Grant and I stared at him, and his aura shrank and shriveled as though his demonic soul was sucking in its breath, and holding it.
“You’re that afraid?” I said.
Rex pointed at me. “You were the prison of the Reaper Kings, and that gave you power. Now that your bond is broken, you still have power, inside you. Others who don’t know you might not be able to taste it, but I can. You’re the Vessel of whatever godforsaken entity those Reaper Kings summoned, eons ago. But that means nothing because you won’t use that power. You’re afraid of it. Which makes you no better than any other human. Food, like the rest of us. All you can hope for is the mercy of a clean death.”
The demon possessing the caged woman had spoken almost the same words. True or not, I was getting tired of hearing that doomsday crap. I grabbed his finger, but didn’t jam it backward. Just steered his hand away from me.
“I don’t want mercy,” I said to him. “I don’t want a clean death. When I die, it’ll be fighting . . . right to the bitter end.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“She doesn’t give up,” Grant told him. “That doesn’t make her an idiot.”
“Then what does that make you?” Rex closed his eyes, sweating. “You, Lightbringer. Blood Mama didn’t want to possess you, all those years ago, just to control humans. She wanted you because she thought you’d be a weapon against the Demon lords.”
“Zee and the boys are beyond my power. What makes you think I’d be effective against any of the others?”
“Don’t play dumb. Even if you don’t know exactly what you’re capable of doing, you know damn well that you have power. You’re a member of a race that could have destroyed the Aetar . . . and the Aetar nearly destroyed us. That’s not something you waste here, on a bunch of drug addicts and assholes like me.” Rex leaned in, aura flaring, matching the wildness in his eyes. “You do something that matters even if you don’t have the stomach for it. You fight.”
Tension leapt across our bond. I slid my hand around Grant’s arm and felt the strain in his muscles—which I shared, in my gut, when he glanced down and I saw his eyes.
“You fucking deserve each other,” Rex whispered. “Both of you, unafraid of anyone but yourselves. You have power. You have the means. But you won’t take it because you think it’ll change you. Of course it will change you. But is that worse than dying?”
“I don’t know,” I said, speaking not to Rex, but to Grant—and I could see the same torn conflict in his eyes. We both knew it wasn’t a matter of change but of transformation. Losing ourselves. Maybe losing each other. Possibly becoming the very thing we were trying to fight. We’d had a taste of all that tremendous power . . . and it was not sweet.
Dek tilted his head, looking behind us. I tore my gaze from Grant and found Zee, Raw, and Aaz moving slowly from the stairwell to the roof. It was strange, seeing them in the light. Unreal, even. I had to force myself to breathe because looking at them when they should have been part of me made my chest constrict with longing and loneliness. My skin ached. I felt cold.
The sky brightened, just then: clouds thinning, burning silver. Seattle light, diffuse and shy. Moments later, though, the actual sun broke through and flooded the roof, hitting us all.
Zee and the boys hissed, their eyes glinting red. At first, I thought it was with pain, but their spines arched, and so did their backs, and their ears perked in pleasure. All of them, stretching, twisting, like stroked cats. I heard popping sounds, cracks—bone, muscle. Aaz threw back his head, closing his eyes as he rolled his shoulders in the light.
“Sun fed,” Zee whispered, as Dek and Mal writhed and twisted over Grant’s and my shoulders, exposing their sleek, silver-veined stomachs. I winced as small claws scratched my neck, leaving a trail of fire. It was an accident, but still surprising—the boys had never scratched me, not once, ever.
Something warm and wet trickled down my skin. Blood.
Dek stilled, and his purr died. A slow tremor rolled through him, followed by another sound that chilled me to the bone. I couldn’t believe it, at first.
“Maxine,” Grant said, staring at him. “Maxine, don’t move.”
I had already frozen. That low rumble rolling from Dek’s throat . . . was hunger.
Zee edged forward, hissing at the little demon. Mal did the same, half-sliding off Grant’s shoulders, his scales undulating in the silver sunlight. Dek, however, continued vibrating, and my blood kept flowing, and I felt his tongue rasp across my skin—drinking me in.
