Dragon's Eden (18 page)

It was impossible to imagine a man loving
both the Dragon Whore and Jackson’s mother. The woman he remembered
from his childhood had been gentle and loving, and afraid most of
the time. She’d been too vulnerable to Old Man Daniels’s anger and
abuse. Baolian, on the other hand, didn’t know the meaning of the
word
fear
, and the only abuse she dealt in
was the abuse she dished out. Together, the two women would have
made one good, strong woman. Maybe that had been their appeal to
the same man—if the story was true.

He wondered if Cooper knew about Sun Yi. And
if his brother did know something, why hadn’t he told him? It
wasn’t like Cooper to hold back information. He’d stopped
protecting his little brother from the crueler realities and harder
edges of life the day Jackson had delivered a high roundhouse kick
and broken his first board during martial-arts training.

If Cooper had known, he would have said
something. Shulan had to be wrong. And yet . . . and yet . . .

He rolled onto his stomach and into a patch
of diminutive orchids. The blooms were white and blushed with a
mauvy green in the center. He slipped his hand through the flowers,
gathering them into his palm and crushing them as he brought them
to his face. Their scent infused his senses and made him smile.
They smelled of Sugar.

She was a virgin. That was the information
she’d given but hadn’t spoken aloud. A virgin saved by a poorly
wielded blade, saved for him. He closed his eyes and inhaled the
perfume he’d made with his hand and nature’s bounty. He would make
love with her, and it would be sweet—to watch her eyes darken, to
use slow hands and a teasing tongue to seduce her past inhibitions,
to take her body and give her his and let her wonder at the magic
they could conjure with a touch.

An angry shout from below knocked him out of
his reverie. He was on his feet in a flash and scrambling for the
ledge overlooking Sugar’s compound. An elephant-ear leaf provided
him with the cover he needed to get closer to the edge. He inched
forward until he could see, and what he saw froze him in place,
except for his mind, which raced at double time trying to come up
with enough versions of the word
fool
.

He’d known it wasn’t right to send her out
alone. The isolation of Cocorico had dulled his instincts for
danger. They’d assumed only Shulan would come, but the men in the
courtyard were wearing the colors of Fang Baolian’s honor guard,
black gis and red headbands. They were wushu storm troopers, men
trained in every known weapon and in the art of hand-to-hand
combat; and they always traveled in groups of nine, a
jiu
, eight fighters and a captain.

Jackson swore vehemently. How could he have
let her walk through the waterfall without doing reconnaissance?
His instincts weren’t dulled, they were friggin’ comatose. She’d
told him he was at the edge of the world, and he’d started
believing it.

Their leader, identified by the double red
insignia on the shoulder of his uniform, ducked out from under the
bungalow’s verandah, and Jackson wondered what great sin he’d
committed or which god he’d failed to appease to deserve such bad
joss.

Shulan had a traitor in her midst. Sher
Chang, six feet four inches and two hundred eighty pounds of mean,
shouted a stream of commands in a staccato rhythm, getting everyone
moving except for the two people tied back-to-back in the
courtyard, Jen and Sugar.

Five of the soldiers fanned out, quartering
the area. Sher Chang turned his attention to Sugar, going down on
one knee in front of her and cupping her chin in his huge, meaty
hand. A lewd smile spread across his round face and sweat glistened
on his bald head. Jackson couldn’t hear what he said, but Sugar
grew whiter with every movement of the bastard’s lips. She looked
unbelievably small and fragile compared with the giant, and
something ugly twisted in Jackson’s gut to see her at Sher Chang’s
mercy. His only consolation was in knowing Baolian’s captain would
want to use Sugar to bargain with him and was unlikely to damage
the goods until the parlay was over.

The brute released her with a rough laugh
and a pat on the cheek, but the son of a bitch had left marks on
her face. Those marks sealed his fate.

Jackson scooted out from under the green
bower of leaves and made his way back to the opening of the cave.
His best chance was to take out the soldiers while they were
searching the forest. Catching each one alone improved the odds in
his favor, despite the firepower they were packing.

