Chest of Bone (The Afterworld Chronicles Book 1)

by Vicki Stiefel

  “And where are you going?” she asked.

  “Nowhere. I’ve got some errands later, and I just want to check the gas. We might be low.”

  I stowed the backpack on the floor of the backseat. Right. A magic fricking chest just hanging out on the floor of my truck. Sort of like groceries, only more.

  I had plenty of gas, as I suspected, and when I closed the door, I pinged the silent lock.

  I opened the mudroom door. Now came the hard part.

  Bernadette was finishing up with the dishes. James was in his room. I started down the cellar stairs, ran back up, softly shut the door, then shouted up to the men, dosing my voice with fear. “James!”

  He blazed down the hall. Bernadette swirled to face me.

  “There’s someone in the cellar!” My breathing came hard and fast. “Maybe more than one. I heard something. Felt something bad. By the chimney flue.” I waved my hand toward the cellar’s far end.

  They all reacted to my “feeling,” just as I’d hoped.

  “We need to check.” I drew the gun from my boot.

  Larrimer whipped out his 9mm.

  Such a stupid plan, but… I opened the door and looked behind me. Yup, Bernadette had pulled her derringer and was loading bullets into the double barrel.

  “Bernadette, really?” I asked.

  She scowled. “It’s my home, too, cookie.”

  “Fine.” I put my snottiest tone into that one word. “I’ll take point.”

  Larrimer shot me a look meant to annihilate. “I’m point.”

  I huffed. “Bernadette, get in front of me, then. I want to make sure we’re not jumped from behind. Somebody could come in from the bulkhead.”

  I unlatched the door, eased it open, but didn’t turn on the lights. James glided down the steps, silicone smooth, as did Bernadette.

  I followed. Well, two steps, followed. The cellar was vast. I waited until they made it almost to the other end, their focus entirely ahead of them. I padded back up the two stairs, eased the door closed, and locked it. Then I dragged the red chair across the room and wedged it between the cellar door and the hall wall.

  Shouts. In particular, James’ booming voice, “Clea!”

  I’m sorry. So sorry.

  The chair wouldn’t hold them, not with Larrimer’s strength. But they’d be trapped just long enough for me to escape.

  Just before I left, I placed the Fae knife on Larrimer’s bed.

  was back at MacDaniel Lake, only this time, I’d swung around and approached the reservoir high up from the road. I’d taken the burner phone. GPS was a bitch.

  When I got out, I donned my weapons. They would do bupkis against his magic, but I hoped they’d prove a distraction.

  I stood amidst pines and crept closer to the bridge, up the verge, hugging the shadows of the trees. My watch read nine forty. Twenty minutes to blast off. Gods, that sounded way too literal. I paused, and the early March damp seeped into my bones. Not my favorite type of day. Today might be my least favorite of all—my last.

  Pops of adrenaline. I massaged the spiral on my wrist, which was disturbingly inert. I’d been close to death before. He’d kissed my lips, in fact. But this was different. This was Tommy.

  We’d come here myriad times. In spring, herons fished the waters. In summer, turtles basked on logs. In fall, ducks flew south.

  Today, blotches of dirty ice and snow covered the paths, along with a silence that failed to work its usual magic. All I felt was alone.

  Could I really kill Tommy?

  Having seen his power, would I even be able to kill him? Whispers faint and haunting said yes.

  My stomach cramped. For what was to come. For how Tommy and I had gone so wrong. For death. Nobody came back from that particular trip.

  Bernadette’s bark, Now is the only moment, cookie. Own it!

  Now. Only now.

  I centered myself, readjusted my backpack, then moved, crouching low as I approached the bridge, with its concrete abutments and two-story tower.

  Tommy would be on the far side. Beyond that sat a small deforested hill, followed by acres and acres of trees.

  I licked my lips. This whole game depended on my knowledge of Tommy Sevaux. That he wanted me, would try to take the chest and me. That he loved gambles and trades and one-upmanship, which was how he would see Lulu. She had little value to him. So, by getting the chest and me in trade, he’d one-up me. A childhood game. Our game. He’d won so often, he’d fail to remember that I’d won sometimes, too.

  Today had to be that “sometimes.”