The sensation was so strange. It went deeper than physical, as though something drained from me, into him—a momentary spark, there and gone, too fast to be certain it was even real. It didn’t scare me, exactly. I trusted Dek.
But it didn’t feel right, either.
I never saw Zee move. One moment he was on the ground, and in the next his fist punched Dek off my shoulders, slamming him into Raw’s arms. I swayed, light-headed, and deep inside me—very deep—that dark entity stirred, its sly voice flowing soft through my soul.
Nothing is sacred, it whispered. What is holy will pass into darkness, and be lost. Gods live and die in memory.
So does the heart.
Grant caught me. I stared at Dek, who coiled into a ball within Raw’s arms, hiding his face and making quiet, desperate clicking sounds. All the boys stared at him—and then me, with startled, stunned expressions. I started to ask them what was wrong, besides the obvious, but my neck throbbed and I was suddenly too sick and sweaty with nausea to even think about opening my mouth.
“I told you,” Rex said, his voice low and hard with unease. “Nothing is sweeter than power.”
I didn’t know what power had to do with my blood. I heard a low, vibrating hum—Grant’s voice—and that cut began itching like hell. The pain eased, though. When I touched the cut, I found only smooth skin.
Grant sighed against my ear, his fingers loosening around my arms. “I hate this.”
“I know,” I murmured to him, then pulled away to kneel before Dek, who shuddered and mewled.
Zee gave him a hard look—far angrier than I would have expected, given that the others had been ripping people apart with their teeth and claws less than an hour before.
“It’s okay,” I said, though Zee grunted in disagreement, and a flare of irritation filled my bond with Grant.
I ignored them both and brushed Dek’s neck with my fingertips. I hummed a little Bon Jovi for him: “Born to Be My Baby.”
“Come on, baby,” I crooned, taking him from Raw. “Come on, sweetie.”
Dek was knotted up so tight, I wasn’t sure he’d ever come undone. I couldn’t see his face, but he shivered when I cradled him in my arms, stroking his sleek, muscled skin.
“Sun cut,” Zee whispered, and then: “Maxine.”
I didn’t look away from Dek. “Yes?”
Down below, at the bottom of the stairs, I heard the apartment door open and a muffled voice.
“Mr. Cooperon? It’s Detective—”
I didn’t hear the rest. Grant’s low curse drowned out the man’s voice. That, and Zee had slid his arm around my shoulders, pulling me close. He laid one claw upon my armor, and all the boys—in a heartbeat—curled around us. Mal landed hard in my lap, licking Dek.
Outrage flickered over Grant’s face. “No, you don’t.”
“Must,” Zee said.
“Wait,” I argued. “Zee—”
Grant reached for us. “Take me with you.”
“You are a warrior,” Zee rasped to him, “and consort of the Queen. But you are no King.”
And with that, we slipped into the void.
CHAPTER 16
IT was night on the other side of the world, in a desert filled with tumbled ruins broken in the sand and cracked rows of delicate columns that rose like pale fingers toward the stars. I stared, drinking in the stillness of the place and the endlessness of its stone remains, tumbled and fallen. It reminded me of a mass grave. I tried to imagine
the city that had been here but could not. All I knew was that this was a burial ground for something that had been beautiful and that time had torn it down.
Even stars die, whispered the darkness inside me. We have tasted their last fire and burrowed through the veins of their fading hearts. Accept us, and we will do so again. We will hunt the stars for light, and you will be our Vessel.
Zee shivered and backed away from me. All the boys did, even Dek, unwinding with a hiss and slithering into the sand. My neck tingled. I touched where he had scratched me, but the skin was still smooth. I dropped the blanket, and the cool night air wrapped around my naked upper body.
“You should have warned me,” I said to Zee. “Why did you bring me with you?”
“Safer,” he rasped, as Raw and Aaz prowled, stone breaking beneath their claws. “For all of us.”
I thought about what Rex had told me and picked up the blanket again, throwing it around my shoulders. “And Grant? You should have let him come.”
Zee’s broad chest rose and fell. “No place for him. Not yet.”
