Part 8 (2/2)

His daughter was running toward him. She had her mother's body. She was very beautiful. She was clothed in gossamer instead of the ragged Triad uniform she had actually had on that day.

She ran in the water. She did not sink but rather ran on as if she were on solid land. Jake, fearful for her, opened his mouth.

”Lan!” he called. ”Lan!”

But no sound came out. He strained to call to her but there was no response from inside him. At that moment, Mariana, his second wife, appeared beside him. She was laughing so hard the tears were streaming down her face. ”What are you doing?” She could barely get the words out. ”Don't you know you were born without vocal cords?” Just as she was about to cry for real, she vanished, leaving him alone with Lan.

Coming across the Sumchun River at full speed. She saw him now and she smiled. Her arms opened wide. Then the blood started to flow from neat round holes in an oblique line down her body. A fountain of blood. Her face filled with terror and she slipped, sinking into the river.

Jake, shouting, tried to get up. But the river had his feet. His legs ended in ankle stubs, callused and worn. He could not even hobble.

With a herculean effort he flung himself into the river. Down and down into its sluggish depths he sank. Without feet to propel him he was like a stone. His arms and hands were useless.

Near the muddy bottom he found her, twined in weed and fern. She swung, blue-white, through the aimless current. An errant eddy swirled her black hair across her face so that he was obliged to pull it away as he came up on her. It was as tenacious as if it were alive.

It seemed vital to clear her face, so he devoted himself to the task. It took all his energy.

And when at last he had succeeded, he let out a scream of sheer horror.

It was his face he saw swinging slackly before him. His face. His face a Woke up in a rush. His chest was heaving like a bellows gone mad, his skin slick with cold sweat. Sound filled the room.

”Jake.”

There it was again, chilling him.

”Jake, stop it!”

Sound upon sound. He began to s.h.i.+ver, then to shake, to sweat.

Bliss tried to get her arms around him but he fought her, hurting her, not meaning to, not yet seeing her or even knowing she was with him.

The sound echoed eerily through the core of him. It had substance, as much shape as a shadow. He a.s.sociated a color with it, a deep nut brown, rich and glossy, filled with hidden tones. Skin tones a skin running with crimson blood, exploding mahogany trees piercing the sky like javelins thrown by giants.

”Jake. Jake.”

Together they struggled while the demons of sound howled and cried out.

His daughter calling out to him, across the gulf of the Sumchun River, ”Bah-ba. Bah-ba. Bah-ba!” While the bullets tore into her and she stumbled, falling to her knees in the sluggish eddies, regaining her feet, turning and falling almost immediately, the mahogany trees exploding upward in a great fiery burst as the mortars. .h.i.t, fountains of blood and rock chips.

Three-and-a-half years ago when Jake was still an active member of the Quarry, on a mission at the border of the New Territories and Mainland China. Working with a secretive splinter Triad, misfits and daredevil maniacs, outcasts of the major Triads who patrolled the northern border of the New Territories, pulling fleeing Communists across into the Colony.

Jake and his grouphis dantaihad been a.s.signed to safeguard a crossing of three high-level Chinese scientists. For that, he had had to enlist the aid of the Triad.

But something had gone very wrong. Someone had been pulled in at the last minute, perhaps, and been made to talk. Their operation had come unraveled beneath a withering counterattack. The strategy had been flawless and Jake had recognized the hand of a wei qi master at the head of the enemy: Nichiren, the a.s.sa.s.sin he had been chasing, the man who had shot Jake's daughter, Lan.

a Lan falling into his already b.l.o.o.d.y arms, her skin a deep nut brown so much like her mother's, but already cool. Her eyes were distant and dark. Her long hair, undone, cascaded into the swirling river.

Lan dying in his arms and her murderer, Jake's half-brother, Nichiren, on the far sh.o.r.e, directing the counterattack. The wei qi master. Jake had gone after him, after him across the river, into the jungle. And then, unsuccessful, he had returned, to find only the bodies of his ma.s.sacred group. The Triad had gathered up their own casualties and faded back into the burning trees.

