Bone Dance

by Lee Roland

  She grabbed the corner and tried to jerk the wheel loose.

  “No,” Erik said. “Don’t try to move it any more. On the side…two leavers…one knob.”

  Her fingers trembled as she felt around the box edge until she found them.

  “Turn the knob clockwise—slowly. It’ll take time.”

  Time, the one thing they didn’t have. Maeve twisted the knob. It moved easily, but slow was a vague word that spanned sluggish minutes. She caught a movement in the corner of her eye. Three, then four threads of silk drifted down from the indefinable ceiling to the Manticores’s body. In a few seconds, one spider inched down the thread. In its death struggle, the Manticore had rolled and exposed much of its underbelly. That was the spider’s destination. It landed, hunched down, and a set of lobster clawed pinchers sprang from its head. Maeve gagged as it tore out a thick chunk of flesh and stuffed it in a mouth the size of a dinner plate. Three more spiders sidled down the threads, and the air came alive with the sound of a feast. At least they weren’t paying attention to her.

  Her fingers continued to turn the knob. How far could it go?

  The knob stopped. Maeve glanced at Erik for directions.

  Erik’s eyes were intent on something behind Maeve. The gun was in his hand, braced on his knee. “Don’t move,” he said.

  Maeve huddled and fought a lunatic urge to jump and run toward the elevator.

  He pulled the trigger. Once…twice…three times. The sound of shots rocketed through the cavern again, but this time a grumbling roar and the vibration of rock under her feet answered it.

  She didn’t turn—didn’t want to see.

  “Push each lever to the side. Right one first…that’s all.” Erik shouted over the rising clamor.

  Maeve did so, rose, and rushed toward the elevator. As she did, a figure walked out of the darkness.

  Place a dragon in a three-piece suit and he would be a dragon, and this dragon was magnificent. Black hair drifted around his face, and his eyes sparkled like crystal, even in the dim elevator light. Not as powerful as Yarrow, nor as slender and lithe as Raymond, he nevertheless projected masculine power as he assessed her, male to female.

  Maeve stopped. Her breath quickened.

  “Maeve!” Erik shouted.

  The air around them trembled with the crunch of grinding rock as a fine dusty powder drifted from the unseen ceiling. A growing hiss rose from the darkness like an angry, rising wind.

  “Maeve! It’s set. Let’s go.”

  She stepped toward the elevator.

  The dragon held out his hand. His expression carried a look of anticipation.

  Maeve reached for him, and he caught her fingers. Her skin warmed and flushed, and her legs trembled as relentless desire swept through her body.

  “Come with me.” he whispered in her mind.

  Go with him? Oh yes, Maeve wanted…go where? Into the darkness with creatures alien beyond her imagination. Desert Elder?

  Erik shouted over the rising din. “Damn the oracle, Maeve, I’ll leave you.”

  She shook her head, jerked her hand away, and raced to the elevator. Dragon or not, she did not belong here. But…the bomb. She whirled to face the dragon. She pointed at the box.

  “Run.” Maeve tried to force the image of an explosion into his mind with the word.

  The dragon frowned, stared at the box, and looked back at Maeve. As the elevator door closed, his eyes widened with comprehension. He whirled and disappeared into the darkness.

  “Stupid bitch!” Erik leaned against the elevator wall. “We’re not going to make it.”

  “May I have my gun?” Maeve held out her hand.

  He handed it to her. “It’s empty.”

  She holstered the weapon. As she did, she felt the fuzzy shift that told her she’d passed through a gate. She’d entered Elder prepared to die, but she had no desire to do so in another world.

  “Will the blast come through the gate?” Maeve asked.

  “Yes. Probably. I don’t know.” His eyes clouded with pain.

  The elevator slowed, and then stopped.

  The door didn’t open.

  Erik and Maeve reached for the “open door” button, bumped into one another and killed a few more seconds.

  The door jerked and opened a few inches. Enough to allow Maeve to squeeze through, but trap Erik. He threatened, but he hadn’t deserted her, even when she hesitated. She would not leave him. She wedged herself in, back to the door, and pushed with her body, hands and feet. Erik used his uninjured hand to pull. The door jerked again, opened, and they tumbled on the balcony circling the vat.

