A Book of Bones

by John Connolly

  As they became his daughters.

  * * *

  IN VERMONT, JENNIFER HELD tightly to her half sister’s hand.

  don’t answer them

  “I won’t.”

  even if it means he dies

  “Even if.”

  * * *

  QUAYLE WAS IN AGONY. The bullet was lodged inside him, and each step he took seemed to drive it deeper into the core of his being, but it was only one part of a greater trauma, as though he had been hit not once but multiple times. Yet he was close, so close. He held the Atlas against his chest with one hand, and felt the warmth of it, its life force. In his right hand was the knife, and before him were the Sellars girls. The older one was still dazed, either by the blows from Mors or the lingering effects of the sedative, and moved only with the aid of her sister, but the younger child’s strength was failing. As Quayle watched, the older girl’s legs collapsed and she dropped heavily to the floor, her head impacting dully on the stone. Her sister took her by the right arm, and tried to drag her further, but she was deadweight.

  “It won’t hurt,” said Quayle, as his shadow fell across them. “I promise. And then we’ll all sleep.”

  * * *

  MORS CAST ASIDE THE knife, and reached for her gun beneath the folds of her jacket. The right side of her body was covered in blood, and the grayness had taken up permanent residence in her face. Only those milky eyes retained hints of brightness, but even these were now fading, like gemstones sinking in lactescent waters. She was swearing, over and over, a string of obscenities directed at a world she would soon leave behind; at every man who had hurt or slighted her in a lifetime of baseness; at Quayle, for using her without ever loving her; and at Parker, for having the temerity to believe he could stand against her and prevail.

  Mors found the gun, and Parker let his hands fall to his sides. A great lassitude descended upon him. He raised his head and stared at the two children behind the West Window, in all their beauty and strangeness. He felt the fracturing of worlds, heard it as a great exhalation that echoed around the church, and thought that he, like Quayle, would be glad to sleep at last, glad to feel nothing.

  Mors, now just a few feet from him, grew rigid. Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to speak words that would never be heard. Behind her stood Louis, his right hand obscured by her body, his left grasping her chin to turn her face toward him, so she might look upon him and know it was he who was responsible for ending her life.

  “Remember me?” he said, and his right hand twisted the knife, her knife, in her back, and a great gout of blood shot from her lips as the light in her eyes was extinguished at last, as all her pain became one before ceasing forever.

  Louis withdrew the blade and let Mors fall. Parker stepped forward and took the gun from her hand. To his right, he saw Angel running from the direction of the open door in the north wall.

  “Quayle!” shouted Angel.

  Then Parker, too, was running. He saw the lawyer kneeling on the stones by the chancel, blood spreading across the floor—

  And, in a corner, the Sellars children, the younger still protecting the older.

  Still breathing.

  Still alive.

  Parker circled Quayle, keeping his distance, until finally he faced him. The lawyer was sitting back against his calves, his hands splayed, palms raised, on his thighs. Parker could see no sign of an exit wound from the .22, which meant the bullet had probably hit bone before ricocheting, tearing through organ, nerve, and tissue before it ran out of energy. Had it passed straight through, Quayle might have survived, but now he was fading. Beside him lay the Atlas, the image of the church already dissolving from its open pages.

  Quayle lifted his head. He looked at Parker.

  “Who are you?” he whispered.

  “Nobody,” said Parker.

  “Liar. What are you?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Liar.” Quayle managed an expulsion of air that might have passed for a laugh. “They told me I couldn’t die.”

  “It seems they lied, too.”

  “No, you did this. Just you.” He took a deep, shuddering breath. “But still you’ve failed.”

  “Really?”

  “The Atlas wasn’t created by man. It can’t be destroyed. It will keep seeking its own completion. Someday, it will find its way back to this church, and unmake the world.”

  Quayle stared at the cross on the chancel wall.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, but his words were not directed at God. A whiteness flickered in his eyes, like pale light reflected from an unseen source, and then was gone. His chin sank upon his chest as the life left him at last. Upon the West Window, only stained-glass images remained.

  Angel looked down at Quayle’s body.

  “I guess no one ever tried hard enough to kill him before now,” he said, “or he was just deluded.”

  “Fuck him either way,” said Louis.

  “Hey,” said Angel disapprovingly, “we’re in a church.”

  And they had company.

  * * *

  CANTON, THE LEGAT, JOINED them at the chancel. He watched as Angel went to comfort the Sellars girls, gathering them into his arms, before taking in the bodies of Quayle and Mors.

  “He arrived just before the shooting started,” said Louis, indicating Canton. Louis sounded apologetic, as though this represented some failure on his part.

  “How did you find us?” said Parker.

  “I tagged your phone at the police station,” said Canton, “and your jacket, too, just in case. There’s a transmitter under the collar. When you didn’t return to your hotel, I tracked you.”

  He handed Parker a clean white handkerchief to stem some of the bleeding from his broken nose. It hurt like hell. He was tired of hurting.

  “The police will be here soon,” said Canton. “We need to get our story straight.”

  “Which is?”

