Bone Song (8 page)

He continued to drive.

Eldritch howls and half-perceived shadows with amber eyes moved in the darkness. Donal branched off the already-narrow forest road onto the Tartrous Trail, dropping his speed. Grit seemed to have gathered in his eyes.

By four
A.M.
, he was in familiar surroundings. Donal drove the car quietly down to a clearing and stopped.

And waited.

He switched the engine off.

Lost in trance for a time, Donal eventually came to. He inhaled, then forced himself to move, pushing the car door open and stepping out onto dark mud. The sky was a featureless purple. Looking downslope, he could see the lake.

It was a massive shadow that would never grow lighter. The lake had no name, and its waters were permanently black, perpetually still. Donal had never seen it any other way.

He walked to a wide silvery tree that stood on a hillock, dragging a key out of his pocket. Donal inserted the key into a knothole in the bark. There was a hesitation, then a cracking sound.

The slope's mulch slid back to reveal the cabin's steel windows and the carved blackwood door.

Grandfather Jack's legacy.

Donal opened up the front door, then went back to the car and hauled the dear diva from the trunk. Gently he carried her to the cabin,
their
cabin, and laid her down on the long dining table.

He snapped the flint switches on two oil lamps. Their yellowish light danced and flickered before growing strong and steady.

Perfect . . .

No. There was work to be done.

Forcing himself not to look at the perfection spread out upon the table, Donal looked around the low-ceilinged room, avoiding the overhead beams, searching for something heavy.

He stopped when he came across an old Zurinese stone skull, some beloved totem of his miserable old grandfather Jack, who had never come to visit his grandson, never mind take him away from the prison that was . . .

Irrelevant now.

So beautiful.

Stone skull in hand, Donal made his way downslope to the car. He pushed down the trunk lid and climbed into the driver's seat, the skull in his lap as he drove in first gear, bypassing a large tree root. Then he stopped but left the engine running.

Directly below, the nameless lake was thick and dark as ever.

Donal slid out from the driver's seat, jammed the stone skull down on the accelerator, let go of the clutch pedal, and leaped back. The car bumped its way down toward the waiting lake.

It's going to stall.

For a second Donal thought he had failed, but then the car was over the edge into the lake with a heavy plop, no more. Black water surrounded the car's roof, pulling it under, and then it was gone.

One long curved wave moved across the viscous surface like a satisfied smile, then attenuated into nothingness. Lake and forest had returned to dark normalcy.

After a moment, Donal turned and made his way back to the cabin. To the object of his dreams.

F
or the next three days
and nights there was no sleep—no true sleep—for Donal. He slid in and out of strange half-waking dreams, where the diva sang arias that were purely his, amid impossible white sands by a quicksilver sea born of the memory of that other artist, Jamix Holandson, whose dead bone Donal had touched.

But it was the diva who remained with him, laid out on the long table beneath the low ceiling, her flesh pure and radiant ivory.

So beautiful.

Donal washed the wounds and scraped dried blood from perfect skin—a spatula from the kitchen served for that. He cut away the bloodied portions of her dress—
oh, Thanatos, such perfection
—and wrapped a white bedsheet around her body.

Afterward, he pulled the only armchair close, turned it away from the table, and used it to kneel upon, his forearms across the chair's back. He contemplated the drying perfection of his desire.

Soon she would be ready for the flensing.

Do you hear the bones?

Not every moment was spent in contemplation. For the beautiful dark act to take place, it was necessary that the diva—and Donal—remain undisturbed. So he was able to drag himself into the kitchen, drinking cold canned soup as he dug through the old toolbox and equipment chest.

In a forest such as this, Grandfather Jack had needed to prepare for dangerous times. There were thirteen old iron life-wards: narrow, heavy objects the length of his forearm, ending in a rough spike so they could be jammed into the ground.

Designed primarily to ward off packs of deathwolves, the devices would repel all living organisms above the level of plants.

The life-wards were heavy as Donal lugged them outside. When he pushed them into the hard soil and leaned on them, the life-wards' spikes slid easily into place. It took an hour—as far as he could tell; time seemed to be moving strangely—to set them all in place, in a rough ring around the cabin.

As the last ward entered the soil, a great shimmering hemisphere descended, shielding the entire cabin from invasion.

Safe.

Donal went back in to contemplate the diva.

After a long, rapt period, Donal shook himself into awareness. He was kneeling on the reversed armchair. When he pushed himself to standing, his sinews ached with unaccustomed use.

