The Bone Scroll: An Elemental Legacy Novel

by Hunter, Elizabeth

  “Desta?” Arosh’s face went blank. “You have something that belonged to Desta?”

  “What else could compel her?”

  Tenzin saw the moment Arosh realized he might lose.

  His upper lip curled back and he snarled. Then he lifted his arms and sent a blast of pure fire directly across the trench, heading straight toward Tenzin’s face.

  38

  “You won’t damage the scroll,” Saba said. “You are Giovanni Vecchio’s son.”

  He began to pace back and forth, feeling trapped by Saba, her expectations, and the painful revelations she’d dumped on him. “Some things should not exist. This is one of them.”

  Even as he said it, he knew she was right. He could never destroy an artifact so ancient. His uncle would never forgive him. History would never forgive him.

  Saba smiled again. “Have you read it, Young Vecchio?”

  He stopped pacing. “No, I told you I don’t read—”

  “You will learn,” Saba said. “And only after you have read the scroll of Mithra should you make a decision about its value. It is the only logical course of action.”

  He was angry, afraid, and confused. Why did Saba keep making so much sense?

  Ben held the scroll close to his body. “You’re just giving me this superpowerful object? Why?”

  “I told you,” she said. “I’m curious.”

  Ben felt like screaming. “I don’t think that’s what Walt Whitman intended.”

  Saba frowned but said nothing more.

  “And if it does work?” Ben stepped closer to Saba and looked down at the calm vampire sitting on the bench. Her calm stoked his anger. “Say it does work, Saba. It will make me more powerful than any immortal on earth. More powerful than even you.”

  There was her infuriating smile again. “Do you think so?”

  “I will control all four elements. I would be able to conquer nations. Steal territory. Rule over cities where you hold sway.” He held the leather-wrapped scroll in front of her face. “What is to say that I won’t figure out the secrets of this scroll and—”

  “You’re Giovanni Vecchio’s son,” she said softly. “The same man who risked burns to pull an ancient vampire from the sun’s killing rays. The man who sacrificed his innocence to protect a pregnant woman. The man who handed power back to an ancient instead of claiming it for himself. You are the hope and the legacy of your family line, son of Giovanni and Beatrice, brother of Sadia, mate of Tenzin.”

  Despite the import of the moment and the kindness of her words, Ben felt a stab of pain in his chest. “She’s not my mate.”

  “Of course she is.” Saba rose and took his chin between her fingers. “If you could see who she has become with you, compared to who she was.” Saba shook her head softly. “My most reckless and rebellious daughter. The one who has survived. I could never tell her anything; she would not accept it. But I smell her blood in your veins, Benjamin Vecchio. I see her mark on your heart. She is your mate.”

  Saba moved toward a blackened passageway. “Come. It is time to stake your claim.”

  As soon as she moved, Ben smelled the acrid smoke drifting down the passageway. “Arosh.”

  “And Tenzin.” She shook her head. “The two of them, so arrogant.”

  Tenzin sent another wave of wind across the chasm, directing the fire into the side of a hill. “Does Saba know you’re burning churches?”

  “We’ve done it before.” His eyes were alight with destructive joy. “It will hardly be the first time.”

  “You aren’t going to get the scroll. We won’t let you have it.” Tenzin rose in the air and dove down, drawing Arosh’s fire from a line of early-morning pilgrims she saw walking toward the church. There were children in the group, mothers with infants. The bastard Fire King wasn’t going to kill any more innocents, not while she was alive.

  Arosh aimed another stream of fire at her, but she stopped it, sucking the air from the flames before they could do any damage.

  The pilgrims walking toward the churches turned and ran, their cries echoing in the predawn light.

  “The scroll is mine!” Arosh screamed. “I am the blood of Mithra. I am the inheritor of his power. I am—”

  “You don’t know who the hell your sire was!” Tenzin yelled back. “I’ve heard the stories.” Tenzin watched the door of the church. Surely Daniel would emerge soon with Ben in tow. Then she could finish off her fight with the mad bastard who didn’t even realize the sun was less than an hour from rising. “You woke in an empty black cave, Arosh. You probably killed your sire before they realized what you were.”

