by Jasmine Walt
“I have never been anything but honest and upfront with you,” he continued.
I whirled around then, if only to get away from the destruction within me. “Then tell me who you are to me.”
Tres opened his mouth. Then he closed it. There was an entire world swirling within the depths of his eyes, one I’d been to before but couldn’t seem to get back to.
“Like I said,” he said, “some things are better left buried beneath the dirt.” And, with that, he turned and stormed off to his horse.
23
“You okay?” Loren asked the next morning as we broke camp.
“Yeah,” I said. But I’m sure I looked like the pile of horse dung whose smell was wafting over to our campsite. “It’s just—”
“Allergies,” Loren cut me off as she stuffed her sleeping bag into its liner. Her tone spoke volumes—she wasn’t buying the excuse any longer. She probably never had. “That keeps happening to you, but only when you’ve been around Fine Frenchy and Broody Billionaire. I’m starting to wonder if you’re allergic to men you find attractive, which would be the weirdest form of birth control I’ve ever heard of.”
Loren was in the wrong career. She should give up tomb raiding. Clearly, her talent was elsewhere. The girl should be a contestant on a game show where people solved puzzles for money.
“We’re just half a day’s ride to where I found the bones,” she said. “Then this will all be over. I’ll prove my father was telling the truth, and you’ll get to rescue another lost culture from the bowels of the earth.”
I dragged myself to my mount. My limbs felt heavy. One of the guides Mr. Xu provided handed me the reins of my horse. His fingertips accidentally brushed mine as the leather straps exchanged hands. My fingers cramped around the lead. I clenched and unclenched them a couple of times before mounting the horse. The guide smirked at my hands before turning and mounting his own steed.
I glared over at Tres, who I knew was the source of my discomfort. The pinch had returned to that place between my shoulder blades. The headache was a gong against my cranium. It was his age as an Immortal, and his general demeanor as an asshole of biblical proportions, that had me in this bad way. But glancing over at him, I saw he was rubbing at a spot behind his neck, too. His face contorted in discomfort. His eyes were a bit red from what I assumed was lack of sleep. Was I having the same effect on him?
It didn’t make sense. I could stay with Zane for days before the weariness set in. It was always weeks before I began to lose my strength. Why was Tres having this effect on me? And why was I apparently having the same effect on him after only two days?
During the half day it took to reach the site, I felt every clomp of the horse over the rough terrain. A quick glance over at Tres showed that he pinched at his shoulder blades every now and then, but clearly the allergy wasn’t bothering him as much as it was taking a toll on me. He hadn’t been around three of his own kind in the span of a week, nor plagued by nightmares of his past, trying desperately to hold waking memories at bay.
As the sun rose to its peak, we arrived. The site we pulled into was on a hillside. We were nearer to the river waters. I smelled the dampness in the air and the dirt as we dismounted. A chill ran through me in the windless day. I’d been here before.
The guides stayed back, insisting they needed to keep an eye on the horses while we went in. I kept hearing the fish-headed alien from that space movie saying, “It’s a trap.” But I had to go forward. I couldn’t hold back the truth any longer, whatever it may be.
I looked around at the entrance to the caves. They didn’t look familiar, but I knew I’d been here before. My feet rooted to the earth, and something inside me told me to turn back. Something dark pushed at the lock in my mind, urging its way free.
I wrapped my arms around myself like I’d done outside of Epsilon and Vau’s home. I didn’t want to go into that cave any more than I’d wanted to go into the pyramid. I knew that once I crossed the threshold, there was no turning back. Whatever I’d locked away inside myself was going to come back to the forefront.
“They’re in there,” Loren said, nudging me forward.
I took a deep breath and took the first step, then another, and then another. Tres and Loren marched steadily forward ahead of me. Loren disappeared into the darkness of the entrance, and my heartbeat increased. I hesitated at the threshold.
