The Mortal Bone

by Liu, Marjorie M.

  “What?” I said to them, with unease. “What is this?”

  A shudder raced over Zee. Raw spat on the ground. Aaz reached into the shadows, pulled free a teddy bear, and hugged it so tight the seams split and stuffing spilled. Dek and Mal began strangling me with their tails. I had to reach up, and hook my fingers between their bodies and my throat.

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s not good. I get that.”

  “Not good,” murmured Zee. “Should not still exist.”

  I saw movement at the bottom of the hill. Grant, making his way, slowly, toward us. A thin black strap crossed his chest: his flute case, slung around him. Each step was careful, controlled, much of his weight on the cane. This hill was hell on his knee. He looked up, caught my gaze. I stared back, unease deepening in my stomach.

  “Zee,” I said. “No riddles.”

  “Riddles are safe,” he whispered, edging closer to the skull. Raw and Aaz joined him, eyes glittering, slinking on their bellies with hot, fluid grace. Dek remained wrapped around my throat, but Mal slithered down between my breasts, and coiled in my lap—quivering, ready to strike.

  I pushed him aside, trying to stand. Forcing myself to breathe. Unclenching my right hand. Golden light was fading from the sky. Shadows, lengthening. Night would be here in the blink of an eye, and the unease in my gut was growing.

  I wanted to put that skull away. Bury it inside a mountain. I had a bad feeling about all this. My simple case of the creeps was becoming a wail inside my head.

  A wail accompanied by a pulse, deep in my soul: an infinite darkness, a presence not my own stirring, waking, cracking open one vast, hungry eye.

  Ah, it sighed. Ah, Hunter.

  Go back to sleep, I told it, with a firm mental shove—and snapped my fingers, trying not to wince when my voice cracked. “Answers.”

  “Those eyes,” Zee whispered, edging sideways, never once looking away from the crystal skull. “Those eyes are the lock. The mind is key. We remember. We remember the dawn, our last dawn, burning in light. We screamed. We screamed, but none heard. Drowned, our voices. Drowned, in knots and pieces.”

  I stepped toward him, but Aaz leapt close, blocking me—putting his back against my legs. Like Zee, he did not look away from the skull. When I reached down to touch his head, he shivered. So did I.

  “Zee,” I said. “Tell me what it is.”

  “Lock and key,” he murmured again, and tore his gaze from the skull to look at me. “One of thirteen. Thirteen hammered vessels. Thirteen minds. Thirteen, to bind.”

  “Bind.” I tried again to step forward, but Aaz continued to hold me still. Raw grabbed my hand and rubbed his cheek against it. Mal coiled around my ankle, and a keening sound rose from his mouth. Dek buried his sleek head against my throat and made the same high, mournful cry.

  “Bound,” rasped Zee, looking at me. “To our first old mother, bound. To her flesh, bound.”

  I stared, taking in those words, knowing what they meant—but too stunned, bewildered, to accept the truth.

  Grant had almost reached us. Limping faster, his jaw tight. Warning in his eyes. He looked at me, but also the crystal skull—and my right hand tingled, the organic metal embedded in my skin shimmering with heat.

  I pressed my hand to my stomach, heart pounding—but not because of the armor.

  “Zee,” I croaked. “You’re talking about my ancestor. The first woman you and the boys were imprisoned on.”

  He drew in a deep breath and closed his eyes. “She screamed, too.”

  I swayed. Grant took his final steps up the hill, and stopped—leaning on his cane, breathing hard. A fine sheen of sweat covered his brow, and a narrow line running down the front of his T-shirt was dark, soaked. I saw the faint bulge of his mother’s amulet beneath the white cotton. He had not been wearing it earlier. That he had it on now meant only one thing.

  We were going somewhere.

  He gave me a hard stare. “You’re all hurting. What happened?”

  Zee looked away. All the boys did.

  So did I, after a moment. I stared at the crystal skull, at its large eye sockets and sharp teeth, and wondered what the hell it was doing with me now. Why, after ten thousand years, had it surfaced in Texas, in a red bowling bag, delivered by a terrified demon in a pickup truck?

