Carlos’s expression blackened. “I underestimated his skills. I expected your own healing ability to deal with it, but I . . . was wrong.” I could tell it was difficult for him to say so. He rarely made errors, much less the sort that came back with consequences later, and he’d made several here. I wondered if the memory of his power when he lived here had made him incautious and thoughtless of the changes time had wrought, but I wasn’t going to suggest it. We’d survived and had to look forward, not back.
“I haven’t been in top form. My body just hasn’t been able to keep up,” I said.
Carlos shook off my attempt at mitigation. “Nonetheless, I left you in danger that could have been avoided.”
“Could Rui find you the same way he found me? I mean, he must know what your bones—”
Carlos waved the comment off. “He’s had little success thus far—my bones have changed since the days of our association. And it’s hardly impressive to bribe and threaten a taxi driver to find my house.”
“Which is a crime scene now,” I said.
Carlos shrugged. “We could not have returned in any event. Tell the rest.”
“We may have some breathing room. Even with that bone, he’s not got much. It’s the only one of mine he seemed to have an affinity for. I don’t think Rui was paying much attention to what he told me—he was too focused on his plans.”
Quinton looked ready to throw up, but Carlos was intrigued. “What did you discover that was nearly worth the cost of your life?” Carlos asked.
“Rui doesn’t know about—or understand—your change of state. He thinks the house protected you from the daylight and that you’re a sitting duck outside of it. He doesn’t seem to have much knowledge about vampires in general, either, and he’s . . . excited by the thought of exacting revenge from you. He hates you to a point of blindness, but he figured out what you did to Griffin pretty much on sight, so that was a wasted effort.”
“Not entirely. It deprived him of his best assistant, stopped him from salvaging anything from that loss, and he will still have to find appropriate bones.”
“He does have one of mine,” I said, “and he talked about ‘adjusting’ my bones to make me . . . something else—he didn’t say what.”
“He did not and will not have that chance. The bone is a pity, but there are still others to collect. I have been to Évora. The skeleton of the child is missing, but they had no opportunity to take more—perhaps because Rui was too busy with you to oversee his minions’ efforts.” He looked at Quinton. “They have recovered from the loss of your niece, but they are no further ahead.”
“And there are only three days left, according to Rui,” I added.
“Only three days?” Carlos scowled. “What is significant about that date . . . ?”
“He didn’t say.”
Carlos made a dissatisfied growl. “Go on. What more did you discover?”
“Rui confirmed that Purlis gave up his left tibia for some control of the drache—and he was amused enough to tell me that my own left shin is a near match in resonance, but again, he’d have to be close enough to touch me for that to be useful. I guess it tickles some Kostní Mágové sense of irony. Anyhow, he said it wouldn’t matter that Purlis had sacrificed a major bone for some control of the project since Rui had placed three of his own bones in the construct, which he seemed to think would mitigate the effect of Purlis’s.”
Quinton shook his head, muttering, “Jesus . . .”
“Yeah . . . your dad’s completely past the sanity line. I—we had a really disturbing discussion before he let Rui catch me.”
“I’m sorry—” he started, leaning forward as if to pull me into his arms.
I put up my hand. “It’s not your fault,” I said in my strained, half whisper. “Both of you stop apologizing or I’ll never get done before I lose my voice.”
It took him some effort to sit back and let me go on.
“So,” I said, regathering my thoughts and swallowing a few times before I continued. “Rui told me a nasty story about a girl and a witch and I think I may have figured out how the ghost bone swap thing works, but I didn’t have time to try it out and I have no idea how it’s useful.” I pulled the bone flute from my pocket. “This is Rui’s bone song—he said it’s made from the twin of one of the bones in the construct. He used it to locate the finger bone I . . . left behind.”
Carlos smiled one of his wolf grins and took the flute from me as I held it out. “Ah, now this may be useful, once he can’t hear it.” He looked it over, listened, and pulled a long, kinked strand of white energy from the small bone. I watched him through the Grey as he stretched the white thread across the table, then picked up a sharp, serrated knife from the food tray and stabbed it into the wiry filament. He held it tight, muttering, as the energy strand whipped and writhed like a snake. Every word he murmured to it seemed to slide down the blade of the knife and stain the thread darker and darker, damping its vitality, until it lay limp and black. He pulled the knife away, picked up the strand, and wove its inky length around the bone again. Then he handed the modified flute back to me. “He cannot hear it now, but it may be best if you keep this, else I may be tempted to do something rash.”
“I don’t see you as the impulsive type,” Quinton said. “More the brooding, plotting type.”
Carlos gave him a sideways look that bordered on amusement. “At the moment, the balance of my impulses appears to be positive. Don’t tempt me to upset the scales.”
Quinton made a dismissive snort, as if he had no fear of what Carlos could do to him. It was an interesting reaction, but I was too worn down by sleeplessness and pain to give it much thought.
Carlos turned his attention back to me, saying, “If you must use it to call to Rui’s bones, remove the binding I’ve put around it, first, or the sound will die in the air. It should do you no further harm now that you no longer own the bone it sang to.”
