I wasn’t sure I wanted to test their loyalty when it came to this bond. I didn’t need my heart broken one more time.
“Hey.” I patted their heads. “Get lost for a bit, okay?”
As if that wasn’t suspicious. Mal swung his head sideways, staring into my eyes. His little heart pulsed inside mine with misgivings.
He did not trust me. He knew why we were here.
I held his gaze, unflinching. “Mal. I won’t pretend to know what you’ve experienced. But you’ve been in my heart. You’ve lived there. You know my faith in you. My trust. And maybe I did take it for granted, but I still trust you. So please . . . show me the same respect.”
Just a little. Just enough.
Mal did not look away. A low growl rumbled through his chest, and his ears pressed flat against his skull, one little tooth bared. In his heart, conflict, shimmering into doubt, into pain, and that old, lingering remorse. Dek was carefully still, his emotions muted. I wondered, suddenly, if the boys were bonded to each other, if they could sense each other’s feelings. I’d suspected they had some sort of psychic link but never considered until now what that might be like.
Finally, though, Mal relaxed . . . and slid through my hair . . . into nothing. Gone, in moments. Dek sighed and nuzzled my neck. Then he followed his brother between.
I let out my breath. All of us did, except the Messenger—who cocked her brow at me.
“Surely,” she said, “you do not expect the Reaper Kings to let you break this bond.”
“I won’t know until we try,” I replied, and held out my arms. “Do your worst.”
“Er, don’t,” Grant murmured, giving the Messenger a hard look. Jack winced, rubbing his newly attached leg. He was very broad in this new body, husky, with muscle and fat. I was accustomed to my grandfather being lean as a dancer, with large, elegant hands. His hands were still large, but rough and coarse, with scars on his knuckles.
“How?” Jack asked me, his voice little more than a rasp. “How did it happen?”
“They tasted some of my blood. I . . . gave myself over.”
Jack exhaled slowly. “My dear girl.”
“Don’t. Just . . . focus on now.”
I thought he would argue, but instead his eyes closed, and a strained grimace passed over his face.
“Lad,” he said to Grant. “You know how deep this goes.”
“Deep enough that I wasn’t comfortable touching it without advice.” My husband’s gaze passed from Jack to the Messenger. “You and I . . . if we work together . . .”
The Messenger studied me with cold, detached thoughtfulness. “It is not a normal bond. Five souls, in hers . . . making themselves part of her soul. She is outnumbered. They are stronger than she, together. I see this in the threads that are knotted between them.”
“It’s strong.”
“Stronger than anything I have ever seen.”
“It is the bond of a demon lord,” Jack murmured. “Only once could we break that, and we had no need to be careful. We hacked it apart with all the strength of our wills, and it was like chopping at the trunk of a thousand-year-old tree with nothing but a dozen small axes. Ugly, brutal.”
I didn’t want to imagine. I didn’t want to think about what it would feel like to have those five hearts hacked from my soul. Again. “So, that’s it? You won’t even try?”
Jack tugged on his beard. The Messenger looked me dead in the eyes. “You do not want us to, Hunter. Not even your bondmate can aid you.”
“There has to be something we can do,” Grant protested.
“You are only a Lightbringer, and wild-born. Powerful, yes, but not a god.” She looked at me. “There is no path to freedom, Hunter, unless the Reaper Kings release you. That would be safe . . . though it is unlikely to happen. You are a slave now. Make peace with it.”
She suddenly seemed bored and gave Jack a look of cold deference. “Maker. Praise be your light. I will go and fetch refreshment for your new body.”
“Ah,” said Jack, uneasily. “Er . . . thank you, my dear.”
The taller woman’s gaze darkened, a faint scowl tugging on her thin lips. We watched her vanish into thin air.
“Awkward,” Grant said with a careful glance in my direction.
Jack grunted, scratching his beard. “I need to shave.”
I rolled my eyes. “Well, don’t let me stop you.”
