The Mortal Bone (28 page)

MORTAL.

Even the stars are mortal,
said my mother, one clear night in a campground in Yosemite National Park.
Everything dies, baby. Some things just take longer to get to it.

Except the boys weren’t supposed to die. Not my boys. I counted on them like I counted on the rain falling, or the world spinning round and round. Some things you took for granted. Some things just never gave out.

I fell to Texas, with Zee in my arms.

It was dusty and hot. Late afternoon, maybe. Grant let go of my arm, and I ran to the house, unsure what I was doing, just that moving, moving forward, was all that mattered.

I veered from the living room, taking the stairs two at a time until I hit the bedroom we’d been using. The covers were still rumpled, books scattered on the nightstand and our clothes on the floor. I staggered to the bed, arms aching, and half fell as I laid Zee down. I stayed there for a moment, trembling.

“Zee,” I said.

Still no reaction. He looked as small as a child, and vulnerable. His blood seeped into the covers.

My heart filled my throat. The sound of a cane floated from the hall, and Grant limped inside, stopping at the bed.

“This can’t be happening,” I whispered to him. “Nothing hurts the boys.”

Grant hummed a little. “My power still slips over him.”

I pushed myself off the bed and retreated toward the door, never taking my gaze off Zee. “I’ll be back.”

I staggered down the hall, one hand braced on the wall. My mother had kept a first-aid kit in the bathroom, and I’d replenished it during our first week in the house. Old habit. Accidents always happened.

I found the box, but I had to take a moment to catch my breath, and leaned on the bathroom sink. My side ached. My skin stung. Those five heartbeats, so damn quiet. I tried reaching for them but got no reaction.

So I reached for the darkness. I stretched through my soul, seeking out that presence. I found it in moments, coiled, quiet.

Too quiet. I jabbed that entity with a sharp mental finger, uncaring what the consequences might be.

I’m not stupid,
I said, furious.
I know bonding to me was supposed to give the boys access to you. And you gave them power. I felt you in the bond. You delighted in the hunt.

The darkness stirred.
Yes.

I gripped the edges of the sink so hard my fingers hurt.
So what happened? You couldn’t protect Zee? All that power, and you couldn’t do even that much?

Silence. Long, thoughtful, silence.

They control
you
,
it whispered finally.
Not us. Never us. What little we gave them was a gift. A taste for times past.

I frowned at those words and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror.

Someone else looked back.

I froze, unable to breathe or blink. My face was the same, but my eyes were black as pitch, black as the night sky, flush through with shadows. Even the bathroom light did not reflect in my eyes—as if there was nothing
to
reflect. No surface. Just an endless void, a limitless darkness. A place for light to fall, where it would never be found.

“Stop,” I said, and though I heard my voice and watched my lips move, nothing sounded right.

“You lie,” I replied, watching my empty, soulless eyes.

Because you do not want our power,
it murmured.
And that is something we have never known. We have never known the heart of light.

The heart of light. Somewhere, deep, I thought I might know what that meant . . . but the thing inside me was still beyond my comprehension. An entity so old, so powerful, so beyond mortal . . . that I was just as alien to it . . . as it was to me.

I closed my eyes, afraid to look at myself.
Why didn’t you help them?

I bowed my head and took a deep breath, then another, filling my lungs until it hurt. I was terrified to look at myself, but I forced up my chin.

My eyes were normal again. I stared at my reflection, shivering, afraid to look away even for a moment. When I bent to pick up the first-aid kit, I moved slow and careful—and when I did leave the bathroom, the back of my neck prickled—as though someone watched me from the mirror.

Someone like me. Another me. A woman with eyes that could swallow the light of a star.

Grant wasn’t in the bedroom. I thought I heard him moving down the hall. He would take one look at me and know something else had gone wrong. I didn’t want that. I didn’t want anyone to know what I had just seen. I had many nightmares, but that one . . . my eyes, the mirror . . .

