Heroines and Hellions: a Limited Edition Urban Fantasy Collection

by Margo Bond Collins

  The doors opened into a large sitting room with lace-draped French windows and a view of a pond set among flowering bushes. The Chinese premier, Li Huang Shan, had his back to the door, but turned when they entered the room.

  “Your excellency,” the chief of staff said. “Miss Ching Shih. Miss Mu Xin.”

  The premier’s gaze darted over Xin to focus on Ching Shih. “Thank you.” His narrowed eyes possessed all the ferocity of a glare. “You may leave.” He told the official. He waited until the door closed before gesturing to the seating area. “Please.”

  Ching Shih smoothed her dress before taking a seat. She tilted her head and smiled. “We have met.”

  “You remember?”

  “Of course. At Wuyuan. You were among the government officials who came to the compound after Xin was born.” She glanced at Xin. “They wanted to examine the infant who was the reincarnation of the Lady Fu Hao.”

  “Not quite a reincarnation,” Xin said.

  The premier studied Xin. He was a craggy-faced man in his mid-fifties. His physique was small but wiry, like a peasant accustomed to hard work under the sun. “You have made a name for yourself in the halls of true power.”

  The halls of true power—the back corridors of government, where principles were dissolved and deals negotiated long before they were debated in the public spaces—were Xin’s hunting grounds, where her actions and decisions touched thousands of lives every day.

  The premier looked at Ching Shih, and he inclined his head slowly. It might almost have been a gesture of respect, but that would have been…impossible.

  Xin’s eyes narrowed.

  No, not impossible, but certainly unlikely. What dealings could her mother have had with the Chinese premier?

  Ching Shih sat straight in the chair, and her chin lifted as her eyes met the premier’s. The smile on her face was proud, even smug, but something about her eyes was touched with wistfulness.

  Xin’s gaze shuttled between her mother and the premier. They know each other—but how and when? How deep had her mother ventured into the halls of true power?

  Xin held her peace until she and Ching Shih returned to the car. As the gleaming towers of downtown Zhengzhou gave way to the suburbs, Xin broke the silence. “I particularly enjoyed my meaningless chatter with the premier.” The topics had warbled around culture and arts, specifically Angie Ma’s upcoming concert at the Henan Stadium. Beneath the farce of dialogue, a deeper exchange had taken place between her mother and the premier. She slid a sideways glance at Ching Shih. “Did you enjoy your unspoken conversation with the premier?”

  Ching Shih snorted. “He is little changed.”

  “What was he like when you knew him?”

  Her expression softened. “He was always ambitious, but when he was younger, he was more open, more inclined to listen, more curious. He was the only one who looked around when everyone else was focused on you—the infant queen.”

  “He looked around and saw you.”

  She nodded. “He was in his mid- or late-twenties. I was fifteen and furious at the loss of my fame—fame that, I realize now, was merely an accident of birth. We spoke. He reminded me of who I was; he told me stories of Zheng Yi Sao.”

  “He showed you who you were?”

  “He showed me who he wanted me to be.”

  “Which was?”

  “Mythic.”

  Xin frowned. “It’s an odd word.”

  “The Chinese revere their heroes of old. Communism and materialism have not expelled the traditions of ancestral worship. It’s in their blood. It’s in yours and mine.”

  Xin laughed. “The only difference is that we’re the ancestors they’re supposed to be worshiping. So much for living up to our reputations. We can’t please everyone, I suppose.”

  Ching Shih’s chest heaved as she sighed. “You would not have, not here, in China.”

  Xin relaxed against the leather seat but kept her attention on her mother.

  “You would have been worshipped and revered, but not tested. You would have lived as I did—in the glory of your past—and done nothing in the present.” Ching Shih looked down at her hands, neatly folded on her lap. “In a way, he inspired me to leave.”

  “What?”

  “He told me what he wanted to accomplish with his life—his dreams, his ambitions.” Sadness touched Ching Shih’s smile, but irony infused her voice. “He wanted me beside him.”