He wiped his hand across his face, feeling rough stubble. Then he moved toward the bathroom, and each step was hot agony.

Finishing, he drank brackish water from the faucet. Then he walked, still in pain but with more mobility, to the kitchen. He opened another can of soup, took three cold sips from it, and put it down.

There was something important he had to do.

What is it?

The toolbox.

From it, Donal drew the rusted scythe that Grandfather Jack once used to cut back the tall, dark grasses. He found the stone sharpening block, poured seven drops of moth oil upon it, and began the long, careful process of sharpening the scythe.

Soon the flesh would begin to soften with a hint of liquefaction.

Beautiful. So . . .

Then, only then, Donal could begin the slicing and cleansing process, which would culminate when he polished those dear bones, one by one, with every ounce of skill he possessed.

Donal worked until he could stand it no more: the presence of perfection in the next room while he scraped blade against stone in here.

He went back into the lounge and resumed his kneeling position upon the armchair, contemplating the diva laid out upon his table.

So perfect . . .

And that was the position he was in, kneeling and frozen in rapt awe, when the front door blew apart in splinters and the windows exploded inward.

No . . .

Dark-clad troopers in hexlar armor stormed inside, dropping to crouch, some rolling and coming up with weapons trained on Donal.

You cannot . . .

Donal's hand moved toward his shoulder holster.

. . . have her!

He clasped the butt of his Magnus, drawing it out.

And in that moment a woman clad in a pale-gray skirt suit stepped through the splintered remnants of the doorway. She raised a heavy dart gun, aimed at Donal's heart.

The world was moving so slowly.

“Too late.”

She fired.

The ceiling spun past and he was flat on the floor, limbs rigid, ribs paralyzed, scarcely breathing. Darkness circled and shifted around the edges of his vision.

“How. . .” It was so hard to speak. “Wards . . .”

“That was your mistake. They're
life
-wards.”

The woman leaned over him and brushed back her white-blond hair with one gloved hand. Donal's lips moved to ask the next question, but only a gasp came out.

“The ward shield keeps out”—she smiled—“only living beings.”

Donal's eyes shifted toward the troopers.

“Oh,
they're
alive, all right.” The woman tapped Donal's forehead with one finger. “It's me you didn't count on.”

Darkness was closing in.

“—take the diva and—” was all he could hear of the troopers' voices.

A hush surrounded Donal, blanketing him.

No. She's mine.

Even the air was thicker, viscous. It was difficult to drag the stuff into his lungs.

Do you hear the . . .

Silence.

A shadow fist closed around the world and snuffed it out.

D
elirium followed chaotic dream followed
a thrashing in his bed, limbs screaming with pain as Donal—or the near-mindless thing that had been Donal—fought against the restraints and howled. Then he would lapse into comatose darkness.

Afterward, liquid fire would spread along each fine nerve, igniting it with agony, as the cycle of torture began again.

For nine long days and nights, nurses with vertically slitted eyes watched over Donal, their skins shifting through hues of violet as Donal's writhing body threw back refracted energy from the thaumaturgic field. They were immune to the field's effects: Night Sisters with delicate fangs and elegant limbs, revealing hints of their feline aspect.

They watched and cared for him.

On the tenth night, something burst inside Donal, something in his mind . . . and he gave a great agonized gasp and fell back, slipping into peaceful sleep. Above him, the ten-foot-long shield casting the healing field glowed strongly and then began to fade. The thaumaturgic field shifted hue and became a pale-blue volume that smelled of ozone and lilacs.

Two of the Night Sisters looked at each other, the vertical slits of their eyes growing more circular as the light faded once more.

“He'll be fine, don't you think?”

“Yes. You did a good job, Sister Felice.”

“Thank you. Shall I phone the commander, or do you—”

“I'll let you make the call.”

The younger Night Sister, the one known as Sister Felice, walked along the central aisle of the shadowed ward. The room was in darkness save for one of the beds, which glimmered with a sapphire glow: radiant energy from an ensorcelled victim trapped deep within the paralyzing influence of a deathmoth's bite.

Other sleeping forms were just lumps beneath the bedclothes, unmoving, while tiny monitor sprites hovered over each pillow, ready to flare with brightness should any vital signs drop below the parameters that the Night Sisters had set.

In the nursing station, Sister Felice picked up the phone. With one long retractable fingernail, she rotated all ten combination wheels to a memorized sequence. She listened for the ring. Though it was the middle of the night, someone picked up the phone immediately at the other end.

“Hello?”

“Is this Commander Laura Steele?”

“Yes.”

