Revenant

THIRTY-FIVE

Lying in wait. That was the only phrase I could think of for what we were doing. Quinton called it “camping.” The fields around the dolmen rolled slowly up from the river, into gentle hills covered in cork oaks and grazing cattle and down shallow valleys until it climbed all the way to the castle walls of Monforte, which I could spy even at this distance. There was very little cover down near the standing stones, so we’d crossed the river and climbed the nearest hill until we came to a stand of trees on a bit of high ground with a mostly clear view back down. We lay in the last of the summer grass with Quinton’s small automatic pistol between us to watch what Rui and Quinton’s father would get up to. We’d have to work our way down with care once they arrived, since the low slope and the trees made it difficult to watch the dolmen from any greater distance than about a quarter mile.

For hours there’d been no activity at all. Then a handful of trucks arrived and set up around the bridge as if they were road maintenance. There was a farmhouse about a mile to the west up the rising road, but the sloping, rolling terrain hid the little hollow by the river and only a car approaching from the east would see anything going on at the standing stones.

The trucks were useful cover. They parked one at the far end of the bridge and another farther up the road to the west, just before the road dipped down. With lookouts in each, there would be plenty of time to warn the group working at the dolmen of any visitors coming from the road. They plainly weren’t worried about anyone crossing the road in between the trucks since that stretch was visible between the two vehicles. The only blind spots would be on our side of the river, but it appeared they were counting on the water itself to hold off intruders. The mages were conspicuous in their black robes as they headed to the dolmen. Papa Purlis’s guys spread out to create a perimeter near the trucks and patrol the field near the standing stones. I counted fourteen of them, all armed with compact weapons of some kind—shotguns or rifles, I wasn’t sure—and there would be a few more in the trucks.

“It looks like they’ve heard about Carlos and are writing us off,” Quinton said. “They aren’t putting out many sentries I can see. Anything magical?”

I peered into the Grey, but aside from a growing network of lines over the dolmen, there was nothing new. “No. They’re probably shorthanded without Griffin, but if, as you said, they’ve written us off, they won’t be too worried about redundancy.”

“Or spares.” Quinton returned to staring at the standing stones through the binoculars. “It’s frustrating that the graveled part is on the opposite side of the stones. It appears Rui’s decided the Devil’s Pool is the place to do the job, but I can’t see what’s going on there with the stones blocking a big part of the view.”

“It’s more important to know where they are than what they’re doing until nightfall. Carlos thought they’d have to wait until after dark to raise the dragon—which looks likely—so I think we can make our way closer once the sun goes down without a lot of risk, so long as we know where all of your father’s guards are.”

“We’ve got a few more hours. Do you want to sleep for a while and I’ll keep watch? We can swap in an hour or two—you’ll be a better observer than I once the sun starts heading down.”

We agreed to the schedule and I curled up to nap, sleeping poorly with more dreams of blood and death. Quinton woke me as the sky turned orange and I took over, peering through the Grey to keep track of the living bodies down below. I was grateful that none of the bone mages were undead, since their smaller, darker auras would have been harder to spot in the growing darkness.

I could see a spinning circle of silvery fog around the dolmen and thought Rui had probably created an alarm system, in effect, by posting the ghosts from any remaining Lenoir boxes to watch. They would be a problem only in bringing our presence to Purlis and Rui’s attention, but by then we’d be so close, the element of surprise wouldn’t be much anyway. I looked at the other sentries and lookouts, trying to map a path down to the stones without alerting anyone. Without Carlos, I’d have to be right at the edge of the casting circle to have any effect on the spell. I studied the landscape of my preferred route, looking for potential problems like tree stumps or sudden hollows in the ground.

As it grew darker and the sky was turning purple, the stars beginning to shine while they waited for the moon, I switched my attention to the dolmen, watching the slow building of the casting circle and the assembly of the bones within it. Since they were parts of the spell that would become the Hell Dragon’s skeleton, the bones gleamed through the Grey, leaving soft threads of ivory with streaks of blood red and ink black hanging in the silvery mist world. They were beautiful in spite of their dire purpose as was the strange chanting of the Kostní Mágové. I recalled Rui’s bone flute that I was carrying in my pocket, the bone, smooth and pale, carved with red runes that molded the tones that would come from it. I wondered whether I was going to have to use it since we didn’t have Carlos with us and whether it would be better to take that risk and use it soon, rather than gambling on getting close without Carlos to back us up. Just how close would I have to get to make it work . . . ?

