Dragon Bones: a Nia Rivers Novel (Nia Rivers Adventures Book 1)

by Jasmine Walt

  “In the original canonical works of the Bible,” Aleph said, her voice quiet, “it says the Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown, Genesis 6:4.”

  Aleph was the oldest of us. But her angelic round face and thin body made her look like she’d just graduated high school. She turned to me, her movements slow and languid. Her eyes were the color of the sky after a storm, an eerie peace over a wasteland of destruction. I didn’t like having her attention on me, but I needed answers, so I held still and returned her gaze.

  “That last line, I think it was mistranslated,” Aleph said. “Because I was born first and I’m not a man. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find an original copy of the Bible? Would you, Tisa?”

  “They were destroyed in the Library of Alexandria. You remember that, Aleph.”

  “Hmm,” she said, turning her attention back to the mole.

  Immortals kept secrets, and we lied. It was for self-preservation when we did it to one another. It was for the survival of us all when we did it to humans. In the past, when humans knew about us, they’d hunted us down and either worshiped, tried to kill, or experimented on us. Sometimes all three.

  We’d been worshiped as gods. Egyptian gods—us. Greek gods—yup. Some of us liked to play at monarch, but because we didn’t age, it made humans suspicious. So instead of taking the crown and scepter in hand, the power-hungry among us became advisors, whispering in the ears of queens, dictators, prime ministers, and presidents.

  “Do you like it here, Aleph?”

  “It’s the same as every convent.”

  “You moved not too long ago,” I said.

  Aleph moved convents every twenty years or so when the other sisters and monks saw that her baby face didn’t age. Though she was the oldest of us, she appeared younger than we did. And somehow, she held on to many of her early memories. Maybe that was what made her a touch crazy.

  “Were you not safe in the last place?”

  “Why do you ask, child?” Aleph wrinkled her brow as the still waters pooled in her dilated pupils. “Do you need safe haven?”

  Most Immortals were well-practiced in the art of the redirect. Aleph was the master. She had patience and cunning. I had some of that, too, when it came to a treasure buried in the dirt. But when it came to people, I was usually a quick-triggered bulldozer.

  “Have you heard any of the legends of the Lin Kuie?”

  Aleph frowned. “I don’t know that word. Is it some new slang the youth are slinging?”

  “It means forest ghost. Some believe they were the original ninjas.” I’d done a little reading on the commercial plane ride over from the Caribbean to Europe. There wasn’t much on the actual Lin Kuie in the recorded human history either. It seemed that modern-day gamers had appropriated the term for characters in their video games.

  “Ninjas? You mean the Orientals who leap about in their pajamas?” Aleph chuckled like an eighty-year-old woman. It looked sinister on the face of a girl who appeared eighteen. “Are you hunting flying men who dance in the dark? You need only go to the picture shows.”

  Aleph turned away from me. Without preamble, she took her garden shears and sliced the mole from navel to nose. The creature let out a toe-curling scream. I looked away, my eyes burning. My stomach roiled.

  Death, I could handle. Needless suffering, I couldn’t abide.

  “I’ve lived every experience in this world, except this one,” Aleph said as the mole ceased its screeching and its body went still. Its eyes turned glassy and lifeless, just like hers.

  There was a moment of silence. But it was only my silence that was out of respect. The silence ended with the thunk of the mole’s body being returned unceremoniously to the dirt. I looked off into the patch where its body had landed, forever silenced. No one would tell its story.

  “There’s something after me,” I said. “Some people. At least, I think they’re part human. I feel weakened when they’re near, like it’s one of us.” I opened my shirt. The wound had healed. The deep gash that had sliced my chest was now only a faint scar. “One of them did this.”

  Aleph came up and put her cold hands on my shoulders. I tried to hold still, but I shuddered. I had seen many inexplicable things in my times. There were other kinds of magic in this world besides us.

