Bone Deep

by Lea Griffith

  But wouldn’t she have done the same thing for her sisters?

  At night, she slept in a tent she’d purchased in Jericho. She stayed far away from the camp where her parents had been killed but resolved that she would eventually need to visit the place. She would never have closure but she could fight with the ghosts of her past—maybe purge some of the hate that continued to build.

  The nights at Masada were filled with conflict. She did not pray as there was nothing left to pray for but she stared up into the twinkling eyes of God and she talked to Him. Sometimes she raged. Sometimes she taunted. But she returned every night and left every morning hoarse from the discourse.

  She did not find her peace because she realized she would never know that until Joseph was gone from the earth. But as close as she’d come since she’d lain in Dmitry’s arms, she knew a form of tranquility and it was good.

  She’d been there for ten days when she recognized the itch at the base of her skull. She scouted to find her pursuer but found no sign of anyone. Perhaps it was Arrow’s demons seeking her out. Maybe her time was close.

  Another day passed, more tourists came and Bone decided she would stay here for as long as it took. Blade would call her SAT phone when it was time to meet her sisters. Until then she would remain.

  She longed for her journal. The ancient Torah had been her great-great-great-grandfather’s, passed down through the generations and she’d snuck it into the single bag Joseph allowed her bring with her when he took her.

  She longed for her bag and the items it held but they were gone—lost to a war she’d helped begin. Lost to her cause.

  She did not visit Masada that night. The clouds blocked her vision of the sky and she couldn’t stand being cut off from His eyes. It was as close as she’d ever come to Him.

  So she lay down on the sands of her tent and she rested. Tomorrow she would visit the place where she had been formed.

  •●•

  She was well off her game. He’d been hovering on her periphery for two days and though she had to feel his scope on her, she’d simply scouted once, not really looking for his sign and then she’d given up searching altogether.

  It was as if she wanted someone to find her.

  And now she slept in a threadbare tent under torrential rains. Dmitry shook his head and cursed himself. He’d done this to her—hurt her so badly she fled to a place that only brought her pain.

  He wanted to hate himself but he wanted to love her more.

  The woman who called herself Nameless fled his grasp soon after they’d left the cabin in Arequipa. She looked like Dmitry. Her eyes were the same as his. She’d called herself Ninka but Ninka was dead. He’d not had time to question her because there was another possibility but she’d not stayed long enough for him to ferret out the information.

  She had looked at him, smiled a smile of sadness, and run.

  Dmitry had gone back to Sydney, filled Rand, Adam, Gretchen, and Saya in on everything that happened and then he waited for Bone to show. She had not and he’d grown tired of waiting. He’d asked Saya and Gretchen for clues and they ignored him. They had withdrawn into themselves and not even Rand or Adam could break down the wall they built.

  Dmitry wracked his brain and finally he remembered her love for the sands of her homeland. He started in Jericho, searching endlessly for five days until he stared into the night sky and it struck him—she’d gone to Masada.

  He found her easily. And if he could so too could anyone else. But he was here now, watching over her and waiting for the right time. He could feel it coming and didn’t want to dig deeply into how his conviction had arisen.

  He spent his days watching over her. He spent his nights doing the same but also took time to stare up into the heavens, speaking, demanding, pleading with an entity he wasn’t entirely sure existed. The stars twinkled back. Surely that was not God’s answer. He was being fanciful.

  His kostolomochka moja had come to the place where she’d been created. He was going to delight in taking Joseph Bombardier’s life. Probably enough that the pleasure was sure to damn his soul to Hell. But it did not matter. Bone was his. Her pain was his.

  It had rained off and on the previous night but had stopped earlier and as he’d not slept, he was up and watching through his binoculars for movement. She did not disappoint. Within moments of the sun rising she was packing up her tent, strapping it to her back and moving with purpose. He pulled his own pack on and followed.

  It took her a half hour to come to the place she’d been seeking and once there, she shrugged off her pack and tent and stood there, so straight and still. It was nothing more than sand to Dmitry but obviously held a deeper meaning to her.

  The ruins were closed to tourists for the upcoming week so they were alone in this place of history and death. He did not creep up on her. She was a killer, more versed in death than even he was, so he would not startle her.

  Her back was straight, her face raised to the sun and he could hear her murmuring in Hebrew. It took Dmitry a moment to place the words but his heart squeezed once he did.

  The Hebrew death prayer. It was at once the most beautiful and the saddest moment of his entire life. She was saying a prayer for her parents.

  This then must the place where they had been killed. There were no markers, no blood dotting the sand. There was nothing to mark they’d ever lived or died here.

  There was nothing but a woman praying to a God she thought had abandoned her, and she was praying for the ones who had betrayed her. She finished and Dmitry caught his breath.

  “Would you pray for me?” he ventured into the silence of the morning.

  If her back had been straight before it was a ramrod now. Bone did not turn to look at him, she simply took a deep breath and let it out slowly.

  “Would you, Bone Breaker? Would you pray to find it in your heart to forgive me?” he asked and took a single step forward.

  He could smell her scent—sugared apricots—and it made his body clench.