“All right,” I said, my voice barely audible even in the quiet room as I accepted the flute. “There is one other thing,” I added. “Rui mentioned Coca and the Inferno Dragão as if they were the same thing. He said . . . the dust from the tomb of King Sebastian . . . Let me think. . . . ‘The dust of a great deception will make it seem to burn like flesh.’ I’m not sure what he meant, but I thought . . .”
Carlos picked up where my flagging voice gave out. “It will lend the drache the illusion of solid flesh that burns without being consumed.”
“But if it’s only an illusion—” Quinton started.
“The illusion of flesh. ‘A great deception,’” Carlos repeated. “But the flames will not be a mirage and there is no Saint George or Sleeping King to save the people that this burning death will descend upon, although Purlis’s agents have done a great deal to give the distressed hope of such a miraculous rescue.”
Quinton added, “After creating or contributing to their distress to begin with.”
Carlos nodded. “And when there is no rescue, their resistance to fear, despair, and the rhetoric of hate will be shattered.” He closed his eyes as if he were worn out and covered his face with his hands before running his fingers back through his hair in a gesture I’d never seen him use before. “Ah . . . now I know what he needs and where he’ll have to go to find it.”
Quinton and I both stared at him in expectation while he fell silent, thinking, the colors of energy around him whirling like the view through a kaleidoscope full of volcanic glass.
“What?” Quinton demanded after a while.
Carlos replied slowly, as if dredging his thoughts from long-faded memory. “The day Rui and the Kostní Mágové have chosen to raise the Dragão do Inferno is the memorial day of Saint Jerome. That sharp-tongued aesthete is the patron saint of librarians, translators, and encyclopedists, and in that regard, the Kostní Mágové consider themselves Hieronymites—followers of Jerome.
I had almost forgotten. They are gatherers, translators, and protectors of the knowledge of the bones. Jerome himself was fascinated with the bones of the dead and the righteous. He walked through the tombs and catacombs of Rome regularly as penance for his sins when he was a young man—he considered it a vision of hell. His biographies say that he cited a passage from Virgil’s Aeneid: ‘Horror ubique animos, simul ipsa silentia terrent’ to describe the horror and repentance that he felt in the silent judgment of the dead. It is ironic that the bones of a common soldier were entombed and venerated as those of a king—the dust of a great deception—in the monastery of Saint Jerome. And now that profane dust lies in the hands of fanatics who consider themselves the hidden acolytes of that same saint.
“On Saint Jerome’s Day, they will bring forth their monster, clothed in fiery deception, blessed by the saint’s own, and constructed of bones from both the innocent and the depraved, carved with the song of an unholy resurrection. The perversity of their plan is magnificent. It binds the sacred indivisibly to the obscene. The drache cannot be killed, because it is not alive. It cannot be cursed away by darkness, nor banished by light, since it is made of both. Rui has advanced better than I’d expected. It’s too bad I’ll have to kill him.”
“You make him sound . . . commendable,” I murmured.
“I would be lying if I said I did not admire tenacity and ingenuity. Especially since I hadn’t expected him to survive ten years after I left. But how he’s chosen to use his talents and with whom he’s chosen to ally himself do not please me in the least. I will consider the return of his powers to me as a worthy apology for the small matter of his sending his student to kill me. . . .”
Quinton shuddered beside me and I felt no happier about the idea myself. “He gave me the impression that Griffin either did that on her own, or didn’t follow his instructions,” I said, compelled to be fair.
“A detail of no consequence. Rui seems to have forgotten that I am also tied to Saint Jerome—I was born and died on the saint’s memorial day. That will give us some additional strength, but we would be better served if we could stop him and the rest of the Kostní Mágové before they can assemble the final form of the drache. Given what we know he has and what he intends to create, how he means to weave the holy with the blasphemous, I know what else he must have that can only be found in the ossuaries of Alentejo. He has already taken the bones of a sacred, virgin child from Évora. Now he will need the bones of someone infected with a plague that killed thousands, and he will need the skull of a repentant thief who died in a fire. I know where both of those might be found. If they yet lie undisturbed, we may be able to upset Rui’s plans. But if we cannot, we must be prepared to fight a monster that may be nigh on unstoppable.”
“How come this doesn’t surprise me?” Quinton asked the air of the room. “Leave it to my father to hook up with a bunch of bone-waving spell-slingers who can raise an undead and unslayable dragon that breathes fire.”
“Not merely breathes fire. Is made and born of eldritch flame that burns everything it touches except the beast itself.”
“So . . . fire extinguishers aren’t going to help?”
I snorted a laugh and winced as my whole aching body seemed to nag at me for moving.
Carlos turned to look me over again, his face creased with unaccustomed worry, and held out his hand for mine. “May I see it?”
“Not pretty,” I warned him—more for Quinton’s benefit since Carlos wouldn’t care one bit how my mutilated finger looked. I put my hand into his and he unwrapped the bandages with great care.
