Chest of Bone (The Afterworld Chronicles Book 1)

by Vicki Stiefel

  I checked Ronan’s shoulder. Only a flesh wound. Thank you, gods. “Maybe you’d better sit down again.”

  Minutes later, Larrimer strode over.

  “Gone,” he said. “As well as what was in the cellar.”

  On our car ride to the hospital, a shudder went through Ronan when I told him about his dad. I tried to draw in his pain, sensing I could that, but I hadn’t the understanding of how. Or maybe that was just another batso idea.

  “He tried to save you, Ronan.” I gave a quick squeeze to his fisted hand. “He’s the one who told us someone was stalking you outside.”

  Ronan turned away and leaned his head against the window.

  His father was a beast, but he’d tried to save his child in the end.

  “Come stay with us at the farm,” I said. “After the hospital. Please. I’ve got a spare room.”

  Ronan peered out the window. Another kid’s world ripped away. In a town like Hembrook, change didn’t come often or easily.

  At the hospital, Larrimer remained with Ronan, while I phoned Balfour about Ronan’s dad, then went to visit Bernadette. I sat beside her bed as snores wuffled from her lips. Her bandaged head looked like a poster for some war movie.

  Confounding woman. At least her cheeks had lost that awful pallor. I stood and covered her feet where the sheet had slipped.

  “Don’t!”

  I jumped. “Bernadette, I—”

  “Uncover me. Maintenant!” Her lips thinned, her accent again deeply French.

  I undraped her feet, exposing the incongruity of veined, scaly feet and bright red toenails.

  I hid a smile. “Who painted your nails, Bernadette?”

  The anger softened. “And what’s it to you, Viviane?”

  My fingers curled, nails biting my palms. My mother’s name. “Who?”

  “That sweet Lulu did it. She’s nothing like that willful child of yours.”

  She was talking to my mother. “No,” I said. “Lulu’s nothing like Clea.”

  “Ça va. She’s a good child. But what a handful. I was a warrior, not a caretaker, and you, sending me off to New Hampshire. Now the time shortens. Viviane, why did you give her to me?”

  As far as I knew, my mother had not given me to Bernadette. “Because you were my best option.”

  “Mon dieux! Why not her own kind? I’ve weakened, my power thinned. You, of all people, know that. Your métis expressed as Mage, not Fae. Yet you laid her burden on me.”

  Fae. Mage. Da called me his little Mage. A half-breed. “Was my mother Fae? Am I part Fae?”

  She grunted with disgust. “What are you talking about? You’re a nurse. I need to go to the bathroom. Help me up.”

  I helped her into a sitting position.

  “And that curly mop of yours. Unconfined and unhygienic! Shame on you.”

  She was firmly planted in loopytown.

  After our toilet run, I wrangled her back to bed and sat beside her, the vinyl chair making that squeaky noise on my ass.

  “Enfin!” she said.

  “You’re welcome,” I said, knowing the “thank you” was seldom in her vocabulary.

  I rubbed my forehead, trying to erase the deja vu. Four-plus years earlier, it had been the almost the same.

  I’d just gotten out of the service. Tommy, too, except he hadn’t come home like I had. He emailed us, saying he’d met someone amazing, who was schooling him, loving him.

  Typical Tommy, off on one of his toots. Passion, he’d say. The key to everything. Follow your bliss, Clea. Let it sing.

  He was supposed to go back for his Masters, had gotten into Worcester Poly. He’d promised Bernadette and me to finally use that amazing brain of his. This new woman, he said, was encouraging him to do just that. But he’d deferred one semester. Just one. He couldn’t be apart from Tanya, not quite yet.

  But he had come home, when I’d written, panicked about Bernadette’s small stroke and her resulting mental instability. I’d tried to reach her, but, unsurprisingly, hadn’t been able to. She needed her Tommy.

  A day later, he’d breezed through the door. And he’d stayed for a week, high on his “training,” nattering about his Ty, how much she knew, how much in love he was, how happy.

  He worked so hard with Bernadette, bringing her back, helping her remember, doing familiar tasks with her over and over, reacquainting her with the present, shedding the past.