  Who was the voice in the dream?

  I needed to talk with that demon.

  “Long story,” I said to Grant. “You don’t look happy, either.”

  He limped closer, worry in his eyes. “Just got a call from Rex. He found something during the cleanup of those burned apartments at the shelter. He’s calling it a message in a bottle.”

  I gave him a sharp look. So did Zee, and the rest of the boys.

  “Message?” I said. “What does that mean?”

  Grant’s voice dropped, so grim. “He thinks it came through the Labyrinth. A note, of sorts. For you.”

  I didn’t move because I knew him too well—and even though what he had just told me was bad enough, there was something else, in his eyes.

  “And?” I said to him, carefully.

  Grant drew in a sharp breath. “It’s from your mother.”

  CHAPTER 4

  MY mother had been dead for over six years. That was a fact. I was sitting at the kitchen table in the old farmhouse when a demonically possessed man shot her in the head with a shotgun. It was on my birthday. She had made me cake.

  I still blamed myself. I couldn’t help it. She had died because Zee and the boys abandoned her for me. That was the way it happened, for every woman in my bloodline. One day, when I had a daughter of my own, when she was old enough . . . the boys would leave me for her. No warning. No apologies.

  And then, I would be murdered. Just like that. Something would be waiting. Something was always waiting.

  On the day I became pregnant, the clock would start ticking. I might have sixteen years, or twenty . . . but not much more than that. I was almost certain I would not live to see fifty. Which was something Grant and I didn’t talk much about. He was convinced I’d die old, of natural causes.

  If he wanted to believe that, I wouldn’t stop him. For him, for any child we had, I would fight. I would fight to my last breath to stay alive and be with them.

  My mother, however, was dead and buried. Dead, now. In the present.

  But not in the past.

  And the Labyrinth was slippery when it came to matters of time.

  WE could have taken a plane, like normal people, but the airport was two hours away, and the flight we needed left in an hour. If we had been normal, we would have waited until the following morning—to sit in a metal box at thirty thousand feet, contending with airsickness, pressure sickness, and the uncomfortable suspicion that I might be claustrophobic.

  We were not, however, normal people.

  Byron was waiting for us on the porch when Grant and I walked down off the hill. He did not comment on my missing tattoos. He never had though his gaze skimmed my pale arms and lingered on the two serpentine demons coiled over my shoulders. Dek and Mal gave him toothy grins, and started humming Heart’s “The Road Home.”

  Byron cleared his throat, and in a voice that was only slightly strained, said, “Grant told me we’re going back.”

  “I thought you’d stay here,” Grant told him, with the same reluctance and conflict I was feeling. We had talked about what to do in moments like this and never come up with a good answer. “I’ll ask Killy—”

  “No.” Byron shook his head, and gave us a hard, grim stare. “No.”

  “Okay,” I said, struggling not to argue with him. I could just leave without the boy, but he would never forgive me for abandoning him. It wasn’t some teen-thing, wanting to be in on the action. I wished it were that simple.

  He had been abused, so deeply, for so long, that he felt safer, and more normal, with us—in the middle of all our craziness—than he did on his own. Like the monsters, the demons, were safer than humans.

  Grant
and I shared a brief look—and then I suffered a soft pang as Byron reached behind him on the porch chair and handed me my leather jacket—which was really my mother’s. Like armor, inherited after her death. In his other hand were my knives: a shoulder rig, modified to sheathe a dozen razor-sharp blades, meant to be handled by someone whose skin could not be cut. Good weapons for daylight hours.

  I dressed—all of us quiet, tense. Behind the boy, Raw and Aaz lingered in the farmhouse doorway, watching with big eyes. Somewhere, they had found baseball hats and were wearing them backward over their heads. Spikes poked through the cotton. Little punks. I tried to ignore them as they poured motor oil down their throats. The plastic containers followed, crunched and swallowed in seconds.

  When Raw reached into the shadows and pulled out an ax and a squeeze bottle of chocolate syrup, I had to look away. Watching him nibble nervously on a candy-coated blade was making me nervous.

