The Red Heart of Jade (9 page)

No
, Miri thought.
No
.

Impossible—so much impossible this night—but that voice—
that voice
—it could not be. That voice was twenty years dead. Twenty years dead, resurrected only in dreams. It was her imagination, delusion, a desire born of desperation and fear and—

“Get up,” hissed Robert.

“Fuck you,” Miri said, and over another slam, another shout, added, “That guy out there is not going away, you know. You’re going to have to open that door.”

“Yes,” he said. “Which is why I want you out of the way when I do.”

Miri moved. She wanted that door open. She wanted to see who was on the other side. Scrambling backward, pushing herself up against the wall, she watched Robert move into position beside the door. He held a gun in his left hand, tight against his thigh.

Do it
, she thought, and he turned the handle, jumping back as the door slammed open with enough force to put a crack in the wall behind it. Another man stepped swiftly into the room. There was too much light behind him; Miri could not clearly see his face, but she saw a giant robot on his shirt and a gun in his hand—a gun aimed at Robert, who held his ground, weapon also raised.

“Put it down,” ordered the new arrival, though he looked at Miri when he said it. She stopped listening after the first word. Her soul, walking out of normal into a world where women died with stones in their chests, stones meant for the eyes of gods, a world where strangers pointed guns and kidnapped friends, and where friends who were dead, friends who stole hearts and then gave them, suddenly walked through open doors, alive and whole and warm after decades of death.

You ‘re crazy
, she told herself.
Don’t do this to yourself. Please, don’t
.

But her eyes adjusted to the shift in light, and she could not look away. Could not stop staring at the person whose face was almost as familiar as her own. Older now, with more lines, but those blue eyes, those cheeks, that mouth—just like in her dreams...

Too much. All in my head. All in my head and all in my heart and all twisted up like
—

“Dean,” she breathed.

His heart was burning again. The skin above it, the cut, reaching hot into his flesh, pumping fire like his heart pumped blood. No complaints, though. Dean welcomed the pain. He needed it to stay focused, conscious, because the sight in front of him, the sight in his head only moments before, was enough to lay him out, for him to see lights, to spin the world around his head— all because there was a woman looking into his eyes, a woman who should have been dead.

He was ready when the door opened. Ready for anything, to kill or be killed, but when he looked into that room, past the man with his gun raised—
danger, that guy is dangerous
—all he could see was the naked woman standing in shadow, staring at him with eyes like black diamonds, glittering and bright with some astonishingly hurt light. Dean forgot to breathe, looking into those eyes. The photograph, the visions in his head... all lies.

This was better. This was real. This was good enough to die for.

And then she said his name—
his
name, murmured like an old song—and everything fell together inside his mind. He stopped questioning. His heart gave up the fight. His heart gave up everything but love.

“Miri,” he whispered. “
Bao bei. “

She closed her eyes, but that was all the reaction he saw; the man stepped in front of her, the man who Dean had all but forgotten in that one moment of shock. Stupid, so stupid—the kind of carelessness that deserved a bullet.

Dean raised his gun and sighted down the barrel, aiming at a pale eye that was the coldest he had ever seen. The man’s face was a mess, covered in blood. Teeth marks scarred his nose. Dean glanced at Miri again; red stained her mouth, the memory still fresh witness to the nightmare, watching her play Hannibal Lector like a born fighter. Perfect and lovely. His sweet girl.

The man shifted again, blocking Dean’s sight. Behind, Miri moved; a subtle dance, trying to slip around him. It did not work. He threw out his arm, blocking the narrow hall. Miri stopped, but only just; her posture was breathless, quick. Dean tried not to look anywhere but her face; her nudity scared the hell out of him, made him think all sorts of ugly things. Made him want to kill.

You can’t. Miri’s standing too close.