  “I am the blood of Mithra,” Arosh shouted from a rocky ledge.

  “Repeating it doesn’t make it true.” Tenzin darted through the air, no longer caring about stealth. She had to keep an eye on the church doors, another on the horizon, and still dodge the spears of flame Arosh kept sending toward her.

  Where the hell was Benjamin?

  She drew a long throwing dagger from her tunic. She had no desire to kill Arosh—she didn’t need the political headache—but maybe she could scare him enough to stop raking the earth with flames.

  Part of her desperately wanted to end the man—she had a feeling she could take him in combat—but that would shift the balance of power. She had no intention of taking on Arosh’s responsibilities on the Alitean Council or his territory, so as much as he irritated her, she had to let him live.

  She tested the edge of her dagger, then flung the blade toward him, shifting the air around it until she saw the quick flick of hair that flew up when the edge of the knife caught the Fire King’s ear.

  “Tenzin!”

  The vampire flew into an even greater rage, a column of fire forming around him, the flames making his hair fly in a torrent of heat and wind.

  Dammit. He was losing control, forgetting their location and the people around him.

  She needed Ben and his diplomatic words. He always seemed to be able to temper situations and avoid violence.

  He would probably not have advised throwing the dagger.

  Plus, when he was with her, their power built on each other. Their amnis reinforced the other. In the dry, crackling air of the Ethiopian mountains, Arosh was at his most powerful. She couldn’t pull enough air from around him to kill the flames. She could suck the fuel for his fire away for a second, but then he lit it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Taking shelter behind a wall, Tenzin looked at the horizon, then back at the church. The sky was growing lighter; she needed to get Ben away from this place and safe in their compound. She needed Daniel to emerge. She needed Saba—

  “My love.”

  Tenzin flew up when she heard Saba’s voice.

  The most ancient one put a gentle hand on Arosh’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”

  Tenzin’s eyes flew around the church compound. Arosh was cornered on a ledge across from the church where he’d leaped to mount his attack on her.

  Where had Saba come from?

  It was as if the earth just spit her out wherever she wanted to go. Tenzin hovered over the chasm between the church and the path, watching Arosh and waiting for Ben.

  “The human has the scroll.” Arosh growled.

  “He is no longer human,” Saba said. “And he has my favor.” She stroked a hand over his long beard, then turned toward the growing light. “Come, my prince. We will take shelter for the day and continue this discussion tonight.”

  “Discussion?” Tenzin couldn’t stop the snark.

  “Not helpful, Tiny.”

  His voice brought a rush of inexplicable joy to the center of her being.

  Tenzin looked behind her and saw Ben and Daniel standing at the door of the stone church, a leather-wrapped bundle still cradled in Ben’s arm.

  Tenzin looked back where Saba and Arosh had been, but they were gone, swallowed into the earth like the myths they were.

  With only minutes to find shelt
er, Tenzin flew down and grabbed Daniel by the collar. Then she tugged Ben into the air, and her heart felt whole again.

  “Come on.” She wouldn’t panic. Panic produced nothing useful. “We only have a few minutes to get home.”

  Ben wrapped his arm around her waist in midair and moved them so fast Tenzin knew that humans on the ground, looking up into the morning sky, wouldn’t believe what they were seeing.

  He was stunning and powerful, a creature of immortal grace so elegantly dangerous that her heart gave two thumps just from looking at his profile. He turned and smiled at her; he’d heard the sound.

  “Almost home,” he mouthed, the sound of his words whipped away by the streaking wind around them.

  “Always home.” She gripped his hand. “With you.”

  Minutes before dawn, they landed in the compound and took shelter from the deadly rays of the sun. Minutes after that, both Ben and Daniel were passed out in the middle of the entryway in the main house.

