The Red Heart of Jade

by Marjorie M. Liu

  “More,” she breathed. “You can touch more.”

  The four best words he had ever heard. His hand trailed higher, moving slowly as he savored every inch of soft warm skin, fingers dancing as Miri squirmed even tighter, exposing herself so that he could feel the heat of her through his jeans. His hand grabbed her backside, fingers sliding into the crease, and she bit down on her lips as he pulled her tight against him, rolling her so that he was on top, her leg still wrapped around his hip. He ground himself against her body, using the friction of his jeans to rub and rub. She cried out, and her tiny hands found their way under his waistband, seeking skin, moving and moving until she managed to push them down the front of his pants, her fingers barely grazing him. Dean groaned and Miri began to laugh.

  “That good, huh?”

  He buried his face in her neck. “If you really touch me I think I might explode.”

  “Only if you explode inside me,” she whispered, and that was enough to send him to the moon. And he was just about to go to the moon—to peel back the front of Miri’s robe to see her breasts for the first time in twenty years—when the door to the bedroom slammed open and Koni burst in, breathless.

  Miri, much to Dean’s amazement, clamped her legs like a vise around his hips, preventing him from following his first inclination to leap up and do the dance of shame. Which put him in a very awkward, and yet manly, position when he looked Koni straight in the eye and said, “What the hell do you want?”

  “We’ve got a guest,” the shape-shifter said, and his eyes began to glow.

  Chapter Nine

  It was, Miri thought, a mystery that her brain had not yet exploded. She gave credit to her grandmother for that, a woman who had seen more horror, suffered more in one lifetime, than Miri could ever imagine—and yet, to her very end, remained unbowed, unbroken. Still smiling.

  The very least Miri could do was act the same. That, or die trying.

  Pretend. Pretend to accept everything that’s happening to you and maybe it’ll stop being crazy. Maybe it’ll make sense.

  Which might be just as disturbing, but such was life. Miri accepted it. She had to survive. She had to keep her mind strong and intact. She had to believe.

  “When you say guest …” Dean began, as Miri ran to the closet. She found some women’s clothes and yanked out a pair of khakis. She did not take time to look for underwear, just stuffed her legs into the pants and grabbed a T-shirt. She hesitated for only a moment before turning her back on the two men, throwing off her robe and pulling the shirt over her head in one smooth motion. She felt the break in their conversation, but ignored them, looking for a jacket.

  “Not someone we know.”

  “But I didn’t hear the alarms,” Dean protested.

  “He, uh, flew in.”

  Miri stopped what she was doing and stared at Koni. “Flew in?”

  “Shit,” Dean said. “Shape-shifter?”

  “Yeah,” he said uneasily. “You really ought to go out there now.”

  Dean scowled and reached for the handgun on the nightstand. He tucked it in the back of his jeans.

  “I don’t know if you really need that,” Koni said. Dean gave him a look and even Miri knew better than to push. The man liked his firearms. Fine.

  They left the bedroom single file, Miri bringing up the rear, which meant she was the last to see their “guest,” though the sound Dean made as he entered the living room was warning enough.

  And, indeed, she got a shock when she saw who was waiting for them: a tall man dressed entirely in white, a perfect complement to his white skin and long white hair. He wore sunglasses. His mouth was a pale line in his angular face. A big mouth, and very wide.

  Miri recognized him. His face was the new hot thing; she had even read an article about him in one of the inflight magazines on her plane ride from California. Bai Shen, egnimatic rock star, who still managed to maintain a playboy image despite reports—meant to be endearing, no doubt—that he really did like to keep to himself. Unless there was a girl in front of him who was very truly hot.

  And he’s not human, to boot. Now that is interesting.

  “Well,” Dean said slowly, still frowning. “I guess you were staring at me for more than my pretty face when I saw you in the hotel lobby tonight.”

  One pale eyebrow arched over the sunglasses. “You took me off guard. I didn’t expect to see you there.”

  “Which implies that you know who I am,” Dean countered. “Care to explain?”

