California Bones

by Greg Van Eekhout

  He surged forward with a speed that should not have been possible with the anatomical structure of his legs. His teeth were still the small, pebbly things evolved to chew soft meat and plants. His fingers were still delicate instruments evolved for tool use. But osteomancy transcended his physical form. He reached the fish and grabbed hold of its spine. He twisted, and its bones shattered with the sound of snapping wood boards. The fish turned toward him, opened its great mouth wide, and Daniel thrust his hands into the its eye sockets and ripped its skull apart as if tearing a loaf of bread in half.

  In just a few seconds, he’d broken the fish into a puzzle of bone fragments that sank into the murk.

  As the last of the sea creature magic faded, his leg thundered with pain. He opened his mouth in a silent scream, and his starved lungs threatened to burst through his rib cage.

  But in the glow of the calcium flares, he saw the faces of his crew.

  They were okay.

  Things would be okay.

  The job was still going okay.

  * * *

  He broke the surface in a stone-vaulted cistern, heaving for breath. Dripping water echoed through the vast space of pillars and shadows.

  Moth dragged him onto a floor of ice-cold stones.

  “You’re hurt,” Emma said.

  “What gave it away?” Daniel gasped. “Was it all the blood?”

  “Your face is the color of cottage cheese.” She looked down her nose at the rivulets of blood streaming from his leg and tsked. “Well. What are we to do about this?”

  “Move,” Cassandra said, shoving Emma aside. Daniel could tell by the look on her face that it was bad.

  “Everyone else okay? Moth?”

  Moth peeled off his shirt. He held it up, displaying huge puncture holes. “Lost a lot of blood and tore a couple of nerves. Five minutes and I’ll be fine.”

  “Daniel,” Cassandra said, and then she stopped talking.

  “Can you see muscle?”

  “I can see bone.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “Okay, not a lot of bone.” She unpacked her medical kit.

  “Just bandages,” Daniel said. “No hydra.”

  “You need the hydra.”

  Hydra regenerative could stop bleeding and speed tissue regeneration, and even though Daniel had cooked every last ounce of it from the bones in Otis’s stores, it wasn’t enough to fill a perfume sample bottle.

  “Save it for later, in case we need it,” he said. “Just bandages.”

  Ignoring him, Cassandra daubed a few drops of the white oil onto a gauze pad. “You can give me orders as soon as I’m no longer looking at your exposed tibia. Until then, shut up.”

  Daniel surrendered, because he knew she was right. In the water, drawing on the magic of the sea creatures, he could swim. On land, he was crippled.

  He bit back screams as she wound bandages around his calf. After a few minutes, the pain receded to a cool tingling. The hydra regen coursed through Daniel’s blood, filling him with warmth and well-being. He accepted Cassandra’s hand and got to his feet. Gingerly, he put a little weight on his leg. He felt like he could kick a soccer ball to scraps.

  “So the competence-porn part of this job has clearly come to an end,” he said. “Which means we’re officially underway. Next phase. Jo, make your face.”

  They all stripped out of their wetsuits and back into dry clothes. Jo changed into the midnight-blue uniform of a catacombs guard. Daniel held a mirror for her as she molded her face into a new configuration. Pressing her hands against her cheeks, she flattened and widened them. She hooked two fingers into her right eye socket and grunted softly as she pulled it an eighth of an inch to the right, and again as she pulled her left eye in the other direction. She spread her front teeth apart to form a gap. While she reshaped her face, she expanded her belly and broadened her shoulders and lengthened her arm and leg bones. Her hair shortened and curled. Her skin flushed and then paled, finally settling to a freckled, olive tone. Wiping sweat from her forehead, she donned a baseball cap with guard insignia, and she was someone else.

  “Break a leg, kid,” Daniel said, kissing her stubbled cheek.

  “Thought you already did that.”

  They rounded the walkway bordering the cistern and hunkered in the shadows against the wall. On the other side of an arch, a guard paced back and forth. She was a small, slight woman, but Daniel could smell short-faced bear sweating from her pores. In terms of strength and ferocity, she was a monster.