  Beatrice came down and saw the two vampires sprawled on the floor, one of whom was clutching a bundle roughly the size of an American football. “I’m almost afraid to ask.”

  “Is my hair burned?” She inspected the ends she could see, certain she’d smelled Arosh’s flames singeing her.

  “I don’t think— Oh, there’s a little spot in the back.” Beatrice patted her head. “Hardly even noticeable.”

  “That bastard.” She looked down at the men, then at the windows that would eventually expose them as the sun rose. “Why are they so big?”

  “Don’t lie, you like his height and his muscles.” Beatrice bent down and grabbed Daniel by the ankles. “I’ll drag this one into the library if you want to hide in the closet with Ben.”

  “It’s not ideal.” She glanced at the bone scroll. “But I have a lot to think about, so I guess that will do.”

  “Good luck.” Beatrice was still lugging Daniel toward the light-safe room. “Sadia is going to be awake in an hour, maximum. And I have a feeling she’s going to have a lot of questions.”

  Tenzin opened the closet door and pushed and pulled Ben into its safety. “Maybe today is a good day to pretend to be sleeping.”

  39

  Ben sat at the library table with his uncle at his shoulder, examining the scroll that had caused so much drama.

  It was over five feet in length when it was stretched out, with the bones split, polished, and woven delicately with sinew that had grown stiff with age. Giovanni had used subtle heat with his fingers and palms to unroll the scroll to its full length without damaging it, but it still needed some restoration work.

  The writing on the scroll was both carved and inked, meaning that even in places where the ink had faded, the writing was still intelligible. The leather casing in the cool, dry cave had protected it beyond what Ben could have imagined for anything so ancient.

  “Do you recognize the language?” Ben asked.

  His uncle stared at the scroll for a long time. “No,” he finally said. “I recognize the Ge’ez on the back, of course, and this language is in an old cuneiform writing system that was in use in Persia prior to the first century BC, but the language itself?” Giovanni shook his head.

  “So there’s no way of knowing what the original language is saying?” Ben asked. “The Ge’ez translation on the back—”

  “Will definitely be helpful, but I need to take pictures and take them to a classical Persian specialist. This may simply be a dialect of Old Persian I’m not familiar with, but I’m not recognizing any words at all. An expert in the writing system should be able to transcribe the language somewhat accurately, and then we might be able to decipher it or link it to something more familiar.”

  “Or we could depend on the expertise of the Aksumite scribes who translated it on the back.” Ben flipped up the top edge of the scroll to reveal the writing system still commonly used in the Horn of Africa. “That’s probably going to be the easiest.”

  Giovanni looked at him with annoyance. “Easiest? Possibly. Most accurate? There’s no way of knowing. Translations from the original script are necessary.”

  “Okay, you go ahead and work on that.” Ben rolled the top of the scroll down so he could see the blackened marks where the ancient scroll had been translated. “But I’m going to do what Saba suggested.”

  “Which is?”

  “Learn to read Ge’ez,” Ben said. “Read the scroll. Try to understand it and what Ash Mithra was attempting to preserve.”

  “I admire you.” Giovanni leaned on the library table. “I cannot lie—the energy coming from this scroll is unsettling. You really feel nothing of the sort?”

  Ben shook his head. “I mean, I definitely feel kind of in awe of anything that’s survived for this long, you know? And it’s weird as hell to have a scroll made from human bones. But I don’t feel uncomfortable or hypnotized or anything like what you and Tenzin have described.”

  “Interesting,” Giovanni muttered. “The blood of Mithra indeed.”

  “Gio, we don’t even know—”

  “We do.” Giovanni set down his magnifying glass and looked up. “She wouldn’t have lied about something like that. She knows I can confirm it.”

  Ben blinked. “You can confirm it?”

  “I can confirm your mother’s true name,” he said softly. “And Saba would know that—should you want to explore it—I could do a complete ancestry.” Giovanni slid his hands in his pockets. “If you want.”

