Bone Deep

by Lea Griffith

  His hips pumped and she relished the sweat that fell from him as a benediction, burning her skin in the most delightful ways.

  “Take me,” he demanded. “Take all of me.”

  She did not answer simply gave herself over to him, allowing his body to carry hers up the shimmering cliffs of desire so that they both peaked and exploded at the same time.

  He rode her through her orgasm, building the heat once more, pushing her body until she thought she’d go mad.

  “I will have all of you,” he said at her ear.

  She acceded and he took it—her heart, her soul, her mind, they were his. Bone was his.

  And when the darkness began to lighten in the eastern sky, Bone slid from the sheets and the warmth of his body, kissed his lips and left.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  The cabin had not changed much. A broken spot in the landscape of the forest, it was a sad reminder of a past Bone could no longer run from. Warped, twisted boards hung haphazardly across the opening and moss clung to the rotting wood. The trees of the rainforest had formed a shroud of sorts above the roof, as if protecting the events that occurred there.

  The light was falling and Bone lifted her gaze to the western sky, noting the deep oranges and brilliant reds of the setting sun. The blue of the day was being chased by the threat of the darkness and the darkness was winning as it always did.

  Jungle cats screamed in the distance but the night birds were silent. She was here, close, but Bone was lost to the history they shared.

  Bullet had stood guard fourteen years ago and Arrow had entered with Bone and Blade.

  We must help her, sisters. Blade had been so persistent and the desperation in her voice brought chills to Bone’s skin in the present. They had gotten out of bed, dressed in tanks and shorts, no shoes, and run through the night to a cabin they’d not known existed. They’d followed their sister without question.

  Who is she, Blade? Arrow had asked. Bone had been mute with terror. The scent of blood, urine, and feces had been strong. It was as if death stalked them all that night.

  She is mine. Blade’s answer had been enough.

  Bone had never had an easy time seeing in the dark. Arrow and Blade were the best with the darkness, but she’d walked in, drawn by the pain she heard in the girl’s mewls.

  What is wrong with her? The question rang down through time and Bone remembered her fear at the unknown.

  Blade had moaned, as if the pain was her own. I don’t know.

  We should not be here. Death is here. Arrow warned them and in hindsight Bone realized it would have been better for them all if they’d simply left.

  But they hadn’t.

  You are the strongest, Bone. Help her.

  Blade’s demands, combined with the girl’s keening cries had prompted Bone’s feet to move.

  It is so dark in here. I cannot see, she had told Blade.

  We cannot risk any light. He will know then.

  Bone scraped her foot, hissed out a breath at the small hurt and walked to the girl. Bone placed her hands on the girl’s body then. The tiny thing was contorted in agony, her breathing shallow. Help me.

  Her belly had been huge and distended. Wetness coated the floor at Bone’s feet and the copper stench of blood was vicious.

  I must push.

  The snap of a twig broke the silence of the mountains around her and Bone found herself wholly in the present, standing inside the cabin, staring at the corner where she’d both taken and saved life.

  “I do not remember much about that night, but I remember the pain,” her voice pressed on Bone’s eardrums, filled with ghosts and hate.

  “I remember it all,” Bone said, turning to confront the woman who had been on First Team’s heels for well over a year, maybe longer.

  The falling sun highlighted her tall form. Willowy and rail thin, she didn’t present much of a threat. Her long, wavy, wheat-blond hair reminded her of another time. Like the yellow crayon in my crayon box, that’s what Ninka’s hair reminds me of, Bullet had always said.

  Bone blinked her eyes, the transposition of the past on the present throwing her for a second.

  She inhaled slowly, deeply, letting the orchid-scented air soothe the wildness in her soul. “You were much smaller then, though your face and form remained in darkness. You smelled of blood and death. It was abhorrent to me.”

  The setting sun haloed her, keeping her features in darkness but giving Bone an impression of frailty.

  “And now, Bone Breaker, what do I smell of?”

  The woman’s husky tones rang through the forest, ricocheting off the trees and seeking to stoke Bone’s rage.

  “I do not know, Nameless,” Bone said softly. “Why don’t you step closer so I can be sure?”

  The woman threw her head back and laughed. “I will not dance with you, killer.”

  “‘We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once,’” Bone mused aloud.

  “Nietzsche. Impressive. I wondered if you were all nothing more than brute force and a need to kill,” the woman responded.

  Bone shrugged. “I am what I have always had to be. But in this you have no choice,” Bone told her. “We will dance. I didn’t come here to chat. I didn’t come here to discuss the monsters of our past. I came to here to put you down should there be need.”

  The woman sighed and nodded. “It is something you excel at. ‘He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’”

  Bone’s skin rippled with awareness. Someone else was headed their way. “Nietzsche becomes you as well, Nameless.”

  “You have your fists, Blade her knife’s edge, Bullet her rifle, and Arrow her bow. My weapon is my mind and he almost took that from me,” Nameless imparted.

  “You did not break and that is good, but you are not as we are.” Bone shifted, sliding to her right preparing herself. The woman’s body had coiled, muscles tightening. Blade was correct—she wasn’t trained. Whatever she’d learned hadn’t been at Joseph’s hands. “And I am not your abyss.”