  I took a breath, straightened, and walked forward, out of the trees and onto the wide path flanked by forest. I still couldn’t see the bridge. But I knew the way.

  I climbed the sinuous path. Keep walking. Keep climbing.

  Clumps of snow on the bridge and the hill beyond. Gray sky brewed overhead, filled with mean clouds threatening wet snow. Not much wind. A plus.

  I stopped and peered across the bridge. Where was Tommy? I squinted, hoping to catch a glimpse of movement. The wind picked up, and from across the bridge, the ugly scents of rotted geraniums and cat urine. Smoke coalesced, darkening from white to charcoal. Lit from within, it pulsed. And chittered.

  Oh hell. I knew that sound. A bead of sweat trickled down my back.

  The smoke thing banded the trees high up the hill, then flowed down like syrup to the opposite side of the bridge directly across from me.

  Yeah, I knew just what was coming.

  At the bottom of the hill, the viscous wave paused and coalesced. That woman’s face, huge and high-cheekboned, eyes closed, with gray mottled skin, tendriled hair that undulated and soon differentiated into those snake-like things. The Cardillo. She, it, solidified from the mucoid wall, shaping, rising, until the horrible cobrathings spread their pulsing red hoods and black tongues flicked out.

  I looked around. Not a wolf in sight. A girl could hope, right?

  A primal scream begged to escape. Focus, focus, little Mage. My Da’s words.

  I drew my Bowie.

  The cobrathings writhed into a nest and tumbled onto the bridge. Bile in my throat.

  Jean-covered legs dispersed the gunmetal ooze, and that nest of repulsive things parted, fawning, glistening cobra-heads bowing.

  Tommy stepped from their midst, Lulu clutched to his side, as if they were on some twisted date. She wore that same indigo dress, now dirtied and torn. It ruffled in the breeze.

  Hands cuffed behind her, she still struggled. Good girl. Duct tape covered her mouth. Wide eyes, a mixture of fear and outrage, stared at me. Lulu might be terrified, but she was also pissed.

  That fucking bastard. There it was, my anger. I reveled in it, nourished it, bathed in its bright light. My rage spiraled higher and higher. I sizzled.

  And my soul knew that I could kill him.

  A part of me fixed on those cobrathings. They hadn’t moved forward.

  “Cle-a.” Tommy singsonged my name, slow and strong. It was a lullaby, a call for me to come, a siren’s song.

  “I’m ready!” I shouted back. “Are you?”

  “Have you got it?” he said.

  “Oh yes,” I said, all husky and warm.

  “Then show me.”

  I rested a knee on the ground, unzipped my backpack, and withdrew the chest. For the millionth time, I wished I could have brought a fake. Knew I would fail if I did. I held it up.

  “How do I know it’s the real deal?” he said.

  “Can’t you sense it with your woo-woo powers, Mr. Adept? Maybe those disgusting snaky things can.”

  He laughed. “Come to me.”

  There it was again. The call. The cry. The song. “No. You’ll just have to believe me that I hold Dave’s calligraphy box. The Chest of Bone.” I grinned. “With Dave making those invitations, the box was right under your nose. You could have had it all this time.”

  “I’ll have it soon enough.” He nodded, and the smoky ooze parted again. Two of his goons, arm
ed to the teeth, stood sentinel.

  A spurt of panic, a couple of fireflies escaping beneath hands death gripped on the chest. I took a few steps forward. “Really? I mean, come on. You must be pretty impressed with me, bringing those bozos.”

  “Not with you, sweetness, your creature.”

  I refused to turn, but I felt him, immense, his wrath an inferno to my flame.

  A cocktail of joy and fear. “James,” I said, not turning. “This is between The Master and me.”

  “Hey, babe, I want to dance, too.”

  I stuttered in a breath. “You don’t understand.”

  “I do.” He stepped beside me. Silent. Savage.

  “Take it or leave it, Tommy!” I said with a shout.

  We walked forward, which was when my senses caught another person, crouching in the bushes to my left. Tommy would have noticed it, too. Unless that person was part of his cadre. Hell.

  “Who else—” I said to Larrimer.

  “Hell if I—”

  “Tommy!” A scream ripped from a soul in torment.

  Bernadette! I forced myself not to turn, to keep my focus.

