“Remove your heads from your fourth point of contact, gentlemen, and tell me what we’ve got here,” he said. I immediately thought of him as “Leader.”
“It’s a woman, sir,” said the laughing one—MacPherson, I reminded myself.
“Must be Blaine.” Leader looked at the one who’d fallen. “Jesus, Bara, you stink. Go back to the truck, clean up, and see if you can find something less . . . shitty to wear. If not, stay at the truck. This isn’t going to be much of a job now. The only remaining threat is Junior.”
“He’s a sneaky bastard,” MacPherson said as the fallen one trudged away, muttering. “I’d be more worried about what he’s going to do than what this skinny bitch is up to.” He shook my arm slightly to make his point.
I back-kicked him in the knee and ducked, yanking him over my back and into the same pile of manure his buddy had found. Then I lunged at Leader.
There was a reason he was in charge of this group, and he demonstrated by stepping aside and smacking me on the back with the stock of his compact shotgun. I thumped to the ground, winded and facedown, in the opposite direction from MacPherson.
This time Leader pulled me up, twisting my arm behind my back and snatching my free wrist into the same hold while I was still off balance. I gave up a sharp bark of pain as he grabbed my injured hand to manage the maneuver. He ignored me and secured my wrists behind my back with a riot cuff. “Yup, not going to be much of a party now,” he said. “Gotta watch out for skinny broads, MacPherson—they’ll kick your ass.” He yanked the broken flute from my good hand and turned back to me, holding it up. “What’s this?”
“Not mine,” I said.
He peered at it in the moonlight. “Looks like one of the creep’s toys. You take this with you the last time you escaped?”
I didn’t reply. He took that for an answer and started me walking downhill with a slight push. “All right. Find out soon enough.”
We trudged on down the hill with MacPherson in the back and slogged across the river at a shallow ford, getting wet up to the knees. At the edge of the gleaming circle of ghosts, Leader stopped and sent MacPherson on the same errand his partner had gone on.
It was fully dark now, but the area around the stones was illuminated by the fire in the center of the Devil’s Pool. Without the flute, I’d have to buy Quinton time and hope one of us got an opportunity to disrupt the spell up close; otherwise I had only one shot left and it was such a long one, I wasn’t sure it would work.
Leader gave me another encouraging shove and I walked forward, into the firelight and toward Rui and Purlis standing at the edge of the graveled circle. Rui looked thrilled to see me, clasping his hands together as if he had to force himself not to unwrap me like a Christmas gift. Purlis appeared ill, leaning more heavily than ever on his cane, but smug at my return.
Rui started to reach for me as we drew near and Purlis waved him back. It annoyed Rui, but he stepped aside to let Purlis address me as Leader caught my arm again. He wasn’t taking a chance that I might bolt.
Papa Purlis smiled and his eyes gleamed as he said, “Hello, Harper. I knew you’d be back. Rui was displeased with your departure.”
Leader leaned forward, keeping his grip on me, and handed Purlis the broken flute. “She had this.”
“Thank you, Mancino.” He took the flute and Rui snatched it from him. Purlis offered no objection.
Rui examined the bone flute and turned a stormy face to me. “What happened to it? Where’s the rest?”
I nodded toward the hill behind me. “Broke when I fell. Sorry.”
Rui growled and threw the broken flute to the ground, crushing it underfoot.
Purlis smiled at me, a sick, tired smile. His aura was a terrible dark green, threaded with black. If he wasn’t dying, he would be soon. “Where is J.J.?” he asked.
“I don’t know. We split.”
“I doubt that.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rui interrupted. “We must call the dragon. Now.”
Purlis ground his teeth, frustrated at having to delay the pleasure of grilling me, but he was as anxious as Rui to see what the spell would produce. “Yes. Yes, we should. Go on.” He turned his head to Mancino and nodded him away.
I started to jump forward as soon as Mancino’s grip left my bicep, but he snatched me back and gave me a hard shake. “No, you don’t. Sit tight or one of us is going to shoot you.”
Rui glanced at Mancino and then at me. Then he took my arm in a proprietary manner, waiting for Mancino to let go and step away before he said, “I look forward to perfecting you later. This will be exquisite. You’ll understand why the flesh is a poor vehicle for enlightenment after this. All that matters is the bones.”
It reminded me of what the priest at Campo Maior had said: “All of us are bones and all bones are dust.”
Rui turned to gaze at the circle of gravel on which the skeleton of his beast had been laid. Hundreds of bones, carved and illuminated with runes and sigils painted red with blood, some grafted together to form a different shape than nature had provided, others whittled down while still in the living body they’d come from. It all formed a single creature with a long snout full of teeth, massive wings, and taloned feet, and it now rose slowly into shape, held aloft by a complex web of light that the Kostní Mágové chanted and wove into existence.
“Begin,” Rui said.
Four men in long, black monk’s habits had been walking slowly around the bones as they chanted. Now they circled around the edge of the gravel and stopped, one at each point of an invisible compass. The young dreamspinner edged past the rest, coming close to where Rui and I were and stepped in front of the standing stones. He stooped beside the bones and began whispering to them in a voice so low, I couldn’t hear him, but every word sparkled and burned on the glowing bones, coloring them and drawing fine silver ligaments between them. Muscles of ghost-stuff and glimmering flesh began to knit over the bones before my eyes. The mages at the compass points continued to murmur, but quieter and lower, slowly withdrawing the support of their initial spell as the shining skeleton began to stand on its own.
I had to stop it and I wrenched myself from Rui’s grasp, diving forward, hoping to break the circle or disrupt the boy’s voice. But I had made no more than a few inches’ progress before Rui snatched me back, clutching my injured hand. But even my shout of pain didn’t distract the dreamspinner, his expression enraptured as he slowly rose to his feet, opening his arms as if he were conducting the misty monster upward, raising it with his own strength.
“Levanta-te, meu sonho!” the boy shouted, rising up onto his toes.
The monster of bones and magic stood in the gleaming circle, fully fleshed in silvery skin, taller than the stones, and barely contained in the circle of the spell, the bones held within its shape of ghostlight and magic burned like white-hot steel. Then it opened shimmering wings that arched over us in a starfall of pearly light. I was too stunned to move or breathe as the monstrous, beautiful thing stretched its neck, raising its face to the starry sky. The moonlight touched the unreal flesh with a lambent glow that rippled across its surface as if the thing drew breath, waiting only for a command to take wing.
The dreamspinner spun to face the stones, his face glowing with joy. He threw his arms up and flung his head back, shouting at the stars, “Vive! Voa!”
Rui pivoted on his off-side foot, coming up behind the dreamspinner, and cut his throat. Blood gushed from the boy’s neck, splashing onto the stones and turning their gray faces red.
The swift death doubled me over and I fell to my knees. My only solace in the moment of agony was knowing that the boy had barely understood what was happening before all the world went dark for him. The tiny, shining thing that had been his life energy flashed away, soaring toward the stars, and disappeared as I gasped, still coiled in the shock of his death.