Bone Deep (21 page)

“Noooo!” Bone rushed to him, kicking out at Cain, connecting with a knee and hearing his next shot go wide and gouge bits of brick from the top of the wall.

Cain did not stay down and just as she made it to the sill, she noticed Dmitry had somehow managed to grab it with his injured hand. Then Cain was on her, using both of his fists against the sides of her head.

She crouched, spun and used the move similar to what she’d done with Bullet the other day—she punched up…only she hit Cain in his balls. He fell immediately, mouth open on a silent scream of pain, eyes promising retribution.

She glanced out the hole and her gaze met Dmitry’s. Fear snaked through her at the pain and acceptance in his gaze. Cain grabbed her waist and she turned as he sought to push her away from the window. She backfisted him in the ear and followed it with a straight jab to his nose.

“Bitch,” he said in low voice.

“Let me show you what a bitch I can be,” she taunted him.

Bone didn’t wait for a response. She attacked. She ran and leaped toward him, punching him in the shoulder and landing behind him. Bone tapped him twice in the left kidney, once in the liver.

He turned, his big body absorbing the blows though pain marked his face. He attempted an attack but she knew she’d hurt him with the liver shot. She blocked some of his blows and the ones she couldn’t, she accepted and altered them into motivation.

A glance at the sill told her Dmitry still hung at least fifty feet above the sidewalk below. He wouldn’t be able to hold on much longer. A punch to the jaw and Cain grunted, giving up on boxing her to simply take her on a bumrush. They grappled and he took her down with his considerable size. But she was quicker.

Bone shifted her weight as they fell and ended up beside instead of under Cain. She gained her feet immediately, kicking the man in the ribs, feeling his bones give…so she kicked him again.

He rolled, grabbing her foot and taking her off her feet. The grinding of bone in her own chest took her breath.

“Do not make me kill you, Bone,” Cain wheezed.

“You cannot kill what you don’t understand—it is the thing that halts your sniper, your swordsman and your archer. That pressing need you five always have to know
why
you are killing…
that
is why First Team is better. We kill because it is all we know. Stand and meet your fate, assassin,” she hissed between clenched teeth.

Her gaze darted to the sill. Dmitry’s hand was still there but he was slipping. Panic rushed in.

Cain’s glance shifted to the sill also. “You cannot take me and save him. Which will it be, Bone Breaker?”

Dmitry made her weak but it was a weakness she wouldn’t regret. If they died, here, today, it would be because she had given in to something she had never known and never dared dream have.

And it would be enough for her to meet the end having known Dmitry Asinimov.

Bone took three steps back, reached for Cain’s discarded gun and then grabbed for Dmitry’s hand. She swallowed hard when he tried to grip her wrist but could not.

“I will see you again, Bone, and when I do I will not be so lenient,” Cain said in a low, promising tone.

“Fuck you all. I will be waiting,” Bone answered.

Cain retreated and she wondered why he hadn’t attacked when she was at her weakest. Not weak due to physical incapacity, but rather emotional, something she’d sworn never to be.

Dmitry gasped and Bone reached with both hands to hold him. “Let me go,” he whispered.

“I cannot,” she returned.

“He could have been a good man but you killed him.”

Dmitry words split her heart in two. She gave him all she could.
“Tvoj otets bil horoshim chelovekom. Horoshim ubijtsey,”
she whispered.

“I want to hate you. My mother, my father…Ninka…all because of you…” he trailed off but the damage was done.

She’d known this would be the end. What he said wasn’t fair but life was rarely that way. She and her sisters were living proof.

“So be it,” she said aloud.

She heard shouts and heavy footsteps heading up the tower steps. Behind her gunfire sounded. She returned fire, doing her best to hold them off. It wouldn’t be long. Bone glanced over her shoulder, realizing this was the end for her. She had done her part—played her moves perfectly and now Joseph was coming.

“I want her alive, fools!” Her creator’s voice echoed to her.