  We moved toward the middle of the bridge. So did The Master, wrenching Lulu along.

  Ten feet. Eight. Then he stood before me, six feet away, wearing jeans and the blue sweater I’d knit for him one winter. Lulu stilled, eyes saucers, hair wild. She notched up her chin.

  Tommy flicked a finger, and a quill of power sliced her cheek. Her cry muffled, she stumbled, but he caught her. Blood trickled from the cut.

  I stoppered my howl of fury. Not yet. Calm, be calm.

  Beside me, Larrimer’s cool savagery was a balm to my senses.

  “I don’t want to hurt this girl,” Tommy said.

  “You’ve already done that,” I said.

  “Give me the chest,” he said. “Give me you.”

  His expression gentled, pleaded.

  “All right,” I said.

  Larrimer’s feral growl. “No.”

  “Trust me,” I said.

  Tommy tugged at me with his power, and I allowed it in. I hugged the chest and walked forward.

  Larrimer reached for me.

  “No,” I said. “Take Lulu, James.”

  Tommy’s smile flayed me. “Not yet.”

  “Oui, Tom!” Bernadette. A wraith beside me, fragile and wild and old. Derringer drawn, her fingers bit into my shoulder.

  “Bernadette, no,” I whispered.

  Then a knife arrowed from Larrimer’s hand, swifter than I could track.

  Dripping arrogance, Tommy didn’t move.

  His face seared with shock when the knife drove into his shoulder to the hilt.

  He roared.

  The cobrathings slithered across the bridge, jaws wide, monstrous fangs dripping venom.

  Larrimer reached behind him and unsheathed his swords.

  Bernadette fired her gun, and Tommy’s shock allowed her to rip Lulu from his grasp, and they tumbled to the ground. I dropped the chest and fireflied, pushing his power away from me.

  Streams, rivers of gorgeous gold fireflies answered my call to consume Tommy’s miasma of evil, fireflied stitches mimicking my wrist’s Celtic spirals, twirling like blades.

  Tommy’s hands, a cascade of silver quills, crashed against my fireflies.

  Mine held. So did his. Stalemate. Tommy couldn’t get through. But the cobrathings kept coming and coming.

  With the battlecry, “Aera!” Larrimer’s swords flashed as he danced, a blur, rending, slashing, cleaving cobra head after head after head.

  Gods, he was gorgeous.

  And Tommy was mine. I smiled as I battled, and the pleasure-pain melded, my swirl of fireflies a beautiful symphony of death. Soon, the warmth of blood trickled from my eyes, my nose, my ears. Screw that. “Hell yeah!” I screamed.

  Tommy waved his left hand, and the chest flew to him.

  “No!” I reached for it, failed to capture it. So I pushed and thrust and rammed that wall of steel, and Tommy staggered back, back, back, his face a bloody mask.

  “Now!” Tommy hollered, but nothing happened.

  “You’re a fucking warrior, babe!” shouted Larrimer.

  It was glorious.

  Tommy dropped the chest.

  “Bitch!” He fell to one knee, angled his hands.

  Larrimer kept cutting, slashing, and I, I was pure energy, fireflies boiling, a magic wall of razored spirals.

  “Now! You fucking assholes!” Tommy screamed.

  The two thugs ran across the bridge and stepped beside Tom, automatic weapons barking. Bullets poured, and I strained against Tommy’s rain of silver quills, chanted warrior again and again. Bullets hailed, bouncing off my fireflies, ricocheting.

  A goon fell. The other, teetered, crumpled.

  The remnants of the cobrathings, now a roiling nest, the woman’s face, a howl.

  Larrimer, flanking me. My world ignited, cyclonic light streaming from me.

  And Tommy broke, fell backward into the fog, buried beneath the churning ball.

  I staggered.

  But his power still pulsed, grew from that writhing mound, as it shrouded Tommy and the men and the Chest of Bone.

  Tommy’s hand emerged, then his arm, his head, his shoulders, seeking.

  I understood, tried to protect them, spread my arms, widened my firefly stream, but I tripped, tired, too tired. And I was late!

  A blast from Tommy. Bernadette, cradling Lulu, exploded into the air.

  “Catch them!” I screamed at Larrimer.

