The Red Heart of Jade

I would also like to thank my fantastic readers, who don’t seem to mind joining me on these wild rides inside my head. Thank you for the company.

And at last I find you here,

In a dark room full of woe
—

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 silendy 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 and 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.

Odd. Dean did not like it.

You’re being paranoid. He’s a pansy-ass pretty boy, who at the worst thinks you’re white trash. He’s not some mother-fucking psycho with pyromaniac tendencies. That’s just kooky.

Maybe. But it still rubbed Dean the wrong way, and he had no trouble matching that mirrored gaze. Pure stubbornness, defiance, a childhood spent dealing with Philadelphia steel men, gruff sons of bitches who worked hard, drank harder, and who could probably turn this rock star albino-wannabe into toilet paper with nothing but spit and a glare. All kinds of good times.

Bai Shen looked away first. He turned his head and said something to one of the women hanging on to his arm. A cheap save. Dean smiled and left the hotel.

The night air hit him hard; heat stuffed itself down his lungs, along with the scents of exhaust, smog, a singularly wet odor of humid cement, fresh with grease and some distant open sewage line. Cabdrivers leaned out their windows, alternately spitting beetlenut juice on the sidewalk and whistling.

Dean ignored them. The latest crime scene was ten minutes away, easy at a fast walk. He had made the trip earlier that day, but at nine in the morning the area was too crowded: cops swarming, family mourning, nosy neighbors, journalists with their microphones swinging. Better to go back to the hotel, catch up on some food and sleep. Try again when things got quiet.

Yeah, right. What a joke.

Skyscrapers ranged tall and sharp, framed against a nighttime backdrop of light-reflected yellow clouds. At street level the roads narrowed and the shops transformed, high-end polished gems of austere beauty giving way to colorful crammed alcoves full of plastic jewelry, trendy cast-offs, and blasting music. Beetlenut girls, dressed in glittering shreds of almost nothing, tottered down the street in six-inch wedge heels, calling out to cabdrivers with their baskets in hand, giving Dean wary looks as he passed, ready to kick his ass if he tried anything. He wanted to tell them not to worry, that he knew they weren’t prostitutes, but he settled for not looking. Hard, given the amount of skin showing, but he was not a complete sleaze.