Empire of Bones (41 page)

“Oh, great,” Cyrus said, but he was already digging for his keys.

Diana slid on her belly toward the stone stair rail. There was a diamond cutout in the stone that would let her look down into the main hallway. She glanced back, and Rupert nodded.

Diana set her shotgun on the step beside her, slid the barrel of her blunderbuss through the gap in the rail, and studied the floor below. She could see four transmortals flat on their faces with their arms bound. The Captain paced around them, muttering furiously. His face was a bloody mess, but his golden breastplate glowed like it was fresh off a bed of coals, and his dragon blade was drawn.

Beyond him, and beyond the smashed front doors, Diana could just see one of Leon’s legs, and the heavy spattering of rain on the steps outside.

Diana scanned the rubble throughout the hallway but saw no sign of Gil or Nolan or Arachne. Nothing of Niffy or Sterling—though she hadn’t expected him to be around—and no sign of Dennis or Jax.

In her peripheral vision, Diana saw something move in Brendan’s black boat, where it lay tipped onto its side. She stared for a moment longer, and saw it move again.

Dennis Gilly. And Jax. Together, and not in a bad hiding place, though close to where the fight had been the hottest.

Of course, she was glad Dennis and Jax seemed to be fine. But they weren’t really whom she had been thinking about. She had no idea what Cyrus and Antigone were attempting or where they had gone. She did know that she wanted to be with them. She’d hesitated. She’d waited. And then they’d been gone.

Niffy and Nolan entered the hallway. Niffy was limping badly, and Nolan was peeling skin off his bare arms as they walked, dropping the thin sheets behind him.

Where were the other five attackers? Where were Gil and Arachne? Where were Cyrus and Antigone?

“Do you hear that?” Rupert asked. He dropped into a squat behind her.

“Shouting?” Diana asked. She wasn’t sure. It was definitely voices.

The Captain could clearly hear it. He tensed and turned in place.

Niffy and Nolan froze. Niffy dropped onto his belly and pressed his ear to the mosaic tile floor. A split second later, he jumped back to his feet. He grabbed Nolan, and they ran.

The floor erupted in fire. Diana jerked back as tile shrapnel whistled and chattered through the hallway. Larger stone blocks smashed into walls and skidded across the floors.

A huge bare-chested man with glistening olive skin and a bloodred dragon on his chest climbed out of the hole. He wore a bright white cloth bound with gold around his waist. Broken chains hung from his wrists and dragged from his ankles.

The Captain stood to face him.

“Smith!” Radu Bey roared, and he began to laugh. “This is joy in truth.”

Diana blasted her last tooth-treated shot into the back of the huge man’s head. His roar became a scream of pain, but he turned, snarling and undamaged, looking for her. Transmortals with thick arms and wild eyes were scrambling up out of the hole around him like ants out of a mound. The whole building shook with the thunder of their weight.

Niffy and Nolan had regrouped, both holding blades and lobbing jars of pyro-newt eggs, but not enough for the swarm that came to meet them. The hallway was filled with shouts and explosions. Diana dropped her blunderbuss and then emptied her shotgun, and still the Captain and Radu Bey eyed each other like they had forgotten all else. Niffy and Nolan retreated out of sight.

More transmortals were climbing out of the hole. They scanned the hallway and the walls for enemies, and Diana prayed that Dennis and Jax would keep still in the boat. Radu waved a few away. Others circled around him and pressed the Captain’s flank.

Captain John Smith stood alone, his eyes brighter than his breastplate and his beard smoking. His smile, whitened by years of sun on the sea, flashed at the massive man with broken chains—the transmortal he had tricked and Buried so long ago.

“You are my brother, Smith,” Radu snarled. “You and I are bonded in blood. But I gave you my true brothers’ heads. What shall I do to you?”

“What shall ye do?” The Captain laughed. “Ye’ll see that dragon scite cut from your flesh with your father’s own blade. Then ye’ll face a man as man, with no dragon puppetry to aid you.” He sliced the air with his sword and raised the tip at his enemy. “Come, Radu. A fourth
Dracul head in the crest of Smith would make a better symmetry.”

Radu Bey used only his chains, and they lashed and snapped forward faster than Diana could see.

The Captain whirled and ducked, shattering links on the edge of his blade. As he danced, the transmortals edged all the way around him, swords and spears and daggers raised.

“Rupe!” Diana said. She drew a revolver and put another round in Radu Bey. The blood sprayed from between his shoulder blades, but he barely seemed to notice. “Rupert! What do we do?”

Rupert Greeves put a hand on Diana’s shoulder and began to pull her away. But she couldn’t go. She fired and fired and fired on the circle of transmortals, but she was like a bee trying to defend a man from wolves.

Surrounded completely, the Captain’s blade was still fast enough to keep the ring from closing. He laughed as he fought, and his smile was as grim as any reaper’s. And then he began to sing. His accent and his effort slurred his words, but Diana recognized the song. Her own mother sang it in the kitchen, and her happiness in the singing always belied the sorrow of the words.

