Afterlife (Second Eden #1)

by Aaron Burdett

  He grumbled and waited. The intercom buzzed off, its tiny light going dark. With a deep sigh he sat up and blinked at the glistening debris of his half-empty whiskey bottle staining the bunker’s concrete floor. He hopped over the accident and brushed his teeth in the tiny, rusted sink and stared at the face staring back in the mirror.

  Water from the running faucet pooled in his hands. Dino splashed his cheeks and relished the chill. Cool lines ran down his neck and wet his collar. He cupped a hand beneath the running water and took a few deep gulps before slipping on his boots and bounding into the hall of their labyrinthine complex running in shoddy tunnels beneath the finer streets of Afterlife.

  Sewers were the Errand’s best friends. The archduke needed them. The city depended on them, and they formed a kind of city of filth beneath the glittering one above. Faye could move vast sums of her soldiers through the maze quickly and at the slightest hint of trouble, though thanks to her Deep relics and the archduke’s troubles with the city’s expansion, it had been a long while since they had to flee a black jacket raid.

  Faye even went so far as to keep souls in hotels and townhomes in the luxurious inner districts. The Errand was everywhere because it was nowhere, and so the archduke could never completely crush it, but it could never completely crush him.

  Dino flicked drops from his brow and smoothed his collar. The air in the halls was electric. Excitement thrummed in the low conversations buzzing as he passed, the familiar faces of the men and women in the Fool’s Errand lighting up as he bounded to the sub-basement where Faye’s quarters waited.

  “What’d I miss?” he wondered, toying with the ring around his neck.

  Two guards saluted him at Faye’s office door, then flung it wide. He stepped through and found her hunched over her desk, pouring through communications layered over maps tiled with scribbled notes.

  When she saw him, she motioned to the pile. “Took you long enough.”

  “I was entertaining a friend.”

  “Oh? Her name whiskey by any chance?”

  “What’s all the commotion about?” he asked, ignoring her jab. A lance of excitement shot through him. “Is it Bone Man? Are you letting me dust him?”

  “You wish.” She sighed and threw herself back in her seat. “Unfortunately, he’s going to remain very much alive—or whatever you might call it—for now.”

  Dino glowered at the pile of papers and clenched his fists. “Then why’d you wake me up, Faye? I feel like I’ve been run through a meat grinder and twisted into a pretzel. I need some sleep.”

  “Shut up and sit down. The alarms around the palace went off, Dino. My spies say something of extreme value’s been stolen from the archduke, and he’d do anything, dust anyone, to get it back.”

  “And we have no idea what it is?” Dino asked, plopping in the chair.

  “Rumor has it that it’s something Bone Man brought back from the Deep.”

  “So there’s a new relic.” Dino squeezed the armrests. “There’re a lot of new relics popping up in the black market. So what?”

  “This might be one of the big ones, the one from the days before the city.”

  Dino’s throat tightened. He gripped the chair tighter. “What do you know about it?”

  “Nobody seems to know much about it, and that has me more unsettled than you could imagine. We didn’t need this. Not now. Not ever.”

  All the muffled grogginess evaporated from Dino’s head. Things from the days before Afterlife’s founding rarely made it inside the city limits without leaving a lasting scar on everything and everyone they touched. Everyone knew—Dino more than any other soul—what kind of horrors a Deep relic could cause.

  “If that relic is somewhere in the city….” Dino’s words trailed off as he focused on the maps.

  “It could seriously screw us,” Faye finished. “But what the relic is doesn’t matter nearly as much as who stole it. Nobody in the archduke’s service has a clue, and my contacts in the Sinners don’t even know who could’ve done it. Whoever this third player is has upset the careful balance of my plans. It’s bad enough that the thief’s actions will probably double security in the palace complex, making our job at least twice as hard, but now the archduke will fear an attack. He knows his safe place is compromised.”

