The Mortal Bone

by Liu, Marjorie M.

  Zee drew in a ragged, quiet breath. “Safer for you. Safer for us. Sunlight burns our hearts.”

  “I didn’t know the sun would hurt you.”

  “Doesn’t hurt bodies,” he murmured. “Feeds us . . . too much.”

  I remembered my dream. I remembered, and felt too uneasy to ask. So I held him tighter, closer, and stroked his rough, bony back, running my fingers down soft razor spines that could cut through bones like butter if Zee wished.

  “But you saw the sun,” I murmured.

  “Sun,” he whispered, as though the word hurt him. “Many suns we have seen, on many worlds. But this light, sweet.”

  “Good,” I murmured, unsure what else to say. I still felt empty in my heart, like part of it was missing. Lighter, but not in a good way. I touched my chest, fingering the spot that hurt most.

  “Feel it, too,” Zee rasped. “Cut. Missing bits.”

  “Missing you,” I told him. “You’ve been part of me a long time.”

  “Part of you longer. All, you. Every mother, in her blood.” He gave me a mournful look. “Lived on your human body. Lived on your heart. We were one. Now, we are broken. Broken, hearts.”

  “No,” I told him, though my voice was too hoarse to be convincing. “You’re free, not broken.”

  “Free,” he echoed, softly. “Free is dangerous.”

  “I trust you. I’ve always trusted you.”

  Zee snuggled closer. “Dangerous. We destroyed. Left only bones. Worlds of bones. No mercy. No love. Just war.”

  My boys. I still could not imagine it. “You’re different now.”

  “No.” He placed his small, clawed hand over my heart. “Just . . . some things . . . more important.”

  Some things more important.

  Ten thousand years ago—so I was told—the boys had been so terrifying, so monstrous and powerful, the Aetar had committed themselves to the desperate act of binding their five lives to a mortal prison, calculating that it would diminish them, leave them weakened.

  And it had. With unintended side effects.

  I covered Zee’s hand, tenderness and concern warring inside my heart. This moment seemed so peaceful. Normal, even. Me. Boys. Grant.

  But I knew it wouldn’t last.

  It will not. It cannot, whispered a sibilant voice, rising from deep inside my body, speaking with sly, sleepy desire. We lived within their souls for a thousand years. We know them. We know their hunger. Perhaps they are diminished now, but the longer they live apart from your heart, the stronger they will become.

  With strength, will come need.

  With need, there will be death.

  Quiet, I told that presence. You’re not welcome.

  We are one, it replied, though that coiled presence drifted and faded. Never fear, Hunter. We will not leave you.

  I shut my eyes, not comforted in the slightest.

  Zee murmured, “It waits, inside you.”

  “Yes,” I said, reluctant to talk about the dark entity living in my soul: a power, and presence, inherited from the boys. Power they had bargained away their lives, eons ago, to possess . . . and which had consumed their strong hearts, and strong souls . . . and given them everything they needed to fight a war in a place far beyond the edges of the Labyrinth.

  Power that had slept inside my bloodline for ten thousand years. Resting dormant, until me.

  I had fought its possession for a long time. Only recently had we seemed to reach a stalemate—if only because my defiance was almost as strong as its curiosity.

  Zee placed his clawed hand over my heart.

  “Good,” he replied. “Good, you have protection.”

  I was ready to tell him that I didn’t want the kind of protection that dark presence could offer. Before I could open my mouth, he shook his head, ears flattening against his skull.

  “Protection, from us,” he whispered.

  I covered his hand with mine. “Don’t.”

  “Must. Might hurt you.”

  “You won’t.”

  “Our hearts been guided by your heart.” Zee hesitated, and his voice softened. “Don’t know our hearts now. Might be same. Might change. Warn you now, in case.”

  I wrapped my arms around him in a tight, hard hug. “If you begin to change, remember someone loves you. Remember that.”

  Zee shuddered. “Love might change to hate.”

  “Never,” I told him, hoping that was true, feeling vulnerable and lost, and afraid. For the first twenty-one years of my life, I’d had two constants in my life: my mother and the boys.