The sun fell lower in the sky with each
passing moment, heading toward its nightly immersion into the sea.
The last rays of bright light glanced off the face of the arch as
he eased himself over the side of the pit and dropped down into
darkness.

* * *

Sugar was furious with herself. Three years
of caution had been blown all to hell with one false assumption:
that Shulan, and only Shulan, would have been on the plane, or
would have authorized someone else to land at Cocorico. The
possibility of Baolian’s foul presence had never crossed her mind,
not even come close to her consciousness. She’d been so concerned
with saving Jackson, she’d forgotten to save herself.

The traitor was Sher Chang, the huge giant
who had brought Jackson to the island. But he hadn’t come for
Jackson. He’d come for her and the bounty promised by Baolian to
the man, woman, or child who brought her the silver-eyed whore’s
head on a platter. Or so he’d told her with his greasy face shoved
up next to hers and his fingers nearly breaking her jaw in their
grip. Jackson was a mere bonus compared to the grand prize.

The first drops of rain hit as the sun sank
into the sea, making its final farewell with a streaking flash of
green across the horizon. Tonight was the night of the full moon.
There would be light in the sky to illumine the intruders’ way, but
shadows everywhere to conceal; and fog, thick, rolling banks of it,
to disorient and give her a chance to save herself and Jackson.

If in the end there proved to be no chance
for escape, she would at least make damn sure someone shot her.
After seeing what Baolian had done to her cat and her dog, the
horrible cruelty of their deaths, Sugar had sworn never to let the
Dragon Queen take her alive. She’d rather die quickly with a bullet
or a dozen bullets than be tortured, maimed, mauled, and raped to
death.

Sher Chang had promised her all that, and
more.

* * *

Jackson waited for the light to fail, giving
himself the added edge of darkness. The waterfall made a sheet of
translucent shifting gray in front of him, while behind him, cool
rain fell into the bubbling pool and made billowing clouds of
steam. He was sitting with the soles of his feet together and
pulled in close to his body, his knees resting on the floor of the
cave, his groin muscles softening and stretching, relaxing so he
could kick clean and true.

He would make his sweep from west to east,
taking down each man in turn. There was no margin for error, and he
had neither the time nor the strength to end up on the ground in a
grappling match with any of Baolian’s guards. Each strike had to be
perfectly timed and delivered with power. Each strike had to
count.

He stood and bent at the waist, touching his
forehead to his legs, keeping his knees straight to stretch the
muscles along the backs of his thighs and calves. With his palms
touching, he straightened and raised his arms above his head,
lengthening his torso by reaching higher and higher. He breathed
deeply and evenly, readying himself for battle, slipping far down
inside himself to find his warrior’s spirit and bring it to the
fore.

The only weapons he had were contained
within his body. He couldn’t afford for it to fail.

The light shimmering through the waterfall
dimmed, telling him it was time. There were no choices to be made,
therefore no hesitations. He and Sugar had one chance to cheat
Baolian out of their deaths, and the chance lay in the strength of
his heart. He stepped through the waterfall and into the twilight
of the lush forest.

Rain fell from the sky, adding the soothing
rhythm of water hitting and running off leaves to the rushing sound
of the falls. He made his way down the stream, staying low.

He heard the first man before he saw him, a
shadow with substance following the trail up to the falls, and
positioned himself for the takedown, molding himself to the trunk
of a tree. Surprise was his great advantage. As the man passed,
Jackson lashed out with a high kick to the head. The soldier went
down without a sound, never knowing what hit him.

Jackson collected his gun and moved on.
Cooper would have been proud.

* * *

Jen had managed the impossible. Sugar
discreetly rubbed her free wrists, then took the tiny blade he’d
produced from out of nowhere and began sawing away at his bonds.
When he’d first wiggled up against her, she’d thought the old man
had picked a hell of a time to make a pass. The language barrier
had effectively garbled the message he’d been so intent on hissing
and whispering at her, giving her the impression that he was not
only making a pass, but that doing it under duress added a certain
excitement for him.