“Dmitry,” she demanded when his eyes closed. She did not to look down lest the height take her mind. “I am going to swing you. The water is not far. You will fall but you will live, do you understand me? You. Will. Live.”

He opened his eyes as far as the swollen tissue would allow and she was able to see a slice of blue. Then his split lips curved. “I do not swim.”

She had no more ammunition and couldn’t reload if she did. Another shot rent the air, this one biting into the muscle of her thigh. She grunted and made the mistake of looking down. They were so high and suddenly she was back on the cliff in Arequipa. Another shot, this one with a rubber bullet right to her shoulder. That arm went dead and she dropped the gun, switching to hold him with her left arm.

“Let me go,” Dmitry whispered.

Always the height taunted her. “The ropes will hold,” she answered and realized she was talking to her past. She shook off her reverie and grimaced.

“I have done all I can, Asinimov. I am sorry for not telling you of your father or your mother.” Her grip was slipping. “Live for revenge,
moye
.”

The men behind her were yelling for her stop.

She wasn’t going anywhere. Not now.

“Bone Breaker, child, it is time to come home,” the black-eyed man said. Joseph was here. There was no such thing as hope any longer.

She closed her eyes, accepted her lot and looked once more into Dmitry’s eyes.

“You will tell my sisters,” her voice broke, tears streaming down her face, “you will tell them that I am going home but I will remember them forever. I will see you on the other side,
da
?”

Bone used all the strength left her, bones grinding, pain overwhelming her, and swung him out as far as she could from the tower’s face, making sure he would hit the water. When she could do no more, she let him go. Their gazes met once more and she saw everything she could have had disappearing. He hit the water, remained still for several moments and then he swam down, deep into the frigid waters of the Moscow River. He would live.

Bone turned, went to her knees and did something she hadn’t done since before her parents gave her up to Joseph. She prayed.

She prayed to the God of her fathers for the end.

He woke in a blinding rush of pain, his dreams following him into wakefulness, the brush of them against his mind cruel and cutting. Her hazel eyes haunted him. Her words ripped through him with every breath.
You. Will. Live.

She was gone. Bone had been taken by Joseph and though he wanted to hate her for her lies and subterfuge, all Dmitry knew was fear. It ate at his insides like worms, gnawing and rabid. She had given her life for his.

I will see you on the other side, da?

She was gone and he wanted her back. For what he didn’t know.

“She is in Arequipa, Asinimov,” a soft voice said from the dark corner of his room.

Somehow, someway, Grant Fielding had been in a boat on the Moscow River. He tracked Dmitry after he’d fallen into the murky water and dragged him up, saving him. Now he was back in Virginia recuperating. But Bone wasn’t here.

“Did you hear me, Russian?” she asked and Dmitry thought her voice truly lovely. It didn’t have the husky quality of Bone’s, the ancient tones of Arrow, or the deadly threat of Bullet’s, but it was still lovely.

He did not know who this woman was though and tried to sit up, failing before he drew in a deep breath and sucked up the pain.

He sat up and moved his legs off the bed, sitting on the side and staring into the darkness. “I heard you.”

“She is dying,” the woman said. “Much like Bullet almost gave her life for Beckett,” she said his friend’s name as if it was shit in her mouth. “Bone is giving hers for you.”

Agony pierced his chest then. He swallowed but could only cough. “She is dead?”

“Not yet.” A long pause. “Soon.”

The woman stepped into the meager light of his bedside table and he saw who she was then. It was the one they called Blade. “We continue to replay the same scenario over and over and over with Trident. I have asked myself why women worthy of so much more than what you have given them continue to offer their lives for you.” She shook her head, the spiky blond hair on her head reminding Dmitry she had been punished not too long ago by Joseph.

He always cut their hair. As if taking away their locks took their strength. It was another testament that Joseph had no idea what he had created.

Dmitry had no answers for her. He could not understand it himself but he was also still dealing with the fact that he’d given his heart to a woman who’d been lying to him from the beginning.

“She lied to you,” Blade affirmed.