  Dino crossed his arms and nodded. “And Bone Man won’t let this crime go unpunished. He’s going to slaughter souls everywhere he goes, Faye. He’ll fill the streets with dust. He’ll make sure everyone knows the archduke’s displeasure. We have to stop him. Kill Bone Man, and we cripple the archduke’s grip on the city. This is the time to strike, before they can recover!”

  “Bone Man will make souls suffer. Many of them. Many already have.”

  “All the more reason to end his existence and lift the shadow from our city. You fight the archduke to give the people their voices back, to grant them the power to rule themselves instead of being ruled. Give the word and I’ll gather a force to kill the archduke’s greatest weapon.”

  Faye clasped her hands and stared at her desk lamp. “This is not the time to stop Bone Man, Dino. Not now.”

  “Dammit, Faye!” Dino slammed his fists on the desk. “He’s going to kill! How many more innocents have to suffer because of him? How many!”

  Faye lowered her hands and glared at him. “I will not risk everything I’ve built and the progress I’ve made to stop the archduke’s reign in your petty quest for vengeance, no matter how you try and make it sound righteous. This is bigger than you. It always has been.”

  “There is nothing petty about my revenge. It is everything to me.”

  “And you’ll have it.” Faye stood with her hands pressed onto the desk and her eyes level with his. “But not now. Bone Man is our only clue into the archduke’s true plans. I won’t purposefully blind ourselves just to make you feel better about yourself.”

  For a long moment, Dino glared at Faye, his nostrils swelling with each heavy breath. She stared back, calmly and without so much a single blink of her dark eyes. Dino pressed his fingertips into the desk and slid back until he stood straight and stiff as a board. “Fine. What’s the plan now?”

  Faye’s flat lips curved into an elegant smile, and she leaned back. “Good. Your orders are simple: The archduke isn’t going to keep Bone Man cloistered in the palace. He’ll sic the Hound on the city in hopes that Bone Man sniffs out the thief and the relic and brings them back. I don’t doubt Bone Man will find them. He always finds what he wants. But I need to know if this thief acts alone, or if there’s another faction in the war.”

  A cold pit opened in Dino’s stomach. Sweat congealed on his palms. “Don’t ask this of me, Faye.”

  “I need a soul who has the strength and the skill to follow Bone Man, who knows what to look for and how to peer into the shadows to see someone—something—that exists on the edges and lurks in darkness.”

  “Please. Not this. It’ll be torture.”

  “War is torture, Dino. Find Bone Man and tail him. Do not engage. I want to know if the thief is one of the Scarlet Sinners or truly could be someone else. I want to know what this artifact is and why the archduke wants it so badly. The more I know, the more I can use that knowledge against our enemies.”

  “It’s clearly the Sinners.” Dino kept his voice calm despite the rage roiling in his heart. “Wilhelmina and her lackeys are finally stabbing the archduke in the back after they stabbed us. I can have a few doppelgangers hit up the gaming houses to corroborate it. I’m sure it’s her! Who else?”

  Faye smirked and folded her arms. “I thought the same initially. It wasn’t Wilhelmina. I’ve already confirmed it. This is someone else. There is no other possibility.”

  “But we can’t just believe Wilhelmina. She’s the head of the Sinners, and—”

  “This isn’t up for discussion. Bone Man will likely hit Wilhelmina’s gaming houses first, since I’m sure the archduke will think much like we did initially and speculate the Scarlet Sinners were behind t
he robbery. I’ve posted scouts around every major casino around the palace. When they spot Bone Man, they’ll let you know. Be his shadow. Know everything he knows.”

  “He took—No, ripped—her from me, and now I’ve got to skulk in the dark while I follow him around Afterlife, murdering souls left and right, doing what he did to me to so many others? This isn’t right! What’s the Fool’s Errand for, Faye? I thought you wanted to bring the Soul Assembly back. I thought you wanted to stop the killings, to stop the vanishings? Do you even care about the people? Or are they just empty souls to dust?”

  Faye’s jaw set, and she spoke low through the wall of her teeth. “If I let you charge into the streets and fight him, you may lose. He’s stronger than you, no matter how angry you are. And if you failed, and this third actor made a move against us, we might fail. Because how would I fight this new threat? I know nothing of it. The archduke knows nothing of it. And now they have something from the Deep.