  The woman remained in shadow though it mattered not to Bone. She had fought shadows her entire life.

  “You are all a product of my abyss. It is the truth I don’t whether to destroy you all or seat you a table of royalty and worship you. Perhaps I owe each of you something different. But you, Bone, you I owe more than the others,” Nameless whispered.

  She’s having a child, Arrow had whispered so long ago, the demons she carried inside her swirling and reaching for Bone even then.

  More screams and then a plea from the girl to get whatever was inside of her out. Bone had reached for her, seeing the darker shadow of her body lying on a cot of some short, legs bent, body heaving.

  Help her, Bone! It was if Blade was there and Bone actually looked around, seeing the cobwebs and the dirty walls of the present.

  “You do remember,” Nameless said with a small laugh. “That’s good. I had hoped it haunted your every waking moment but you remembering here, where I can watch your face, is enough.”

  Take it out of me! The girl labored. Bone checked her pulse, finding it weak and thready and knowing she didn’t have much time left. She had only known death but she remembered a time when her mother had dragged her to the heart of Jericho. A fellow Zionist was giving birth and Bone’s mother had been a midwife.

  Bone had remembered her mother reaching between the girls legs and pulling a baby out.

  Get it out, please!

  Her screams were weaker and with Blade’s fear scenting the air, Bone had done what her mother had done. She’d reached between the girl’s legs and pulled.

  She remembered the wet feel of a rounded head, so tiny and fragile and she remembered grasping that head and tugging. She remembered the snap of tiny bones and a feeling that she had done something wrong—that this was not how it was supposed to go.

  Push, she had sa
id to the girl softly after begging Blade to shut her up.

  The girl had pushed and the child had fallen into Bone’s hands, unmoving. Its head flopped to the side and Bone’s heart had shattered. It isn’t breathing.

  Her own words echoed through from the past to the present.

  She had broken its neck with her clumsy attempts. She had taken an innocent life and it had ripped her soul in two.

  “You killed the first one,” Nameless said, her body shifting sinuously as she prepared to strike. “I have always wondered if it was intentional.”

  Bone could not answer her because it was a truth she did not know and it tortured her unlike anything Joseph or Minton had ever done. Had she? Had her rage and fear been so great that maybe in the grips of it she had succumbed to the only thing she’d ever known? Death bringer.

  “After all, you were created and honed to kill,” Nameless finished bitterly.

  She struck then and Bone took the fist to the side, right over the area where she’d been shot and she staggered back doubling over.

  Nameless followed it with another kick to the abdomen and Bone absorbed the blow. The pain spread like poison through her veins, wracking and demanding she fight this woman who thought she could take Bone down.

  Another kick and a shot to the side of Bone’s head and she spit out blood, stood tall and said, “Enough!”

  “It could never be enough,” Nameless spit out.

  Bone took her measure and spun to meet the next kick, catching the other woman’s leg and twisting until Nameless spun and fell to the ground. She was up almost immediately but Bone was ready.

  “I allowed you those strikes because a part of me feels as I deserve them. But you will get no more,” Bone promised in a deadly voice.

  “Where is the other boy?” Nameless asked.

  Bone closed her eyes and simply listened. A shift of boot over dirt and gasp of pain. Fighting was ninety-nine percent awareness. The other one percent was training and motivation. Bone was at one hundred percent right now. “The boy is ours.”

  “He. Is. Mine!”

  Nameless attacked again but Bone met each thrust and parry with a sharp, definitive blow, rocking the other woman on her heels until she finally fell in the dirt and scrambled backward.

  They were away from the entrance of the cabin now and the low light told Bone the truth of Nameless. She was a fine-looking woman—even with a cut above her eyes and a now-broken nose she was startling. Her face was a symmetry of classical perfection—well, maybe not so much now with the broken nose.

  “He is ours,” Bone said again. She walked to stand over the woman, grabbing her head in her hands and forcing her look up. “I am sorry,” she whispered on a broken breath.

  “You are a killer and as such show no mercy,” Nameless responded, her blue gaze narrowed and filled with pain that had festered for years and years.

  “I buried him in the bone yard beside the rest of ours. I did not name him so he remains as you…nameless. I have suffered every day for that single life I took. Accident or not, his death weighs on my soul. You could not hope to punish me any more than I’ve punished myself,” Bone said in her ear.

  “I want to kill you.”

  “You will not. And you will leave my sisters and the boy alone. You think Joseph is yours to take but he is not. Did you not give yourself to him, taunt him with your childish body until he took what you were offering?”

  Nameless gasped and Bone had her affirmation.

  “You did. You saw a way to survive and while I will not judge you for that, I will say to you what is given freely cannot be used to justify vengeance. I am not saying you do not deserve it, simply that it is not yours any longer.”

  “You do not know…” Nameless began.

  Bone squeezed and a gun cocked.

  “Let her go.”

  His rough voice sent both thrill and foreboding through her.

  Nameless smiled and something in the curve of her lips made Bone’s blood freeze. So familiar was that curve, so memorable those eyes.

