Empire of Bones (Ashtown Burials #3)

by N. D. Wilson

  “Jeb’s hurt!” she shouted. “Rupe, it’s bad. And we lost Dennis. Some monk …” Her green eyes landed on Niffy, and then darted to Dennis.

  Rupert was already running toward the car. Gunner, Horace’s tall Texan nephew, rose out of the driver’s side. He was in a black suit minus the jacket, and twin revolver butts peeked out from under his arms.

  “Mr. Greeves,” Gunner drawled. “There ain’t no time, sir. Two minutes tops. We need to move on out and now. They’re hot after us. Two dozen, at least, loaded for bear.”

  Rupert stopped at Diana’s door and looked inside the car. Cyrus watched the big man’s face fall and his chin drop to his chest. But the sadness was only there for a moment. Rupert tugged a small card and a pen from his pocket. He began scrawling on it while he spoke, his voice as calm as it was quick.

  “Daniel Smith, get Dennis into this car now.” He looked up and bellowed, “Arachne!” Cyrus turned back to the diner and saw his mother and Horace standing at the window, watching. Arachne hurried out the front door, cradling her heavy spider bag like an infant, but it sagged like a sack of mud.

  Rupert handed Diana the card. “That’s where you’re going. Do not relocate again before we arrive unless there’s an emergency—your secondary location is on there as well. Cyrus flies tonight. You’re too shook, but keep him sharp. Nolan”—Rupert turned and pointed at Niffy—“if he gives you any heartache, deal with him. You listening, Irish? I want you as proper as the pope.”

  Daniel had gotten Dennis into the front seat. He shut the door and stepped away from the car. Arachne slid into the back, and Cyrus saw her ice-blue eyes widen as she looked at the floor.

  Diana shook her head. “Rupe, I have to stay with him.” She grabbed at Rupert’s shirt as he climbed into the car. “Please.”

  Rupert put a big hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry. No discussion. We’ll get him help.” He looked around at the little crowd. “Go!”

  With that, Rupert ducked into the back of Horace Lawney’s modified limousine. The engine throbbed, Gunner spun the car around, and it bounced out onto the little road.

  Diana Boone’s shoulders shook.

  Cyrus looked at Antigone, at Dan, and then at Nolan. Pat the cook rested the shotgun on his shoulder and turned back toward his diner.

  “I know I’m new to the club,” Niffy said. “But it seems we’d best be off.”

  Cyrus nodded. The sirens were growing louder, and the people they really needed to worry about would be even closer than the cops.

  “Dan,” Cyrus said. “Get Mom. Leave the wheelchair. Do you think you can carry her?”

  Dan was already jogging away.

  “Di?” Cyrus said.

  Diana Boone spun on her heel. She dragged her hands quickly down her cheeks, streaking soot over her freckles. She looked from Antigone to Cyrus with wet wide eyes.

  “We need to go,” she said. “Right now.”

  Cyrus led the way, ducking through the old tunnels beneath the overgrown plum trees and holding back branches for Dan, with their mother in his arms. Antigone and Diana followed. Horace, Niffy, and Nolan brought up the rear.

  Cyrus was still wearing flip-flops, and he’d almost forgotten to snatch his canvas pack out of Room 111, where he’d hoped to spend the night. He had completely forgotten to thank Pat and Pat, but he figured they would understand.

  “Daniel, I can do it.” Katie Smith patted her son on the chest. “Set me down and I’ll walk.”

  Daniel didn’t answer. Cyrus slid out of the plums into a dry pasture and pulled a bundle of branches aside until they popped with concern.

  “Daniel …,” Katie said.

  “Mom,” said Cyrus. “We have to be quick. And quiet. Just let him carry you. And hang on.”

  As the train emerged, Cyrus turned and began to jog through the tall grass, glancing back to make sure Dan could keep up without jostling their mother too much. He shouldn’t have worried. Daniel’s head was high and relaxed, and he wasn’t even breathing hard. Cyrus hated admiring his brother’s strength. It meant that Phoenix was good at what he did. And it always reminded Cyrus that he would never again see his tall, straw-haired, blue-eyed California brother. Dan was a quick brown-haired ox, with a patched-up heart and dark-brown eyes that saw things he didn’t like to talk about.