Dmitry looked at her then, anger taking root in his pain. “Do all of you read minds? Are you sure you’re even human?”

Blade shrugged and sat back down in the corner, crossed her legs like an executive at a meeting and leaned back negligently. “We bleed.”

Dmitry winced.

“She was shot holding your ass above the Moscow River, making sure you didn’t give your life. She had been beaten for a full day prior to that, fought with a killer much like she is, and you are angry that she lied about your bitch of a mother and your assassin of a father? You are all stupid,” she said hatefully.

Dmitry remained silent. She continued.

“None of you understand that you are secondary. Oh, maybe not in my sisters’ hearts, but your goals are secondary to a promise made in Hell. Tell me, do you know what we did to save your sister?”

Dmitry wanted his anger to germinate and grow into rage but it wouldn’t. It refused him.

“We knew Ninka was weak from the moment she came to the compound. We had been there for a week before she was dumped on the floor in front of us, tears on face and her thumb in her mouth. But we all looked at her and without words vowed that we would protect her.

“In the end it was for nothing. Bullet held her hands, Arrow sang to her, Bone took her punishments, and I took her kills. Still she died. Tell me, what did you and yours ever do for Ninka besides leave her to Joseph?”

There was the rage then, he stood and immediately went back down. He too had taken a severe beating when he’d been caught snooping in the wrong places. The fingers of his right hand had been broken, though hadn’t required surgery. They’d been set and he now wore a cast. His shoulder was infected but he was improving. Of course, none of that would have happened had he not been looking for Bone.

Yeah, he’d been looking for Bone but found…his mother. Oh, and he’d discovered his father’s killer was one of the best killers of all…Bone.

Good God, the shock hadn’t worn off. His mother had been alive the entire time. She’d been the one to sell his sisters. She’d requested Joseph kill his father.

And Bone had seen it through on Joseph’s orders.

His head rang with the knowledge. He stood by dint of will alone and glared across the room into the shadows.

Blade laughed low. It was an ugly sound. “Beckett came back for Bullet. I do not think you will return for Bone, and that is sad to me.”

“Why?” Dmitry asked from a voice with holding in his emotions.

“Because she killed your mother for you. Because she killed your scourge of a father—and if you ever doubt what your father was, please come to me. I will tell you exactly who your father turned into. Also because she sang to Ninka and took every single punishment for your sister…and Asinimov? They were brutal. Last but not least, it is sad because Bone did it for you.”

He closed his eyes, hearing every word, seeing the hazel of her eyes, the jade-splintered glass calling to him.

“Joseph will not kill her.”

She laughed again, loud and full and Dmitry hated her. When she stopped and the silence was left ringing in his ears, she stood and walked to him. Each of the women of First Team was stunning, this one no more or less than the others. She was taller than Bone but much shorter than Arrow. She wore a black unitard and there was a bag…wait…it was Bone’s bag, strapped across her shoulders.

“He
is
killing her, slowly and meticulously.” She opened the bag and pulled something out. It was a leather-bound copy of a book. She stroked over the frail, aged leather and handed it reverently to Dmitry. “She would want you to have this. A remembrance, she would say. I do not think you deserve it, but she would want you to have it.”

Blade turned then and walked to the door. “You will not go for her?” Dmitry asked harshly.

“She would not want me to and that is another vow we made when we started this journey. If we had to give our lives to destroy Joseph, we would. We helped you when Beckett returned for Bullet because it was convenient. Bone set the charges and created a diversion. But I have other steps to take and now that Bone has fit her pieces of the puzzle, it is my turn. There will be no diversions for Bone.” She shrugged then and glanced back at him once more. “Out of us all, Bone is the strongest. She would expect us to keep our vow and it is loyalty to her that prevents me from going for her. Her control is a thing of beauty. Then you came into her life and she weakened. The one thing we have never known has destroyed her.”

“What is that?” Dmitry called out.

Blade stopped and her head drooped. She stood straight and proud seconds later and left him with a single word before she became the shadows and disappeared.

“Love.”

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