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

by Jasmine Walt

  He bent down to receive hugs from a couple of the younger children. The older ones I recognized from the festival back in Beijing. These were his grandchildren. They snuck glances at me as they headed up the stairs.

  “There is nothing better than seeing your future in a child’s eyes.” The hunch in Xu’s back seemed more rounded. His wispy hair looked even more sparse. His cheeks appeared shrunken in. When he reached for me, his frail hand closed around mine and I got prickles, like a storm cloud moving across the horizon. I took a deep breath and held still when what I wanted to do was pull away, like snatching my hand away from hard ice.

  “How are you feeling, Dr. Rivers?” he asked. “I understand you delayed your trip to the forests by a day due to illness? I do hope it’s nothing serious.”

  “It was just allergies,” I said. “I’m fine now.” I smiled down at him before wrenching my head back and coughing.

  A handkerchief appeared from behind me. I traced the length of the arm up until I met with Tresor Mohandis’s face.

  “What are you doing here?” I demanded, ignoring the proffered handkerchief.

  “I was invited,” he said, putting away the unclaimed cloth.

  I turned to Mr. Xu, my feet shuffling back a step beyond the two of them.

  But Mr. Xu smiled amiably, even if the smile didn’t reach his eyes. “Mr. Mohandis and I have come to an understanding.”

  “Mr. Xu agreed to put aside any objections from his seat as a councilman if I gave you and Ms. Van Alst time to explore the site,” Tres said.

  “Oh,” I said, realization dawning. “So your generosity in giving Ms. Van Alst and me passage onto your lands was a business decision and not out of…”

  I swallowed instead of finishing the sentence. I had no idea what word would have come out of my mouth. Just because I had dreams about this man holding me, making me feel safe and cherished, didn’t mean I meant anything to him. And, to confirm, he spoke his truth.

  “Everything I do is a business decision, Dr. Rivers.” The hard mask was back in place. There was no trace of the tenderness I’d imagined and dreamed about.

  “The Xia have always been forward-thinkers and adaptable,” Mr. Xu said. “Even while we hold on to our past traditions. I want my homeland to prosper again, for the sake of my children and grandchildren. After all, we don’t live forever, do we?”

  I felt Tres’ eyes on me. I steadily avoided his gaze. There was an awkward moment of silence. But thank God for Loren and her single-minded mission to restore her father’s name.

  “You are forward-thinkers,” Loren agreed. “As far as my father could tell, the Xia were the first Chinese dynasty to have a queen.”

  “Queen?” Mr. Xu asked.

  Loren pointed to the painting of the woman above the river. “Yes, the River Queen.”

  Mr. Xu shook his head. “Queen is actually a mistranslation. She was not a mortal queen; she was an immortal goddess.”

  I looked again at the painting that very well could have been of me. The connections snapped together in my mind like magnets. The Chinese characters for goddess and queen began the same, but differed in the second character. How could I have missed that? More of the characters on the bone snapped into place. The Lin Kuie must’ve been making sacrifices to their goddess.

  “So, there wasn’t a ruling queen of the Xia?” The disappointment was palpable in Loren’s voice. “She wasn’t real?”

  “All gods, goddesses, and myths start with a truth,” said Mr. Xu. “But Pa Shui was very much real.”

  “Excuse me?” Tres said. “Did you say Pa Shui?”

  Mr. Xu nodded.

  Tres turned to me. Those dark eyes bored into mine, but I avoided his gaze.

  “Shui means river,” Loren said. “And Pa is the number nine.” Now Loren turned to me, obviously remembering the Nova Fleuve alias from my flight manifest.

  “Legend says that the goddess, Pa Shui, was sailing down the river, trying to recover from a broken heart. She came from the west and sailed to the east. She took the waters into herself, and the flood receded. Once the people were safe, she left to find her lover. But the next season, she returned with her heart broken. That is why the river often changes course. The pattern repeated. It would flood when she came to us with a broken heart, and it would recede when she was happy.”

  “This legend began about two thousand years ago?” Tres asked.

