by Lea Griffith
“You look surprised I would share the information with you.” She shrugged and the action was dismissive. He didn’t care for it much. “My past cannot hurt me unless I allow it to. And since it seems you want to have a 'let’s chat and be friends’ session, I’ll go one step further.
“My parents were devout Jews until they met a man who turned them into Zionists. They became zealots, terrorists if you will, though I would argue we are all terrorists of a sort. Anyway, they excelled at killing any who opposed their beliefs or who threatened Jerusalem at all. They were so effective at what they did, so full of the richness of being killers, they decided to have a child to pass their beliefs on to.”
She took a deep breath but never blinked.
“This is all information I found out later in life, mind you, though there are times when my memories collide with my dreams and I remember more than one would think possible.”
Dmitry sat across from her, attempting to ground himself before she went any farther. He inhaled slowly but she refused to relinquish his gaze. She waited for him to gain control as if she knew he was on the edge.
“We lived in Jericho and I remember how the sun shone there. It would strike the sand and sparkle when it was at its highest. I would scoop it up and drop it over me thinking that the sand would make me beautiful like my mother. Even the heat of my homeland was lovely, the people were mine, and my life was full. Then my father forced me to watch him kill one of his enemies and life as I’d known it changed. Not long after that, Joseph and Minton came calling. My parents were contract killers—we lived a minimalistic life but even Zionists need money to survive.”
Her voice was low and rough. It ripped at the ragged edges of Dmitry’s soul to hear these things. What must it be like for her to have lived it?
“My parents had crossed swords with Joseph but they found a way to bargain. My ima, her voice so deep and soft, proposed a much simpler, less deadly option for her and my father. I’d been playing in the ruins of Masada that day and had just returned when I heard her offer her only child if Joseph would but spare their lives.
“I remember walking into the tent and he was there, the black-eyed man with the Devil’s minion at his back. His smile was stunning, as any killer’s should be, yes? He held out his hand and I turned to run because though I lived with two demons, I had not encountered anyone like Joseph Bombardier.”
“Stop,” Dmitry pleaded, exposed and raw from her recounting.
“There are questions you ask, Asinimov, that inevitably lead to other answers. I am but giving you a full response so that in the future when you think to query me further you will understand what you might be getting.” She smiled and Dmitry thought that perhaps Joseph’s smile might have been just so the night he’d taken her. It was a facsimile, a hard curve of her lips and it hurt to see it. “Now you will listen to the story and you will know how Bone was formed from blood and sand and the lust to create a perfect killer.”
Shock raced through his system. This was the assassin he’d not met. Though he’d seen her take life, he’d not known the horrible insanity of who she was. He’d yet to be exposed to her wrath and in that moment he both feared her, and suffered with her as well.
Dmitry remained still as any prey would. If he moved they would fight and this was not the time for fighting.
“My father was blocking my way. He restrained me, his face blank, his hazel eyes burning and then he guided me to Joseph. I have my father’s eyes. I have a picture I could show you?”
Dmitry shook his head.
She paused and then, “No? I do not like looking at it either. But back to my story…there I am, standing in front of Joseph, my father offering me up and I thought then it must have been how Abraham offered Isaac at the altar—reverently. That story had a much happier ending though, didn’t it?” A shudder worked its way through her body.
Dmitry did not reach for her. She would neither appreciate it nor accept it.
“Joseph touched my hair, then pushed me to my knees and said, ‘Do you believe in God, child?’ I nodded, because the God of my fathers, Hashem he was called, while silent in His responses when I prayed to Him, was revered in my aba’s house. He smiled again and I could not look away. He said to me, ‘I am your God now. Bow down before the one who will break and remake you.’ I looked to my ima and aba and both nodded, so I had no choice. I bowed. And Joseph laughed. I will forever remember his laugh.”
The car stopped and Dmitry opened the door, getting out immediately and drawing in breath after breath. It took a few seconds for her to be at his side, staring into the vast blue of the frothing Atlantic Ocean, hands fisted at her sides. There was a storm brewing, a late fall tropical storm that would leave its mark on these beaches over the next day or so.
