The Red Heart of Jade

by Marjorie M. Liu

  Huh. Interesting.

  There were other people within the temple’s courtyard, most of them standing or kneeling before the shadowed alcove where a golden Buddha sat amid incense and flowers. An old woman pressed her forehead three times to the earth before the altar, murmuring to herself.

  Dean moved slowly to either side of the temple, studying stone and wood and painting, until he stopped, quite suddenly, above a grate located to the side. Miri looked down. All she saw was darkness. It looked like a sewer to her.

  “No,” Miri said, seeing the expression on Dean’s face. “You can’t go down there.”

  “It has a ladder. See?”

  “What I see is that you’re going to get yourself arrested if you start ripping out grates from the middle of a Buddhist temple and go diving into the sewers. Actually, forget the police. You’re going to contract some horrible illness and die.”

  “I don’t think it’s a sewer down there, Miri. It doesn’t smell.”

  He crouched and looped his fingers through the grate. Tugged. Miri glanced around the temple. Several people were watching them, but so far, no problems.

  And then Dean moved the grate. It made a horrible screeching sound that echoed like the cry of a dying animal. Several women gasped, clutching their chests. Miri felt like doing the same. That, and kicking Dean down the hole.

  “You coming?” he asked. He had a small backpack that Ren had thrown together for him, and he pulled out a headlight attached to a colorful elastic band. He put it on his head and switched it on.

  “I’m coming,” Miri said. “But if anything happens …”

  “Yeah, yeah. Death, pain, destruction. Probably some castration. If it makes you feel better, I’ll do everything in my power to keep my manhood safe from the possibility of retaliation.”

  “Don’t bother,” Miri said. “I doubt there’s much there, anyway.”

  Dean grinned. “Don’t knock the goods before you sample ’em, darlin’. I am a love machine.”

  “Keep talking,” she said, as Dean slid into the hole—which suddenly looked far more ancient than her first impression. He began climbing down.

  This is so very stupid, right up there with all the other so very stupid things you’ve done in the past twenty-four hours. Oh. God.

  Apparently, she was not the only other person to think that this was maniacally dumb—several people rushed up to the hole, wringing their hands and talking fast in Cantonese. Miri shook her head, tried to edge a word or two in in Mandarin, but gave up. When she tried to follow Dean, an old man grabbed the back of her shirt. Miri swatted gently at him, trying to be polite, but the man was persistent. Miri was considering more aggressive tactics when a screaming bundle of black feathers descended, pecking and clawing. The man lurched away from her with his hands over his head, crying out for help.

  Miri did not waste time. She slid into the hole and down she went, step over hand over step, down the ladder into darkness. Just another big adventure, courtesy of Campbell & Lee, creators of Wild! Times! Incorporated, where for a small flat fee, unsuspecting victims might find themselves chased by maniacs, with bonus travel to highly exotic locales—all for the purpose of crawling into black holes to run among rats, sewage, and other unmentionables. Lovely. What a winner.

  Dean waited at the bottom, his little headlight bobbing like a star on the end of a fishhook. The last few rungs were gone; he grabbed her waist and helped her down. She expected to step in something wet, but to her surprise, the ground was hard and dry, the air blissfully cool, clean-smelling. Dean dug another light out of his backpack and strapped it around her head.

  “Which direction?” Miri asked, suddenly less apprehensive about their underground adventure. Her voice echoed. The tunnel was narrow, pale, and rough-hewn, as though carved by hand. It stretched in two directions, both leading into darkness. Miri heard sounds above; she looked up and saw tiny faces peering down. She wondered if anyone would send the police after them.

  Dean grabbed her hand, staring at the path directly ahead. “This way. I think.”

  “Comforting,” she muttered.

  They walked carefully. Miri trailed her fingers along the wall, taking impressions of the stone. The ground beneath them was well worn. She did not think the erosion was water-based. Foot traffic, was her guess, though why anyone would be walking down here—and so often as to wear away stone and earth …

  “I wonder if this tunnel is on a city map,” Miri mused. “It must be.”