Tres tossed a look over his shoulder at me, raising an eyebrow. There was accusation, curiosity, and concern in his gaze. I couldn’t deal with any of his emotions. So instead of facing him, I made my way inside.
The darkness assaulted me immediately. I nearly turned back into the receding daylight. Tres held up a high-beam lantern. My eyes adjusted quickly as I looked around.
The humidity in the cave was high, the temperature a cool sixty degrees. Prime conditions to preserve ancient artifacts for hundreds of years. There were writings all over the walls. I could tell that these were names and not a story. They also were not by my hand.
It looked as though many people had taken a hand at writing them. It reminded me of the Vietnam Wall Memorial in Washington, D.C. I expected this was the same type of memorial. Probably a record of the names of those who had been born, or those who had fallen. There were hundreds, male and female, etched into the walls.
“They’re down here,” Loren said.
She led us down a narrow passageway. The further we went, the more light came in. I looked up and could see that there was an opening in the cave that brought in natural light like a skylight.
Glancing back at the narrow passage, I noted there was only one way in and one way out. If anyone came up behind, we were trapped. I cursed under my breath, but I kept going. My feet wouldn’t stop moving, just as my brain wouldn’t stop turning. I’d been here before … and not just in my nightmares. In reality.
“Here.” Loren pointed ahead. “There they are.”
I made out turtle shells, ox scapula, and various other mammalian bones. I had expected the bones to be buried. Or mounted on the walls. They weren’t. They sat on a bit of raised earth, much like a set of trophies mounted on a mantel. And like trophies, these could be easily lifted and carried from their viewing place.
I turned back to Loren. “I thought you said you couldn’t take the bones with you.”
“Trust me, I couldn’t.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. “You said you couldn’t get the bones out. You said your father couldn’t get the bones out either. Why not? What stopped you? Or rather … who stopped you?”
She shook her head. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”
I took a deep breath before I said the word I’d kept to myself for hundreds of years. “Ninjas?”
Loren blinked those blue eyes wide. “Or maybe you would believe me.”
My gaze shifted from Loren’s and went to the solitary way in and out. It was still empty, but I knew that wouldn’t last long. The Lin Kuie had to be near. They were probably waiting on the outside of the cave.
“Flying ninjas,” Loren said. “I mean, these dudes were straight out of House of Flying Daggers high-wire martial arts, but the thing is, there were no wires.”
Tres came up between us. Unlike the hushed awe of Loren’s voice, his was his normal deep-set, impatient, annoyed tone. “What do the bones say?”
Loren narrowed her eyes at his interruption. I turned back to the bones. There were three of them. The one Loren had taken the picture of and shown me in Washington, D.C. On its right was one I hadn’t seen before. On the far side of those two was—
“That’s the one my father found,” Loren said. She crouched down and reached for it but withdrew her fingers at the final second. “Do you see? It’s real. He was telling the truth. But the ninjas wouldn’t let him take it. Who was going to believe that? Ninjas in a cave. So he copied it. After he died, I found this place. I came here, and they pulled the same thing with me. They wouldn’t let me take it, but they let me go. Luckily, the tim
es had changed and I had a camera phone. But I only had a chance to take a picture of the one bone.”
I stared at the raised platform that the bones were mounted on. It didn’t look like a natural structure. It looked man-made. I looked around at the inside of the cave. It was well-kept, as though someone had been in here recently and frequently. And then I saw it.
Off in the recesses of the cave, it was there. Just like I’d seen in my nightmares. It looked smaller in the light from the sky. But the chills that ran down my back were just as strong as the ones that woke me in the middle of the night. I reached for the cool, comfortable steel of the dagger at my hip as I looked back at the entryway. It was empty, but I still felt the prickles.
“Nia,” Tres said. “What do the bones say?”
Something wasn’t right here. But I’d suspected that all along, hadn’t I? I just had to figure out what.
Had I mentioned I hated riddles?