  “I don’t believe it was a legend,” Xu said. “I believe it’s real.”

  “But the floods continue to this day,” Tres challenged.

  “The legend says that the floods ceased once the goddess sacrificed herself for her people.”

  My head was spinning. We were back to a sacrifice of the goddess, which just didn’t make any damn sense.

  “There are prophecies that she will return and the floods will cease again,” Xu said.

  Tres opened his mouth, likely to ridicule the idea, but I cut him off. I needed to make some sense of this. And Xu was right about one thing—every story had a kernel of truth. You just had to dig. “Are these legends oral stories? Or are they written down somewhere?”

  “Both,” Xu answered. “My mother told me these stories. Unfortunately, she passed away a very long time ago. But she said the prophecy of the return of Pa Shui was foretold on dragon bones. Perhaps you and Ms. Van Alst will find the relics on your journey tomorrow.”

  A bell sounded for dinner. Mr. Xu led the way forward with Loren. I made to follow, but Tres’s hand on my arm held me back.

  “Goddess?” he sneered, stepping in front of me when I didn’t turn to face him.

  Immortals had long stopped claiming such titles with humanity. It only ever led to death and destruction. Human destruction, not our own.

  “It was a long time ago,” I hissed. “I don’t remember what happened.” I found his hard gaze and glared at him. “What do you care, anyway?”

  “I’ve lived long enough to know that you can forget the past, but you can’t rewrite history if that’s what you’re trying to do.”

  I had no comeback for that, and he saw it. I had forgotten my fair share of pasts recently. My past with Tres, my past with Epsilon and Vau, and my past with the Xia people. But I wasn’t trying to rewrite it. I was trying to recover it. Well, my past with Vau, Epsilon, and the Xia, not my past with him.

  “Hey, guys.”

  We both turned to see Loren in the doorway to the dining area.

  “Play nice,” she said. “We’re guests. You can take it behind closed doors later.”

  Tres and I sprang apart as though that was the grossest idea ever. I folded my arms over my chest. He clenched his jaw and his fists. His stiff body stood even taller as he stormed ahead of us.

  Loren came to stand beside me and watch the show of him walking away. “There’s so something there. Why are you holding out on me?”

  “All that’s between that man and me is mutual dislike.”

  “Yeah,” she agreed. “But it came from somewhere. Otherwise, there would be indifference.”

  “I’m with Zane.”

  “You know my view on monogamy.” Loren shrugged. “Life’s too short to stay faithful. I swear, sometimes you talk like you’re an old woman born in the last century.”

  22

  I swung my leg over the Mongol horse. It wasn’t a great feat. I was larger than the horse, which stood at about five feet. The breed was small, but they could carry heavy loads and their stamina was legendary. Genghis Khan had nearly taken over the Eastern world on the backs of these small but mighty beasts. I mounted mine, ready to delve into a past it appeared I’d purposely forgotten.

  Loren pulled up beside me on her steed. Her eyes were trained past me. Her lips quivered, failing to hide a building snicker. I turned to see what she found so funny. Then I had to look away, lest I burst out in a full belly laugh.

  Tresor Mohandis was not having an easy time mounting his own steed. The two beasts faced off. Tres gripped the reins of the
mongrel. The horse stepped to the side as the big man tried to mount, causing Tres, foot in stirrup, to hop alongside the horse to keep from falling over.

  I lost it then, which caused a domino effect, and Loren’s trickle of laughter teetered from her lips. Tres looked up and glared at us. We were not cowed, especially not by a man who couldn’t mount an animal that was no bigger than a cow.

  Tres recovered his foot from the stirrup and tossed the reins down in frustration. “Why can’t we take a helicopter?”

  “Because there’s nowhere to land it,” Loren supplied helpfully. “And, before you ask, a Jeep or Land Rover can’t get through these trees.”

  “But a bulldozer could,” Tres muttered as he finally mounted his horse through brute force. The animal neighed but took the brunt of its new master’s weight and command.

