Each slight movement brought with it excruciating pain, but Bone Man relished the agony. Afterlife was vibrant when he suffered, something more than a throbbing hive of filth and endless noise.
General Kelly held his breath and stared intently as Bone Men took one measured step after another toward the man. Each stride sent a lance of pain tearing through Bone Man’s legs. Each slight movement of the wind against his neck burnt like boiling water thrown against his skin. He reached the two short stairs leading to the arch where Oscar waited.
The general took another step back, his body nearly swallowed in the arch’s shadow. Between the darkness behind him and the black he wore, he was little more than a pale, floating head glistening with nervous sweat.
Bone Man’s grin widened behind the mask. A breeze sighed into the plaza. It curled around them, whispering, teasing.
“Stop that!” General Kelly’s calm demeanor shattered as he shook his head and stomped to the upper step. “You’ll not haunt me with that tainted power! The archduke has given you explicit orders to respect my authority, and I’ll have you heel or face the consequences. You should be careful, Bone Man, a master loves his dog but holds his friends’ opinions higher than the mongrel’s bark.”
The whispering winds silenced. Bone Man stepped onto the lower stair. He pressed a finger to his mask’s brow and motioned for the general to continue.
“Excellent.” Oscar regained his composure and scowled down his nose at Bone Man. “As I was saying, I dispatched a platoon of blackjackets to eliminate the dust devils harassing our expansion. Most of the savages fled into the Deep or dusted themselves before we could capture them, but we did manage to take one prisoner.”
“Dust devils are never captured,” Bone Man said. “They wanted you to have him.”
“My initial thoughts as well, but the fool is so far gone to the Deep I wonder if they didn’t just abandon him. He’s raving mad. Practically feral.”
Bone Man ground his teeth. His knuckles cracked on the cane. “They still would not have left one of their own behind. Could he be with Faye?”
“No, no, he isn’t with the Fool’s Errand. Doubt he even remembers Afterlife after being exposed to the Deep’s call so long, and she’s never been one to mix and mingle with them anyway. She’s an old soul, part of the old city. You know how they despised the dust devils in those days.”
Bone Man loosened his grip. He stepped back onto the grains coating the plaza. “Then I have no interest in helping you.”
The general’s cheeks reddened, and he marched down the stairs, jabbing a finger at Bone Man’s mask. “Every word that I am telling you is important and you will listen to it. I am the general here, not you. You are the archduke’s hound, and you take orders. You do not give them!”
Bone Man’s cane stilled. His gaze locked on the man.
General Kelly smiled like he’d just won a boxing match against a reigning champion. “Now then. My spirits can’t get through this man’s addled mind. Normally, I would simply dust a dust devil without a second thought about it, but this one is, I don’t know, different. He’s cursed with the spirit, but his touch on our minds isn’t like anything we’ve ever felt, even among our most talented spirits. There’s knowledge in there, locked away as it is in a madman’s skull.”
Bone Man cocked his head.
“And he carried a relic with him,” Oscar whispered, his mustache wriggling.
Bone Man stiffened. “What kind of relic?” He edged toward the general, his voice rippling with excitement. “Let me see it.”
General Kelly snapped his fingers, and a whirling vortex exploded behind him. Silky smoke condensed into a soldier sweating more than he should in the cool evening air. The man carried a small box in his trembling hands. The container was constructed of a dark wood and bore not a single unique marking, etch, symbol, or otherwise extraordinary feature save the simple black pearl capping its lid. It was worn. Old. Tired.
Something like this was barely more than trash in a city like Afterlife. But if it came from the Deep? A pleasurable tingle raced down Bone Man’s spine.
“Do you know what this is?” the general asked, taking the box from his soldier, who promptly burst into a cloud of smoke and vanished.
Like a striking serpent, Bone Man’s power latched onto the box and ripped it from Oscar’s grip. The container hung suspended between them, slowly rotating. Bone Man’s crows surrounded them. They cawed and squawked as they beat their wings excitedly.
No matter how carefully Bone Man’s power prodded the container, he couldn’t identify where or how the box opened. Not so much as a single seal announced itself to him.
