Bones 35 - Spindle

I staggered with the weight of Jamie in my arms as we all made our way along the eerily empty streets. Normally I would have let Duo or Warren take him, but Duo was bringing up the rear and Warren carried an exhausted Danni on his back. We kept Jamie in the center of the group to protect him; we knew now, because of Nick, that the dethlysser was after my son. I just didn’t understand why.

Nick jogged next to me. We'd left his truck because two of the tires had been slashed during the fight. Nick's familiar warmth, the solid strength of him, helped thaw the graveyard chill that had taken up residence in my bones. The events of the last hour raced through my skull, buzzing like hornets. The strangely cold wind chilled the tears on my cheeks as I tried to sort through all the new information.

My former husband, the man who'd murdered my sisters and two of my brothers—to protect me from himself, he'd always claimed, from the urges inherent in the keycorpse—had given up killing humans, had devoted his life for that last two-hundred-odd years, to protecting my son and me. He'd died protecting Nick. It felt like icy claws had reached into the story of my very heart and ripped the pages to shreds. I was bleeding ink and fairytale blood with every step because Jonathon was dead.

And he was dead. I'd Chained him before his heart had stopped beating, but I had no illusions. The Once wasn’t going to send him back to this world or the Border Towns. It would devour Jonathon, absorbing his power, in order to help protect and transform the next Broken Tale.

Fresh tears dripped down my cool cheeks at the thought. It made no sense. I'd spent my entire life as a Broken Tale hating and fearing Jonathon Fitcher…and he'd spent all those years—decades, centuries—loving me. Protecting me. Loving and protecting our son. I didn’t know how I was supposed to feel about that.

Nick reached over as we rushed through the streets and touched my hand. That brief touch of his fingers against my knuckles, against the scar where my little finger had once been, helped push back the chill even more. I swallowed my tears. Tightened my grip on Jamie, who kept his face pressed against my neck and his arms curled around me. Nothing would happen to my son.

As we threaded our way through mortal streets, Yeh-Shen and Jocelyn in the lead, I felt my chains hum and heat against my skin. They'd been flickering on and off for the last however-many minutes we'd been making our way back to the house. The dethlysser's minions were hunting us. The streets weren’t safe.

Which was why Phoenix, one of Jocelyn's crew, was kind enough to put the lights out for us. Even as I ran hugging Jamie, I watched the slender matchgirl with the fiery red pixie-cut lift a hand and snap her fingers, once for every light on the street—including porch lights and backyard lights, living room lights shining through front windows, and the occasional car lights left on by forgetful drivers. Once we passed and had been gone for several minutes, the lights would come back on. Phoenix was a walking blackout. We left a swath of darkness a few miles across all around us, encompassing the hunting ground the enemy oncelings had already marked out. It was difficult for many of us to see, but our chains warned us when the enemy drew close. And some of us, like Duo and Warren, or even Mina, had preternatural night-vision.

Mina paced beside Ami. Ami's face was streaked with soot and tears, smudged with dirt and blood. Krysta had tended her wounds with ice, but we hadn’t had time to wash away the grime before the howling of wulvers and the shrieking of grimcats had filled the night again. I had a feeling those prowlers were why the fire department hadn’t shown up as Nick's house burned to the ground. Now Mina kept Ami calm with her high energy, her kind smile…and her power. Mina's hypnosis was a subtle gift, but useful in this situation, where she used just a brush of it to keep Ami from breaking down.

The strain of tonight had gestalted Ami's latent wordsmith abilities. Diamond flecks of power swirled around her in a whirlwind. I didn’t know what would happen to her now, how swiftly her powers would flare up and stabilize. Nick still didn’t have complete control over his gifts, and he'd come into them naturally. Strong emotions—like terror or grief—could give naturally strong powers an even bigger kick. We'd have to watch Ami.

Movement from the corner of my eye had me jerking around. Jamie yelped as I loosed my bracelet chain and morphed it into the silvery chain-whip I used in battle. Warren and Duo snarled in warning. Krysta and Nick flanked me; Nick had chain-whips in both hands and Krysta's fingers were splayed, ready to unleash a miniature ice storm.

"Whoa, hey, dudes," a vaguely familiar voice grumbled from the pitch blackness between two houses. "Relax. It's just me."

Beside me, the tension faded from Nick's body. "Mark?"

The panling that had been Nick's best friend for four years stepped out of darkness and into the softer shadows. Mina flicked out her flute and held it up. A small spark lit up at the tip, illuminating the feral features and forest-green eyes of the panling I'd met in the bookstore parking lot. The moment Mark saw us, he smiled, showing his milk-white teeth.

