Dragon Bones (Red Princess 3)

“But I have something more important to you than the journal,” David said, holding up the wrapped ruyi.

“What is it?” Quon asked, his eyes still resting possessively on Hulan.

When Hulan heard David’s voice, she didn’t want to believe it. Then she saw him—wet, covered with dirt and slime from crawling through the caves, Chaowen’s Band-Aids on his forehead. He’d come all this way for her. He always had.

“The ruyi.”

Hulan heard in Quon’s voice something entirely new—barefaced greed.

“The ruyi of Da Yu!”

She watched as David held on to the kerosene lamp with one hand and awkwardly began shaking the linen off the wrapped object with the other. Didn’t he understand what was going to happen if he gave Quon what he wanted? Michael motioned to Su to get the ruyi. Her husband would be dead as soon as he handed it over.

Hulan had been raised to be a martyr, but she’d denied her destiny at every step of her life. For the last thirty years, the knowledge of the consequences for others of her denial of her duty, obligation, and blood imperative had been almost too horrible to endure. Now in the dankness of this cave she understood what she needed to do. Her heart so long shielded had been battered and cracked by Michael Quon’s pernicious attacks. Now it shattered open, releasing wave upon wave of feeling. She would give Quon her life to save David’s because she loved him. She loved him in the way that the first Liu Hulan had loved her village.

With Quon and Su focused on David, Hulan reached for the jade ax. She glanced toward her husband one last time, hoping that when she made her move he’d know to get out of there.

“The ruyi for my wife!” David grasped the ruyi by th

e handle and held it aloft. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hulan leap up, reach for the ax that lay next to Hom’s body, and hack it into Su’s belly. In that same instant, David threw the ruyi and the lantern at Quon. The glass shattered against Quon’s chest, sending kerosene in flaming rivulets down his body. He glanced down in surprise and then, as the fire began to eat away at his clothes, he dropped and rolled.

David bounded across the cave, shoving his wife into the tunnel on the wall opposite the one he’d entered. He lurched blindly in the darkness, bashing into the rocky walls, fully aware of the unseen crevasses that might appear as traps beneath his feet but unable to do anything but press on. He hit something soft and giving. He recoiled instinctively.

“It’s me,” Hulan whispered.

They stood in the absolute midnight of the cave, listening to Su’s agonized screams and, below them, footsteps.

“This way,” she hissed. She held David’s hand, and they edged along the wall.

Behind them, they saw a flashlight beam.

“Are you armed?” David whispered.

“No,” she whispered back.

They would be caught by Quon’s light in a couple of seconds. Hulan picked up her pace, but without sight they were helpless. They rounded a corner, and the beam disappeared from view. David held Hulan back from going any farther, then he let go of her and clenched his hands into a sturdy interlocked fist.

He watched for the beam, trying to judge from the angle just when Quon would come around the corner. When the beam shone through at waist height, David swung his hands down on Quon’s arm, dislodging the flashlight, which clanged to the ground. As the chamber went black again, David brought his clenched hands up and bashed Quon’s chin. Quon grunted from the impact and fell away.

David felt Hulan reach for him and pull him deeper into the cave. But before they could get very far, she stumbled, bringing him down with her. In the deathly stillness he heard the three of them panting. He concentrated on slowing and quieting his breaths. Hulan and Quon did the same until there was nothing—no light, no sound.

“Hulan.” The syllables sounded intimate—almost loving—in the darkness. “I have it, Hulan.” Quon sighed into the ebony vacuum.

Hulan’s hand found David’s shoulder, felt its way to his face, and clamped down over his mouth. She crept closer to him, and when he felt her hair on his face he knew she was leaning over him.

Her movements seemed impossibly loud, and somewhere nearby Quon moved in response. “Come to me, Hulan,” he murmured. “Fulfill your destiny now, with me.”

David tried to shake her hand free, but her grip was unnaturally strong. Then she broke away from him and plunged into the inky void. He rolled over, reached out, felt nothing. He heard the two of them wrestling in the blackness, then a long cry cut through the air. As the sound fell away, then abruptly ended, David realized that the person must have plummeted into one of the crevasses. What he couldn’t tell was if it had been a man’s or a woman’s voice or to whom the thready breathing that remained belonged. He felt the ground for a rock or the flashlight—anything he could use as a weapon. He heard the other person move, slithering across the ground toward him.

“David”—his wife’s voice came to him strong in the darkness—“stay where you are. I’ll come to you.”

EPILOGUE

THE RAINS FINALLY SUBSIDED. WHILE NO ONE COULD BELIEVE everything that was written in the China Daily — or the International Herald Tribune, for that matter—the floods were devastating. Despite everyone’s best efforts, the Minzu Yuan dike in Hunan Province collapsed, creating a landslide that took out several hundred homes, then sent downstream a huge wave, which washed away the next two villages. This tragedy served as a reminder to all of past and possible future tidal waves.

Yichang, near the Three Gorges Dam, reported the highest water level to date, with the flood cresting at fifty-two meters. Twenty-two million acres of farmland had been swamped, 2.9 million homes destroyed, and 2,500 deaths reported. Outbreaks of hepatitis A and typhoid had been contained—not bad considering that although only 1.8 million people had actually been evacuated, more than 140 million people had ultimately been affected. However, the economic cost—in terms of crops lost, manufacturing production shut down, and homes and property ruined—was staggering. Although monsoon season was not yet over, the Central Meteorological Station expressed confidence that the worst was past. The cleanup began.

David and Hulan were extremely busy during the week after the events in the cave. Working side by side, they pieced together more of what had happened—both personally and in their respective cases. Hulan interrogated Officer Su, who was recuperating in a local hospital, while in Hong Kong Investigator Lo questioned Bill Tang, who was being held for the murder of Dr. Ma. Both Su and Tang were singing like proverbial canaries, and both were well-aware that if Michael Quon wasn’t found, they’d be made the scapegoats. Quon had fallen into one of the tunnels in the cave that led down to the river, but his body had not been recovered. If he’d somehow survived, then he’d disappeared into the black world. As for the ruyi, both Hulan and David hoped it had washed out to sea and would never be retrieved, for it had already brought out the worst greed and covetousness in those aware of its existence.