And there was also the uncomfortable sensation of not knowing what the fuck was going on. Though frankly, all he had to do was look at Miri, at her naked body, and remember that vision of her on the bed, on the floor with a hand in her hair and a foot in her gut, to remind himself that he was a man who needed to take care of some nasty business, and that bullets might just be fine.

Maybe more than fine. He glanced at Miri—back from the dead, real and miraculously alive—and remembered another night, years past, another gun in his face, and then—
bang, bang
—her body, broken and bloody in the rain.

Bad memory. Dean’s chest burned like a bitch. He wondered if the rest of him was glowing, because Miri was still staring like he was a ghost and the other man couldn’t take his gaze away, either.

“Well,” he said. “This is unfortunate.”

“What’s unfortunate is your life,” Dean said. “But what’s gonna get you killed is the way you treated that girl behind you.”

“Really?” A grim smile touched his mouth. “You have no idea what is happening here. The importance of it.”

Dean ignored him and glanced at Miri. “You hurt?”

“No,” she said. “But I think I’m insane.”

“Good enough, sweetheart. “ And then he flicked his gaze right, to the dimly lit interior of the room behind her, and wondered if she understood, if she could still read his mind with nothing but a look.

And she stared, lifted her chin, and he knew the answer.

Miri flung herself backward, deeper into the hotel room, out of range and out of sight. The man turned to follow. Dean fired his gun.

It was a point-blank shot. The bullet entered the man’s shoulder. High impact, high velocity—he should have been blown off his feet, but instead he staggered, folding, gun still in hand. And then, careful, like an unwrapped doll, he slowly, slowly, straightened. His shoulder looked like hamburger. Blood poured down his chest. He did not seem to care.

Dean fired another round, another wounding shot. The man ate the impact with a swing, a twist, another spurt of blood, all the while his eyes growing colder, paler, almost white. Dean remembered energy, power, and shifted his vision, seeking out the wounds. Sparks flew from the gaping holes. Not typical.

“You have made a terrible mistake,” whispered the man, as he bled and dripped. “Simply terrible.”

“The only mistake I made was not shooting you in the ‘nads. “ Dean aimed low. “But I can fix that.”

“No,” the man said. “Not like that. “ And he fired first.

For a moment, the world slowed; Dean imagined the bullet racing toward him, cutting the air, and somewhere nearby he heard a scream. His, maybe, though it sounded exceptionally feminine. And then time sped up and his chest exploded into fire, burning—
burning
—and he looked down and saw the bullet press above his heart, suspended still and hot in the air. Dean imagined a glow through the cotton of his shirt, and thought,
Holy
shit Take
that,
you son of a bitch
.

The man stared, something dark passing through his face, a darkness mixed with wonder. He aimed his gun at Dean’s head, but that was it, game over; he never got a chance to pull the trigger. Miri ran out from behind the wall, so fast she was a blur, and jammed a pillowcase down over the man’s head, blinding him. She jabbed something small into his neck. A syringe.

Dean moved in, lunging for the gun while Miri grappled with the man’s free arm, trying to wrench it back, to hold him down from behind. The scent of blood washed over Dean like heat. His hands were slippery with it. He punched the man’s wounded shoulder, driving him to his knees.

He was finally able to take away the gun, and the moment he had it, he slammed the butt down hard on the other man’s head, again and again until the man stopped struggling, collapsing limp on top of Miri. Dean grabbed the front of the man’s shirt and hauled him off her. Miri scrambled away, heading immediately for her clothes, holding them to her body. Dean, face hot, heart burning, turned his back. He rummaged through the man’s pockets but found nothing: no wallet or cell phone, not even another weapon. The man’s chest rose and fell with even breaths.

Miri appeared at Dean’s shoulder, dressed in jeans and a navy blue tank top. She held a very long telephone cord, and had a look on her face that gave Dean a serious case of memory lane as he watched her loop the plastic around her hands, gazing down.

