California Bones (2 page)

On the last day he saw his father alive, Daniel watched a little nugget of bone bob in a kettle of boiling oil. Sebastian lifted it with a copper spoon and sniffed it. “Tell me what this will do,” he instructed.

“I have no idea,” Daniel said, giving the bone a cursory sniff. Outside was a blue sky and a warm sun and a short gondola-bus ride to the beach, where Daniel fancied he could rent a surfboard and maybe figure out a way to impress a girl. He didn’t want to be here with the curtains drawn, breathing air full of dead things that stank.

Sebastian dipped the bone back into the oil. “Try, Daniel. Let it in. Let it talk to you.”

His father wouldn’t give up, and there was still a part of Daniel that wanted nothing more than to please him. Resigned, he lowered his face to the kettle. At first all he detected were his father’s tells: There was clean sweat. Shaving soap. And tar, deeply embedded, from the marrow of his father’s bones. And there was also something of Daniel. The ghosts were all mixed up, and Daniel couldn’t tell where his father’s smell ended and his own began.

“What is our essence?” Sebastian asked.

Daniel had answered this question a thousand times. He answered it again. “Cells.”

“And what is the essence of the cell?”

“The molecule.”

“Was that your mind answering, Daniel, or just your mouth?”

“Molecules,” Daniel repeated, adding a touch of drone in order to make himself sound as brainless as possible. But taking the time to answer, even in his smart-assed way, forced him to concentrate on the word just enough that he involuntarily began to envision molecules, like knotted beads twisted into esoteric chains.

Sebastian smiled, enjoying his small victory. “And what is the essence of the molecule?”

“The atom.”

“And the essence of the atom?”

“Electrons, protons, neutrons. And quarks.”

This was where Sebastian Blackland had made his innovations in magic. He’d followed the research in nuclear and particle physics, reading papers smuggled into California from the United States, seeking to understand the fundamental nature of matter on a finer-grain level than his colleagues at the Ministry of Osteomancy. Ultimately, he felt that magic came from understanding matter, so he sought to understand matter as deeply as he could.

“What is at the heart of the subatomic particle?”

“Energy,” Daniel said, his answers more than recitation now. Sometimes he felt he was coming close to understanding his father’s model of magic, and that’s when he felt nearest to those beach-walk afternoons of long ago. But his understanding was like a whiff of vapor that stole away on the breeze.

“What bridges energy and matter?” Sebastian continued.

“Magic,” said Daniel.

“Trick question,” Sebastian said, a little mischievous now. “Magic transcends energy and matter. Magic transcends the laws of thermodynamics. An osteomancer consumes a creature, and not only does he use its power, but he increases it.” He stirred the pot again. “If he’s any good, that is. Now. Smell the preparation again.”

Daniel moved his face over the bubbling kettle. He shut his eyes and thought of chains and links and impossibly small bits of matter and impossibly huge parcels of energy.

“Well?” Sebastian whispered, close to Daniel’s ear.

“It’s sint holo?” The sint holo was an extinct horned serpent from the American southeast.

“Yes,” Sebastian said. “And what does it do?”

“I don’t know,” Daniel said. “It’s like something I can’t hold on to. It’s like confusion.”

Sebastian straightened, smiling, and Daniel felt his head swim. Maybe from the fumes. Maybe from pride.

“That’s right. Sint holo remains transfer properties of invisibility. It’s for a weapon I’m making. Part of a sword blade. Want to see?”

Did Daniel want to see? Was he kidding? What kind of wizard’s son would he be if he didn’t want to see his father’s sword? He’d read a book about the swords the Hierarch had used in the Battle of Santa Barbara, and he knew if he ever became a true osteomancer, he’d specialize in making magic swords.

“Okay,” Daniel said.

He imagined Sebastian would take him through some secret doorway, down a passage to an underground vault, and that the sword would be displayed in a magnificent case, or embedded in a stone. Whenever Daniel heard mention of the Ossuary catacombs, where his father worked, that was how he envisioned it. Instead, Sebastian took him to a bureau in a spare bedroom stuffed with books and file cabinets. He slid open a long, flat drawer, from which he took out a towel-wrapped bundle. He set it carefully on the bureau and peeled back the terry cloth.