I sank a little deeper into the Grey, holding the bone flute in my hand. The world seemed to leap and tremble in shades of silver and gunmetal as if the planes of the normal and the paranormal fluttered here like sheets of cellophane in unearthly breezes, with almost no Grey fringe in between. The longer I stared, the more obvious it became: The Grey really was only the thinnest curtain here. And on the other side of it lay the true, deep paranormal—the realm of things that should never escape into the world of mortals, things I had only glimpsed and with which I wanted no closer association. Whatever Rui’s mages were doing with their lines and their chanting, it was thinning the Grey. If they could tear the barriers between the worlds open, I didn’t know what manner of horror would pour into the normal plane.

“Oh shit,” I whispered, rolling over to wake Quinton. “It’s not a nexus—it’s a portal.”

Quinton woke instantly. “What?”

“We missed it, Carlos and I. That’s not just a nexus. It’s a door. The Grey is thin here—there’s barely space between this world and the next. Whatever they’re doing right now, it’s pushing the Grey aside and tearing a hole in the barriers. If that nexus actually lies in the paranormal, it’s not as weak as we thought and once they’ve made their hole, it’s not just power that will come through. Carlos thought something was waiting there—he almost told me something just before he . . .” I had to shut my eyes for a moment to banish the choking memory. “Just before he died. He started to turn back, said he had a better plan. . . . I can’t possibly exert enough control from here if that opens up. We need to risk using this,” I said, holding up the flute, “before they’re done preparing, or we’ll have to move a lot closer—and I mean breathing close.”

He blinked at me for a second or two. “Well . . . I guess we needed to get closer anyway. When’s the best time to go get captured?”

“Captured?”

“Yeah, whatever I can do to create maximum disruption, at this point, is what I need to do. You need to get as close as you can if you’re going to use that thing, so I need to pull them away and buy you the chance. How many of the people down there are bone mages? Or mages of any kind?”

“Six—one is Rui and one’s the dreamspinner. We know the kid is weak, so there’re only four to worry about aside from the Big Bad.”

Quinton nodded. “All right. Can you pinpoint my father? Assuming he’s here at all.”

“Yes. I know his aura. He’s down by the Devil’s Pool. I’d guess he plans to test his control of the drache as soon as possible.”

“Probably wants a good look at what he’s paid for, first. It’s so convenient of them to gather close together. This is one time I wish I had a rifle.”

“Are you any good with one?” I’d seen him handle rifles before, but I’d only seen him fire my automatic and a shotgun and that had been in close quarters. This was more like four hundred yards.

“Passable, but I’d settle right now for any mess I could cause from a distance. This small-caliber pistol won’t do much from here but make noise,” he added, patting the gun that lay on the ground nearby.

“Sort of the same problem with the flute.”

At the center of the Devil’s Pool, someone lit a fire. The flames jumped up initially and cast shadows into the falling night, then died back down to something more like a moderate campfire.

“Looks like gasoline,” Quinton said. “Flares up quick, but burns fast, too. I wonder how much of it they’ve got. . . .”

“Does it matter?”

“It could. I’d feel bad for the farmer, but I could do a lot of damage and wreak a lot of havoc with a couple of cans of gas, especially around these dry grasses and trees. Even more if I also had some rags and some matches. Gasoline makes a pretty impressive explosion if you know how to make it go ‘boom’ in the first place, and then there’re little fires all over the place afterward.”

“They’ve lit a fire of their own, so my guess is that they’re going to start this show soon,” I said. “The sun’s already down. They’re probably just waiting for the last of twilight to burn away. It has to be a pretty complex spell with so many parts, so it’s not going to advance quickly. At my guess, we’ve got maybe an hour. If they already know we’re here or if we draw too much attention too soon, they’ll try to grab us.”

“A pair of megalomaniacs like them? Yeah, they’ll want to make us watch the whole show. I’d better get to causing trouble so you can get into position. Where are you thinking of stopping?”

“Near the short end of the standing stones—I need to see what’s happening on the gravel, but I can always retreat to the river if I have to.”

“I don’t want them to hurt you. . . .”

“This is not going to be a damage-free fight. So long as we’re alive and they’re dead at the end, I’m willing to risk some hurt.”

