The woman said something that was drowned in the rising wail of the bone flutes. The greater volume of blood that ran from Soraia’s arm lifted from the floor and flowed swiftly now toward the floating man at the middle of the circle, following the path of light like water in a pipe. As it touched his outstretched right hand, the blood turned to mist that spread over his arm and side, vanishing in the black cloth. The spell moved through him as if he were some kind of conductor. Bones from the pile on his left rose into the air in the moving light, assembling themselves into a skeleton that gained the momentary shape of its former owner.
Sharp memories of death enveloped me in pain as the ghost seemed to fight and resist, spinning in the light, and was then crushed with a screech back into a bundle of white that tumbled across the room to fall into one of the polished wooden boxes on the right side of the circle. The man with the candle walked to the box, closed the lid over the clattering bones, and fastened the latch. Then he murmured over it as he dripped the black wax over the latch until the metal was covered. He pressed a small object against the wax and the remains fell silent.
The song of the bones faded to what it had been before. I caught my breath at the same moment that the woman at the altar seemed to draw hers for the first time in minutes. Her shoulders slumped a little as if they’d been doing this all night. “Now the girl,” she said.
The man with the candle began to walk counterclockwise around the circle as if he were going to change sides. Quinton lunged forward, shedding his cloak of darkness, and wrapped his arms around the man’s shoulders and head, then twisted, using his momentum to add power to the motion.
I didn’t hear the man’s neck break, but the shock of his death knocked me to the ground with a gasp and I fell across the edge of the illuminated circle. The woman screamed in rage. Quinton buckled to the floor with me, caught in the lashing pain by our paranormal connection.
The light from the circle’s edge seemed to burn through me for a moment before it flashed and vanished with a stink of burning hair. I struggled to regain my feet, just inside the circle this time, aching and breathing as raggedly as if I’d been punched in the stomach. I turned to lurch toward Soraia from my knees; however, as the one to break the circle, I was subject to the effect of the bone magic now that I was outside the cloak of Carlos’s protection. The presence of the ghastly bones with all their death hummed in the lingering cloud of power that the mage had raised. The strange magic seemed to stab at my own skeleton with hooked blades, slowing me and pulling me downward.
Carlos had darted across the broken circle, revealed from the shadows, and was reaching for the floating man who was moving as though dazed in his bubble of light. The woman shouted some words and upended the cup on the altar, red liquid flowing in bloody rivulets over the white bones. She snatched the hand of her assistant and drove a knife through it, pinning him to the base of the cup as he screamed in shock. Blood ran down the cup and into the intricate carvings on the altar bones, burning them red.
The floating man plunged to the floor in a clatter of bones and an icy pall of mist enclosed him, seeming to bear him to the floor and hold him there. Carlos smashed his fist against the opaque white shape the steam and bones had taken. His hand rebounded as if the dome had hardened. He roared in anger and turned toward the woman as Quinton ran several steps ahead of me, heading for the cage that held his niece.
The woman spoke rapidly and made a flinging motion in Quinton’s direction. A whirling ivory chain of bone caught him around the legs and upper body, flipping him to the floor with a crash that shook dust from the columns of skulls nearby. He tried to ignore the spell and squirmed toward Soraia’s cage, but he could move only a few inches. He gasped, his face going pale, and he fought to move forward, the labor of his breathing mixing with his niece’s weak sobs and the panting of the man whose hand was transfixed by a dagger.
The woman made another gesture, as if lofting something into the air, and four of the bony figures from the walls began to detach and walk toward us. The first reached me in a moment and snatched for my head with its skeletal hands. I ducked, wincing, and swiped at it, yanking a bone loose from its lower leg and rolling aside. The bone melded to the floor as the walking skeleton fell over me. Its bones rattled against the mosaic of smaller bones, sticking and forming a partial cage around me. Kicking and yanking, I thrashed, breaking the bones as I tried to get back to my feet. The next skeleton didn’t even try to grab me, but threw itself on top of the other, its bones sliding straight down like spears.
I yanked the edge of the Grey and tugged it over me like a shield, isolating myself in the folds as the bones pierced through, shoved aside by the Grey where they hadn’t yet encountered another bone. Then they sealed themselves to the floor or to other bones when they touched at last. The cage was tight and without the edge of the Grey over me, the plunging bones would have gone right through me. I had no desire to see what would happen if they had pushed through my flesh to my own bones. But the bones were brittle with age and I continued to kick and beat at them, making my way out.
The third skeleton crushed itself over Quinton as he crept toward Soraia’s prison, but Quinton rolled, knocking more of the bones aside than I had been able to. The scattered bones hit the floor and made a small obstacle. Quinton was still barely moving, squirming forward by inches, borne down by the spell that enclosed him. I fought to get back to my feet, but it felt like the floor was drawing my own bones down to it and rising was more difficult than it should have been.
The woman took a step away from the altar, satisfied that Quinton and I were no threat now. She picked up a small white object and left her minion still pinned without a single glance of concern. Her expression narrowed and she focused on Carlos, who stood just to the left of the room’s center in a rising shimmer of obsidian light that climbed up his body and wove around him like a dancing chorus of deadly vines. He seemed gigantic, enfolded in the shroud of his power, and the last of the bone constructs sparkled into dust as it touched him. Sparks snapped in the air around him as if he stood at the eye of an electric storm. The woman seemed unfazed, though she did keep her distance from him.
“Well done, Maggie Griffin,” Carlos said. “You saved your master from my wrath. For now.”
She tried to restrain a wince at his knowledge of her name, but if I saw it, Carlos had, too. Instead of replying, she spread her arms and the room shook as the rest of the bony figures on the walls pulled themselves loose from the plaster and stepped onto the floor, animated and enraged. They turned toward Carlos and me, clicking as they began to walk toward us, ignoring Quinton and Soraia. I was barely up when the nearest skeleton swung its arms, clawing at me. I dropped and swept its feet out from under it, but I was sweating with the effort, pulling against the hungry grip of the floor.
The bones scattered, not sticking this time, but now other bone constructs were close enough to grab at me. As I tried to manage the increasing number of fragile assailants, the skeleton I’d just broken began drawing back together. I would have cursed, but I was already breathing too hard to want to waste my breath.
Griffin laughed. “Which of your friends will you save? You can’t possibly manage them both before the bones collect them.”
Carlos crouched on the floor, his hands rising, drawing black tendrils from the ground. Blood ran through the interstices of the bone mosaic, drawn toward him from the altar and from the place Soraia had bled onto the floor. Carlos slammed his palms onto the floor with the same gesture he’d used to frighten the dogs. The room shook and the skeletons shattered, bones tumbling to the ground.