Tiger Eye (2 page)

“My,” drawled a smooth masculine voice. “You
are
in a hurry. What a shame.”

Dela was used to unpleasant surprises, but it was still difficult not to flinch. The strange man stood beside her, intimately close. Perfectly coifed, breathtakingly handsome.

She disliked him even more. He was too perfect, fake and unreal. Even his voice sounded over-cultured, as though he was trying to affect an unfamiliar accent. There was nothing kind about his smile, which skirted the edge of hunger, conceit. He made Dela’s skin crawl, and she stepped out of his shadow, frowning.

A cab stopped in front of her; Dela opened the door to slide in. The stranger caught her hand. His touch burned, and she barely kept from gasping at the strange sensation. His skin felt thin as parchment, ancient, but with such heat—actual fire, to her ice.

Shock turned to anger.

“Get your hand off me,” she said, low and hard.

He smiled. “It has been a long time since I had a conversation with a beautiful woman. Perhaps I could share your cab? I know a lovely courtyard restaurant.”

Conversation? Beautiful woman? Dela would have laughed, except he clearly expected her to say yes; he even nudged her toward the cab, maintaining his iron grip on her hand, his smile as white and plastic as a cheap doll.

“I don’t think so,” Dela snapped, surprised and pleased to see his dark eyes shutter, his smile falter. Did he really think she would be so easily cowed, so stupid and desperate? “And if you don’t let go of me this instant, I am going to start screaming.”

Perhaps it was the cold promise in Dela’s voice; all charm fled the stranger’s face. The transformation was stunning. He leaned close, his breath hot, smelling faintly of garlic, pepper. His gaze, dark and oppressive, lifted the hairs on the back of Dela’s neck. Something fluttered against her mind, bitter and sharp.

Dela clenched her jaw so tight her teeth ached. The stranger smiled—a real smile, bright and blistering and sharp.

“How interesting,” he said, squeezing her hand until her bones creaked. The pain sparked rage, striking Dela’s fear to dust. No one hurt her. Ever. Not while there was still breath in her body.

Loosening her jaw, she smiled—and screamed.

It was a marvelous scream, and Dela took an unholy amount of glee in the look of pain that crossed the stranger’s face. Bikes crashed into cars; passersby stopped dead in their tracks to stare. Dela pulled against his hand.

“Help me!” she screeched in both Chinese and English. “Please! This man is trying to rob me! He’s going to rape me! Please, please …
someone!”

Dela did not think she had ever sounded so frightened or pathetic
in her entire life, but the horrible part was that while she had started out acting, the growing fury in the man’s face suddenly did scare her. He looked like he wanted to kill her with his bare hands—as though he would, right there with everyone watching. Her entire arm screamed with pain as his fingers crushed bone.

Soldiers, common enough on Beijing’s streets, ran from the gathered crowd of onlookers. The strong young men latched on to Dela’s assailant, wrenching him away from her. It was quite a struggle; he was very strong and refused to let go of her hand. When he did, a cry escaped his throat; a bark of frustration, anger.

Dela slipped backward into the cab, fumbling for the door, eyes wide upon the hate distorting that handsome face. The urge to run overwhelmed her, and she rapped her knuckles on the plastic barrier. The startled cab driver did not wait for her destination. He swerved into traffic, car brakes squealing all around, horns blaring. Within seconds, the Dirt Market—and the ongoing struggle outside its gate—was left behind.

Dela rubbed her arms, shuddering. Her face felt hot to the touch, but the rest of her burned cold. She bowed her head between her knees, taking deep measured breaths. The breathing helped her sudden nausea, but her heart continued to thud painfully against her ribs. She managed to tell the driver the name of her hotel, and then held her aching hand, trying to forget the feel of the stranger’s fingers squeezing flesh and bone. The hot ash of his skin. The cool tremble against her mind.

A great stillness stole over Dela as she rode the memory of that sensation. She could count on one hand the number of times a stranger had purposely pressed his mind to her own, and while her shields were strong—her brother had made sure of that—Dela was in no mood to test herself against anyone who really wished her harm.