It looked … okay. The pommel was a round metal disc welded onto a bare tang, and the guard was an unadorned crossbar. The leaf-shaped blade was kind of short, a little over two feet long and in need of a polish. Running down the blade, almost from guard to point, was a sort of channel inlaid with bone chips. Many were the rich brown of La Brea fossils. Others were tan or gray or white. A few were iridescent pearl, or the rich jewel tones of a church window. Some of the chips appeared to be assembled from smaller pieces, little nuggets of bone, or teeth.

The inlay only ran halfway up the blade, indicating many more hours of toil left to be done.

“Does it have a name?” Daniel asked. All great swords had names. The Hierarch’s was called El Serpiente.

“Not yet. I’ve been calling it the Vorpal Sword for now, just for convenience. It’s kind of a joke from Lewis—”

“‘Jabberwocky,’ I know. Mom read it to me.”

“Ah. Good,” said Sebastian. “Well, whoever finishes the sword gets to name it, because it’ll have that person’s essence.”

Daniel pointed out the bone chips. “What do they do?”

His father’s eyes shone. He somehow managed to betray giddy excitement and remain grave at the same time. “Right now, the sword does everything I do. It has kraken properties, and firedrake. Thunder and flame. Sint holo will make it hard to defend against. But we won’t know all its properties until you’re finished.”

“I’m finishing the sword?”

“Yes, that. But I also meant we won’t know what it’s capable of until
you’re
finished. Here, look at this.” His father ran his finger along some of the inlaid chips. “These are your baby teeth. And these threads between them are made from your hair clippings. And these lacquered bits here? I made those from your tonsils.”

Daniel’s tonsils came out when he was five. He didn’t remember why. He didn’t remember being sick. He just knew his father had taken him to a doctor and then his throat hurt and there was ice cream.

“Your magic is in this,” said his father. “And you’ll keep growing your magic, and you’ll keep investing in this weapon, and in others. Using the magic brewing inside you … that’s deep magic. That’s osteomancy.” He gestured at his work counter, littered with jars and vials and little envelopes. “Everything else is just recipe. It’s so important you learn that, Daniel. It’s important you make powerful weapons. That you be a powerful weapon.”

“Why?”

“Because the Hierarch is making
very
good weapons.”

He rewrapped the sword in its towel and returned it to its drawer. Back in the kitchen, he dialed down the heat on the boiling sint holo bone and fitted a heavy copper lid over the kettle. “It still needs to simmer awhile. So, let’s use our time to—”

“Can we go somewhere?” Daniel interrupted.

“Go somewhere?”

“Yes. Somewhere outside? Or at least somewhere with natural lighting?”

Sebastian’s gaze skated worriedly over his work counter.

“It doesn’t have to be Disneyland or anything like that,” Daniel pressed on. “We can even just stand out on the curb. We can gaze into the mysterious shadows of the canal and you can tell me all about the osteomantic properties of carp or canal scum or anything you want—”

“Okay,” Sebastian laughed. “Okay. What do you
really
want to do?”

“Mini-golf and go-carts.”

Sebastian’s eyes warmed. “Aren’t you getting a little old for that?”

“Also, I want to destroy you at skee ball.”

“It’s good to have ambition. I’ll get my keys.”

They left the workroom together and entered the living room, little more than a narrow pathway between teetering boxes that went almost to the ceiling. The boxes contained the books and papers Sebastian had hauled over from his Ministry office.

From outside, the sound of a helicopter rotor chopped the air. Sebastian went to the window, but came away when the phone rang. He lifted the receiver.

“This isn’t a good time, Otis,” he said. And then for a while he didn’t speak, but only listened.

“Who else did they get?” Whatever the answer, it made him shut his eyes. When he opened them, he looked over to Daniel, and for the first time in his life, Daniel saw his father’s fear.

“You’ll take care of them?” Sebastian said into the phone. “Promise me, Otis.
Promise
me.”

There was a short pause, and then he returned the receiver to its cradle.

Out on the canal, boat doors slammed. Sebastian pushed Daniel back into the kitchen.

“The sint holo isn’t ready yet,” he said, lifting the lid of the simmering pot. “But it will help you, at least for a little while.”

“What’s going on, Dad?”

“Wait as long as you can before swallowing it, and when you walk, make no noise. Take the sword, and go to 646 Palms Boulevard. Your mother will meet you there. Wait for Otis, and he’ll help you and your mom get out of Los Angeles.”