  Zee stood beside them, staring at the bowling bag in Grant’s hand. Then he looked at me. Red eyes blinked once, filled with old, hard memories. Not for the first time, I wished I knew what went on in his head. Just a glimpse of the fire that made him burn.

  My boys. My heart, wrapped around theirs. Once, I would have said that I knew where I began and ended, but not anymore. Grant, even Byron, others who were not here—all of them, holding my heart, giving it a home after years without one.

  Home, I thought, flexing my right hand, with its quicksilver shimmer of armor buried in my forearm like a ragged cuff. I wondered how much of my body I would lose this time.

  “Hold on,” I said, grabbing the front of Byron’s shirt. Grant stepped close, and I wrapped my other hand around his waist, meeting his solemn gaze. The bowling bag bumped my leg. Dek and Mal purred thunder in my ears. Zee, Raw, and Aaz hugged us, releasing their hot breath in three long sighs. I smelled chocolate and burning metal.

  I rolled my right hand into a fist, and the armor tingled.

  A moment later, we slipped sideways from the porch and Texas dusk—into the void between.

  Between space. Between the cracks of reality. Between, in a place of infinite crushing emptiness. My soul stretched to the breaking point, stretching to accommodate that terrible void, flying apart until all I was, all I would ever be, was one lost, endless scream.

  When we stepped free, I was still screaming—inside my head. I tasted blood. I had bitten my tongue.

  Seattle was two hours behind Texas, which meant the sun hadn’t yet set. The moment we left the void—even before my foot touched the hardwood floor of the warehouse apartment—the boys surrounded me, settled, flexed upon my skin. Five heartbeats, thundering. Five bodies, embracing mine. Pale flesh gone, covered entirely in tattoos: sinuous, tangled bodies etched in shadow, glimmering with veins of throbbing silver. Scales, claws, teeth, tangled black tongues: covering every inch, except for my face.

  Mortal at night. Immortal by day. Until sunset, nothing could kill me.

  Being scared to death was another matter entirely.

  Free of the void, Byron fell on his knees—gasping. Grant leaned on his cane, jaw tight, breathing hard through his nose. I pressed a deep kiss to his chest and rested my forehead there. When I looked down, I saw the bowling bag on the floor, flipped on its side.

  “Wasn’t this bad last time,” he murmured.

  “It’s been a while. Maybe you’re not used to it.” I hoped that was the truth. I hated slipping space. It felt no less horrific to me now than it ever did.

  Grant turned over my right hand. Black nails, hard enough to cut steel, glimmered like an oil stain. Even the armor had changed its appearance—cut with knots that resembled roses. Red eyes stared from my palms: Dek and Mal, sleeping on each hand.

  A new thread of armor crisscrossed my palm, joining an entire web that traveled from the base of my fingers to the underside of my wrist. Couple more jumps, and my entire hand might be made of organic metal.

  “Some price,” Grant murmured, and kissed my hand. I closed my eyes, then forced a faint smile.

  “I hate planes,” I told him, crouching to check on Byron. “Security lines. Body scanners. Smelly air filled with icky human germs.”

  His mouth twitched. “What a diva.”

  “That’s right.” I pushed Byron’s hair out of his face, very gently. “I am a totally bodacious bad girl.”

  Grant smiled and bent over his cane to look at the boy. “You okay?”

  “Sick to my stomach,” he muttered, and took another deep breath. “But fine.”

  I glanced around. The loft was just as we’d left it. Rare late-afternoon light streamed through massive windows, making the floors glow. Long shelves crammed with books lined the exposed brick walls, and the old grand piano had a light layer of dust on it. Grant’s red motorcycle, which he had ridden before the injury to his knee, still stood in the corner. His worktable, covered in handmade flutes, had not been touched.

  My grandfather’s body had been murdered in this room, but I no longer smelled his blood—and the stain was gone from the floor. That relieved me more than I cared to admit.

  I walked to the kitchen, ran some cool water over a rag, and brought it back to Byron—who looked about two seconds from vomiting. I pressed the rag to his brow and held it there. He touched my hand, and all the boys tugged toward him, rippling warm.