“My dear—”
“No,” I snapped, and there was too much of a snarl in my voice for comfort, too much of that simmering anger inside the boys, moving through me. I could resist those emotions, with effort. Right then, I didn’t want to make the effort. “That’s it?”
Jack seemed taken aback. “No. But I need time to think. None of this should ever have happened. Not their release. Certainly not this . . . new bond.” My grandfather nearly choked on those last words. “How did they get loose?”
I stared at him. I’d come here under the assumption that there would be a fix, an answer. Some kind of reassurance.
Being told I was screwed was not comforting. At all. And the idea of telling that story, reliving it, made it even worse.
I pulled the crystal skull from the backpack and held it up for Jack to see. He sucked in his breath, staring with the sort of stunned, horrified shock that I would have expected from a terror victim. Not him.
He did not blink or look away, and though that jolt didn’t fade, for one brief moment—so brief, it might have been my imagination—I glimpsed hunger behind his gaze.
“Where,” he said, slowly, “did you find that?”
“A demon was told in a dream to give it to me. I thought, maybe, you had something to do with that.”
Jack’s gaze flicked to mine. “No.”
“We found several others. The boys destroyed them.”
He flinched.
“There were bodies, encased in stone,” I added. “In the desert, beneath a ruined city.”
Jack swallowed hard and appeared ill. “Yes.”
“Who were they?”
“Don’t,” he whispered. “Don’t make me say it out loud.”
I stared at him. “There’s something else you should know.”
He visibly braced himself, expression so grim. Grant cleared his throat, glancing at me.
“You tell him,” I said, unable to say the words out loud. It was too personal and new. Maybe it was the same for him. He had to take a breath and hesitated, with a look on his face just as raw and intense as what I was feeling.
“I’m going to be a father,” he said in a soft voice, with utter seriousness and solemnity—that is, until a smile spread over his face. “A father.”
Despite everything, all the horror, the danger, seeing that smile was like being infected with joy. I laughed out loud.
If Jack had appeared stunned at seeing the skull, this news seemed to hit him like a rocket in the gut. He stared at us. No smile. No words of congratulations. I kept expecting him to say something, but as the silence continued, my own smile died. So did Grant’s. I hated that. I really did.
“Is there a problem?” I asked, my voice sharper than I intended.
Grant leaned forward. “He’s scared.”
I waited for Jack to disagree, but that didn’t happen. All he did do was slump his shoulders, rub his new beard, and look at us with tired eyes.
“I’m scared for you,” he said, but from the way Grant looked at him, I wondered if that was entirely true.
I tried not to grit my teeth. “Jack.”
“I’m also happy for you,” he added, glancing at my frowning husband. “I’m happy that you are going to have a baby.”
Glass shattered behind me. I whipped around—but all I found was the Messenger staring at me, bottles crushed in her bare, bleeding hands. Her eyes were so dark.
“You,” she said slowly, “are with child?”
I tensed. Grant pushed himself up on one knee, a look on his face I had never seen.
“I will kill y
ou,” he said, “if you even breathe wrong around her. I will destroy you. I will rip you apart.”
The Messenger did not stop looking at me. “Maybe you should.”
I flexed my right hand. “You want to do this now? I’m ready.”
She went rigid. Jack said a sharp word. The language was coarse, unfamiliar, but the Messenger flinched and closed her eyes.
“You told me there are no gods,” she whispered in a tight voice.
“About this, there is,” he said. “I am your God, when it comes to that child. You will not harm her.”
“The offspring of a Lightbringer . . . and the Hunter, with her power . . .” The Messenger drew in a deep breath and dropped the shards of glass into the sand. “I will return with more drinks,” she murmured, and vanished again.
Grant did not relax. Neither did I. I was filled with the somewhat twitchy desire to sink my teeth into hot, soft flesh. Made me want to swish out my mouth with ginger ale.
“Jack,” I said, nauseated—and hungry.
“Tell me your story,” he replied, quietly. “Hurry.”