  Jo gave Daniel a thumbs-up, removed a handkerchief from her pocket, and crossed the archway, into the chamber beyond.

  Daniel chewed his lip. He would only be able to hear and smell what happened next.

  “Sir?” the guard said, startled.

  Jo blew her nose into the handkerchief. “How’s the watch, Tomasi?” She made her voice thick and gravelly. Emma had been able to get a photo of the guard captain Jo was impersonating, but not a voice recording. The common-cold trick was one of Jo’s standbys.

  “Nothing to report, sir,” Tomasi said.

  A harrumph from Jo. “You heard about the situation with your relief?”

  “No, sir.”

  “He failed his inspection. He won’t be relieving you.”

  “I can stand his watch, sir. It’s no problem.” Tomasi sounded so jaunty and happy. Anything for Team Hierarch.

  “I don’t think you’re understanding me. He won’t be making tomorrow night’s shift, either. Or the night after that. He won’t be making his shift for a long, long time. He failed his inspection.”

  “Oh.”

  “Oh?”

  “I mean … Oh, sir.”

  “That’s marginally better. I’ve had to shuffle personnel all over the catacombs. I need you in Annex B, third level.”

  “Isn’t that a restroom?”

  “I’m sorry, is that beneath you? I think you’ll find many guards would be happy to stand watch at a restroom. I think your relief would be happy to stand watch there. I think he’d be happy if he ever stood again.”

  Daniel could practically hear Tomasi’s lips moving as she worked it out.

  “Of course … I didn’t mean … When do I report, sir?”

  “Immediately. I’ll cover your watch here.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  A few echoing footsteps as Tomasi headed off.

  “Tomasi!”

  “Sir?”

  “Your keys. You won’t be needing them in Annex B.”

  The jingling of metal. “Should I sign them over?”

  “I’ll take care of the key roster. Report to your watch. And while you’re up there, you may want to review procedures and protocols before your inspection.”

  “Yes, sir. I will, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  A tense silence, and then footsteps again as Tomasi retreated with haste.

  Daniel waited a full minute in the shadows with the others until Jo whistled the all-clear.

  She beamed as Daniel hugged her.

  * * *

  The morgue was constructed of stone, mortar, and human bone. Steel cabinets, with drawers large enough to contain bodies, were built into the walls. There were hundreds of them.

  “Welcome to one of our kingdom’s dirty little secrets,” Emma said, her breath fogging the air.

  This was where dead magic users were warehoused. Not the osteomancers, or even high-level consumers, but just average users with trace amounts of osteomancy in their systems. Some were homeless, scooped up off the streets. Others died in clinics and hospitals. Some were dug out of their graves. From here, they were transferred to the catacombs’ leeching workshops, and once all remaining osteomancy was reclaimed, the bodies were incinerated.

  Emma changed from soft-tread boots into heels and threw on a long lab coat. Meanwhile, Jo changed outfits again, this time into the plain gray coveralls of a catacombs worker. She gave no thought to modesty. “An actor doesn’t fear exposure,” was one of her favorit
e sayings. Daniel suspected she simply enjoyed exhibitionism.

  More modest than Jo, Moth used a blanket for cover as he stripped out of his clothes and lay back naked on a gurney. The metal joints creaked under his weight.

  Daniel stood over him. “Not too late to back out, man.”

  “Shut up and kill me,” he said.

  Sometimes Daniel couldn’t escape the conclusion that Moth liked pain. He’d earned his nickname when he was a small kid, holding his fingers over a cigarette lighter flame for as long as he could stand, which was longer than it ought to be. He got into fights not so much for the pleasure of punching other kids, but because he liked taking their punches in return. Maybe it wasn’t the pain he liked, so much as the feeling of resilience. He liked proving he could get up off the playground asphalt for more. He acted as though he were invulnerable, but he wasn’t. Not until Daniel changed him.

  Daniel had come for a visit at Moth’s squat and found him clubbed so badly his face was barely recognizable as a face. And whoever had done him had used knives. It wasn’t the worst thing Daniel had ever seen done to a person, but it was awful enough.