The Captain sang and he danced and he slashed the ring around him. He sang even when Radu’s chain found his legs and lightning forked from the links and felled
him. He sang as the transmortals tore the blade from his hand, grabbed his wrists, and stretched his shaking oak-strong arms out from his sides.

He was singing as they tore off his breastplate, and singing as Rupert pulled Diana back from the rail, away from what was about to happen.

“You are no immortal,” Radu spat. “You are a beggar with a scrap of Odyssean Cloak hidden beneath your skin.”

“Their mouths they opened wide on me,” the Captain sang. “Upon me gape did they, like to a lion ravening and roaring for his prey. For dogs have compassed me about; they pierced my—”

The Captain’s voice broke into a shout of pain, and then he sang on, louder still, filling the vaults with what sounded like triumph, like joy.

John Smith was ready to sail.

Diana shook as Rupert pulled her away. But she heard the beastly snarl as the scrap of Odyssean Cloak was taken from inside the Captain’s chest. She heard a blade sing. The snarling stopped. Mocking laughter began.

“We have to get you out of here now,” Rupert said. “All of you.”

Diana didn’t argue. She couldn’t, even if she’d wanted to.

Oliver Laughlin paced the length of his descending plane, with his chute strapped to his lean adolescent shoulders. Radu Bey had taken longer to strike than Phoenix had expected, but the timing would work, so long as Phoenix wasn’t there first. The transmortals would ravage the place for a while. They would open Burials. Hundreds would dance in the ashes of Ashtown. They would rejoice in the glory of their own strength. That was easy. They could be there for hours and Phoenix would still have time to gather his harvest. But if he was there too soon, a cautious Radu Bey might withdraw to strike another day.

But would there be another day like this one? A day when all the great ones would be in one containable, cageable place? Before they inevitably feuded and fought and scattered?

Phoenix raised the silver knob on his broken bamboo cane to his thin Oliver lips. He knew this breed of last-minute anxiousness was courtesy of youth, but he still felt it. He wanted this more deeply than he had once been able to want anything. And with wanting came fear.

He flipped open the silver knob and studied the black tooth, the sharp black triangle that swallowed light. He pressed the tooth itself to his lips and felt calming cold electricity flow through him. His plan would work. His intellect knew it. The trouble was with his young nerves.

Oliver walked toward the cockpit, even as he felt the plane banking into descent beneath him.

He could see Ashtown smoking ahead. He could feel a young man’s adrenaline pumping through him.

“Father!” The two largest of his sons stood behind him, ready to help him jump. He walked back toward the cargo doors and positioned himself between them. Oliver smiled and bounced in place. Anxiety was becoming excitement.

“Aim for the fountain, Father!” one of the big men said. Once, he had been a Marine. “We don’t want you initiating too close to hostile structures.”

Phoenix smiled. He had molded a terrific crop of sons, the first seeds of his new world. Hal, the coward, excepted. But Hal was still in Plumm, watching over the collection of women chosen as wives for those sons who would survive this day.

A red light began to flash beside the cargo door. Let the countdown begin.

Cyrus and Antigone had descended back into water. The Brothers were in a chamber beneath rising water, but there had been no springs anywhere, and no fountains. The water was black and still, and the walls were
wet. The chain of chambers behind the sealed door hadn’t been easy to navigate. Ten stone markers in and Cyrus and Antigone had been forced into a hard right turn, and a room much larger than any they had seen belowground. It was almost the size of the dining hall, but with slightly lower ceilings and some kind of dais at the far end.

The water was thigh-deep. Antigone sighed, but Cyrus was staring straight ahead.

“Tigs,” he said. “Look.” He slid Patricia’s tail out of her mouth and stood beside his sister in silence.

“Cy …”

“Let your eyes adjust.”

There was a vertical seam on the far wall and it was glowing. That was how Cyrus had seen the dais at all. And that was how he could see the two huge shapes on either side.

Cyrus began to water-jog forward. He tripped, dove, stood again, and kept running, the heavy stone ball in his pocket banging against his leg with every step. Antigone dove more often, managing to stay just half a step behind him.

As Cyrus drew nearer, he slowed, sliding his finger back into Patricia’s mouth and holding up her light.

Steps rose to a circular door with the glowing vertical seam. But the top of the steps was buried beneath
a layer of bones carved from stone—stone bones, from monstrous beasts and monstrous men, strewn around the feet of the tall statues.

The Brothers and their clothes and all their weapons were shaped from the same stone. They wore the robes of monks with hoods up, hiding hard features in shadow. But solid stone or not, both heads seemed to have turned, to be looking down at Cyrus and Antigone.

“What do you think is behind the door?” Antigone asked. “And where’s the rising water?”

“Right now, I don’t care,” Cyrus said. “I want these guys up top.”

The Brother on the right gripped three spears in his left hand; a long sling dangled from his right. Instead of a stone, the sling held the skull of a king wearing a gold circlet crown. More skulls were pulled behind.

“You must be Justice,” Cyrus said.

“Why?” Antigone asked.