THE Messenger returned almost fifteen minutes after I started talking, but she did not say a word. She set down bottles of chilled water from wherever she had fetched them, then sat a short distance away, sinking into a meditative pose and closing her eyes. I glimpsed movement on the edge of the oasis: the Mahati, walking gracefully in the night amongst the palms.
I told Jack everything, starting from the rose. He listened carefully, but his focus remained on the carved skull, which he placed a good distance away from him.
He gave no impression that he wanted to touch the thing. In fact, he seemed wary, a sentiment I shared. I was glad I didn’t have to look into those empty eyes. The rest of the skull was hypnotic enough, its smooth surface reflecting the fire so that it seemed flames burned deep inside the crystal.
“Those demon lords,” he murmured, almost to himself. “I never knew their names. When we broke their bond to the Reaper Kings, it disoriented the entire army, especially them. Just long enough for us to raise the prison walls.”
“You didn’t try to kill them?” Grant asked.
“We couldn’t,” he said with a faint look of surprise. “The bonds they share with their individual clans make them incredibly strong. Maybe not as strong as Zee and the others, but very nearly immortal. In hindsight, we should have struck those bonds, as well, but our focus was on the Reaper Kings.”
Jack met my gaze with discomfort—but some defiance, too.
“The boys are not innocent in this, my dear. No matter how much you care about them, don’t forget that. Their army killed billions, and destroyed civilizations that were . . . precious and remarkable. They would have killed more had we not stopped them.” He hesitated, looking down at his scarred, battered hands. “Not that the Aetar didn’t do the same, elsewhere. Perhaps it was justice. All of us, punished in different ways.”
Justice. Punishment. Billions dead.
Another lifetime. Different hearts.
How much can be forgiven? How can the extinction of worlds be redeemed? Where is the redemption in mass murder? Is there such a thing when the crime is so immense?
And yet, I was contemplating killing an entire race of demons. Out of self-defense, yes. But still. It would be murder. It would be extinction.
I didn’t expect redemption for that. Just survival.
I drew in a deep breath. “Tell me about the crystal skulls.”
Jack hesitated, staring at the skull in front of him. I tried to imagine him with the same bone structure—sharp teeth, huge eyes—but it was too alien, and he was too human.
“Each of us involved in building the prison had one of these skulls, attuned to our particular identity. This was mine. I’m shocked to see it, though. I threw the damn thing into the Wasteland.”
That surprised me. “Nothing escapes the Wasteland.”
“Almost nothing,” he reminded me. “But this artifact? Found in a toolbox in a basement in Texas? That defies understanding.”
I thought about the other skulls the boys had destroyed. “Why would you have tried to get rid of it? Why, any of you?”
“Because they made us too powerful. Each skull, carved and polished from stones cut from the Labyrinth.” Jack stared at the skull, and, in a soft voice, said, “We thought we were strong before, but when we focused through them, when we focused on our desires . . . it was like being fed by a star. Frightening, and beautiful. Truly, we did feel like gods.”
The Messenger’s mouth tightened. I pressed my right hand against my leg. “You felt like gods and gave up that power? There must be more to that story.”
“You think?” he murmured.
“I know,” I said. “Who made the skulls? The Aetar?”
Jack stared into the fire, and the fall of flickering light cast shadows that made him look tired and thoughtful, and grim. “No. That is beyond our abilities. We only discovered the Labyrinth because the Lightbringers knew of it. Before that, we were nothing but drifters in space. We drifted so long until we found that home world, we forgot where we came from, or why we even left.”
Something told me that wasn’t entirely true. Grant’s gaze hardened. “How did the Lightbringers discover the Labyrinth?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said simply. “The Labyrinth is a crossroads between space and time, but it takes a particular manipulation of energy to open its door. Energy is what your kind does, lad.”
“And that?” I pointed at the skull. “If the Aetar didn’t make it, who did?”
Jack grimaced and said nothing. Grant glanced at the Messenger.
