The Mortal Bone (18 page)

Finally, silence. A long minute passed.

Then, a scraping sound—so heavy, immense, the ground vibrated—as though part of a mountain was shifting beneath our feet. I moved closer to the hole, feeling more of those vibrations, listening to a tremendous cracking sound—like the bones of a giant were breaking. Closer, louder. Until it was no longer the ground shuddering, but my eardrums.

Zee finally crawled free. Slow, careful, dragging something behind him. I couldn’t see much, but it was massive. The hole was not big enough to let it out, and Raw and Aaz broke away dirt, rock, widening the way. Zee tugged again, and the other boys joined him, digging their claws down into—stone, I realized—pulling hard.

Dek and Mal coiled tense on my shoulders as the object was pulled free from the hole. I found myself staring at a stone block: approximately eleven feet long, five feet wide, almost as tall as me. Smooth surface, but unpolished, as though it had been taken whole from the earth and fashioned in the rough shape of a massive rectangle. No engravings, no markings of any kind.

I searched for seams but found none. It either had no lid or was sealed so tight nothing was visible.

Zee beckoned me closer. I looked where he pointed.

I had been wrong about there being no engravings. I found one, carved into the top of the stone block. It was small, less than the size of my palm.

It looked exactly like the scar on my jaw, just below my ear.

A jagged line, twisting and daggered. Given to me by a creature that was not a demon or anything that could be named—except that he was another kind of hunter, devoted to one of my ancestors, who had shown him trust and friendship when no other would have.

He had become an odd ally and friend—though I still hadn’t forgiven him for scarring my face. Marking me with a symbol that I’d seen tattooed on a priest and set inside my grandfather’s arm.

A symbol that meant death and rebirth. A symbol that meant either the end of everything—or the beginning of tremendous possibility.

All of which was inside me.

All of which had once been inside the boys.

A chill hit me. Raw and Aaz crept close, all the spikes along their spines flexing with tension. Zee watched my face.

“Why did you ask if I trust you?” I said to him.

He did not answer. A single look passed between him, Raw, and Aaz. Dek and Mal began humming “Ain’t No Grave,” a Johnny Cash song I’d been listening to a day or a lifetime ago. Back in Texas, on a porch with a ginger ale in my hand. Another world from here.

“Ain’t no grave can hold my body down,”
I recited in my head, and stepped back as Zee and the boys jammed their claws into solid stone and started tearing it apart as though it was little more than a butter block, already soft from the sun. It sounded like silk tearing.

Dek and Mal dropped off my shoulders, winding close with sparks of fire trailing from their nostrils. They attacked the stone with the same ferocious grace as their brothers, chewing it with their teeth.

Less than a minute later they broke the surface—and I realized that that massive, seamless block of stone was hollow as an egg.

I forced myself to breathe as Dek shot inside, Mal behind him. Zee snarled, ripping out another block of stone, and tossing it aside. Raw and Aaz redoubled their efforts, lips pulled back over their sharp teeth, red eyes narrow and glinting. Faster, harder, claws ripping into that rock with a brutality and desperation that made me profoundly uneasy.

I didn’t feel any better when I saw what it held.

“Those are bones,” I said, listening to myself speak as if from a distance,
feeling
distant, numb—because it wasn’t just bones I was looking at, but scraps of clothing and desiccated flesh attached to bones, and what I should have said was,
those are bodies
, but my mouth wouldn’t form that word—that raw, painful, word.
Bones
was easier.
Bones
were cold and dry, and remote.
Bones
weren’t bodies stuffed inside a hollow stone and buried beneath the desert.
Bones
weren’t bodies that had died in positions of agony, hands still reaching, clawing at the walls of an impossible coffin.

Zee made an odd sound, almost a gasp, and dragged his claws over his eyes. Raw and Aaz leaned on each other, shoulders slumped. I heard a mournful humming from inside the stone slab, deep amongst those remains. It made my heart sink.

I stared at the boys. “What is this?”

Zee let out a slow breath and jammed his claws into his chest as though he were trying to dig out his heart. Again and again he stabbed himself, as if the pain would bring him relief from whatever he was suffering.

