The Bones of the Earth- The Complete Collection

by Scott Hale

  Felix’s eyes snapped open. He scraped the crust from their corners and wiped the drool from his mouth. Crap, he thought. He flung his legs over the side of his bed and stood up.

  “Audra?” He stumbled forward blindly in the dark. “Where are you?”

  There was something wrong with the floor. It didn’t feel right. Still out of it, he bent over and closed his hands around a clump of grass. What the heck? He reared back and rubbed his eyes. With every pass, they worked a little better. Until, when they were good and ready, red and raw, he saw that he wasn’t in his room at all.

  “The Void,” he whispered. His words rippled the air. “I’m here.”

  Standing on a hill, Felix could see most of the Void. The lowlands below him were a mess of narrow ravines and gaseous pits that fragmented the scaly stretch. The ground itself appeared as though it were liquid, not solid. Although the inky, rocky texture flowed in every direction, it never actually moved at all. There were dark masses that swept across the area, too; feathery whirlwinds of disease-wracked ravens that flew the lowlands in a constant patrol.

  Felix backed up. He didn’t want to be seen. Not by the birds. Not by anything that lived here, really. A clammy wind rolled off the peaks that loomed in the distance. Breathing it in, he quickly coughed it out, as it burned his lungs and turned his stomach.

  Holding his breath, Felix turned around, to see what other sights sat behind him. At the furthest end of the hill, where the tall grass tapered off, there was a small house. Out of its chimney, thick, bruised-colored smoke poured. The front door to the house, or what was left of it, creaked open, stopped, and slammed shut. It did this over and over again.

  “In the house.”

  Felix jumped and stumbled sideways. Beside him, one of Audra’s shadows floated. Here, in the Void, the creature had more definition, more detail. There appeared to be bones inside it, a ghostly skeletal system that floated inside the hazy darkness the shadow was comprised of.

  “So close to death,” it said, flexing its claws. “Good place to hide.”

  Felix cleared his throat. “Can we g-get Vrana out?”

  The shadow shrugged. “There are ways.” It floated towards the house.

  Felix ran after it. “What about the Witch?” After a few seconds, he was already out of breath. He stopped, buckled over, and gulped the vomit-flavored air. “Can you…? Oh, god.” He retched. “Can you stop her?”

  The shadow floated back to Felix and straightened him out. With its ice cold hands on his shoulders, it said, “No.”

  Looking into the creature’s eyeless sockets, he whispered, “Can anything?”

  The shadow nodded and pointed to the house, to the woman standing at the window, watching them from behind it. “She can.”

  Vrana? Felix wiped his mouth and broke into a sprint. The closer he got to the house, the more his body fought against him. His skin was on fire, and his muscles seizing. But he ignored it, all of it. This wasn’t his body, anyway. Just a dream of his body. He was still back in Pyra, asleep, with Audra at his bedside and Avery and Mackenzie close by. He knew pain, and he knew it well. If Samuel Turov had taught him anything in their time together, it was that pain, much like money, had a value to it. It could buy a person, and it could be used to buy something with. Pain here, in the Void, was cheap, an inflated imitation. His time in the South had given him a wealth of suffering, real suffering, to spend. And now, at last, it was time to cash it all in.

  Felix sprinted up the yard. The front door creaked open, paused, and slammed shut. As he reached for the handle, the shadow grabbed his arm from behind and said, “Wait.”

  “Wait?” a woman’s voice cried inside the house. “Don’t wait.” The woman laughed cruelly. “No, no. Come in. We seldom have willing visitors.”

  The door slowly creaked open on its own. The shadow let go of Felix’s arm and stood beside him. Blue light spilled over the threshold, across their feet.

  The shadow leaned into Felix and whispered, “I can get her out. But we can’t keep her out.”

  Felix noticed the drool that had started to fall from the shadow’s fangs. “God will find a way,” he said.

  At that moment, the door slammed all the way back. It cracked against the house and flew off the hinges, just barely missing Felix and the shadow. Cringing, he gathered himself and stepped across the threshold.