I turned my back from the only escape route and picked up the first bone. My hands trembled under its light weight. In my mind, I saw water dropping on the bone. I knew they were my tears. I’d cried as I wrote on these carcasses. But the water had long ago evaporated and only the symbols remained. The first bone that Loren’s father had found told the beginning of the story. The bone Loren had presented to me was the end with my signature. And now I had the last bone, which was the middle of the story, the worst part. What I read chilled me to my bones.
I closed my eyes. My fingers traced the symbol for the name of my friend. That joyous trickle of laughter sailed through my ears on a clear memory.
Vau.
“It’s not me.” I opened my eyes, but I didn’t focus on either of my companions. I didn’t focus on anything except the truth of what the bones told me—a truth I had written down and then buried in my mind. “I wasn’t the River Goddess.”
24
“Uh, you thought you were the River Queen?” Loren asked the question like a mother inquiring after her child’s imaginary friend.
I glanced at her, unsure where to begin to explain. There were Immortals who kept humans as servants. They informed these humans of everything, about who and what we were. Some Immortals had entire bloodlines of servants who stayed with them for generations. I’d never taken to the practice. But Loren was in this deep, and with no other way out of this cave, it seemed only fair that I bring her into the fold.
I turned my back to her and slid the collar of my shirt down over my shoulder. “Do you see that symbol?”
She leaned in and peered at the branded number on my shoulder. “That’s the same as the one on the bone.”
I readjusted my top and turned back around. “It’s my signature. It’s how I’ve signed every document or scroll since I learned to write. The reason I knew the dragon bone was authentic back in Washington is because I recognized my signature”—I took a deep breath and prepared for the kicker—“from two thousand years ago.”
Loren blinked, and then her eyes got wide. She opened her mouth, but when no words came out, she closed her lips and her mouth went slack. She rubbed at her eyelids. Then she rubbed at her slackened jaw. She didn’t argue or try to make excuses. She took the news like a grown woman.
“I’m immortal,” I continued. “I’m super strong. I can’t be hurt or get sick. Unless I’m near another of my kind for too long.”
Her gaze flicked to Tres. She jerked her thumb. “Him, too?”
I nodded. “Yes, he’s one of us as well.”
“And Frenchy, too?” She huffed and rolled her eyes. “Allergies, my ass.”
The girl was perceptive, I’ll give her that.
“Flying ninjas and immortals,” she said. “What next? Werewolves?”
“Nia,” came Tres’s impatient voice. “What do the bones say?”
I fixed my gaze on Tres. “It was Vau. She’s the one who came to China with a broken heart.”
“During one of the times she and Epsilon broke up,” Tres supplied.
I nodded. I had heard her laughter in my head, but now I was seeing flashes of her tears. We’d gone sailing during one of her breakups with Epsilon. I remembered her dark hair, so like mine, flowing behind her as she took command of the wheel. I lay on the deck beside her. Our sun-toasted skin dried under the day’s light, and we talked about giving up on love. We stopped in Persia and I goaded her to come with me, but she wanted to continue north. I’d told her I’d make my way north through the Persian Royal Road, a trade route that would later become the Silk Road.
I had met up with Vau years later. She and Epsilon had made up. He’d found her. They were living in bliss in their pyramid home, surrounded by a small tribe of humans who knew what they were and what they could do. For generations, these humans had worshiped them both like gods. I remembered leaving them, promising to return soon.
“Vau came here,” I said. “She saved the Xia from the flood, and they claimed her as their savior and goddess.”
Tres shook his head, not needing me to complete the rest of the story. “Let me guess … Epsilon eventually joined her. They lived here together until they grew weak.”
That was what Tres had said to me in my dreams. “Love makes you weak.”
His jaw worked as he stared at me. His expression was unreadable.
I nodded. “They lived here for hundreds of years, and they grew weak. And when they could no longer protect the Xia from the floods, the people turned on them and—”
“And sacrificed them,” Tres finished. His voice was small and hollow. It sounded wrong on such a mountain of a man.