  As far as I knew, there were twelve Immortals who walked the earth. We found evidence of ourselves throughout recorded history and references to our likenesses in stories told about the times before. But we weren’t the only supernatural beings who walked this planet.

  Somehow, these ninjas knew about me. It could’ve come from my own mouth or from someone else’s. Zane had never mentioned being attacked by ninjas, but then again, neither had I.

  It could be another Immortal. Not all of them liked me. Namely, Tres. But I’d interfered in other Immortals’ business as well. Immortals had gone to war with one another, but it rarely came to physical assaults. Only we could do true harm to one another. If we happened to kill one of our kind, well, then, that was it. No one wanted a murder like that hanging over their head, because the next Immortal could do it to them.

  “They’re strong, all Asian males,” I said. “Could they be demons?”

  “Demons have no interest in us. They want souls.”

  Aleph didn’t believe we had souls. She believed that was why we didn’t die.

  I pulled the dagger from my bag. Her eyebrows rose with interest. I wasn’t sure if the interest was in the blade or what the blade could offer her. The blade should not have torn my skin. At least not without another Immortal present. Being impervious to harm was a perk of living forever.

  I knew the ninjas attacking me weren’t immortal because I’d killed them, many of them. But they were strong, they made me feel weak, and they could wound me. And they kept coming, generation after generation, which meant they were being born and taught.

  “I was alone—no other Immortals were present. I was struck with this and I bled.” I handed her the blade.

  When her eyes lit up, I wondered if I had made a mistake. My flesh was vulnerable in her presence. I didn’t think Aleph would kill me. She was more interested in her own death. Plus, I wouldn’t hold still like the mole.

  “Aleph, is there a substance that could kill us? Or a special metal? This blade breached my skin.”

  She sniffed the blade. Then she stuck out her tongue and tasted the metal.

  “Maybe a witch’s magic?” I suggested.

  There were objects in this world that held power. Witches were those who could sense and wield that power.

  “There is no magic, only blood.” Aleph rolled her tongue around the roof of her mouth and closed her eyes. “No, not blood. Bone.”

  That made even less sense. I tried to smooth my face from the grossness of her action by the time she opened her eyes and refocused on me. “Have you heard anything similar from any of the other twelve?”

  “You mean ten.”

  Had she forgotten some of us? There were twelve Immortals. We didn’t have much occasion to meet, especially with the allergy. I didn’t keep tabs on everyone. The only Immortals I saw regularly were Zane, every few months; Aleph, every decade or so; and Delta a few times a century. We weren’t exactly a family.

  “Didn’t you know? Epsilon and Vau fancied themselves in love. They paired up and went off to live ever after, happily I suppose. But I haven’t seen them in over two thousand years.”

  Vague images of the two came to mind. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen them. “You think they’re … dead?” The word sounded foreign on my tongue, which was familiar with nearly every word known. But referring to death and an Immortal was an unfamiliar concept.

  “They probably grew weak and died of old age.” Aleph said it in a dreamy voice. “How is Zayin, by the way?”

  She ran the blade over her finger, watching the
blood leak out of her skin with fascination.

  “Aleph, have I ever told you anything I’ve done that was … bad?”

  Asking an Immortal about their memories was like asking a potential partner about their sexual history on the first date. You weren’t sure if what they told you was the truth, and they likely underestimated their experience to make themselves look good.

  “Good and bad are such human notions,” Aleph said. “What was bad one century is good in another. I’ve spent so much time making amends for the terrible things I’ve done in the past, only to wake up a thousand years later and no one even remembers, including me. I don’t concern myself with such human trifles anymore.”

  She tucked the blade in the folds of her tunic and smiled up at me. I knew I wouldn’t get it back. I wondered if I should worry about what she might do with it.

  “Forgive yourself, Tisa. You are the only one to lay the blame.”

  No, she was wrong. It was a few hundred ninjas and me.

  I knew I wasn’t going to get anything useful from her, so I made to leave.