  “He asked you to marry him? But you were only fifteen.”

  “He had a vision of what he wanted—to be premier of China. A historical clone on his arm beside him would secure his position.”

  “It looks like he got what he wanted anyway, and he did it without his desired trophy wife.”

  “But he did have his trophy wife—a different one. She died many years ago, didn’t she?”

  Xin nodded. “It was a marriage of convenience. Her father was a self-made millionaire; she legitimized him with the wealthy, capitalistic legions of Chinese society. They had one child—a son, who is apparently a huge fan of Angie Ma.”

  “Opera?” Ching Shih snorted. “And western opera, no less.” She rolled her eyes.

  “Angie’s performing at Henan Stadium tomorrow. Would you like to hear her?”

  “No, I have no ear for opera.” Ching Shih turned her gaze to the scenery outside the car window. For a moment, silence expanded to fill the space between them.

  Xin tilted her head. “Do you ever wonder what your life might have been like if you’d stayed in China?”

  “All the time.”

  “Do you wish you’d stayed? You could have been the premier’s wife.”

  Ching Shih’s sigh was scarcely an exhalation of breath. “What is the point of this conversation? We cannot change the past.”

  Xin frowned. “You would have stayed, wouldn’t you?”

  “No. In fact, I would have left China with a lighter heart if I’d realized then our escape was for me as much as for you.”

  Xin’s breath caught. You left for me? But the risks… Why would you have taken them just for me?

  11

  “What do you mean?” Xin had asked, but Ching Shih had refused to answer. Teeth gritted, Xin had stared at Ching Shih’s back. If only Danyael were here— How on Earth did people pass Communications 101 without an alpha empath shepherding the conversations?

  When they returned to the villa, Ching Shih had retreated into the pagoda, leaving Xin to the quiet of her research, the solitude of dinner, and the slow passing of hours until Danyael and Yu Long arrived late in the evening.

  Danyael cast her a curious glance, but said nothing.

  Starting difficult conversations that were none of his business was not his style, Xin noted. Zara had always found him exasperating, even infuriating, in his avoidance of verbal conflict.

  Xin met Danyael’s eyes, her own narrowed.

  A faint smile touched his lips, and he looked away.

  Why had she imagined for even a moment that Danyael was any better at communication than she was just because he was an alpha empath?

  Her chest ached. Their friendship would never survive the much-dreaded conversation about her role in his imprisonment at ADX Florence. Even more reason to put it off, preferably forever.

  She straightened and looked at the two men—the alpha empath and the alpha telepath. “All right, let’s go.”

  Xin huffed out her breath and slouched lower in the backseat of the battered blue Changan—a car as ubiquitous to China as Ford to America. A glance at her watch confirmed that it was closing in on midnight.

  In the driver’s seat, Yu Long tapped an impatient rhythm on the steering wheel. “Surveillance stakeouts are out of fashion,” he complained. “We’ve got cameras at every traffic intersection. My staff will be able to find the evidence you’re looking for.”

  “By going through fifteen months of recordings trying to find that needle in the haystack? It could take them months.” Xin shook her head. “No, we�
��re going to get the evidence we need tonight, and we’re going to shut Excelsior down.”

  “After your destruction of Excelsior is complete, do you think you’ll have time to spare on my murder cases, which far outnumber your murder cases?”

  Danyael, seated in the passenger seat, glanced over his shoulder. An amused sparkle gleamed in his eyes. “Just tell me when you want me to pour emotional ice water over the situation.”

  Xin chuckled. “Danyael gave me lots of leads; his case got solved first. All you’ve done is given me lots of dead bodies, no witnesses, and no leads. It’s going to take longer.”

  “What the hell.” Yu Long scowled. “All of Danyael’s leads were ‘bad feelings.’ What kind of evidence is that?”

  Danyael laughed. “The kind that needed a lot of embellishing before it would hold up to anything stronger than a tiny summer breeze.” He straightened as the front gate of Sin Wang Ai orphanage opened, and a dark-colored van slowly rolled out.