From that moment on the Triad had severed all contact with Jake, believing that they were betrayed by someone inside the Quarry. A disaster on many levels for which Jake had paid dearly for years afterward.

”Lan!” he screamed now, beating Bliss back against the wall. ”Lan!”

”Jake,” she called to him breathlessly, ”Jake! It's only a dream. A dream!” She fought aside his fists. ”You are awake now!” Beating aside his frightened blows. ”Listen to me! You are awake! Lan is dead! Do you hear me! Dead!”

Jake's eyes were wide open, he knew where he was, but all he saw was the Sumchun River, the exploding trees, the stumbling body of his long-lost daughter.

Ba-mahk, he thought desperately. Ba-mahk was the way to energy, calmness, order inside oneself. It was the way to see others' strategies, to win battles, even wars. Ba-mahk: feel the pulse. It was the first lesson that Fo Saan had taught him.

He tried to concentrate.

Feel the pulse.

And for the first time since it had been introduced to him Jake felt nothing. Ba-mahk. It was gone; its power was closed to him.

Only a great roiling at the core of him. Lan. Lan. Lan.

Before he knew it, he was crying into the hollow of Bliss's shoulder.

”It's all right,” she whispered. ”It's all right.”

Stroking him over and over, wiping off the sweat, brus.h.i.+ng back the hair that had fallen over his forehead. Her palms against his chest, kneading the tension out of the muscles, the tips of her bare b.r.e.a.s.t.s crushed against him, doing everything she could think of to bring the heat back into a frame that had gone cold as ice.

It was as if he diedor at least a good part of him diedduring these episodes. His flesh turned cold, his color paled, his pulse became rapid and erratic, his breathing was dangerously shallow as he exhaled in rapid pants.

Rubbing her b.r.e.a.s.t.s against him, breathing warmth into him through parted lips, drawing him out because he was withdrawing and she feared that one time he would do so with such severity that he would no longer be able to return to her. It was her opinionbut one that he had made her keep to herselfthat his episodes were becoming more and more severe. Once he dreamed of Lan perhaps once a month. Now, it was several times a week, and the violence of the visions had increased at an alarming rate.

Moved one hand down his body, stroking his lower belly and inner thighs, caressing his sacred sac, squeezing ever so slightly, grazing the sensitive skin with the edges of her nails until she felt the heat of him beginning to emerge as she placed the engorged tip of him against the f.l.a.n.g.es of her jade gate.

Allowing their natural movements to move him against her slowly, achingly so that without any other help, her s.e.x flowered open to him, arousing him even more.

She gasped as he plunged into the core of her, her head thrown back, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s thrust into his chest. His lips came down onto her exposed neck, sucking there until she moaned with pleasure.

Never once did her talented hands cease their work across his flesh, never once did she allow him to slow; circling her hips, she thrust herself to the limit onto his hot pulsing sword.

Long strokes, then short, quick strokes, up and up until each moment hung suspended in ecstasy, precious and sublime, tender.

They entered each other in an entirely other way, then, and her qi sought to cleanse him of the remnants of his nightmare.

Each scorching instant brought them closer together, merged into time and s.p.a.ce, until Jake could draw it out no longer and, throbbing, he shot and shot into her liquid depths, groaning deeply, exhaling the long-held air out of him all the way down to his loins.

Bliss, trembling like a leaf in a gale, felt his o.r.g.a.s.m reach out and surround her in heat. In that moment, she felt the onset of the clouds and the rain and abandoned herself to his inner core.

Vulnerable and open to her widest extent she unwittingly entered da-hei for the first time on her own, and instead of confronting the coruscating colors of Jake's exceptional qi she encountered something else entirely.

Da-hei, the great darkness, where all incorporeal essence resides, revealed to her all that she needed to know. Her black eyes flew open and she looked upon the face of her beloved, now relaxed, drifting off to sleep, his arms tenderly around her.

<script>