Empire of Bones (14 page)

“All are welcome,” the man said. “Even those who labor to bind me. Their prayers weaken only them, and in the end, they too shall be given peace.”

Behind the priests, there were other men. Mercy could see a rabbi lying on his face, still clutching a large animal horn.

“Who are you?” Mercy asked.

The man smiled like an animal baring its teeth. “I am the son of the moon and the sea. I am the Peace upon the Earth.”

Mercy held out the package, her hand shaking. She couldn’t make herself step forward.

“For you,” she said. “From someone in Arizona. Can I go now?”

Bring it to me
.

Hard and cold. Mercy blinked. The man still smiled. He spread out his arms and leaned farther back. Crude
iron chains dragged beneath his wrists. The blister dragon quivered and darkened.

Mercy inched forward. “You … were in jail?”

The huge man laughed. He rattled his chains. “We were,” he said. “Long. But here, in the sun, in this new Babylon of towers and lights, there has been much pain to be healed. We are now strong.”

Bring it to me
.

The voice had grown impatient. It bit into Mercy’s mind like ice.

“Hear and obey,” the man said. “I can drink your soul where you stand.”

Mercy bit her lip. She looked at the slowly breathing couch of people beneath the man, at the sweating priests and the dazed rabbi. How many thousands were in this building already? How many more would come after her? Would she be a body in a wall when the next person passed?

Mercy Rios shook her head. She squared her shoulders and straightened.

“No,” she said. “You’re some kind of devil. Kill me if you want, but I’m not giving you anything.” Turning, she flung the package like a Frisbee. It fluttered out into the air and over the edge. But one of the men from the couch—an armrest—exploded after it even as it left her hand.

The man leapt off the building. With his gray suit
coat flapping, he snatched the package out of the air, curled around it, and disappeared. Seconds passed and Mercy tried not to hear the sick sound that floated up from the street.

Mercy swallowed hard.

A woman spoke behind her.

“You’ve fed enough, Radu. Quiet the dragon gin.”

Mercy spun. The kneeling priests still whispered, never breaking concentration. A woman like no woman Mercy had ever seen rose from the human stairs. She was taller than any man Mercy knew, and her red hair was pulled back into a braid that fell to her waist. She wore cracked leather the color of parched earth, studded with sea glass and smooth stones, and tight enough to be a second skin. Her freckled and scarred arms were bare to the shoulders, but large fish scales had been outlined onto every inch of them in deep-blue ink. The same scales crawled up her long neck, stopping just beneath her jaw. A deep scar underlined each stark cheekbone, too symmetrical to be accidental, and her eyes were the color of an angry sea.

“Girl,” she said. “I am Anann the Morrigan. Breath and bone, you belong to me.”

Behind Mercy, Radu Bey began to laugh.

 eight 

BOMBING RUN

C
YRUS ROLLED OVER ON HIS BUNK
. He knew it was no longer late. By now, it had begun to be early. Moonlight flickered and flashed on the floor beneath the cabin’s little window, sliced and diced by tall swaying trees. Antigone’s breathing was slow and steady on the bunk above him. Dennis was snoring on the bunk across the room.

For Cyrus, sleep was impossible. His leg wasn’t bothering him. The throbbing had downgraded from shark bite to dog bite, and then down again to bike wreck. His mind couldn’t stop chewing on Dan’s words. Or maybe Dan’s words were chewing his mind.

He was the Desolation? He would come on the wings of abominations? Suddenly, he cared about every word. The seventy weeks would soon be passed? Come again? Seventy weeks since when? He rolled over on his bunk, facing the wall. And then he rolled back. The keys hanging from the little snake around his neck jingled as he tossed. Reaching up, he fingered them, two of Skelton’s gifts. He could remember the old man tossing them to
him. He could remember the cold tingle he had felt when they were in his hands. But he could barely remember being that boy in the motel who knew nothing of real danger, who knew nothing about real Dangers. The tooth had been on the key ring then. There was no tingle to the key ring now.

Cyrus sighed, watching the moon paint spatter on the old plank floor.

He and Antigone had given Rupert both paper globes to study, not that there had been much choice. One had been meant for him, after all, and hiding the other one would have been impossible after Rupert caught them with it in the outhouse. Hopefully, the notations would make more sense to him.

Cyrus cautiously reached down to feel the little puckered pellet wounds in his calf. Maybe the pain was keeping him awake. No. Not the pain. The sharpness was gone, replaced by a familiar soreness that could have been caused by any number of things. He was awake because of what was going on inside his skull.

While the sun had fallen, Cyrus and his sister had sat with their mother, letting her squeeze their hands tight while she told stories of their father. Antigone had asked her for the old stories, the ones they had never been told, but their mother’s eyes had wandered and grown heavy.

Cyrus kicked over onto his back and the bed rocked beneath him. Soon the sun would rise and they would
fly. They would run and find some new place to hide, while Niffy and his monks were heading off to help the Brendanites wipe Ashtown clean. If they had their way, they would reset the O of B all the way back to the Middle Ages, when every member was a monk. But if the members fought back, then what? Kill them? It didn’t make any sense to Cyrus. Why start a fight with your own side when there were real enemies all around?

They wanted Ashtown’s darkest weapons.