  Did he want? Ben shook his head. “I know who my family is.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with wanting to know,” his uncle said. “With wanting to understand her.”

  “I understand that—whatever shit happened in her life—she had a kid,” Ben said. “And chose not to protect him. I lucked out when she gave me to you. If she hadn’t, I’d probably be dead.”

  Giovanni shook his head. “I don’t believe that. I have no doubt that whatever you chose to do in life, you would have been successful at it. Your character was already rooted when I adopted you.”

  “Rooted, maybe.” Ben shrugged. “But you’re the one who raised me. Taught me how to be a man. Taught me what family was supposed to be.”

  Giovanni’s hand spread and hovered over the scroll. “Whatever this is. Whatever power or knowledge it may hold” —his uncle looked up and met his gaze— “know that I will never fear you. Never, Benjamin.”

  How had he known the dread Ben hadn’t even been able to articulate? “Giovanni—”

  “And I agree with Saba. She couldn’t have given it to the keeping of a better vampire.”

  Ben voiced the question that had been haunting him since he spoke to Saba in the cave. “Do you think she turned me because of this?”

  Giovanni frowned. “It’s hard to say. As twisted as it may seem to us, she saw herself as repaying a great favor when she engineered your human death. I think the fact that you’re a human descendant of Mithra was convenient and exciting to her, but I don’t know that—even if you were not—she would have allowed you to have a typical human life or death. Remember, Saba cares about humans, but she doesn’t see them as equals. The man who saved her son deserved immortality. At least in her own mind.”

  In the distance, a loud boom reverberated. Giovanni and Ben rushed to the door and saw a distant puff of smoke far in the hills on the north side of Lalibela.

  “Is that near the airport?”

  “No,” Giovanni said. “I am going to guess that explosion is a fire vampire having a small temper tantrum.”

  “Small?”

  Giovanni nodded a little. “Knowing Arosh… quite small.”

  “Great.” Ben stuffed his hands in his pockets. “This meeting should be super fun.”

  Saba sat in the middle of the leather couch in the living room like a queen, nodding graciously as blood-wine was opened for her, frankincense was lit, and coffee was roasted. No one accompanied her but a single vampire of her line, Gedeyon, who stood behind her at attention.
<
br />   Tenzin sat in the chair across from her, trying her best to remain civil after everything Ben had shared earlier that night.

  Ben had shrugged and moved on, but Tenzin still felt the scrape of her knees against stone in a courtyard half a world away.

  Saba looked up, her eyes piercing in their brightness and clarity. “You’re angry with me.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Yes.” Saba sipped a glass of blood-wine. “What were you forced to give, daughter of Zhang?”

  “That is not for you to know.”

  “Isn’t it?” Saba’s eyes never left hers even as she drank the blood in the goblet. “I know the answer already. You were forced to give nothing. Everything you offered was given willingly.”

  “I would have given anything to keep him alive.”

  Tenzin heard silence fall around them, and all the polite murmurs of company fell away. Perhaps some immortals wouldn’t want to speak of such personal things among others, but Tenzin knew she wasn’t saying anything that Ben, Giovanni, Beatrice, Sadia, Dema, and Chloe didn’t already know.

  They were her family.

  Saba smiled softly. “You bare your secrets in your actions, daughter, even as you keep the truth in your heart.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Of course you do.”

  “Tenzin.” Ben put his hand on her arm. “Learning to love it, remember? I’m not angry anymore. Let it go; we can’t change the past.”

  She finally looked away from the arrogant queen and to her mate. “You are more forgiving than I am.”

  “Anger…” He shrugged. “I’ve learned that it doesn’t accomplish much.”

  Tenzin turned back to Saba. “You have given the scroll to Benjamin as the blood and immortal heir of Mithra.”

  “I have.”

  Ben leaned toward Saba. “I know you told me to learn to read Ge’ez—and I will do that—but you should know more than anyone else.” He gave her a level look. “The scroll… is it real?”