Bone Deep (20 page)

She laughed then. It was funny though it probably lent credibility to his assertion she was a sandwich shy of a picnic. “Your religion will not save you from me,” she told him.

She could not see the punches coming. They weren’t as effective as they were hoping. She couldn’t control how her skin bruised or swelled but she could control her pain and what they were doing was creating a monster inside of her.

Then they stopped and she breathed as deeply as her cracked ribs would allow.

“Take her to a Cathedral cell,” Dostoyev bit out. “String her up.”

Those were probably the only words they could have said that would have given Bone pause. The only other thing would have been that they had Dmitry. As it was, the threat of ropes slithered under her skin, sinking its poisonous promise into her soul.

But this too she would overcome.

They dragged her back through the tunnels and when they came to her cell, one man lifted her bound hands and wrapped a thinly-braided rope around her wrists. He left the flex cuffs on her, simply winding the rough rope over them.

You will know what it is to go against me. Do not breathe too heavily, child, the rope is frayed.

Once the men finished twining the rope on her wrists, they strung her from a bolt hole in the ceiling. They gave her a small table to stand on but it was rickety.

“Kinky,” she whispered. “Who’d have thought you capable of it?”

One of the men spit on her. Another punched her in the gut. She breathed out as the punch landed and it didn’t hurt quite so bad. Then each man turned, walked out of the cell, and locked it behind them.

And so it began. Every few hours one of the men entered the cell, kicking the small table out from under her to leave her hanging so they could tear into her with punches and kicks, and taunt her with death. She drew in a breath with each new man, memorizing their smell. When they left she withdrew into her mind, stroking her hate and lust and letting it soothe her.

The beatings went on for over a day. She’d had no food, nothing but their fists to eat and it was enough. She licked the ropes which had droplets of water clinging to them. She slept when she could. She had been here before, absorbing blow after blow, taking the punishment so the lust could be fully realized.

They did not know the beast they’d tethered. She wouldn’t be in these ropes much longer. And when she wasn’t, she would kill them all.

The ropes stirred the hate inside her. Minton had been a cruel taskmaster. He had lingered over tying her up, the look on his face as he’d touched the fraying strands, seen her naked and quivering in their grasp, had been grotesque.

Do not move, Bone Breaker, they will break and you will fall…all…the way…down…

Always he’d taunted her.

The cell door clanged open and a brand new scent, clean and lovely, littered with gardenias and a spice of some sort infiltrated the damp, musky confines.

The table was kicked from under her. She swung and swung until she did not swing any more.

“You will give me what I want, or I will kill you,” a woman’s soft voice said.

Give me what I want or watch them, child. Watch me take their lives.

She had not given in to Minton, she would not tell him what had happened on that black night so long ago and so he punished her. Five little girls, not much younger than Ninka when she’d died…bait…each a penalty for the crime of withholding information. He’d killed them all in front of Bone, throwing them over the cliff and forcing her to watch until her voice was gone from screaming.

She could not have given him the secret but she had begged him to throw her instead of the girls.

She had vowed that day she would be the one to take him. He was hers from that moment on. When he had released her from his ropes two days later, she walked to the river, gathered their broken and bent bodies with her sisters and buried them in the bone yard with Ninka. So many were there now…too many. The weight of their lives remained a noose around her soul.

No
, she thought.
I did not give in to Minton and this bitch will not break me either.

“She has not told you who she is?” a woman asked, her voice still soft though now being ridden with a hard edge.

“She remains silent. We have beaten her black and blue,” Dostoyev said.

The woman walked around and around and around Bone and she thought perhaps the woman knew Joseph too well. The woman’s fingers traced Bone’s spine, slid down her hip and Bone’s stomach rebelled.

“She was once lovely,” the woman said wonderingly. She release Bone’s braid and her hair fell. “Look at this hair.” The woman ran her hands through Bone’s long, curly hair and it made the rage grow and ripple under her skin. “She’s said nothing about her reason for attacking you? She hasn’t said why she’s here?”

“
Nyet
,” Dostoyev hissed.