  “Off to see your lover?” Aleph said. “If you see Epsilon and Vau, pray give them my regards.”

  9

  The woman pulled out a thin blade and reached for my hand. I took a deep breath and uncrossed my arms. With another breath, I wrung out my hands, shaking my fingers loose from the clench they held. Finally, I gave the woman my right hand.

  “Square or rounded?” she asked, readying the nail file for work.

  “Rounded squares,” I answered, resting my left hand on the armrest of the salon chair.

  The nail technician began to work on my pinkie finger, and I relaxed into the rolling pins and vibrations of the massage chair. The visit with Aleph the other day had left me tense and out of sorts. She always left me feeling exposed. Aleph looked at me as though she knew more than she let on, and she liked to talk in riddles. Despite the way I made my living, searching for the lands of the lost and deciphering old scrolls, I hated riddles. In my everyday life, I preferred things to be simple and straightforward. Like the controls of a cockpit.

  I’d chartered a plane in Spain— an SJ30 SyberJet—and flew it solo to China. The cost of the aircraft wasn’t an issue. I had thousands of years of gems, coins, cash, and credit at my disposal. What was priceless were the demands on my mind and body courtesy of a solo flight across continents.

  The journey had taken half the day. I was mentally and physically exhausted by the end of it, which had been the point. The flight had taken my mind off my plight.

  I was looking forward to lugging myself to my hotel room and crawling under the covers for a full day before figuring out my next move. But first, I had to do something about my cuticles and chipped nail polish. A girl had to have her priorities in order, after all.

  “I thought I’d find you here.”

  I turned my head to see Loren Van Alst slide into the cushioned salon chair next to me. A petite Asian woman scooted up on a rolling chair with a tray of nail polishes. Loren selected a coral color, discarded her heels, and dipped a toe in the sudsy water.

  The Beijing airport salon was not what Loren had led me to believe. It was a couple of massage chairs with foot baths. Pretty much a standard neighborhood nail salon. But I wasn’t complaining. The water on my feet had been welcome. And now the polish on my fingernails was presentable despite my chewing at them from stress over the past couple of days.

  “How did you know I was coming today?” I asked Loren.

  “I’d been looking to see if you used the ticket I reserved for you.” Loren gave the nail tech her left foot. “When you didn’t, I thought you might be flying coach.” She shuddered, shimmying her chest and wiggling her hips at the mention of the back of a plane.

  “I said I wasn’t coming at all.”

  Loren snorted. “I saw your eyes when you saw my photograph. You’re an artifact junkie. You weren’t going to pass up the chance to get your hands on that bone.”

  She flounced back in her seat and moaned with delight as the nail tech scrubbed at her heels.

  “And then this morning,” Loren continued, “I saw there was a private plane coming in piloted by someone called Nova Flueve. What’s the translation, again? New River? Nine River?”

  Loren turned to me. I avoided her gaze. She’d figured out the key to my aliases. Either she was as good as she claimed with patterns, or I really was getting predictable in my old age. I wasn’t usually this paranoid, but I was walking into the lion’s den. The men who attacked me were likely born and bred on this continent. They wouldn’t have to travel far to throw a dagger or aim a kick at me.

  “Anyway, you’re here now,” Loren said. “And you’re just in time. I’ve arranged a meeting with the antiquities expert tonight.”

  I tilted my head as I regarded her. “Those meetings aren’t easy to get. How’d you manage that?”

  Loren arched her back. “I have a lot of assets.” She gave her bra straps a tug and then let go. They snapped back with an indecent crack against her chest.

  I tapped my freshly painted toes on the top of the basin. “Loren, we’re scientists. Our greatest weapon is our mind, not our breasts.”

  “Not when the problem before us is a man.” She shrugged. “And an old lover. But we broke it off on good terms. I told him I needed a favor.”

  “And he told you to come by for a meeting?”