And he
was
suffering. I could see it in his eyes.

“No matter now,” he finally rasped. “No matter.”

Raw and Aaz closed their eyes. I said, “It fucking matters to
you
.”

Zee snarled at me, and I flinched. He didn’t seem to notice, instead spinning away from me and facing that jumble of dried flesh and bones, tangled together inside the stone block, which had been ripped open until it resembled little more than a cradle. Dek and Mal moved slowly through those remains, caressing them with their bodies.

Zee crouched, and touched one of the dead—a hollow, shrunken face covered in dark dry skin, and bits of black hair. I could not see enough to tell if it was human, though it didn’t matter. He was so careful, even reverent. Made me hold my breath, watching him.

“Aetar wanted to punish us,” he whispered. “Buried our hearts alive.”

An ache spread through my chest, into my gut. “Who are the dead?”

“Our hearts,” he echoed again, and looked at Raw and Aaz. “Made us watch them die.”

Some of those bodies shifted, stiff and crumbling in the night air. Dek and Mal appeared, pushing them aside, with gentleness and soft melodies strumming from their throats. Zee’s shoulders rose and fell, and he leaned forward to reach beneath those remains.

He pulled out a crystal skull.

I stared, startled. The skull was larger than the one the possessed woman had given me, and the face was different. No sharp teeth. A jutting jaw. Only one socket, in the center of the head. Like a Cyclops.

“Um,” I said, watching as Raw stepped forward to take the skull from Zee, who reached in again—deeper, this time—and pulled another crystal skull from beneath the dead. This one was partially wrapped in a threadbare cloth that crumbled when Zee touched it, falling away and revealing a crystalline carving that resembled a horse’s skull—except for the long, spiral horn embedded in the brow.

Zee moved deeper into the stone cradle, sifting through the dead until he pulled out three more skulls. Each one was slightly human, and slightly not, with differences that ranged from the shape of the cranium to the numbers of eye sockets. One skull sported bull horns and an overly large forehead that would have looked good on a Neanderthal.

Raw and Aaz lined the skulls in the sand and stepped back, staring at them. Zee crawled free of the dead, also watching the skulls. I had no idea what those artifacts were doing with the bodies, but I was certain they hadn’t been meant to see the light of day again.

Thirteen skulls, I’d been told. Thirteen keys to bind the Reaper Kings. And here were five of them.

The armor on my right hand tingled, pins and needles flowing up my arm, over my entire body. A chill. That deepening unease.

“Guys,” I said.

“Trust,” Zee whispered, looking at me. “Only have one heart now. Won’t lose it. Won’t lose
you
.”

He turned back, raised his fist, and slammed it down on the skull nearest him.

Crystal shattered. I staggered back as shards hit my legs and chest—other, larger, fragments sinking into the sand beneath the force of his blow. I gasped at him, stunned, shielding my face as Raw and Aaz tore into the remaining skulls, breaking them with their fists, raising them over their heads and hurling them down on stone, on their knees, on each other’s backs—destroying them with deliberate, relentless, determination.

Loss hit me, all my unease exploding into fear.

I realized that I’d been lying to myself. I
was
scared of the boys no longer being bonded to me. Scared of what they would do. I’d been looking at that
other
crystal skull as a way out. A possible solution in case things got bad.

Clearly, the boys were not going to cooperate. And why would they?

“Fuck,” I whispered, as Zee reached back and flung a baseball-sized chunk of crystal into the ruins. I heard it crack against stone, then silence fell, hard and heavy, smothering even the sound of my pounding heart.

“Never again,” he whispered, trembling.

CHAPTER 17

T
HEY burned the bodies. Dek and Mal coughed fire upon the remains, and the sparks turned to flames in seconds, spreading with a heat and ferocity that made me keep my distance. The boys did not retreat. They stood in the fire, holding those bodies as they burned in their arms.

I watched them and wanted Grant. I almost left them to return home, but every time I came close, I stopped myself. I needed to be here. I didn’t know why, but my gut said so. Leaving would have felt good but not right.