But he didn’t know I was different until the end.
Which meant the stranger had followed her out of the Dirt Market for another reason, one that had nothing to do with her posiabilities. Dela remembered his cold dark eyes, how he had watched the old woman long before paying attention to her. What was his need, his purpose?

Through her purse, Dela felt a hard lump. The riddle box. Clarity spilled over her, and she almost examined her tiny purchase then and there. She caught the driver watching her through his rearview mirror, and hesitated. If she really had just purchased something awful like drugs or God-knows-what, she did not want any witnesses when she began poking her nose into Trouble. If that was what the riddle box represented.

He can’t find me
, Dela reminded herself.
That creep has no idea who I am, and this is a big city.
It was a small comfort.

When Dela arrived at the hotel, she stumbled up to her room, ignoring the strange looks people cast in her direction. She caught a glimpse of herself in the elevator’s polished steel doors, and winced. Her blouse had popped open, her face was beet red, and her hair looked … well, just plain bad.

“Round one goes to the Evil Minion of Satan,” she muttered, holding shut the front of her blouse. A nearby businessman gave her a strange look, and Dela laughed weakly—which didn’t seem to comfort him at all.

Once inside her room, Dela turned all the locks on the door and threw her purse on the bed. The linen-wrapped box spilled out onto the burgundy cover, and she stared at it for one long minute. Stared, then retreated into the bathroom for a shower. Dela couldn’t take any more bad news—not just then. She desperately wanted to scrub away the morning, the lingering miasma of the stranger’s presence.

Dela remained under the hot water for an indecent amount of time, until at last she stopped shivering. Infinitely calmer, she
wrapped thick towels around her body and hair, and returned to the main room. She flopped on the bed with a sigh and picked up the wrapped box. Such a small, innocuous object.

Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. The box may have nothing to do with that guy crawling all over you. He could have just pegged you as a victim.

True, but what had the old woman said?

He seems to think I have something he wants.

Frowning, Dela carefully unwrapped the layers of fine linen—surprising, to find such quality on an object from the Dirt Market—and caught her breath as the riddle box was finally revealed.

It was exquisite, with the breathless quality of some exotic myth. Round, no larger than the palm of her hand. Rosewood, polished to a deep red that was almost black, inlaid with silver and gold, onyx and lapis. The lid was etched with some foreign, incomprehensible script that looked more like musical notations than words, and the curved sides displayed an elaborate series of images, a story: a magnificent tiger inside a thick forest; the beast suddenly a man, fighting, raging—and then the tiger once again, prone, locked inside a cage.

The detail was incredible, impossibly precise and subtle. Dela had never seen such clarity of pinpoint and line—not even in her own art, and her methods were unorthodox, to say the least. Dela ran her fingers over the carvings, the bright inlays. She felt the tiger’s gold-lined fur beneath her fingers, sensing his capture. The sensation of imprisonment made Dela inexplicably unhappy.

She pressed the riddle box against her cheek and closed her eyes. She could finally taste the trace of metal inside her head, but it was faint, faint, an ancient whisper like the brush of a brittle leaf.

Its age startled her, sent a rush of pressure into her gut. Dela
rolled the metal inside her mind, listening to its sleepy secrets. Millennia old. Two millennia, maybe more. She felt breathless with awe.

What was that old woman thinking when she sold this to me? It’s priceless.

But Dela thought of the strange man, the old woman’s cryptic remarks, and his behavior suddenly made sense. She cradled the small treasure in her palms, turning it over in her fingers as surely as her thoughts were turning, twisting. Yes, someone might very well kill for this—or kidnap, assault. But why had the man waited until he thought Dela possessed the box? Why not go after the old woman if he suspected she had it? Surely she would be an easier target.

Dela sighed. She could understand the old woman wanting to rid herself of the box if she thought it would cost her life, but the black market would have offered her more money than one yuan! It didn’t make sense.

Dela tried opening the lid, but it was stuck fast. She studied the box, and smiled. A true riddle. It took her fifteen minutes of careful fiddling, using her instincts more than her eyes, but she finally found the two releases, set in an onyx claw and a silver leaf. Pressing them simultaneously with one hand, she unscrewed the box lid—

—and the earth moved.