  At night, when she was in bed, those crisp fall nights, we’d start the woodstove, drink mulled cider, his favorite, and he’d talk about how Ty was so much more than he’d ever imagined. He refused to get specific, but wore that smug look on his face. Knowing Tommy, that look had to be about sex. No way was I going to ask for particulars.

  I chuckled, then stilled. The memories sifting through my mind, my emotions, morphing from joy to sorrow.

  That was the week we’d planned our cross-country trip to the Grand Canyon. I’d said he should bring his new girlfriend. And he’d laughed, saying she’d find that funny.

  He’d been so good with Bernadette. So warm to me. I wished I’d pushed him, learned more about his Tanya, her last name, what she did, where she lived. Now I never would. And the hole that never filled, deepened. He wasn’t here now to bring Bernadette back. He wasn’t anywhere.

  he final straw—Ronan had to stay overnight in the hospital. I was beat, my bouquet of crazy overfull. I slid onto Fern’s passenger seat, earning a frown from Larrimer. He swiped the keys from my outstretched hand and started the truck.

  We drove in silence to Sparrow Farm, and once the hysterical greeting of our dog pack subsided with their dinners, I gathered the feed to take care of our animals.

  “I’ll help,” Larrimer said.

  “Thank you, but I’m good.”

  Hearing my critters greetings, feeding and watering them comforted me. The movement worked out some of the kinks in my body, and I breathed in the restorative farmy smells. No need to think. Just do.

  So blissfully normal.

  Larrimer would be showering or tapping on his computer or dancing with his swords. A beautiful way to stay in shape. I wanted to stay in the barn. Hide there.

  Lulu, Lulu. I had to stop thinking about her or my head would explode.

  It almost had at Ronan’s house. The pain. The possession. After all today’s creepiness, that IT crawling around in my head had scared me the most.

  Cold finally drove me into the house. Padding on silent feet, I climbed the stairs and gently closed my bedroom door.

  Each step I took felt odd, as if not simply my legs, but my entire body was asleep. I sat on my bed, crossed my legs in the half-lotus, rested one hand on my knees, and with the other, I rubbed my fist across my chest again and again. But it didn’t help. Why was that? Why did nothing help?

  The sound of my bedroom door cracked like a gunshot.

  Larrimer stood there looking feral, as if he’d doffed some costume to present his authentic self. Sweat coated a body clothed only in those loose workout pants. Arms crossed, stance wide. It was as if he’d shed his human husk to become something “other.”

  “What?” I asked, voice like a ventriloquist’s dummy, as if it came from a piece of wood. As if I’d turned something “other,” too.

  “I’m concerned about you,” he said, his words quiet, at odds with his persona.

  “I’m fine.”

  “Then what’s with the tears?”

  I raised a hand to my face. “I don’t know.”

  He stepped inside and kicked the door closed, then walked over and plucked a couple tissues from the bedside table. He handed them to me, and I wiped my face, then blew my nose. I chucked the ball into the wastebasket.

  The silence grew and grew. “I had my door shut for a reason,” I finally said.

  “You always have your door shut.”

  I notched my chin. “So?”

  His jaw clenched. “You hate letting anyone in.”

  “That’s why I shut my door.”

&nb
sp; Flesh stretched taut over cheekbones, he snarled. “I’m not fucking talking about the door.”

  He reached for me, and I shrank back. A weight on the bed, his arms around me, lips hungry and hot pressed to mine.

  Did I want this? Yes.

  I opened to his greedy kiss, wove my fingers through his sweaty hair, cupped the contours of his bruised cheeks, answered his tongue with my own. Intoxicating.

  I’d wanted this from forever ago.

  “Godsdammit!” I gasped for a breath. “You’re a pain in the ass.”

  He growled low in his throat and licked me.

  I moaned. “James.” I caressed the word with all the caring, the longing I felt for this man.

  He nudged me away. “You tantalize me.”

  My heart bruised at the flatness of his tone. I searched his face. “Cold. You can be so cold.”

  “You just noticed?” He sat back, a nasty smile tugging at his lips.

  I scooched away. “Cut out the ‘cruel and ruthless,’ Dragon Dude.”