Beneath the gauze, my whole hand was swollen, discolored, and misshapen. I winced with an unexpected pang as Carlos removed the last of the packing around my dismembered joint. I hadn’t looked at it since I’d cut off the tip of my finger and was taken aback by how terrible it looked. The skin remaining on the palmar side had been stretched over the cut end and stitched down, leaving a hideous line of bloody sutures and bruising across the top of what had been the upper joint of my ring finger. The wound had wept blood and serum and the doctor hadn’t been overly nice about his work. It looked as if there were no remains of the bone I’d hacked off, but I didn’t know if I’d managed to remove the fingertip so cleanly myself or if the surgeon had done that, cleaning up some chopped-off bit I’d left behind inadvertently. I hoped the latter hadn’t been the case, since even a sliver of the bone might draw Rui to the doctor who would have no reason to lie for us even if the bone mage didn’t do anything to persuade him.
Carlos glowered and shook his head. “It could have been better done.”
“The chopping or the sewing?” I asked, my voice nearly faded to nothing by now.
“Both. And you waited too long in repairing it.” He held on lightly and laid his free hand over mine. His hands were cool and dry, his touch more soothing than I could have imagined. I closed my eyes and let the sensation flow over me, not caring where it came from. “I can’t make it whole again—the tip is unrecoverable—but the remaining bone and tissue are dying,” he said, his voice very low. “For that I have some recourse.”
The relief of pain I hadn’t even acknowledged was so great that I cried and was dizzy. Tension that had held my shoulders rigid for hours faded away. I could feel Quinton supporting me, his arms around me, pulling me to his chest. I went limp against him, his breath stirring my hair. The constant, red ache in my body eased and flowed away, replaced by a cool, creeping tide that seemed to loosen all my joints and draw me toward a sensual floating sensation. I felt adrift, aware of the room as if from a distance. Then the coolness began to warm to an uncomfortable degree. I moved a little, trying to pull away, trying to make an objection with my sleepy, ruined voice, but it came out as a weak whimper. I forced my eyes open as Carlos let go of my hand, surrendering it to Quinton with a thin smile.
Carlos rose to his feet from the chair he’d occupied and turned toward the door. “I shall ask Nelia for more bandages.”
He left us alone in the quiet room and I looked up at Quinton, fighting to keep my heavy eyelids open.
“Are you all right?” Quinton asked, watching me with clear anxiety.
“Hand’s better,” I whispered.
“It still looks bad but not like something from a train wreck anymore,” he said. “I can’t say I’m pleased with Carlos about it, though. Something felt . . . weird about that.”
I tried to laugh but didn’t make it past a snort.
Quinton started to smile. “All right, how ’bout one snort for ‘you’re imagining things’ and two for ‘you may have to challenge him to a duel’?”
This time I did manage to laugh.
“I’m sorry. That sounded like ‘You’re imagining that I want you to challenge him to a duel and die tragically.’”
“Never,” I said, my vocal cords having received a small benefit from whatever Carlos had done, as well. “Showing off.”
“Me or Carlos?”
“Him.”
“What sort of showing off are we talking about here? Because I’m grateful for the healing thing, but if he’s been messing around in your head . . .”
“No. My head’s fine. Funny that you’re still jealous.”
“Of a dead guy? I am not.”
“Liar.”
“All right. I am jealous of someone who has a connection to you that I can’t have. And I’m jealous of the time I haven’t been able to spend with you while I was chasing after my father, giving in to my own obsessions instead of being with you. I’m envious of my sister. She has a family and a home, and she can hold her loved ones close and be with them all the time, wherever and whenever she wants. And I wish I had that. I hate what I’ve done in leaving you alone and I wish I’d quietly broken Dad’s neck when you weren’t looking last year.”
“I’m glad you didn’t.”
“Why? If he’d died, none of this
would have happened.”
“You’ve said that before, but we can’t know that, and you would have become a man who had murdered his own father in a fit of rage.”
“But I still think the world would be better off if he were dead.”
“I agree, but a year ago, you weren’t thinking of the world. You were caught in your own fury and fear. If you had killed him, your remorse and your horror at what you’d done would have torn you to pieces. What’s happened is terrible and I feel for your sister and her kids, but you can’t preempt every atrocity in the world by perpetrating more—that’s the route your father has taken. It would be unwise for you to be the instrument, no matter how necessary his death may become. You don’t need the guilt and you would carry it forever. I know you. It would weigh you down even more than knowing the end results of what you did for the government does now. I want you to be free of that, but I can’t take it away and you would never let yourself off that hook, so don’t put yourself there. Let someone else carry the guilt.”
“You?”
“No. I think he ought to be dead, but I won’t be the one to do it. He is very ill. Rui and his plans may be all it takes. Let him go.”
“I will. I’ll have to work on it, but I will. I would rather hold on to you.” He looked at me as if asking permission, and the colors around his body were fluttering, unsure.
“Right now?” I asked, feeling there was something that pressed on his mind that he was afraid to say, and was trying to get around to, or escape from somehow.
“Yes.”
“All right,” I said.
He pulled me closer into his lap, swinging my legs over so I was snuggled sideways to his body. I nestled my cheek into his shoulder and, in spite of the topic, I wished I could purr with the contentment of being quiet in his arms. Quinton wrapped those arms around me and we sat like that for a while, me listening to the reassuring constancy of his heartbeat at rest.
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