  “No,” Bai Shen said.

  Koni coughed. “Maybe we should sit down. Anyone need a drink?”

  “No drinks,” Dean said. “Just answers. But first, take off your glasses, hot stuff. I want to see your eyes.”

  Bai Shen did as Dean asked. Miri was not sure what she was expecting, but was surprised to find a fairly ordinary gaze—unique only because his eyes were the color of gold. Not just light brown or hazel, but a polished rich gold that reminded Miri of the real thing, deep twenty-four karats set into his eyes.

  Dean nodded. “Okay, then. Let’s talk.”

  Everyone sat down. Miri stayed close to Dean, more for his comfort than hers. She did not feel threatened by Bai Shen—which, considering everything that had happened, seemed remarkable. Dean, on the other hand, was practically quivering with tension. Koni was harder to read—especially because she barely knew him—but he also seemed to display a bit more … deference than she expected, given their brief encounter.

  “So you’re a rock star,” Dean said. “Tell me how a celebrity playboy shape-shifter knows who the hell I am and how to find this place.”

  “I’m rich and I hear things. What more do you want?”

  “A lot. But somehow, I don’t think we have time for twenty questions. You know us, you found us, and it must be for a reason, so just spit it out fast.”

  “The murderer you encountered tonight is my father.”

  “Okay, not that fast.”

  “Your father?” Koni asked.

  “Your father?” Dean echoed. “God. My brain.”

  “Are we talking about the man who burned all those people to death, the one who showed up at the university?” Miri looked at all the men. “Is he?”

  “Yes,” Bai Shen said. “And the jade your friend found is the reason.”

  Miri briefly closed her eyes. “Is there a billboard in the sky, or something? Why does everyone and their mother seem to know about this thing?”

  “It’s not that many people,” Bai Shen said. “Really. It’s just … what you have is so important, so world-changing, there are men and women willing to give up their lives—or the lives of others—to possess it.”

  “It’s a four-thousand-year-old rock,” Miri argued. “Other than its historical value, I don’t see anything about it that would incite this level of violence.”

  “Do you have it?”

  She hesitated, but that was answer enough. Dean sighed. “Miri, you got your purse?”

  “Um, no,” she said, trying to remember the last time she had seen it. She recalled slipping the jade back into her purse after Dean’s collapse, but after that …

  Bai Shen cleared his throat and reached down by his feet. He held up her black leather bag. “I believe this is yours?”

  Miri, face hot, leaned over and took it from him. He smelled like wood smoke up close, the edge of some winter fire, and his eyes glowed just a little brighter as she neared.

  “I didn’t look inside,” the shape-shifter said, glancing sideways at Dean. “I’m a gentleman.”

  Dean frowned. Miri, stifling a smile, unzipped her bag and removed the jade. It was warm in her hand, and she felt a gentle weight in her chest, a presence in the bone between her breasts that was, in her imagination, full of light. The sensation was so strong she almost looked down her shirt. Instead, she held the jade out to Bai Shen. Her arm shook.

  He did not take it from her. Instead he stared, frozen, his body growing ever more white until for a momen
t, Miri thought he might begin to glow. Glow like his eyes, which burned golden like the sun, heat to the winter snow of his skin. It hurt to look at him. He was not beautiful, but his presence was powerful, and it was almost too much.

  And then, quite suddenly, her mouth filled with words—those butterflies returning to flutter their wings against her tongue—and there were so many things to say, and she lost herself in words, in language, in a vision that was full of impossible light, and she thought, Let it go, let it go, let it go.

  But a hand touched her, and the light died, and the butterflies went away, withering to dust inside her mouth, and she wanted to fight, to rage against that loss, but even as she struck out another hand touched her, and another, and another, and she was buried in hands and in voices. And yet, only one voice cut through, cut right down to her heart, and she clung to that sound and let it draw her from the rage, draw her completely and utterly into another place of light; not otherworldly, but effortlessly human.

  Miri opened her eyes and found Dean only a breath’s distance from her face. She tried to move and found she could not; it took her a moment to realize that all three men were holding her down.