  “Stay here,” I said, quietly. “Relax. When you feel better, go down and say hi to the volunteers. We’ll be close.”

  He raised his head and gave me haunted eyes. “We didn’t come back here, like this, because you’ll be staying close.”

  I stared. Grant reached down and rested a gentle hand on his shoulder. The teen tensed—and then, after a long moment, nodded and looked away.

  I wondered if I’d ever made my mother feel this shitty.

  Grant and I left the loft. I carried the bowling bag. Clouds scudded across the blue sky, covering the sun. A cool, salt-scented breeze washed over me, and somewhere distant, I heard the horns of the shipping yards. We were in the warehouse district, south of Seattle’s downtown. Concrete everywhere. Skyscrapers crowding the horizon. The only color surrounding us was gray, in all its limited variations.

  I missed Texas. Quiet and safe, where I could pretend to be a mother to a teenage boy. Where I could be a new wife in an old house and imagine that I was a normal woman with a normal life, who did not have five of the most lethal creatures in the world living as tattoos on her skin.

  When I touched Grant’s hand, he tangled those long, lean fingers around mine and pulled me close.

  “Byron will be okay,” he said quietly.

  “Promise?” I said, knowing it sounded childish and not caring.

  He was silent a moment. “I almost . . . calmed him. If I’d said a single word, I would have.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time,” I reminded him. “If you’ll recall, you’ve done a lot more than just ‘calm’ people at this shelter.”

  For years, he had conducted morning sermons and impromptu flute concerts, using those opportunities to cure attendees of addictions or abusive behavior, or to transform despair into hope. But it was without their knowledge and against their will.

  Therapy or control. Such a fine line. Grant called it playing God—and for a former priest, like him, that was a moral quandary difficult to reconcile.

  He grimaced. “This time it felt different. I’m not sure I would have just calmed Byron down. I didn’t even stop to think about whether it was necessary. The power was there. I barely stopped myself in time.”

  “You make it sound as though you would have hurt him.”

  “Maybe. I know my potential now, Maxine. I could be like the Aetar.” Grant gave me a concerned look. “I didn’t feel in control.”

  “But you did stop.”

  His jaw tightened. “I didn’t want to.”

  I held his hand, tight. I would never know what it felt like to manipulate the living energy of another person, but it was a power that made him,
quite possibly, the most dangerous individual in the world—besides me.

  He was also, likely, the last of his kind. Last of the Lightbringers, the most hated enemies of the Aetar—who had destroyed them all in a long war that amounted to little more than genocide, and the enslavement of an entire race. The human race, to be exact, which the Aetar had commandeered as their playthings.

  If the Aetar learned Grant existed, nothing would stop them from trying to capture him. It was only a matter of time. They had already sent one investigator—a genetically enhanced slave, descendent of a Lightbringer. We had managed to turn her to our side. I didn’t think we’d be so lucky a second time.

  But this . . . Grant’s struggle with his power . . .

  “I trust you,” I said. “You know that.”

  “You’re the only person in this world I can’t affect with my voice.”

  “That’s not why I trust you, and you know it.”

  Grant shook his head. “Now, when I speak, every sound I make . . . there’s more waiting. More power. More . . . potential. It feels as though I’m plugging the Hoover Dam with my finger.”

  “It’s not the same finger you use to touch my—”

  “Maxine.”

  “I’m just saying, it’s a magical finger. I’m not surprised it can—”

  Grant bent and kissed me hard and sloppy on the corner of my mouth. I held up my hands in surrender.

  “Listen. Don’t be like me, all gloom and doom, and full of self-doubt. You feel like you’re on the verge of losing control and doing something awful? Been there, done that.” I stood on my toes, gripping the front of his shirt and staring hard into his eyes. “Accidents will happen. Accept that now. You are going to screw up.”

  “You always make me feel so much better.”

  I kissed his chin. “You are my best friend. Nothing you do will change that, ever. Whatever you’re dealing with now? Don’t be afraid of it.” I placed my hand over the amulet hanging beneath his T-shirt. “You’re not alone.”