He came and laid a hand on my shoulder. Instead of it making me feel weak, it felt as though he passed on some of his strength. I doubt either of us knew how to process what we were feeling. We’d seen countless numbers of humans die. But there had never been an Immortal death.
“I came back, but it was too late.” I ran my finger over my signature.
I’d taken the time to write out this story and its warning, but why hadn’t I taken these records with me? Why had I left them here in this cave? And why were they on display instead of buried in the dirt?
“What does it say?” Tres asked.
The answer was pushing its way to the forefront of my brain, but I refused to acknowledge it. It was simply too gruesome. Instead, my mind was taken back to my nightmares. But I didn’t have to go too far. I was standing in the reality of those dark dreams. Everything was out in the open in this cave, with the light of day shining on them—the bones, the writing on the wall, the altar in the corner.
The altar.
In my mind, I saw myself on the altar. My hands and wrists were tethered. I was weak, so weak, even though there were no Immortals around. There were just dozens and dozens of humans—ninjas in black.
I’d been strapped down to that altar. I remembered the cold grip on my ankles and wrists. I’d nearly died just as Epsilon and Vau had. But I hadn’t. Everyone else died. Screams tore through throats, then heads rolled. There was blood, so much blood.
I jumped as a hand settled on my shoulder. Loren held up her hands as I turned to her with my dagger raised. “Hey, I’m a friend, not a foe. Remember?” She lowered her hands. “You looked like you were about to pass out.”
I lowered the dagger. My hand trembled, too weak to maintain the grip. The dagger fell to the ground.
“Nia?” Loren’s face was full of concern.
“I did this. I’m the reason all those names are on that wall. I’m the reason they’re all dead.”
“Those savages murdered two of our kind,” Tres said. “If you did anything to avenge them, it was rightful.”
“Two wrongs don’t make a right,” I said.
Tres shook his head. “Good and bad are human notions.”
I frowned as he repeated Aleph’s words back to me. My gaze caught Loren’s. Her hand remained lightly at my back. I felt that without her support, I would topple over.
“I’m not convinced these people died by your
hand.” Tres looked at the writing on the wall of the named dead. “This has Set written all over it.”
Set was the name of the war god of Egypt. It was also a name for the number seven, which was Sept in French, Zayin in Hebrew. But Zane was a pacifist. In the entire five hundred years I’d known him, he’d never so much as raised his hand to harm another living soul. He was too preoccupied with beauty to cause any destruction.
“Zane would never—” I began.
But the words stuck in my throat as the memories gave one final push and the floodgate opened. I saw Zane’s face contorted into something ugly. His beautiful eyes shining with rage. His lush lips covered in blood.
“No.” The word bubbled up out of my heart, but the memories strangled the sound.
“Still defending him.” Tres snorted. “Just like in Giza.”
Giza? I remembered Zane holding me in the bed back in Beijing. He’d been musing over when we’d met in the sands of Giza. He’d laughed at his lapse in memory. But it hadn’t been his lapse. It had been mine.
I’d forgotten him. Just like I’d forgotten Tres. My world felt like it was crumbling around me.
“Leave it,” Tres said. “Whatever story it tells, leave it buried. No one needs to know any of this.”
Loren and I turned and looked at him.
“There’s Aramaic in those writings.” He pointed to the bones. “There’s no proof that anyone from the Middle East or Africa came to Asia that long ago. What will you tell the humans? That you’re an Immortal and you wrote on these bones nearly two thousand years ago? Who’ll believe you? Let’s just destroy it all and be done with it.”
“You mean silence them again,” I said. “The people, and Vau and Epsilon?”
Loren took a step forward toward the bone that cost her family everything. Tres barely spared her a glance. To him, she was an insignificant speck that would be gone in less than a hundred years. That time was a weekend vacation to someone as old as him.
“Who does it help to reveal this information?” he asked. “Who does it hurt to keep it silent?”