24 Bones

by Stewart, Michael F.

  “He helped me do battle with the devil of alcohol.”

  “Alleluia!” the choir chimed.

  “I owe the Lord of life, my life.”

  He shook in what Father John supposed was overwrought ecstasy and then hung his head.

  “Praise the Lord,” the priest continued. He wasn’t especially proud of Ashley’s antics, but his celebrity was a draw, and Father John would never apologize for bringing God into the homes of his viewership.

  “You’ve got a hundred-dollar-kind-old-lady on the line, John, name is Sandra,” a voice told him through his earbud.

  “And if you need our help, if you need our prayer,” Father John explained to the viewing audience. “Please call the number at the bottom of your screen for a prayer request.” He swept his hand where the station would broadcast the numbers. “Sandra, you have a special problem?”

  “Yes, hello? Father John?”

  “Sandra, you are on the air and have generously made a one hundred-dollar prayer request.”

  “Make it quick, Father, we’ve got a big fish,” his earbud complained.

  “Oh, good, thank you,” Sandra said. “I listen to your show all the time, and—”

  “Who would you like us to pray for, Sandra?”

  “I have a cat. She is very ill. Her name is Jingles.”

  “Hurry, John. There’s a guy, calls himself the pharaoh—never mind that—he’s got a million dollars for a ten-minute on-air prayer. Got it?”

  “And I cannot afford the cost of the operation see? It’s to cure her cancer,” the kind old lady said. “Bone cancer it is. She’s caught a demon in her bones.” Her voice rose to a shrill wavering pitch. “Will you pray for her?”

  Father John had turned his ear to the camera, and now the camera zoomed in for a close-up. “Sandra, we will pray for you here, and so will the three million listeners of our program. You are God’s child and so is your cat. Let us pray for her now. Let us draw out Jingles’s cancer.” He stabbed with his arm, like a knight slaying a dragon. He closed his eyes for a moment, more of a blink, clasped his hands briefly to his chest, and turned his ear to the audience once more.

  “We have a very special caller. Clearly a devoted man, a man with a very special request.” Father John wasn’t all that excited, they had had big fish before who didn’t come through, but for every kind-old-lady they put on the air, they received a hundred more. Kind-old-ladies had built his ministry, and to them he must direct his attention.

  “Jesus Christ, Mother Mary—John, it processed, we are clear half a million, make it count.”

  But sometimes someone truly in need called. He grinned like a jack-o-lantern. With this sort of money, he could buy a major network’s nine AM slot on a Sunday morning.

  “Go ahead, caller.”

  “Yes, I do have a special request, Father John.” Pharaoh paused. “I will make a prayer pledge of one million dollars for a ten-minute prayer at three PM Eastern Standard Time on your program tomorrow.”

  “We’ll pray for you now, Pharaoh.”

  “Tomorrow, it’s a very important time. You will receive half now as a deposit, half after the prayer.”

  “John, agree to it, for a million dollars I’d pray for his dick to grow.”

  “Pharaoh, at three PM tomorrow, we will open our hearts to you.”

  “Thank you, Father, but I only have need of your minds.”

  Chapter Thirty-seven

  Zahara’s hands brushed against the stone of the low passage. Each time her hand jarred against a rock niche, she bit her lip and tried not to cry out. The stub of her thumb throbbed. She longed for sunlight, and as the prospect of a light-filled, ceilingless world approached, she hastened.

  What she missed most of her old life was to be covered. She craved to wear the flowing robes of the Sisters of Isis and to return to celibacy—to be pure. Her stomach lurched, bile filling her mouth. She gagged it down. Purity was no longer an option. The prospect of a flood had shaken her. The cities of Luxor and Aswan would be swamped. Millions would drown. She had to warn the sisters.

  Her hands lost the guide of the wall. She shuffled and searched for where the wall began again. She looked backward into black and shuddered. David—Seth—had frightened her, but not as much as Pharaoh. Pharaoh knew what he wanted and was calculating and difficult to manipulate. In their last meeting, she had sensed his impatience. Her role was spent, and with each intelligent conversation, her credibility as the sex dummy crumbled. She could only hope she’d sown enough seeds of enmity between them.