  She cocked her head to the side. “I’m not sure. We got disconnected.”

  The chime of a phone interrupted my comeback. I looked down and was shocked to see Zane’s number. His unscheduled calls rarely came through.

  “Problem?” Loren asked.

  “Boyfriend.”

  “Oh.” Loren wrinkled her nose. She frowned, twisting her lip in disappointment.

  “What?” I demanded, my hackles going up.

  “I didn’t take you for a monogamist.”

  I adjusted my pants and stood, moving over to the drying section since I was done. Answering my phone, I said, “Zane?”

  Part of me didn’t expect to hear him, but his voice came through crystal clear, like he was standing right next to me. “I didn’t expect to catch you, mon coeur. I thought you would be immersed in the muds of a spa in Catalina.”

  I’d texted Zane that I was going to Catalina. The region happened to have excellent spas. Technically, I had been in the mud when I walked through the convent gardens. But I hadn’t had any beauty treatments. All in all, it wasn’t exactly a lie.

  And I was in a spa now. “I just got my nails done.” I looked around the airport salon in the heart of Beijing.

  “What color?” His voice hit a low register, like it would if he’d asked what I was wearing.

  “You’re a pervert.” I giggled. “Why can I hear you so well?”

  “Delta stopped by.”

  “Oy, Nia,” came a smoke-filled voice in the distance.

  “Heyyy, Delta.” I dragged out the syllables of my salutation.

  “The transmission is crazy clear, isn’t it?” Delta shouted in the background.

  “She’s created some kind of gadget that’s given me a signal boost,” Zane said, coming back on the line.

  “She gave you a boost, did she?” I tapped my painted nail on the back of the phone case. “Wasn’t that nice of her.”

  I really had no reason to be irritated. Delta was a tech geek and one of the few Immortals I would call a friend. She’d also lost any interest in males a millennium or so ago. My jealousy stemmed from any Immortal who spent time with Zane. If they were around him zapping his energy, that meant less time for me when I finally got to see him.

  Zane chuckled instead of addressing my snark. “I asked Delta for the use of her wares…”

  He chuckled again at my audible exhale of annoyance.

  “…because I have some good news. They restored the cottage.”

  “Wait? Do you mean the cottage?”

  “Yes, the cottage in Nice where we spent
our first month together.”

  Zane had pursued me for decades. During that time, he never pushed or imposed himself upon me. He’d always approached me with that same confident swagger. When I rejected him time and time again, he’d offer a patient smile with a glint in his eyes that promised me a next time.

  We ran into each other repeatedly during the Protestant Reformation. I was sequestering away artwork deemed immoral by the church. He was painting and sculpting more of it to put on display in defiance. At the time, I refused to admit I admired him for it. It was during my stay in Versailles, under the reign of Louis XIV, who commissioned hundreds of pieces of artwork, music, and literature, that I finally gave Zane any attention.

  In the spring, I sat still for him in the Palace of Versailles while he painted my portrait. In the winter, I saw him again in Paris and stood in the snow while he kissed me first on one cheek, then another, and then on my lips. In the summer in a cottage in Nice, I’d given him my body. By the fall, he had my heart.

  “It’ll be open in two weeks, and I got us the first booking,” he was saying. “Right after my showing. This means we’ll see each other sooner, as you wished. And we can stay for a whole month.”

  “Oh…” I sighed.

  “Oh?” he parroted.

  “I might not be able to make it in two weeks.”

  “Spain isn’t that far from France, the last time I checked a map.”

  I picked at the peeling Formica on the drying station’s counter. “I’m actually in China.”

  The phone heated in my hand. I heard something that sounded like a light bulb splinter on his end. There was silence on the line. I worried we’d lost the connection. But then I heard him inhale and sigh.

  “You’re going on the excavation with the Van Alst woman?”

  I nodded, then realized he couldn’t see me. “At least to stop Tres from building on the site before it can be excavated.”