  Cyrus wondered what his mother thought of Daniel’s change. She’d known about it; she’d been brought up to speed on almost everything during her two months of therapy in Ashtown. But she hadn’t commented on Dan. She’d said more about the changes in Cyrus.

  The group shuffled across an old beam over a muddy pasture stream, and then Cyrus led them up a low hill, through a cattle gate, and down into a green bowl. Milk cows looked up, still chewing, and watched them descend. The motel disappeared from view behind them.

  At the bottom of the bowl, beside the ruins of an old barn with a broken back, an odd-looking tilt-rotor plane basked in the long grass. Two large propellers had been rotated up above the wings, making it look and act part helicopter. Once in the air, the props could rotate forward. The strange plane had once belonged to Rupert’s old Keeper. It had been borrowed from his widow, and the loan had become mostly permanent.

  Cyrus had never flown it.

  Diana got the cabin door open and climbed up and forward into the copilot’s seat. Dan set Katie down and helped her climb inside. Horace hopped in, but Niffy paused to admire the plane before Nolan nudged him from behind. Antigone stopped at the door.

  “Cy …” Antigone’s voice was one shade short of panic. She turned back toward the motel. “Oh, gosh. Cy … the globes.”

  Cyrus stared at his sister, not understanding.

  “Skelton’s paper globes,” Antigone said. “I left them by the pool when Mom came and then I forgot them. We have to go back.”

  Cyrus sighed. “Why? We never even figured out what they meant.”

  “Yeah, but they might,” Antigone said.

  Cyrus turned and hopped up into the plane’s open door. His mother was in a rear-facing seat, and Dan sat with his legs crossed on the floor at her feet. Niffy was facing forward, perched in a middle seat between Horace and Nolan. The little lawyer was pinned against the rounded cabin wall.

  “Horace,” Cyrus said. “What would you say if I told you we lost Skelton’s paper globes?”

  Horace snorted. “That I warned him against taking you as his heirs, and that I hope he haunts you into an early grave. I’ve told you that the money and the accounts he had me hiding were only a fraction of his real worth. His real shadow empire, the one he spent his final years sheltering from the O of B and from Phoenix—”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Cyrus said. “I get it.”

  Cyrus leaned in until he could see up into the cockpit. Diana looked back at him from the copilot’s seat. She already had her headphones on, but she lifted one earpiece.

  “Give me two minutes, Di,” Cyrus said. “Fire up in one and be ready for me.”

  Diana nodded and turned back to her controls. Cyrus dropped his pack on the floor and then backed out of the cabin.

  “Cyrus …” His mother’s voice stopped him. Her eyes were wide with worry.

  “Love you, Mom,” Cyrus said. “Be right back.” He turned away, sidestepping Antigone as he did.

  “Cy …,” Antigone said.

  “You’re not coming, Tigs, so don’t even say it.” He kicked off his flip-flops and handed them to his sister. “Stay with Mom.”

  And with that, Cyrus Smith began to run.

  Antigone watched her brother race through the pasture, weaving a slalom course around grazing dairy cows. As he reached the lip, he ducked low, and then disappeared.

  Antigone sighed and climbed up into the plane, dropping into the one empty rear-facing seat, across the cockpit door from her mother. Her eyes stayed focused on the pasture, and her thumbnail rose to her teeth.

  Katie Smith took her daughter’s free hand.

  “He’s changed a lot,” Antigone said
.

  “Cyrus?” Katie laughed. “Have you forgotten the boy who ran the cliffs, who always left a worried sister behind?”

  “More like an angry sister,” Antigone said. “It was stupid. And he fell, too. He was lucky.”

  “Cyrus has grown larger,” Katie said. “But he is the same boy.” She squeezed her daughter’s hand. “I am sorry I left you. It must have been hard to be the one who had to worry for Cyrus.”

  “Oh, she wasn’t the only one,” Dan said. “And I wasn’t any good at it.”

  “I’m here now,” Katie said. “And I think I will worry enough for all of us.”

  Niffy massaged the side of his swollen jaw with two fat fingers. “Touching,” he said. “Truly.”

  Cyrus slipped out of the plums and over to the chain-link fence at the end of the pool and patio. He couldn’t see the globes anywhere, but the sun was just down and shadows were deepening. An evening breeze wrapped around the motel and made the short hairs on his neck tingle.

  Cyrus could hear voices. They were coming from the front of the motel. Not much time.