  Then, just the boys. My rocks. My family. My home. I couldn’t abandon that because of what might be. Not when we had already achieved so much of the impossible.

  Zee’s gaze shifted. I found Grant watching us, alert and intent. I tried to smile for him, but it felt crooked, sad.

  He unclenched his hand from the blanket to touch my lips. Then, with excruciating gentleness, he leaned over and kissed me. I didn’t let him pull away. Grant dislodged Raw as he wrapped himself very carefully around my body, both of us all arms and legs, and heat. I wasn’t wearing much.

  We didn’t talk. We soaked, instead. Listening to heartbeats, and deep breaths, filling up on being close, whole, together. Zee and the boys rested around us, quiet, staring at the stars.

  “Today,” Grant said finally, slowly, “was as close as I ever want to come to dying.”

  “Melodramatic,” I told him, voice muffled against his shoulder. “You could absolutely live without me.”

  “No.” Grant lifted his head, forcing me to look at him—and what I saw in his eyes chilled me to the bone. “No, Maxine.”

  I met his gaze without blinking. I dimly remembered hearing his voice, and a woman, speaking about bonds and life, and death . . . and was more than certain that was not a dream.

  “You’ll live a long time, with or without me,” I told him. “That’s just the way it’s going to be. No matter what happens, you’re going to live.”

  His jaw flexed once. His eyes so hard, so dangerous.

  “Grant,” I whispered.

  “Maxine,” he said, and then softened his voice. “Shut up, and let me love you the way I love you.”

  I blinked, and he reached beneath the blanket to pull out my left hand. He kissed my wedding ring—closed his eyes—and lingered there like he was praying. Maybe he was. Former priests did that sort of thing.

  “Okay,” I said, unsteadily. “But I don’t like your attitude.”

  Grant gave me a crooked smile, and curled even closer around me. “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’ve been given a second chance. I’m not paralyzed, and I’m breathing. You’re here. The boys are here. It’s all good.”

  “It was close. I thought that fever would kill you.”

  “You fixed me.”

  “I fixed some things. Your spine was broken in two places. Your nose and jaw were partially crushed, and you had a fractured skull. Internal bleeding. That fall did more damage than it should have. I’m not entirely sure it was all to blame for your injuries.”

  Grant hesitated. “What happened, Maxine?”

  Before I could answer, Zee stirred. “Tricked. Trapped. Kissed by a rose.”

  Dek and Mal, who I had thought were sleeping, began humming the song of the same title. I rubbed their heads. “All those things. What did you see when the boys were ripped off my body?”

  “It was like . . . watching a star torn apart.” Grant drew in a ragged breath. “You and the boys, when they’re on your skin . . . you mesh. Your light is part of their shadow, and their shadow is part of you. It’s . . . beautiful. But when that thing began melting in your hand . . .”

  He rubbed his eyes, as though in pain. “Who made it, Maxine? Who would want to hurt you?”

  I told him about the message written on the stem of the rose. The more I spoke, the angrier I got. Anger mixed with betrayal—rising inside me, bitter and heavy, until all I wanted to do was lay on destruct
ion with my fists.

  What the fuck? Who does this to their own child? Why?

  My family. My crazy family. Every secret seemed to be wrapped in another layer of secrets, inside another, and another, with no straight answers, ever—only riddles that were deliberately, maddeningly vague. It had been—and always would be—enough to drive me insane. Even though, in hindsight, I understood all the reasons for being so careful with the truth.

  Some truths were too big to tell.

  But this? Ripping the boys off my body? That didn’t have anything to do with the truth. That felt like an act of war. A first strike. Completely, indisputably unfriendly.

  Grant fell silent after I stopped speaking. Zee sighed. Raw and Aaz cracked open their eyes. Dek and Mal stopped singing. All of them torn between watching him and me—but especially me.

  You guys know something, don’t you?

  “Hey,” I said, but Grant thought I was talking to him.

  “I’m thinking” he replied. “I don’t know where to start.”