  Daniel begged Otis to help. He knew how much hydra regen and eocorn Otis had locked away. Enough for Daniel to save Moth’s life. But Otis wouldn’t relinquish it. He had a customer for the materials, and he wouldn’t spare it on a talentless kid like Moth. Daniel asked a second time, was denied. He didn’t ask a third time. He knew which safe Otis kept the stuff in.

  He used it on Moth. All of it. And when Moth awoke with even his oldest scars gone, he was different.

  Daniel gave Cassandra a nod. She loaded her gun with a needle painted bright red and yellow, like a venomous snake, to make sure she wouldn’t confuse it with any of the others in her arsenal.

  She kissed Moth on the forehead, then put the tip of the gun to his neck. “Not too late to back out, man.”

  “Cass, I swear to god—”

  “Okay, okay. We’ve just never killed you before. Excuse us for asking.”

  Moth closed his eyes and took a breath, but before Cassandra pulled the trigger, Daniel covered her hand with his own. “Wait.”

  Moth’s eyes popped open. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. Just … I’ll do this. Let me have the gun, Cass.”

  Moth looked worried, but Cassandra understood. Reluctantly, she gave Daniel the gun.

  The things I ask my friends to do for me, Daniel thought. He could bring himself to ask Moth to die, but he shouldn’t ask Cassandra to kill him. If something went wrong, Daniel should be the one to bear it.

  “Close your eyes, Moth.”

  “Uh-uh. I’m watching you. Don’t fuck this up, D.”

  Selfish of him, telling Moth not to look at him. He had a right to see what was happening to him. He had a right to see who was doing it to him.

  There was a puff of air, and the needle penetrated Moth’s neck.

  Daniel resisted the urge to hold Moth’s hand. Moth had made it clear during planning that he didn’t want anyone to make a big deal out of his deaths, and Daniel wanted to respect his wishes.

  Moth took half a breath, and the blood drained from his face. His lips parted slightly, and his eyes remained open, but now they stared at nothing. This was different than watching someone fall asleep. This wasn’t sleep, nor paralysis, nor coma. There was an absence in the room now, and a mournful horror that Daniel didn’t expect. He swallowed and told himself that, when next he spoke, he wouldn’t betray any of it.

  He pulled the blanket over Moth’s face.

  Wearing the form and clothes of a low-level catacombs worker, Jo pushed the gurney into the extraction workshops. Emma walked beside her, with an air of contemptuous confidence that she didn’t have to feign.

  Emma Walker was permitted to be here, and policy allowed her one attendant, so that was Jo’s cover. Moth was a corpse, and this was a morgue. But Daniel and Cassandra needed a way to pass through.

  Daniel reached back to his sense memories of sint holo. Vapors of confusion and elusiveness emanated from his cells. “Take my hand,” he said to Cassandra. She pressed her warm palm to his, and together, they vanished.

  He trailed several yards behind Jo and Emma, keeping enough distance to avoid casting his sint holo magic on them. With his invisibility miasma extended to include Cassandra, she was in the most danger. She was in a ghost world, incapable of forming coherent thoughts, of making good decisions. It was as though she were invisible to herself, and her hand felt insubstantial in Daniel’s iron grip.

  They entered the maze of lab benches in the leeching workshop. Bodies hung by chains from overhead racks. Drip pans below them collected fluid, transported by pumps and tubes to holding tanks for further processing. Workers took bodies apart with long knives and saws and files and picks and shears and scrapers. Some workers kept framed pictures of their families on shelves above their workstations. One had a WORLD’S GREATEST GRANDMOTHER coffee mug. Piped-in soft rock played amid the noise of suction and scraping and blood plinking into the pans.

  Daniel was struck by the dense smells of magic. He caught whiffs of flight, of muscle power, of searing flame. The floors and walls and workbenches here were infused with layers of magic. Over the decades, the finest mists of ground bone hung in the air until gravity brought them down, coating the surfaces. As Daniel moved through the atmosphere, his cells thrummed.

  Guards patrolled the workshop, prowling like cats, occasionally peering over the workers’ shoulders to make sure nobody tried to palm a tooth or a rolled bit of intestinal tissue. The guards’ own magic smelled complicated and potent. The Hierarch invested resources in them. Smilodon for speed, and Colombian mammoth for strength.

