California Bones

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “Who you are?” Daniel said, his hands tingling with subdued kraken energy and nerves.

  The boy reached into his pocket and flipped a quarter at him. Daniel caught it.

  “You forgot to call heads or tails.”

  “Just look at it,” the boy said.

  Daniel did, first at the wings-and-tusks emblem on the tails side, then the heads side, featuring the Hierarch’s portrait.

  “See it now?” The boy helpfully tilted his chin and ran his finger down his long nose.

  “His son,” Daniel said.

  The boy shook his head.

  “Golem, then.”

  “Uh-huh. I was supposed to wait inside there.”

  He pointed to a broken crate.

  “You broke out of your box.”

  “Yeah.”

  Daniel didn’t buy it. “If you’re really his golem, you’d be under guard, in a vault. You’d be the fucking crown jewels.”

  “I was under guard.” He drew back the canvas tarp. Two bodies in black uniforms lay curled beneath. Daniel smelled venom.

  The boy sniffed the air. “You hurt the Hierarch pretty bad. He’s not healed enough to come for us yet.”

  Daniel had dropped a ceiling on him and breathed enough fire to burn down an apartment complex. “I hurt him. Well, that’s encouraging. I guess.”

  “He’ll get better.”

  “I know. I’m not finished with him yet. Just taking a breather.”

  “Are you going to kill me?”

  The thought hadn’t occurred to him, but it should have. If the boy was the Hierarch’s golem, he was a threat.

  Is this something you’re willing to do now? Daniel asked himself. You’re going to kill a kid?

  “Of course I’m not going to kill you. You should wash your mouth out with soap for even asking.”

  The boy regarded him, wary and curious. “Aren’t you scared?”

  “Of course I am. I’m terrified.”

  “Then why don’t you run away?”

  Daniel shrugged. “Can’t. Won’t. What about you?”

  “I already ran away once. That’s why they crated me.”

  The Hierarch kept his golem in a box. This is the kind of thing Emma Walker was trying to prevent.

  Daniel reassessed the boy’s age. He talked older, but he might only be six. Daniel wasn’t well versed in kid morphology. “What’s your deal, anyway? What’s he using you for?”

  “When he wears a golem out, he puts himself in a new one. And I’m it, a golem grown from his own, original flesh. From his own magic. The problem is, I’m not mature enough yet. I’m not powerful enough. He’d be stepping into a weaker body. But he’s too far gone to wait. So, first he needs to nourish me. That’s what you’re for. He calls you a meal fit for a king,” the boy said. “I’m the next king.”

  * * *

  Like a pipe organist, Mulholland sat before an expansive array of controls: switches and levers and valve-wheels, all accessible from a wooden throne on brass rails. Above the console, climbing all the way to the plumbing webwork in the high ceiling, was a board with hundreds of gauges and dials, and a vast configuration of lights that Gabriel recognized as a map of the kingdom’s aqueducts.

  Mulholland began to turn valves. “You’re just in time. I’m cutting off flow through Pyramid Dam.”

  Gabriel had been studying. Water flow through the dam drove the turbines of a 1,495-megawatt hydroelectric power plant. Cutting off the water would darken huge swaths of the San Fernando Valley. With the spin of a few valves, Mulholland was throwing lives into chaos. There might be people lying on operating room tables, or on life support, and commuters depending on traffic controls. A few valves, and hundreds of thousands of lives were casually put at risk.

  On the map, a light blinked red.

  “May I ask why?” Gabriel asked. “Have the people in the Valley erred in some way?”

  “Not in any remarkable way. They pay their taxes, they work their jobs, they switch on their televisions and warm themselves in its reliable glow. They turn their faucets and water their green lawns. Their children and dogs leap in the sprinklers, and their goldfish swim endless circles in their bowls. They boil their pasta and rinse germs off their hands and flush their excrement out of sight. Tomorrow, when I give them back Pyramid Dam, their lives will continue as such.”

  “A demonstration,” Gabriel said.

  Mulholland nodded, a pleased teacher. He rose from his chair. “It’s a good idea to remind people who their magic comes from.”

