Bone Deep (29 page)

“He. Is. Mine!”

Nameless attacked again but Bone met each thrust and parry with a sharp, definitive blow, rocking the other woman on her heels until she finally fell in the dirt and scrambled backward.

They were away from the entrance of the cabin now and the low light told Bone the truth of Nameless. She was a fine-looking woman—even with a cut above her eyes and a now-broken nose she was startling. Her face was a symmetry of classical perfection—well, maybe not so much now with the broken nose.

“He is ours,” Bone said again. She walked to stand over the woman, grabbing her head in her hands and forcing her look up. “I am sorry,” she whispered on a broken breath.

“You are a killer and as such show no mercy,” Nameless responded, her blue gaze narrowed and filled with pain that had festered for years and years.

“I buried him in the bone yard beside the rest of ours. I did not name him so he remains as you…nameless. I have suffered every day for that single life I took. Accident or not, his death weighs on my soul. You could not hope to punish me any more than I’ve punished myself,” Bone said in her ear.

“I want to kill you.”

“You will not. And you will leave my sisters and the boy alone. You think Joseph is yours to take but he is not. Did you not give yourself to him, taunt him with your childish body until he took what you were offering?”

Nameless gasped and Bone had her affirmation.

“You did. You saw a way to survive and while I will not judge you for that, I will say to you what is given freely cannot be used to justify vengeance. I am not saying you do not deserve it, simply that it is not yours any longer.”

“You do not know…” Nameless began.

Bone squeezed and a gun cocked.

“Let her go.”

His rough voice sent both thrill and foreboding through her.

Nameless smiled and something in the curve of her lips made Bone’s blood freeze. So familiar was that curve, so memorable those eyes.

“Did Blade ever see you as a child?” Bone asked the woman.

“No.”

A simple answer and yet it created a bevy of questions.

“I said, let her go,” Dmitry bit out in a hard voice.

Bone raised her gaze to see him standing feet from them. “You would kill me now, Asinimov?”

His conflict was on his face. “You do not understand…”

“You do not know…you do not understand…one would think I’m an imbecile not to see the truth in front of me,” Bone retorted viciously. To the woman whose head and life she held in her hands she asked, “What was your given name?”

The woman smiled full out now. Bone whispered the name even as the woman spoke it aloud, “Ninka.”

Dmitry took a step and Bone speared him with her gaze. “Do not move, Asinimov. I hold her in my hands and you know I’m a death-dealer.”

Shock rolled in a great wave through Bone. It was not possible. She had buried Ninka in the bone yard. She had watched the life drain from her eyes after Julio had broken her body

“You are not her,” Bone said ruthlessly, squeezing even harder.

“Do not hurt her, Bone!” Dmitry yelled.

The report of his shot made her ears ring. The dust from his bullet hitting the ground beside her feet was testament he would shoot her.

He would shoot her for a dead woman.

“I am her,” Nameless murmured, smile in place. “Go ahead, Bone Breaker, kill me. Take my life once more and leave me in peace.”

“Let her go, Bone. I will not let you kill her,” Dmitry demanded.

Her gaze dropped to the woman. Her sisters could not have anticipated this and would be devastated. Ninka lived? Their reason for vengeance—their entire reason for putting each foot in front of the other for the entirety of their years was alive? No. It was impossible.

Yet the truth was indeed in front of her.

Another shot, this one winging her thigh, close to where she’d taken a grazing shot in Virginia.

This must be what betrayal felt like.

She met his blue-blue eyes and in them was pain but also conviction. He would kill her if he had to in order to save the woman she held.

“You would do this then?” she asked in a broken voice.

Where was her rage? Where was her lust to kill? Where were all the things that made Bone a killer when she needed them most?

“I will,” he responded and in his tone was affirmation.

Bone rose, dropping the woman to the ground and taking a step back. She held her hands opened wide. “You should have left me in Minton’s ropes. It would have been an easier end,” she told him.

“Leave,” he told her, “and I will not follow you. Not yet.”