“He is called the Tinker,” she said, ignoring the older man when he gave her a stern look. “Even the Lightbringers knew of him.”
“That old?”
“What is time in the Labyrinth?” she replied with a hint of disdain. “Time means nothing, there.”
“You make it sound as though he lives inside the Labyrinth.”
“He is the only one who does,” Jack finally said, still not looking at me. “You travel through the Labyrinth, but you don’t remain.”
“Why not?”
“It will not let you,” said the Messenger, as if that was the most ridiculous question she had ever heard. “If you do not open a door of your own choosing, the Labyrinth will choose for you.”
“So how do you know what door to open?” Grant asked.
The Messenger frowned. “You see its light.”
I closed my eyes, thinking of roses and starlight, and a man with silver skin. “Who is the Tinker, and why is he different?”
“We don’t know,” Jack said. “Neither did the Lightbringers. He’s a ghost. Few have seen him in the Labyrinth, and only from a distance. No one has ever spoken with him. Trust me, we tried. Some of us even hunted him, thinking . . .” He stopped, shaking his head. “Thinking to possess him.”
“Familiar story,” Grant said coldly.
I touched his hand. “If you don’t know how to find him, then how did you convince him to make those crystal skulls?”
Jack hesitated. “We . . . prayed.”
“You . . . what?”
“If you have a need, sometimes the Tinker answers, with gifts.” My grandfather looked profoundly uncomfortable. “He made seed rings for the Lightbringers. He made our crystal skulls and left them where they would be found. He made the armor that your ancestor discovered and that you now wear.”
“And you don’t know how he does it.”
“Some would call what we do magic,” he said in a subdued voice. “But to us, it is just an ability, another kind of science. What he does, though . . . is so far beyond our capabilities . . . that we call it magic.”
I had to soak that in. “You’ve never spoken of him.”
“He is an uncomfortable topic for my kind.”
“Because the Aetar can’t control him.”
Jack studied his old, gnarled hands. “Yes.”
&
nbsp; I wondered what else my grandfather wasn’t saying. “He made the rose that broke my bond with the boys. I didn’t ask for that.”
“I know.”
“And you’re wrong. Someone has spoken with him. Someone did a lot more than that.”
Jack looked me dead in the eyes. “I know that, too.”
Silence fell around the fire. Grant and I watched him. He watched us back. All of us, so still, lost in the desert hush and the crackle of flames burning between us.
The Messenger stirred, losing some of the stiffness in her spine. “Who is this person who spoke with the Tinker?”
My grandfather closed his eyes, and his chest sank inward as though he were hollow and brittle. It was so him, all of his movements and gestures, that I found myself forgetting his was a new body. I could see only his spirit.
“Someone very special,” he murmured. “Someone very dear.”
My heart seized when he said those words, swallowed up in an ache that reached down into the pit of my stomach. My mother. My mother, so special and dear.
I’d never understand her, no matter how much I wanted to. That killed me, all those wasted years. I’d loved her, learned from her . . . but in the end, I’d resented her, too. I still couldn’t forgive myself for that.
But the ache in my chest deepened, and I realized suddenly that it wasn’t because of anything I was feeling.
It was the boys.
I hardly had time to react. A sharp stabbing pain lanced my ribs, making me gasp. It hit me again before I could recover, and I doubled over—breathless, in agony. I felt as though I were being cut open with a dull saw—and I expected to see blood when I checked my hand.
Nothing. Clean.
Grant grabbed me around the waist, hauling me back against his chest. “Maxine,” he said, voice throbbing with power. “Maxine, listen to me.”
“Something’s happening to the boys,” I managed to gasp out. “Jesus.”
Jack scrabbled across the sand, picking up the crystal skull. “We need to break the bond.”
The Messenger rose to her feet, staring past us into the desert. Her hand fell to the crystal chain looped around her waist, and it fell free into her hand like a whip. I twisted in Grant’s arms, panting with pain, and glimpsed movement in the night, at the edge of the oasis.
The Mortal Bone Page 19