  Mulholland looked over his console, where the blinking red light had gone black, and clasped his hands behind his back. He seemed very satisfied.

  “I’ve always been impressed by magic,” Gabriel said. “But there’s more. There should be more.”

  Mulholland turned away from his controls and glanced at him, curious. “Oh?”

  “There are sources of power that don’t rely on bones and mandalas. There is bureaucracy. There is administration. There is the idea of running things for no other reason than things need to be run. There is power fueled by sober responsibility. There is service.”

  Nerves were making Gabriel pompous. He hadn’t meant to make a speech. Speeches got you noticed. But maybe, just this once, attracting attention was a good tactic.

  Mulholland frowned. His watery eyes looked into Gabriel’s.

  “End it,” Gabriel said.

  A shot thundered, and Mulholland’s forehead blew out, along with a great splash of brains. The blast echoed through the pipes of the vast chamber, for so long that Gabriel wondered if it would ever end. He decided that, even if the sound died, the echo would reverberate through the life of every man, woman, and child in the kingdom. There would never be a moment when Gabriel didn’t hear the sound of that gunshot.

  Mulholland lay on the stone floor, facedown, with a pool of blood expanding from his head.

  Max, standing behind Mulholland’s body, pocketed his gun.

  “We just turned off half of the kingdom’s power,” Gabriel said. “Let’s hope Blackland can turn off the rest.”

  With his handkerchief, he cleaned Mulholland’s brains off his shirt.

  The webwork of pipes all around him sang out and groaned, and the earth beneath him shook.

  * * *

  The attic floor rolled beneath Daniel’s feet. Wood ground against wood and floorboards ruptured. Deep in the earth, tectonic plates moved with thunderous cracks. The Hierarch was coming for Daniel.

  The golem boy vanished behind a rain of dust and cobwebs from the ceiling, and when Daniel summoned a wind to clear the air, the boy stood, facing him, gripping the Blackland sword. The smell was unmistakable.

  Daniel felt a pang of embarrassment. The sword did exist, and Daniel had failed to steal it. He breathed something between a sigh and a laugh.

  The boy took a few wobbling steps toward Daniel. He held the sword out to him, handle first. “Kill me. Cut me open. Eat as much of me as you can. With my magic added to yours, you might be able to beat him.”

  “Shut up. I’m not going to cut you open.”

  “It’s what I’m for,” the boy insisted, his voice rising. “I’m supposed to be eaten.”

  “Eat you? I thought he was going to become you.”

  Tears cut paths in the boy’s grimy face. “How do you think he does it? He eats. It’s all he does. If you don’t, then he will. He’ll eat every last crumb of me. He’ll be me. And I’ll be him. I don’t want that.”

  “I’m not going to eat you,” Daniel said with finality. “God, sometimes I hate my hometown.”

  “It’s the only way!” the boy shouted back, so ferocious that Daniel recoiled. He was red-faced now, sobbing. He stripped off his T-shirt and spread his arms out and presented the white flesh of his belly for the sacrifice.

  Daniel smelled the power in him. The golem-boy possessed the components of the Hierarch’s magic, and Daniel knew he was right. With his osteomancy fueling Daniel’s own, maybe h
e could destroy the Hierarch. Maybe he could just take the boy’s heart. And why shouldn’t he? Why shouldn’t he eat this miniature replica of the Hierarch and use his power to live, to slay the monster and earn Moth’s and Cassandra’s release? Daniel was an osteomancer. His gift was to gain strength from what he consumed. To take and use magic. To take and use his friends’ love and loyalty. Why not take what the boy offered?

  The shaking subsided. The swaying settled, and dust motes danced in the air.

  “You take the sword,” said Daniel. “Take it and haul your ass away from here as fast as you can. I’ll fight him off to give you time.”

  “There is no more time, son,” the Hierarch’s voice said.

  Silently, gracefully, the Hierarch rose, floating outside the shattered attic window with the night sky behind him. His sparse hair moved in a gentle breeze. He smiled in a familiar way and ignited. A corona of osteomantic energy flared around his silhouetted body. He was like a black sun.

  The boy wailed. He held the edge of the blade up to his throat and screwed his eyes tightly shut, his intent clear. He would die, and Daniel would feast.