  “There’s not much time,” Erik said.”

  “I want to see the sun, and I might kiss the dirt.”

  “Now, what have we here?” The voice came across the vat from the other side of the balcony.

  Chapter Forty

  Steam rising from the vat gave Sethos a ghostly appearance, but at twenty feet, his black eyes still glittered, tiny lanterns in a round moon face.

  “Oh, my dear, you don’t like my factory? Now my feelings are hurt.” Sethos stepped forward and grasped the balcony railing. “How pathetic. Two wretched children playing adult games.”

  Maeve and Erik faced him.

  “What makes us wretched?” she asked.

  “An incompetent witch with a whore’s nature and my son—my son, my only son, to whom I would have given dominion of the world had his bitch of a mother not filled his head with sedition.”

  Maeve kept her eyes on Sethos. “Is that why you killed her?”

  “No. Erik, did you finish wiring your explosives throughout the building? Of course, I’ve altered them so they won’t detonate.” Sethos laughed. “I killed Erik’s mother because she wasted my time. My original body was incredibly old and wearing out. She was supposed to produce a child with my genetic material that would be suitable for me to…use…when I could no longer maintain my own. Her male child is too strong, but the female I could have taken. The female she destroyed. Then I was forced to…occupy…this body, which horrifies even me.” He opened his arms in an expansive gesture.

  Maeve understood the concept of possession or use as he called it, but didn’t believe anyone could accomplish the transfer from one body to another and make that body function as their own. Again, she wondered how he obtained such a lever of power. Of course, until a few weeks ago, she hadn’t believed in the Elementals, either.

  “Male? Female?” Maeve grasped the balcony railing and glared at him. “Your own children? Nobody says you’ve got to like your kids, Sethos, but most men would be proud to have a son like Erik.” A blatant lie, but she was trying to stall. The bomb downstairs was the important one.

  Sethos laughed. “To be proud of one’s offspring means that you leave a legacy behind when you die. I do not need an heir, my dear Maeve. I need a body to inhabit. I do not intend to die.”

  Maeve wondered if Sethos gained the power and knowledge to transfer his soul to another body from Akihem, the Book of Immortality. That might certainly be possible.

  Erik stepped close behind Maeve. “Are you sure you disarmed all of them?” he asked Sethos. “I’ve been hiding them for years. Several tons of plain explosives. Only one has to work. It’ll set off the others.”

  Sethos didn’t answer, and Maeve accepted his hesitation as uncertainty. He stared down into the vat, as if his mind was formulating some devious plan. The hiss of the vat was the only sound. The building shuddered. With an ear-hammering crack and stunning force, the elevator door blasted out. It sailed across the vat, and punched through the far wall with the force of a head-on collision. Very little noise followed the door’s stunning impact, and Maeve prayed that meant access to and from the gate to the cavern’s world had closed.

  “What have you done?” Sethos screamed.

  Erik said nothing—but he smiled. Okay. It must have worked. Maeve decided to gloat.

  “Big bang downstairs, Sethos.”

  Despi
te the steam from the vat, the room’s temperature dropped to a frigid chill. “If you have a weapon,” he said, “I suggest you use it on yourselves now.”

  The words wrapped around Maeve’s heart, and she felt him brush her mind. Felt him plunder with psychic fingers as cold as the room—colder because they were plundering the warmth of her life, her spirit. This wasn’t right. He couldn’t do this. With all the strength she could muster, she reached for the magic. Only a thread came. How could she use it? What should she sacrifice? She snatched Flor’s obsidian knife from her belt and sliced a half-inch gash in her thumb.

  With blood dripping down her hand, she gazed across the steaming vat at Sethos. “Get out of my mind.” She spoke in a soft conversational tone. Then she said, “Fire.” And fire came. It shot from the pool of magic, down the thread she held, and slammed into his probe.