“You won’t be able to open it using the poltergeist curse,” the general said. “I had some try already. If they could have, I wouldn’t be here interacting with you, now would I?” He frowned at the box and shook his head. “I’ll not approach the archduke until I know for sure what this artifact contains. We don’t want a repeat of the Jelani incident.”
No one in the archduke’s tight circle would ever make that mistake again, not after General Jelani’s supposed relic from the Deep turned out to be a lockbox full of dynamite and nails from the Fool’s Errand. Jelani’s screams could still be heard coming from the palace basement on quiet nights.
Oscar’s plan unfolded in Bone Man’s mind like a rosebud’s petals spreading to the sky. The general found something that might be a relic, or it might be a trap, and Oscar wouldn’t risk his own life to pry it open, so he enlisted Bone Man. If it was a relic, the man could claim credit for the discovery. If it was a bomb, maybe he would rid Afterlife of a rival for the archduke’s favor.
The general motioned behind him. Smoke raced into the courtyard, swirling into the mass of two soldiers dressed in pressed black.
A sobbing man appeared between them wearing tattered rags that once were the brightly-beaded garments of the dust devils. General Kelly’s blackjackets hauled the gypsy onto the sandy courtyard and tossed him at Bone Man’s feet.
Scars marred his lips. A bruise swollen as large as a fist covered the man’s right eye. Tears rolled down his grizzled cheeks and plopped onto the black dirt. The long curls of his oily hair cascaded over his slouching shoulders and tickled the ground.
The blackjackets saluted as they evaporated into trails of mist, once again leaving the general with Bone Man to speak in private.
“What do you think?” Oscar asked, motioning to the prisoner.
Markings teased the flesh of the gypsy’s neck around his frayed collar. Bone Man focused on the tattoos, inching forward. They were odd designs; runes of a language Bone Man didn’t recognize. Then again, if this man was a dust devil, they might be nothing more than gibberish.
The slits of Bone Man’s mask framed the prisoner as he committed him to memory. Once etched onto his mind, Bone Man shifted his gaze back to the general.
“As I said, watch out for him,” General Kelly grumbled. “He’s a powerful spirit and the Deep’s only made it stronger and wilder.”
Bone Man nodded. He extended his hand, and the box floated above it. Oscar’s mouth opened in protest, but a single, hard look from Bone Man shut it quickly.
With the barest of effort, his will coiled around the prisoner, lifting the gypsy from the dirt and floating him through an archway leading into the palace halls. Three of Bone Man’s crows flapped onto the prisoner while the other three perched on Bone Man’s shoulders.
“Bone Man?” General Kelly’s voice carried a hard, deep edge.
Bone Man acknowledged the general with a nod.
“If this truly is something of value, the archduke will know it was I who took it into possession and I who captured its bearer. You will not take the glory for it.”
Bone Man closed his eyes. The wind whistled through the plaza. “I need no glory, General. But you already knew that.”
“What dog does? Nevertheless, what I say, I mean.”
Rocks flew as Bone Man vaulted t
oward the general. In an instant, they stood so close Oscar’s greasy nose nearly touched Bone Man’s mask. Their breaths intermingled, though the general’s heavy huffs were much more labored than Bone Man’s calm exhales.
General Kelly shuffled back, throwing up his hands as he stumbled into the darkness. “You think you’re special, but you are nothing to the archduke! I sit on the Iron Council. I command armies. What are you but a ghost in the land of the dead? I’ll see you put out of your misery soon enough. This city is changing. The times are changing, and you are nothing but an old dog with no more tricks left to see.”
Oscar’s footsteps quickly faded into muted echoes. Bone Man shook his head, then motioned to the prisoner, and the gypsy floated through the palace halls, crows cawing on his quivering back.
For such a powerful spirit, the man kept it to himself. Bone Man’s power held the gypsy’s body at bay, but if the man truly did carry the spirit curse, why didn’t he try to free himself with it?
They came to the end of a long and empty hall where a single, nondescript door waited in the dim light of iron lanterns holding humming bulbs. Cobwebs hung in tired strands from the lights while dust collected in the hallway’s corners.