  Yu Long activated the recording device installed on the dashboard before bringing the night vision binoculars to his eyes. “It’s the director, Kimberly Hawkes. No one’s in the passenger seat.”

  He waited until the van rounded the corner before he turned the key in the ignition and the car thrummed to life. Keeping a safe distance from the van, they followed it through the city. The still bustling streets of Zhengzhou allowed the car to blend into traffic as it trailed the van to the back entrance of the Excelsior ARTS complex.

  Yu Long let out a low whistle as he pulled over to the side of the road. A guard emerged from the security booth and peered into the van before raising the bar over the gate. The van drove through.

  Yu Long snorted. “Surprisingly low tech.”

  “It has to be,” Xin said. “It’s not as if they can give her a security access card. There cannot be any direct connection between Excelsior and the orphanage. I need to know what’s in that van.” She leaned forward and tapped Danyael on the shoulders. Her grin widened.

  He raised his eyebrows. “Is this a change of plans, Zara-style?”

  Xin laughed, and Yu Long frowned. “What does that mean?”

  “Zara’s notorious for changing plans. It means we’re going to improvise,” Xin said.

  Danyael shook his head. “Changing plans wasn’t the problem. The rapid deterioration into chaos that followed any of Zara’s change of plans was.” He met Xin’s eyes. “Shall we?”

  “Wait!” Yu Long straightened. “How are you planning to break in? You don’t have any weapons—”

  “I noticed you didn’t say warrant,” Xin said.

  “We don’t have those warrant things here in China. The point is you’re not equipped to break in.”

  Xin held up her smartphone in one hand and wriggled her fingers with the other. “Smartphone, satellite access, and fingers. They’re all I need. I can handle anything high tech. Danyael can handle anything low tech.”

  “Thanks,” Danyael murmured, his tone unoffended.

  “It doesn’t get much more low tech than manipulating emotions. Shall we?”

  Yu Long’s brow furrowed. With a scowl, he turned off the device on his dashboard. “I’m going to have to delete the last few minutes of that recording. I wouldn’t want the evidence to be used against me. Let’s go.”

  “Oh, you’re coming?” Xin asked. “I wouldn’t want for you to be inconvenienced into using your telepathic powers in case of an emergency.”

  He glared at her. “Your concern for my well-being touches my heart.” Squaring his shoulders, Yu Long stepped out of the car. He glanced at the security booth; his eyes narrowed, and his brow furrowed with intent concentration.

  Within the concrete frame, the two guards, slouched over a board game, stiffened. Several moments later, the metal bar over the road rose.

  Yu Long bowed from the waist, his sardonic smile gleaming. “After you, your majesty.”

  After blatantly utilizing her connection with Fu Hao to establish a relationship with the general and police chief, she supposed she was in no position to turn down the related titles. Xin stared at the unguarded gate and drew a deep breath. If only she had a trigger-happy assassin to send on ahead—

  “I’ll go,” Danyael said, as if he had read her mind.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “You can’t live with an assassin without picking up a few tricks on getting around unobserved.”

  Xin squinted at Danyael. The “getting around unobserved” part didn’t bother her. Danyael’s penchant for life-risking heroics, however, did. She didn’t trust him, which, she supposed, was fair. She didn’t think he particularly trusted her either.

  She glanced at Yu Long. “Join our minds,” she mouthed the words.

  His lips quirked in obvious reluctance, but moments later, his voice whispered through her mind. Fine. The hourly cost for Yu Long Telepathic Communication Services is $1,999.99 per hour, plus taxes and fees.

  You can send the bill to the U.S. government.

  I would, but I’m not sure they’re good for it.

  Xin stifled a chuckle. Danyael?

  I’m here. He did not sound thrilled. Danyael shied from telepathic contact as much as he shied from physical contact, but at least he appeared willing to endure it when circumstances demanded. Zara, on the other hand, had refused any telepath access to her mind, not even to protect it.

