Page 52 of Mistress of Bones

XXXV

MISTRESS OF BONES

W ell , Azul thought to herself, that was a foolish thing to do . Barging in, too focused on finding more bones to wonder if Sergado might already be there, waiting for her.

“Why didn’t you stay at home, as I asked you to?” said her brother. “I was on my way to Almanueva.”

The men blocking the way between Azul and Sergado waited silent and still for their orders. Such control her brother had over these bodies, it was still hard to comprehend. “I’m not interested in you, Brother. Only in my sister’s bones.”

“Why not simply ask me?”

At the reminder of his deceit, fury and shame rose within Azul.

“I did ask you, remember? I won’t ask again.

You’ll either string me along or lie to me, or both, as you’ve done so far.

And if instead you decide to be truthful, the price you’ll ask of me won’t be something I’d be willing to pay, will it? ”

“So, you’ll simply take?”

Azul waved at the contingent of living corpses surrounding her and Sombra. “Isn’t that what you do? It must run in our blood.”

Sergado tilted his head, a satisfied edge to his smile. “Yes, you are very much like me, aren’t you?”

Virel Enjul had been wrong, she realized. Her brother had known she was to blame for the demise of his men, and had guessed how she did it, judging by his victims’ gloves and long sleeves.

“So let us talk, Sister,” Sergado continued. “I will not harm you—you have my word.”

Azul dug under her waistcoat and brought out her bone-hilted dagger. “No.”

Sergado ignored her rejection. “I knew from the first time we met, when you were nothing but a child—how stubborn you were then, how stubborn you are now. I should have dragged you back home, as was my right and duty as your older brother. I was too busy with my own self, and I must ask forgiveness for that. But I won’t fail you again.

We will talk, and we will see about your sister, since you wish it so much.

That sort of urge, I can understand. Are we not alike in every other way? ”

One of Sergado’s men advanced on her. Azul slapped his hand away and crossed his chest with her dagger, forcing him back. “No.”

She heard swords clanking behind her. Sergado wouldn’t be concerned with Sombra’s well-being, but she couldn’t afford to check.

Azul grabbed the man in front of her by his shirt and pivoted her body to send him stumbling to the wall.

She was on him the next instant, pushing him to the floor and thrusting Nereida’s dagger deep into his gut.

It wasn’t enough to stop him—back in the ossuary, she had seen how mortal wounds mattered little to these living corpses—and the man’s strong hands clamped on her forearms. She pushed the blade deeper until the hilt reached the skin, slipped her fingers through the tear in the shirt, and touched flesh.

The stench of putrefaction filled her nostrils, invaded her throat. A shout came from the stairs. A body thudded against the floor by her side. Sombra, giving her more time.

Azul tightened her hold on the bone hilt and opened the Eye of Death.

Power coursed eagerly along her arm all the way to the dagger. It sucked greedily at the bone, drank from the man slumped against the wall, and demanded its cut of Azul’s soul, which she gave up willingly.

The bone reshaped itself, and then demanded more, going after the wooden column behind the man. The house groaned; the plaster and paint on the wall crumbled.

Muscle re-formed in the blink of an eye. Azul snatched her hands back and scrambled to her feet as fur crept over flesh and a gray catlike creature stood as tall as her chest. Fangs protruded from its mouth, big black eyes opened, and muscles strained under its hide, ready to strike.

She let it go.

The beast ripped into the living corpses, shredding their limbs to butchers’ meat.

Sombra handed her a new dagger. She plunged it into the back of a man about to stab the big cat.

The man’s body jerked, his weapon still firmly in hand.

Azul felt for the neckline of his shirt and touched his neck with her knuckles. The man dropped instantly.

The huge cat sank its teeth into someone else. Azul kept her back against the creature’s side, protecting its flank. She saw a man with a raised pistol, waiting.

Her brother was shouting something. Was it “Enough, enough”? Sergado’s eyes were wide, his cheeks flushed. “Enough! Or it’s his death.”

Her brother’s words finally made it through the maelstrom of her thoughts.

Panting, Azul glanced at the corpses surrounding them to find Sombra with a dagger to his neck.

Azul’s stomach clenched. Even with his life in danger, Sombra’s countenance remained unperturbed, as if he were enjoying the situation.

The beast stopped attacking Sergado’s men and backed against Azul, warm and alive and growling.

Why hadn’t her brother left? Did he have so much faith in his men? More than half littered the floor. If he tried to keep her and Sombra here, the rest would soon join them.

But Sergado knew her well, hadn’t he said so? And she would not risk a friend’s life. But then… would it really be such a risk when she could just touch one of Sombra’s bones after she was done felling everyone else?

The big cat shifted suddenly, but the warning came too late. A powerful hand gripped her arm and spun her around. Azul cried out in pain, barely keeping the cat from mauling the new threat.

Because Virel Enjul stood in front of her.

The world went still.

You survived! she wanted to say, but her voice failed her. Those harsh features, the wide violet rings, the golden irises, the unfocused black pupils. He had survived. The Lord Death’s touch had reached Cienpuentes, after all. He had struck some kind of deal with Sergado.