  “Why? Take off those pretty blinders.”

  I smiled. “They’re not blinders. The opposite. They’re windows into you.”

  He was in my face in a blur. I froze, and he ran a knife so close to my cheek, it chilled me. Eyes mocked, razors of cruelty. “See? This is me.”

  I bit his shoulder. Hard.

  He threw his head back and laughed. His lips hot against my ear, voice a cold whisper. “Do you like it?”

  His heartbeat, thudding. Breath warm, so warm. His shoulder muscles bunched, an ooze of blood, teeth marks, my teeth marks. Dear gods, I really bit him.

  And he was one scary shit. Huge and muscled. Fierce, with a scarred face and hands and torso that spoke of battles won and lost. But it was that contained power. You just knew if he ever unleashed it, it would be nuclear.

  In for a penny, and all that. I grinned. “It’s kinda sexy.”

  He was off me in a flash, stood beside the bed, body vibrating. “You’re a fool,” and almost to himself added, “And what am I, then?”

  “More,” I said. “You’re more.”

  He paced, hand scraping his chest. “Oh, I’m more, all right.” He stilled, a bow strung, brushed a finger down the scar at his temple. The cruel grin returned. “Ever hear of nanotech?”

  “Not much.”

  “Nanotechnology. The manipulation of matter on an atomic and molecular scale. You can Google the rest. There was a bomb.”

  I shuddered. “You were injured. I heard—.”

  His snarl, a bitter sound. “I wasn’t injured. I was hunks of meat and splintered bone. What was left was taken to… that’s not important now. In any event, none of this is from memory. I was told bit by precious bit. They took me to the lower levels, to their underground research facility.”

  He sat cross-legged at the far end of the bed. He wasn’t breathing. I waited and waited. His chest neither rose, nor fell, his body inhumanly still. “I can control my breathing, if need be. I breathe normally, but I don’t have to.”

  I groped, unfurling my senses, but he had those damned shields up. He breathed again, and I now wondered how much was artificial, a costume he wore to appear alive?

  He crossed his arms, a wicked smile tilting his lips, eyes a burning indigo. “I’m a creation. Frankenstein’s monster. The beast under the bed. Every centimeter of me except my brain; that part is mine, from before. They would have replaced that, too, if they had the science to do it. They haven’t figured out how the brain becomes the mind, how it generates a sense of individual consciousness. The rest? They recreated me, remade me, down to the scarred bullet holes.”

  Like from a horror novel. I leaned forward and ran the pads of my fingers across the raised mark on his shoulder. Smooth and rough. Skin and scar.

  “That’s why you don’t want people touching you. You’re—”

  “No one should touch me.”

  “But—”

  “I’m toxic.”

  My eyes narrowed. “No, you’re not.”

  “Stop!”

  A hand clamped around my throat, a finger stroking my carotid. I hadn’t even seen him move.

  “Hush,” he said, low, cruel. “See how fast I am, little girl. I could kill you using less than a hundredth of my strength.”

  I forced myself not to flinch. “Hey, dragon dude, you realize you’re touching me, right?”

  He whipped his hand away and again leaned against the footboard, arm resting on one bent knee. “You’re really something else, babe. They enhanced me.”

  “This is most definitely not Fish and Wildlife stuff. Who are ‘they’?”

  He said nothing. I could only imagine what “enhanced” meant. His speed. His strength. His resilience. What else? Did he ache for human touch? Or did it no longer matter?

  “You’ve touched me.” More than just physically. “Kissed me.”

  He frowned. “Only you. I can’t seem to help that. I’ll do better.”

  “Please don’t.”

  He snorted. “They tried to program emotion out of me. They screwed up, can’t fix it. You may have noticed I sometimes overreact. A flaw.”

  “Not to me.” We sat there for long moments staring at each other. I finally said, “In the cellar, you shut down. You said that.”

  “Yes. That was literal.” A hint of confusion. “I don’t understand how you awakened me. This body,” he said with disgust. “It shuts down when it overloads. The cold. I was out too long. They warned me. It’s never been a problem before.

  “With great pride, they said it took more than a year and millions to create me. Fifty million. A hundred. A billion. I don’t give a damn. They stole me.”