  Sethos screamed as a halo of flame surrounded him, but the scream was one of rage, not pain or fear. The pressure on Maeve’s mind ceased, but she knew her little display was only a slight slap at a greater power.

  With Flor’s obsidian knife in her hand, she started around the balcony toward him.

  Erik caught her arm and dragged her back. “Don’t be stupid,” he hissed in her ear.

  Sethos straightened. His formerly white suit was charred black, making his pale face stand out as if he stood on a stage with a spotlight directed at him.

  “Now what shall I do?” Sethos’ tone was that of a man with a minor problem, but his voice wavered a bit. “It’s quite a dilemma. If I destroy my wife’s daughter, she will be a bit distraught.”

  “She will shred you like a cabbage, you pompous ass.” Claire’s voice came from behind them. She walked out on the balcony and stood by Maeve.

  Sethos went silent for a few moments, and then said, “I knew you would challenge me eventually, Claire, but I hoped it would be much later. You are one of the few people whose presence I can bear. You understand power. If I were capable of love, I would love you.”

  “If you were capable of love, you wouldn’t be here now.”

  “No, I would be buried in the ocean’s black tomb with the other fools of Ataro. Do you have any idea who I am?”

  “Yes, Sorath, I know.” Claire’s voice softened.

  Maeve heard regret in that voice, but she knew it wasn’t love. Magic knows magic, and an Elder witch of Claire’s power would find an affinity, even a perverse affinity, with her own kind.

  Sorath—malevolent sorcerer, destroyer of Ataro, ancient evil incarnate in a white suit. Eight-thousand years—no wonder he needed a new body along the way.

  “Very well, Claire.” Sethos sounded resigned. “If you will not join me, you can join the others. I’m sure your bones with give the mix a significant boost.”

  Magic swelled and whisked around as Claire and her husband gathered strength.

  Claire grabbed Maeve, drew her close, and whispered fiercely in her ear. “Please believe that I love you more than life. Now go. I can hold him until you get out. You’ll stand a better chance with Tana and the others.”

  Maeve staggered as if someone slugged her. The thing she longed for all her life, her mother’s love, slammed into her like the Wandering Stone dropped on the Council house—and there was no time. “Tana…what others…why—”

  Claire’s hand brushed Maeve’s cheek. “Go now, while—”

  “No. I’m not going anywhere.” Having received the bounty, Maeve wouldn’t give it up. She would most certainly die first.

  The first searing wave of power crashed around them, but Claire deflected it with ease. The vat under the balcony rumbled and churned. Imbued with magic, it responded to unleashed power.

  Erik grasped Maeve by the arm and tried to drag her away from Claire as steel nails rained from the ceiling. She fought him, and he couldn’t hold her with one hand. She expected him to leave, but he stayed beside her. She presumed he was testing the oracle’s prophecy to the ultimate end.

  The rail along the balcony’s edge sagged like pasta dropped in a pot of boiling water.

  Claire lashed out at Sethos, and he staggered.

  He threw his head back and shouted with laughter. “You’re stronger than I thought, Claire. My first true battle since I crushed those fools in Itzama. All that is left of them is the delicious little witch your darling daughter brought home with her. Perhaps she will give me the child I need.”

  Sethos and Claire stood frozen as they battled, but waves of spectral energy buzzed like wasps and pounded the building. It would give way soon. What about the explosives? Would they detonate under the pressure?

  Maeve wracked her mind for a spell that would help, but even if she found one, she didn’t dare use it for fear of distracting Claire. It ended fast. One enormous surge of power swept Claire off her feet and slammed her to the balcony floor.

  Sethos merely shook his head. “My dear, I would have made you Queen of the World. Were you more docile…no, that wouldn’t work. It was your strength and will that attracted me. Attributes not associated with submissiveness.”

  Maeve remembered a spell. “Erik,” she whispered. “I’m going to try to distract him. When I do, you grab Claire and try to get her to Tana. She’s down now, but she’ll recover, and with Tana she’ll have more power.”

  “And you?”

  “I’ll be okay. Please, you don’t have anything to lose. Tana and Claire together might take him.” A lie…two lies.