I blinked hard, dragging back my focus.
Zee.
Zee was in trouble. All the boys were. That was here, now, immediate.

Blood had stopped seeping from the little demon’s wounds, but the cuts were no less wicked, deep enough to require stitches. I found a needle and thread and tried to close the slash in Zee’s throat.

The needle refused to pierce his skin.

I wasn’t surprised, but it frustrated me. I tossed the needle back into the first-aid box and grabbed bandages and gauze. Only a handful of his wounds could be wrapped. Many deep cuts were on his dark, scaly back.

“Turd,” I kept muttering, as I tried to bandage his wounds. “Little fucking Shurik turd.”

The next time I saw Lord Draean . . .

When I was done bandaging Zee, I lay down, curled in a ball and facing him. It had been a long time since I’d had the opportunity to just . . . look . . . at Zee. He almost never slept. Not like this. Deeply unconscious and unaware, and so vulnerable. So . . . defenseless. A million thoughts crawled through my mind—memories from childhood, memories from the past six years, little moments of kindness, his quiet.

I thought, again, of what Blood Mama had called them.

Barbarians. Slave hunters.

I recalled that dream, too, or vision: that man in the shadowed room, that room of starlight and roses, telling me to ask Zee what a Reaper King feared.

I covered his clawed hand with mine and closed my eyes. I didn’t think I would sleep. There was no way. No way at all. I wasn’t even tired.

But the next time I opened my eyes, the bedroom window was dark with dusk, and a blanket had been spread over Zee and me. I began to sit up, alarmed. I was an idiot. Might as well just paint a target on my back.

“No,” Grant murmured, behind me. “Don’t be hard on yourself. I was here the entire time.”

I glanced over my shoulder. My husband was seated in the overstuffed armchair beside the nightstand. His cane was in his lap, along with a tin whistle held loose in one hand. I was afraid for him to see my eyes. I touched my face and steeled myself before looking directly at him.

I breathed a small sigh of relief when his only reaction was a gentle, tired smile. “Jack and the Messenger are downstairs. Nothing new to report.”

“What about Zee? Any changes?”

He shook his head. “You’re going after the others, aren’t you?”

“I have to.”

“Not without me.”

I wanted to tell him no, but my heart crawled up my throat, and I could not speak those words.

“Thank you,” I said instead.

“You’re my wife,” he replied, but behind those words, in his eyes, I knew what that really meant was,
You’re my friend, and I love you.

The hall floor creaked. Jack appeared in the doorway, holding a steaming mug and giving us a hesitant look. I was surprised to see that he had shaved. His face was broad and creased with wrinkles, but there was a certain character there—a particular set of miles—that seemed to suit him.

“Might I come in?” he asked. “I made you tea.”

“I appreciate that.” I felt uncomfortable around him and didn’t know why. I didn’t like it. Jack was my grandfather. We were family.

Family with secrets, and lies.

I glanced down at Zee. No reaction. I was still looking at him when I reached out, blind, for the tea—and flinched when Jack clasped my hand instead. He did not speak at first. We simply looked at each other. I was afraid what he would see in my eyes, but his were fathomless.

“Sweet girl,” he said, gently. “I
am
sorry.”

I felt like a cynic when he said that. There was so much he might be sorry for, including things I probably didn’t yet know about.

“For what?” I asked, as Grant leaned forward, watching him.

“Everything.” Jack handed me the tea, and backed away from the bed. “All those millennia ago, during the war, the things we did to survive . . .”

His voice trailed away, perhaps because he had been staring at Zee . . . and that was too much of a distraction.

I
needed my
own
distraction. “How did it feel to use the skull?”

“I never wish to use it again. It felt too good. And it will draw the wrong attention, using that level of power, again and again.” Jack hesitated. “The breaking of the prison on your body would have been enough, alone, to draw others of my kind here.”

“We always knew that would happen.”

“Only now they will have weapons, and numbers. No simple scout like the Messenger.”

