making him feel like a musician as he moved through the light—tasting the world, trying to find the right color and note, the perfect combination of identity and murder.

  But it was a waste of time. He found no fire as he stared through the eyes of the people around him. He found no death as he pulled himself along the fading trails of energy crisscrossing the lobby, nothing at all as he tracked the actions of every man and woman who had walked this floor in the past day. Picture shows flickered through his head—incontrovertible testimonies—remote views not barred by distance or time. Hard sex, fights, parties and national monuments and designer shops. Interiors of limousines and dance clubs, cigarette smoke and crying babies. Nothing incriminating. Perfectly boring. Not one person to use a bullet on.

  And you were expecting what? A break in the case? A miracle? When everything else about this assignment has been shit in the drain?

  Yeah, well. There was nothing wrong with being an optimist. Especially now, given that he was so totally and irrevocably screwed.

  No traces in my room, nothing recent in the hall. I burned like there was a flamethrower up my ass, got sliced in the chest, and the bastard didn’t even leave a trail. Fucking uncivilized.

  And unnatural. Just like everything else he had encountered over the past three days. Dean had been stymied before on particularly tough cases, but nothing like this. Taipei had a killer on the loose, an arsonist and psychopath—a cruel vindictive son of a bitch—but tracking the man was like trying to find a ghost; a creature with no energy left to share, someone who did not exist. Dean had found nothing of him at any of the crime scenes, just impressions from the lingering vibrations of the dead—their last visions, the world around them as they burned. The sensation of a man watching. Dark eyes.

  Not much of a description. Nothing else to go on, though. Nothing about the energies crisscrossing the lobby that tickled Dean’s brain as he soaked in the light; nothing familiar, not even some gut instinct crying, There, you might just have him there.

  He shut off his inner sight, and the world snapped back into place. People had bodies again; the material had form, substance. All those bits and pieces of energy, invisible. He almost wished that was not the case. He liked seeing people as nothing but light. It put life into perspective, calmed
him down, all Zen-like. He needed some calm right now. Really badly.

  His wandering had brought him close to the massive flower display arranged near the hotel entrance: a tanglewood, sprouting orchids and wild lilies, misted ferns and curling vines; other, more delicate blossoms tucked away like pixies. Dean heard laughter. Women, voices low, husky, warm like whiskey with the rough burn. He peered around the flowers and saw short skirts, long golden legs, fake breasts, perfect hair. Some of the faces were nice, too. Six high-maintenance women, glossy mouths shining, clinging to the arms of a tall man in white—white linen pants, loose white linen shirt, long white hair framing a pale chiseled face sporting mirrored sunglasses. Definite dye-job. A diamond glinted from one ear. The women looked ready to tear open his fly and take him down like a fat, juicy deer. Dean thought it must be nice to be that wanted.

  The man in white smiled at the ladies, but not with his teeth; his mouth simply curved and curved, curved so much it was like looking at the rock star version of an albino clown. Very disturbing. Very familiar. Dean recognized him, had seen that pale mug on a billboard at the airport, on the covers of local magazines, on Taiwanese television, in a music video playing on monitors in a night market. He was the new hot tamale, the best man around town. Always in white, always with those glasses, with that same damn smile cutting his face like an upside-down frown.

  Bai Shen. White God. Singer, model, playboy. Not in any immediate danger of spending an evening alone. Bastard.

  Dean backed away toward the glass doors. He studied Bai Shen, the spectacle surrounding him, and thought for a moment he was being watched through those mirrored sunglasses. Watched with the kind of intensity that could explain the sudden shift of that curving smile into nothing more than a crooked line.