Empire of Bones (Ashtown Burials #3)

by N. D. Wilson

The room was three floors above ground level and served as a council hall for Sages. The long, low ceiling was held up by dark carved beams, and a table of the same wood filled the room below it. The stone walls were painted but undecorated. There were three doors but no windows, which was why Rupert had chosen it.

  He shrugged Horace’s limp body onto the end of the dark table and stepped back, breathing hard. Robert and Diana jumped forward and quickly tore open the little lawyer’s vest and shirt, searching for his wound.

  Rupert saw the deep gash just below Horace’s ribs, and he looked away, wiping the sweat off his face.

  Gunner dropped his weapon bag and rounded the table, bolting the other two doors. Not that bolts would do much good against the hunters behind them.

  Jeb was leaning against a wall with his eyes shut. The stitches in his scalp had blown halfway open and his ear and neck were painted red down the shoulder.

  Rupert looked back at the other two Boones.

  “Come on, Horace,” Diana whispered. She was working on the lawyer with gauze while her father used a needle, fighting to stop the bleeding inside the small man.

  Horace’s breathing was short and sharp, never quite filling or emptying his lungs. Rupert had seen too many ends not to know what was coming. While the Boones worked, he stepped over to the table and grabbed the little lawyer’s hand.

  Horace turned his head toward the big Avengel, and he squeezed. He licked his lips and tried to catch enough breath to speak.

  “Too many lies,” he said, “to forgive. So many …”

  Rupert shook his head. “Not now, Horace. Not now.”

  “Then … when?” the lawyer asked. “Forgiveness … I don’t …”

  Rupert leaned in. “Forgiveness is given, not earned. You have mine.”

  Horace shut his eyes. “Gunner,” he whispered.

  Rupert looked up at Horace’s tall nephew, but Gunner shook his head and backed away, wiping his face with his sleeve. Robert Boone had given up. He backed away. Diana gnawed her lip, still pressing down on the wad of gauze.

  “My accounts,” Horace said. “Sewn in my vest. All Gunner’s.” Gasping, he grabbed at Rupert’s arm. “The old words,” he said. “Say the words.”

  Still gripping the lawyer’s hand, Rupert placed his left hand on Horace’s head, and he spoke in Latin. The words were firm and certain, and as he spoke, John Horace Lawney VII relaxed. His breathing eased. His bleeding stopped. And he was gone.

  Rupert folded the lawyer’s hands on his chest and backed away.

  “Dennis?” he asked the room. “Jax?”

  Robert and Diana looked around, noticing the boys’ absence for the first time.

  “Dennis was with us on the first flight,” Jeb said. “I slipped and he helped me. Jax could be anywhere.”

  Rupert sighed. Niffy had insisted on standing with the transmortals. How long the monk would last, he didn’t know.

  “And Sterling?”

  “Didn’t even try,” Gunner said. “He fell back when we started the push.”

  “How many were there?” Robert Boone growled. His crease-lined eyes were still on Horace. “I expected more.”

  “Nine by my count,” Rupert said. “Scouts only. The rest will be on their way.” He reloaded both guns in his holsters, and then drew the short black-bladed sword in his belt.

  “Keep the doors open while I’m gone. Eyes and ears at all three. No surprises, and do not get holed up in here. Lock the door and get out.”

  Robert Boone cracked knuckles on both of his rough hands. “Jeb here knows his way around this place better than I do. He’ll take the lead.”

  Jeb looked even more exhausted at the suggestion, but he nodded. Rupert gave the body of Horace a final salute as he moved back to the door they had entered.

  Diana followed him. “Rupe,” she said, “I want to come.”

  She had the black-barreled blunderbuss strapped to her back, and it was loaded with her very last round of tooth-treated shot. At least three of the transmortals were hobbled by pain because of it, but the ammo shortage had moved her on to a short heavy shotgun. It might not hurt them as much, but it could still send them rolling.

  Rupert looked at Robert.

  “Bring him back whole and entire,” Robert said to Diana. “But don’t let him slow you down.”

  Diana almost smiled.

  Cyrus and Antigone ran down the long corridor. Antigone had left her coat behind, given that it had sprouted leather twigs and leather leaves.