  “Did Blade ever see you as a child?” Bone asked the woman.

  “No.”

  A simple answer and yet it created a bevy of questions.

  “I said, let her go,” Dmitry bit out in a hard voice.

  Bone raised her gaze to see him standing feet from them. “You would kill me now, Asinimov?”

  His conflict was on his face. “You do not understand…”

  “You do not know…you do not understand…one would think I’m an imbecile not to see the truth in front of me,” Bone retorted viciously. To the woman whose head and life she held in her hands she asked, “What was your given name?”

  The woman smiled full out now. Bone whispered the name even as the woman spoke it aloud, “Ninka.”

  Dmitry took a step and Bone speared him with her gaze. “Do not move, Asinimov. I hold her in my hands and you know I’m a death-dealer.”

  Shock rolled in a great wave through Bone. It was not possible. She had buried Ninka in the bone yard. She had watched the life drain from her eyes after Julio had broken her body

  “You are not her,” Bone said ruthlessly, squeezing even harder.

  “Do not hurt her, Bone!” Dmitry yelled.

  The report of his shot made her ears ring. The dust from his bullet hitting the ground beside her feet was testament he would shoot her.

  He would shoot her for a dead woman.

  “I am her,” Nameless murmured, smile in place. “Go ahead, Bone Breaker, kill me. Take my life once more and leave me in peace.”

  “Let her go, Bone. I will not let you kill her,” Dmitry demanded.

  Her gaze dropped to the woman. Her sisters could not have anticipated this and would be devastated. Ninka lived? Their reason for vengeance—their entire reason for putting each foot in front of the other for the entirety of their years was alive? No. It was impossible.

  Yet the truth was indeed in front of her.

  Another shot, this one winging her thigh, close to where she’d taken a grazing shot in Virginia.

  This must be what betrayal felt like.

  She met his blue-blue eyes and in them was pain but also conviction. He would kill her if he had to in order to save the woman she held.

  “You would do this then?” she asked in a broken voice.

  Where was her rage? Where was her lust to kill? Where were all the things that made Bone a killer when she needed them most?

  “I will,” he responded and in his tone was affirmation.

  Bone rose, dropping the woman to the ground and taking a step back. She held her hands opened wide. “You should have left me in Minton’s ropes. It would have been an easier end,” she told him.

  “Leave,” he told her, “and I will not follow you. Not yet.”

  She shook her head, the pain she’d been begging for nearly sweeping her off her feet. “Do not follow me at all. We will end it here.”

  “I will not fight you,” he bellowed.

  She took another step back, then another. Birds took flight from the canopy, disturbed from their night nests by his vehement denial.

  “He’s coming,” Nameless said softly. “I can feel him.”

  Bone glanced at the woman who still lay on the ground. Dmitry ran to her, helping her stand.

  It was over.

  “Run,” Dmitry said. “I will find you.”

  “Do not seek me, Asinimov. All you will find is death,” she promised.

  Joseph was coming, the sound of jeeps heading up the pass sounded clearly. Dmitry headed into the forest with Nameless.

  Bone did not rub the ache in her chest. She did not allow herself to break. She put one foot in front of the other as she had always done and she made her way from the cabin, away from her past, away from Arequipa.

  She stopped only once to contact Blade. She told her what had transpired and waited.

  “Thank you, sister. But you must know she is not Ninka. Ninka died in that clearing an
d we buried her in the bone yard. She is gone to us. Whoever Nameless is, she is not ours,” Blade assured her.

  Blade was in play now, searching for Nodachi and the boy and setting up the final kill that would render Joseph powerless.

  “It is as it should be,” Bone whispered and hung up. She called Bullet and Arrow and whispered those same words, not giving either sister time to speak simply hanging up afterward.

  In the end it did not matter that Nameless lived. Whether she was Ninka reincarnated or Ninka herself, Joseph and The Collective were going to perish.

  There was more to do but Bone needed the sun and sands of her birthplace. So home she would go.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Her walls had crumbled much as the walls of her beloved city, Jericho. She was aimless, lost, and just a crack away from being broken completely. Her world had been turned upside down by Dmitry Asinimov. He had taught her that she could feel the softer emotions and then he’d stomped on her, showing her that in the end the only thing softer emotions earned you was pain.

  She walked along the banks of the Jordan River and knew no peace. She walked the city bazaars in the heart of a bustling Jericho but it did not succor her.

  It wasn’t until she’d stepped onto the plains of Jericho that she knew she must go to Masada. She stood on the sands of the plains until her feet burned and her skin was fire. She soaked up as much warmth as her cold soul could carry and then she set out for Masada.

  She walked for five days, taking care to remain as far from civilization as possible. She kept the Dead Sea to her left and the rest of the world to the right and on the fifth day, she came to her beloved rock.

  The high, barren plateau had called to her and she answered. She waited until the tourist groups left each day and then she ventured into the ruins, touching walls she left long ago and remembering the pain of her parent’s betrayal.

  It was similar to Dmitry’s yet different. She had never loved her parents. They had not surprised her with their actions. Dmitry had.