  The Witch was there, rocking back and forth in a chair made out of bones. She was rubbing her hands together over the fireplace, as though to get warm, yet there were no flames or logs inside it. Instead, there were tentacles—fat, blue, writhing tentacles that spewed the very same bruise-colored smoke he had seen coming out of the chimney. At the back of the fireplace, an object caught his eye. Squinting hard, he saw that it was the same silver, blue-gemmed necklace Vrana had been wearing the night she came into his room.

  The Witch leaned back in the chair, her spinal column sinking into her skin. Lazily, she twisted her neck and looked at him, half-interested.

  “Who’s this?” another woman asked.

  Felix’s head snapped to his left, where another woman stood beside the windows. Unlike the Witch, who wore black, this woman wore white. She had a kinder face, too, with soft eyes and a small smile. She looked about as out of place here as he did. But then he saw the skinned bodies dangling from the rafters behind her and thought otherwise.

  “That is the Holy Child of Penance,” the Witch said, unenthused. She turned her head and went back to the fireplace. “She must have called him here.”

  The second woman nodded and put her finger to her lips. “You shouldn’t let her do that.”

  The Witch waved off the woman’s warning.

  “My name’s Joy,” the second woman said, making a small curtsey. When she did, several dead fetuses fell out from in between her legs. They slid across the ground, like vaginal regurgitations. “I’m sorry.” Her cheeks went red. “I’m so embarrassed.”

  Felix tried to cover his mouth, but he was already puking. He fell against the doorway, spitting up what little was left of what the dream thought was in his stomach.

  The Witch howled with laughter. She fell back in her chair and pounded the armrests in grotesque delight. “Don’t worry about it, Joy.” The Witch came to her feet and clapped her hands together. “Vrana will clean it up.”

  Something rattled in the rafters above. As Felix looked up, Vrana dropped to the floor and scurried to where the fetuses had been spilt. She stopped short of Joy and reared back, stretching out her massive wings. With a look of disappointment, she nodded and turned away. In a ravenous fury, Vrana went down on all fours and started shoveling the abortions down her beak, swallowing them whole.

  “I’m sorry to say,” the Witch said, getting out of her chair, “but Vrana is grounded. She can’t come out and play with you tonight.”

  “Please, don’t,” Felix begged, reaching out to Vrana. She was licking clean the floor. “God, please, make her—”

  The Witch stomped her foot and shouted, “What is this? What is that behind you?”

  Felix turned around. She was talking about the shadow, except it wasn’t just one shadow anymore. There were several of them now. They were holding their hands in the air. Above them, a dark circle was forming, like they were etching it into reality itself.

  “I told you she would be a problem,” the Witch said to Joy. She spat at Felix and went to the fireplace. “I hope you’ve gotten right with the God, Holy Child. You’re about to meet It very soon.” The Witch clapped her hands and belted, “Vrana!”

  “No, come with us,” Felix cried as the Winged Horror scurried across the ground, talons clicking on the floorboards. “We’re getting you out of here.”

  Vrana ignored him. She crawled up beside the Witch and lay her head at the woman’s feet.

  “Say the words,” the Witch said. She grabbed Vrana by the feathers on her neck. “You know them. Say them!” She shoved Vrana’s face into the tendrils. The silver necklace at the bac
k of the fireplace glowed vibrantly. “Say them!”

  “Penance, Pyra. The Holy Child. His quarters,” Vrana croaked. Her feathers stood up across her body. The blue tendrils extended and stabbed into her skull. “Penance, Pyra! The Holy Child. His quarters!”

  “What’s going on?” He turned around to the shadows, but they were gone. “No, no!”

  “Penance! Pyra! The Holy Child! His quarters!” Vrana clawed at the ground like a dog digging a hole. “Penance! Pyra! The Holy Child! His quarters!”

  The Witch crossed her arms and grinned.

  Felix, wake up! Wake up! It was Audra’s voice. He backed out of the house. Where was she? His body started to shake. He felt hands on his shoulders, someone slapping him across the face. Felix, he heard Audra cry. Felix, wake up!

  Joy stepped in front of him, frowning. “I’m sorry, but you really did do this to yourself. All of you. You and the whole world.”

  Felix! Audra screamed into his ear.

  “Where are you Audra?” He looked up at the black circle, which was beginning to fade away. “Audra, where are—?”