  “Where do we start?” Antigone asked.

  “We have to get out of this dead end and find some other way down,” Cyrus said. “But ‘the rising water’? Where is any water rising in this place?”

  They were approaching the base of the long stair. Was there a spring Cyrus didn’t know about? A fountain?

  Crack.

  Stone shivered and groaned. The floor of the corridor heaved and leaned to the left. Cyrus and Antigone tumbled, flew, slammed into the wall, and then slid to a stop. Stone shards rained down from the ceiling. Whatever had just happened, it was big.

  Cyrus coughed, climbing to his knees. Patricia had popped her light off again, but Cyrus could feel the floor angling left.

  Cold energy hissed through the stone beneath him. Faint blue-and-white shapes like flames wisped through the walls around him, unhindered by the rock, too fast for his eyes to catch and hold. And then they were gone.

  “Tigs?” Cyrus asked. “Did that seem like the strength of a thousand souls to you?”

  “Shhh,” Antigone said. “Listen.”

  Voices. And not from inside the corridor. And not from above the corridor. Cyrus lowered himself back down, pressing his ear against cool stone.

  Many voices, all of them mingling together like the sound of falling water. And then silence.

  One voice, a great voice, a man’s voice, rose from beneath the stone.

  Antigone recognized it.

  “Cy!” she whispered. Reaching out for her brother, she found only his foot, and it was sliding away. The floor was cracking. It was crumbling.

  Together in the darkness, they fell.

  Radu Bey stood in a tunnel of bodies on the uppermost level of the temple. One moment ago, the bodies had been breathing, but no more. He and Azazel had thrown the pulse of one thousand souls through the symbols on the floor, and then at the wall. Blue-and-white fire still danced around the hole that should have opened onto the air above the city streets. Instead, it opened into a perfectly spherical tomb. A large grisly shape was stretched out on a stone bed.

  Azazel burned inside Radu Bey’s chest. The dragon held a second flood of souls ready, gathered from the temple floor below. Anann the Morrigan stepped up beside Radu Bey. Behind them both, the armed Ordo Draconis waited.

  Radu Bey gripped the chains that hung from his arms, and he raised them both in his hands. The dragon writhed in his chest, sizzling with fire. Radu lashed his chains forward into the tomb, and the second storm of souls exploded like thunder.

  The temple of bodies shook. But the tomb’s stone walls shattered and crumbled. They cracked and splashed into unseen water, and dust billowed out of darkness.

  Radu Bey waited. As the dust settled, he listened to the whine of sirens. He listened to his now-silent human walls. He was truly a blood sorcerer, possessor of dragon gin, savior of gods.

  Black water was flooding Babd’s newly opened tomb. It flowed out of the ancient tunnel and around Radu’s bare feet. He walked forward, dragging his chains against the current, and stepped through the gaping hole in his temple wall. He stepped into darkness, into the deepest belly of Ashtown.

  Dan sat at his suspended metal table, looked at Cyrus, and said nothing. Cyrus bobbed, treading water in the black lake beside the huge statue that now floated high on the surface.

  “I know,” Cyrus spat. “I know.” And he grabbed on to Babd and tried to pull himself up. But he kept slipping back down. He kept sinking.

  In the darknes
s, Antigone found her feet. The water wasn’t deep—waist-high in places—but it had been deep enough to break her fall, and it was deep enough to drown in.

  There was light coming from somewhere close—through a jagged crack in the wall, glowing through the rubble dust that filled the air. More blue-and-white wisps darted around and through her, finally disappearing beyond stone and below water. Grisly, monstrous carvings lined what was left of the broken walls.

  She turned around and saw Cyrus floating facedown in the water.

  Antigone splashed forward, grabbed her brother, and flipped him onto his back.

  A huge laugh echoed around them.

  Radu Bey was coming.

  Antigone got her arms under Cyrus’s and looked for a place to hide. Giant shapes and shadows were moving past the lit crack. Voices. Loud, excited shouts. A woman began to chant.

  They had to get out of there. Antigone veered toward a deep shadow in the opposite wall, a tunnel mouth. Praying a string of pleases, she pulled her brother into it, wrapped her arms around his chest, and shut her eyes. He was breathing. But not for long if anyone found them.

