Revenant

by Kat Richardson

  I could see the tangles of energy that were more-normal people scrambling around near the dolmen as three of the guards broke away to find me. Others spread out into the edges of the river-bound area, the non-magical working their way farther out, crossing the water to search for anyone else who might be with me. I could no longer see Quinton’s aura clearly in the mess of movement and the rolling of the Grey. While Purlis’s men were quiet and careful, I had confidence in Quinton’s ability to avoid them long enough to make some trouble at the very least. Me, I made noise and tried to keep an eye on the bones in the circle as well as tracking the three men coming across the river to catch me.

  Every note I played made the spell waver, but I needed to move or be a sitting duck. It didn’t take long for the three men tracking me to converge and try to grab me. I slipped sideways through the Grey and forced them to chase me, playing different notes on the flute whenever I got away and waiting as long as I could for any bones to respond.

  On the third try, I saw something flicker, dim, and quiver in the illuminated skeleton within the circle. That was the note I needed. I only had to remember which holes to cover and how hard to blow. Down near the bridge, I spotted Quinton’s energy signature slipping toward the truck. I figured we both needed a few more minutes and I wasn’t sure I could get them.

  I dove back into the Grey as the men stalking me drew close to my position. I struggled through the thin, heaving Grey as if I were trying to swim in a storm-wracked sea. It was becoming difficult to keep both my positions in mind—where I was and where I needed to be—and watch everything that needed watching, but I saw the men turn, realizing I’d moved, and start searching for my new location. They were pros and knew I wouldn’t be far away, but I still wouldn’t be where they expected.

  I dodged around behind them and dropped for the normal. . . . Then one of them stepped left when I’d expected him to go right, and I fell into him, knocking him down as I slipped out of the Grey. I tumbled a few feet down the slope toward the river and the dolmen. I felt the flute break in my hand as I rolled and my injured finger took a beating even as I tried to pull my fist in against my body.

  The man I’d knocked down shouted for his comrades and they bounded down the slope after me, my movement making me easy to track under the quarter moon and the light of millions of stars. The quickest of the three caught up to me and stopped my downward somersaulting by throwing himself across my path and onto my body. The second guy jogged up and started to haul me to my feet as the first stood up and then slipped and fell in the unmistakable stench of cow flop.

  “Shit!”

  The second one laughed. “Yes, it is! That was fucking hilarious, Bara.”

  “Fuck you, MacPherson.”

  Apparently the guys in Purlis’s team were Americans and they had the usual sense of humor that young men in combat acquire. I put my feet down more carefully, avoiding the dung, as the last of the trio trudged in, feeling no need to hurry now that someone had captured me.

  “Remove your heads from your fourth point of contact, gentlemen, and tell me what we’ve got here,” he said. I immediately thought of him as “Leader.”

  “It’s a woman, sir,” said the laughing one—MacPherson, I reminded myself.

  “Must be Blaine.” Leader looked at the one who’d fallen. “Jesus, Bara, you stink. Go back to the truck, clean up, and see if you can find something less . . . shitty to wear. If not, stay at the truck. This isn’t going to be much of a job now. The only remaining threat is Junior.”

  “He’s a sneaky bastard,” MacPherson said as the fallen one trudged away, muttering. “I’d be more worried about what he’s going to do than what this skinny bitch is up to.” He shook my arm slightly to make his point.

  I back-kicked him in the knee and ducked, yanking him over my back and into the same pile of manure his buddy had found. Then I lunged at Leader.

  There was a reason he was in charge of this group, and he demonstrated by stepping aside and smacking me on the back with the stock of his compact shotgun. I thumped to the ground, winded and facedown, in the opposite direction from MacPherson.

  This time Leader pulled me up, twisting my arm behind my back and snatching my free wrist into the same hold while I was still off balance. I gave up a sharp bark of pain as he grabbed my injured hand to manage the maneuver. He ignored me and secured my wrists behind my back with a riot cuff. “Yup, not going to be much of a party now,” he said. “Gotta watch out for skinny broads, MacPherson—they’ll kick your ass.” He yanked the broken flute from my good hand and turned back to me, holding it up. “What’s this?”