  “How badly do you want to be a hero?”

  “Not at all.”

  “Good, because you’ll only be a hero until the police discover you were carrying an illegal firearm, and used it to shoot two people. They won’t like that. You’ll be arrested, and charged. In the end, you probably won’t serve any jail time, but it’ll be messy, and public.”

  “Do you have a better suggestion?”

  “The British are our allies in the War on Terror. Allowances have been made by the authorities when it comes to the possession of firearms by certain representatives of the United States, myself included. I followed you here. In desperation, I was forced to intervene to protect the children. There were fatalities.”

  “You think a story like that will stand up?” said Parker.

  “Two young girls saved, and two individuals suspected of involvement in any number of murders, including the killing of police officers, dispatched? I think we can make it work. In the end, people prefer easy lies to difficult truths.”

  “Then I guess you can be the hero,” said Parker.

  “I’ll make a better one than you,” said Canton. “I have a stronger jaw.” He poked at the Atlas with his foot. “Is that the book?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ross wants it.”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you think he should have it?”

  Parker regarded Canton with new interest.

  “Probably not.”

  “Do you want it?”

  “Definitely not.”

  “Then what’s the alternative?”

  Parker removed his jacket, and used it to wrap the Atlas, being careful not to touch it with his bare hands.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, while you’re thinking about it, I have one other piece of news for you.”

  “Which is?”

  “Those eyes found at St. Bart’s? They weren’t human.”

  CHAPTER CXXXIII

  Lotte and Chris climbed the stairs to Armitage’s apartment in The Hague. Each wore a black silk ski mask and
black gloves, along with cheap black jeans, a long-sleeved black shirt, and black sneakers. Only the fact that Lotte was marginally heavier than Chris distinguished them at all. Both carried Maxim 9 pistols: semi-automatics with an integrated suppressor, capable of delivering a bigger punch than a .22.

  Cornelie Gruner had been shot to death, which meant that Armitage, in flagrant breach of Dutch law, was in possession of a firearm for purposes other than hunting or target shooting. Lotte and Chris found this both irritating and presumptuous. It was one thing for them to own any number of illegal firearms, but quite another for a foreigner like Armitage to do so. They were at least Dutch citizens, and if anyone had a right to break Dutch law, they did.

  De Jaager had made it clear that no one else was to be hurt, only Armi-

  tage. Lotte and Chris had decided to interpret “hurt” as “hurt badly,” meaning “shot.” They would only get one run at Armitage. If anyone else in the building should appear before the legat was dealt with, the short stun baton attached to Lotte’s belt loop contained enough of a charge—more than two microcoulombs—to put even the biggest man on the ground instantly.

  Once De Jaager had confirmed the identity of the woman suspected of killing Eva Meertens—and, in all likelihood, Cornelie Gruner, although De Jaager had yet to lose any sleep over that old man’s demise—it had been a simple matter to obtain access to Armitage’s place of residence, and the work of minutes to insert a carbon-coated key blank into the two locks on her door that, through pulling, striking, and rocking, produced the marks required to manufacture a duplicate set. Lotte and Chris’s only concern was that the new keys to the apartment had not been tested, so if one or the other failed to work they’d either have to pick the lock—which would be time-consuming, and almost certainly alert Armitage to their presence—or kick down the door, which would wake the entire building, and quickly draw the police. De Jaager had assured them that the best locksmith in the city had created the duplicates, a man with decades of experience, both legal and otherwise. This had not particularly reassured Lotte and Chris, who were of the opinion that the best man for most jobs was usually a woman.

  They reached Armitage’s top-floor apartment without incident. Lotte inserted the first key into the mortise lock, and it turned easily, but the second lock proved trickier. The key stuck, and Lotte feared that Armitage might have activated the night latch, but after a long minute of jiggling, and the application of some WD-40 from a tiny spray bottle, the lock clicked. Lotte eased the door open with her left hand while keeping her back against the wall. Chris risked the first glance, but no cries or shots came, and seconds later the two women were inside.

  The door opened directly into the living area, with a small kitchen to the left. Lotte cleared the kitchen while Chris moved through the other room, ending up at the short hallway leading to the apartment’s only bedroom. The main bathroom stood to the right, its door fully open. It was empty, a curtain looped over the shower rail exposing the clean white surface of the bath itself.

  Now only the bedroom lay ahead, its door slightly ajar. Chris kept to the left wall, Lotte close behind. From the floor plan, they knew that another private bathroom lay on the far side of the bedroom, which gave Armitage two possible positions from which to fire, assuming she had heard them enter and not elected to escape through a window instead of risking a confrontation.

  Chris kicked the door wide as Lotte came in low, her gun fixed on the bed while Chris aimed her weapon at the door opposite. The bed was unoccupied, the sheets thrown back from the mattress. Chris checked under the frame, but the space was empty even of dust. A large unit stood against the opposite wall, consisting of closet spaces and exposed shelves.