"Told you this chick was trouble, man," Mark said. "But I may or may not have called in a favor and gotten those beast-freaks off your trail."

I frowned. "Not that we're not grateful, but what favor?"

"There's a colony of tinkwisps living out in Rancho del Lago," he said. "They're playing bait. See?" He pointed behind us. I turned just enough to catch a glimpse of a handful of silver, gold, and brilliant green sparks shoot into the air and split apart in different directions. A chorus of wulver howls split the night. The humming heat in my chains slowly faded as the enemy drew further and further away from us. I glanced back at Mark, who shrugged. "Like I said, they owe me a solid. You're gonna need eyes in the sky, though. You want 'em?"

I hesitated as my crew, and the few members of Jocelyn's, looked to me. Did I trust Mark? Nick did, and his wordsmith abilities should've warned him if Mark was a problem. My chains were barely reacting to him—a sign that he meant no harm, that he wanted to help. But my entire world, how I perceived everything, had been shaken tonight. I wasn’t certain I could trust my instincts.

Except I had to. I was the leader.

I nodded to Mark. "Eyes in the sky would be good."

He tilted his head in a cocky sort of nod. "If I see anything, I'll send a tinkwisp." Mark turned and took off running. Just before he zipped out of the small pool of light from Mina's flute, he leapt. His feet in their dark jade Converses cleared the asphalt, he lifted his chin, and grinned. The angle was such that I could see the emerald glow of his eyes, the moonlight on his milk-teeth, as he caught air and swooped out of sight like a falcon taking off.

Nick choked. I turned to see him staring after his best friend in absolute shock. Well, it wasn’t everyday that a former human got to see a panling take flight. My boyfriend turned to me in a bit of a daze and said, "He flew away."

"Peter Pan," I explained with a small, tremulous smile. It felt so strange to smile. But Nick nodded and looked toward where we were heading. I'd walked the distance between Nick's house and mine before without breaking a sweat, but I hadn’t been on the run from things that wanted to devour me and murder my son at the time. This journey felt as if it might never end. I didn’t show anyone my weariness, though. I simply said, "Let's go."

The tinkwisps proved invaluable. The ones Mark had sent to lay a false trail kept most of the enemy off our backs. A few nimblequicks or other henchmen of the dethlysser—and who had ever heard of malevolent Tales working together like this?—would find us, but it was always easy, thanks to Mark's warnings, to Chain them and be done. Nick was getting a lot of field experience tonight.

We should have known they would be waiting for us outside the house. Just as we were about to turn onto our street, Mark dropped down out of the sky, fists planted on his lean hips. His dark green muscle-shirt and black jeans had a dozen rips in them, inky blue blood staining the edges of the tears in his shirt. His panling grin shone under the moon, but his eyes were clouded and pensive.

"They cut us off," he began without preamble. "The dethlysser's there, and we're outnumbered. She's got a pack of creeps at her back, including nytkorns, serpentines, cardreapers. We're screwed, bonesinger."

I set Jamie on the ground to give my aching arms a rest and considered our options while Duo and Warren took human form again. Danni sagged against Warren, exhausted from grabbing Nick and Fitcher with her power when they'd fallen out the window and then the long journey from Nick's smoldering ruin of a house. Everyone was flagging, I noticed. A pitched battle at the end of all of this was the last thing we needed. I considered what we were dealing with.

Serpentines were dangerous, with their snakelike body parts and poisonous teeth and claws. The best person to take them on would be Krysta with her ice and Danni with her tweaking. Nytkorns, though…the carnivorous, venomous unicorns were deadly. I'd have to leave them to Warren and Duo, who were used to hunting dangerous prey in beast-form. Cardreapers had problems with fire and blades. Jocelyn, Yeh-Shen, Phoenix, and Mina could handle them. Anyone else could contend with Witch and Isis. Nick needed to stay with me, because I needed to get him, Jamie, and Ami inside the house. If we could get in, get these malevolent Tales to follow, and then the four of us could get out, Baba could take care of those who followed.

As for the dethlysser…for now, we'd have to stay away from her. Otherwise, she'd kill us. We could die. At the moment, she couldn’t.

Quickly, Jamie clutching at my legs, I laid out my plan. Everyone offered a point or two, and we amended as needed. When we were ready, Duo and Warren shifted back into beast form. Yeh-Shen drew a long, slim Chinese sword called a chokutō—made of diamond-hard glass the color of kingfisher feathers, with a golden hilt—and tossed her long, bone-straight white hair back. Jocelyn strung her bow and nocked a snowy white, goose-fletched arrow to it. Phoenix drew close to her and snapped her fingers. A ball of iridescent flame sprung to life in her hand. Matchgirl fire would burn anything, no matter how non-flammable it was.