  “What happened?” she whispered. Her voice was hoarse.

  “You began speaking in tongues,” Dean said, his voice as ragged as his breathing. Miri’s gaze slid sideways; she found Koni pressing upon her right hand, and at her feet, Bai Shen.

  “Not just tongues,” she said. “What did I do?”

  “I touched you,” Bai Shen said. “Or rather, I touched the jade. It was a mistake.”

  “You pulled me away,” she murmured, exhausted. “From something … beautiful.”

  “You sure as hell didn’t want to leave,” Dean said. “What was it?”

  “Light,” she said. “So much light.”

  “Pretty lights,” he said. “Okay, I got that. But if we let you up, are you still gonna try and get back to that happy place?”

  Miri had enough energy to give him a dirty look. Dean smiled, mouth all crooked. “Right, bao bei.”

  The men released her slowly, as though uncertain of what she might do, and Miri herself did not move for one long minute. She did not feel as though she owned her body.

  “Can I just … stay down here while we talk about this?” Miri said to them. Dean’s smile widened—relief, it was relief she saw in his eyes—and he lay back down beside her and ever so gently propped her head up on his arm, nestling close.

  “Good?” he asked her, and when she nodded, he looked at Koni and Bai Shen and said, “What the hell just happened?”

  “The jade is powerful,” Bai Shen said. A light sheen of sweat covered his brow; some of his hair stuck to it. He looked more normal, less like an otherworldly rock star.

  “I get the power thing now,” Miri said. “Really, I do. But this is only one half of a larger piece. What happens if we put them together?”

  “Danger,” Bai Shen said. “That is exactly why I am here.”

  “Not because of your father?” Koni asked him.

  Pain passed, fleeting, through his face. “Not just because of him, though if he wasn’t involved, I might not be here right now.”

  “He wants the jade,” Dean said. “He’s killing to get to it. All those people he murdered? He must have thought they would know where it was.”

  “Still in a mummy,” Miri muttered. “The timing of this is all wrong. All this planning and preparation for something that two weeks ago was buried in a Taiwanese jungle? That would only make sense if someone could … I don’t know, see the future or something.” The moment those words passed her lips, she stopped, closing her eyes. “Oh God.”

  “Yes,” Dean said. “Welcome to my life.”

  “Don’t be too surprised,” Bai Shen said. “The jade is a large enough event that a psychic of nominal power would feel some premonition of its discovery, even if they didn’t know quite what it is they’re feeling or seeing.”

  Dean frowned. “But that means we’ve got at least two different pre-cogs with the power and resources to put themselves into play for this thing.”

  “There can’t be that many people who fit the bill,” Miri said. “Can’t you track them down or something?”

  “I wish,” Dean muttered, closing his eyes. “But first, I want to know what the jade is.”

  “A book,” Bai Shen said. “A very powerful book.”

  “I’ve heard it referred to like that,” Dean said. “But a book of what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s very ancient. All that’s left are legends, conjecture. Dr. Lee, you’ve heard of the Three August Ones, correct?”

  “The God Kings. Men who ruled during China’s early history. They predated the Five Emperors and the Xia Dynasty.”

  “There is a legend, Dr. Lee. It tells of a red book, a book carved in jade. A book that will outlast time. The words of the book were supposedly written for the eyes of the gods, and as such, only the gods could read them.”

  “What are you saying? That the legend refers to the jade?”

  “Maybe. It fits the description.”

  “I took a reading of the thing earlier tonight,” Dean said. “All I could hear were voices. Male. Talking about a book. There was a guy who wanted to die. It didn’t make sense what he was saying, only that he acted like he had been alive for a long time. Like, immortal long. And he wanted it to end.”

  “So, what? This thing kills people?” Miri shook her head. “I’m sorry, but I just don’t believe it. When I was inside … wherever I was, I didn’t feel anything evil about it.”

  “I’m not trying to imply it’s evil,” Bai Shen said. “Just … powerful.”