“He made me watch as Minton strung my parents from the tent’s poles, wrapping them in ropes the color of midnight, so tight they couldn’t move. Joseph held my head, made me watch as Minton stepped up to their rope-wrapped bodies swaying from the tallest poles of tent. He made me watch as he sliced each of them at the wrist and thigh.”
She took a deep breath, the wind off the sea wreaking havoc with her hair. Joseph’s mark was revealed, a stylized C intersected by a bone. Right behind her ear it wouldn’t have been visible had the wind not been blowing. He felt pain then. It wasn’t a foreign emotion but the depth of it was staggering. How dare that bastard mark her skin.
She wasn’t Joseph’s goddamn it. She was…
He squeezed his eyes closed and silence reigned for a bit longer as the wind continued to blow, rushing past his ears and playing in her hair. Sometimes the strands brushed his face but he stayed where he was. Bone looked up at him then.
“They swung and bled and bled and swung, their blood dotting the sand at my feet and the walls of our tent. Their blood was so crimson it seemed as black as my new god’s eyes. The sand was hungry that night, ravenous, and it drank their life until it was full. Then the sand offered up something it had created in gratitude for the meal it received.”
She would break his heart with the pain she fought to hide. But he wanted her to know he was there and he’d listen to every word she said regardless of how it hurt him. “What did it offer?” he asked hoarsely.
Her gaze slid away. “Me.”
She walked then, over the dunes and down to the water where she crossed her arms and gazed out over the ocean.
And as she stared at the water, Dmitry stared at her, memorizing her face and form, committing her to his heart.
He was going to kill Joseph Bombardier.
Joseph was his.
Chapter Six
Her heart settled the moment she saw Bullet and Arrow. Her sisters waited in the driveway, hands at their sides, gazes locked on the arriving vehicle. Bone got out as soon as the car stopped and walked to them, not embracing but staring at them, assessing their health and mental status.
Bone herself was still rocked by her admissions to Dmitry Asinimov. She’d never told her sisters of the night that brought her to Arequipa. They’d had too much to deal with themselves. As they’d grown, Bone’s rage had evolved into a wicked thing, living and breathing under her skin, in her sinew and muscles. It wouldn’t have been contained. The others had their own burdens, and she would never add to them.
Bone held each of her hands palm up. Bullet and Arrow slid their hands into hers and then they were holding each other as much as they could allow. Then, as one, they dropped their hands to their sides.
“Sister,” Arrow acknowledged, the sibilant tones of her voice stroking Bone’s eardrums.
“Bone Breaker,” Bullet quipped in her soft, dead voice.
Bone nodded at them. “Blade is well?”
She hadn’t talked to her other sister in over a month, missed the one whose laughter made her smile. Out of them all, Blade alone had the capacity to feel joy. It was rare to witness it but it had saved Bone many times over the years. Saved her from flinging herself off that cliff i
n Arequipa.
“She is angry,” Bullet returned.
Bone sighed. The boy had been taken and Blade was searching for Ken Nodachi now. Ken had taken the boy on a cold morning in Shanghai, when the woman First Team picked to watch over him had been slain.
He’d dared take something of theirs and he would pay for his folly.
“We are all angry.” Arrow’s voice carried the millennia. Ancient and smooth, it never failed to stoke Bone’s need to kill. She did her best to stay away from Arrow as much as possible, though she would give her life for her. The demons Arrow carried inside stalked Bone as well.
“She will find him,” Bone whispered. She shifted her gaze to Bullet, moving over her shorn hair, which did nothing to detract from her beauty, and meeting her eyes. “Your Mr. Beckett doesn’t know where his brother-in-law is?”
Bullet shrugged. “He would not tell me if he did.”
“Loyalty is a commodity, Bullet. You should be proud of him,” Bone responded.