She shook her head, the pain she’d been begging for nearly sweeping her off her feet. “Do not follow me at all. We will end it here.”

“I will not fight you,” he bellowed.

She took another step back, then another. Birds took flight from the canopy, disturbed from their night nests by his vehement denial.

“He’s coming,” Nameless said softly. “I can feel him.”

Bone glanced at the woman who still lay on the ground. Dmitry ran to her, helping her stand.

It was over.

“Run,” Dmitry said. “I will find you.”

“Do not seek me, Asinimov. All you will find is death,” she promised.

Joseph was coming, the sound of jeeps heading up the pass sounded clearly. Dmitry headed into the forest with Nameless.

Bone did not rub the ache in her chest. She did not allow herself to break. She put one foot in front of the other as she had always done and she made her way from the cabin, away from her past, away from Arequipa.

She stopped only once to contact Blade. She told her what had transpired and waited.

“Thank you, sister. But you must know she is not Ninka. Ninka died in that clearing and we buried her in the bone yard. She is gone to us. Whoever Nameless is, she is not ours,” Blade assured her.

Blade was in play now, searching for Nodachi and the boy and setting up the final kill that would render Joseph powerless.

“It is as it should be,” Bone whispered and hung up. She called Bullet and Arrow and whispered those same words, not giving either sister time to speak simply hanging up afterward.

In the end it did not matter that Nameless lived. Whether she was Ninka reincarnated or Ninka herself, Joseph and The Collective were going to perish.

There was more to do but Bone needed the sun and sands of her birthplace. So home she would go.

Her walls had crumbled much as the walls of her beloved city, Jericho. She was aimless, lost, and just a crack away from being broken completely. Her world had been turned upside down by Dmitry Asinimov. He had taught her that she could feel the softer emotions and then he’d stomped on her, showing her that in the end the only thing softer emotions earned you was pain.

She walked along the banks of the Jordan River and knew no peace. She walked the city bazaars in the heart of a bustling Jericho but it did not succor her.

It wasn’t until she’d stepped onto the plains of Jericho that she knew she must go to Masada. She stood on the sands of the plains until her feet burned and her skin was fire. She soaked up as much warmth as her cold soul could carry and then she set out for Masada.

She walked for five days, taking care to remain as far from civilization as possible. She kept the Dead Sea to her left and the rest of the world to the right and on the fifth day, she came to her beloved rock.

The high, barren plateau had called to her and she answered. She waited until the tourist groups left each day and then she ventured into the ruins, touching walls she left long ago and remembering the pain of her parent’s betrayal.

It was similar to Dmitry’s yet different. She had never loved her parents. They had not surprised her with their actions. Dmitry had.

But wouldn’t she have done the same thing for her sisters?

At night, she slept in a tent she’d purchased in Jericho. She stayed far away from the camp where her parents had been killed but resolved that she would eventually need to visit the place. She would never have closure but she could fight with the ghosts of her past—maybe purge some of the hate that continued to build.

The nights at Masada were filled with conflict. She did not pray as there was nothing left to pray for but she stared up into the twinkling eyes of God and she talked to Him. Sometimes she raged. Sometimes she taunted. But she returned every night and left every morning hoarse from the discourse.

She did not find her peace because she realized she would never know that until Joseph was gone from the earth. But as close as she’d come since she’d lain in Dmitry’s arms, she knew a form of tranquility and it was good.

She’d been there for ten days when she recognized the itch at the base of her skull. She scouted to find her pursuer but found no sign of anyone. Perhaps it was Arrow’s demons seeking her out. Maybe her time was close.

Another day passed, more tourists came and Bone decided she would stay here for as long as it took. Blade would call her SAT phone when it was time to meet her sisters. Until then she would remain.

She longed for her journal. The ancient Torah had been her great-great-great-grandfather’s, passed down through the generations and she’d snuck it into the single bag Joseph allowed her bring with her when he took her.

She longed for her bag and the items it held but they were gone—lost to a war she’d helped begin. Lost to her cause.