Quinton looked grim at my reply, but he didn’t argue. He nodded. “All right. You start down to the stones by an indirect route. I’ll start moving toward the truck on the bridge to play pyromaniac.”

Once again, Quinton and I were moving in opposite directions; I digging the bone flute from my pocket and he slinking through the long shadows of the freshly fallen night like a snake in the grass.

Getting down the hill wasn’t simple. I wanted to keep one eye on the Grey and one on the ground, looking for a location that would be close enough to try the flute, but far enough out to give me room to run when Purlis’s guys started after me. I also didn’t want to step in anything that might slow me down—like a hole or a cow patty. Pastoral hillsides look benign and lovely in photos, but they’re full of potential pitfalls. I made my way to the top of one of the paths I’d been mapping earlier, crouching and moving with care while keeping to the shadows as much as possible.

At the top of my path to the stones, I stopped and, remaining crouched, slid a little farther into the Grey to look around. I could see Quinton’s energetic form moving down the hill closer to the bridge and no one seemed to be paying him any mind. I could see the fluttering of the planes and the growing white shape of the casting circle with its enclosed bones, sending ripples through the Grey like something rising from deep water. I thought that once I was within the radius of the ripples, I should be able to disrupt the spell with the flute. I had no idea what noise I was supposed to make with it, but I’d have to hope I could fake it—it only had four holes, so the tone combinations were limited and when Rui had used it, he hadn’t been playing a song so much as progressions of notes and listening for a matching resonance. If I could get it to make a noise at all, I’d try to do the same thing, except I’d be watching the glow of the bones to see if one stirred.

I checked for anyone moving nearby and estimated my distance to the first ripple. Then I backed toward the normal and started down the hill. I was going to be closer than I liked, but I didn’t think I stood any kind of chance at a greater distance.

Going downhill in a crouch was more difficult than crossing the face of the hill. I started to lose my balance once and bit back a yelp as I put my injured hand out to catch myself. I may have been healing faster than normal, but the flash of pain was sharp and left my hand throbbing for a minute. I would need both hands to play the flute and couldn’t risk doing myself more damage at this stage. Maybe later . . .

I could feel the ripple in the Grey when I snuck into it. The world seemed to roll like the deck of a storm-beset ship. With the contradictory evidence of my eyes saying nothing was moving and the remaining discomfort in my hand, I felt a bit queasy. It was nothing compared to my initial nausea in the Grey years ago, but it wasn’t easy to ignore—it reminded me too much of vampires and of one in particular. . . .

I squatted in the churning cold and unwound from the flute the black thread that Carlos had made. I shuddered at the thought of putting my mouth on the nasty little instrument, but I forced myself to do it and started to play, the random notes warbling out into the night like disturbed birds, screaming in distress. I played as terribly as I sing, being tone-deaf. The initial notes from the bone flute caused a flurry of sparks to rise from the bones assembled in the center of the casting circle and, for a moment, the spell burned phosphor-white. I didn’t see any of the bones move, but I did observe the black and white energy around Rui eclipse in a storm of red as he heard me. The chanting of the Kostní Mágové faltered and the spell dimmed, wavering as Rui moved, shouting first at the mages and then at Purlis. The chanting resumed and the spell gleamed not quite as brightly as it had and the red spires of Rui’s anger fell back only part of the way. Apparently I was irritating him and that was adversely affecting the spell. It was not the effect I wanted, but it was still a good one.

I could see the tangles of energy that were more-normal people scrambling around near the dolmen as three of the guards broke away to find me. Others spread out into the edges of the river-bound area, the non-magical working their way farther out, crossing the water to search for anyone else who might be with me. I could no longer see Quinton’s aura clearly in the mess of movement and the rolling of the Grey. While Purlis’s men were quiet and careful, I had confidence in Quinton’s ability to avoid them long enough to make some trouble at the very least. Me, I made noise and tried to keep an eye on the bones in the circle as well as tracking the three men coming across the river to catch me.

Every note I played made the spell waver, but I needed to move or be a sitting duck. It didn’t take long for the three men tracking me to converge and try to grab me. I slipped sideways through the Grey and forced them to chase me, playing different notes on the flute whenever I got away and waiting as long as I could for any bones to respond.

On the third try, I saw something flicker, dim, and quiver in the illuminated skeleton within the circle. That was the note I needed. I only had to remember which holes to cover and how hard to blow. Down near the bridge, I spotted Quinton’s energy signature slipping toward the truck. I figured we both needed a few more minutes and I wasn’t sure I could get them.