Mina twirled her slender, silver flute between her fingers, spinning it faster and faster until the silver began to bleed away, melting into vibrant gold—a talent of a lot of dancepipers, who could control both moonlight and sunfire because their mothers were nightqueens, their fathers daymages (or vice-versa). She stopped it in an instant to reveal a golden flute. With a flick of her wrist, a tiny ball of black flame popped into being.

Witch hefted her staff. Krysta drew the slim, basket-hilted rapier of ice she almost never used, wrapped around the slender pieces of the hilt with slender chains. Danni drew her knives and clambered onto Warren's back again. Isis clutched at her chains. Nick readied his.

Mark lifted his hand over his head. A tinkwisp, her light dimmed to almost nothing, dropped something swathed in shadows into Mark's outstretched hand. Dropping the wrapping of shadows, the green-gold tinkwisp's light caught on the sharp edge of a pan-sword. A symbol like a curved hook had been etched beneath the wooden hilt. Mark hefted it. Swung it twice.

"Been a long time since I used this," he said softly.

Nick said, "Mark…listen, man, I can't ask you to step in on this. It's not your fight—"

"Panlings never back down from a fight, bro." Mark smirked. "Doesn’t this girl teach you anything? Besides, I think I saw some hookblades in that mess. Haven't fought one of those pirates in a long time, either. Need to see if I can still cut it." Getting serious for  a moment, he added, "I'm sticking with you and the bonesinger so I can watch your back and look after Ami."

I glanced at Ami, who stood pale and silent between Nick and Mina. Due in part to shock, in part to Mina's influence, she hadn’t said a word during our planning. She understood what she had to do—run like mad for the house, keeping with Nick and me, and now Mark—but fear and shock kept any protests quiescent.

Nick shook his head, but then he laughed softly and sighed. "Whatever, man. You're crazy." He smiled at Mark. "Thanks." They exchanged one of those complex, modern hand-slap routines that stood in place of a handshake in this time. Nick drew a breath. "Seriously, though. Thank—"

"Dude, if you try to hug me in front of all these girls like some chick, I'm gonna have to deck you," Mark said with a grin.

Nick grinned back. "Shut up."

I smiled and glanced down at Jamie. "I need you to grow up a little, Jamie-lad," I murmured. My son nodded, closed his eyes. Gritting his little teeth from the effort, he slowly forced his body to grow, expanding until he was about eight or nine years old. He stumbled back against the wall, dizzy from the exertion. We waited a moment for him to get his equilibrium back. It would be easier for him to run on his own—none of us could afford to carry him anymore—but a toddler couldn’t hope to keep up with the pace Nick and I would set for him and Ami.

Ami whimpered as she stared at Jamie. Jamie smiled gamely back at her. Ami's eyes widened a fraction. Before her panic could shake off Mina's hypnosis, Mina began speaking softly to her, soothing her. It only took a few moments to calm her again.

When I was certain of everyone, when I knew it was now or never, I took Jamie's hand, gripped my bracelet-chain, and said, "Let's go."

We raced out into the open in a wave fifteen strong, but that was nothing compared to the enemy waiting for us. My crew and those of Jocelyn's who were with us and not on patrol crashed into the waiting Tales like a rockslide. I gripped Jamie's hand, caught Nick's eye. He grabbed Ami's hand. The four of us zeroed in on the house, skirting the fresh battle; Mark ran right behind us, wounding the enemy with his pan-sword.

Balls of black and iridescent fire shot past us, crackling as they soared through the air. They hit the paper-white cardreapers with soft whumphs. The cardreaper's tinder-dry white and black hair and white skin ignited instantly. Horrific screams shattered the night. I could barely hear them over the pounding of my heart and the sound of Jamie's petrified, sobbing breaths. Nytkorns screamed in challenge as Duo and Warren lashed out with their massive claws, ripping open flanks and withers, drawing splashes of midnight-blue blood. Grimcats shrieked and yowled as Phoenix and Mina blasted them with fresh fire. Jocelyn kept pace with the dancepiper and the matchgirl, dipping the points of her arrows in their fire before shooting at the cardreapers, grimcats, and wulvers. Shards of ice swirled around us all. Daggers of winter crystal shot the enemy in the knees, the shoulders, the legs—agonizing shots, but not deliberately fatal.

