The Mortal Bone (3 page)

We lumbered to the house. Grant sat on the porch, staring at the crystal skull. I had set it out on a chair, nestled on a tattered red cushion. Johnny Cash still rumbled, this time about the apocalypse—which seemed incredibly appropriate.

Byron paused, staring at the skull. “Wow.”

“Yes, wow,” Grant muttered, and gave me a piercing look.

I shook my head and went into the house just long enough to dump the grocery bags and put away the frozen dinners. Byron opened the cabinets, unloading rice and cans. I patted his shoulder on my way out, and he only flinched a little. It wasn’t personal. He still had trouble, sometimes, being touched.

Outside, I found Grant sprawled in his chair, staring at the hill where my mother and grandfather were buried. He was humming beneath his breath, less a melody than a rumble, less music than power. His flute was in the house, but he’d been using it less, learning instead how to rely on his own voice to twist at the threads of energy around him.

“What’s the verdict?” I asked him.

“Who brought it?” he replied, instead of answering my question.

“A possessed woman. Terrified. She said that she was . . . ordered. In a dream.”

“That makes me feel
so
much better.”

I snorted and leaned against the rail. “It’s not shaped like a human skull.”

“No,” he said softly, “it’s certainly not.”

The cranium was wide, with three ridges across the brow and a similar protruding crest at the cheeks. The eye sockets were huge, and the carved jaw thick. The upper and lower rows of teeth were sharp as dagger points, jutting at odd, uneven angles that reminded me of a piranha’s mouth.

It should have been ridiculous. But it wasn’t.

It was disturbing as hell.

My first view of the skull, out in the driveway, had been too quick. I had not appreciated, then, just how unsettling it really was—but I’d been sitting with the thing for over an hour, and it was pretty much getting on my last nerve.

“I assume you’ve heard of crystal skulls,” Grant said.

“New Age bunk,” I replied. “Signs of alien life. Hosts of supernatural powers. Ancient computers. I spent a lot of late nights watching bad hotel television before I met you.”

His mouth twitched. “Pre-Columbian fakes. At least, that’s what one camp says, while others believe . . . well, everything you just said.”

“Uh-huh,” I said, rubbing my tattooed arms, soothing the boys. “But I bet demons didn’t deliver up
those
skulls in a bowling bag and red pickup truck.”

“No, you’re special,” he replied dryly. “This skull, sweetheart, isn’t from earth.”

CHAPTER 3

A
lot of things weren’t from earth. Including humans.

Life had been a lot easier before
that
little discovery, which I tried not to think about all too often, given that it involved genocide and quantum highways, and aliens that could—and did—manipulate human DNA like it was nothing but silly putty. Those same aliens had imprisoned five demons on my ancestor’s body in an attempt to stop a war, and those same aliens had played God on this earth and on other worlds, creating monsters,
becoming
monsters, using humans as a living dolls in games meant to ease the burden and boredom of being immortal.

They were called the Aetar, or Avatars, and only one—that I knew of—still resided on earth. The rest had been gone for thousands of years, off to other worlds accessible through a network of quantum roads called the Labyrinth: a place outside time and space, a nexus where the infinite was possible across a universe that might only take a heartbeat to traverse.

I didn’t understand any of it . . . not as much as I needed to. A war was coming, and if it wasn’t fought, if I couldn’t find a way to stop the Aetar . . .

. . .
this
world would be lost. Humans would find their own bodies turned against them. If they were lucky.

Of course, there was
another
, even
worse
, possibility.

Six billion people could end up penned like cattle and
eaten
by the vast and starving demonic army currently locked away on the other side of a crumbling interdimen-sional wall.

A month ago, some of those demons had broken free. Humans had died. Next time, the break in the prison wall would likely be permanent.

Maybe I’d be able to control that army. Maybe not.

But at least I had friends.

FIVE minutes until full sunset. Grant went inside to start dinner, and I took a walk, carrying the crystal skull inside the bowling bag. Neither of us wanted it in the house, and I had questions that couldn’t be asked around Byron, no matter how much weirdness the kid had been exposed to.

All that big sky hanging over the horizon was pale and golden and held the promise of shadows. I walked toward the hill where the oak tree stood over my mother’s grave. Even from here, I could see the green leaves shimmering with that same last light, nature turning to gold like some Midas touch of evening.

Birds sang, and insects hummed in the tall, dry grass. I inhaled deep, savoring the summer heat in my lungs, heat that I could not feel beneath my sleeping tattoos—and the warm wind blew, and was sweet, and so was the world.

I had almost reached my mother’s grave when the sun set below the horizon. I felt its last ray of light wink out in my soul . . .

. . . and the boys woke up.

Happened in a heartbeat. A hurricane of knives, skinning me alive. Every inch of my body, from nails to breasts, between my legs, and the soles of my feet—ripped away in one hard blast of pain that still, after all these years, almost dropped me to my knees.

I kept walking, though—staggering, bent—focused on reaching my mother’s grave. Tattoos peeled, shadows tearing off my skin and pouring out from beneath my clothing—gathering in a knotted dance of darkness and flicks of lightning. Hard. Fast. Whispers bent through the air, twisting into soft growls and laughter that dropped into hisses. I heard singing, brief and lilting.

Shadows coalesced. Claws gleamed. Razor-sharp spines of hair flexed against chiseled skulls. Muscles rippled beneath skin the color of soot and shadow, and in those shadows, smears of silver and throbbing veins, and jutting bones sharp as knives. Red eyes glinted.

I reached the grave and fell down on my knees. I felt the impact. I felt the sting of a pebble beneath my left palm. The wind was hot, even blistering, against my skin. Dry grass scratched my wrist. I felt it all, my skin tender, raw, and new. Totally human, without a single tattoo.