  Flames rose around the window frame. They spread to the wall, and the wood blackened and crackled away like paper before the Hierarch’s blazing magic.

  “Give it to me,” Daniel said, reaching for the sword.

  “You can’t beat him.”

  Daniel winked at him. “I can. Got a secret weapon. But I need you to do something.”

  The boy looked up at him, and Daniel felt a strange urge to ruffle his hair. Because whatever else he was, in addition to a magical construct born from the tissues of a cruel and powerful man, he was also a boy.

  “When it’s over, find his heart,” Daniel said. “As much of it as you can. Bring it to Gabriel Argent at the Department of Water and Power.”

  “I don’t understand,” the boy said.

  “In a way, I kind of hope you never do. But do it for me. That’s the deal we’re making. You deliver the heart to Argent.”

  “Okay,” the boy said.

  People were always so eager to please him.

  Daniel turned to face the Hierarch. Leading with the sword, he launched himself through the burning window frame. Charred wood burst into flakes and splinters as he flew into the abyss. He vomited blue fire and embraced the Hierarch. Together, they plummeted.

  The Hierarch’s heat seared him. Daniel’s eyebrows crisped. The heat scorched his eyes, his gums, his sinus cavities. Spinning and burning, they continued to fall toward the canal at the bottom of the hill. With firedrake talons, he gripped the Hierarch’s throat in one hand. In his other hand, he gripped the sword. He imagined wings spreading from his back, larger than the sails of a great yacht. He beat them and arrested his descent.

  Three more strokes of his wings, and he shot over what was left of the Magic Castle. Half the roof was caved in, pulverized clay shingles and chimney bricks spilling down the hill along with masonry from the broken walls. Below, on the ledge of the attic floor, the Hierarch’s golem looked up in wonder as Daniel propelled himself and the Hierarch over the castle.

  “You’re forgetting something,” the Hierarch whispered in his ear. “You’re using the magic I fed you in my Ossuary. My magic.”

  Gravity reclaimed them. They dive-bombed to earth, cratering into soil and manzanita and buckwheat.

  They’d impacted in Runyon Canyon Park, a perch of dusty trails and shrubs above the Magic Castle on an eastern ledge of the Santa Monica Mountains. Panicked lizards and rabbits and coyotes skittered for cover in the chaparral. Pain lanced Daniel’s lungs as he struggled to draw in breath, but he was satisfied. This was a fine place, far removed from the castle and other buildings and innocent bystanders. This was just the kind of place he needed.

  The Hierarch was already back on his feet, brushing off his trousers.“Is that your secret weapon?” he said, gesturing at the sword.

  The sword was not his secret weapon. It was just a reminder of what he was, of what his father had designed him to be: a weapon made of his own magic.

  The bombs he’d used for the museum break-in were fake, but he carried inside him a real bomb. His body contained kraken and seps venom and wyvern and firedrake and groot. An osteomancer with deep magic became the creatures he ingested, and Daniel was a creature of fire and lightning and acid and earthquakes.

  The Hierarch surely knew the magical ingredients Daniel was composed of, but he couldn’t know what Daniel was willing to do with them.

  Daniel thought, when he came to this point, he’d be reaching inside himself to find rage. Instead, he found himself reaching for warmer feelings. He thought of his friends. He wished he could see Cassandra again. He wished he could find a way to apologize to her. He wished he could buy Moth a chili burger. He wished he could save Jo from Otis. Moth and Cass would have to take care of that. Like so many other times, his friends would have to pick up after him.

  “Boom,” he said.

  There was no passage of time as the substances in his body broke apart. Magical analogs to molecules and atoms released their bonds, and Daniel was the heart of a sun. His energies surged through his body, and he was distantly aware of tremendous agony and the high pitch of his own scream, like that day on the beach when his father gave him lightning. Daggers of white light shone from his eyes and from his gaping mouth and from his pores. He was a weapon. The most powerful weapon Sebastian Blackland had ever crafted. All his life, people had sought to wield him. Now, he wielded himself.