Halfway to the house, Mark shouted something obscene. Five blazing furrows ripped across my back. I stumbled and fell to the ground as Jamie screamed for me and Nick yelled my name. Before the huge, leonine grimcat that had attacked me could rake me again, I flipped onto my back and shot my foot straight between his legs. He roared, golden eyes burning against his tawny fur. I jumped to my feet. Blood trickled down my back, but already the wounds were closing. I flicked my wrist, hard. My chain-whip shot out like a snake of quicksilver and snapped around the grimcat's throat.

“Onørüssé üffynné ära krønüx łiäsa krønüłyss!” I yelled the Chaining words, scanning the area behind me for more assailants while the power of the Once flashed bright as a small star where the grimcat had been. A nimblequick leapt at me, his hand of fire stretched out to boil my flesh away. I leapt aside, wrapping my chain around his throat like a fat garrote, and cried, “Onørüssé üffynné ära krønüx łiäsa krønüłyss!”

My attack gave us some breathing room. Grabbing Jamie's hand again, Nick and I caught each other's gazes, nodded, and we took off again. Jamie and Ami managed to keep up as we dodged wrestling combatants. All the while I scanned the battle for the dethlysser. Now that Yeh-Shen and Jocelyn were busy fighting alongside us—I could see Yeh-Shen's sword, a blur of cerulean-colored glass and gold, as she battled a black-haired cardreaper—the dethlysser had very little to fear.

We'd reached the driveway of our house, and I'd shoved Jamie forward, toward Nick, when Mark yelped. He went sailing past me, smashing into the wall. He hit the lawn with a groan. Nick yelled his name. I started to turn back, toward whatever had attacked Mark.

She rose up in front of me like an eidolon draped in shadow and wolf-fur, nearly as tall as a cloudstrider, ebony eyes blazing with triumph. Her hand shot out and gripped my throat. She yanked me toward her until I could smell her breath like rancid meat and candy. Her teeth were almost wolf-sharp when she grinned at me. For some reason, I thought I recognized her. Her grip tightened. I choked.

“You really thought you could escape me? I am the Deathless,” she murmured, almost crooning. I heard Nick shouting behind me. Someone was keeping him from getting to me. I had to get away from her on my own. “Such a foolish little bonesinger. Your husband loved you so dearly and you didn’t even know it.”

Liquid ice flooded my veins, poisonous as hatred, cold as death. I narrowed my eyes and knew I would do the one thing I'd never done in a battle before, just to make sure I hurt this dethlysser. She'd killed Jonathon. She'd tried to kill Nick. She wanted to kill my son, my Jamie. So I would figure out a way to kill her first. I didn’t have a marblade, those accursed weapons that no hunter was allowed to carry, but I had something else.

The golden key on its chain around my neck.

With one hand I reached up and grabbed the key, yanking savagely. The chain-clasp opened under the force of my will. Gripping the golden key, I squeezed my eyes shut and brought all of my power as the bonesinger to bear. I could feel a spinning tornado of power like tiny shards of blue diamonds and ice whipping around me. The dethlysser laughed mockingly, but I heard an undercurrent of fear in it. I smiled.

I'd never used the key before. It wasn’t a tool for Chaining. Duo hadn’t made it for me; Phillip had. In a way, so had Jonathon. Inside the metal from a goldspinner's wheel, paid for with something unutterably precious, were the delicate bones of my missing little finger. My power had saturated those bones in the midst of the Breaking of my Tale, infusing them with something Yeh-Shen had always cautioned was too strong to be left uncontained—the essence of my Tale, the magic from the birthing of my race, the bonesingers, because I was the first. Phillip had had this key made for me. Like our chains, blood was mixed with the metal…but not my blood. Phillip's. What he had done in giving me a little of his blood, and the love that burned within it, mixed into this weapon wasn’t exactly forbidden, but it was dangerous, because it gave the key the powers of both a sleepbane and their nemesis, the malevolent starwisher. Our power came not just from grief and hatred, after all, but love, and Phillip had loved a sleepbane with his entire heart and soul.

In my grip, I felt the key lengthen, thicken. Molten gold spilled out of my clenched fist, hardening into a dagger-like spike that glittered with eerie green-blue light at its tip. Tendrils of gold writhed around my hand, around the lengthening spike, like vines. Spurs of white bone speared the night, biting into my hand. My blood slipped over the weapon.

By now, the dethlysser had stopped laughing. I was still smiling despite the pain. The key had the power to shatter the fragmented bonds of my Tale completely, leaving me unmade. But it wouldn’t, because I wouldn’t let it. Belief and will were an integral part of what made us märchénłinġ, onceling. So instead of being consumed by the power swelling inside the key, I channeled it, forcing it to sweep through me and the key, the twisting vine-like tendrils of gold that were slowly creeping toward the dethlysser.

