The Red Heart of Jade (31 page)

A crow cawed above their heads. Miri looked up and saw a large black bird winging down. She glimpsed others, very high in the sky, but they kept their distance. Dean held up his hand; the crow settled on it, flapping its wings to balance. Golden eyes glowed.

“I was beginning to wonder,” Dean said. “Slow ass. You were probably picking up chicks on the way in.”

The crow bit his hand. Dean, swearing, tossed him back up into the sky. Miri laughed, but it was short-lived.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s go back to the village and rest. We’re going to have a long night.”

But when they arrived at the small home, with the mists rolling in and the sun fading into a deeper chill, it was difficult to sleep. There were too many sounds, the bed uncomfortable—and she wanted suddenly to be anywhere but here. Hiding sounded good. Any kind of hiding, as long as it kept her away from craziness. Danger.

She said as much to Dean, and his only reply was “I love you, Miri. “ And that, she found, was enough to calm her. She settled into sleep, and chased herself into dreams.

Ren was waiting for them, golden and shining, with a softness to his edges made it seem like she was looking at him through a filter or soft focus lens. His presence was unexpected—as was Dean’s, whose body looked much the same, like some cheesy soap opera dream-scape of the Man She Loved. At first Miri thought they were all still awake, but the background was different— more woods, shadows—and she was lucid enough to resign herself to the fact that not even her sleep was sacred anymore.

“This better be good,” Dean said.

“I think I found a way to access more of those dreams,” Ren said. “I can’t fix your memories, but I can help you ride your unconscious all the way down to the root, which might be enough to let you see everything else that’s been taken from you.”

“And if it’s not?” he asked.

“What do we have to lose?” Miri said to him. “And besides, I want to know if what we’re really seeing in our heads is the same thing. We’ll be doing this together, right?”

“I’ll provide the link,” Ren said. “You’ll have access to each other’s dreams at the same time.”

He reached for their hands. Dean first, and then Miri. As soon as he touched her, even the dreamworld slipped away, and she felt herself falling and falling. She kept expecting to hit ground, but it never happened; like Alice in that damn rabbit hole, she could see things around her as she moved—or maybe it was the world moving, and she was standing still—but nonetheless there were glimpses of her life, tiny picture shows, and she realized just how good it had really been. So much wonderful in her life, and all the bad that happened was just another stepping stone. She had to believe that. She had to believe she had the rest of her life to make and find more that was good.

Movement stopped, everything lurching like a elevator slamming rock bottom, and as Miri stumbled, all around her the world seemed unchanged—woods, water, mountains—except there was an added weight to the air that was heavy with age, with the still quiet of a place that had never seen human life—and that any life, big or small, was inconsequential under the weight of such endless time.

We forget
, Miri thought, remembering all those shards of the past that regularly passed through her hands.
We
forget that we are nothing
.

Ren was gone, but Dean stood beside her, holding her hand.

“Which way do we go?” he asked.

Miri turned in a full circle; some distance away, set into the trees, she saw a great darkness. The mouth of a cave. Dread hit her when she saw it, but she tugged on Dean’s hand and they set out walking. It should have taken them several minutes to reach the cave, but in seconds—just steps—they were there, craning their necks to look up into a gaping maw that was all rock and shadows, and beyond, inside, nothing but more of the same.

Dean squeezed her hand, and they stepped inside.

Again, it was as though they floated; Miri expected pitfalls, uneven ground, but nothing caught her feet and she traveled with a feeling of exceptional grace and speed, flowing through darkness, through the empty space like a ghost. The only thing that felt truly solid and real was Dean’s hand clamped tight around her own, and she focused on that, on his strength, and for a moment thought she touched his gift. She felt energy inside him, a great flickering warmth, and she wondered what it would be to always see that side of people, to have the world stripped away to nothing but energy.

And to be able to use that energy, all that power, as he had done for her.

“I hear something,” Dean said, stopping them. Miri listened hard, and sure enough, she caught the sound of a woman weeping. Hoarse sobs. A terrible noise to float from the darkness, and it was accompanied by the clink of chains.

Behind them, Miri heard movement. Dean tugged and they ran, flying, and ahead she saw a pinprick of light, and then closer: a ring of white, like a halo, surrounding a large sandy circle. Nothing else existed beyond the darkness, but within the light, bones covered the ground. Human bones—and some that might not have been human, though the shapes were certainly similar.