“Dad…”

He ruffled Daniel’s hair and placed a priestly kiss on his forehead, just like he used to do when putting Daniel to bed. Then he went into the living room and shut the door, leaving Daniel alone.

Here, Daniel’s memory of what happened became less clear. Mostly, he remembered noise and light. Splintering wood and boots pounding the hardwood floor. Shouts. Then, cracks of thunder, so close, like bombs detonating between his ears, the loudest thing he’d ever heard.

After that, a brief silence, followed by soft footsteps outside the kitchen.

Daniel ran to the stove, where the kettle rested over the flame of the burner. The bone still tumbled in the low boiling oil. With a pair of tongs he lifted the bone and braced himself for pain. He opened his mouth and dropped the bone in, forcing it down, tears streaking his face as the jagged nugget burned and tore its way down his throat.

The kitchen door flew open and a half-dozen cops rushed in. The gray-haired man in the lead wore the Hierarch’s wings-and-tusks emblem on his windbreaker. Daniel backed up against the stove as the man came closer, his hand extended.

The man’s eyes lost focus. He blinked.

Daniel stepped around his outreached hand, avoiding contact. When he moved past the cops, they flinched as though brushed by cobwebs. He went into the front room.

Four charred bodies lay amid an avalanche of overturned boxes, yellow-edged papers and books spilling across the floor. The men’s faces bubbled, black with char and red with blood. The room stank of ozone and cooked meat and kraken.

His father hadn’t managed to get them all. He was on his back. Three cops were cutting the flesh off him with long knives. They’d already flayed one arm, exposing the deep, rich brown of his radius and ulna. They peeled back his face to expose his coffee-brown skull.

The man on the carpet being dissected before Daniel’s eyes was no longer his father. Daniel understood that his father was gone. In the space of an instant, eternal moment, these men had taken his father away from him. They had reduced his father to a sack of magic, and now they were plundering him.

Daniel reached back to that day on the beach, six years before, when he’d found the kraken. He remembered its smell, and he searched for it in his own body, and when his fingers began to tingle, he knew he’d found it. His father had made him strong, and now Daniel would use his strength to make these men with the long knives shriek like slaughtered animals.

In the doorway stood a man. Whether it was a trick of memory or a trick of magic, Daniel couldn’t quite focus on him, as if light slid off his flesh and dripped away. But Daniel caught an impression of him. A smell of deep things underground. The smell of earthquakes.

The Hierarch entered the house. The earth shuddered with each step. The pictures on the walls rattled in their frames, and glasses in the cabinets and the silverware in the kitchen drawers jingled. The Hierarch loomed over the body of Daniel’s father. In his hand, something of polished metal glinted. It was a fork.

“Excuse me,” the Hierarch said in a sandpaper voice. “I’ll have him fresh.”

Daniel did not want to see this. He wanted to run. That’s what his father had told him to do, and he did not want to see this, because he knew that, once seen, he would never be able to close his eyes without seeing it.

But the sword. He couldn’t leave without getting the sword. The sword was his father’s magic. It was Daniel’s own magic. So he forced himself to turn back to the spare bedroom, where two of the men with the long knives stood before the door. There was just enough space between them that Daniel should be able to slip past. He took a step. And then he heard something, over from the floor where his father lay, and where the Hierarch crouched. He didn’t look, would not look, but the sound was obvious. The Hierarch was chewing.

That night, Daniel left the sword behind and ran. Away from the house. Away from the rotor blades and searchlights. He ran until he could only walk, walked until he could only stumble, stumbled until he could only crawl. When morning broke, he awoke in wet sand and bathed himself in the cold waves rolling in on the edge of a winter storm. He would live here, he thought. He would live here on the beach as a ghost.

He was already dead, Daniel told himself.

When the Hierarch began eating his father, he was already dead.

Ten years later, he would still hear the sound of the Hierarch’s teeth grinding his father’s cartilage.

TWO

Daniel caught the gondola-bus at Lincoln Station and rode it all the way to Wilshire and Fairfax, just a few blocks from La Brea Tar Pits. The gondola doors flapped open with a pneumatic hiss, and the burned-dirt stink of tar settled in the back of his head. He only realized he’d been woolgathering at the door when the gondolier growled something about schedules and people with heads lodged in their asses. Daniel stepped off into the tar-haunted air.