  I ached to touch him, to soothe his hurt. He’d never let me. The stubble of beard, face bruised from the beating, one eye still badly swollen. He looked real. Felt real. Yet he could have been a sculpture. I wanted to understand this Larrimer, too, all of him.

  “What happened to you? While they remade you?”

  He blinked. Once. “That year and half is gone.” He paused. “You can tell no one.”

  “I know how to keep secrets.”

  “That, I’m aware of. I have little family left. My parents are dead. Friends, comrades in arms. I’ve been warned off them. Bad things would happen if I ever reconnect with them. After the bombing, they were told I was a vegetable.”

  What a terrible and lonely thing. “That’s monstrous!”

  “That’s what I am.”

  It was like talking to a machine. No affect. Nothing. I shivered and tucked my old cashmere blanket around my legs. “What are you called?”

  “Freak,” he said. “Monster. My terms. My handlers, the government, they love names, acronyms. I ignore them all. To them, I’m a highly useful and expensive weapon they need to control.”

  “Fish and Wildlife? The endangered animals?”

  “All part of the op. A real one. But they’re not the puppeteers.”

  “Who then?”

  He remained silent.

  So much I didn’t understand. “Why you?”

  “Timing. I was highly trained. A mercenary who—”

  “But you were in the FBI.”

  He nodded. “Things got a little too hot, so they unleashed me, and I was recruited by a corporate mercenary group.”

  Men like that fought, killed, raped with no government oversight.

  My revulsion must have shown on my face, because his next words came sharp and very slow.

  “Some do rape,” Larrimer said. “Some murder. And some don’t. Some protect. Most don’t even carry weapons. In Afghanistan and Iraq, thousands of my brothers and sisters died in service, as many as U.S. troops. More were maimed. And since we’re unofficial, we receive no cheers on our return. No flags waving. No parades. We get no VA benefits, no support. We stand in harm’s way and are silent.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “No one does. We are the unacknowledged.”

  I tried to breath
e deeply, but the air felt still and thick. “So why remake you?”

  “As a human, I was faster than average. Stronger. Smarter. I’ve never asked. They’ve never said.”

  “Between living and dying, if you’d been able to choose, would you have—”

  “Never. Never this. I’m a fucking monster.”

  Whatever shield he was using shattered. His lips pulled into a snarl, his face savage.

  The primal part of my brain screamed, “run!”

  I was more than my primal part. Screw it!

  “Ever see Blade Runner?” he asked.

  A favorite of mine. I nodded.

  “That’s who I am. A replicant. One of those messed-up things. All science and…”

  “What?”

  He shook his head.

  I searched for words, meaningful ones, not platitudes, the ones that would make him see sense.

  The room held notes of my patchouli incense, the musk of his sweat, the scent of my fear. I saw the curl of his hair, the curve of his shoulders, the blue of his eyes, the laugh lines, a shade lighter than the bronzed skin surrounding them. I knew the beat of his heart, the brush of his spirit, the light of his intelligence.

  “A replicant?” I paused, took a breath. “Not a chance. It matters not, flesh or construct, bone or steel, human or other. We’re spirit. We think. We feel. You feel. That survived. Nothing else matters. I’m glad you told me.”

  His lips moved. A whisper. “I needed to.” A large, scarred hand reached for my cheek, then dropped. “You. You make life… bearable.”

  “James.”

  He was at the door before I blinked. Turned back, his smile grim. “Some mindfuck, isn’t it?”

  Gone. And I hadn’t tried to stop him.

  I sat stunned, attempting, and failing, to process. My fingers stroked the blanket’s cashmere over and over.

  When the phone rang, I was thankful I’d found both mine and Larrimer’s in a drawer at the Miloszewski farmhouse. When I looked at who it was, not so much. Bob. Calling, again, worried, except…

  A snarl. Mine. Larrimer was mine. And Bob knew about him and saw him as a thing. And he hated him, and, maybe, envied him, too.

  I bottled my anger and declined the call.

  I could do one thing, finish one thing. I knit several rows, then cast off the stitches. Larrimer’s mitts were complete. They would warm him.