  The transmortals were not silent. The chanting was growing louder. Other voices were laughing. And then there was splashing. Large shapes were moving through the crack. They passed Antigone quickly—dark silhouettes of women as tall as Gil with swords drawn, thin men who seemed to leave ripples in the shadows, huge men with heads like buffalo, shapes that were bent and sharp like scythes, unarmed women that emitted an aura of dim light that bruised the air—yellows and reds and greens. More and more and more of them splashed past, until they were only distant voices falling down whatever shaft they had chosen to climb up.

  “Cyrus,” Antigone finally whispered. “We shouldn’t be here. No one should.”

  Cyrus sighed a dreamer’s frustration. Antigone slapped his face and he jerked awake, kicking and splashing in her arms.

  “I’m sorry,” Antigone said. “But I can’t hold you up out of the water anymore and we have to work fast. A whole army of nightmares just marched by.”

  Cyrus flailed, smacked her by accident, and stood up.

  “Where?” he asked. “Who?”

  “Radu Bey is here somewhere. I heard him. A ton of others came out of that crack.”

  Cyrus looked back at the jagged crack in the wall. Then he messed with Patricia until the surface of the water was silver all around them. He held the snake high. Not too far behind them, in the tunnel Antigone had chosen to hide in, low wide stairs rose out of the water.

  Cyrus waded toward them, and Antigone followed. At the top of the stairs, there was a stone door. More than thirty silver links were inlaid in its surface around a center keyhole.

  “Oh, great,” Cyrus said, but he was already digging for his keys.

  Diana slid on her belly toward the stone stair rail. There was a diamond cutout in the stone that would let her look down into the main hallway. She glanced back, and Rupert nodded.

  Diana set her shotgun on the step beside her, slid the barrel of her blunderbuss through the gap in the rail, and studied the floor below. She could see four transmortals flat on their faces with their arms bound. The Captain paced around them, muttering furiously. His face was a bloody mess, but his golden breastplate glowed like it was fresh off a bed of coals, and his dragon blade was drawn.

  Beyond him, and beyond the smashed front doors, Diana could just see one of Leon’s legs, and the heavy spattering of rain on the steps outside.

  Diana scanned the rubble throughout the hallway but saw no sign of Gil or Nolan or Arachne. Nothing of Niffy or Sterling—though she hadn’t expected him to be around—and no sign of Dennis or Jax.

  In her peripheral vision, Diana saw something move in Brendan’s black boat, where it lay tipped onto its side. She stared for a moment longer, and saw it move again.

  Dennis Gilly. And Jax. Together, and not in a bad hiding place, though close to where the fight had been the hottest.

  Of course, she was glad Dennis and Jax seemed to be fine. But they weren’t really whom she had been thinking about. She had no idea what Cyrus and Antigone were attempting or where they had gone. She did know that she wanted to be with them. She’d hesitated. She’d waited. And then they’d been gone.

  Niffy and Nolan entered the hallway. Niffy was limping badly, and Nolan was peeling skin off his bare arms as they walked, dropping the thin sheets behind him.

  Where were the other five attackers? Where were Gil and Arachne? Where were Cyrus and Antigone?

  “Do you hear that?” Rupert asked. He dropped into a squat behind her.

  “Shouting?” Diana asked. She wasn’t sure. It was definitely voices.

  The Captain could clearly hear it. He tensed and turned in place.

  Niffy and Nolan froze. Niffy dropped onto his belly and pressed his ear to the mosaic tile floor. A split second later, he jumped back to his feet. He grabbed Nolan, and they ran.

  The floor erupted in fire. Diana jerked back as tile shrapnel whistled and chattered through the hallway. Larger stone blocks smashed into walls and skidded across the floors.

  A huge bare-chested man with glistening olive skin and a bloodred dragon on his chest climbed out of the hole. He wore a bright white cloth bound with gold around his waist. Broken chains hung from his wrists and dragged from his ankles.

  The Captain stood to face him.

  “Smith!” Radu Bey roared, and he began to laugh. “This is joy in truth.”