The door flung wide at Bone Man’s silent command and slammed into the wall. His prisoner flew inside, thudding on the ground somewhere in the impenetrable black. Bone Man’s six crows flew from their perches and landed each upon a lantern lining the hall, watching their master intently as he strolled into the windowless chamber.
This was a simple, cramped square of a room where Bone Man treated all his guests. The doorway framed his long, thin visage before the cowering prisoner. With a smile hidden behind a featureless mask, his mind reached for the door. It reacted to his command, creaking closed like the long sigh of a dying man. What little light remained blinked out, save for a sliver between the door and the floor that washed across the heel of Bone Man’s oxfords and gave his shoes the faintest of outlines against the darkness.
The razor-sharp blade hidden in his cane sang softly as he drew it into the open. With a casual flick of his wrist, he flipped the sheath into a loop on his belt.
His prisoner cowered like a hunched and trembling bean. Bone Man willed the mysterious box between them, and it dutifully hovered inches from the whimpering stranger.
Bone Man waited. The sobbing quieted, and the man lifted his bleary, blinking gaze. He stared at the box with one good eye. His scratched and torn fingers shakily reached for its dark surface. Bone Man watched the crazed, unfocused twinkle in the gypsy’s eye like a cat watches a goldfish swimming in a fishbowl. How long must someone so strong in spirit linger in the Deep before the Deep takes them? No soul could fight the vast desert of dust forever. It was beyond eternal and always hungry.
The prisoner’s ragged breaths disturbed his thoughts. The man no longer stared at the box, but at his captor.
“Does it hurt?” the gypsy rasped, flashing a smile of broken teeth. “Your every breath? Your being?”
Bone Man placed the tip of his sword against the dusty floor and slowly circled the man, his blade scraping along the stone tiles. The sound sent a ripple of goosebumps down Bone Man’s arms. Each tantalized follicle was a rusty nail driven through his flesh, yet he continued with a grin.
“Your life is torture, isn’t it?” The prisoner wheezed a laugh that tumbled into a coughing fit. “Come to the Deep. The Deep is kind. The Deep will cherish you. Hold you. Heal you.”
Bone Man paused behind the man and pressed his lips together. “What is in the box?”
The gypsy glanced over his shoulder. “It’s not for you. It’s for another. You have your curses. Let others suffer theirs.”
A nibble at his mind. A probing tendril, like a rat’s whisker brushing his ear. Bone Man smirked. So the man did have the spirit curse. He lifted his weapon and tapped it against his pale mask, and that probing tendril vanished.
The gypsy flashed his splintered smile. “So your master protects you. Smart man. Smarter than you know. Not as smart as he thinks.”
Bone Man clenched his sword. His gloves creaked. His blade whirred through the darkness. Cloth ripped. The man cried out and fell forward. Dust from the gypsy’s wound peppered the shadowy wall.
The prisoner’s wheezing calmed. “I peered into the Deep. I know its face. I hear its mind.” He began to shake, softly at first but more violently with each breath. “But how? Please, please, please tell me how! I hear you, I feel you. The serpent on my soul, I feel your slick scales upon my heart. Your fangs, they bury poison in my mind. I cannot hear. I cannot see! I am your loyal servant. Why do you torture me? Why do you make these breaths painful? Why do you make this skin burn? My bones crack and peel and blacken, but why? Why?”
Doubts seeded Bone Man’s thoughts. It appeared the Deep had devoured this mind long before Oscar found him.
“You betrayed me,” the man spat. Foam collected in the corners of his mouth. Red veins formed an angry latticework in the white of his good eye.
Froth dribbled down his bleeding lips. “I….”
Bone Man stepped closer. The gypsy meant to speak, and Bone Man meant to hear it.
Saliva rolled down the prisoner’s jaw and splattered on the floor. “I….”
Bone Man leaned over farther. Each vertebrate fractured and healed as he bent, spreading pain in radiant bursts along his back. He stilled, and they stared at one another. The man wept, shaking his head. “I….”
Bone Man frowned. Something swirled in that gypsy’s eye, something odd, something ancient. Something powerful.