  Magic flew out in all directions, physical events of flame and light, backed by the forces that couldn’t be described by other physics. He exploded.

  * * *

  It wasn’t enough.

  The Hierarch looked upon Daniel with curiosity and reached out with his right hand.

  The spires of light ceased their expansion from Daniel’s body. The shockwave collapsed. The swirling arms of flame radiating from him reversed their course, and Daniel’s magic rushed back into his body, like a fire hose forced down his throat. Blood streamed from his nose.

  “I’m sorry,” the Hierarch said, squeezing, “I know this hurts.” Daniel fell to his knees

  Blood filled his mouth. It streaked from his ears and down his neck. Tears of blood streamed from his eyes.

  The Hierarch smiled fondly, looking out over the expanse of Los Angeles. “I’ve always liked it up here,” he said, making picnic banter as Daniel died. From here, Daniel could see a huge swath of the Hierarch’s capital city. The city lights turned the bellies of the low clouds orange. The boats on flumeways sat still, clogged in a late-night traffic jam. The vast basin of Los Angeles glittered below.

  Daniel lifted his head from charred earth, and he summoned words, but in the end, the only thing he could croak was “Why?”

  The Hierarch’s face was thoughtful. “Why I killed your father? Or why I’m going to feed you to my boy? The answer is the same. It’s what I want.”

  “No,” Daniel said, forcing the words out through his tortured chest and throat. “Why? Why do you need power?”

  “Ah,” the Hierarch said, just as Sebastian Blackland did whenever Daniel asked a good but unexpected question. “I truly wish I didn’t, Daniel. I wish I could stop. But I can’t. I can’t stop eating. It was simple when we just ate what the Tar Pits gave us, and what we could sell and trade for. Such rare, delicious bones. But I wasn’t the first osteomancer to eat a fellow sorcerer. I’m not that much of an innovator. And I made the decision not to be food a long, long time ago. You’re a thief, Daniel. You know if you don’t take, you’re only waiting until someone else does. I never believed the men who rose to power were the smartest, the most capable, the most deserving. They’re simply the ones who made the decision to claim what anyone else could have. If it weren’t me, it would be William Mulholland. Or a man like your father. Or poor old Fenmont Szu. It could be any of them.” He swept his arm across the entire Los Angeles basin. “You thought you’d broken in
to my Ossuary. But here’s a secret: The entire kingdom is my Ossuary. The people have been breathing my air for generations. They’ve living in my exhaust, in my soot. They’ve been walking my pavements, and eating the fruit grown from my soil. My magic is everywhere. My cache of bone is wrapped in their living flesh. They’re all treasures.”

  Daniel let his face fall back into the dirt. He was so tired. And everything hurt so bad. His world tunneled, and if the Hierarch was still speaking, his voice was lost behind the sound of rushing blood in Daniel’s head. He could smell his own adrenaline, the lactic acid in his battered muscles, and the endorphins his brain was sending out to help him cope with pain and stress. He smelled the weak remnants of his own magic. His skin was broken. Blood vessels torn. Bones cracked. He had come open to the world, and his magic was draining away.

  And there was another smell, so faint, as the Hierarch’s footfalls crunched in the earth, coming closer.

  It was the smell of everything, coming from all around him.

  He was smelling all the magic. Maybe this was just the aromatic equivalent of seeing his life flash before his eyes.

  If the kingdom was the Hierarch’s Ossuary, then how much magic could Daniel ingest, up here, on this hill? A particle per billion? Even less?

  The magic surrounded him. All else was recipe.

  He let it soak into his body. He imagined thousands of Jinshin-Mushi beetles streaming up from the earth and burrowing under his skin. He imagined corrosive venom, seeping up from the soil, burning its way into his flesh, burning through his bones, all the way to the marrow. He imagined the thin residue of magic atmosphere growing dense and raining upon him. He was a sponge of magic and pain. He was a cauldron.

  He breathed the Hierarch’s living Ossuary. He breathed the kingdom.

  Beetles digging, fire burning a hole in him like a blowtorch, Daniel gained his feet.

  He chose a spot in the center of the Hierarch’s chest, and he pushed. The Hierarch shrieked like a horse in a burning barn.