  Tres was decked out in expensive boots that looked like they’d never hit the concrete. His jeans looked like they’d been tailored by a brand-name designer. His linen shirt wouldn’t last the day in this dirt. He would be a tousled, disheveled, worn-through mess by nightfall. And I found all that delightful.

  I smiled pleasantly at him as he rode by. He narrowed his eyes as he passed me. I gave my horse a tug and followed at a distance.

  We were a small party. Loren and I had come alone, but Tres brought two guides provided by Mr. Xu. The trek through the dense woods would take two days. I’d trekked through the world’s most extreme climates with ease. But this was the first time I did it with another Immortal in my presence, and one I didn’t care for at that.

  My head was pounding by the end of the first night. It wasn’t just from Tres’s presence—though that factored in. His age and strength brought the recently cured allergy symptoms back with a vengeance. There was an annoying pinch between my shoulder blades. My pinky toe hurt in comfortable boots I’d worn for years. I bit my lip as we went through a tricky passage, and I tasted blood. I didn’t know how humans lived with these annoyances day in and day out.

  But those were all minor complaints. The screams of my nightmares pierced my waking hours. I jumped at every snapped branch, expecting men to fly out of trees and take their revenge. But the sky was cloudless, blue, and empty.

  As the day stretched on, I could see much evidence of an ancient civilization. Stone structures poked their heads out of the ground. The landscape lay before me like a classroom with students raising their hands to be called on by the teacher. Archaeology was never this easy. Remains were rarely visible from a mountaintop or out in the desert sands. But, like the site in Honduras, this civilization wanted to be found.

  I was certain that if we dug up this dirt, we’d find a large city beneath our feet. It was likely that the flood waters had reached inland and washed away all traces of life.

  As the sun began to set, we came to a man-made structure that was nothing like the rest we’d seen all day. We stood looking at the triangular structure in the middle of the Chinese wilderness.

  “Pyramids aren’t uncommon in China,” Loren said. “They were mostly burial mounds.”

  But this mound was set apart from the signs of civilization we’d found. It sat alone in what I assumed might be the center of the town. Burial sites were for the masses, not a solitary person. No, this looked like someone’s home.

  Loren was the first inside. The two guides stayed back. I couldn’t tell if it was fear in their eyes, or something else. Tres stared at the edifice for another second. His eyes connected with mine with an unreadable expression, and then he went in.

  I stepped up to the opening. The moment my foot touched the threshold, a wave of emotion nearly knocked me to my knees. Something dark bubbled in my gut and raced up into my lungs.

  I grabbed onto the side of the structure. I had been here before. I looked up at the pyramid, but my eyes were unfocused as I expected to hear screams. But I didn’t. Instead, I heard laughter. It was high-pitched and happy, followed by a deep baritone full of delight.

  It came and went like the wind. As soon as the sound cleared from my head, the nausea receded. I still gripped the wall. My fingers roved over a groove. As I caught my breath, I noticed the groove felt like a pattern. I looked up at the wall of the doorway. What I saw had me closing my eyes again.

  On the entrance were the markings of the people who must’ve built and lived in this dwelling. The clearly marked lines were not Chinese characters. They were Aramaic.

  I did not go inside the home. Turning away, I crossed my arms over myself as the winds of memory continued to beat against the inside of my mind. The next sound I heard was not full of happiness and delight. It was accusatory.

  “I may not read every language known to man,” Tres said, “but I recognize the names of my people. When’s the last time you saw Epsilon and Vau?”

  I took a deep breath but did not release the hold I had on myself. “I don’t remember.”

  He was so quiet for so long that I chanced a glance up at him. His dark eyes were granite—hard, cold, and unreadable. “Seems to be a trend with you.”

  I didn’t take the bait. Instead, I looked off to where the guides stood with the horses. They were too far away to hear us, and they seemed unconcerned in any case.

  “What’s on those bones, Nia?”

  “I don’t have the complete story.”