  Diana blasted her last tooth-treated shot into the back of the huge man’s head. His roar became a scream of pain, but he turned, snarling and undamaged, looking for her. Transmortals with thick arms and wild eyes were scrambling up out of the hole around him like ants out of a mound. The whole building shook with the thunder of their weight.

  Niffy and Nolan had regrouped, both holding blades and lobbing jars of pyro-newt eggs, but not enough for the swarm that came to meet them. The hallway was filled with shouts and explosions. Diana dropped her blunderbuss and then emptied her shotgun, and still the Captain and Radu Bey eyed each other like they had forgotten all else. Niffy and Nolan retreated out of sight.

  More transmortals were climbing out of the hole. They scanned the hallway and the walls for enemies, and Diana prayed that Dennis and Jax would keep still in the boat. Radu waved a few away. Others circled around him and pressed the Captain’s flank.

  Captain John Smith stood alone, his eyes brighter than his breastplate and his beard smoking. His smile, whitened by years of sun on the sea, flashed at the massive man with broken chains—the transmortal he had tricked and Buried so long ago.

  “You are my brother, Smith,” Radu snarled. “You and I are bonded in blood. But I gave you my true brothers’ heads. What shall I do to you?”

  “What shall ye do?” The Captain laughed. “Ye’ll see that dragon scite cut from your flesh with your father’s own blade. Then ye’ll face a man as man, with no dragon puppetry to aid you.” He sliced the air with his sword and raised the tip at his enemy. “Come, Radu. A fourth Dracul head in the crest of Smith would make a better symmetry.”

  Radu Bey used only his chains, and they lashed and snapped forward faster than Diana could see.

  The Captain whirled and ducked, shattering links on the edge of his blade. As he danced, the transmortals edged all the way around him, swords and spears and daggers raised.

  “Rupe!” Diana said. She drew a revolver and put another round in Radu Bey. The blood sprayed from between his shoulder blades, but he barely seemed to notice. “Rupert! What do we do?”

  Rupert Greeves put a hand on Diana’s shoulder and began to pull her away. But she couldn’t go. She fired and fired and fired on the circle of transmortals, but she was like a bee trying to defend a man from wolves.

  Surrounded completely, the Captain’s blade was still fast enough to keep the ring from closing. He laughed as he fought, and his smile was as grim as any reaper’s. And then he began to sing. His accent and his e
ffort slurred his words, but Diana recognized the song. Her own mother sang it in the kitchen, and her happiness in the singing always belied the sorrow of the words.

  The Captain sang and he danced and he slashed the ring around him. He sang even when Radu’s chain found his legs and lightning forked from the links and felled him. He sang as the transmortals tore the blade from his hand, grabbed his wrists, and stretched his shaking oak-strong arms out from his sides.

  He was singing as they tore off his breastplate, and singing as Rupert pulled Diana back from the rail, away from what was about to happen.

  “You are no immortal,” Radu spat. “You are a beggar with a scrap of Odyssean Cloak hidden beneath your skin.”

  “Their mouths they opened wide on me,” the Captain sang. “Upon me gape did they, like to a lion ravening and roaring for his prey. For dogs have compassed me about; they pierced my—”

  The Captain’s voice broke into a shout of pain, and then he sang on, louder still, filling the vaults with what sounded like triumph, like joy.

  John Smith was ready to sail.

  Diana shook as Rupert pulled her away. But she heard the beastly snarl as the scrap of Odyssean Cloak was taken from inside the Captain’s chest. She heard a blade sing. The snarling stopped. Mocking laughter began.

  “We have to get you out of here now,” Rupert said. “All of you.”

  Diana didn’t argue. She couldn’t, even if she’d wanted to.

  Oliver Laughlin paced the length of his descending plane, with his chute strapped to his lean adolescent shoulders. Radu Bey had taken longer to strike than Phoenix had expected, but the timing would work, so long as Phoenix wasn’t there first. The transmortals would ravage the place for a while. They would open Burials. Hundreds would dance in the ashes of Ashtown. They would rejoice in the glory of their own strength. That was easy. They could be there for hours and Phoenix would still have time to gather his harvest. But if he was there too soon, a cautious Radu Bey might withdraw to strike another day.

  But would there be another day like this one? A day when all the great ones would be in one containable, cageable place? Before they inevitably feuded and fought and scattered?