  “Does it matter?”

  “I suppose not, but if it has any historical significance—and I would guess it does—then we could find out where exactly it leads, if there are branching tunnels, and who built it and why.”

  Dean grunted. “Something tells me it’s not four thousand years old.”

  “Definitely not. Which means that if the red jade is down here—”

  “It’s buried. Or it was put here at a later date.”

  “That would imply that someone was trying to hide it.”

  “Yup.” He glanced over his shoulder. Miri checked behind them, as well. She did not see anything, but the darkness closed in tight and she suddenly felt like hands were on her neck, crawling up her spine, ready to grab and twist and break. She shivered, rubbing her arms.

  Dean’s back was turned, but he stopped and looked at her. She did not know what he saw, only that he reached out and wrapped her in a quick tight hug that sent the dark things of her imagination skittering away.

  “I forgot,” he said. “You don’t like the dark.”

  “I’m fine,” Miri protested. “Really.”

  Really and truly, she was fine when he held her like this and she remembered—so long ago—how he had stood guard against the shadows in her mind. Shadows that sometimes seemed so real she could touch them. Shadows that, on certain occasions, she seemed to remember as having weight and form, presence. As though once upon a time she had rested in darkness, not just in sleep, but as a body alone in a void, and that there, in that place to be forgotten, the oubliette still waited.

  They moved on, but Dean placed Miri’s hands at his waist and the connection was a comfort as they walked and walked, following the one line of tunnel as it snaked down and up, curving, narrowing until they had to crawl, and still Dean insisted that it was close, that they were almost there, until Miri’s feet ached and her body was so tired she was ready to beg for a sit-down, a nap, anything to ease up. She was used to hard digs in difficult locales, but crouching and sifting through layers of dirt used different muscles than hauling ass, and she was out of shape for the long endurance trek.

  Indeed, she was just about ready to draw a line in the sand and turn around, when the tunnel abruptly widened. Dean stopped Miri with a finger to her mouth. She held her breath, listening.

  Water, running. And beneath that, a muffled sound.

  Like a groan.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dean switched off their headlamps. Darkness swallowed them, so black he could not see his hand in front of his face. He and Miri crept along the path with their palms against the wall, moving slow, trying to be quiet, eavesdropping and hearing nothing but water. Whoever had made that noise was silent now, though Dean smelled incense. A drop of light entered the gloom, enough for him to see Miri moving beside him.

  Dean heard a scuffing sound in the tunnel behind. Miri went very still, and he felt her slow exhale, breath moving light against his face. Careful, quiet, he went for his gun. The weight felt good in his hand. It made him focus, instead of dwelling on guilt—guilt for being so hasty and cocky, bringing Miri down into this place without taking the appropriate precautions. Like bringing an army along with him.

  But then he thought again of the jade, and felt in his heart a great swelling, almost like music, and a pull that had been at him since touching the artifact in the safe house vault in Taipei. He had managed to ignore it while still in Taiwan—it was hardly more than an afterthought—but ever since touching down in
Hong Kong …

  Well, he had not expected such a strong reaction, and from his vision perhaps only a memory or two. But not a life, not an experience that was wholly, explicitly painful.

  Cut. Broken. Breaking. Watching. Feeling.

  The woman and man had committed themselves, submitted willingly to the primitive operation. But with fear. So much fear. Holding that jade in their hands, tasting the stone before placing it in their bodies. Searching it for magic, because it was magic. There was no other word for it. Maybe what Dean did was just science, odd wiring—but that glow inside his head when he touched the jade was more than human, more than anything he had ever seen, and it called to him.

  It called.

  Dean shifted sight; Miri transformed into a ray of light, beating back the darkness like the sun. Only, she still left no trail. Dean reached out and found Miri’s waist, her hand, and drew her close. His mouth pressed against her cheek, moving up to her ear, and he breathed, “I love you.”