  A crop of goosebumps sprouted across her skin. She never wanted to see a man again. When she felt the wall, she breathed out and began to scramble forward. Air blew toward her. Her spirits rose.

  She pushed forward, and the wind grew. Gusts tugged at her tunic and pulled her hair back. She paused.

  This wasn’t an ordinary wind, more like an inhale. It stopped.

  The passage was quiet.

  “Isis, no,” she cried, breaking into a run.

  Air warmed at her back.

  She sprinted. Ahead, gray light from the city glowed.

  Hot breath propelled. Gushed. The geyser blistered. Licks of Void lashed at her back. Shadows of flame surged past and buoyed her upon its flow.

  She screamed.

  Her tears dried before they could escape her eyes. She blasted from the crypt and fell broken on the steps. Her robes hiked over hips that twisted at an impossible angle.

  A man stepped from the door of a tomb and gawked at her nakedness.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Faris’s room smelled of sickness. Gray light cast through the window. He stared at the ceiling, and Sam pondered the cracked plaster wall.

  “My life to date was false, Faris. My family, my choices, the Shemsu Seth and now …” Sam looked at Faris’s stump, his half leg. “You gave me the memories of your childhood, but I want a future. With you.” She licked her lips and wouldn’t meet Faris’s stare. Power unfurled within her, more each day, each hour, second. Faris rolled to touch Sam’s eye. The swollen lids were sewn closed.

  “We will see after, Sam,” Faris said. He dropped back into the middle of the bed and clenched his hands. His teeth ground, as if he honed them to fine points.

  “Don’t join us tomorrow,” Sam blurted and betrayed the truth of why she had come to him.

  His stump slapped the bed as he sat forward. “I will join the battle.”

  Sam jerked back from his feral expression.

  A falcon cried. Sam lifted her head. Her eye reflected golden in the windowpane. The bird screeched, and Sam chastely kissed Faris’s cheek.

  “Wait until after the new moon. For me,” she said and left.

  She strode past the hall where Shen guarded Zarab’s door. Shen’s hand signaled: “Good night.” Tara had been teaching Zarab sign language.

  When Sam exited the apartment, the falcon landed on her arm and cocked its head. Night was at its height, deadman’s hour, when hearts beat their slowest and breaths come in lingering gusts. She studied the sky.

  Something wasn’t right. Sam drew back sharply. A cone of Void erupted that warped the stars in its path. The waves of black grew, snaring a falcon in its eddies. Its source was the City of the Dead.

  The Shemsu Hor and the Sister of Isis must shore the defenses.

  Sam reached with her mind to the boundary of the fortress walls. Someone within the sisters’ convent practiced. Sam stretched beyond the ramparts and met a moat of Void. She choked an exclamation. This Void was not the intelligent maneuvering of trained and adept humans, but rather a hundred kernels of it—crocodiles and hounds of Seth. Babylon lay under siege.

  Sam drew her senses back from the fortress walls and touched each of the minds open to her. To the walls, she
urged. And when she returned wholly, her mother stood under the sycamore, a shadow in the moonless night.

  “They attack, Mother,” Sam said.

  “Are you ready?” Tara asked.

  A stray sword lay near the tree. Sam reached to pick it up and avoided her mother’s gaze.

  “You know now why I gave you to the Shemsu Seth?” her mother asked, with no apology in her voice. Tara’s return to the sisterhood had shored the walls of her vanity.

  “I know why the sisters installed me with the Shemsu Seth,” Sam agreed.

  “But you blame me.”

  Sam paused beside her mother, her hand on the hilt of the short rapier. Its blade, thin as a whisper, must brace the horde without. “You traded me like chattel,” Sam growled. “I blame you.”

  Tara’s expression did not change, and she did not move away even though her chin hovered inches from Sam’s chest.

  “It is a burden I will bear.”

  “Burden?” Sam asked, breathless. She sucked in air, but then slowly let it out. “You are not sorry.”