  “Not mine,” I said.

  He peered at it in the moonlight. “Looks like one of the creep’s toys. You take this with you the last time you escaped?”

  I didn’t reply. He took that for an answer and started me walking downhill with a slight push. “All right. Find out soon enough.”

  We trudged on down the hill with MacPherson in the back and slogged across the river at a shallow ford, getting wet up to the knees. At the edge of the gleaming circle of ghosts, Leader stopped and sent MacPherson on the same errand his partner had gone on.

  It was fully dark now, but the area around the stones was illuminated by the fire in the center of the Devil’s Pool. Without the flute, I’d have to buy Quinton time and hope one of us got an opportunity to disrupt the spell up close; otherwise I had only one shot left and it was such a long one, I wasn’t sure it would work.

  Leader gave me another encouraging shove and I walked forward, into the firelight and toward Rui and Purlis standing at the edge of the graveled circle. Rui looked thrilled to see me, clasping his hands together as if he had to force himself not to unwrap me like a Christmas gift. Purlis appeared ill, leaning more heavily than ever on his cane, but smug at my return.

  Rui started to reach for me as we drew near and Purlis waved him back. It annoyed Rui, but he stepped aside to let Purlis address me as Leader caught my arm again. He wasn’t taking a chance that I might bolt.

  Papa Purlis smiled and his eyes gleamed as he said, “Hello, Harper. I knew you’d be back. Rui was displeased with your departure.”

  Leader leaned forward, keeping his grip on me, and handed Purlis the broken flute. “She had this.”

  “Thank you, Mancino.” He took the flute and Rui snatched it from him. Purlis offered no objection.

  Rui examined the bone flute and turned a stormy face to me. “What happened to it? Where’s the rest?”

  I nodded toward the hill behind me. “Broke when I fell. Sorry.”

  Rui growled and threw the broken flute to the ground, crushing it underfoot.

  Purlis smiled at me, a sick, tired smile. His aura was a terrible dark green, threaded with black. If he wasn’t dying, he would be soon. “Where is J.J.?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. We split.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Rui interrupted. “We must call the dragon. Now.”

  Purlis ground his teeth, frustrated at having to delay the pleasure of grilling me, but he was as anxious as Rui to see what the spell would produce. “Yes. Yes, we should. Go on.” He turned his head to Mancino and nodded him away.

  I started to jump forward as soon as Mancino’s grip left my bicep, but he snatched me back and gave me a hard shake. “No, you don’t. Sit tight or one of us is going to shoot you.”

  Rui glanced at Mancino and then at me. Then he took my arm in a proprietary manner, waiting for Mancino to let go and step away before he said, “I look forward to perfecting you later. This will be exquisite. You’ll understand why the flesh is a poor vehicle for enlightenment after this. All that matters is the bones.”

  It reminded me of what the priest at Campo Maior had said: “All of us are bones and all bones are dust.”

  Rui turned to gaze at the circle of gravel on whi
ch the skeleton of his beast had been laid. Hundreds of bones, carved and illuminated with runes and sigils painted red with blood, some grafted together to form a different shape than nature had provided, others whittled down while still in the living body they’d come from. It all formed a single creature with a long snout full of teeth, massive wings, and taloned feet, and it now rose slowly into shape, held aloft by a complex web of light that the Kostní Mágové chanted and wove into existence.

  “Begin,” Rui said.

  Four men in long, black monk’s habits had been walking slowly around the bones as they chanted. Now they circled around the edge of the gravel and stopped, one at each point of an invisible compass. The young dreamspinner edged past the rest, coming close to where Rui and I were and stepped in front of the standing stones. He stooped beside the bones and began whispering to them in a voice so low, I couldn’t hear him, but every word sparkled and burned on the glowing bones, coloring them and drawing fine silver ligaments between them. Muscles of ghost-stuff and glimmering flesh began to knit over the bones before my eyes. The mages at the compass points continued to murmur, but quieter and lower, slowly withdrawing the support of their initial spell as the shining skeleton began to stand on its own.

