Empire of Bones (25 page)

They passed a solid wall of rolled-up newspapers, next to a section of densely packed fish bones, stacked like tiny logs, beside shelves of peach pits.

And then came the skulls.

Huge flat-faced orangutan skulls in ascending size. Below them, skulls that looked far too human and began much too small.

Antigone hopped up closer to Pythia, her mouth suddenly dry. The oracle strolled between them without a glance, but her hair seemed to notice, to tense and slightly tighten.

“Stop.”

Two metal chairs sat in the aisle. Antigone stopped and looked around until she spotted the nearest speaker in the low ceiling. Pythia did not stop. She walked between the chairs and took a right turn around a shelf loaded with stacks of loose paper, sorted in towers by matching width.

“Stop!”

Pythia still didn’t stop. Antigone hesitated and then ran after her.

“No! No! NO!” the speakers screamed. But it wasn’t just the speakers now. The human voice was not far away. Pythia was accelerating, rounding another corner, and then a quick switchback turn; she was shooting the maze without hesitation, like one who knew and had always known.

The speakers squealed. Something crashed to the ground, and Antigone followed Pythia through a small gap in a shelf loaded with little swaths of fur artificial enough to go on teddy bears at a carnival.

They stood together in a small square room, walled in completely with shelves. A little mattress was on the floor, tidily made up with a pillow and one sheet. Black-and-white security monitors were stacked in a square at the foot of the bed, and an old-fashioned microphone was perched on top. A perfectly symmetrical arrangement of orange blossoms sat in a tiny vase on the floor beside the bed. In the corner, where a wall of coffee mugs met a bank of file cabinets, beside a tipped-over chair and a dropped long-scoped rifle, a woman was curled up in a ball, shaking. Her hair was blond going on silver, she was wearing old but clean coveralls, and her face was hidden in her arms.

“Don’t look at me,” she said. “Please. Go away.”

Pythia dropped a fiery leaf onto the floor in front of the woman’s face.

NO

The woman flinched. She sat up and scooted toward her bed. But only for a second. Then she dove back and frantically swept at the ash on the floor, dumping it into her pocket as she did. Finally satisfied, she set her chair back up and dropped into a crouch behind it, peering over the top with muddy green eyes nested in creased, sun-darkened skin.

“What do you want?” she asked, eyes darting to Antigone. “Why are you here? Why now? Where is your brother? Why do you have the oracle? How did you find her? Will she answer my questions?”

“Ms. Chauncey,” Antigone said, “Skelton told us to trust you. And we need your help. Everyone says you know a lot.”

“Questions,” the woman said. “Mine for yours. One for one. We take turns, and you stop looking at me, you little Cataan devil with your Cataan devil eyes. Your eyes are cold midnight. I don’t like eyes. Turn your back.”

Antigone began to turn, but Pythia grabbed her and shook her heavy head. Pythia sat down, crossing her legs. Her hair swept backward, away from her face and her body. It wound around and around itself, forming a single thick braid down the center of her back. Antigone’s mouth opened in surprise. Pythia always hid herself. She
was always in the shadowy shelter of her hair, and Antigone thought of her as slightly more wild than woman. But with her hair back, she wasn’t a woman at all. She was a girl—young and pretty with smooth brown skin, wearing a simple brown dress with no sleeves that could have been made from a potato sack. But her eyes were what grabbed Antigone. Without the shadow of her hair, they were wide and bright and warm, like … like burning leaves. Antigone had seen them like that before, but not often.

Pythia was showing herself to Lemon, and waiting for Lemon to return the favor. After a moment, Antigone lowered herself to the floor beside the oracle and crossed her legs.

“Fine,” Antigone said, digging the slip of paper from her pocket. “One for one. But we look at you as much as we want. And my eyes aren’t cold. I’m not an Eskimo. My mom was from the jungle. Now, you ask first.”

Lemon Chauncey sniffed and shifted her weight, rocking back and forth in her crouch behind the chair.

“What happened to Billy?” she asked. “Is he dead?”

Antigone sighed. Then she nodded. “He came to a motel where I lived with my brothers. Some of Phoenix’s men tracked him down. They killed him and burned our motel down. I was with him when he died.”

Antigone saw tears in the woman’s eyes. They glanced at Pythia, waiting.