“He’s still breathing,” she said, and her gaze slid sideways to Dean’s chest. He looked down. Nothing. No magic. No wild rings of fire or leaping leprechauns. Just the shirt. Optimus Prime and the Autobot logo. “More Than Meets the Eye” was taking on a whole new meaning. Miri made a small sound and tore her gaze away, looking again at Robert.

“His bleeding stopped,” she said grimly. “That’s not natural. He’s going to wake up, isn’t he?”

“Maybe. Are you going to tie him?”

“Yes,” she said. And after a moment’s hesitation Miri moved in, looping the cord around the man’s neck like a noose, pulling hard and turning him face first into the floor so that she could straddle his body. Miri held the plastic in her teeth as she yanked back his arms, and Dean helped her tie the man’s wrists behind his back, binding them high in a choking knot. He remembered Miri at eight years old, practicing this move on a doll. He remembered her at fourteen, doing the same to a bully on the playground—and getting away with it, too, because she was a girl and the boy whose ass she kicked was too embarrassed to place blame.

She doesn’t look any different
, he thought to himself.
Twenty years, and her face is almost the same as the last day I saw her. Give or take a few lines around her eyes
.

Dean holstered his gun and slid the second weapon into the back of his jeans. He pulled his T-shirt and jacket over it, and left Miri for a moment to go into the bathroom for a wet rag. She was waiting for him when he came out, standing just beyond the door.

“I want to know what’s going on,” she said.

“Ditto,” he replied, and handed her the rag. “Wash your face, babe. You have blood on you.”

She grimaced and pushed past him into the bathroom. The light was better, and he could see the shine in her black hair, the gold in her skin. There was a crease between her eyes, and after a moment, he realized she was just standing there, staring at him in the mirror.

She did not say anything. Simply looked into his eyes with all that cool strength fading, melting away into the wild diamond glitter of their first locked gaze. In shock before, maybe. Just pretending to be in control.

And then she twitched, a sharp jolt, like a body startled from a dream. Dean held out his hands. Miri shook her head, putting more distance between them, moving until she hit the glass door of the shower. Her hand touched the marble wall and she swallowed hard.

He saw it coming, flipped the toilet seat up just as she turned, staggering, shoulders heaving. She fell to her knees and gagged.

She stayed down there for some time, and Dean soaked and wrung out another warm rag. At the last moment, though, he hesitated before touching her. He did not know what to do, how far to push. It had been twenty years. Twenty years and now this, with violence to boot. Jesus. What a fucked-up night.

Dean split his vision, opening his mind, reaching out to listen to her quantum song. Her thread was light and airy, a sweet energy thrumming against his soul. Perfect harmony, just as he remembered. He knew how Miri felt better than he knew himself. He had spent the past twenty years remembering, keeping her alive inside his head.

Alive. She was alive all this time. And you never knew it. Of all the people in the world you needed to find, it was her. And you couldn’t.

He checked the area around her body. No trail. Her energies were self-contained. Just like the murderer he had been hunting.

No
, Dean thought.
Miri could never do that before
.

Not Before that night. Before he’d lost her.

Dean could not wrap his mind around the idea. He did not want to. He moved close, dropping to the floor beside her. He touched her hair.

“Miri,” he whispered. “Mirabelle.”

She wiped her eyes, but did not look at him or say a word as she pushed away from the toilet. She took the rag he offered, but did not use it. She stared at her hands instead, small and golden, pressed flat to the floor.

Her silence hurt. It drowned the pounding of his heart, the roar in his ears. He wanted to lie down in that silence, press his forehead to her knees. Beg for a word.

And then, quite suddenly, her pinky reached toward him. Just one twitch, but Dean held his breath and edged close, brushing his finger against her finger. He almost expected fireworks; somewhere distant, angels singing. But no, just skin. Warm, lovely skin. Miri sighed, and then her hand turned over and her fingers trailed themselves into his open palm, closing gently like a warm wing; meeting, rubbing, twining.