  I had to stop it and I wrenched myself from Rui’s grasp, diving forward, hoping to break the circle or disrupt the boy’s voice. But I had made no more than a few inches’ progress before Rui snatched me back, clutching my injured hand. But even my shout of pain didn’t distract the dreamspinner, his expression enraptured as he slowly rose to his feet, opening his arms as if he were conducting the misty monster upward, raising it with his own strength.

  “Levanta-te, meu sonho!” the boy shouted, rising up onto his toes.

  The monster of bones and magic stood in the gleaming circle, fully fleshed in silvery skin, taller than the stones, and barely contained in the circle of the spell, the bones held within its shape of ghostlight and magic burned like white-hot steel. Then it opened shimmering wings that arched over us in a starfall of pearly light. I was too stunned to move or breathe as the monstrous, beautiful thing stretched its neck, raising its face to the starry sky. The moonlight touched the unreal flesh with a lambent glow that rippled across its surface as if the thing drew breath, waiting only for a command to take wing.

  The dreamspinner spun to face the stones, his face glowing with joy. He threw his arms up and flung his head back, shouting at the stars, “Vive! Voa!”

  Rui pivoted on his off-side foot, coming up behind the dreamspinner, and cut his throat. Blood gushed from the boy’s neck, splashing onto the stones and turning their gray faces red.

  The swift death doubled me over and I fell to my knees. My only solace in the moment of agony was knowing that the boy had barely understood what was happening before all the world went dark for him. The tiny, shining thing that had been his life energy flashed away, soaring toward the stars, and disappeared as I gasped, still coiled in the shock of his death.

  The ground trembled as the dreamspinner’s body struck it. Rui shoved the remains slightly with his foot so that they fell outside the “pool” of gravel and crumpled against the bottom of the standing stones that were wet with the young man’s blood. Rui looked me over with a wide smile and a gleam in his eye and yanked me back to my feet, my aching hands still caught behind me, unable to drop into the Grey while the pang of death still dazed my mind and crippled my body.

  Rui resumed his place beside me, staring into the circle that began to burn around the straining shape of the luminous dragon within. A line flowed swiftly from one monk to the next and the shaking of the ground increased.

  I heard three quick shots, and the truck by the bridge exploded as I folded once again over the stabbing torment of death, barely keeping my feet.

  Everyone turned their heads. All the men who weren’t in the circle ran outward, searching for Quinton, turning into black silhouettes against the brightness of spell and flame. In the momentary distraction, the white fire that connected the mages in the circle around the bones began to dim and the shape of the dragon trembled like the surface of a pond. I pushed myself toward the circle, hoping I could break the edge, but Purlis swept his cane across my legs, so I twisted and fell onto my injured hand, screeching in pain.

  “Go on!” Rui screamed at the mages as he stepped into the dreamspinner’s place and reached for the incantation, closing his eyes. The white lines of the circle folded him in, and he seemed to burn, adding greater light to the fire of the spell.

  Purlis hooked his cane through the loop of my arms and hauled me backward until I was lying facedown in the dirt in front of him. He rested the tip of the cane against my spine and leaned on it, letting me know he could break my back in a heartbeat.

  The bone mages had turned their attention back to the circle, singing and spreading their arms wide so the white lines of magic seemed to pass through them. Light shot upward, then rushed back to them, spreading into the circle and crawling along the bones. Burning light shot from each rune to shine on the eldritch dragon’s skin from the inside, mixing with the gleam of moonlight and lending the eerie appearance of living, rippling flesh that glowed from within as if lit by a growing bank of candles. As they illuminated, each bone sang. More notes joined the bone mage’s song, building into a complex melody that coiled in minor keys around my spine.

  This was the moment Carlos had spoken of and there was only one thing I could do. I tried to concentrate on the odd feeling of the ghost bone, hoping to have the same strange, aching sensation that had linked my finger with Carlos’s. . . .