Bone raised her head. She could no longer feel her arms. “I am here for you,” she whispered.

“What did she say?” the woman asked.

But Bone would not repeat herself. It was enough her vow was given voice, no matter if her target heard it or not.

The woman tsked. “Where is Sacha’s son?”

“Already in the tower,” Dostoyev assured her.

Bone’s heart stopped. Everything in her mind crashed around her. Surely not…

“You have made him comfortable?” the woman asked and in her tone was a slyness that coated Bone’s skin with acid.

“We have,” Dostoyev responded on a laugh.

“Take her there. It is as Joseph said it would be. This is one of his prized assassins,” the woman sneered. “She came for me and the prodigal son followed.” She stepped up to Bone, stroking a fingernail down over her collarbone. “They call you Bone Breaker but I think it is I who will break you. Thank you for bringing Dmitry to me, Bone Breaker. I wish I could say it will be a joyous reunion.”

Then the woman stepped back, chuckled and was gone.

“Take her down and drag her to the tower,” Dostoyev ordered.

His men stepped in and did just that. Bone was in a bra and her underwear. They had discarded her clothes after they searched her yesterday. When they took the ropes out of the bolt hole she slid to a heap on the floor.

She coughed loudly and then gagged, throwing up stomach acid. The men backed away, not wanting to be in the middle of all that. The swelling in her eyes had gone down enough for her to see through slits. She allowed them to pick her up by her armpits and begin half-carrying, half-dragging her to one of the towers that surrounded the Kremlin.

She contained her excitement that everything was going as it should because it wasn’t. Somehow, someway, Dmitry was here. It was Bone’s worst nightmare. It could only be worse if it were one of her sisters.

It seemed to take forever to get where they were going. Behind her eyelids she saw low light and heard the lapping of the Moscow River at its banks. The smell of stagnant water was strong here. It reminded her of the water pits in Arequipa.

Soon now
, she thought.
Please let him be okay.

A door opened and then she was thrust into a room that held low shadows. She hit the ground and rolled, again absorbing the impact.

“And now we are all here,” the woman said with a clap.

Bone looked through the long skeins of her hair and found Dmitry being held up by an enormous mountain of a guard. The guard looked familiar, something about how he held himself niggling a memory. She pushed it aside. It mattered not who he was. He would die for harming Dmitry.

Whether he ever admitted or accepted it, Dmitry was hers now.

Her gaze tracked over him. His face was bruised. The fingers on his right hand were bent at odd angles and his fingertips bled. They’d made him suffer. His shoulder was bleeding too, the rust red of his blood marking his olive green T-shirt.

Bone came to her feet, threw back her head, and screamed to the heavens. Dmitry flinched, and his eyes, swollen shut opened to bare slits.

“You are angry, child,” the woman queried.

Bone counted the men in the room with them—four including Dostoyev. She did not like that someone held Dmitry but she would have to work with what she was given.

“You should not have come,” she spit at him.

He remained silent and Bone wondered what had been done to him.

The woman walked to stand beside Dmitry and stroked his hair. Dmitry’s eyes closed and on his face was a curious hope. It hurt to see it.

“You will speak to me and only to me,” the woman ordered Bone in a strident tone. “Dmitry cannot be bothered with trash like you.”

The hope on his face disappeared and in its place confusion took residence, followed by a hardness that could only be one thing, hate. He pulled away from the woman. “Do not touch me.”

“You missed me, eh? It has been a while, Dmitry. You have grown to look like your father. Strong and beautiful. But your mind, it is as weak as Sacha’s and that affirms I made the right decision.”

Bone watched the woman step away from Dmitry and tsk softly.

“What decision is that?” Dmitry asked, his voice rough and bitter.

“To leave. Weakness cannot be tolerated,” the woman responded softly. She turned then and glared at Bone. “Why are you here?”

Bone let her muscles loosen, accepted the pain of every single broken rib, bruise and cut. She opened herself up to the agony and it washed over her in a red tidal wave, sucking her under.

“I came here for you,” Bone said, spearing the woman with her gaze.

The woman smiled at her and nodded. “I know. Joseph told me it would be so and it is.”

