Empire of Bones (40 page)

He shrugged Horace’s limp body onto the end of the dark table and stepped back, breathing hard. Robert and Diana jumped forward and quickly tore open the little lawyer’s vest and shirt, searching for his wound.

Rupert saw the deep gash just below Horace’s ribs, and he looked away, wiping the sweat off his face.

Gunner dropped his weapon bag and rounded the table, bolting the other two doors. Not that bolts would do much good against the hunters behind them.

Jeb was leaning against a wall with his eyes shut. The stitches in his scalp had blown halfway open and his ear and neck were painted red down the shoulder.

Rupert looked back at the other two Boones.

“Come on, Horace,” Diana whispered. She was working on the lawyer with gauze while her father used a needle, fighting to stop the bleeding inside the small man.

Horace’s breathing was short and sharp, never quite filling or emptying his lungs. Rupert had seen too many ends not to know what was coming. While the Boones worked, he stepped over to the table and grabbed the little lawyer’s hand.

Horace turned his head toward the big Avengel, and he squeezed. He licked his lips and tried to catch enough breath to speak.

“Too many lies,” he said, “to forgive. So many …”

Rupert shook his head. “Not now, Horace. Not now.”

“Then … when?” the lawyer asked. “Forgiveness … I don’t …”

Rupert leaned in. “Forgiveness is given, not earned. You have mine.”

Horace shut his eyes. “Gunner,” he whispered.

Rupert looked up at Horace’s tall nephew, but Gunner shook his head and backed away, wiping his face with his sleeve. Robert Boone had given up. He backed away. Diana gnawed her lip, still pressing down on the wad of gauze.

“My accounts,” Horace said. “Sewn in my vest. All Gunner’s.” Gasping, he grabbed at Rupert’s arm. “The old words,” he said. “Say the words.”

Still gripping the lawyer’s hand, Rupert placed his left hand on Horace’s head, and he spoke in Latin. The words were firm and certain, and as he spoke, John Horace Lawney VII relaxed. His breathing eased. His bleeding stopped. And he was gone.

Rupert folded the lawyer’s hands on his chest and backed away.

“Dennis?” he asked the room. “Jax?”

Robert and Diana looked around, noticing the boys’ absence for the first time.

“Dennis was with us on the first flight,” Jeb said. “I slipped and he helped me. Jax could be anywhere.”

Rupert sighed. Niffy had insisted on standing with the transmortals. How long the monk would last, he didn’t know.

“And Sterling?”

“Didn’t even try,” Gunner said. “He fell back when we started the push.”

“How many were there?” Robert Boone growled.
His crease-lined eyes were still on Horace. “I expected more.”

“Nine by my count,” Rupert said. “Scouts only. The rest will be on their way.” He reloaded both guns in his holsters, and then drew the short black-bladed sword in his belt.

“Keep the doors open while I’m gone. Eyes and ears at all three. No surprises, and do not get holed up in here. Lock the door and get out.”

Robert Boone cracked knuckles on both of his rough hands. “Jeb here knows his way around this place better than I do. He’ll take the lead.”

Jeb looked even more exhausted at the suggestion, but he nodded. Rupert gave the body of Horace a final salute as he moved back to the door they had entered.

Diana followed him. “Rupe,” she said, “I want to come.”

She had the black-barreled blunderbuss strapped to her back, and it was loaded with her very last round of tooth-treated shot. At least three of the transmortals were hobbled by pain because of it, but the ammo shortage had moved her on to a short heavy shotgun. It might not hurt them as much, but it could still send them rolling.

Rupert looked at Robert.

“Bring him back whole and entire,” Robert said to Diana. “But don’t let him slow you down.”

Diana almost smiled.

Cyrus and Antigone ran down the long corridor. Antigone had left her coat behind, given that it had sprouted leather twigs and leather leaves.

“Where do we start?” Antigone asked.

“We have to get out of this dead end and find some other way down,” Cyrus said. “But ‘the rising water’? Where is any water rising in this place?”

They were approaching the base of the long stair. Was there a spring Cyrus didn’t know about? A fountain?

Crack.

Stone shivered and groaned. The floor of the corridor heaved and leaned to the left. Cyrus and Antigone tumbled, flew, slammed into the wall, and then slid to a stop. Stone shards rained down from the ceiling. Whatever had just happened, it was big.

Cyrus coughed, climbing to his knees. Patricia had popped her light off again, but Cyrus could feel the floor angling left.

Cold energy hissed through the stone beneath him. Faint blue-and-white shapes like flames wisped through the walls around him, unhindered by the rock, too fast for his eyes to catch and hold. And then they were gone.

“Tigs?” Cyrus asked. “Did that seem like the strength of a thousand souls to you?”