And then I summoned my will, my power, and the power of sleepbanes and starwishers that Phillip had given me, and I croaked, "Touch it."

The dethlysser's ebony eyes widened. She tried to jerk back, tried to let me go…but she couldn’t. The strength of my will and the power in the transformed key held her immobile. She made a small sound of protest. I let my smile widen. The magic of the spike, the glimmer of cerulean light like poisonous sleep, called to her. Even a dethlysser is not immune to a starwisher's powers.

"Touch it," I whispered. Her hand came up. Her fingers reached out. I never let her look away from my eyes. I could feel the searing heat of my tale-tell burning in arabesques and swirls across my throat, feel the vivid luminescence of my gaze like cobalt stars. My stomach twisted as the power curled inside me, writhing. I ignored it. "Touch it."

The dethlysser grunted, tried to shake her head. Muffled oaths and snarls emerged from behind her clenched teeth. Her hand crept inexorably forward. Her forefinger touched the tip of the spike.

A single drop of black blood welled up, glistening in the moon- and firelight like a tiny sable diamond. It wavered, clinging to the dethlysser's pale skin. It swelled. It rolled down the length of the spike, mingling with mine. It smelled of dry bones and dust.

Ebony eyes met mine. Horror spilled into her gaze as the thread of the tale wound into the weapon Phillip had gifted me with—a tale as old as time, a tale of enchanted sleep, sleep inescapable as death—slipped around her throat like a noose and began to tighten. She threw me to the ground, screamed for her forces to fall back.

She staggered as she tried to back away from me. Nearly fell, but a golden-haired man with eyes as blue as a summer sky caught her before she fell. Draping one of her arms across his shoulder, he helped her stand straight. He glared at me and it was like sunburn had slapped across my face. I heard a hiss, a popping sound like a knot in a log catching fire. Flames bloomed in front of the golden-haired man and I realized too late he was a daymage. I tried to stand, tried to get to my knees and crawl away to avoid the sunfire, but I couldn’t. Though the sleeping spell didn’t affect me as strongly, it made me woozy, disoriented, as if I'd been drugged. I didn’t have the precious seconds it would take for me to shake off the effects before the blast of sunfire set me ablaze.

I was going to die.

Jamie screamed, "Mom!" Nick roared my name and lunged forward, trying to get to me. I knew he wouldn’t make it. I smelled ice, knew Krysta was trying to stop the blast. Her power stood no chance. Ami screamed. Duo and Warren roared and charged toward me, but they wouldn’t reach me in time, either. I closed my eyes as the sunfire filled my vision, as the heat singed my face.

A man swore as his heel crashed into my thigh. My eyes snapped open. A shadowy figure loomed over me, half-crouched to hold up something that glinted silver and gold in the light from the moon. My mouth fell open as he raised a sword in his other hand that carried the same otherworldly sheen as our chains.

"Take your mistress and go," a voice—so familiar it made my chest ache—commanded. He straightened from his crouch and took a fighting stance. A stance I recognized. "I will let you live if you go now. You have my word."

The daymage glared death at me, but the ebony-eyed dethlysser was succumbing quickly to the sleeping spell. He needed to take her away. With savage muttering, he hefted her into his arms and ran after their retreating forces. Later, when I wasn’t so tired, so shaken from nearly being burned alive, I would try to figure out where I knew both the daymage and the dethlysser from. In the meantime, I had to deal with a sobbing Jamie—now a toddler again—and Nick clutching me, gasping about me being alive, being all right. My crew kept their distance from me. Why?

But no, it wasn’t from me. It was from the man who'd saved me. The man whose voice was so familiar, even though it shouldn’t have been. This man was dead. He should have been dead. There was no chance it could be…

But then he turned to me. I stared up at him, my mouth hanging open. Stared into a face with a charming smile that had always made me smile back, into eyes the color of the blueberries he'd put in the pancakes he made, framed by golden-brown hair. I managed to get to my feet. I managed to step toward him. My hands shook when I touched his cheeks, finding the scar-like mark on his jaw in the shape of a crown.

"Hello, Violet," he murmured.

Tears spilled down my cheeks for the second time that night, but this time they were tears of absolute, incredulous joy. Because it couldn’t be. It just couldn’t be.

But it was.

"Phillip?"

"Yes," he said, and hugged me hard. "I'm back." Then he turned to Nick and added, "And I know where your parents are."