“You wanted to know when a patient called Lieutenant Riordan underwent a phase shift in his condition?”

“What's happened?”

“It's an improvement, not a decline. Although, not having died in the first three days, he had a good chance of—”

“He's going to live?”

“Yes, that's—”

A burr sounded.

Sister Felice held out the receiver.

“You're welcome.” Her voice was a predator's whisper.

She put the receiver down.

On the seventeenth day—after Donal had woken for an hour at a time, three times in twenty-five hours—Sister Felice hauled him from the bed, onto a wheelchair whose frame was formed of interlocking silver heptagrams.

“For luck,” she murmured, as Donal ran his fingertips along the soft metal. “And for healing.”

“Where . . .” His voice was a croak. “Going . . . where?”

“Rehabituation.” Sister Felice pushed the chair into motion. “Don't believe what they say about mystical therapists.”

She let go of the chair's handles and walked in front, heading through open double doors and into an empty corridor. The wheelchair trundled after her, bearing Donal's pain-racked form.

“What do they . . . say?”

“Oh”—Sister Felice looked back over her shoulder at him—“that they're evil and sadistic and delight in torturing you until you scream.”

They continued on until they came to a floating hand-shape sign hanging in midair in a five-way intersection of corridors.

“Rehab,” said Sister Felice loudly.

The hand swung left.

“Everything moves around in this place.” She shook her head, then headed into the indicated corridor. “Come along.”

The wheelchair followed.

“The . . . therapists.” Donal's voice was tight, but he had to ask. “Don't . . . torture patients?”

“Oh, they torture you, all right.” Sister Felice slowed before a set of black opaque doors labeled
RD.
“It's just they don't enjoy doing it.”

Then she grinned, showing needle-fine white fangs.

“Only kidding.”

The doors swung open of their own accord, and Sister Felice stepped aside as Donal's wheelchair rolled forward and took him into Rehab.

A soft feminine chuckle sounded as the doors closed behind him.

“Ah, so you're our latest vic—patient.” The androgyne in white tunic and trousers had wide shoulders and ten-inch-long fingers. A smile stretched its long features. “That's our little joke. Don't you worry.”

“Thanatos.” Donal was not up to this.

“All right, my name's Jan, and the first thing we have to do is restore some basic thought and movement patterns. You with me?”

“Uh, if you say s—”

A strangled gargling sound came from one corner of the Rehabituation Department. Donal was confused by the strange geometric shapes of apparatus designed for Hades-knew-what functions, but then he saw the patient trapped inside.

Gross distortions rippled across the man's body. His right hand flared to maybe four feet in length, and he moaned in pain.

Then, just for a second, his whole form pancaked outward to ten or twelve feet in diameter, amoebalike, before retracting into a normal human shape. The man bent forward on his couch, retching. Another androgynous therapist held a cardboard bowl beneath the man's mouth.

“That's Andy”—Jan used one frighteningly long finger to indicate the patient—“and the therapist is Alyx.”

“Very good,” Alyx was murmuring to the wretched Andy.

“Are you trying to tear him apart?” Donal felt an urge to get off his wheelchair and run, but when he commanded his muscles to move, only hot pain resulted. “You're killing him.”

“No. Relax.” Jan ran its long fingers, ending in soft padded tips, down Donal's face. “Andy's been infected with an attenuation field. We're teaching him to hold himself together.”

“Oh.” Donal's eyelids fluttered.

Again Andy's hands ballooned, the right more than the left, and his face grew larger and larger.

“See the natural precursor to complete expansion?” Jan gestured, and Donal's wheelchair rolled closer to Andy's couch. “That's how your nervous system views the world, in terms of touch. The hand and face are more sensitive than—”

All of Andy's body started to rip outward, to flow across the room, but Alyx shouted at him, “
No!
Pull yourself together!”

“Can't . . .”

“Now.”

With a whimper, Andy sucked his body back into normal configuration. Then he looked over at Donal and gave a tiny smile, ignoring the tears flowing on either side of his mouth. “Some people would pay good money for this.”

“I'd pay a shitload to be somewhere else.”

“Don't”—a painful ripple spread across Andy's chest and face—“make me laugh.”

Then Donal's chair swiveled away. It was time for his treatment to begin.

Back in the ward, body aching in what might have been a good way—Donal hovered in that strange place between hurt and joy—he was sitting up beside the bed in a hard wooden chair when he heard strange voices coming from the nurses' station.

“. . . Commander? I'm not sure he's up to it yet.”