  “They might be another archduke in the making, and if I don’t play this right, I’ve lost you and many of my good fools, and then I’d be facing the archduke, Bone Man, and whatever other demons this city has kept hidden for so long alone. Don’t talk to me about not caring. I care. You don’t. You want to die in a blaze of glory and join her as grains on the wind. Sorry. Not today.”

  Dino’s gaze drifted to his shoes. It took every bit of strength he had not to slam his fist into the wall until his knuckles shattered.

  “So tell me, Dino,” Faye continued. “Tell me you can carry out my orders. Tell me your honor binds you to the greater good and not to your darker passions. Tell me true. If you can’t do this, tell me now, and I’ll let you go out in your stupid blaze, and you can find a final death knowing you would let countless others die the way you let her die, because like I always knew, you have no honor or love for anyone but yourself.”

  Dino lifted his chin and stared at the wall. “I will carry out your orders to the letter. I will find Bone Man and the thief he hunts. I’ll learn everything there is to know about the artifact and why the archduke wants it.”

  “Excellent. I’ve got much planning to do now that things have changed. Please don’t disturb me again until you have something valuable to bring to my table.”

  Dino saluted and pivoted on a heel. He flung open the door and marched beyond the guards without so much as a glance their direction.

  He tore into his room and bolted the lock behind him. He pressed his back against the door and slid to a seat, eyes closed, hand clutching the ring around his neck. He closed his eyes and rocked there for a long while.

  Dino lifted his face and sucked in a deep breath. He rolled to his knees and stood, staring at the sticky glass glittering on the floor. He needed a drink. Luckily, he always kept an extra bottle of whiskey under the bed.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dog of War

  Bone Man’s bones cracked and sheared with each slightest twitch of muscle. He raised his chin to the sky and closed his eyes, fighting down the pain rippling through his body.

  Piles of dust swirled around him, the remnants of the souls foolish enough to come to between him and what he wanted. The Scarlet Sinners believed the archduke was their ally, but in truth, they were his tools, and he cared little for their kind.

  Bone Man took a deep breath and glanced toward the balcony overlooking the casino plaza. He caught a fleeting glimpse of a woman dressed in red slipping into the darkness as she pounded away from her casino. Her anger filled the air and pressed upon him like the weight of a boiling ocean.

  It took three visits to different gaming houses to coax her from her sanctuary, but in the end, the leader of the Sinners couldn’t simply stand by and let him dust her loyal souls. One quick exchange was all it took, and his crows told him all he needed to know. Wilhelmina had nothing to do with the relic thief.

  Like a godly gazelle he bounded from the courtyard, cocooning his body in his will and launching himself in an enormous arc over the casino’s manicured lawns.

  Startled guests scattered like roaches beneath him. The wind lashed at his body, each howling kiss like a knife slicing across his skin. He careened downward and thudded on a dark avenue, then straightened and smoothed his blazer.

  Shadows gently reached out and cloaked his form as his crows took to the skies and kept watch on the roads around him. Keeping to the cool stone walls, Bone Man sprinted through streets that became ever louder, busier, and brighter as he moved into the writhing mass of the city’s dense neighborhoods.

  The sky was a river of low clouds glowing with the faintest moonlight. Every so often, twinkling stars appeared between the rolling tributaries. Taller towers in Afterlife with their gaudy signs and flashing neon arrows reflected in pinks and greens and brilliant yellows on the billowing mists.

  He ran without thought, bounding from alley to rooftop and back again, letting his conscious mind seep into the city as he searched for the criminal. He did not know this thief, so he could not track them, but he had touched the box, and something once touched by Bone Man could never be lost to him. And so his mind flew across the avenues as he leapt from one to another, searching for the object of his desire.

  Frustration set in as the relic remained elusive. How long had he searched for it once he learned of its theft, and even then it still hid from his power? Bone Man despised this thief. Their power was a match for his, and the thought lit a dark inferno in his heart.