She did not visit Masada that night. The clouds blocked her vision of the sky and she couldn’t stand being cut off from His eyes. It was as close as she’d ever come to Him.

So she lay down on the sands of her tent and she rested. Tomorrow she would visit the place where she had been formed.

•●•

She was well off her game. He’d been hovering on her periphery for two days and though she had to feel his scope on her, she’d simply scouted once, not really looking for his sign and then she’d given up searching altogether.

It was as if she wanted someone to find her.

And now she slept in a threadbare tent under torrential rains. Dmitry shook his head and cursed himself. He’d done this to her—hurt her so badly she fled to a place that only brought her pain.

He wanted to hate himself but he wanted to love her more.

The woman who called herself Nameless fled his grasp soon after they’d left the cabin in Arequipa. She looked like Dmitry. Her eyes were the same as his. She’d called herself Ninka but Ninka was dead. He’d not had time to question her because there was another possibility but she’d not stayed long enough for him to ferret out the information.

She had looked at him, smiled a smile of sadness, and run.

Dmitry had gone back to Sydney, filled Rand, Adam, Gretchen, and Saya in on everything that happened and then he waited for Bone to show. She had not and he’d grown tired of waiting. He’d asked Saya and Gretchen for clues and they ignored him. They had withdrawn into themselves and not even Rand or Adam could break down the wall they built.

Dmitry wracked his brain and finally he remembered her love for the sands of her homeland. He started in Jericho, searching endlessly for five days until he stared into the night sky and it struck him—she’d gone to Masada.

He found her easily. And if he could so too could anyone else. But he was here now, watching over her and waiting for the right time. He could feel it coming and didn’t want to dig deeply into how his conviction had arisen.

He spent his days watching over her. He spent his nights doing the same but also took time to stare up into the heavens, speaking, demanding, pleading with an entity he wasn’t entirely sure existed. The stars twinkled back. Surely that was not God’s answer. He was being fanciful.

His
kostolomochka moja
had come to the place where she’d been created. He was going to delight in taking Joseph Bombardier’s life. Probably enough that the pleasure was sure to damn his soul to Hell. But it did not matter. Bone was his. Her pain was his.

It had rained off and on the previous night but had stopped earlier and as he’d not slept, he was up and watching through his binoculars for movement. She did not disappoint. Within moments of the sun rising she was packing up her tent, strapping it to her back and moving with purpose. He pulled his own pack on and followed.

It took her a half hour to come to the place she’d been seeking and once there, she shrugged off her pack and tent and stood there, so straight and still. It was nothing more than sand to Dmitry but obviously held a deeper meaning to her.

The ruins were closed to tourists for the upcoming week so they were alone in this place of history and death. He did not creep up on her. She was a killer, more versed in death than even he was, so he would not startle her.

Her back was straight, her face raised to the sun and he could hear her murmuring in Hebrew. It took Dmitry a moment to place the words but his heart squeezed once he did.

The Hebrew death prayer. It was at once the most beautiful and the saddest moment of his entire life. She was saying a prayer for her parents.

This then must the place where they had been killed. There were no markers, no blood dotting the sand. There was nothing to mark they’d ever lived or died here.

There was nothing but a woman praying to a God she thought had abandoned her, and she was praying for the ones who had betrayed her. She finished and Dmitry caught his breath.

“Would you pray for me?” he ventured into the silence of the morning.

If her back had been straight before it was a ramrod now. Bone did not turn to look at him, she simply took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

“Would you, Bone Breaker? Would you pray to find it in your heart to forgive me?” he asked and took a single step forward.

He could smell her scent—sugared apricots—and it made his body clench.

“I have told you, Asinimov,” she said so softly he almost couldn’t hear her, “The God of my fathers does not listen to my prayers.”

He took another step forward, her draw irresistible. His skin craved hers next to it. “He listened to mine.”

Her gorgeous honey-brown curls blew in the breeze. They reached her waist and his hands ached to feel the tresses wrapped around them. Still she did not turn.