Empire of Bones (43 page)

Yes, Cyrus could see that Phoenix was impressed. His Oliver face had the look of a boy admiring a new toy. And he had a wall at his back. He felt safe.

Cyrus scrambled to his feet and ran as hard as he could to get out of Oliver’s peripheral vision.

He slid over a dead gilled man with his chest caved in by a crowned stone skull. Then he sprinted toward the courtyard wall, aiming for a spot less than forty yards from Oliver.

Twenty transmortals were drawing Justice away from Wrath, separating the Brothers. The dragon circled Wrath alone.

Breathing hard, Cyrus hit the courtyard wall and pressed his back against it. Oliver was clutching his broken cane, rubbing the silver knob at the top. If one of his two guards turned … but they didn’t. Apparently, they had never seen a dragon fight a man of stone, either.

Glass shattered. Three stories up on the main building, Cyrus saw four bodies falling together. He saw Rupert’s dark skin. He saw Diana’s red hair. And his heart stopped.

They hit the ground hard, but they bounced and rolled like Cyrus had been taught. Then they were still. The bodies on the grass were well away from the Brothers. A few eager shapes began to move toward them.

Cyrus had no time for anything but rash. He might never get this close to the tooth again. Keeping his shoulder as tight to the wall as he could, he sprinted toward Phoenix from the side. He saw Oliver raise his silver knob to his lips.

Four seconds. Three. The guards still hadn’t looked. One. Cyrus slipped in behind the first large guard, closed his hand on Phoenix’s bamboo rod, and smashed his shoulder into the side of the boy’s head.

He felt a shot of cold vibration thrill up his arm as he rolled free. And then a large gilled man stepped over him and emptied a gun into Cyrus’s stomach.

The other man was firing now, too. Darts and bullets both. Heat punched through Cyrus’s ribs. Darts dangled from him.

Cyrus couldn’t breathe. But right now, holding the tooth, Cyrus also couldn’t die. He pushed away the pain and rose, clutching the tooth to his chest and slashing at the guards with his black knife. He split one man’s knee and kicked his gun away when he fell. The other was reloading. Cyrus threw his knife and watched him crumple.

Cyrus turned to face Oliver.

Cyrus’s arm straightened, shaking, slowly extending the tooth to give it back.

“No,” Cyrus said.

“Yes,” said Oliver.

Cyrus turned and ran with Oliver behind him. He ran toward the Brothers, but as he did, he saw Rupert being dragged by his arms back toward Leon’s steps.

A transmortal with a forked spear was prodding Diana. Cyrus forgot everything else. He forgot Oliver. He forgot the pain in his chest. He ran toward the ones he loved, and he heard swamping thunderous footsteps as two stone mountains ran with him.

“Crescens!” Cyrus shouted. It was the name the Captain had used.

The transmortal turned and raised his spear in surprise. His mail mask was up and he had a black pointed beard. He clearly wasn’t worried about Cyrus, but there were stone giants right behind. As Crescens prepared to roll out of the Brothers’ reach, Cyrus slashed at him with the short bamboo rod. He missed, slipped, and fell.

But Nolan didn’t miss. A black blade sprouted out of the transmortal’s chest, thrown from behind.

The man dropped his spear and sat down in the mud, his eyes wide with pain and surprise.

Nolan wrenched the long knife from the man’s back with gloved hands, and he looked at Cyrus with rain parting around his eyes.

“You hold the tooth,” he said, and he raised his own blade. “Beside it, true tooth-forged steel strikes with the Reaper’s own bite.”

Wrath’s jawbone nearly took Nolan’s head off, but he dropped to the ground just in time.

“No!” Cyrus shouted. “No!”

Justice bent to pick up Diana’s body. Cyrus dove over her, spreading himself as wide as he could. He dug into his pocket for the stone ball Quick had given him to mark the ones he loved. Not knowing how to open it, he squeezed as hard as he could, and drops of Quick’s blood fell onto Diana’s cheek. She was breathing. Barely, but it was there, hot on Cyrus’s hand. He quickly dabbed the blood onto her temples and then dragged stripes down her forearms. He climbed to Robert and Jeb and did the same for them. Jeb was coughing, but Robert was unnervingly still, and his breath was quiet.

“You see?” Cyrus looked up at Justice. The monk bent over the bodies. Then he turned back to the courtyard. It was scattered with gilled bodies and dart-drugged transmortals, stirring slowly. The dragon was gone. Oliver was nowhere to be seen.

Antigone was racing around the fountain hole, heading for Cyrus.

“Stay with her!” Cyrus shouted to Justice. “Keep her safe!”

Nolan was still dodging Wrath. Cyrus scrambled after them, and when Nolan doubled back, Cyrus was ready with blood on his fingertips.

Wrath picked Nolan up with the delicacy of a backhoe, studied him, then dropped him in the mud and turned his orange and green eyes on Cyrus, waiting for a command.

They had to find Rupert. But he couldn’t leave Diana.

“Tigs!” Cyrus shouted. “Guard them!”

Without waiting for an answer, Cyrus and Nolan ran toward the main door into Ashtown. Wrath followed, splitting stone stairs with each step. At the top, Leon had retreated into his shell and was still. Through the doors, Cyrus saw Radu Bey, back in his own form but bruised and bloody. He was grinning, watching four others nail Rupert Greeves up onto the door of the Galleria.

“Radu Bey!” Cyrus shouted, every cell in him ready to explode with anger. He was quivering with cold lightning, with a feeling he had never had before, not even when he’d first struck with the tooth as a weapon. Slowing his breaths seemed like slowing time itself. His heartbeats felt years apart. Radu Bey and his crowd turned as Cyrus bent and picked up a short spear with a broken shaft but a head and throat of blackened, tooth-forged steel.