  He landed in a cloud of dust, his mind suddenly refocused on the world around him. The buildings spanning the avenue he remembered well, but why couldn’t he remember how he came here? Even when he let his thoughts guide him, they never led him here. He hated this place, from the highest shingle to the lowest sewage pipe.

  Bone Man was in the Old City, the decadent ruins where the elders of the Soul Assembly built their sprawling estates. Once the jewel of Afterlife and rumored true first district of the city, these homes rivaled anything constructed in the mortal world. Delicate pillars supported verandas lined by intricate iron rails. Marble walls displayed baroque murals of interwoven flora, broken by the occasional skull peeking between carved petals.

  Not so long ago, wide lawns defined this place. Their manicured grasses were crowned with topiaries sculpted in the shape of exotic animals. Fountains spouted crystalline water into elegant arches that refracted starlight into countless glittering gems. Blossoming trees lining the wide avenues carpeted the stones with their snowy petals and sweetened the air with the faintest scent of citrus and honey.

  But that was then. Now, Old City was little more than dust and charcoal and piles of better left forgotten ash. When the archduke purged the Soul Assembly and scattered their forces to the wind, he blackened these graceful arches first. This district was rage and ruin and reminder of a way that would never rise again.

  Bone Man drifted through a spacious lane. His will parted the dust and debris before him like the prow of a great ship moving swiftly over the ocean. His oxfords clicked on the stone and echoed in the cavernous husks of the empty mansions.

  He paused before an estate with a long, deep drive. The remnants of its door hung ajar, a black tongue spewing ash onto the patio. Cracked and broken windows dotted the high walls. Fully half the roof had collapsed, exposing the third floor to the elements.

  A form washed across two of the windows on the second floor. It paused at a third window. It turned. It watched Bone Man, this formless silhouette. It waited.

  His grip tightened on the cane. He walked down the drive, dust and ash billowing around him without ever settling a single speck on his impeccable suit. The mansion’s door shattered and flung aside as his will tore it into pieces and launched it from the doorway.

  Ruined furniture crumpled like broken black bones littered around the room. Tattered remnants of curtains dangled like dead skin from warped rods. Bubbles in once elegant wallpaper betrayed the destructive heat that kissed them.

  It didn’t take long to find the stai
rs. Bone Man bounded up to the second floor, licking his lips as he tore his sword from the cane sheath. He landed lightly on the floorboards. The ruined ceiling had several holes between it and the second floor. Spears of silky moonlight lanced from them and washed over the decay.

  A floorboard creaked, just around the corner. Bone Man whipped around the turn, razor tip of his weapon leading the way. Two doors lined each side of the hall. Another waited at the end. All were shut tight. All were dark, save for the last door where a ribbon of silver scarred the gap between it and the floor.

  Bone Man let his will seep into the hallway. He prodded the first doors. Locked. His will moved to the next doors. Also, locked.

  A shadow disturbed the dull grey light beneath the final door. Another floorboard groaned as the shadow moved. Bone Man turned his will toward that last knob and squeezed the grip of his weapon.

  Just before his mind reached the lock, the door clicked. Rusted hinges moaned. The door gradually swung wide.

  Bone Man retracted his will. With measured steps and a steady grip, he stepped toward the open door.

  Halfway down the hall, he paused. No sound came from within the room. No movement sifted through the gap of light angling through the opening.

  He reached the doorway. Using his blade, he pulled the door wider. The hinges groused loudly at the movement, but whoever lurked in the room beyond didn’t run. Their mistake.

  His steel whistled into the room, sparkling in a silvery light that streamed through a large, arched window while furniture covered in dusty drapes littered the space like tired ghosts. Bone Man stiffened. He scanned the dark corners, searched the floor and inspected the ceiling. He slashed the cloths covering the furniture, but no assassins hid beneath them. Frustrated, he walked to the window and pressed his hand on the pane. The glass was cracked, but not broken, and despite the force he applied, the pane wouldn’t budge.

  The door clicked shut. Without his help.