  Tara reached out toward Sam’s eye. “No, Wedjat. I am not.”

  Sam turned away.

  “You are the product of a generation of planning. The Shemsu Hor and Shemsu Seth serve no purpose. In you, Sam, the sisters have found their leader. You have given us the twining. The sisters were once a powerful mystery cult. We can be so again. We will control the balance.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped, but a cry of pain tore the night, and Sam flew from her mother.

  Sam reached into the Fullness and pulled forth a blade of gold, thicker than she had in the past; around it, she wound Void. Her mind gazed upon the mental map of Coptic Cairo.

  “They’re in the church,” Sam said. The falcon shot from her shoulder.

  Sam charged through the gate and chased the sounds of battle toward the convent. Scores of crocodiles with a dozen dwarf handlers clogged the street.

  Two dozen sisters stood and hacked at the reptiles to keep from drowning in their flood. The sisters’ veils bristled with dwarf darts. Axes cut their fitted black clothing.

  “Wedjat,” they cried, as Sam arrived. They poured from the doors of their apartments and the convent to join their leader. Those who had taken to the walls at Sam’s request were trapped behind the enemy. The strategy had been ill advised. The majority of the dwarfs had entered via the church tunnels and already fought inside the fort. The sisters were divided. The walls of the Coptic fortress seemed to buckle against the press of Void. Hounds and crocodiles funneled through the wall’s single door. A sister choked on a crossbow bolt.

  Sam swung her sword. She drew on the twining to speed the blade. It lodged in the brain of a crocodile. The stupid creature continued to snap at Sam’s legs. She stabbed again and severed its spinal column. A black dart nipped a piece of her ear. Three more crocodiles lunged at her and collided. She pivoted past and hacked at the haft of a dwarf’s raised axe. Its blade clanged to the stone. Her second stroke caught the dwarf’s neck and slit both beard and throat.

  “Wedjat!” The sisters’ war cry lifted as Sam lopped a limb from a crocodile. Four sisters flanked Sam. She could only concentrate on the nearest threats, but beyond her focus, a wave darker than the night crested and bore down. She braced and set a shield to cover the nearest sisters. The first who broke rank fell under the swell of hounds. Sam protected the others. Bones cracked like twigs against her defense. When the tide ebbed, Sam released. Her blade lifted, caught starlight, and fell. They scythed through the beasts, their swings soon growing methodical and heavy.

  A hound’s chest parted beneath her blade, and she barely parried the swing of an axe. Sparks burned on her cheek. From out of the firework, Trand’s filmy eyes glared.

  Sam lost her concentration.

  The dwarf’s double-bladed axe slipped past Sam’s rapier to gouge her shoulder. The Sisters faltered. Pain drove Sam to a knee.

  “You betrayed my honor, Samiya,” Trand rasped.

  “Pharaoh deceived me.” Sam parried another blow. “I had no choice.”

  “You disrupt the balance.”

  Sam shook her head and lowered her sword. “No, Trand. It is the pharaoh who would be the Osiris.”

  “It is not too late to return,” Trand said, axe high. Hounds halted at his whistle. They gathered, circling, growling.

  “I cannot, Trand.”

  “Return and we will fix this.” His eyes shone with emotion. The tip of Sam’s blade lowered. “Pharaoh only wishes to ensure Seth’s place,” Trand said. “It is the sisters who wish to rule.” His axe crashed down, and Sam rolled so that the blade shattered rock. When she hit her injured shoulder against the street, she cried out. How could she convince, Trand, otherwise? In her heart, she knew he was right about the sisters as well.

  “Return,” Trand repeated.

  “No, Trand, I was never Shemsu Seth.” Trand’s axe rose. “I am the Horus hidden in the reeds.”

  “Then you are Wedjat.” Trand’s eyes never flared so bright.

  His axe fell mightily. “And you must die!”

  The crocodiles lunged as the axe swung in a broad arc at Sam’s breast. She leaped backwards and stumbled over a crocodile’s knobby hide. Trand’s blade rose above her and chopped down. Sam groped to reclaim her hold on the Fullness and caught only Void. It coursed through her arm and sword, taking the sting with it.

