The Mortal Bone (25 page)

“I didn’t expect you here,” I said, unmoving.

“Or looking so comfortable.” Grant handed me the sandwich, which he’d wrapped in a white napkin. “You need to eat.”

I grunted at him. “I’m not hungry.”

His gaze flicked down to my stomach and back up to my face. “Try.”

I frowned and took the sandwich. I didn’t look at what was inside, but that first bite tasted good—and fresh hunger roared inside me. I kept eating, and suddenly the sandwich was gone, and I was still starving. Dek and Mal made approving sounds.

Grant pushed another sandwich into my hands, his mouth twitching with humor. When he looked away at Jack, though, his gaze turned dangerous. “We could have used your help before now.
Long
before now.”

Jack grimaced, and finally, in his eyes, I could see the man I had known, a man who had been born into so many lives, in so many different bodies, that the one he wore now probably meant very little to him, except as a shell for his soul: this skin of a man whom I’d first seen in the warehouse, and who had looked at me with mortal eyes.

Mortal eyes. A distinction I had learned to make only after spending time with my grandfather. It wasn’t age but, instead, the depth of the gaze that gave away an immortal. All the things that soul had seen, and remembered.

Jack had witnessed the birth of stars. His eyes were pretty damn special.

He barely looked at Grant. Instead, he watched Dek and Mal with terrible wariness. The two demons returned his stare with similar suspicion—and cold calculation. He might be my grandfather, but he was also an Aetar. One of the thirteen who had imprisoned them.

“I felt Zee and the others go free,” Jack said carefully, not taking his gaze off them. “It was terrible. Quite possibly one of the most wrenching sensations I have ever suffered.”

“Tell me about it,” I said, as Grant gave him a dirty look. I noticed the Messenger walking toward us from the shadows, her robes whispering. Even she looked at my grandfather with a raised brow.

Jack winced. “I’m sorry. That was thoughtless. I cannot imagine what you suffered.”

No, you can’t,
I wanted to tell him, stung and feeling more than a little childish that he hadn’t come searching me out. It was stupid. But he was my grandfather. I could get petty, if I wanted to.

I stroked Mal’s tense body, feeling edgy because of him, despite him, some confusing mix of both that made me uncertain what was real, and what wasn’t. “Where were you?”

“Indisposed. In a particular state of
being
, which did not allow me to come easily to you.”

Grant opened his mouth. I touched his arm, and shook my head. “That body you’re wearing . . . was torn up.”

“He died,” Jack said bluntly, scratching his new beard. “I happened to be nearby at that point and decided I had no time to be choosy about who my new host would be. I took over his fresh corpse, and brought the body here to be . . . healed . . . of its more severe wounds. I’ve also been making some additional modifications of my own.”

The Aetar were masters at manipulating organic material with nothing but conscious thought. There was no telling what kinds of unseen “modifications” Jack had made. “You grew a new leg?”

“Attached the original. Some thoughtful soul had put it on ice, just in case. I stole it from a freezer.”

I tried to envision that, then stopped. I really didn’t want to know.

Grant looked at the Messenger. “We came to speak with you.”

She had been watching me the entire time, assessing my body—up and down—with all the warmth a butcher might give a rotting piece of meat.

“Yes,” she said, slowly, “I can see
all
her problems.”

I frowned. “I didn’t think there was a
list
.”

Jack made a distressed sound and leaned forward. “Oh, my.”

Suddenly, everyone was looking at me. I hadn’t forgotten, either, that Dek and Mal were perched on my shoulders, aware of everything the others were saying.

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 you,” 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.”