Empire of Bones (35 page)

“Pythia has been teaching me,” Dan said. “She started by coming into my dreams, and she doesn’t just write on
leaves. She helped me figure out that all the abomination, desolation, seventy-weeks stuff was about you.”

“We’re not talking about that one,” Cyrus snapped. “Don’t show that to me.”

“Not going to,” Dan said. “But she taught me how to send dreams, and she’s helping me to interpret. This one is easy. The water is death. And the statue is floating in it. But it shouldn’t be floating. It’s stone. It’s meant to sink. It—
she
—should be deep in darkness, but she is rising.”

“She,” Cyrus said quietly. “Who is she?”

“She is called Babd Catha. She was a Celtic war goddess the last time people let her run around. She’s a storm crow who gathers vicious human followers and demands, in Lemon’s words, ‘much unpleasantness’ in her service. Child sacrifice. That kind of thing.”

“Okay,” Cyrus said. “And she’s floating. Not staying in darkness. Check.”

“She’s in the Burials, Cyrus,” Dan said. His voice was barely louder than the rain pattering on the table around him. “In one of the oldest and deepest vaults. If
she’s
coming up, then she won’t be the only one. Also, that’s not her face. Babd has no face. She has only a feathered skull. Whoever that girl is will be her first victim, the required sacrifice when the storm crow wakes.”

Cyrus didn’t want to look back down at the face of the sleeping girl, at the stone features struggling to speak.
But he also couldn’t help it. The girl’s mouth bobbed underwater, choking on liquid darkness. Cyrus felt sick.

“I think I’d like to wake up now, thanks.” He shut his eyes and turned his face up to the sky, hoping for cool rain. Another drop hit him in the ear hole.

“Last thing,” Dan said. “And it’s not good. Babd will rise up from the depths of darkness, but how do we keep her from leaving the water for good? If she receives a sacrifice, her awakening will be complete, but we don’t know who that girl in the statue is or where she is, or who is meant to stop it. There has to be a key in the dream. Something. A promise. A clue. Or else it’s just awful news with nothing we can do about it.” He sighed. “Pythia says most dreams are like that, but this one can’t be. I’ve seen what Babd will do and … and that sacrifice can’t happen. It just can’t. You can wake up now, Cyrus. I need to talk to Pythia.”

Cyrus looked down at the massive floating stone statue beneath his feet. Dan wanted a clue. He rocked slightly and watched dark water ripple up into the statue’s mouth.

Babd was
beneath his feet
.

“Dan,” Cyrus said quietly. “Am I usually in the dream? And I’m standing on her?”

“Oh.” Dan swallowed. “Cyrus. You’re right. You’re the last thing between her and total reawakening. You
have to find the girl, Cyrus. If Babd receives a sacrifice …” Dan’s eyes were still closed tight. “Cyrus. Look around. Look down. She would only be the first.”

Cyrus scanned the water. All around him, stone fingers and stone faces were beginning to break the black rain-puckered surface. Hundreds of them.

“Cyrus,” Dan said. “I’ve seen Antigone die. I’ve seen her live. I’ve seen Diana and Jeb and Rupert and Dennis.…”

“Stop it.” Cyrus bit his lip. “Jeb’s not even here.” He stomped on Babd’s stone shoulder.

“Cy? Have you thought at all about the words from the other dream?”

“I try not to, thanks,” Cyrus said quietly.

“The seventy weeks will soon be passed,” Dan said. Cyrus could have recited the rest, he’d heard his brother say it enough times. “One comes on the wing of abominations, and there shall be no end to war. He shall be called the Desolation, and when he casts his shadow, even the dragon shall shrink in fear.”

Cyrus stared at the black water, at the slowly bobbing fingers.

“Seventy weeks …,” Dan muttered. “Seventy weeks of what? From when? Any ideas? We need the dragons scared now.…”

“Dan,” Cyrus said. He faced his brother and opened
his mouth to fire irritation. Dan was sitting up now. His arms were crossed. His eyes were open.

Dan was blond. His eyes were blue. He had thinned down to the tan California boy that now lived only in fading pictures. Cyrus was looking at the brother he’d lost, the brother Phoenix had erased and rewritten.