Buried in the bones was a man. Miri recognized him. His body was the one she had glimpsed during her vision in the university lab, a lifetime ago. Brown lean body, compact and small. Chains bound his ankles. There was a woman behind him, just out of reach. She was tied, spread-eagled, to a stone platform. She wore a loincloth, though her chest was bare, and on it were words—curling words, red words, hanging like jewels between her breasts. Miri looked into her face, wet with tears, and saw that miserable gaze bear down on the man. The woman said something to him. It sounded like she was begging.

Behind, Miri saw moving light. There was no place to hide. Dean pulled her over to the side and held her tight against a rough rock wall. They watched, breathless, as the light entered the chamber—a light wrapped within a globe of shadow. It passed through the ring, floating, and the man chained to the ground began to shout, trying to stand, beating his fists on the ground. He scattered bone, and reached for one that was pointed, wicked. Not sharpened; it looked like a natural growth of some kind, though Miri could not imagine the animal it belonged to. Tears rolled down his anguished face. His chest began to glow.

The light stopped in front of the woman, and it unwound itself like yarn, flowing down, filling up the air, taking shape—until Miri gazed upon a man. A man of skeletal gauntness, but with a shine and glow to his skin that was like pearls.

His face contorted when he saw the woman. He fought—twisting, trying to turn away with a desperation that seemed to far exceed the threat. He acted as though his life was at stake, and yet, no matter how viciously he writhed, it seemed he was struggling against himself, or merely the air.

But then—a flash, on his body—and Miri looked down and saw rings of dark light around his wrists, cutting close as a second skin. Likes cuffs. Restraints.

He’s being held. Someone brought him here against his will.

The other man, the human man, was still screaming, brandishing the long sharp bone. The woman called out to him, but her voice choked; Miri watched as darkness curled like smoke around her face, sinking into her nostrils, through her eyes and mouth.

She stopped crying. She stopped speaking. The whites of her eyes bled away and were replaced by darkness. Miri thought of the dragon’s eyes, how the gold had become shadow, a pure black oil, and a terrible dread weighed heavy in her gut, an awful premonition, because she
knew
this, she knew it like it belonged to her, and if this was a memory, if this was not just a dream—

The woman spoke. Miri still could not understand her—but the woman’s voice was chilling, deep and quiet and perfectly without emotion, and the man in front of her, the man of light, opened his eyes wide and gazed upon her naked chest, where the words between her breasts suddenly glowed.

He began to read. Miri knew he was reading; his eyes traveled over the words in a descending pattern, and what he spoke was melodic, almost a song. Resistance had died, but his gaze was terrible to look upon, as though he knew something awful was coming, and simply had nothing left with which to fight it.

And then he stopped speaking, and the light of his skin, the light that seemed to have been at the core of him, leeched away in threads and tendrils, rising up through his mouth, leaving a body shriveled, dying—

—and the light entered the woman. She smiled. She laughed. And the man in chains began to howl. He lifted up the bone, raising it like a short spear, and Miri already knew what was going to happen, knew it because she remembered. She felt a pain in her heart, sharp, and listened as the woman—that possessed and black-eyed woman—said a word. The man said another. And he threw the bone.

Miri never saw the impact. She felt it in her heart, and in that moment, the ring and sand, the bones and darkness and death—all disappeared, and Miri opened her eyes and found herself back in their tiny room in the village. No sign of Ren. She guessed waking up had bypassed him completely.

Dean stirred against her. His skin was slick, his breathing rough.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, hoarse. “What the fuck? There’s no way that’s a memory. We never saw that. We couldn’t have.”

“Maybe we didn’t see it,” she murmured, rubbing her chest. “But I think we may have lived it.”

“Miri.”

“What if those aren’t memories from this life, Dean? What if they’re memories from another?”

Another life, an impossible life, a life that had ended at the hands of another.

He will kill you
, whispered a voice inside her head.
He
will kill you again because he must. Unless you stop him. Unless you end it first
.

A horrible thought, beyond crazy. Dean would never hurt her.
Never
. And maybe after all these years apart it was too soon to trust, and maybe it was wrong to believe in him with all her heart—but she did. And she knew he felt the same about her.

Dean propped himself up, but whatever he was going to say was cut off by a smell that wafted through the room.

Ash. Smoke. Somewhere near a crow cawed, sharp.

