Etched in Bone

by Anne Bishop

  He’d been on the road less than an hour when he spotted a rest area and a sign that indicated the next village was another thirty miles away. The rest area looked rustic. The crappers were probably nothing more than seats positioned over holes in the ground, but if there was no one else there, the place would serve just fine.

  He pulled into the rest area, then backed up as close as he could to the side of the small building that was designated for women. No other cars around, but he still checked the men’s side as well as the women’s before he opened the trunk.

  “You evil human! You hurt Skippy!”

  The cha-ching tried to sit up without permission. Jimmy slapped her hard enough to split her lip. The slap wouldn’t have fazed Sandee, not to the point of looking like she’d taken a hard blow to the head. He hauled his prize out of the trunk and hustled into the women’s side of the building. He pushed her down on the dirty floor and pulled the folding razor out of his pocket. He’d heard enough about the scar girls to know you cut them and asked a question. Then they gave you an answer.

  But where to cut? He figured he could get a hundred—maybe even two hundred—dollars for a cut, but customers would want fresh skin. He studied the cross-hatching of scars on the top part of her left arm, then looked at the evenly spaced scars on her right arm.

  She still seemed dazed from the slap, but when she saw him bring the razor close to her right arm, she started to struggle.

  “No, don’t,” she said.

  His hand tightened on her arm, a bruising grip. “You do what I tell you from now on.” He made a cut across several of the existing scars. Blood flowed from the wound, running down and pooling where his hand held her arm.

  “We’re going to a city on the coast,” he said. “Tell me what roads to take to avoid being found by the fucking cops. Speak!”

  Her gray eyes went blank, and her expression as she began to speak . . . He knew what it meant when a woman had that look. The little bitch needed a man, and she needed one bad.

  First he had to concentrate on what she was saying. He didn’t need to write this shit down; he’d remember it just fine, but . . .

  When she finished speaking, she sighed and stretched out on the floor.

  Jimmy dropped the razor and shoved a hand down her pants. Gods! She was hot and wet and just begging for a quick fuck. He reached for his zipper, then froze when he heard car doors slam.

  Shit!

  He grabbed the razor and almost closed it and put it in his pocket. But he’d dropped it on the floor and he could see bits of dirt on the blade. If he cut her with a dirty razor she could get an infection and be worthless. Did he have time?

  Male voices, going into the other side of the building.

  He turned on the water in the sink, rinsed off the razor, then dried it with a couple of paper towels before closing it and shoving it into his pocket. He wet a couple more paper towels and wiped the blood off her arm. The cut was still bleeding. Was that normal? He didn’t have bandages or any of that first-aid shit. Maybe he’d look for some when he stopped for gas.

  Pressing the wet paper towels against the cut, he hauled her to her feet and walked her to the door. He opened it enough to make sure no one was hanging around outside. Then he pulled her outside and dumped her into the trunk. He slammed the lid down and swore fiercely when the latch didn’t catch. Fucking piece-of-shit car. Yeah, the car’s owner had told him the latch wouldn’t catch sometimes if you slammed the lid down hard, which just proved the owner was a pussy.

  He slammed the lid again. This time it caught. He got in the car and was pulling out of the rest area when two young men came out of the other side of the building, laughing and talking. Traveling somewhere. They looked in his direction.

  Jimmy pulled out of the rest area too fast and bumped onto the road, heading south and east. He didn’t notice the trunk lid bounce up a couple of inches before something held it down.

  • • •

  Jolted out of a haze of colliding images, Meg saw a strip of daylight and grabbed the trunk lid before it might be noticed. She couldn’t remember anything she’d told Cyrus when he cut her arm, but she had swallowed the blood and the pain and the words when he slapped her and split her lip.

  She’d seen only a couple of the images when he cut across the scars of old prophecies and asked his question, but combined with what she’d seen after he slapped her, those images were a start. She had been asking questions of her own ever since her head cleared from the blow Cyrus gave her when he took her from the Liaison’s Office: How could she escape from this man? Where could she hide until Simon found her?

  She’d seen an image of a trunk lid partially open and she’d seen . . . Or was it a memory?

  Carefully shifting position, Meg took hold of the trunk lid’s catch with her right hand and tucked her left leg toward her belly until she was able to undo the lacing on her sneaker. She used the lacing to secure the trunk lid, leaving just enough space to provide some fresh air and light. Then she lay back, aware that her arm was still leaking blood. Not good. Cyrus must have made the cut a little too deep. But it would clot—eventually. She hoped.

  She had to stay awake and aware. If Cyrus stopped the car, she needed to untie the lid and hide the shoelace. No guarantee that the lid wouldn’t latch on its own if the car hit a bump or that Cyrus would be so careless the next time he stopped. But . . .

  Yes. She remembered this. A trunk safety release. After Karl Kowalski had read the new Wolf Team story where one of the Wolf Team had been trapped in a car trunk, he told her that all cars made by humans had a safety release, had even shown her the release on his car. So she could get out of this trunk even if the lid was closed. But not while the car was moving. That would be dangerous for anyone, and the cuts and scrapes on skin for someone like her would be devastating, leaving her helpless to the prophecies released with every cut and scrape.