  Dean held up his head. “Wait. How do you know so much about this? And don’t give me any cheap excuses.”

  “Those are the only kind I have,” the shape-shifter said. “I can’t tell you why or how I know these things.”

  “But you expect us to believe you?”

  “I don’t expect anything,” he said. “But I hope.”

  Dean rolled his eyes. Koni said, “Tell us about your father. What’s his interest?”

  “And why is he psycho?” Dean added. Miri poked his ribs.

  Bai Shen frowned at Dean; his mouth was remarkably suited to a frown, which curved and curved like some awful rainbow made of only one color: white.

  “He’s not himself,” he said in a hard voice, and with his glasses off it was easy to see his youth, all the cool varnish, the high-end maintenance, stripped away with the pain in his face. “My father’s been possessed.”

  “Possessed,” Miri echoed.

  “You have to believe me, Mr. Campbell. This is not him. Something is controlling him. Forcing him to kill those people.”

  Dean did not counter his words with disbelief or more argument. He said nothing at all for a long moment, and then glanced at Koni, who nodded slowly. “Okay. Tell me more. Tell me what could do that.”

  “They don’t have names. I don’t know what they are. But the more they touch you, the more they change you. Your eyes, your teeth, your entire body and mind. They transform your soul. You know what my father is now, Mr. Campbell. What you see is not the same man I knew less than a year ago.”

  “Let’s say that’s true. What the hell do you want us to do about it? Fix him? And what does this have to do with Miri and the artifact?”

  “Miri, I still don’t understand. I wish I did. But what I can be certain of is that the thing controlling my father wants the jade. It wants the Book. The whole Book, and if it gets it, if it can use the power—”

  “No,” Miri said, remembering butterflies, light. She wondered where the jade was, and glanced about until she found it on the sofa. “Whatever is in there, we can’t let anyone have it who doesn’t deserve it. We can’t, Dean.”

  “How was your father possessed?” Koni asked.

  Bai Shen shook his head. “I don’t know. Just that I felt the change in him immediately. He was not the same man.”<
br />
  “And again I ask, what the hell do you want us to do about it?”

  “I want you not to kill him, Mr. Campbell. Please.”

  Dean blew out his breath. “Do you know what your dad has done? Have you been to the crime scenes?”

  “No,” Bai Shen said.

  “And have you witnessed the murders?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then don’t ask me to hold myself back when I deal with good old Dad. I’m sorry if someone is controlling his actions. I can’t tell you how sorry. But I refuse to handicap myself just because he’s got a big bad spirit sucking on his brain cells. I won’t do it. There’s too much at stake.”

  Bai Shen closed his eyes. “If you knew him—”

  “If I knew him like you know him? I bet I’d like him. But that’s not the man I know.”

  “I understand.”

  No, Bai Shen did not understand, but Miri admired him for saying the words, no matter how bitter they might be on the tongue. She did not feel particularly bitter; she was on Dean’s side. Moral ambiguity notwithstanding, there was a bottom line to consider, and that was how many more people would have to die if something was not done.

  Bai Shen stood. He put his sunglasses on. “I need to go.”

  “Now?” Dean asked. “Don’t get me wrong, man, but you haven’t really helped us.”

  “I’ve given you all I can.” The shape-shifter sounded weary.

  “What should we do next?” Miri asked him. “You must have some idea.”

  “Find the second piece of jade. The Book is dangerous, but only in the wrong hands.”

  “And you think we’re the right hands to have it? Why? You don’t know us.”

  Bai Shen said nothing. Dean gave him a hard, cold smile. “You son of a bitch. You’re holding back. You know more than what you’re telling.”

  “I’m telling you more than I should.”

  “No such thing,” Dean snapped. “You come here talking about hope, you want us to trust you, but that can’t happen like this.”

  “Then ignore everything I’ve said,” Bai Shen told him angrily. “Use it or don’t use it, I don’t care. All I want is my father back. That’s all I want, Mr. Campbell, and you won’t even try not to hurt him. You won’t even give me a goddamn maybe.”