  I could sympathize. I’d been too sick to think about what had happened—just that it had, and I was dealing with the consequences. But now my head was clear, I wasn’t dying, and all those memories and questions were rocking back on me, hard.

  “My mother mentioned my . . . father . . . in that message on the rose.” I watched the boys from the corner of my eye.

  “The same man we saw in that vision of your mother, when we were trying to close the prison veil . . .” His voice trailed away.

  “Yes,” I said in a tight voice. “Him.”

  “You’re sure he’s your father?”

  I tilted my head to look at Zee. “Well?”

  The little demon pulled the covers over his head.

  Grant frowned. “Okay. Let’s assume, however weird, that it’s true. But the message . . . forgive your father . . . sounds as though he’s the one responsible for this.”

  “Not almost. He must be. He must have told my mother what he was planning. And she agreed to it.”

  I flipped away the blanket and found Zee clutching the teddy bear again. He blinked at me with big eyes.

  “Answers,” I said. “Is the man who crafted the rose my father?”

  “Yes,” he muttered, scowling as Dek and Mal slithered off my shoulders to nibble on his bear.

  Hearing him confirm the truth made me light-headed.

  “Maxine,” Grant said, with concern.

  I shook my head at him. “Until recently, I imagined that my father was a trucker, or maybe a mechanic. My mom liked cars. Or maybe some mystery man she picked up in a bar, just to get the job done. Pregnant in one night, no strings attached.”

  “Romantic.”

  “My sex education consisted of watching dirty movies in hotel rooms. My mother didn’t talk about men except to say that I shouldn’t hold on to them. What was I supposed to think?” I frowned, staring at the armor on my hand. “I would have preferred that he was human and normal.”

  Grant cleared his throat. “Severing the boys almost took your life. Why would he do that? Why now?”

  I poked Zee. “You were there with my mother. What did you see?”

  He turned away from me. “Always sleeping in the Labyrinth. Always skin-bound.”

  “In your dreams, then.”

  “We remember,” he said, voice muffled against the teddy bear. “They fought. We tasted her tears. Saw him craft the rose from his skin but did not know its meaning.”

  “His skin,” Grant said, as I thought the same thing. Was that a metaphor or literal? I had seen enough strange things in my life that I couldn’t be certain.

  “I have to find him,” I said, but Zee started shaking his head before I’d even finished my sentence.

  “Insane,” he told me. “You, brain-dead.”

  “I need to understand why this was done,” I shot back. “This was not random. This was planned. If you know why, and you’re not telling me—”

  “No.” Zee shook his head. “Was shocked. Still shocked.”

  I believed him. But that didn’t make it easier.

  “Zee,” I said, “I don’t know how to react to your being free. I don’t know if I should be happy for you or afraid.”

  He sighed. “Don’t know, either.”

  “Okay,” I said, thinking that was horrible. “Okay, fine. What was done . . . may not have had a good intention behind it. I need to find the person responsible. Him.”

  I couldn’t say my father. It felt too strange.

  “Maxine,” Grant said, in a voice that was too gentle. “You can’t enter the Labyrinth.”

  “I have to.”

  “Cannot,” Zee said firmly. “Not now. Not as are. Will die.”

  “I’m not helpless.”

  The little demon—and Grant—made growling sounds.

  Zee muttered, “We go with you, protect you—this world dies.”

  That got my attention. “What do you mean?”

  He threw up his clawed hands, looking at me like I was an idiot. “Our prison falls, the other follows.”

  Grant stiffened. So did I.

  “What,” I said, “does that mean?”

  Zee drew his claws down his chest, over his heart. Sparks danced. I shivered, imagining that I could feel his touch on my own skin.

  “Ours, first prison,” he murmured. “Power that binds, connected to all the prison walls. We break, all break. Army goes free.”

  “In other words,” Grant said, “apocalypse, again.”

  “Shit,” I said.

  On the other side of the pallet, Raw reached into the shadows and brought out a grenade. Without hesitation, he pulled the pin and stuffed the live bomb down his throat. Grant and I tensed, but all Raw did was belch.