  And then the door to the pool patio slid open. Cyrus retreated beneath the brush and waited. Two men stepped out.

  These were not Phoenix’s men, at least not visibly. No gills fluttered on their necks. No bone tattoos traced their limbs. These were men of the Order of Brendan, men dressed like Rupert Greeves and hundreds of other Explorers and Keepers of Ashtown.

  They wore canvas shirts, safari shorts, and boots. Wide leather belts held holsters and short sheaths.

  One of the men was shorter than Cyrus, with immense shoulders. He had brown hair and a short reddish beard. Cyrus had seen him dozens of times in the dining hall, but even more often training Acolytes in the great yard of Ashtown. His name was Eric Romegas, but the Acolytes all called him Eric the Red.

  The other man was taller, leaner, blonder, and looked more like someone who wanted to be photographed for a living. A short, heavy gun was slung over one shoulder, and he cradled it against his stomach. Cyrus had never seen him before.

  Eric the Red squared up and faced the taller man. “You hear me, Flint. I trained Jeb Boone. He was a member in good standing.”

  The man called Flint smiled with half of his pretty face. “They took the bait. But we didn’t take them, did we? Funny how Jeb and that brat Diana just happened to lead us off the trail. If they hadn’t, the Smiths and that mutineer Rupert Greeves would be facing their Brendan tonight.” He shrugged. “Or lying in their own blood at the feet of their Brendan.”

  “What you did was evil,” Eric said. “I’ll have no part of it.”

  Flint walked toward the fence and Cyrus held his breath, fighting to slow the thunder of his heart.

  “ ‘I’ll have no part of it,’ ” Flint mocked. “No part! Not for Saint Eric! Well, too late, lad. You knew the game. You came to play.”

  Eric shook his head. “The Brendan has a right to question any members of the Order, and the Avengel must stand before him prior to being removed. Any rule-respecting member would help bring them in. It’s all in good order. Pumping Jeb Boone full of lead is not!”

  “Oh, don’t play dumb,” Flint said. “You’re dumb enough already.” He turned and walked back toward the motel, and Cyrus exhaled. He preferred having the man’s back toward him. “You know the Smiths will be sent off to the transmortals as a peace offering, and Rupe is as good as dead. And you know the Brendan is cleaning house until Ashtown sparkles. The Boones are all gone either way.”

  Flint flipped a switch on the motel wall. The pool suddenly glowed with pale light. Cyrus could see the paper globes.

  They were in the pool, flattened like trash and floating in a cloud of dark dissolving ink.

  “Hello,” Flint said. “What’s this?”

  From beyond the fence and one green fold of pasture, two huge engines shook the evening air.

  Old-man cicadas grew silent. Surely, the end had come.

  three

  SOGGY

  CYRUS BIT HIS LIP. Flint and Eric both stared across the pool and over the fence.

  “Helicopter?” Flint asked.

  “Plane,” said Eric. “But I’m done. And if this is how Brendan Bellamy Cook wants Keepers to behave, the whole Order can go to hell. It already has.…”

  He turned toward the sliding motel door, but Flint raised his gun, pointing it squarely at Eric’s back. He tucked two fingers into his mouth and whistled long and hard.

  “Just so we end this honestly,” Flint said. “I’m glad I get to be the one to put you down. Turn around.”

  Cyrus vaulted the chain-link fence, and then leapt the corner of the pool. Eric the Red turned to face Flint, angry and defeated. His eyes widened as Cyrus picked up a wooden patio chair and smashed it over Flint’s head. The tall man crumpled.

  Cyrus didn’t have time to talk. He dropped into the pool, scooped up the two paper blobs, slapped them over his shoulders, and exploded back out of the water.

  Two more men stepped out of the motel door. They raised shotguns.

  Eric the Red roared, lowered his shoulder, and drove them back into the doorway. A shotgun fired. Glass exploded. Cyrus turned toward the end of the pool, the fence, the scrub plum trees.

  Six men rounded the corner of the motel and stopped beyond the fence. Heart racing, Cyrus slipped to a stop on wet feet. They had cut off his path through the plums. He could jump the fence straight at the pasture, but the brush was too thick and too tall. He’d be stuck until they plucked him out.

  Another gun fired, and Eric the Red staggered and fell. Tall Flint rose slowly to his feet, bleeding from his scalp, gun smoking.