“But it's just me, and I'll keep it low key.”

“You mean”—this was Sister Felice's voice, and she gave a soft hiss before continuing—“the both of you?”

After a moment: “Very perceptive, Sister. I can see that Lieutenant Riordan is in good hands.”

“Ha. Come this way.”

Sister Felice came walking down the wide aisle between the beds, her feline eyes slitted, her ears flattened against the sides of her head, and her hair flowing straight back, not hanging down. Behind her walked the pale woman who had shot Donal with the dart gun, wearing a pale-blue skirt suit today, with dark-blue gloves. And behind her . . .

Something?

“Yes.” Sister Felice bared her delicate fangs. “That's right, Donal. Call me if you need anything.” She placed a green stone in his hand. “Squeeze it, and I'll be here in a second.”

Behind the woman, the air rippled. But if Donal turned his head and closed his eyes nearly all the way, the wavering became almost human-shape.

“Thank you,” he told Sister Felice. “You're the best.”

“I know.” She gave a soft laugh. “Remember, you just need to squeeze the callstone.”

Then she walked away, silent and elegant. Both Donal and the pale woman watched her go. After a moment, the woman said, “Do you remember who I am?”

“Yeah.” A knot of pain was forming over Donal's right eye. “Not your name, but I remember in the cabin, when I . . .”

Do you hear the bones?

But the words were distant, no longer clinging: just an abstract memory. It was the image of the diva stretched out upon the table—the
dead
diva—that made Donal's gorge rise. He turned to one side, grabbed a trash can, and vomited into it.

“Perhaps this is too soon.”

“No, it's all right.” Donal wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “So who are you?”

“Laura Steele.” She held out her gloved hand. “Nice to meet you properly.”

“Er . . .” Donal sniffed. “We should shake when I've cleaned up. And does that mean you're
Commander
Laura Steele?”

“That's right. And this”—Laura nodded toward the wavering in the air—“is Xalia. She's a member of the federal task force that I'm heading up.”

“Ah.” Donal leaned back against the hard chair. “Are you here to cheer me up or to interrogate me?”

“Neither one. We're here to recruit you.”

“You're joking.” Donal closed his eyes and remembered the long drive into the forest and the blur—how many days?—that was his stay in the cabin, while he kept the diva's corpse laid out and made his preparations for scraping clean the bones. “How many laws did I break?”

“You were effectively ensorcelled.”

“Yeah, but not actually. Doesn't that make me
effectively
guilty?”

“No, it makes you a damned victim, especially if you keep acting like one.”

“Thanatos.” Donal looked at her, then at Xalia's near-invisible shifting form. “Nice bedside manner you got. You say you're heading up a task force. So what are you working on?”

“Well, it's a task . . .”

“That is so fuckin' funny.”

“We're investigating the exclusive little club that Malfax Cortindo belonged to. We call them the Black Circle—”

“That's original.”

“—because their real name is a secret only they know.”

Then a soft whisper that might have just been a breeze sounded:

*I wanted to call them the Pink Collective.*

A smile twisted Donal's face, despite himself. “How about the Lilac Conspiracy?”

Xalia's form rippled.

“So how big is it?” added Donal. “This conspiracy?”

“Let's just say”—Laura's glance flickered toward the end of the ward, where Sister Felice sat at the nurses' station, drinking hellebore tea—“the BC have gone for quantity over quality when it comes to recruitment.”

“But not just in Tristopolis.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you're federal, even if you're based here. And because of the background to my screwup. We were supposed to be on alert because of what happened in other cities. Including overseas.”

“Hmm.” Laura walked over to the bedside cabinet. On top stood a cheap stained vase containing two black dandelions. “I think Sister Felice likes you.”

“It's her job. She's good at it.”

“Whereas you let your principal die seconds before killing the chief suspect.”

Donal consciously relaxed his shoulders. “You said you were here to recruit me, and now you're telling me how badly I performed. Interesting tactic, Commander.”

“The thing is, we”—Laura nodded toward the near-invisible wavering of the air that was Xalia—“understand more about ensorcellment and the ways of manipulation than your superiors do. Or more than they'll pretend to, for the sake of political expediency.”

“You mean I'll be a scapegoat? But it
was
my operation, didn't you know?”

In lucid moments, Donal had wondered what might have happened to his career. Or whether he was going to jail, or worse.

“You were the only person in the whole theater, cops included,” said Laura, “to break the trance. If you hadn't been there, the diva would have died anyway, with police protection all around. The story that everyone remembered would not have been what happened.”