“Shhh,” Antigone said. “Listen.”

Voices. And not from inside the corridor. And not from above the corridor. Cyrus lowered himself back down, pressing his ear against cool stone.

Many voices, all of them mingling together like the sound of falling water. And then silence.

One voice, a great voice, a man’s voice, rose from beneath the stone.

Antigone recognized it.

“Cy!” she whispered. Reaching out for her brother, she found only his foot, and it was sliding away. The floor was cracking. It was crumbling.

Together in the darkness, they fell.

Radu Bey stood in a tunnel of bodies on the uppermost level of the temple. One moment ago, the bodies had been breathing, but no more. He and Azazel had thrown the pulse of one thousand souls through the symbols on the floor, and then at the wall. Blue-and-white fire still danced around the hole that should have opened onto the air above the city streets. Instead, it opened into a perfectly spherical tomb. A large grisly shape was stretched out on a stone bed.

Azazel burned inside Radu Bey’s chest. The dragon held a second flood of souls ready, gathered from the temple floor below. Anann the Morrigan stepped up
beside Radu Bey. Behind them both, the armed
Ordo Draconis
waited.

Radu Bey gripped the chains that hung from his arms, and he raised them both in his hands. The dragon writhed in his chest, sizzling with fire. Radu lashed his chains forward into the tomb, and the second storm of souls exploded like thunder.

The temple of bodies shook. But the tomb’s stone walls shattered and crumbled. They cracked and splashed into unseen water, and dust billowed out of darkness.

Radu Bey waited. As the dust settled, he listened to the whine of sirens. He listened to his now-silent human walls. He was truly a blood sorcerer, possessor of dragon gin, savior of gods.

Black water was flooding Babd’s newly opened tomb. It flowed out of the ancient tunnel and around Radu’s bare feet. He walked forward, dragging his chains against the current, and stepped through the gaping hole in his temple wall. He stepped into darkness, into the deepest belly of Ashtown.

Dan sat at his suspended metal table, looked at Cyrus, and said nothing. Cyrus bobbed, treading water in the black lake beside the huge statue that now floated high on the surface.

“I know,” Cyrus spat. “I know.” And he grabbed on to Babd and tried to pull himself up. But he kept slipping back down. He kept sinking.

In the darkness, Antigone found her feet. The water wasn’t deep—waist-high in places—but it had been deep enough to break her fall, and it was deep enough to drown in.

There was light coming from somewhere close—through a jagged crack in the wall, glowing through the rubble dust that filled the air. More blue-and-white wisps darted around and through her, finally disappearing beyond stone and below water. Grisly, monstrous carvings lined what was left of the broken walls.

She turned around and saw Cyrus floating facedown in the water.

Antigone splashed forward, grabbed her brother, and flipped him onto his back.

A huge laugh echoed around them.

Radu Bey was coming.

Antigone got her arms under Cyrus’s and looked for a place to hide. Giant shapes and shadows were moving past the lit crack. Voices. Loud, excited shouts. A woman began to chant.

They had to get out of there. Antigone veered toward
a deep shadow in the opposite wall, a tunnel mouth. Praying a string of pleases, she pulled her brother into it, wrapped her arms around his chest, and shut her eyes. He was breathing. But not for long if anyone found them.

The transmortals were not silent. The chanting was growing louder. Other voices were laughing. And then there was splashing. Large shapes were moving through the crack. They passed Antigone quickly—dark silhouettes of women as tall as Gil with swords drawn, thin men who seemed to leave ripples in the shadows, huge men with heads like buffalo, shapes that were bent and sharp like scythes, unarmed women that emitted an aura of dim light that bruised the air—yellows and reds and greens. More and more and more of them splashed past, until they were only distant voices falling down whatever shaft they had chosen to climb up.

“Cyrus,” Antigone finally whispered. “We shouldn’t be here. No one should.”

Cyrus sighed a dreamer’s frustration. Antigone slapped his face and he jerked awake, kicking and splashing in her arms.

“I’m sorry,” Antigone said. “But I can’t hold you up out of the water anymore and we have to work fast. A whole army of nightmares just marched by.”

Cyrus flailed, smacked her by accident, and stood up.

“Where?” he asked. “Who?”

“Radu Bey is here somewhere. I heard him. A ton of others came out of that crack.”

Cyrus looked back at the jagged crack in the wall. Then he messed with Patricia until the surface of the water was silver all around them. He held the snake high. Not too far behind them, in the tunnel Antigone had chosen to hide in, low wide stairs rose out of the water.

Cyrus waded toward them, and Antigone followed. At the top of the stairs, there was a stone door. More than thirty silver links were inlaid in its surface around a center keyhole.