  And then there were the other images she’d seen when Cyrus split her lip. Images like snapshots of places she’d never seen. And road signs. STOP! GO BACK! WRONG WAY!

  Was she seeing opportunities to escape, along with warnings that those places weren’t the right place?

  When she escaped from the Controller, she had followed the visions. There had been other stops, other towns where she could have left the train. But she had remained free because she had kept going until she reached Lakeside and the Lakeside Courtyard—a place that had put her out of the Controller’s reach. Now, like then, she had to make the whole journey, follow all the visions. If she didn’t, she might escape Cyrus but never get back home.

  So she would wait. For now she had light and air and the knowledge that, when the time was right, she would escape. There would be more images to mark the trail. Cyrus had taken her razor, but there were other ways to cut skin. She would find them, use them if she had to.

  She would escape when the real world matched the vision that didn’t have a warning sign. Then she would run until she reached the place in the woods that held a grave. That was an image Simon would remember from her prophecy dream—and that was the place where Simon would go to find her.

  CHAPTER 25

  Thaisday, Messis 23

  The police set up roadblocks at every road leading out of Lakeside, but everyone already knew it was too late. With the chaos and blocked traffic on Crowfield Avenue, there had been time for Cyrus Montgomery to get Meg Corbyn out of the city. Officers from each precinct had been assigned to the manhunt, and patrol captains were sending in their findings to Captain Burke as well as Police Commissioner Alvarez.

  Nobody had expected any luck at the bus and train stations, but the police checked them anyway, talked to the ticket sellers, showed Cyrus’s photo around.

  They tried hard to find Meg Corbyn, but the minutes ticked by into an hour—and then two.

  • • •

  While waiting for any n
ews from the police, Vlad, Blair, Nathan, and Officer Debany went through Cyrus Montgomery’s apartment, first looking for any clue that would tell them where he might be heading and then looking for whatever drugs Sandee might have ingested before her clash with Leetha. They found her stash of pills hidden beneath the tampons in what looked like an unopened box. They found some money in the fridge’s freezer box, hidden in a small, hollowed-out loaf of something labeled cranberry-artichoke bread—an unappealing combination that explained why no one had been hungry enough to thaw out the loaf and discover the money.

  After checking the apartment a second time, Debany said, “I think we’ve found everything there is to find.”

  “Then it’s time to pack up their possessions,” Vlad said. “Miss Twyla offered to help with that.”

  Debany frowned. “Pack? But I had understood that you weren’t pressing charges against Sandee.”

  “We’re not. But we are evicting her for breaking our no-drugs rule.” Vlad smiled, showing a hint of fang. “If she ever comes within sight of the Courtyard again, the Sanguinati won’t bother to bite. We’ll just snap her bones, one by one, until we get to her neck.”

  Debany went white.

  “But that is unlikely to happen because either you will arrest her for the drugs you just found and she will go to jail, or she will be on the first train out of Lakeside tomorrow morning.”

  Debany swallowed hard. “Alone?”

  “Alone. As for that Clarence, you may hold him accountable according to your laws for his part in Meg’s abduction, or we will hold him accountable according to ours. Either way, he isn’t coming back here.”

  “What about Frances?” Debany asked.

  “For now, Eve Denby is looking after Frances and Lizzy since we all feel that it is easier to protect the children if they’re all in one place.”

  Debany gathered the evidence bags. “If any of you or Miss Twyla notice anything else that doesn’t look right, give me a call.”

  “I don’t think it will take long for Miss Twyla to pack the carryalls. You should wait a few minutes and take what belongs to that Sandee and that Clarence.”

  “All right. I’ll be nearby.” Debany walked out with the evidence bags.

  Vlad knew the patrol car was parked in the Courtyard’s employee parking lot. The other officer, Hilborn, was still helping to free the motorists who had been buried under several feet of snow—snow that was getting harder to move by the minute as the Messis sun beat down, compacting it and making it heavy with water.

  This time no Wolves came to help dig out the cars. This time it was humans with shovels.

  Vlad took out his mobile phone and called Twyla Montgomery to let her know she could come over and pack up the things that had belonged to the humans who had stayed here. Then he called Chris Fallacaro to come over and change the locks.

  He hadn’t seen Henry since they all realized Meg had been taken by that Cyrus. He hadn’t seen Tess.

  Some of the terra indigene in the Courtyard had gotten too close to the humans, had become too involved—had developed feelings that, in the future, might be the very reason they chose to shun contact with humans. If they failed to find Meg, Simon wouldn’t remain in Lakeside where he would listen for a voice that would never be heard and search for a scent that would fade day by day. No, Simon would head into the wild country, alone, and simply disappear.

  But Vlad would remain in Lakeside with Grandfather Erebus. He wasn’t sure Henry would stay. Maybe the Grizzly would relocate to the River Road Community or Great Island, where he would be able to continue working on his sculptures and totems. Maybe he would go farther west. Maybe all the way to Bennett. Elliot would take Sam far from here to a place that had limited contact with humans. As for Tess . . . Vlad wasn’t going to think about what would happen to the humans who crossed Tess’s path while she looked for some other place.