TRUTH

The leaf and its burning word floated over the chair and Lemon Chauncey snatched it out of the air, letting it turn to ash in her palm and then dumping it into her pocket.

Antigone glanced down at her list. She might as well start at the top.
Radu’s Dragon
. She exhaled, trying not to grow tense. Feeling nervous was just silly. He wasn’t here. He was far away. He couldn’t touch her.

“Tell me about the dragon in Radu Bey’s chest.” Her voice was steady, and she was glad. “The one he turns into.”

Lemon grabbed the back of the chair, and she rose slowly. She pushed her silver-blond hair back behind her ears with rough-skinned hands, revealing a thin nose that turned up at the end and wide smooth cheeks speckled slightly with age. Creases clustered around her eyes. She was striking—pretty, even—but lost.

“Radu,” she whispered. “The last Dracul. He and his dragon are gone. Bound. Buried. The Captain, your Captain, the noble traitor Smith, he ended the dragon gin.”

Antigone scrunched her face. She didn’t want to get off track with the big bad news that Radu Bey was probably running amok in New York City that very minute.

“Just tell me about his dragon,” Antigone said. She felt her throat tightening and she couldn’t stop it. She could see the chains he had used as whips, and the writhing dragon under the skin of his chest—the dragon that
had taken over his body. It had almost eaten her just months ago, and now it was loose. They were going to have to beat it somehow. Maybe this woman had a jar of magic bullets next to the paper clips. Something. Anything. There had to be a way. Or … or she didn’t want to think about the other option. She cleared her throat.

“Everything you know, please,” Antigone said. “Is there any way to kill it?”

Lemon’s eyes locked on Antigone’s, but she seemed unaware that she was being seen, unaware of everything.

“Everything I know of Radu begins with a scroll,” Lemon said, “written by the great Bar Yochai, who claimed to have been visited by the shade of Enoch himself.”

“I don’t know who those people are,” Antigone said. “If you could—”

But Lemon cut her off.

“Listen, daughter of Cataan, heiress of Skelton. Radu Dracul, son of Vlad the Second, brother to Vlad the Third, was a powerful blood sorcerer and necromancer, one who feared no darkness. He was sent to the courts of the sultan, and among the royal magicians, he heard whispers of the old powers bound by Solomon and long hidden away by Hebrew wise men and Persian magi. With his bloodthirst, Radu became Bey of the sultan’s armies, and he conquered many lands, always searching the synagogues while his men pillaged cities. He did much evil among the rabbis but loosened no tongues. With the
armies of the curved sword behind him, he spilled rivers of blood and threw down walls until he found what he sought, sealed in the caves of an island on an Ethiopian lake, hidden with relics of the lost temple, guarded by African knights, claiming long descent from Levi. Radu cut them down but took only one relic—the scroll of Bar Yochai, the tale of the dragon gin, sealed by Solomon and cast into the sea, sought only by fools and dark ones.”

Lemon was silent, staring straight ahead. Lost in memory and story, she moved around her chair and sat, with her rough gardener’s hands restless on her knees.

“I am a Sage. I read and I do not forget. I found the accounts written by Vlad the Fourth, nephew of the great Radu Bey. He numbered the gin that had been recovered from the sea. He told Bar Yochai’s tale, how he had stolen the gin jars and lamps and stones from kings and emperors and warlocks, and where he had hidden them. He told how the Draculs quested alone for them, how they were found, and the name of the beast Radu claimed for himself. He told of the blood magic Radu performed, and the union made between man and dragon gin.” Lemon looked straight into Antigone’s eyes. “Radu’s dragon is called Azazel. He feeds on pain. His wings and his flesh were taken and destroyed by Solomon. Azazel needs a body. Radu is that body. Radu needs power and undying life. Azazel is that life and, when fed, provides power
beyond any man. The two became one. You have asked and I have answered. Now tell me how the oracle comes to be with you.”

Antigone glanced over at Pythia, wrapped in her hair. The dark-skinned girl’s eyes were shut and her mouth was slightly open. She looked like she was sleeping.

“Phoenix found her,” Antigone said. “He wanted her to explain how he could use the Dragon’s Tooth to raise the dead. We rescued her two months ago and we’ve been taking care of her ever since. My brother—Dan, not Cyrus—sees things. He dreams, and then he talks to Pythia about what they mean. He can hear her. The rest of us can’t really. Not usually.”