I was mortal. Until dawn.

“Maxine,” whispered Zee. “Sweet Maxine.”

I smiled for him, still trying to catch my breath. The little demon was vaguely humanoid, with spindly arms and legs, claws instead of fingers, and rakish, angular features: like the love child of a dragon and wolf, parts of his body caught in limbo between the two. He tended to crouch when resting, which meant he rarely stood higher than my knees.

Zee sat back, eyeing the bowling bag as Raw and Aaz bumped against my arms, trying to crawl into my lap. The spikes jutting from their spines flexed with pleasure as I scratched behind their flattened ears, and I reached up to pat another set of sleek heads: Dek and Mal, who coiled their serpentine bodies over my shoulders. Purrs rumbled.

My protectors. My family. My friends.

Bound to my blood until I passed them on to the daughter I’d one day have—just as they had been passed on to me and every woman in my line, reaching back to the first of us—a human bound to demon flesh, bound forever, bound by heart and spirit. Bound, always, until the world tumbled down—and then, even, still together, perhaps.

I could not imagine life without them. I had never
known
life without the boys.

Zee had
delivered
me. If that wasn’t close, I didn’t know what was.

“How were your dreams?” I asked him, as Raw and Aaz tumbled off my lap and began prowling around my mother’s grave. Her headstone was a giant slab of rock that had been carved from the ground by little demon hands. My grandfather was buried alongside her, with a similar headstone. The dirt hadn’t yet settled. His body had only been dead for a month.

But he’d be back. Once he found someone else to inhabit.

Along the edges of those stone slabs were shadows—deep, lengthening—which Raw reached into with one long arm, as though sticking his hand into a bag. A magician’s bag, maybe, where doves and rabbits hid and where you might disappear if you weren’t careful.

Raw pulled nails and candy from the shadow—suspiciously like the ones Grant and Byron had brought home from the store. Aaz giggled, reached into the same shadow, and dragged out a six-pack of beer—which definitely was
not
from the house. He tipped back his head, pushed an entire can into his mouth, and closed his eyes with a sigh.

Zee edged closer to me, raking claws across his belly, drawing sparks.

“Bright,” he said, narrowing his eyes at the bowling bag. “Long and bright.”

I tipped out the crystal skull. I didn’t want to touch it again with my hands.

Zee tensed when he saw it. Dek and Mal stopped purring, their tails tightening around my throat. Raw and Aaz made choking sounds, and spat out the nails and chocolate bars they were stuffing by the fistful into their mouths.

“What?” I said to them, with unease. “What
is
this?”

A shudder raced over Zee. Raw spat on the ground. Aaz reached into the shadows, pulled free a teddy bear, and hugged it so tight the seams split and stuffing spilled. Dek and Mal began strangling me with their tails. I had to reach up, and hook my fingers between their bodies and my throat.

“Okay,” I said. “It’s not good. I get that.”

“Not good,” murmured Zee. “Should not still exist.”

I saw movement at the bottom of the hill. Grant, making his way, slowly, toward us. A thin black strap crossed his chest: his flute case, slung around him. Each step was careful, controlled, much of his weight on the cane. This hill was hell on his knee. He looked up, caught my gaze. I stared back, unease deepening in my stomach.

“Zee,” I said. “No riddles.”

“Riddles are safe,” he whispered, edging closer to the skull. Raw and Aaz joined him, eyes glittering, slinking on their bellies with hot, fluid grace. Dek remained wrapped around my throat, but Mal slithered down between my breasts, and coiled in my lap—quivering, ready to strike.

I pushed him aside, trying to stand. Forcing myself to breathe. Unclenching my right hand. Golden light was fading from the sky. Shadows, lengthening. Night would be here in the blink of an eye, and the unease in my gut was growing.

I wanted to put that skull away. Bury it inside a mountain. I had a bad feeling about all this. My simple case of the creeps was becoming a wail inside my head.

A wail accompanied by a pulse, deep in my soul: an infinite darkness, a presence not my own stirring, waking, cracking open one vast, hungry eye.

Ah,
it sighed.
Ah, Hunter.

Go back to sleep,
I told it, with a firm mental shove—and snapped my fingers, trying not to wince when my voice cracked. “Answers.”

“Those eyes,” Zee whispered, edging sideways, never once looking away from the crystal skull. “Those eyes are the lock. The mind is key. We remember. We remember the dawn, our last dawn, burning in light. We screamed. We screamed, but none heard. Drowned, our voices. Drowned, in knots and pieces.”

I stepped toward him, but Aaz leapt close, blocking me—putting his back against my legs. Like Zee, he did not look away from the skull. When I reached down to touch his head, he shivered. So did I.

“Zee,” I said. “Tell me what it is.”

“Lock and key,” he murmured again, and tore his gaze from the skull to look at me. “One of thirteen. Thirteen hammered vessels. Thirteen minds. Thirteen, to bind.”

“Bind.” I tried again to step forward, but Aaz continued to hold me still. Raw grabbed my hand and rubbed his cheek against it. Mal coiled around my ankle, and a keening sound rose from his mouth. Dek buried his sleek head against my throat and made the same high, mournful cry.

“Bound,” rasped Zee, looking at me. “To our first old mother, bound. To her flesh, bound.”

I stared, taking in those words, knowing what they meant—but too stunned, bewildered, to accept the truth.

Grant had almost reached us. Limping faster, his jaw tight. Warning in his eyes. He looked at me, but also the crystal skull—and my right hand tingled, the organic metal embedded in my skin shimmering with heat.

I pressed my hand to my stomach, heart pounding—but not because of the armor.

“Zee,” I croaked. “You’re talking about my ancestor. The first woman you and the boys were imprisoned on.”

He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. “She screamed, too.”