  She nodded against him, hugging his ribs so tight he lost his ability to breathe. And then her arms dropped away and he heard her move. Metal scraped, a fine hiss. Ren had given her a new knife to replace the one she had lost.

  “Do you see anything?” she whispered, and Dean looked up and down the tunnel. He found threads, twisting and bright. Still fresh. He stepped into them and felt stung with familiarity.

  Oh, shit, he thought, and considered turning back. But they had come this far, and if not now, then never—and they needed that jade. Might be he didn’t know exactly why they needed it, but it was enough that everyone else wanted it—and that somehow, for some reason, he and Miri were both tied up in the mystery of its existence.

  “Who’s there?” Miri asked him.

  “Old friend,” he said, and refused to elaborate. He thought it was enough. He felt her go very still, and considered making her stay behind. Not that she would listen to him.

  He and Miri pushed ahead, moving swiftly; the sound of running water grew louder, as did other noises: scrapes and shuffles, cloth rubbing. And there, again, a low groan. He clicked the safety off his gun. A low burn entered his heart, a fire in his skin. He was growing accustomed to the sensation. Welcomed it, even, because whatever else had been done to him, that heat, those words, seemed to tell him when danger was near, and that was something to appreciate. Like now. He rubbed his chest.

  The tunnel ended. In front of them, a waterfall. On the other side, bodies shimmered inside a room cast in soft candlelight. The smell of incense curled strong through the air. Miri touched his elbow and pointed at deep crevices in the wall beside them. Sunk just within and on each side were metal panels, and on the ground between those panels were track marks, grooves for sliding doors.

  Dean hesitated only a moment before pushing through the waterfall. The water was shockingly cold. It formed a shallow artificial creek that led to a large hole in the center of the stone floor where the water poured over the edge. Somewhere distant, Dean imagined splashing, a low roar.

  He heard another roar, too, a rumble in his ears that was his heart, his mind, his body rebelling. Across from the hole, across from them, sat a large rosewood chair, elegant and shining. And in that chair, with his feet resting on familiar bodies bound and gagged, lounged Robert.

  “I feel like such a king in this place,” the man said, idly rubbing the side of his cheek with the barrel of his gun. “It’s remarkable, really. It reminds me of the good old days.”

  Dean sensed movement; he turned too slow. A tall graying man had been standing in an alcove to the side of the waterfall, a man that Dean had sensed only on the periphery while running his scan of the corridor. He pressed a gun against the underside of Miri’s chin. She did not struggle or scream—was too smart for that—but Dean saw the knife in her hand angle against the inside of her wrist, pressing tight between her skin and thigh. Waiting.

  Dean aimed his gun at Robert’s head. It was a clean shot, close range, straight to the eye. The only problem was that it was a worthless opportunity. Dean had already wasted bullets on this man. If he could be killed—and holy crap, he hoped the answer was yes—Dean suspected he did not have the know-how or the proper tools. Like a chain saw and a shovel.

  “Tell that son of a bitch to get the fuck away from her,” Dean said.

  “Very eloquent,” Robert replied. “But I think we can all agree that making demands on me is virtually useless.”

  “You won’t hurt her,” Dean said, and his voice was terrible: low, hard, full of death. Out the corner of his eye he saw the gun held against Miri’s neck grind even deeper into her flesh. Her gaze rolled sideways; she looked at Dean, her mouth settled into a hard line.

  “No, Dr. Lee,” Robert said, as though able to read her intentions as clearly as Dean could. “Please, no acts of heroism. Using that knife will not be necessary. Desmond? Release her.”

  “But Mr. Locksley—”

  “Desmond.”

  The man let go. Miri slipped away, still palming the knife against her thigh. She stepped backward out of the water, moving close to Dean.

  Another man pushed through the waterfall, weapon extended. His thick black beard dripped. Robert said, “Albert, don’t shoot.”