The gazes of the men in the courtyard were a tactile nudge at the base of her skull—Dmitry, Raines, Adam Collins, and Rand Beckett. There were others, armed and ready.
“I shouldn’t smile, but the thought that these huge men around us, armed to the gills, are afraid of three small women—it does make my mouth curve,” Bone told them.
“It is done?” Arrow asked, switching topics effortlessly.
Bone nodded again. “I will return soon and finish my part. She will need time to regroup after losing Vadim. It is my hope she returns to the Urals though I hold no assurance. I will go after Dostoyev to get her attention.”
“Does Dmitry know the truth?” Bullet questioned.
“No.”
“Joseph is scrambling. It is as we planned,” Arrow mused. “Do you plan to tell Dmitry?”
Bone stared at Arrow but did not answer her question, choosing to ignore it as the implications of her answer might damn them all. “Yesipov is gone. Azrael is gone. Joseph has the scent of desperation riding him now. He sent two of his Sicariorum after me in the forests around Yesipov’s mansion.”
Arrow and Bullet straightened, the need to fight an unseen threat rising in them both. Their rage tainted the air with the bittersweet hint of endings. Sometimes it was the most beautiful smell of all.
“They live,” Bone answered their unspoken question.
“They hunt us and as much as I crave a decent opponent, as much as the death inside me wants to find an outlet, they are as we are. It would be similar to killing myself,” Arrow replied.
The male equivalent of First Team had always been there. While her sisters surmised they were a bit older than First Team, had perhaps been in Arequipa longer, Bone didn’t care. Anyone who presented a threat to her or her sisters was an enemy. It didn’t matter that they’d been raised much as she had. She didn’t know their agenda or their allegiance and though the one told her to run, they took Joseph’s command and as such they were not First Team’s in any way.
“I could have taken them but they are more useful alive than dead at this point. Make no mistake, sisters, they will kill us if given a chance,” Bone said.
Bullet shifted and turned as the one who’d stolen her heart walked up. Rand Beckett was a strong man to have taken Bullet on. And though her sister had broken, it was a fascinating thing to observe the softness in her gaze as she looked at him.
“Bone, this is Rand Beckett,” Bullet murmured.
Bone glanced at him, took his measure. He was a big man, though not quite as tall as Dmitry. Her gaze automatically sought the man who made her feel things she should not be feeling. He stared at her and for some reason the cast of his jaw, the readiness in his stance communicated he was there for her—would fight with her should any of these men attack.
She was being fanciful. It would get her killed.
She slid her gaze back to Rand Beckett. “If you hurt her, I will kill you.”
Bullet stepped in front of Rand, her mouth flat, blue eyes shadowed with darkness.
“We have always had truth between us, sister. If he is yours he should know all of it, yes?” Bone questioned.
Arrow sighed. “I would introduce you to Adam Collins but I’m afraid that if you terrorize him, we will fight and you have just arrived. After so long without my sisters by my side, I would mourn your loss.”
Bone raised her chin in the air. “We have had this argument before, Arrow. I am stronger, quicker, and meaner than you. Threats will earn you that fight your soul is screaming for if you continue.”
Dmitry stepped to her, hovering at her back, waiting. For what, she wondered.
“Do not threaten him, Bone. Do not ever threaten him,” Bullet whispered harshly. “And it seems you have truths of your own to be concerned with.”
Bone’s spine snapped tight and she narrowed her gaze on Bullet.
“I will not hurt her. Not intentionally, I assure you,” Rand Beckett offered into the taut silence.
“You would fight your sisters?” Adam Collins asked, inserting himself into the conversation.
She looked at him, really looked at Adam Collins for the very first time. He, too, was handsome but where Rand Beckett whispered elegance, this man shouted warrior. Much like Dmitry, the well of his past was deep and littered with death. “It is all we know, Mr. Collins. Would you rather we held hands and sang Kumbaya?”
“You had the holding hands part a minute ago,” he said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I wondered if breaking into song was coming next.”