  Erik nodded. Maeve saw no hope in his eyes, but he would try. He slipped his arm around Claire and helped her to her feet.

  “Maeve, no!” Claire called to her as Erik dragged her toward the nearest door. She couldn’t do anything, though. The battle had drained her, and it would take time for her to regain enough strength to help.

  The spell that came to mind was one Tana used to speed up the growth of plants. Maeve didn’t know its effect on a living animal type body, but she gathered the magic and whispered the chant. The obsidian knife in her hand warmed.

  Sethos sneered. “Hurry up and work your pitiful spell, little witch, I have a busy afternoon ahead of me.”

  The balcony trembled under them. It wouldn’t hold much longer. Maeve released the spell and the obsidian knife blade shattered. A power of its own, Flor had said of the knife.

  The spell hit Sethos, and he blinked in surprise. “You silly child, what do you think—” Sethos stopped and choked. His eyes bulged. To Maeve’s amazement, the white slug body swelled like the rising dough it resembled. The balcony sagged again and gravity dragged both of them toward the boiling vats below.

  Sethos screamed, and Maeve’s spell broke. “You’ll pay for that, stupid bitch,” he shouted.

  Maeve felt Sethos gathering power to strike her, but unlike Claire, she had no defense against extrasensory attack.

  “Please believe I love you…” Claire’s words echoed in Maeve’s heart. At least she had that before she died. Maeve glanced over her shoulder. Erik had carried Claire through the doorway to the more stable hallway. She turned back in time to see black Orcus slam into Sethos’s face. He didn’t change to a jaguar this time—beak and talons were sufficient. She decided to make the best of the opportunity, so she ran for the door. The balcony gave way under her feet.

  When she dropped down, Maeve caught one of the steel braces that had held the balcony to the wall. It jerked with her weight, but it held. She twisted and had a first-class view of Sethos, floating in mid air for an impossible time, and then falling, screeching into the seething vat.

  Chapter Forty-One

  “Maeve!” Erik lay in the doorway and stretched his good hand toward her.

  She couldn’t reach it.

  The balcony support gave under her hands, and she dropped farther.

  Magic tugged at Maeve. Gentle magic with a hint of platinum blonde.

  Claire sat in the doorway above, face tight with strain as she cast a supernatural web of power around her daughter. Maeve’s body lifted a few inches, and she
caught Erik’s hand.

  The High Witch gasped, and the web faded.

  By then, though, Maeve had a solid grip on Erik’s arm, and he was hauling her through the doorway. She crawled over and wrapped her arms around Claire.

  “We have to get out of here.” Erik pushed himself to his feet. He held his broken hand close to his body, but he seemed stronger. Maybe Claire had found a bit of strength to help him. “The timer is—”

  A mighty but shrill voice shrieked and seared the air with malice.

  Sethos. Could he still be alive? Of course, he could have used magic to protect himself.

  Erik grabbed Claire, hauled her to her feet, and dragged her away, leaving Maeve to follow. The screaming continued behind them until the vat room exploded in fire. A tongue of flame funneled down the hallway like a grasping hand and singed their backs as they rounded a corner.

  The explosion took out the lights, but Erik led them through the darkness with ease.

  Maeve ran into them when he stopped. “Erik, you have night sight, don’t you? Everyone can see in the dark but me.”

  Claire grabbed Maeve’s hand. “I can’t.”

  Maeve’s heart raced as she slipped her arm around her mother to support her. “That’s okay. Maybe Erik won’t get lost.” Maybe Erik wouldn’t decide to abandon them and save himself.

  The building shuddered, and the hall tilted.

  “Do you know where we are?” Maeve asked.

  “Almost at the center of the building,” Erik said. “We have to cross the lab area, go to the concourse, and then to the loading dock.”

  They raced through the midnight corridors, searching for a viable escape route, all the while listening to the continuing explosions from behind them.

  Claire staggered and collapsed in Maeve’s arms.

  “Leave me,” she said. “Let Erik take you out.”

  “No. Erik, help me.”

  No answer.