Cyrus’s irritation fell out of him; it was swallowed by the black water. He owed Dan better. He owed Dan everything.

“You can wake up now,” Dan said. “Anytime.”

Cyrus nodded.

“Hey …,” Cyrus said. “Thanks. And, I, uh …”

Dan gave him a wide, sun-bleached surfer grin of years ago. “I love you, too, man. Now look behind you. You’re not alone, little bro.”

Cyrus turned. Antigone stood on the statue right behind him. She wore her leather jacket belted, with a revolver on one hip and a long knife on the other. A slice of pearly Angel Skin shimmered in the open neck of her shirt, and her fingers were threaded into her glistening black hair as she wove it back into a tight braid. She smiled at Cyrus as she worked.

“Cowboy up, Tarzan. Let’s go.”

A raindrop hit Cyrus in the ear hole.

He opened his eyes.

Cyrus blinked. He was curled on his side beneath a heavy blanket with his knees pulled up against his chest. And he was on a rooftop, tucked against a small wall beneath a wet morning sky. A dissipating trail of black smoke wandered away from the Brendan’s destroyed rooms on the far side of Ashtown.

Niffy nudged Cyrus with his toe.

“Well, you’re a keen little watchman, aren’t you, then?”

Cyrus sat up and dug for a raindrop in his ear.

Niffy smiled. He had bathed, and his visible portions were striped with bandages. His robe had even been washed. More likely, he had swiped a new one. His stripe of hair was now uneven on his gauze-dotted scalp, but it was clean.

“Rupert told me to let you sleep,” Niffy said. “But enough is enough.”

Cyrus’s brain slowly shook off the image of black water and his blond brother. In the Galleria, when he had refused to run to Africa with the others as a sort of Avengel in waiting, he had expected Rupert to argue, to banish him from Ashtown, to grow angry. He hadn’t. After the first flurry of activity, Rupert had sent Cyrus onto the roof to keep watch for incoming planes. But now it was day. Niffy wouldn’t be standing here if Radu Bey was downstairs.

“What happened?” Cyrus said.

“What happened is that wily Rupert Greeves sent a bone-weary lad to keep watch over the safest place in all of Ashtown.” Niffy winked. “He even sent you with a blanket. I think he hoped that the war would come and you would sleep through it, tucked up here on the rooftop, watching for planes behind your eyelids.”

Cyrus felt his damp face growing hot. “No planes came. I would have heard.”

Niffy’s grin widened, his high round cheeks pinching his happy eyes into slits.

“You slept through the grave digging and the funeral bells, and the final wee air fleet as it flew away. Vesuvius couldn’t have roused you.”

Cyrus stood, wiping his rain-wet face. He ran his hands over his short hair, flinging an army of tiny drops up after his fingers.

“One plane dropped by,” Niffy said. “Landed not thirty minutes ago, claiming to have been summoned by some right daft prat named Cyrus Smith. You know him?”

Cyrus sucked in a long breath. Rupert had wanted to die alone. He had spent the night shuttling people away. And Cyrus hadn’t bothered to tell him that he had sent out a slightly different message.

“Is he mad?” Cyrus asked.

“Yes,” Niffy said. “Aye. Indeed. Verily. And in more ways than one.”

Niffy turned and Cyrus followed him around chimneys
back toward the hatch door that the monk had left open. Cyrus glanced back at the black smoke curling up from the far corner of the world of Ashtown rooftops.

Rupert had wanted to be alone then, too.

Nervousness floated up behind Cyrus’s sternum and settled in his throat. Yes, he had undermined Rupert.

Oh, well. On this point, Rupert needed undermining.

It was strange, walking an empty Ashtown. Hall after hall, stair after stair, Niffy and Cyrus moved in near silence. The floors were a mess of things cast off and left behind, too heavy to carry or too useless to pick up when dropped.

Members’ quarters had been left open. Beds unmade. Trunks open and overflowing. Water dripping in unseen tubs.

Only fifty of the faithful had remained.

And then there were five.

Niffy led Cyrus through the main hallway, past the black ship of Brendan on its pedestal, past the empty dining hall, and into the kitchen.

Sterling worked one small block of the massive fire island of stoves that would normally be ablaze. Omelets sizzled. Bacon shook and cracked small whips of grease.