“I believe a laugh would be expected here—something to alleviate the tension,” Bone mused between clenched teeth, no smile, and no laugh forthcoming. “He’s a funny man, Arrow. Like loyalty, it is a commodity.”
Arrow nodded and smiled. It was sweet and nothing Bone had ever seen from her sister.
She had hoped, long ago, that her sisters would possibly find peace. Perhaps that was still possible for them. Bone turned to Rand Beckett. “If you don’t hurt her, I won’t kill you. It’s a deal, yes?”
Rand looked over her head to the man who stood behind her. His jaw clenched then released and he smiled. “Deal.”
“The same deal I will offer to you, Mr. Collins. For as much as the death inside Arrow calls my name, she is still mine and should you harm her, I will hunt you, warrior, and I will eliminate you.”
Collins nodded, accepting the warning from another warrior. Arrow said nothing, simply sighed again.
“Now that the pleasantries are over, I am hungry. Tell me Carmelita is cooking.” Dmitry’s smooth-as-whiskey voice broke over Bone, and much as her sisters’ presence soothed her, so did his.
“She has indeed. A feast, I’d say. Shall we go eat?” Rand asked the group.
Everyone turned to walk into the house except for Bullet, who stayed where she was, staring at Bone. She wanted to warn Bone again, out of hearing range of her man, but Bone was having none of it.
Bone shook her head. “You cannot change what I am.” She drew in a rough breath. “What we all are.” Her gaze snagged on Rand who had stopped and turned back to them. “I am what Joseph made me and to venture too far from that makes me weak, sister. You are mine. Arrow and Blade are mine. I will not lose another one.”
Bullet nodded after long moments, which made the band around Bone’s chest ease somewhat. But still there were other truths that must reach the light and suddenly all she wanted was to fight the inevitability of it all.
How she hated Joseph Bombardier.
The others walked in and she was left with Dmitry. He stepped to her side, gazing down at her. “You want to fight, kostolomochka?”
He read her like a book. She had only ever had that connection with her sisters. Bone closed her eyes, unable to find her mind when she stared into his blue, blue eyes. “I do.”
“We will eat first. Then, if you still want to fight, we will,” he assured her.
Her response was immediate. “Not you.”
“You are too much f
or anyone else here. And since you gave me truths earlier, allow me to give you one in return,” he responded patiently.
She nodded—entranced by this man who had never ceased searching for his sister. What kind of love was that? To never stop searching? She would do the same for Bullet, Arrow and Blade. Was that then what she felt for her own sisters?
Love?
No. She could not claim that emotion. It wasn’t to be for Bone.
“Give me your truth, then Asinimov. But make it quick, my stomach is empty.”
He smiled and leaned down to her, his mouth a hair’s breadth from her lips, head angled as if he would kiss her. She licked her lips and tasted him. Want. It was a craven thing inside her.
“I do not like when anyone else touches you. And should anyone hurt you they will pay a thousand fold for it. There’s my truth, Etzem. As your sisters are yours, you are now mine.”
He raised his head, stepped around her and walked into the house.
She was left bereft, the afternoon sun shining down though dark clouds dotting the eastern skyline. She was not his. She was hers.
For both of their sakes, she had to remain that way.
•●•
They had given her a room in the west wing. It was Nodachi’s wing when he was in residence, Rand told her, but Dmitry was two doors down from her. She was similar in size to Bullet and when she’d come out of the shower, naked and ready to step into the unitard, she discovered yoga pants, a sports bra, and a T-shirt on the foot of the bed.
The room smelled of juniper and pine. As she put on the clothing she succumbed to more fancy. His hands had been on those clothes—the same clothes that now touched her body.
As with any other reaction she did not understand, she avoided looking too deep into it. Blade would mock her—tell her that without understanding the reaction she could not defeat it. Bone thought that to analyze it too much gave it power over you.
And Dmitry Asinimov, whether he knew it or not, already held too much of Bone in his hands.