  A pebble dropped in a pond created so many ripples, disturbed the surface of the water, revealed possibilities. When Meg first came among them, they had seen her as a puzzle, a confusion. But she had become so much more.

  It was still possible to find her. There was still time to save her—and Simon.

  • • •

  Jenni, Starr, and Jake Crowgard walked into the Three Ps.

  “Hey,” the Lorne said. “Any news?”

  “You gave the police pack pictures of that Cyrus,” Jenni said.

  The Lorne nodded. “They’re distributing them to the police in the city.”

  “Those are big pictures. Can you make smaller ones that would fit into this?” Jenni held up a mesh bag no larger than a human hand, with woven handles that a Crow’s foot could grasp and carry over a distance.

  “I could print some out small enough for that. When do you need them?”

  Jenni stared at him. “Now.”

  The Lorne went behind the wall that hid the computers and the printers. He returned quickly with a piece of paper that held one picture of that Cyrus.

  “We need many,” she said, wondering for a moment if this human had helped that Cyrus steal their Meg.

  “I wanted to be sure it was the right size before I started printing multiples,” the Lorne said. “You want them on the photo paper like the ones I did for the police?”

  “Yes.”

  While they waited, Jenni looked at the postcards in the spin rack. The police had found one in the sorting room addressed to her. From the Jana. She hoped their Meg had read it and smiled before . . .

  Lorne returned to the counter with a stack of photos that would fit in the mesh bags. The Crows took them and hurried back to the Crowgard Complex. Every Crow had acquired a small bag to carry little treasures. Now the bags would carry something else.

  Once all the photos were distributed and put into the bags, all the Crowgard in the Lakeside Courtyard shifted to their Crow form, picked up the bags, and flew away. They flew hard, in all directions. While waiting for Jenni, Crows who knew about the telephone called Crowgard in terra indigene settlements, telling them about the theft of their Meg, telling them to meet up with the Lakeside Crowgard.

  Crows who lived and worked at one of the terra indigene farms met up with Jenni, who pulled one of the photos of the enemy out of the mesh bag so that all the Crowgard could study the face. This enemy would stay on human roads, so that was where the Crows should search.

  Crows flew off in small groups. One Crow took Jenni’s mesh bag with the photo and flew hard to meet the Crowgard farther down the road, who would study the face of the enemy and tell more Crows, who would tell more Crows, who would tell more Crows.

  • • •

  Simon ran back to Howling Good Reads. Having let himself in by the back door, he bounded up the stairs to the office, where he had a spare set of clothes. After shifting to human and getting dressed, he went to the Liaison’s Office.

  There was nothing to track, no scent to follow to find Meg. Unable to stand being around humans, he had gone to the Green Complex and lain on her bed for a while, breathing in her scent. As it always did, her scent soothed him so that he started to think past the anger and fear.

  Meg had dreamed about being thirsty. She had dreamed about finding a body—or at least a cold hand. Details of something she had seen in the prophecy cards? Maybe, before she was taken, she had asked another question, had selected more cards. Skippy had been wounded and needed help, so Simon hadn’t looked for cards once the Wolves confirmed that Meg was gone.

  She had seen where her journey ended. He just needed to figure out how to find that specific place. When he did, he would also find her.

  He walked into the sorting room and stopped, not sure what to think when he saw Merri Lee, Ruthie, Theral, and Agent O’Sullivan already standing around a map of the Northeast Region that was spread out on the big wooden table. Next to the map was the notebook Meg used to write down
the images on the prophecy cards.

  “We could use your input if you feel up to it,” O’Sullivan said.

  Simon reluctantly approached the table. He’d wanted to look at the notes Meg had made about the last vision; he hadn’t wanted to deal with any humans. But here was part of the human pack sniffing around for clues.

  Merri Lee tapped the notebook. “Tombstone means a grave, but it’s not Meg’s. It isn’t. It’s something she’ll see in a woods somewhere.”

  “Which made me wonder if there were any failed settlements that might be near any of the current roads,” Ruthie said, waving a hand over the map. “Someplace small from a few decades ago, someplace that could have had a graveyard. By now, the buildings might be gone and the land might be wooded, and the gravestones could be weathered to the point of looking like ordinary stones.”

  “Would the terra indigene have any records of places reclaimed by the wild country where humans might have been?” O’Sullivan asked.

  Simon shook his head. “If a place was reclaimed, it either disappeared or the terra indigene turned the buildings into a settlement and gave the area a different name. But Meg didn’t see a tombstone or grave in the prophecy dream; she saw a body hidden under some leaves.”

  It sounded like a tree full of squirrels had suddenly landed in the room. So much chatter out of so few bodies.

  He snarled at the female pack. They ignored him and kept chattering, so he snarled louder. They kept asking him questions and questions and questions, but they wouldn’t stop talking long enough for him to answer.

  “Mr. Wolfgard has more information,” O’Sullivan boomed.

  The chattering human squirrels shut up and stared at him. That annoyed him enough that he wanted to nip someone, but he decided to take advantage of the momentary quiet and told them about Meg’s dream.