  Which left the bathroom. The door was not quite closed, and the faintest of nightlights shone through the crack at the bottom and along the side. Lotte sniffed the air. It smelled strongly of meat and blood, as well as something more exotic, like cinnamon or nutmeg. Chris caught it, too; Lotte saw her nose wrinkle.

  This time, Lotte took care of the door, flipping it open with her right hand. Chris moved back in order to give herself a clear shot. Her gun remained steady, but she lowered it slowly as the interior was revealed. She nodded her head to Lotte, indicating that it was safe to look.

  Armitage sat naked in the shower stall, her forearms opened in jagged cuts from wrist to elbow, leaving the legat to bleed out rapidly and copiously. Most of the blood was on the floor of the stall, but some of it had splashed the walls. Lotte checked for a pulse on the woman’s neck, but it was a redundant gesture. Armitage was obviously dead, her skin faintly mottled.

  “Do you think we’ll still get paid?” she said.

  But Chris was looking at the tiles, and the blood upon them.

  “What is that?” she said, spotting a symbol amid the spray.

  “I think it’s writing,” said Lotte.

  Chris leaned in closer. Even in the glow from the nightlight, she could see that the letters had been scratched into the surface, as though someone had dipped a sharp nib in the blood and used it to etch them into the tiles.

  “That looks like Arabic,” said Chris.

  They exchanged a glance. A dead federal agent, and a message written in Arabic, meant the kind of heat that set nations alight.

  “Do you see a blade?” said Lotte.

  “No.”

  “Then how did she kill herself?”

  “Shit,” said Chris.

  “Shit,” echoed Lotte.

  But they were already retreating from the apartment, even as the last of the lettering faded from the dead woman’s skin, leaving only the barest trace of patterning on the whites of her eyes, like fine blue veins.

  Until finally, this too was gone.

  CHAPTER CXXXIV

  Shortly after 9 a.m., having first secured the offices of Lockwood, Dodson & Fogg, armed police entered the cellars of Lincoln’s Inn to begin searching for an underground means of access to the Old Firm on the other side of Star Yard. Following the intervention of a legal historian, a psychogeographer, and a pair of underground explorers familiar with the area, they discovered an entry point, and worked their way under Star Yard to a steel door. Upon breaking it down, they found themselves in a basement area beneath the Old Firm, and progressed upward through a series of rooms piled high with books and legal papers going back centuries, until they came to a set of living quarters.

  Bob Johnston sat secured to a chair in the main room, his mouth taped shut, but with a hole in the center of the gag. From it protruded a long straw that ended in a near-empty two-liter bottle of water. Johnston was stiff, hungry, and almost delirious with pain from a ruptured eardrum and a damaged hand. What might have befallen him had Glenmore not come forward was unclear, but when asked why Quayle had left him alive, Johnston replied:

  “He told me it was because I loved books.”

  CHAPTER CXXXV

  A week went by. Parker, Angel, and Louis answered a lot of questions, and, on the advice of a lawyer provided by Canton, declined to answer a whole lot more. But Canton was correct: the lie about the events in Fairford was accepted, because the truth would have caused more problems for everyone. Christopher Sellars also inadvertently aided their efforts. It is possible to inject drugs directly and safely into the brain, but not with the kind of force that comes from a gas-propelled aluminum dart. Sellars, who had picked up a pair of pig’s eyes while passing through the meat market solely to add extra anguish to Parker’s final moments, died without ever regaining consciousness. Whatever he might have had to share about Quayle, or the Atlas, died with him.

  * * *

  PARKER SPOKE WITH ROSS on the morning that he, Angel, and Louis were due to leave for the airport. Bob Johnston would not be joining them, having elected to remain in London for a while. Rosanna Bellingham had offered him a room in her home, which Johnston accepted once she confirmed that the presence in the living room appeared to have departed. He’d had enough of visitations, enough of str
angeness. According to the doctors, he would never regain the hearing in his damaged ear. He accepted this news with equanimity, because while he might now be deaf in one ear, and with splints and bandages on his broken fingers, he was, at least, still alive.

  “I heard things in the walls when I was tied to that chair,” Johnston told Parker, while recovering in his hospital bed. “I know some might say I was imagining things, but I wasn’t.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “Voices, and a man whistling a tune. I think it was ‘Pack Up Your Troubles.’ You know, the old World War One song.”

  “I know it.”

  “I’d say it was odd, but in the context of all that’s happened, that wouldn’t be true, would it?”

  “No, I guess not.”

  And when the Old Firm was searched more thoroughly over the weeks that followed, and its walls were broken down, a number of bodies were found immured there. Most would remain anonymous, but one was identified almost immediately, thanks to a wallet found lodged beneath its feet. The wallet contained some money; a photograph of a man in uniform, seated with a woman and two young children; and a folded, barely intact, certificate of discharge from the military in the name of John Soter.

  “What did you see in that church?” Johnston asked Parker, before they parted.

  “I’m not sure. I don’t think I can tell what was real and what was not.”

  “Maybe I don’t want to know. It’s enough that I heard John Soter whistling.”

  None of this Parker chose to share with Ross in the course of their subsequent conversation. It would not have interested him. He was not a sentimental man.