  Albert said nothing. He moved quickly to Desmond, and the two men leaned against the wall, weapons still ready, waiting for instructions.

  Dean angled himself so that his back was also against the stone wall, Miri following his lead. Their vantage point gave them a clear view of the room, which was rough and small, compressed around the hole and the chair and the altar behind that chair. Incense smoked gently before a tiny Buddha, around which tall candles burned.

  Dean, for the first time since landing in Hong Kong, wished the air was warmer. Only the skin above his heart had any kind of heat. His clothes clung with a chill, and it was a struggle to keep his arms from shaking. He wondered how Miri was faring, but he did not look at her.

  Robert stood, stepping over the bodies in front of his chair. Miri gasped, and he knew that she had only just realized that it was Kevin and Ku-Ku lying there, eyes open and staring. If it hadn’t been for their somewhat familiar energy trail, Dean might not have recognized them, either. They were filthy, their clothes singed, skin dark with soot. No obvious injuries, though, and given the fire and smoke he had seen around them, that was surprising. Not that he had suffered much injury from Lysander’s fire, either.

  “I thought they were dead,” Miri said, gesturing at the two captives.

  Robert stood at the edge of the hole. Silver flashed at his throat. He slowly, carefully, rolled up his green linen sleeves. It was a new shirt—no blood, no tears—exactly the same as the one he had worn only last night. “I had men posted nearby. When the shape-shifter began wreaking havoc, some of my people went in to save as many as they could from the lab. But don’t worry, I didn’t do it out of the goodness of my heart. I needed someone to question. Especially after the way I was treated by this gentleman’s colleagues when they found me in your hotel room.”

  “Right,” Dean said. “They give you some sweet lovin’?”

  Robert gave him a hard look. “Not nearly as sweet as you, Mr. Campbell.”

  “Flatterer. I’m blushing.”

  “I’m not,” Miri said. “I want to know what the hell it’s going to take to get you off our backs.”

  A cold smile touched Robert’s mouth. “If you had asked me that question last night, I would have given you the easy answer. The acceptable answer. Which is that I am a gun for hire, and therefore I would require both you and the jade to … cease fire. But things have changed.”

  “What things?” Dean asked, wary.

  “My curiosity. Which is why I am contemplating something that is very much against my better interests.”

  “Suicide?” Miri asked.

  His mouth tightened. “Mercy.”

  “Yeah,” Dean said. “You’re a regular Gandhi.”

  “Why, thank you. I always did con
sider myself an advocate of lofty ideals.”

  “I think you’re scaring me more now than you did before,” Miri said. “Can we just get on with it?”

  Robert sighed. “My employers offered me a very large sum of money to collect you, Dr. Lee. They did not tell me why. Nor did they explain the significance of the red jade. Normally I would be content with such a situation, but in this case, given the chase, given the … attention … that this particular artifact has drawn, I find myself in the very unusual position of caring more about the why than I do the money.”

  Dean frowned. “Was that a long-winded way of saying you want a truce?”

  “I believe that would fit the exact definition of what I was attempting to get across.”

  “Why should we believe you?” Miri asked. “And why bother? You don’t need us. We’re as clueless as you about what this thing represents. You might as well steal the jade right now and keep it for yourself.”

  “Clever,” Robert said. “But then everyone would be hunting me, including my employers, and that is not a situation I desire for myself.”

  “Very selfless,” Dean said, and then, “Just who did hire you?”

  Robert gave him the most curious look. “I don’t think I should say.”

  “And I don’t think I care,” Miri said, glancing at Dean. “The two of you can work out your politics later. I want to know why we should trust you not to stab us in the backs.”

  “Because I stab people in the front,” Robert said. “Other than that, I can give you no reassurances. I am not a good man.”

  Miri narrowed her eyes. She gestured at Kevin and Ku-Ku. “What about those two? Did you hurt them?”

  “Would you care if I did?” Robert asked.