Violent vertigo sent Dela reeling into the pillows, clutching her head. Scents overwhelmed her: rich loam, sap, wood smoke. Some essence of a verdant forest, come alive inside her room. Darkness, everywhere, but her eyes were clenched shut—Dela was afraid to open them, scared she would no longer be in the hotel. Dorothy, transported to Oz. Her displacement felt that complete.

Dela slowly became aware of the bedspread beneath her bare
legs. The pillows, soft against her face.
Silly imagination
, she chided herself, and turned to look at the box.

It was no longer on the bed beside her.

Something in her stomach lurched, another premonition. She felt a ghost of movement, behind her, and she twisted—

—only to watch, dumbfounded, as sheer golden light spiraled through her room, shimmering in steep waves, a sunset palette of colors stroking air.

The light slowly took form, a gathering pressure of intense pinpricks. Dela blinked and, in that moment, the light coalesced. She felt thunder without sound, an impact to the air that lifted everything in the room, including herself.

The light disappeared, and in its place: a man.

Chapter Two

Shocking, worthy of multiple aneurysms, explosions in her shrieking brain. Dela skittered off the bed so quickly she almost lost her towel, but her own near-nudity felt less outrageous than the impossible figure towering over her, the top of his head a mere hand’s length from brushing the ceiling.

The man was lean, long of muscle and bone, his skin tawny from the sun. Thick hair brushed broad shoulders, an astonishing mixture of colors—red, gold, sable—framing a chiseled face almost alien in its golden-eyed beauty. His presence engulfed the room with a power that raised goose pimples over Dela’s entire body. A shiver raced down her spine.

Predator
, she named him, meeting his eyes, unable to look away. It was the second time that day she found herself in the presence of the arcane, but this was infinitely stranger. Unexpected, bizarre, extraordinary; she had seen the gathering of flesh from light, and still she could not believe. Her mind was screaming
no
, again and again. Impossible. Unreal. She was so
shocked, she did not think of escape. She did not even think of rape, murder—his appearance was that unbelievable.

But it was his eyes that finally stunned Dela into sensibility. They were filled with such disdain and revulsion, so profound a dislike, she felt slapped in the face by his ill will. The last time Dela had seen such an expression on a man’s face had been in college, caught making out in a secluded library alcove with her then-boyfriend John. Their observer had looked at Dela like she was dirty, trash—and not because she was kissing in a public place.

John was black. Dela was not.

That same unreasoning disregard and disgust—an awful superficial judgment—closed like a fist inside the man’s eyes, and Dela’s splash of fear dissipated into anger, which snapped through her brain like a whip.

“Who are you?” she demanded. The fact that she was half-naked and vulnerable barely registered; she rode the edge of a terrible righteous fury. Her temper was in complete control of her body. If this man wanted to hurt her, he was going to get a fight.

In the part of Dela’s brain that was still dispassionate and rational, it occurred to her she had not felt this brave earlier in the day outside the Dirt Market when she had been fully dressed and surrounded by a crowd.

Holy shit. The irony is going to kill me.

Not literally, she hoped.

The man blinked. He rested his large hand on the golden hilt of a sword strapped to his side. Numerous weapons were belted to the battered leather armor covering his chest.

Dela ignored the whispering steel, the taste of old blood and death. She wanted answers to his impossible arrival; she wanted to wipe that hateful expression off his face. In her head she calculated distances to the lamp, the chair—anything that
could be used as a weapon. Although, from the look of him, she might need an Uzi.

“If you want my name, you will have to command it from me,” said the man, and Dela shivered at the sound of his voice: deep, rough, and unbearably cold. Not the voice of an illusion.

He clamped his mouth shut, and it seemed to Dela that despite his challenge, he was actually waiting for her to command his name. There was a breathless quality to his posture; his size and strength would have hidden the slight tremor if Dela had not been standing so close. His barely perceptible shiver made her feel strange. The edge of her anger dulled slightly.

Very slightly.