Cyrus thought about the patrik the monk had held, how it had grown in his hand. Patricia had been afraid—terrified enough to almost choke him. Could she do that? Grow in his hand on command?

Cyrus slid Patricia off his throat. Her tail popped out of her mouth, and she appeared in his hands with a blink of silver to match the moon. The keys and the empty silver sheath that had once held the Dragon’s Tooth dropped onto his chest, and he forced the little Celtic snake straight. She twined her neck around his thumb and he studied the sparking green of her emerald eyes.

“You didn’t like that snake today, did you?” Cyrus whispered. Patricia tried to bite her tail, but Cyrus pulled it away. She tried again and was thwarted again. Resigning herself to visibility, she slid down his wrist, rubbing her cool back against him like a preening cat.

“What now, P?” Cyrus asked. “Where are we going to run next?”

The snake didn’t answer. She reached Cyrus’s elbow and stretched for his stomach. He smiled. She was heading back up to his neck.

“Do I look like the Desolation to you?” Cyrus asked, and his smile faded with the thought.

The screen door to the little cabin squealed open. A Rupert Greeves–shaped shadow stepped into the room.

“Rupe?” Cyrus asked.

Rupert nodded. “Come with me.”

Outside, the trees swayed like upright sleepers beneath the silver moon. Shadows darted and swooped and dragged around Cyrus as he followed Rupert along a narrow dirt path. Patricia still glowed on his wrist, but now Cyrus had his forefinger in her mouth to keep her from gulping her tail.

“The leg fine?” Rupert asked, glancing back. “You’re hobbling less.”

“Yeah,” Cyrus said. “Normal pain. More like a groan than a scream.”

“Brilliant,” Rupert said. “What comes after groan? A mutter?”

Cyrus didn’t answer. Rupert had led him to the boathouse. They passed the burial mound of canoes, and rounded the building to an old wooden barn door on rails. It had been thrown open, and a single lantern sat on a workbench inside.

Llewellyn Douglas, complete with puffy vest and
green pom-pom hat, looked up from his wheelchair. Kayaks hung from the ceiling, and long rowing sculls were upside down in a stack of racks that filled the entire left side of the building.

The workbench in front of Llewellyn was covered with gear.

“I have what I have, Rupe,” the old man said. “Nothing’s too moth-bit, but it’s all antique now.”

Rupert picked up a pair of black leggings and threw them at Cyrus. They were featherlight, and the weave was oily and slick in his hands. A matching long-sleeved shirt followed. Black waxed canvas shorts and a waxed canvas shirt were heaped on top.

Cyrus caught them all and watched Rupert pick up larger versions of the same.

“What are we doing?” Cyrus asked.

“You don’t like it when I vanish, yeah?” Rupert smiled, but there was no laughter in his eyes. “Tonight you vanish with me.”

“Seriously?” Cyrus asked. “Where? How long? What about my mom? Dan? Tigs? Do they know?”

“If they did, it wouldn’t be vanishing, would it? Get suited,” Rupert said. “Diana and the Captain have their orders. They get your family out. If things go well, we’ll meet up with them by lunch.”

“And if things don’t go well?” Cyrus asked.

“Then you will never see them again,” Rupert said.
“And that, mate, is the truth every time you set foot outside your door, every time you sleep, every time you blink.”

Rupert stripped off his shirt and began to pull on the tight black featherlight skin Llewellyn had given him. He nodded at the pile in Cyrus’s hands and raised his brows, waiting.

Ten minutes later, Cyrus walked down to the lake beside his big Keeper. Patricia was hidden back around his neck. Waxy pocketed shorts had been belted around his waist, and the bottom of each leg had been cinched in tight just above his knees. The sleeves of his shirt had also been tied below his shoulders. The featherlight skin completely covered his arms and legs and felt like nothing more than cold air. He wore no shoes, but Llewellyn had given him socks of the same strange black cloth, dotted on the bottom with tiny rubber beads. Matching gloves, too, gripped with the same rubber dots.

Rupert led Cyrus out onto the dock. The moonlight split around the dock and stretched away to the far side of the lake. Cyrus adjusted his thick belt as he walked. He had a small spotlight, a tight coil of rope, a small non-lethal electrical pulse gun, and a long black-bladed knife at the small of his back. In Cyrus’s last year at Ashtown, Nolan had spent hours training him with a knife of the same length, but this blade had felt heavier in his hand.

With knives, and against Nolan, Cyrus had always been awful.

Rupert reached the end of the dock, adjusted his belt, and checked the pouch of his shorts, where he had stored half of the lump of Quick Water. Satisfied, the big man dove, leaving dark rings in the moon-silver water. Ten yards away, he surfaced quietly and began to swim toward the floating jet borrowed from the Boones.

Cyrus stared at the water and inflated his cheeks. Ripples stared back up at him, waiting with daggers of cold. Rupert wasn’t waiting. Heart pounding, jaw clenched, Cyrus dove.

He slid into the water like an eel. Cold bit the skin on his face, but it could only gum-chew the rest of him. The borrowed clothes worked. Cyrus surfaced, and he could breathe without gasping. His joints weren’t locking up. Ahead of him, the plane’s cabin door was already open. Rupert was reeling in an anchor.