I heard strain in his voice and something else that made me uneasy: resignation, perhaps even guilt. A terrible sinking sensation hit my gut.
I straightened, staring at him. “Why are we here, Zee?”
He did not answer. Aaz nudged me. I hadn’t felt him draw near. He pushed something soft into my hands: a long-sleeved crew-neck shirt, navy or black in color. I took it gratefully, pulling it over my head.
When I looked for Zee again, he was gone.
I found him a short distance away, bounding over the ruins like a slick shadow. Raw and Aaz joined him, also taking graceful, bounding leaps—skidding, almost dancing, with light, clawed steps over the uneven terrain. My wolves, in the night.
I felt light-headed watching them, a sense of déjà vu. I had never been here, but I felt as though I remembered this, somehow: some vision of them racing through a desert night, in the middle of a fallen city—faster, harder, with deeper purpose.
Dek hugged my ankle, and I scooped him up. I did the same with Mal, placing them on my shoulders as I followed the others across the ruins. I had to take a roundabout path, trailing my hands over fallen columns and carved rubble. I had seen similar ruins in books—these were Corinthian, perhaps.
A heavy hush surrounded us. I could have floated in that silence.
I found Zee and the others prowling around a towerlike structure that had four walls, a solid base, and a standing row of pillars in front of it. The stone was pale in the starlight, with no windows, and enough gaps and breaks in the fitted blocks to make the surface look pockmarked.
“Where are we?” I asked him.
“Old city. Been a city, always. Remember it, when.” Zee paced in front of the structure, his claws dragging through the sand. Raw and Aaz gave him uneasy looks that he ignored, glancing back at me, his red eyes glinting. “Trust us, Maxine? Trust us, with you?”
“Yes,” I said.
Zee looked away, and a growl rumbled from his chest, rolling through the night like thunder. Without warning, he reared back and slammed his fist into the ancient stone wall.
It sounded like an explosion. I stumbled back, stunned, as he tore through the rock. A priceless artifact, thousands of years old, standing against time. I almost screamed at him to stop.
Instead, I swallowed my voice, watching him tear and mangle those carved stone blocks, yanking, clawing through them and burrowing through that immense foundation into the ground itself, moving down, down, digging deep below the structure. Dust kicked up, making my eyes sting, my nostrils burn. I covered my mouth, coughing, watching him disappear into the hole while Raw and Aaz crowded close. Even Dek and Mal leaned off my shoulders, trembling.
Finally, silence. A long minute passed.
Then, a scraping sound—so heavy, immense, the ground vibrated—as though part of a mountain was shifting beneath our feet. I moved closer to the hole, feeling more of those vibrations, listening to a tremendous cracking sound—like the bones of a giant were breaking. Closer, louder. Until it was no longer the ground shuddering, but my eardrums.
Zee finally crawled free. Slow, careful, dragging something behind him. I couldn’t see much, but it was massive. The hole was not big enough to let it out, and Raw and Aaz broke away dirt, rock, widening the way. Zee tugged again, and the other boys joined him, digging their claws down into—stone, I realized—pulling hard.
Dek and Mal coiled tense on my shoulders as the object was pulled free from the hole. I found myself staring at a stone block: approximately eleven feet long, five feet wide, almost as tall as me. Smooth surface, but unpolished, as though it had been taken whole from the earth and fashioned in the rough shape of a massive rectangle. No engravings, no markings of any kind.
I searched for seams but found none. It either had no lid or was sealed so tight nothing was visible.
Zee beckoned me closer. I looked where he pointed.
I had been wrong about there being no engravings. I found one, carved into the top of the stone block. It was small, less than the size of my palm.
It looked exactly like the scar on my jaw, just below my ear.
A jagged line, twisting and daggered. Given to me by a creature that was not a demon or anything that could be named—except that he was another kind of hunter, devoted to one of my ancestors, who had shown him trust and friendship when no other would have.
He had become an odd ally and friend—though I still hadn’t forgiven him for scarring my face. Marking me with a symbol that I’d seen tattooed on a priest and set inside my grandfather’s arm.
A symbol that meant death and rebirth. A symbol that meant either the end of everything—or the beginning of tremendous possibility.