  Cyrus stepped onto a patio chair and hopped onto the top of the chain-link fence. Metal dug into his feet, and the plums walled him in. He turned, wobbling, racing along the fence, grabbing at branches. Then he jumped for the Archer Motel’s new gutters.

  Fingers caught, metal bent, but both held. Cyrus chinned himself up, hooked his right leg onto the hot metal roof, and rolled himself up.

  He scrambled toward the peak, keeping low and breathing hard. From here he could clear the plums. But it was a big drop. A bone-breaker.

  “Tuck and roll,” he said. “Tuck and roll.” He exhaled and crouched on hot feet, ready to dash and leap and crash.

  He paused. There were already men in the pasture. They were running away from Cyrus, toward the sound of the plane.

  Something thumped onto the gutter at the edge of the roof. Two hands.

  Cyrus dropped into a baseball slide straight toward them. His wet shorts shot him down the hot metal roof, but he dragged his palms and they squealed like bad brakes. He leaned back and cocked his right foot.

  The hands quivered and Flint’s head rose between them. Cyrus stomped his bare heel into the bridge of the man’s nose. Bone crunched and blood spattered up between Cyrus’s toes. Flint dropped to the concrete, half-unconscious.

  Cyrus twisted onto his belly and tried to scramble back up to the peak, slipping on his bloody right foot. Behind him, guns fired and sparks kicked off the metal roof all around him. Ricochets went whining up into the sky.

  He dove over the peak for shelter, and as he did, a swarm of bees stung him in the calf. Not bees. Pellets. Hot, fiery, shotgun-belched pellets. With one hand gripping the roof, he grabbed at his leg and bit his lip against the pain. Little craters, erupting blood.

  He could hear shouting, but it didn’t matter what was being said. He knew it was about him. They would surround the building. They would shoot him again. He had to get to the plane. But that meant standing. And then running. And then jumping into the pasture and slamming into the ground. Then standing back up and dodging and outrunning grown men with guns in a four-hundred-meter cross-country sprint. Not likely.

  But the other option was dying.

  Cyrus rose to his knees. He could hear gunfire that was not meant for him. Distant gunfire. And then he heard the airplane change its roar. Diana was taking off.
/>   Cyrus could hear men below him on both sides. He heard a metal gutter pop and squeal. They were coming up for him.

  The turbo-prop, tilt-rotor plane rose above the pasture and glided forward like a helicopter. It drew every pair of eyes. Nolan was leaning out of the open door with a revolver, taking aim and firing whenever a gun was raised below him. Dairy cows bellowed and thumped around in panic, trying to organize a stampede.

  Cyrus clambered to his feet and began to wave his arms.

  He couldn’t see Diana, but he knew when she saw him. The plane swiveled, and swooped in above the motel, beating the air down around him, sending Cyrus slipping back to his knees.

  The men below finally had a target that was easy to hit. Sparks rattled off the wings, but every time Nolan fired, another gun on the ground went silent. Two men were scrambling onto the roof, and then Niffy dropped out of the door of the plane, robes fluttering as he fell. He landed on the metal roof like a ninja elephant and immediately somersaulted down toward the climbing men. As they raised guns, Niffy tore his rope belt loose, and in his hand, it lashed out like hemp lightning. The end cracked the first man in the face and sent him toppling backward over the edge. The rope wound around the second man’s legs, and Niffy jerked his feet out from under him. The man fired into the air as he fell.

  Cyrus crawled beneath the plane, looking up at Nolan leaning out of the open door at least ten feet above him. He had to stand, to jump. And then a huge hand slid beneath Cyrus’s left arm, and another hand grabbed him by the seat of his shorts.

  Cyrus rose until he was perched just above Niffy’s right shoulder. The thick monk suddenly dropped into a crouch, sucking in a long whistling breath, his grip tightening on Cyrus’s rear.

  Cyrus flailed. Niffy heaved.

  Cyrus floated up through the wind like he’d been spat by a trampoline. Nolan’s eyes widened; then Cyrus smacked into him, and the two tumbled back into the cabin in a tangle of arms.

  The end of Niffy’s rope flopped up onto Cyrus’s back, and Dan grabbed on to it, threading it quickly through the metal bones beneath Antigone’s seat and then gripping the end tight with both hands.