“Fine,” I said, grim. “Are you coming with me when I rescue the boys, or staying?”

“Coming, of course.” Jack looked affronted. “I am your grandfather.”

I tried to stand but felt too dizzy. The mattress sank beside me, and Grant laid his hand on my knee.

“Rest,” he said.

I started to shake my head, and Jack touched my brow with his fingertips. Something cool moved through me, like a breeze, wiping away my fatigue and light-headedness.

I caught his wrist before he pulled away. “Who was she? The first woman of my bloodline?”

Jack froze. “I don’t think we have time for this.”

We might not have time later,
I did not want to say. “Please.”

Slowly, carefully, he pulled free of my grip. “Her name was Eiame.”

“Eiame,” I echoed, and felt a quick pulse in Zee’s heartbeat, deep within my chest. “Why did the Aetar choose her?”

“She was genetically groomed. Endowed with extra strength, endurance, perfect immunity—”

“That wasn’t my question,” I interrupted. “Why
her
?”

Jack’s jaw tightened. “She was a sex slave. The others thought she would be easily controlled.”

Grant made a disgusted sound. I sat back, staring. “A . . . sex slave.”

“Don’t look at me like that. Those were different days.”

“Really? Because it seems to me that in ten thousand years, nothing’s changed. Humans still use each other in despicable ways. They probably picked up the habit from you assholes.”

“Maxine—”

I held up my hand. “Okay. So she was a slave, and convenient. Was that really it? Or did she piss someone off?”

“I told you. They thought she would be easily controlled. She was very young and very
kind
. Docile, obedient . . .” Jack stopped, closing his eyes. “Eiame was pleased to serve her gods.”

Grant gave him a scathing look. “Did she feel the same way afterward?”

Jack swallowed hard. “I don’t know. She fell into a coma. We had to artificially impregnate her, in the hope her offspring would be able to handle the bonding process without the same shock to her system.”

I almost regretted asking about her in the first place, though I was glad to know her name. “It worked, I assume.”

My grandfather glanced away at Zee. “When I look at him, I still see a monster. I see a devourer of worlds.”

“You’ve felt that way all these years?”

“Every time I see them. I never forget, dear girl.”

“Do you forget the murder of my world?” Grant asked quietly. “A murder you participated in? Do you forget that you enslaved an entire race and bred them for those Aetar games of flesh?”

Jack looked at him. “No. I am a monster, too, lad. I know that’s what you think of me.”

Grant held his gaze and did not deny it.

“Just as my kind will find you to be a monster,” added my grandfather in a soft voice. “You and Maxine, both.”

“So we’re all our worst enemies,” I muttered, sipping tea. “What’s your point?”

Jack looked at Zee again. “There is no such thing as true redemption. Even if, by some miracle, you find forgiveness in the eyes of others . . . you never forgive yourself.”

Grant slumped back in his chair. “Did you come up here to help or just make us all feel miserable?”

Jack walked to the bedroom door. “I came to deliver tea. And to tell you that some demons are downstairs, waiting to speak with you.”

CHAPTER 25

I
stopped at the foot of the stairs, staring at my mother’s living room, and felt my brain explode. The only way it could have gotten weirder would have been to find the demons in front of me sitting on the couch, sipping soda and watching television.

Actually, it
was
that weird.

Lord Ha’an sat on the floor, propped up against the front of the couch. He looked exhausted. His long fingers were covered in curling blades, strapped to his hands like gloves. Each serrated tip dripped with blood. All of him, bloody, as though he had splashed through buckets.

Some of that blood was his. I saw gashes in his side, across his chest—round holes that looked chewed through. His chest rose and fell with shallow breaths. His eyes were closed.

Beside him was Lord Oanu, also slathered in blood—fur sticky, armor scored with deep scratch marks. I watched him place an experimental paw on the couch cushion, and push down. His ears twitched. So did the tip of his tail. He was wounded: his flanks appeared gnawed on, as did his underbelly around the joints of his armor.