Rupert sat on a stool across from Sterling, his eyes shut, his head in his hands, his mouth open. He looked asleep.

Jax sat on a stool beside Rupert, glaring at Sterling.

A butcher-block table usually reserved for vegetable-dicing prep cooks was mounded with heavy charge guns that could stun a transmortal.

Rupert stirred. “Cyrus,” he said. “Who else is coming?”

The big man sat up slowly and turned.

Cyrus didn’t answer. Sterling winked and flicked a hot piece of bacon through the air at Cyrus’s head. He caught it, shuffled its heat from hand to hand, and then tucked it between his teeth.

Rupert stood up, crossed to Cyrus, dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder, and steered him toward the swinging door into the dining hall. He pushed it open and held it, looking down at Cyrus’s face as he did.

The Captain and Gilgamesh and Arachne sat at one table. Gil and the Captain were both wolfing massive piles of some special Sterling scramble. A dozen plates were already empty.

Arachne sat quietly with her bulging bag on her lap. She’d gained a lot of spiders in the woods, and she looked like she was waiting for something. She turned her frigid eyes to Cyrus and smiled slightly. It wasn’t a happy smile.

Robert Boone, Jeb Boone, Gunner, and Dennis were eating loudly and talking at another table. The creases on Robert’s face were as hard as canyons. His brows were low, and white scruff lined his unshaven jaw. Jeb had stitches down his shorn scalp and across his temple.
And he was wearing an eye patch. Diana’s father and brother both looked as serious as death. Gunner looked lost in thought. Only Dennis was smiling, clearly glad to be in Ashtown.

Rupert let the door swing shut, then marched Cyrus back through the kitchen and into the long hallway lined with Explorer displays.

He pushed Cyrus away from him and crossed his arms.

Cyrus staggered at the force of the shove and turned to face his Keeper.

“What were you thinking, Cyrus?” Rupert asked. “Do you want your friends killed? Robert says his daughter and Antigone are on their way as well.”

Cyrus swallowed. “Ashtown should be defended.”

“And it will be,” Rupert said.

“By you?” Cyrus asked. “Alone?”

Rupert inhaled slowly. “What do you think Radu Bey will do to John Smith?” he asked. “Do you think Arachne’s spiders can face a dragon? Do you expect loyalty from Gilgamesh? Every mortal in this place will die, Cyrus. But any transmortal who stands with us … they can expect decades and decades of horror.”

Rupert stepped forward, uncrossing his arms. “You and every other wakeful soul in this place will get on Robert’s plane, and you will leave.”

Cyrus shook his head. “You need help. Do you even
know where the Brothers Below are? You still have to find them, and there aren’t even any Sages left to ask.”

Rupert blinked.

“You were going to try to wake them up, right?” Cyrus asked. “In the chapel, you said you wouldn’t because they would kill too many innocents. And you’ve done nothing but chase people away since then. You were going to wake them, because even if they killed you, they could stand against Radu Bey.”

“It is an option,” Rupert said. “If I find them. But only if I am alone.”

“But aren’t they evil? Don’t they kill everyone and everything?”

“No man is pure in heart, mind, body, and soul. There are stains in all of us that the Brothers see, and because they see all things without grace or mercy, because they are Justice and Wrath …”

“They kill everyone,” Cyrus said.

Rupert sighed. “They issue a just judgment. If I want justice for Radu Bey, I will bow before it for myself.”

“Rupe.” Cyrus shook his head. “You don’t deserve to die.”

“Before I was born, did I deserve to live?” Rupert asked. “I was made and life was given to me so that I could be standing right here, right now. So that I could be spent.”

Cyrus bit his lip, thinking. He understood what Rupert
was saying. But that didn’t mean he had to accept it—not just yet.

Rupert leaned forward, eyes wide. Cyrus studied the floor.

“Our race is flawed, Cyrus. Mortality is meant for us. We will take our faults into the grave, and in the grave, we will leave them. Pity the transmortals, living forever with their stained souls. We can lay our burdens down; we can offer up our lives for the ones we love.”

“Exactly,” Cyrus said, looking up, meeting his Keeper’s eyes.
“We.”