  But I fireflied, more, staggered again, didn’t let up, couldn’t. And my fireflies began to come apart, unraveling, loosening, deconstructing. Can’t… I screamed and screamed and…

  My heart shattered.

  I flew backward, a blur, Larrimer clasping Lulu, Bernadette, pavement, trees, sky, absurdly blue.

  Blood. Tasting it, drinking it, knowing it, and trying so hard to slow, to soften… killing trees… Try. Try. All used up. All used…

  Body on ice, I swim through murky sludge aiming for a surface I know is there, but can’t see. Vibrations course through me, tuning-fork fast, as I paddle, seeking the unknown. My focus weaves in and out, wavers, a funhouse mirror. A coppery taste lines my mouth, and my hands slow, my kicks grow lethargic.

  The sludge warms, heats, boils with intensity.

  Vibrations accelerate, hypersonic.

  I can’t. I just can’t.

  Come.

  The wyvern. Wings arched in a powerful display.

  Come.

  I obey.

  And fall.

  I awakened, sluggish, aching to reach… finding… the smells of earth and pine and honey. Something cradled me, warm and strong. James.

  As I reached to touch him, agony. Muscles screamed, something torn, and cold, bitter cold. I moved to rise.

  “Don’t,” the voice filtered through pain and illusion. “Stay still.”

  “Can’t. Must find—”

  “Lulu is okay.”

  I blinked away the blur. Saw his face, scarred and blistered. Fingers moved, clasped mine. I hung on tight, his life pulse intense.

  The wyvern. “I died, didn’t I?”

  His hand tightened on mine. “I don’t know.”

  “You’re burned, the cobrathings spittle. Yet you held me.”

  “Yes. Whatever saved you, it wasn’t me.”

  Oh, but it was. “You saved them, too.”

  “I caught them,” he said, voice gruff. “Bernadette did the saving. C’mon.” He rose and carried me to Fern’s tailgate.

  In the back of Fern, he’d made a makeshift bed from blankets. On it lay Lulu and Bernadette. Both so still.

  “Lulu’s heartbeat and color are good,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”

  “Let me get in with them.”

  “Clea, don’t.” A darkness in his voice, one I didn’t like.

  I crawled between them toward Lulu and brushed her hair from her face. He’d removed her
manacles, the tape. They’d left red marks. Her breath sloughed in and out. A steady rhythm.

  I turned to Bernadette. She lay on her stomach, face angled toward me, a glaze of red, and I stared at the jumble of blood and flesh and bone from shoulder to waist. Oh gods. She wasn’t breathing! I moved closer, caught a whisper of breath.

  I looked at Larrimer.

  He shook his head, face taut, eyes a sorrowful howl. “Everything’s broken. Bleeding internally. From The Master’s blast. She saved Lulu.”

  Her turban was off, long, long gray hair pushed to the side, two tiny, pearlescent horns growing from her skull. I started to touch them, clenched my fingers.

  I took her limp hand in mine and lay down beside her, my face inches from hers. “Bernadette. It’s me, Clea.”

  Clea Artemis, she said in that voice I knew so well.

  “Yes?”

  I knew you would hear me.

  Not speaking. No, she was inside my mind.

  Hear me, child.

  “How can I help? What can I do?”

  See me.

  An image coalesced in my mind of a fierce warrior— armored, with long black hair streaming behind her, sword in hand, eyes flames of midnight suns. Bernadette, young and beautiful and terrible.

  You were the soft and he was the hard. You needed strength. He needed love.

  “Rest. Please rest.”

  She laughed inside my head. No time for that now, cookie.

  I bit back a sob, almost smiled. So very Bernadette.

  Hear me. If I erred, I did the best I knew how. You are The Key. La Clé. You are ready.

  “Because of you.”

  He is your twin.

  I gasped. My brother. “Why not tell me?”

  The Fae Queen ordained you be fostered. And so I performed her charade. He was First. Eldest. Thomas Apollo. The boy I loved too well. Adieu, Clea Artemis, child of my daughter.

  “Bernadette!”

  But she was gone.

  oments stretched, elastic, infinite.

  Bernadette looked out at the world with an expression I’d seldom seen her wear. Half-lidded hazel eyes, empty with death’s embrace, her face softened by a slight smile of accomplishment, as if she’d reached her goal and attained it with pride.