She’d been just short of complete disgust
and calling out to one of the guards when he’d nicked her. She’d
sworn, he’d apologized—she thought—and they’d started working as a
team. His timing couldn’t have been better. The rain had stopped
and tendrils of steamy mist were floating across the ground and
hanging in the trees. It would only be minutes before the fog bank
began forming out on the open water, pulling cool moisture from the
ocean and mixing it with the air. If they could be free of each
other by then, they could slip away unseen.

* * *

“Whoa, sweet momma.” Jackson stopped cold,
waving his arms out at his sides to balance himself and to keep
from stepping right into the middle of eleven writhing feet of
bushmaster.

He’d known it was a bushmaster. Anything
else would have been too forgiving, too easy, less deadly. With a
bushmaster, it wasn’t so much the strength of the venom that killed
as it was the sheer quantity of poison the snake could pump into an
animal, any kind of animal, including a man.

Moonlight moved with the snake’s body,
sliding across black-and-gray scales smudged in brownish orange.
The wet grass made no sound, not a rustle or a snap as the creature
twisted and turned upon itself, its nightly prowl interrupted, its
dinner—compliments of Jackson—frozen in fear in the flimsy
stick-and-string box trap not a yard away.

Jackson had taken out four of the guards and
come away with only a bruised rib cage from a reverse punch he
hadn’t seen coming, and a knife wound from a blade he most
definitely had not seen coming. The cut was a diagonal slash across
his chest, but he’d reacted quickly enough to keep the blade from
going deep.

He didn’t think his odds were anywhere near
as good with the bushmaster. The animal was riled, and Jackson’s
own energy levels were high enough to be sending out all kinds of
attack signals. They were in a standoff for the moment, but he
doubted that it was going to last.

He readied himself to make a jump in any
direction away from the deadly fangs. His muscles twitched in
anticipation. His concentration focused on the snake with an
intensity that blocked out the rest of the world. When the snake
made its move, he’d have maybe a second to make a countermove. He
wasn’t ready to die, and if the snake got him, he’d be dead and
Sugar would end up in the clutches of evil personified.

Anger filtered into his concentration, but
on the next breath he let it go. Anger would only slow him down
when the time came to—

Move!
Instinct
propelled him into a vertical jump. The snake struck, and somebody
let out a bloodcurdling scream, but it wasn’t him. He’d been so
focused on the snake, he’d been oblivious to the other threats in
the forest. He didn’t wait around to see who had taken the deadly
strike. The voice hadn’t been female, so he ran like hell, sending
up prayers of gratitude for all reptiles.

* * *

The crazed screaming and pleading riveted
everyone’s gaze up toward the shadow-filled forest. Sugar felt Jen
tense behind her, felt a ripple of awareness flow through the three
guards. They knew it was one of their own.

A burst of gunfire split the night and fear
surged through her body. Jackson was up there. She slashed at the
ropes binding her and Jen together.

Sher Chang came crashing out of the kitchen
cottage, shouting orders, and two of the remaining guards charged
up the hill, guns at the ready.

A sob broke from her throat. She didn’t want
it to end like this, with death and destruction overwhelming all
the life she’d nurtured on Cocorico, including Jackson’s.

Especially Jackson’s.

She struggled with the tiny blade, cutting
herself more than once, trying desperately to get free before Sher
Chang took notice of them again.

Her efforts were in vain.

The giant lumbered toward them at surprising
speed, stopping just short of his prisoners. His eyes grew wide as
he looked past her, out over the ocean. Sugar shifted her attention
from him to the beach, and found it already gone. The fog was
rolling in, consuming everything in its path, obscuring everything
in its wake.

A controlled and powerful yell, “
Aaaiiieeeyah
,” jerked her head around. She saw
Jackson coming out of the night like an apparition—flying through
the air in a high leap, one leg stretched out in front of him, the
other tucked in close to his body—and connecting with the underside
of Sher Chang’s chin. The brute’s head snapped backward, and he
stumbled, but he didn’t go down.