A loud growl broke through the sudden silence, not from the animal, but from Sombra. He didn’t strain against his captors, but his mouth had twisted into a feral snarl. Over Enjul’s strange change of heart?

No, she realized in horror. Of course not.

“Why?” she cried out, despair filling her as she admitted what stood in front of her: the skin, lacking the life it ought to have; the eyes, flat like simple round stones. “Why him?”

One of her brother’s dolls.

Sergado’s heels echoed against the steps as he descended the staircase and stopped well outside the cat’s reach. “ Azul ,” he gushed, motioning to the creature. “Sister! This is beyond any of my dreams! Why did you not tell me you had this gift?”

“Why him?” she shouted.

“Why not? An Emissary of the Lord Death will be useful. He’ll open so many doors.

He can demand access to any ossuary, any crypt.

Just imagine the things we can create, between your gift and mine.

The bodies! We can pick and choose among the best, make a god of our own with nobody to stop us. We can become gods.”

The speech washed over Azul like background rain. She only saw Enjul’s face, remembered how it had twisted with horror in his last moments, how he pleaded to remain with his god.

“Don’t bring me back. I want to stay with him.”

She longed to touch her forehead to Enjul’s chin, end this torment in her gut, in her thoughts, in her guilty conscience.

But even if she did, even if her touch stopped her brother’s gift, Enjul’s body would not decompose.

His death was too recent. Sergado could raise him again. Over and over again.

“Don’t bring me back. I want to stay with him.”

His face, his horror. His last wishes.

Azul could not abandon him to this. She must find a way to destroy his body—burn it beyond use, turn it into another animal, another being.

“We, the emissaries, were born with the blessing of the god inside us.”

The god is here?

“He has no body, but we carry him inside us.”

The cat twisted its head, sank one of its long fangs into Enjul’s forearm. Tendons snapped, muscles tore. His grip loosened, and Azul broke free. She slammed her hand against his neck.

Sergado’s laugh was immediate. “I admire your stubbornness, but this is a waste of time. Stop now, Sister, or risk the lives of your man and your new pet.”

What did it matter? Azul thought as Enjul’s body folded over hers. Their lives were forfeit anyway—Sergado would kill them once he had her safely in his grasp and tucked away.

She allowed the body to drop and followed it down to the floor. Her hand never leaving his neck, she straddled him.

“Azul,” Sergado said. “Must you keep up this foolishness? Even if you do something to him, I’ll simply reclaim the body later. You know this.”

Her gift searched and searched. Desperation clawed at her.

The large bones of the huge feline came into sharp relief, as well as the bones of those lying around her, of those still standing by her brother and keeping Sombra in check.

The bones of those sleeping in the other houses, the bones of those farther away.

A forest of bones, indistinguishable from one another.

She tried to bring back the focus she had gained in the ossuary. From flesh to muscle to bone, she searched and searched. Azul squeezed her eyes shut, willing her gift to work faster, better. There was nothing. Nothing there other than Virel Enjul. Had she been wrong?

But no. There it was.

So tiny. So small.

Enough.

A piece of the Lord Death.

Since Sergado de Gracia loved death so much, she would give it to him.

Leaning down, she placed her lips against Virel Enjul’s, Emissary of the Lord Death, for this was the last time they would ever meet, and there was no shame in saying goodbye to him the way she now realized she wanted to say hello.

The Eye of Death opened in her palm, flush against Enjul’s cool neck.

The cat coiled closer around her, ready to strike.

Her brother shouted something. His guards stepped away, allowing him a better view.

There was nothing to see—her gift rushed into Enjul, made its own network of bridges over his bones to reach that other presence inside him.

And once they connected, the god demanded flesh.

It demanded power. It demanded her essence. It demanded everything.

Her soul was severed suddenly, torn apart by invisible teeth.

Azul cried out in pain. She dropped on her side, curling into herself.

It had taken so much—too much. A gaping hole had been carved out of her, and she feared she would never have enough soul to bring anything else to life again.

That Isadora was truly lost to her because she had chosen someone else. Some thing else.

Enjul’s eyes snapped open. He rose, pushing Azul’s leg off his midriff. She tried to focus and tell the cat not to attack him, to stay out of his way. When Enjul got to his feet, he looked around, taking stock of the room.

On the stair landing, her brother gaped, stumbling as he took a step back. Enjul spared him a glance, then focused on his own hands, flexing them as if he were trying them out for the first time.

“Hmm,” he said. “It’ll do.”

All of Sergado’s men dropped to the floor.

“What?” Sergado cried in shock.

He said something else, but Azul was doubled over again, a new wave of pain rippling through her.

Tears raced down her face. She panted against the floor, the room coming in and out of focus.

Enjul—no, not Enjul, the Lord Death—knelt by her side to look at her.

His eyes were wide with equal parts surprise and curiosity.

Something crashed in the distance and shouting followed.

The pounding of boots shook the tile beneath her cheek.

More of Sergado’s guards? How would she face them?

That was her last coherent thought.