“Good,” Nolan whispered.

Cyrus inhaled and familiar words filled his mind, and for the first time, he knew their meaning. He felt Dan’s voice inside him, and he wondered if his brother
was having his old vision, but this time his vision was real, and it was happening now.

“The seventy weeks have passed,” Cyrus said. “I lost the tooth and hold it again. I am the one come on the wings of your abominations. I am called the Desolation, and even the dragons will shrink from me in fear. Now leave my Keeper be and back away.”

Radu Bey took one step back, but not on Cyrus’s command. He was making room for another figure, walking through the crowd.

It had the tall body of a woman, wearing cracked leather armor studded with smooth stones. But her hands had talons like a bird’s, and she gripped a single white bone. Her face was an empty-eyed skull thick with black crow feathers.

The skull hissed wind instead of speech, but the sound took shape.

“I bring the peace of carrion. I make the quiet of the lifeless. Babd Catha has come.”

 twenty 

SCATTERED

A
NOTHER WOMAN STOOD BESIDE
B
ABD
C
ATHA
, wearing the same leather but with a scarred face and red hair and bare arms tattooed with large fish scales. She carried an ax.

“I will end all of you,” Cyrus said, and he believed it. “Is the girl still alive? I know you need a sacrifice. Where is she?”

The skull spoke again. “Where is my son, Quick, whose power wakes the stones?”

Wrath did not need to be told what to do. He had seen, and he had judged. He stepped around Cyrus and raised his stone jawbone.

And then Babd lifted her raptor hand and pointed a single talon. The stone giant froze. Wrath shook and shivered.

“No.” Cyrus shook his head. He couldn’t fail now. He had the Brothers. He had taken the tooth. But Rupert had been nailed to a door, and Diana was hurt outside, and who knew how many others had fallen.

Cyrus charged, shouting something in Latin that
Antigone would have corrected. He raised his spear, and then Nolan grabbed him and pushed him to the ground. The pale boy was on top of him, forcing his head down, covering it with his own body.

Babd hissed and Wrath shattered. Every shard of the Brother’s huge bulk flew back toward Cyrus and Nolan in a storm of stone, spinning them away across the floor. Shrapnel ripped up tile, stripped walls, and tumbled the great shattered doors out into the courtyard.

Leon bellowed terror, but his chain was broken.

Nolan was limp on top of Cyrus. The transmortals were silent, but the skull was laughing like midnight wind.

Cyrus rolled out from under his friend. Nolan’s back looked like he’d been sanded by an avalanche. His eyes were open but unfocused. Another friend fallen.

Cyrus turned and faced his enemies, dizzy, his ears ringing, shrapnel splinters dotting his arms.

He could see Babd. And Radu Bey.

He could see Rupert Greeves nailed to a door.

How many could he kill before they took the tooth from him? Before Babd shattered him like she’d just shattered Wrath?

It didn’t matter.

Cyrus shoved the bamboo rod into his belt and picked up Nolan’s sword with his left hand. Gripping the spear with his right, he charged.

On the other side of the crowd, he saw the flash of
the golden patrik and heard Niffy’s shout. Babd turned and Cyrus threw.

The scaled woman slid in front of the spear, and the blade split her sternum. She smiled, raising her ax, and then seemed surprised as it fell from her hands and she sank to her knees.

Cyrus was ready to die. He was mortal. His life was meant to be spent. And it was meant to be spent now.

Niffy’s Irish cries proclaimed the same. Ancient black blades whirled on both sides as lambs without fear ravaged lions, as undying devourers felt bones unknit and strength unmade and lives torn away.

Mortals need not fear death. It is as common as birth.

The lesser immortals fled. Only the great ones stood.

Babd deflected Cyrus’s blow with a breath. His sword slid away from her and sparked on the floor as her talons plunged into his shoulder and a needle pierced his throat. Twisting, he brought the sword back up and took her claw off at the wrist. Radu’s chains swept out Cyrus’s legs and pulled him down. Babd bent over Cyrus, raising her bone and hissing a curse, but Niffy sliced at her back. She brushed aside his sword, but he leapt, locked his thick legs around her, and slammed her to the floor across Cyrus, and Cyrus was already swinging.

Babd Catha’s feathered head rolled away from her body, and the storm crow crumpled, sizzling at the wound.

Cyrus rose slowly. Only Radu Bey remained beside
the hole in the floor where he and his army had emerged. Niffy and Cyrus circled the sorcerer, watching the blood dragon in his chest writhe in anger.

“Cut the beastie out,” Niffy spat, “and we face a grimy mercenary prince and a coward.”

Radu Bey lashed his chains, and lightning crackled between the final links.

“Today I took the head of a Smith,” Radu said. “I am owed only two more to complete my own crest.”

You have pain
.

The dragon’s voice was in Cyrus’s head. He gripped his sword.

So many have fallen. Give me your pain, your anger
.

“I have laughter,” Cyrus said. He thought about his father and running with him on the cliffs beside the sea. He pictured his mother awake after three years of sleep and smiling with her short dark hair; Dan, who had kept him alive on waffles for two years; Antigone, who had laughed with him and bossed him through the darkest times; Diana, who had taught him how to fly; and Rupert, who had tried so hard to die alone. Hot tears rolled down Cyrus’s face, and the fire of a loved life flowed through his limbs, wiping away weariness with a fierce fury. He looked back at Rupert, head hanging, body propped up against the door with thin blades through his arms, like an insect pinned.

The great ones are free. The Burials are open. Do you not fear?

“Would that be wise?” Cyrus asked. “Because I am not. And I have this Irish brother to plunge into death with me.”