  Aaz growled at him. Raw rolled his eyes, jammed his arm under the pallet, and lugged out a small missile: five feet long, slender. He handed it off to his brother.

  “Er,” Grant said. “Let’s have this conversation elsewhere.”

  “Uh-huh,” I muttered, as Aaz dragged a jar of Grey Pou-pon from the shadows, and smashed it against the missile’s metal exterior. “They’ve had a very stressful day. It might be a nuclear warhead next.”

  “With ketchup?”

  “Tabasco sauce. And chips.”

  “Nice,” Grant said. “That’s . . . wow. Okay. He shouldn’t really be biting that part, should he?”

  “It won’t kill him.”

  “I’m more worried about us.”

  “Watching him is making me hungry,” I said. “You want Raw to bring us pizza?”

  Grant stared at me. “You’re a nutty woman.”

  “I know,” I replied.

  And though the familiar knot of fear and concern was lodged in my heart, all I could think was that I desperately wanted to prolong the moment, to love and cherish it as though it was my last, with all of us together.

  Just in case it was.

  CHAPTER 9

  ACCORDING to Grant, we were somewhere in Northern Africa, on the edge of an oasis. I saw date palms and clumped grass and smelled water. A short distance away, past the outskirts of where we rested, sand dunes rose and fell like the frozen waves of a dark ocean.

  Behind us, I found a structure that looked very much like a Bedouin tent, open in the front and filled with a few small pieces of furniture: a low table that required floor-seating to use, and two more soft pallets that lay on top of woven rugs.

  “The desert reminds the Messenger of her home world,” Grant said. “Zee brought us to her, so that she could help me heal your wounds.”

  I closed my eyes, not entirely comforted. The Messenger had no other name. As a genetically engineered slave of the Aetar and descendent of the Lightbringers, she had all of Grant’s powers—but unlike my husband, she had been trained from birth to use them. To kill.

  She and I did not get along.

  “I’m surprised she didn’t try to murder me instead.”

  He grunted. “Who says she di
dn’t?”

  I smiled. “And the ice and Popsicles?”

  “Her doing, slipping in and out of space. I don’t know where she got it all or who she terrified when she did.”

  “I owe her.”

  “Don’t tell her that,” he replied, watching as I changed into a clean set of clothing. Aaz had gone shopping for me—in Paris, by the look of the tags—returning with sleek designer jeans and an off-the-shoulder black silk blouse with fluttery sleeves.

  Dressing exhausted me. My muscles were weak, and I had trouble standing. Lying down, I’d been fine, but the fever had stolen all my strength. My spine also ached. So did my head and nose. Dread and fear fluttered in my stomach, but I pushed it away.

  I was not paralyzed. I was alive. Everything else could be handled. Even the boys.

  I had to finish dressing while sitting down. Twisting around to get jeans on made me breathless. Grant clasped my ankle and helped me put on my boots. “Easy, there.”

  “You take it easy,” I muttered. “You look like hell, man.”

  “I feel like hell.”

  “You didn’t draw on our bond when you healed me.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “Are you now?”

  His mouth tightened. “Some.”

  “Screw that,” I replied. “Take what you need.”

  “I am.”

  “I don’t mean a sip.” I grabbed his hand, and squeezed. “I can’t lose you, Grant. I need you healthy.”

  I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so hoarse when I spoke, but it came out squeaky and breathless. I wasn’t embarrassed because it was Grant, but it did make me worried for myself. Losing the boys didn’t mean I could afford to lose my nerve. I had to be stronger than I ever had been before. Anything less might get me killed. And if I died, leaving Grant behind . . .

  I didn’t want to think about that. It made me angry at him—furious—but when I thought about losing Grant, I wasn’t sure I could say that I felt so different than he did. Spending the rest of my life without him . . . filled me with quiet, aching horror. Much like what I felt when I contemplated the next few days—or decades—of my life without Zee and the boys.

  “Grant,” I said, because he was too quiet, watching me with eyes that never saw less than my entire soul.