  She parried Trand’s blow and rolled inside the dwarf’s reach. Trand swung again. She slid her blade through Trand’s ribs. The axe hissed through air to clatter on the cobbled street. He sat down slowly. Sam jerked the blade out. And in the unconscionable Void, she laughed.

  “Wedjat!” A voice cautioned.

  Void slipped like quicksilver up Sam’s thighs. She reached for the tether of the Fullness and swung herself free of the Void’s grasp. She strained to identify the source of the warning, but it was gone. Out of the Void, she fell to her knees and buried her hands in Trand’s beard.

  The dogs were on her. One latched on her bicep, and she punched it. Panicked screams and sobs echoed amongst snarls and snapping.

  High ground, Sam called and reached with tendrils of Fullness. Two of the four sisters remained with Sam; the others had fallen victim to bloody tug-o-wars between hounds and crocodiles. Together the living cut through to the door of an apartment held by other sisters, and then climbed its stairs.

  From atop the flat roofs of the apartments and convent, the greatest dangers were Shemsu Seth crossbow bolts. The crocodiles continued to flood the streets. Dwarfs entered buildings and marshaled the battle back into the hands of their animals. From above, the sisters had little with which to fight: masonry, pots and vases—which, when combined with the powers of the twining could do some damage, but were hardly a material threat.

  Hold them from the rooftops. I must go, Sam sent out to them.

  “Wedjat,” the cry lifted, but Sam shook her head. Saliva and blood caked her arm and shoulder. Before she could leave, a bent sister who still wore flowing robes and veil raised her hand.

  “Mother Isis.” Sam moved to pass.

  “Let Horus slake her thirst, Wedjat. Set the falcon free.”

  Sam recognized the voice and realized that the Mother Isis had warned her of the Void.

  Sam searched her connection and discovered that she had reined her flow of both the Void and the Fullness. No matter the girth of her cord, she only used the slimmest shavings of both.

  “You fear your faith in these powers, child. Give yourself over to your destiny. You are the Morning Star of Re.”

  Sam swallowed. “Yes, Mother.”

  Sam sprinted along the narrow tops of walls, barely looking to her next step, and hurtled across roofless courtyards to halt in the cemetery. Shrines dotted the graveyard. Mary’s
was the largest, but others, some caves and some crypts, jutted from the ground. She jogged past crosses, ankhs, and obelisks. A crocodile, hidden within a shrine, snapped at her legs. Sam jumped backward and brought her sword around, splitting its snout.

  Step, Void, step, Fullness, step—the Wedjat. She stopped and closed her eye.

  You are the Morning Star of Re. You are Wedjat. You must die.

  She released her control of the twining, and her mind glutted with power. She had only ever sipped from the fountain and now clutched the spout between her lips, unable to stop drinking. What was left of the Fullness was only a trickle, but this she could not let dribble past her cheeks. She drank it all.

  When she opened her eye, the scene had changed. It was darker except where movement recorded a swathe of white. This she knew to be Void. In the distance, the Sisters of Isis shed a golden glow; not all was black, white, or shades of gray. Power leaked out her mouth, eye and fingertips. Her footfalls left tracks of guttering blue flame. Power pressed at her skin, the Void and Fullness binding, but volatile.

  As she strode forward, crocodile corpses fell about her; hounds backed away, and the lone dwarf she encountered ran. Down the steps from the necropolis, she carved a path. Where she reached a milling group of crocodiles, she leapt over and evaded jaws and the swish of tails. She pinioned one with her sword, somersaulted to the gate, and heaved the iron-bound door shut. The flood of creatures was severed.

  “Wedjat!” she hollered, and for a moment the clash of steel paused before resuming.

  She took a deep breath and turned to the ranks of crocodiles she had dodged. They slithered forward.

  Weapons clanged in the streets below Shagar’s shuttered window. Shaken from sleep, he wrapped himself in a black robe and cinched it tight with a gold, braided cord. When he reached the Hanging Church, the pews were tossed aside and the trapdoors cast open to the passages below.