  Follow me, she ordered. Xin took the lead and quietly ran up to the van. Pressing herself against the side of the vehicle, she peeked in; it was empty. She glanced through the open door of the building in time to see two figures carrying small, limp bodies turn a corner.

  There, Yu Long said. Evidence. I guarantee my word will trump theirs in any court of law in China.

  I’m getting the children out, Danyael said.

  Yu Long frowned. Was that part of the plan?

  Knowing Danyael as well as she did, she had expected it. It is now. Xin stepped into the hallway. Her gaze swept across the closed doors along the corridor and focused on a door labeled in Chinese. She mentally nudged Yu Long. Is that what I think it is?

  Network Operations. Authorized Personnel Only, he translated. Your nirvana, I suppose.

  Xin glanced at Danyael. Stay in touch. No dumb heroics that Zara wouldn’t approve of, just saying.

  The alpha empath nodded once before vanishing around the corner in silent pursuit of the two people.

  Xin tugged out her smartphone and a thin electrical cord. One end connected to her phone and the other to the security keypad on the door. She tapped her way through one of the applications she had developed, and the secured signal shot from her phone and bounced through several satellites before homing in on its destination.

  At the National Security Agency headquarters at Fort Meade, supercomputers churned through the algorithms. Numbers spun across the screen of Xin’s smartphone. One by one, they stopped, eventually displaying the six-digit security code. Xin punched it into the keypad, and the lock clicked.

  The door opened into a room filled from floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall with massive network servers. Xin relaxed into a smile as the tension seeped out of her shoulders.

  Yu Long peered at her face. “I’ve seen women in the midst of orgasms show less pleasure than you are right now.”

  “That’s because those women don’t know what real power is. It’s not over a man. It’s over knowledge.”

  He gestured at her smartphone. “You can do so much with that little thing. Why do you need the server room?”

  “Because their secrets are here—stored in local area networks instead of in the cloud.” She grinned at him. “Get comfortable. This could take a while.”

  “A while” turned out to be the two minutes Xin needed to hook up her smartphone and tablets to the servers and hack into the security mainframe. The screen on her smartphone changed to display a view of Danyael’s back as he walked down the corridor. I’ve got eyes on you.

  I feel safer already. Danyael only s
ounded slightly sarcastic. He stopped in front of a door and pushed on it, but it did not move. They went down this way. Can you unlock the door?

  Sure. Xin zoomed the camera in on the alphanumeric label next to the door. Moments later, she had identified the offending door on the security console and unlocked it. Danyael pushed through to an empty corridor flanked by doors. His gaze flicked across the hallway as the door closed behind him.

  Don’t go too far, Yu Long threw the thought out to Danyael. We’re both defense-class mutants. We don’t have the range to stay in touch, especially since you won’t let me past your psychic shields.

  Unconcerned, Xin searched for the next security camera to follow Danyael’s progress. Her fingers tapped a quick rhythm across the screen of her tablet as she flicked through each security camera view.

  None gave her what she needed. That quadrant of the laboratory was unmonitored, likely deliberately. Her eyes on Danyael stopped outside the door, and who knew what lay within. She sent out a telepathic whisper. There are no security cameras in that part of the lab. I can’t follow you.

  Danyael responded immediately. I may not need you. The doors along this corridor don’t seem to be locked.

  And that’s not necessarily a good thing. Morgues are rarely locked, as are traps.

  I’ll be all right. See if you can find those research records for the IGEC, or better yet, actual vials of my blood.

  Yu Long frowned as he peered over her shoulder. “Why are we looking for Danyael’s blood?”

  “Because it’s highly addictive.”

  “What?” He looked disgusted. “People drink blood?”

  “No, don’t be ridiculous. This isn’t a vampire movie. Danyael’s blood, if used in a live transfusion, can convey a smidgen of his empathic powers—”

  Yu Long’s eyes widened. “Smidgen? How much exactly is a smidgen? When was his blood stolen from him?”

  “December, the prior year—about twenty months ago.”

  He grunted. “It’s probably not related, then. Zhengzhou only started going to crap about six months ago. The murders. The recreational drugs—”