So I found a tumbled column and sat on it, trying to steady my pulse as I took slow, even breaths, drawing in the cool desert air—closing my eyes, emptying my mind of hard thoughts. I drifted. I sank. My bond with Grant throbbed golden and hot. Beneath that, I suffered the weight of a sleeping giant, coiled beneath my heart.

Zee left the fire first, small body outlined against the flames. He watched me. I watched him.

“I’m sorry,” I said to him, quietly. “Whoever they were to you, I’m so sorry you lost them.”

“Lost many,” he replied, just as softly. “Lost many in the beginning, lost a whole world. Too desperate not to lose any more.”

He hesitated, looking back at the fire. “We lost, anyway.”

“You loved them.”

“Did not know it was love.” Zee glanced back at me. “Know better now.”

I sighed. “Why did you wait until now to come here? You could have unearthed that tomb at any time since you’ve been free. You could have asked your old mothers to come here. My mother. My grandmother. Me.”

“No point warming cold secrets.”

I dug my fingers into the stone beneath me. “Are there other secrets?”

“Always.” Zee pressed his small fist over his heart. “Each breath a secret.”

Each breath. Each moment.
I
was just a moment, a mortal heartbeat that would last a couple decades, then fade into memory. Our lives together were a secret no one would ever understand. But that was just one life. Each of my ancestors had lived a secret lifetime with the boys. Secret, between them. Remembered
only
by them.

But before that? Before being imprisoned? How many memories could burn over the millennia?

Had my mother known this was going to happen?

I just didn’t know what hand I’d been given yet. The boys were free, yes. But I had no idea what that meant or what they would do with that freedom.

I patted the spot beside me. Zee prowled close, graceful and sleek. He did not sit beside me but crouched between my feet, facing the dimming fire. Dek and Mal were singing softly, coiled on top of Raw and Aaz, who continued to kneel in the flames.

I stroked the spines of Zee’s hair, burying my fingers behind his ears and massaging his hard skull. I had seen my mother do this, and over the years, I’d taken up the habit.

“This, peace,” he whispered. “Peace will not last, Maxine.”

“Okay,” I said. “You brought me here, we unburied some bodies, you destroyed those skulls. Was that part of a plan or just something you had to do?”

He tensed. “Need to protect. Need to think ahead, not just to army, but Aetar. War comes, Maxine. War comes, but we will be
free
.”

“And this world? Will it be free?”

He hesitated. My hands stilled. “Zee.”

He pulled away from me. I reached for him, but he slipped out of my grip, dragging his claws through the sand as I stood up. I moved too quickly and swayed, dizzy.

“Maxine.” Zee touched my hand, steadying me. “Need to sit.”

“What I need are answers,” I told him, digging my palm into my eye. “I’m scared. I’m scared of what’s coming.”

“Scared of us,” he whispered.

I swallowed hard. “A little, yes. Is that why you destroyed the skulls?”

“Destroyed so the Aetar could not use them. Destroyed so that you would not die in the belly of a stone.” Zee tugged on my hand, forcing me to sit. “Will do what it takes to keep you safe.”

“No. There are limits.”

“No limits.”

“The limit is harm,” I told him. “Promise me you will keep this world safe, Zee.”

He looked away to Raw and Aaz, who had left the fire and were watching us, with Dek and Mal draped over their arms. I felt something pass between them in that silence. I felt it in my gut and heart.

“No,” he said. “Will not promise.”

“Many worlds. Worlds, always reborn. Not you.” Zee gave me a hard, desperate look. “Not you.”

My eyes stung. “I will die, one day. I am not immortal. I am not forever.”

Zee pressed his claws over my heart. “Ten thousand years, in your blood. Ten thousand years, sharing hearts of mothers. Good mothers, bad mothers. Our mothers. Our
babies
, becoming mothers. Birth to death.
Birth to death.
” His voice grew rough, hard, and his eyes began to glow. “Now we free . . . but your blood, still ours. Our clan. Our babies. Our mothers. Ours.”