“You have sold children to The Collective but more than that you sold your own into the clutches of the devil. You abandoned your family and ordered your husband murdered,” Bone stated and it rang throughout the room.

A cold wind drifted in from the tower window holes but it did nothing to cool her rage.

“Ninka was mine. She was Bullet’s, Arrow’s, Blade’s, and
mine
.”

The woman’s face lost its mask of indifference and it was if she were a demon clothed in flesh. “She was mine to do with as I wanted. No one understood that true power comes from your ability to control life. I did what had to be done. The child was weak. I sent her to Joseph so she could be more and she failed me! All of my children were weak. Their father was as well. They deserved what they got,” she hissed, hands forming claws as she lost her cool and attacked Bone.

Bone sidestepped and chopped the woman in the back of her neck. She fell and looked back, horror on her face, fear a shadow in her eyes. They thought they’d broken her. Never.

One of the men attacked Bone and she stood tall, meeting his rush with a single punch to the chest. She channeled the rage, let it grow in her chest and then pushed it through her fist into his body. She’d struck him right over his heart. He fell without a single sound, unmoving, dead. The other guard, the one not holding Dmitry, ran. Her body protested but her mind demanded more.

The guard holding Dmitry began to push him to one of the window holes.

“Get to your knees,” Bone demanded of the woman.

“Dostoyev, take her!” she screamed.

“Dostoyev won’t help you now because he knows what you do not—I will kill his precious daughter when I finish with you should he take a single step in my direction. I am flesh and blood, Svetlana Asinimov, but I am death and you cannot stop me.”

“No,” the woman whispered, fear pinching her features.

“Joseph should have prepared you better. He gave you warning and you took it as a chance to eliminate me. It is almost as if he wanted you gone, eh? How he has orchestrated every move you’ve made over the years. You are pathetic,” Bone taunted her.

Bone reached down, grabbed her by the hair of her head, and pulled her up. The woman sobbed. Bone did not care.

“It was you!” the woman exclaimed suddenly, nails tearing into the skin of Bone’s hands as she struggled.

Bone knew fear then, the insidious creep of it through her mind and heart. Not because the woman struggled, but because now she would face the truth she had never wanted Dmitry exposed to. Here, now, they would both face the truth.

“You killed Sacha,” the woman said on a cry. “Dmitry? Your
lover
,” she spat the word, “killed your precious father.”

Dmitry’s head swiveled to her then and on his bruised face she saw he now knew the truth. “No,” he said gutturally. “He could have been a good man.”

She steeled her spine and sliced her gaze to him. “No. There was no hope for that. As there is no hope for your mother.” She would not fail in this duty. She cocked her head at him.

“No!” Dmitry’s voice was tortured. “Do not do this, Bone!”

Bone looked at his mother and her mind cleared. She blanked her face but let all the hate she felt in that moment shine through her eyes.

“Vengeance is the Lord’s,” Svetalana told her, desperation painting her words and her features.

Bone took the woman’s head in her hands and Svetlana sobbed. “I will apologize if I ever meet Him,” Bone whispered.

“Don’t do this,” Dmitry pleaded again.

Always he pleaded for her to stay her hands. She could not.

The man holding Dmitry grinned at her and with a flash of memory, Bone realized who the killer was…Cain. The
Sciariorum
. “Kill her, Bone Breaker,” he challenged. “Make the son hate you.”

She nodded, accepting it would happen and with a harsh breath she whispered in the woman’s ear. “
Zeh mah shevesh.”
The words of her father scraped her throat raw but they were all she could offer in this place of death and truth.

She twisted the woman’s head, no remorse, no hesitation, killing her much faster than she deserved. “For Ninka,” she yelled.

Dmitry moved then, bashing his head into Cain’s nose. Cain twisted from the movement, pushed Dmitry away and what happened next seemed in slow motion to Bone.

Cain pulled out a handgun, aimed and fired at Dmitry. Their proximity to the window hole combined with the force of the gunshot pushed Dmitry to the sill, where he hovered, his gaze meeting hers before he toppled out.