  Felix shot up, out of bed, and onto the floor. Onto the floor of his room. He knocked over the candles, burnt his arm on a few that had reignited. He was out of the dream. He was awake. He was awake and there was Audra. But she looked horrified; the way she had looked when the Bloodless had bloomed.

  “Felix, Felix!” She shook him hard. “Felix, do you have any more weapons? Is there another way out?”

  “What?” He heard screams and steel outside his room. Someone was beating on his door, trying to break it down. “Audra, what’s going on?”

  “She sent them. Her cult. Somehow, she—”

  The door burst open. A flood of robed figures spilled into the room. They surrounded Audra and Felix with bloody daggers. Even though their eyes were glowing bright blue, he recognized them all. Patricia and Juda, doctors from the second floor clinic; Amanda, a cook, and Abram, her father; York, the quartermaster; Malachite, head of the kennels and stables. Even Grant was there, the man who was in charge of the main terminal, and the first person to mention to Felix the Cult of the Worm.

  But Grant, unlike the others, wasn’t holding a dagger. No, they were…. Felix covered his mouth and howled. In each of Grant’s hands were heads. Severed heads. Avery’s and Mackenzie’s severed heads.

  CHAPTER XI

  “Kill the Holy Child,” the cult chanted, Vrana’s voice hidden behind their own. “Kill the Holy Child!”

  Audra shielded Felix with her body. With his contrition knife, she spun around, slashing at every cult member that drew near.

  “What do we do?” Felix clung to her slip. His nails tore through it and dug into her back.

  “Kill the boy!” Juda grabbed Felix’s robe and started to yank him away.

  “Audra! Audra, help!”

  Audra twisted back and stabbed the knife into Juda’s arm. She ripped downward. His skin split open like overcooked meat.

  Juda screamed in gut-wrenching pain. He toppled backward, severed veins and arteries dousing his robed brothers and sisters.

  “Stay back,” Audra threatened. Her hand was shaking so much she could barely keep hold of her weapon.

  The cult members kept reaching for him, kept taunting him by stabbing the air. “God, please help us.”

  Patricia and Amanda stepped over Juda and filled in where he had been standing.

  “Justine! Justine!” Felix wailed as Abram went for him.

  Audra sliced across the quartermaster’s collarbone. A red signature signed Audra dribbled down his chest.

  “I’m so sorry,” she said. She moved Felix in front of her. “Get back!”

  Abram tried to stab her face, but Audra deflected the dagger. “Don’t listen to her, you morons!”

  Juda twitched in the background, dying without any concern from those he’d come here with.

  “We are going to kill him,” Grant said, swinging the severed heads of Avery and Mackenzie back and forth by their hair. “Do you want to go first, shadow-weaver?”

  Audra, holding him from behind, whispered, “Felix, pray to god.”

  Malachite, the head of the kennels, started to bark like the dogs he had so lovingly cared for. “Pray.” He pricked his thumb on the dagger and flicked the blood in Felix’s eyes. “Pray,” he repeated, this time in Vrana’s croaking drawl. “Pray you die quick!”

  Felix dropped to the ground and curled into a ball. Audra shielded him.

  Please god, make them stop. Please god, I won’t ask you for anything else.

  Audra shrieked. Felix looked back and saw Patricia’s dagger in her shoulder blade. Please! We need you now!

  “Wait.” Grant was addressing Patricia, but the rest of the cult moved away from their victims. He took a seat on Felix’s bed. Now the Witch spoke through him: “He sent a prayer. Let’s see what happens.”

  Between Audra and Felix, a puddle of sweat had formed beneath them. His skin sliding across hers, he pulled her in and said, “Where are the shadows?”

  “They abandoned me.” Audra gripped the curved knife and put it to Felix’s neck. “Do you want me to?”

  Hearing that, Grant jumped to his feet and screamed, “Don’t you dare!”

  He threw the heads of Avery and Mackenzie at them. Avery’s cracked on Audra’s nose and sent her reeling to the ground. Mackenzie’s slammed into the side of Felix’s; everything went fuzzy and hot.

  “Kill them,” the cult started to chant.

  Sitting there, stunned, Felix shouted, “No,” as Malachite grabbed his leg and dragged him across the ground. “Get off! Get off!” He grabbed onto the bed posts, onto dead Juda’s ankle. Patricia straddled Felix and punched his head into the floor.