  “I have told you, Asinimov,” she said so softly he almost couldn’t hear her, “The God of my fathers does not listen to my prayers.”

  He took another step forward, her draw irresistible. His skin craved hers next to it. “He listened to mine.”

  Her gorgeous honey-brown curls blew in the breeze. They reached her waist and his hands ached to feel the tresses wrapped around them. Still she did not turn.

  “He listened to mine and he gave me you,” he told her.

  He was within feet of her when she turned. Her hazel eyes were dark with pain. He had done that. Dmitry reached for her and she flinched.

  “You shot me,” she said.

  “You were going to kill her and I couldn’t let you,” he responded harshly.

  “You hurt me,” she whispered.

  “No more than I hurt myself.”

  “I will not let you hurt me again,” she assured him.

  He nodded. “I will not hurt you again.”

  “Yes, you will. When it comes time for me to act, you will step in front of me and demand the pieces of me that bind us—you will try to force me away from doing what must be done. You will not break me, Dmitry Asinimov.”

  Her voice rang out in the morning and it was him flinching then. “There is only a single battle I will ever fight with you again.”

  Her gaze pierced his soul, rending him in two. But both halves remained hers.

  He was Bone’s.

  “And what battle is that, Dmitry?” she scoffed.

  “Love,” he answered simply. “Ljubovj–velichajshaja bitva.”

  She went to her knees, a single tear tracking down her cheek. “Do not do this to me,” she pleaded. He had said the same words to her in Virginia. They hurt more here in this place of endings.

  He came down before her, opening his heart and mind and soul to a killer who’d done nothing but save him time after time. “If I do not do this to you, I will walk alone my entire life. I cannot let you
leave because you are my other half. You have become my food, my air, and my heartbeat. Without you, I am nothing.”

  She pressed a single finger to his lips. “Do not say that. I am nothing more than a killer.”

  He understood what the phrase meant to her. “But it is the truth.” He took her hand in his, placed it over his heart. “Every step in this life, moye, led me to you. Killer or not, you are mine. Do not leave me to walk the rest alone.”

  “I am shavur.”

  He shook his head, fear racing through his body. “I will never let you break, Bone.”

  She did not say anything, her shoulders lifting and falling steadily though her pain. He lifted her face with his finger, amazed at the tracks on her cheeks. Dmitry swiped at the tears falling down her face. “Do not cry here in this place. They are not worth your tears or your pain.”

  “But you are worth my tears. I cry for you, Dmitry Asinimov,” she protested.

  He stared at her for long moments, thumb brushing her cheekbones, hand holding hers to his chest. “Forgive me.”

  She stood then, watching him from those jade-splintered golden orbs and she pulled his head to her stomach. “I don’t know what forgiveness is.”

  His heart stopped beating. “Forget what I’ve done.”

  She sighed and sifted her fingers through his hair. “I cannot forget the things that form me.”

  He had to try once more. “Love me.”

  She smiled then and it was different from anything he’d ever seen on her face—it was joy. “I do not understand it, cannot comprehend the emotion, but I know this to be true—I will always love you.”

  “How do I make this right?”

  Her smile turned sad. He panicked but before he could speak she said, “There is nothing to make right, Dmitry. Just love me and I will be what I have always been meant to be.”

  Her words gave him pause. They were exactly what Bullet had said to him. He nodded and stood.

  “Mine,” he vowed. “You have always been mine.”

  He stood and reached for her. She took a single step back.

  “I must say this again—I am a killer, Dmitry. I cannot change that. I have taken many and I will take again. It is a path my feet were set on long before I met you. I still have things to do on my journey, things you may not agree with and things I may not discuss with you. I will not let you sway me.”

  He nodded. It was all he could do. He understood but that did not mean he wouldn’t hawk her movements. He needed to protect her. It was who he was.

  “We will struggle. It’s who we are. I know nothing about love except that I am warm with you. I know peace with you. That alone tells me the softer emotion is mine,” she admitted.

  “There are things we need to talk about,” he said.

  She raised a hand. “Not here.”

  He accepted that.

  “This is not the place to talk about anything but death and I’m weary of death today,” she told him.

  Dmitry understood that too. So he took her hand and they walked through the ruins of Masada. She showed him her hiding places and they both stood on the edge of the ruin, holding each other to keep from falling.

  And when the sun set and night grabbed the land, they slept beneath God’s twinkling eyes and knew a peace that was theirs alone.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “Your sister was our creator. I know you all believe it was Joseph and he was the mastermind but we were all actually cemented in our creation the morning Ninka died,” Bone said softly, breaking the silence of the bedroom.

  They’d returned to Sydney and spent the last two days wrapped in each other. Forgiveness was requested and given with every sigh and moan and there’d been calm between them. She needed to tell him these things though—needed to give him what she had of his sister.

  “When we watched her killed in front of us, it destroyed the last pieces that could have been more than death. Ninka was all that was good and sweet and light. When she died, we became the darkness. She gave us purpose for something besides just survival.” She took a deep breath.

  Dmitry pulled her even closer into his body, her back flush with his front, her head on his arm and his other hand entwined with hers. He did not speak as if realizing she needed to say this.