  Jo pushed the gurney right into a guard’s path.

  The guard dipped her chin in a neutral greeting. She was a plump woman who didn’t appear physically intimidating, though her aroma told Daniel otherwise.

  “Good evening, Dr. Walker,” she said to Emma, ignoring Jo. “I thought you were on vacation.”

  “I got back early.”

  “Mazatlán, wasn’t it?”

  “Cancún.”

  The guard nodded and hmmed. “We usually don’t see you this far from the core complex.”

  Emma waved her hand over Moth’s corpse. “This one’s part of a special research project I’m working on and I want to make sure he arrives in one piece.”

  The guard seemed offended. “You don’t have to worry about that, doctor. I can’t speak for other parts of the catacombs, but I don’t have a theft problem here.”

  Daniel could almost hear Emma’s superior smirk. She offered her clipboard to allow the guard to inspect her paperwork: a requisition for Moth’s corpse, and internal clearance passes for both her and the attendant Jo was impersonating. The guard seemed to read every word of every page. Finally, though, she handed the clipboard back to Emma and stepped aside to let her pass.

  Daniel gripped Cassandra’s featherlight hand, and they trailed Jo and Emma through the chamber of precision butchery. They’d almost reached the exit when the guard stopped them.

  “Dr. Walker?”

  Emma turned. “What?”

  “Why did you come back early from Mazatlán?”

  Emma exhaled slowly. “On Monday a large area of low pressure developed southeast of Jamaica, with increased concentration by Tuesday afternoon, moving southwestward. A confluence of warm-water temperatures, favorable upper-level environmental conditions, and reduced wind sheer led to gradual convection organization with rapid deepening.”

  The guard blinked. “Doctor…?”

  “It was raining,” said Emma. “And it was Cancún.”

  She and Jo moved on.

  FIFTEEN

  Los Angeles was beautiful when it burned.

  Gabriel cowered in an alley behind a trash bin and watched the deepening orange of the setting sun, swirling with grays and purples from the smoke gathering over Silver Lake. With sirens wailing, fireboats strug
gled through rush-hour traffic down West Sunset Canal, and Gabriel couldn’t help but spontaneously devise better ways to organize the canal system and emergency services such that there might be a chance of putting the fire out before an entire neighborhood was consumed. It didn’t take magic to run a city. It took administrative skill.

  And it had taken skill to get this far away from Fenmont Szu’s downtown office without being captured. Max’s skill, mostly. He’d had steered them away from hound patrols and pulled them into alleys and bushes when he sensed cops too near. Both of them were filthy, their clothes still damp with canal water and reeking of diesel, and Gabriel had lost his shoes.

  Szu’s people would have searched the dockhouse below the skyscraper and noticed that the bomb he’d planted in Gabriel’s boat hadn’t blasted Gabriel and Max to blobs of charred meat and paste. But Szu wouldn’t stop there. Gabriel knew Daniel Blackland was alive. And he wasn’t supposed to know that.

  Navigating side roads and canals, he and Max made it to Silver Lake and avoided the cops, who threaded through clogged traffic on water cycles. Smoke rose above his neighborhood, two miles away. Gabriel liked his condo, at the top of a wooded bluff with views of the Ivanhoe Reservoir. And he liked his neighbors. They were right now losing their homes and everything they owned, and choking on smoke, and being clubbed by Szu’s agents as they ran from the flames, and then tortured needlessly for information they didn’t have. He turned and voided sour liquid from his empty stomach.

  Crouched beside him, Max wrinkled his nose. “That smells.”

  Gabriel wiped his sleeve across his mouth. “Sorry.”

  “Try not to emit odors,” Max said. “The hounds can trace it.”

  “Let’s keep moving. Just a few more blocks to Hyperion. There’s stuff I need at the coffee shop there.”

  “This is not a good time for a caffeine break. What stuff?”

  “Cash. IDs. Travel papers. With those, we can make it north into the Valley. I know some people there who can hide us.”

  “You keep things like this at a coffee shop? What kind of coffee shop is this?”

  I know a barista there, and she keeps my things in a locker.”