All of which was inside me.
All of which had once been inside the boys.
A chill hit me. Raw and Aaz crept close, all the spikes along their spines flexing with tension. Zee watched my face.
“Why did you ask if I trust you?” I said to him.
He did not answer. A single look passed between him, Raw, and Aaz. Dek and Mal began humming “Ain’t No Grave,” a Johnny Cash song I’d been listening to a day or a lifetime ago. Back in Texas, on a porch with a ginger ale in my hand. Another world from here.
“Ain’t no grave can hold my body down,” I recited in my head, and stepped back as Zee and the boys jammed their claws into solid stone and started tearing it apart as though it was little more than a butter block, already soft from the sun. It sounded like silk tearing.
Dek and Mal dropped off my shoulders, winding close with sparks of fire trailing from their nostrils. They attacked the stone with the same ferocious grace as their brothers, chewing it with their teeth.
Less than a minute later they broke the surface—and I realized that that massive, seamless block of stone was hollow as an egg.
I forced myself to breathe as Dek shot inside, Mal behind him. Zee snarled, ripping out another block of stone, and tossing it aside. Raw and Aaz redoubled their efforts, lips pulled back over their sharp teeth, red eyes narrow and glinting. Faster, harder, claws ripping into that rock with a brutality and desperation that made me profoundly uneasy.
I didn’t feel any better when I saw what it held.
“Those are bones,” I said, listening to myself speak as if from a distance, feeling distant, numb—because it wasn’t just bones I was looking at, but scraps of clothing and desiccated flesh attached to bones, and what I should have said was, those are bodies, but my mouth wouldn’t form that word—that raw, painful, word. Bones was easier. Bones were cold and dry, and remote. Bones weren’t bodies stuffed inside a hollow stone and buried beneath the desert. Bones weren’t bodies that had died in positions of agony, hands still reaching, clawing at the walls of an impossible coffin.
Zee made an odd sound, almost a gasp, and dragged his claws over his eyes. Raw and Aaz leaned on each other, shoulders slumped. I heard a mournful humming from inside the ston
e slab, deep amongst those remains. It made my heart sink.
I stared at the boys. “What is this?”
Zee let out a slow breath and jammed his claws into his chest as though he were trying to dig out his heart. Again and again he stabbed himself, as if the pain would bring him relief from whatever he was suffering.
And he was suffering. I could see it in his eyes.
“No matter now,” he finally rasped. “No matter.”
Raw and Aaz closed their eyes. I said, “It fucking matters to you.”
Zee snarled at me, and I flinched. He didn’t seem to notice, instead spinning away from me and facing that jumble of dried flesh and bones, tangled together inside the stone block, which had been ripped open until it resembled little more than a cradle. Dek and Mal moved slowly through those remains, caressing them with their bodies.
Zee crouched, and touched one of the dead—a hollow, shrunken face covered in dark dry skin, and bits of black hair. I could not see enough to tell if it was human, though it didn’t matter. He was so careful, even reverent. Made me hold my breath, watching him.
“Aetar wanted to punish us,” he whispered. “Buried our hearts alive.”
An ache spread through my chest, into my gut. “Who are the dead?”
“Our hearts,” he echoed again, and looked at Raw and Aaz. “Made us watch them die.”
Some of those bodies shifted, stiff and crumbling in the night air. Dek and Mal appeared, pushing them aside, with gentleness and soft melodies strumming from their throats. Zee’s shoulders rose and fell, and he leaned forward to reach beneath those remains.
He pulled out a crystal skull.
I stared, startled. The skull was larger than the one the possessed woman had given me, and the face was different. No sharp teeth. A jutting jaw. Only one socket, in the center of the head. Like a Cyclops.
“Um,” I said, watching as Raw stepped forward to take the skull from Zee, who reached in again—deeper, this time—and pulled another crystal skull from beneath the dead. This one was partially wrapped in a threadbare cloth that crumbled when Zee touched it, falling away and revealing a crystalline carving that resembled a horse’s skull—except for the long, spiral horn embedded in the brow.
The Mortal Bone Page 13