Miri and Dean rolled from the bed and ran.

“Then what? We still don’t know what this thing does, babe.”

“It’s power,” she said. “And maybe I don’t know what to do with power, but I’d rather see us have it than Lysander and that thing in his head.”

“Fine, but I still don’t know where it is. I can follow a hunch and say it’s in the water you showed me, but that doesn’t make a guarantee. It’s a big lake.”

She hesitated. “Could you... jump out there? You know, with your gift? Just think really hard about the jade, and then will yourself to it?”

A fair question. Dean had been thinking about it all day, trying to talk himself into trying it. Just trying. Now he wished he had. The pressure was on, and he had no room for mistakes. He did not know what would happen if Lysander got the last piece of jade, but presumably he needed both pieces, and that would mean more violence, more risk of harm or death, and he was tired of it. He was sick of running, of being chased.

They made it to the water’s edge without seeing anyone, scrambling off the road and down the embankment. Dean crouched, feet sinking into mud. He laid his hand in the water and shifted sight.

The world exploded with light. Everywhere, threads coursing; inside the water, on the shore, in the woman beside him. A hum filled his head, and he reached inside Miri’s purse for the jade, holding it tight in his hands. Vision surged, but he shut out the past, focusing instead on the missing link between the stones, the bond that existed where it should not. Inorganic material did not capture energy on its own, not unless the living had been in contact with it. And that always faded quickly. But the power was there, in the jade, and Dean drew on it, trying to follow the same instincts that had allowed him to build that inexplicable bridge to Miri.

Don’t push. Just let it come to you. Let that energy flow.

Flow in ways he had never known it could, like actual threads, rivers, waters to be diverted or stitched or bound, and he found himself doing it again, drawing in with his mind bits and pieces of the living world around him, until the light in his inner eye was so bright he felt blind with it.

And then the light stretched, snapped, and he found another bridge and he placed himself upon it—an act of faith, a leap—and with all his focus centered on the jade, he jumped—

—and promptly began to drown.

The water was crushingly cold and dark, and Dean thrashed, unable to tell which way was up. But then, quite suddenly, he saw light moving beneath him, darting skeins of electric threads. Fish. Many of them—but above, not so much. He took a guess.

It was the right choice. His head burst above water, and he coughed up a lung as he tried to suck air into his abused body. So much for experimentation. The shore was dark; he did not know what direction Miri was in, and he did not dare call out to her.

You were brought to this spot for a reason
, he told himself.
The jade is here. You have to find it
.

If he didn’t freeze to death first. The water was cold—glacier fed—and he could already feel his limbs stiffening up. He had minutes at best, and nothing more.

Dean forced himself to take a deep breath—focused on his memory of the jade, of light—and shut his eyes, floating upward on his back. It was difficult to relax, but he tried, and after a moment felt a pull directly below him, like there was a string attached to the small of his back, tugging. Dean filled his lungs with air—trying not to cough—and went back under.

This time, he did not need to open his eyes. He felt his way through the water with nothing but his mind, following the pull of the jade. Around him, a pulse— thunder through the water—energy—the living energy of the world, so beautiful he wanted to shout—and he found himself gathering it around him, pulling it into his body like food or drink, until it was suddenly not so difficult to swim or hold his breath.

His hands connected with something soft and tangled—grass, dirt, all kinds of debris—but beneath there was a familiar heat, and he dug in, pouring himself into the effort until he touched something small and smooth and hard.

Dean’s fingers closed around the jade. He placed his feet against the surface below and pushed hard. He had been underwater too long; he knew he should be dead—or at the very least feeling the effects of holding his breath—but his body felt strong. Unnatural.

Don’t think about it. Just move. Move now and get the hell out of here.

Fast. Dean kicked down his fear and swam, crawling up through the water. The jade felt warm in his hand, a warmth that traveled through his body and rested heavy in his chest. Light cut the darkness—-a light emanating from the skin beneath his shirt—and the jade seemed to sing with it inside his head. He felt a pressure in his mouth; a fluttering sensation.

But he knew something was wrong before his head broke the surface; his lungs pricked, a sharp heat entered his gut. He thought of Miri and reached out to her, and though he had no trail to follow, the bridge was still there. He saw fire in his head, a great inferno rising up and up, and inside the blaze a face with its mouth open in a silent scream. Burning down to ash.

Miri.