  “You cannot imagine the hell we endured. Children being groomed for nothing but killing. Oh, we had other lessons—how to act like a lady, how to eat properly, how to speak different languages, and how to dress. He made sure we knew how to kill and remain women. His theory was that a man would never suspect a pretty woman had been sent to kill him.

  “Our lessons were hard and brutal. One day I’ll share those things with you, but not today. I want to harm others when I remember those things. We bonded over her death. Until then, we had done nothing more than use one another to survive. Ninka, as the weakest, was the fulcrum around which we pivoted. Every action we took was to survive but also to protect her. We were a unit but until her death we weren’t blooded.”

  Dmitry sighed at her neck. “Stop, moye. We need not speak on these things.”

  “But we do. If not for Ninka I wouldn’t have survived long enough to stand behind you in London, breathe you in and realize I was meant for more than dealing death. I would have broken as she did and been no more.”

  “You are here with me now and that is enough,” he said, squeezing her tightly.

  “I took your father because he was a contract but I was aware of whom he was and the horrible things he had done. I took your mother because she gave up Ninka to Joseph—handed her baby over to a madman. I do not regret taking them, Dmitry, but I do wish you hadn’t known that pain.”

  Dmitry rose above her, pressing her back and kissing the skin he exposed. “This bed will not know death. Where we lay together as one will not be defiled with the past. Do you understand me?”

  She nodded at the ferocity of his words.

  “You haunted me from the moment I knew of your existence. You sank so deep inside me I couldn’t have prepared. All the way to my bones, moye. Bone deep. That’s how far you are inside me now and I will not let anything tear me from you.”

  It was a whispered promise and her heart stilled as the amazing peace he always brought stroked her soul.

  “You are mine, Asinimov. You will always be mine.” She gave her own promise and the moment stretched taut.

  He smiled then, a slow curving of his luscious lips, accepting her avowal as truth.

  And then her stomach growled.

  Dmitry laughed and Bone allowed her own lips to curve at the sound.

  “I guess I need to feed you more than cheese and crackers, eh?” he teased with a leering grin.

  Bone sighed and got up, stretching.

  “You are beautiful, serdtse mojo,” he told her with a smile.

  “I know nothing of beauty other than what you make me feel,” she told him honestly.

  They showered and dressed with an ease that spoke of years together rather than mere days.

  The others were eating when she and Dmitry walked in. Bone wondered if everyone in the room knew what they’d been doing.

  “Wooing went as expected, eh, Russian?” Adam called out.

  Dmitry flipped him off and Bone smiled.

  She didn’t understand teasing but like all of the other soft emotions, Dmitry would teach her.

  Bullet nodded at her. “Bone.”

  Arrow did the same. “Bone Breaker, it is good to see you looking healthy.”

  “Achot,” Bone said in response—both greeting and warning. Dmitry was off limits. Her sisters nodded but they were quiet—almost too quiet. There was much to discuss.

  Carmelita spooned a thick, heavy stew into bowls and placed the bowls in front of them.

  “I saw Blade today in Sydney,” Rand said into the silence.

  Arrow and Bullet stopped eating. Bone pinned the man with her gaze. “Are you tracking her?”

  Rand shook his head. “But someone is.”<
br />
  All eating stopped. “Have you seen that someone?”

  Again he shook his head. “I haven’t but the signs are all there.”

  The sisters looked at each other, expressions shut down. Bone drew within herself. After the delight of her days with Dmitry, to have the past revisit was abhorrent.

  “You know who she is,” Adam threw out.

  Bullet leaned back in her chair and glanced at Bone. “It is not my story to tell.”

  “You were there, standing guard,” Bone bit out. “It is as much your story as it is ours.”

  “No. I didn’t tend her. The story is yours, Arrow’s, and Blade’s. If it is to be told, one of you will do it.”

  Arrow’s eyes were closed and a single tear tracked down her cheek.

  Bone would not cry. The scalding hot drop on her cheek belied her intentions. Perhaps if she purged this, it would ease the blister in her soul.

  “We were ten years old when Blade was taken from us to the big house. She would be gone for days at a time and she would return sad. We did not know why until one night when the rains were upon us and she ran to our quarters and got us out of bed. The girl was bleeding, she kept murmuring. So we followed her and she took us into the forest, to a building we had never seen.”

  Bone drew in a deep breath. She was there with the rain and lightning and thunder.

  “She took us inside and into a darkness so complete I wanted to scream. I thought I was until I realized the sounds weren’t coming from me.”

  Arrow sighed. “They were coming from her, the girl.”

  Bone swallowed hard but Arrow didn’t make a move to continue so she picked the story back up.

  “She was screaming, her pain reaching across the room to us and there was Blade demanding we help her. Twelve years old and we had no idea what was going on. ‘Feel her stomach,’ Blade insisted and so I did. It was…”

  “The girl screaming in the dark was pregnant and her pain was coming from the fact that she was in the middle of birth. Her hands were so small and she was tiny but her belly was huge,” Arrow said, her voice reminding Bone of her need to kill.

  It rose, choking her until Dmitry grabbed her hand and held it in his.