  I wasn’t looking up at his face. My eyes were fastened on his chest. His linen shirt had collected its fair amount of dirt, as I’d predicted. His shirt was open a few buttons, and I caught a glimpse of his strong chest. I couldn’t turn away from the brown within the now-dingy white. I crossed my arms even tighter about myself to keep from going to him and laying my head against his pecs, which I knew would be pillow soft.

  Instead, I looked into his gaze and told him the truth. “There was a sacrifice. I don’t understand if it was to the River Goddess or of the River Goddess. It doesn’t all make sense.”

  “Clearly you weren’t sacrificed,” he said. He looked back to Epsilon and Vau’s home. “But maybe they were.”

  So he thought I might be the Xia’s River Queen, too. And now he’d given voice to my latest fear … that I may not have been the only Immortal to have been bound to that altar of my nightmares.

  The wind blew. It lifted my hair, which was loose. As it blew about my face, a memory flashed before my eyes. I heard that same high-pitched, happy laughter. In my memory, I looked out at the blue sky and equally blue sea. There were sails above my head and a wheel in my hands. Beside me, Vau gave a joyful laugh as we crashed into an oncoming wave.

  How had I forgotten that? It was Vau who had taught me to sail. Her tanned face and dark hair whipped about as mine did now. I held on to the vision of her in my mind. How could I have forgotten her face? We could’ve been sisters as we favored each other so.

  I blinked myself back to the present and my knees wobbled. But I didn’t hit the ground. Instead, I found myself inside of a steel cage full of warmth.

  My nose turned into a chest that was soft and familiar, like my favorite pillow. As the cage closed around me I felt safe, protected, cherished. I tilted my head to look up into Tres’s face. I knew this face. Like the back of my hand, like my signature, this face was familiar to me. How had I forgotten its lines and planes?

  His lips were parted. His eyes widened. He was unguarded in this moment. His hand rose, and he brushed the wayward strands of hair off my temple. He’d done this before, countless times. I knew he had, but I couldn’t remember a single one, only the feeling of it.

  “It shouldn’t hurt after all this time,” he said, his voice no louder than the wind. “But when you look at me like you don’t know me…”

  He swallowed. I felt the lump that stuck in his throat somewhere deep in the recesses of my heart. Tres set me on my feet and turned away. His shoulders looked like boulders of tension. He stood in profile, his body angled away from me, but I saw his face. I watched his jaw tense as he turned his head up to the receding sun.

  “It was bec
ause of you,” I said. “I came here on a boat like Xu said. I was running from you, wasn’t I?”

  He said nothing. The tension mounted in his shoulder blades. His fingers clenched and unclenched.

  “You broke my heart,” I accused.

  That got his attention. His eyes snapped open, and he whirled around to face me. His steps were thunderous as they closed the space between us. I took an involuntary step back.

  “I broke your heart?” He stared at me. His mouth worked, but nothing came out. He was at a loss for words. The pain etched on his face was too much for me to look upon.

  “Did you do this?” I asked. “Did you murder these people? The Xia?”

  “Murder?” His face contorted in a mix of anger, disbelief, and confusion.

  “I have these dreams of people being slaughtered, but not by my own hand. Was it you?”

  “Wrong Immortal,” he said, shaking his head slowly. All trace of tenderness from before was gone. “Murder to get what I want isn’t exactly my style.”

  I took another step back as though his words were a missile being hurled at me and their impact would devastate.

  “Your mind can reject it,” Tres continued. “But like you always say, the dirt never lies.”

  I turned from him as his words continued to weaken the protective walls in my head, walls that were clearly erected around memories I wanted to forget. Needed to forget.

  “Your memory has always been selective,” Tres said. “You left him before because his temper got the better of him. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what happened here. He was always a jealous god.”

  I shut my eyes tight, but with each word from Tres, my defenses continued to crumble.

  “And now he hides behind the veneer of a peaceful artist. He’s fooled you again.”

  I shook my head violently, but the more I shook, the more the memories came loose. Zane’s beautiful, smiling face popped into my mind as a match to Tres’s words. I pushed at the vision, trying to shove it away from me. Tres was lying, or he was stretching the truth. Immortals did it all the time.