  Through his swelling eye, Felix watched Amanda, Abram, York, and Grant descend on Audra. He begged them to stop. Malachite smashed his face into the tile, so that each word he uttered caused his teeth to grind against the ground.

  “I didn’t want it to come to this,” Abram said, both the Witch’s voice and Vrana’s tangled inside his own. He lowered his knife and pressed it to Audra’s neck. “We had big plans for you, little boy.”

  “Audra, no!”

  Suddenly, Patricia’s lifeless body fell in front of him, blocking his view. The intensity of the blue light in her eyes blinded him. What the…? Crunch, snap. Something warm dribbled over his calf. Malachite’s grip weakened.

  “Deimos?” Grant cried.

  Deimos? On wobbly arms, Felix pushed himself up and collapsed on Patricia’s corpse. “Audra!” She had a dagger in her back, but she was breathing.

  Out of nowhere, Deimos rushed past Felix, Abram at the end of his sword.

  “Holy Child,” he said, kicking Abram off his blade. “Lucan, get them!”

  Grant, panicking, crawled backward, into the corner.

  “Lucan?” Felix shifted on Patricia to look at the front of the room.

  Lucan was there, by the door, his knee deep in Amanda’s unhinged jaw. Grunting, he picked her up and hurled her through the mirror.

  “Where’s the other one?” Lucan said, panting.

  Deimos pointed to a body on the ground. “Playing dead.” He threw his sword to Lucan and closed in on Grant.

  Lucan caught it and drove it through York’s back. Eyes bleeding blue, he reared up, screaming. In one motion, Lucan tore out the sword and cleaved the cultist’s head.

  Felix fell backward onto his bed and used it to get to his feet. Pointing at Audra, he said, “Is she… she okay?”

  Lucan hurtled across the room and scooped Felix into his arms. He tore some sheets off of the bed and started wrapping them around Felix’s head. “She’s not with them?”

  “No, no.” Felix’s left eye had completely swollen shut. “She’s good. She’s… my friend.”

  Lucan nodded. He carried Felix to her side and laid him down beside her. “Hey, lady,” Lucan said, nudging Audra. “We’re going to get you out of here.”

&
nbsp; Grant screamed, in Vrana’s voice, “Deimos… Deimos. Use her.”

  Brushing Audra’s hair, Felix turned his attention to Grant in the corner.

  “Vrana?” Deimos snapped his fingers. Lucan tossed him his sword. “Is that… you?”

  “It is,” Felix said. “It’s her.”

  Audra stirred beside him. She grabbed his hand and pressed it to her lips. “Felix.”

  “Oh my god, Audra.” He looked up at Lucan.

  “Deimos, let’s move,” he said. “Help me with the woman.”

  “This is Vrana speaking through this man.”

  Deimos pointed the sword at Grant. “Holy Child, what is going on?”

  “There’s more,” Grant screamed. “She won’t stop until you’ve killed them all!” He plunged the dagger into his throat.

  “Wait,” Deimos cried. He dropped his sword and ripped the dagger away from Grant.

  “Stupid girl,” Grant said, his words bloody bubbles on his trembling lips. “This has been a…” Grant sputtered and slouched into the corner, “… learning experience.” He looked up, eyes finally going dim. “We’ll break her better… next time… Bat.”

  Deimos fell back on his haunches and didn’t say anything else until Grant had finished dying.

  “What are you…?” Felix’s head was throbbing. His gums felt as though someone were running wire through them. “What are you doing here?”

  “Hunting them.” Lucan nodded at the dead cultists. Again, he picked up Felix, and added, “We’ve been here awhile now, trying to track them down.”

  Deimos sighed and walked over to Audra. He knelt down beside her, and whispered, “It’s okay, I have you.” Carefully, her arm around his shoulder, knife still protruding from her back, he helped her to her feet. “I’m sorry about your friends.”

  Avery and Mackenzie. Felix’s good eye wandered over to the doorway, where a woman’s arm lay across the threshold. It hurt too much to cry, so he closed his eye and waited for the feeling to pass.

  “Do you know what happened here?” Deimos asked. He grabbed his sword and, with Audra, shuffled towards the door.