“She is the seventy-seventh girl to be made oracle,” Lemon said. “If Phoenix found her, it is only because he stole the journals I tried to burn before my trial in Ashtown. Her birth name is Pascha.”

Pythia’s eyes opened, not in surprise but with a smile. Lemon continued.

“When the seventy-sixth oracle died, Pascha was taken from a Byzantine convent and placed in Apollo’s cave, where there is a stone seat at the end of a carved hallway full of arches. There, time folds and is not; there, all can be seen, and mortal minds bend and break. I sat in that seat for two breaths, and those breaths took half a year. And since then, my mind forgets nothing even when I want to. There are cracks in me, deep cracks in
my mind and soul, and when Skelton found me, I was ready to fly apart. Pascha, the seventy-seventh oracle, sat in time’s throne for centuries.”

Pythia smiled. Slowly, she spoke, her voice dry and cracking. “Pascha sat,” she said. “For breaths.”

“Right,” Antigone said. “Okay. I think it’s my turn, and I’m still at the top of my list. I need to know more about Azazel, this dragon. How do we kill him?”

“Kill him?” Lemon asked. “Kill? He cannot be killed. But why? Radu Bey is bound and Buried, and his body is Azazel’s cage.”

Antigone puffed her cheeks and then exhaled out the side of her mouth. “I wish,” she said. “I really, really do.”

“I don’t understand,” Lemon said. She looked at Pythia. Her voice was edged and breathy. “Radu is bound.”

LOOSED
floated in the air, and Lemon stared at it, stunned.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, no, no. You don’t understand what will happen. What is
already happening
. How long has it been?”

“Two months,” Antigone said. “About.”

Lemon jumped to her feet. She whistled through the gap in her teeth and both hands went up to her blond silver hair. “That’s why you’ve come now. Where is he?”

“New York.”

Lemon scrambled past Antigone, hopped over Pythia,
and disappeared into her maze, shouting back over the shelves as she went.

“Pain. Azazel wants pain! It makes him strong, and his strength becomes Radu Bey’s. He gathers broken people first—killers, victims, it doesn’t matter—and feeds on their deep hurt while they drift into a sort of nirvana and eventually die.”

A crash came from somewhere behind Antigone. She heard Lemon’s quick footsteps. A book slapped onto the floor. More running and a drawer opened. Finally, Lemon hopped back into the little room and dropped into her chair, out of breath. She handed Antigone an old leather notebook stamped with the black medieval ship that was the symbol of the O of B’s Ashtown Estate.

Antigone opened it. It was full of sepia-brown photos and sharp, leaning cursive. The photos were of what looked like an archaeological dig. Men and women in safari helmets stood in trenches with shovels and brooms. Human skeletons were embedded in the trench walls like bricks—all facedown and densely stacked.

“Persia,” Lemon said. “That book is from the 1850s. O of B Explorers found three different compounds apparently constructed entirely of people—big compounds, tens of thousands of people. Idiots that they were, they identified them as temples in some sort of death cult. They didn’t know their history.”

Lemon snatched the notebook away, dropped it onto
the floor with a thump, and handed Antigone a South American newspaper. The cover showed black-and-white photos of what looked like a ruined mountain temple, half eaten by jungle. The walls and arches and roofs were all bone.

“This one was a temple,” Lemon said. “But only after the fact. Priests mortared the bones together and rebuilt with the scattered bones. The Chilean government found it and shut down the rituals in the 1960s.” She tugged away the newspaper and handed over a stack of large glossy photos. “I took these,” she said. “Thirty years ago. The first half were taken in an underground compound beneath modern Istanbul. You can only get in through the sewers. Long ago, it was the secret harem of Radu Bey. The bodies are all women. Some are now encased in limestone.”

Antigone flipped through the photos, staring down long, arched tunnels of bones. Stairs of bones. Columns of bones holding high ceilings of bones. It was hard to understand, to process how many lives had been spent, how much pain there must have been.

“More than one hundred thousand women down there,” Lemon said. “Just there. The rest of the photos I took in Romania. A hidden mountain valley, the last stronghold of the Draculs. That is where Captain John Smith took the heads of the Vlads. Humans subconsciously avoid it. Even the wolves will not go near it. For
three days, I camped there, listening to the voices, to the whispered pain left unconsumed, and I watched the blue wisps of souls burn cold at midnight.”