  Above me, Purlis turned his head from side to side, shouting, “J.J.! J.J.!”

  Another, smaller explosion disrupted my concentration and sent the black shapes of Purlis’s men scurrying and shouting. More gunshots punctuated the singing of the bones like drumbeats and I convulsed in a knot on the ground as someone died.

  Purlis yanked me up with the crook of his cane. “Where is he?” he demanded.

  “I don’t know!” I spat back, shaking with fury as much as pain and barely making myself heard over the growing noise in the circle. “Try looking at the next thing that’s on fire!”

  He slapped me so hard, I crashed back to the ground and he staggered, barely catching himself with his cane. He leaned against the edge of the nearest stone and slashed his cane at me. “Don’t toy with me!” Each word brought the cane down in a crashing impact on my body.

  I squirmed away and ran into Rui’s foot. He moved within the edge of the spell and flipped me over onto my back like a beetle. “Let me deal with her,” he said. “I know what will bring your son running. . . .”

  The light from the circle was intense, searing white around a core of yellow fire, the incantation’s song a mighty roar of sound, shivering on the verge of something. . . .

  Rui thrust one shining hand down at me, and I felt my ribs arch toward him, the bruises Purlis had just inflicted burning like napalm. I screamed in agony, and I could see the sound flow out of me and into the spell through Rui’s outstretched hand.

  The sound clashed with the song of the conjuration, and Rui made a sour face. He moved his hand over my body, his dissatisfied expression turning to smiles as the timbre of my screaming shifted along the scale, shivering against the music of the bones.

  Quinton bolted from the darkness, straight for me and Rui.

  His father, still leaning on the stones beside us, drew a gun from under his jacket and aimed it at Quinton’s face.

  Chest heaving, Quinton skidded to a halt, the small pistol wavering toward his father, but useless—the slide was locked back and it was empty.

  “You may not have had the balls to do it, Son, but I do,” Purlis said, just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the spell yearning toward resolution. “You move, and I’ll shoot you in the head. And then her.”

  Rui drew his hands over me again. T
he tone of my screams blended to the voice of the incantation and the world shouted fire into the sky. All other sounds fell away and I sagged to the earth, aching.

  From the column of flame a shape emerged, flapping massive, blazing wings of nightmare sinew and ghost-stuff stretched over fire-limned bones. It flew upward, and all of us, even Rui and his mages, stared after it, struck with awe or terror. Everyone stopped to watch it, and the stars vanished in the glare of the monster as it raced to swallow the moon.

  Then the Hell Dragon arched down, turning as it fell away from the apex of its flight, graceful as a falling leaf. Someone shouted and the rattle of automatic gunfire broke the awestruck stillness beside the river.

  The beast opened its mouth and roared a gout of flame, for a moment illuminating the silhouettes of men with rifles trained on it before they vanished in the conflagration. The bellow of the dragon was a bass chord that shook the ground and blew trees aside, a sound like mountains shouting. The thing, like living flame, swept across the dry grass, setting fire to the hillside where I’d lain beside Quinton in the sun. I jerked into a ball around the agony of several fiery deaths.

  More shouts and screams came from the still-burning truck near the bridge as the dragon bore down on it. It slapped the truck aside and snapped at the men who had been moving behind it, snatching one up in its mouth. The victim screamed, the sound trailing as the Hell Dragon leapt back into the sky with a clap of wings and a sweep of its tail that set the river steaming and flung burning trees and the charred bodies of men into the air to rain down again in the farther fields. It circled into the air and turned, sweeping for a moment over Monforte and setting the hillside village aflame.

  I couldn’t hear them, but I felt the panic and death of the people in the town and those on the ground nearby as the drache burned a turning path back toward us. I couldn’t think or concentrate enough to do anything through the haze of anguish and death. I felt our failure crushing my chest and twisting through my guts as I tried to hear anything of the bones, do anything . . . but it was beyond me.