His prisoner lurched forward, grabbing Bone Man’s head in his hands and slamming his forehead against Bone Man’s mask. “Oh, what a sweet sound, this torment of my heart. I give my life, and with this kiss I do depart.”
The nameless gypsy’s lips pressed against Bone Man’s mask. A once quiet room erupted in a torment of rage and power. Screams ripped across the bare walls. Wind bellowed like the belly of cyclone. The gypsy’s once pathetic spirit now speared through Bone Man’s defenses like steel daggers through silk.
Black so dark it drank the light. A void, vast and endless. Something slumbered. Something woke. It stirred beyond his reach. Watching. Waiting. Hungry. Ravenous.
Bone Man rammed his sword through the man’s chest. The chaos stilled, and the dust settled. Silence blanketed the room save for Bone Man’s deep, slow breaths. His prisoner reached out and caressed his mask. The man’s lips twist in a weak smile. “It has begun. For what it’s worth, I am sorry you must suffer in what is to come.”
A single, deep breath whistled through the man’s lips, and his body slumped. The gypsy folded on Bone Man’s blade. Flesh blackened and cracked like used firewood. Pieces of his prisoner sloughed off and shattered into ash as his body turned to dust.
Bone Man watched the soul decay. His hands twitched on the weapon. His body ached. He straightened, ignoring the tearing fibers of his muscles as each twist and bend they made tortured his nerves.
He slipped his sword back into its cane sheath and willed the black box to him. It rotated over his splayed hand, the pearl on its lid barely visible against the black. The archduke would need to know of this relic, even if it hadn’t yet been opened. Bone Man might not have pried the secrets he needed, but he knew enough to know this artifact wasn’t the work of their enemies.
Bone Man eyed the pile of ash. Soon, it would join the rest of the grains floating on the winds of Afterlife. He nodded to himself and smoothed his jacket. He willed the door open, and it obliged with a shrill creak. He turned on his heel and marched down the hall, cane clicking in regular intervals with his steps. Once the Archduke knew of the box, Bone Man would scour every street and alley of Afterlife until he knew exactly what it contained.
CHAPTER FOUR
From the Heart
Amber stared at the blank canvas. Toby’s birthday had come and gone, but she still didn’t feel any better about being abandoned by her mother and i
gnored by her brother. And whenever she was down, her creativity went down with her.
She huffed a sigh and peeked at Jason’s painting. Like always, her friend’s eyes focused only on the stretched white before him. He painted a weave of reds overlapping one another in a graceful dance, like the lines ice skates left on the rink as skaters twirled in each other’s arms.
Rose braided rich maroon. Crimson overlaid amaranth. Burgundy and scarlet interlaid in intricate designs. It was a vibrant dance, a tapestry of motion.
“How’re you so good at this?” she asked.
Jason paused. He shot her a grin and leaned back. Swaths of red stained his knuckles and splotched his forearms to the elbows. He blew the hair from his face and shrugged. “What does Mr. Engel say again?”
“Feel the canvas!” Mr. Engel called, swishing through the rows of students framed by their art. “And Jason, how many times do I have to tell you to call me Ben? We’re all equals in art. No need for formalities. You’re all adults now! Soon, you’ll take flight from your roosts and head into this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours and experience it in all its glory.”
Amber shared a sly smile with her friend as their teacher approached. Out of the nine students in AP Art Two Dimensional Design, Amber doubted anyone else besides her and Jason actually cared about what they created. The rest of the seniors used it as an excuse to fill their schedules since St. Luke’s required as much from all their students.
Mr. Engel—Ben—took up residence beside Amber’s blank canvas. Originally from Portsmouth, their art teacher ran south in his younger years and opened up a studio in Key West, just about as far away from New Hampshire as anyone could get. When the Great Recession hit and people lost their appetite for art along with their jobs and savings, he boarded up his place and slunk back to parents, who leveraged a long history of support to St. Luke’s to land him a position there.
If his unfortunate circumstances scarred him, it never showed. Mr. Engel moved like a dancer, smiled like a child, and had a flair for the dramatic that made him one of the most popular teachers at St. Luke’s simply because he was a splash of color in their otherwise black and white prison.
Afterlife (Second Eden #1) Page 3