I dove back into the Grey as the men stalking me drew close to my position. I struggled through the thin, heaving Grey as if I were trying to swim in a storm-wracked sea. It was becoming difficult to keep both my positions in mind—where I was and where I needed to be—and watch everything that needed watching, but I saw the men turn, realizing I’d moved, and start searching for my new location. They were pros and knew I wouldn’t be far away, but I still wouldn’t be where they expected.

I dodged around behind them and dropped for the normal. . . . Then one of them stepped left when I’d expected him to go right, and I fell into him, knocking him down as I slipped out of the Grey. I tumbled a few feet down the slope toward the river and the dolmen. I felt the flute break in my hand as I rolled and my injured finger took a beating even as I tried to pull my fist in against my body.

The man I’d knocked down shouted for his comrades and they bounded down the slope after me, my movement making me easy to track under the quarter moon and the light of millions of stars. The quickest of the three caught up to me and stopped my downward somersaulting by throwing himself across my path and onto my body. The second guy jogged up and started to haul me to my feet as the first stood up and then slipped and fell in the unmistakable stench of cow flop.

“Shit!”

The second one laughed. “Yes, it is! That was fucking hilarious, Bara.”

“Fuck you, MacPherson.”

Apparently the guys in Purlis’s team were Americans and they had the usual sense of humor that young men in combat acquire. I put my feet down more carefully, avoiding the dung, as the last of the trio trudged in, feeling no need to hurry now that someone had captured me.

“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.

The ground trembled as the dreamspinner’s body struck it. Rui shoved the remains slightly with his foot so that they fell outside the “pool” of gravel and crumpled against the bottom of the standing stones that were wet with the young man’s blood. Rui looked me over with a wide smile and a gleam in his eye and yanked me back to my feet, my aching hands still caught behind me, unable to drop into the Grey while the pang of death still dazed my mind and crippled my body.

Rui resumed his place beside me, staring into the circle that began to burn around the straining shape of the luminous dragon within. A line flowed swiftly from one monk to the next and the shaking of the ground increased.

I heard three quick shots, and the truck by the bridge exploded as I folded once again over the stabbing torment of death, barely keeping my feet.

Everyone turned their heads. All the men who weren’t in the circle ran outward, searching for Quinton, turning into black silhouettes against the brightness of spell and flame. In the momentary distraction, the white fire that connected the mages in the circle around the bones began to dim and the shape of the dragon trembled like the surface of a pond. I pushed myself toward the circle, hoping I could break the edge, but Purlis swept his cane across my legs, so I twisted and fell onto my injured hand, screeching in pain.

“Go on!” Rui screamed at the mages as he stepped into the dreamspinner’s place and reached for the incantation, closing his eyes. The white lines of the circle folded him in, and he seemed to burn, adding greater light to the fire of the spell.

Purlis hooked his cane through the loop of my arms and hauled me backward until I was lying facedown in the dirt in front of him. He rested the tip of the cane against my spine and leaned on it, letting me know he could break my back in a heartbeat.

The bone mages had turned their attention back to the circle, singing and spreading their arms wide so the white lines of magic seemed to pass through them. Light shot upward, then rushed back to them, spreading into the circle and crawling along the bones. Burning light shot from each rune to shine on the eldritch dragon’s skin from the inside, mixing with the gleam of moonlight and lending the eerie appearance of living, rippling flesh that glowed from within as if lit by a growing bank of candles. As they illuminated, each bone sang. More notes joined the bone mage’s song, building into a complex melody that coiled in minor keys around my spine.

This was the moment Carlos had spoken of and there was only one thing I could do. I tried to concentrate on the odd feeling of the ghost bone, hoping to have the same strange, aching sensation that had linked my finger with Carlos’s. . . .

Above me, Purlis turned his head from side to side, shouting, “J.J.! J.J.!”

Another, smaller explosion disrupted my concentration and sent the black shapes of Purlis’s men scurrying and shouting. More gunshots punctuated the singing of the bones like drumbeats and I convulsed in a knot on the ground as someone died.

Purlis yanked me up with the crook of his cane. “Where is he?” he demanded.

“I don’t know!” I spat back, shaking with fury as much as pain and barely making myself heard over the growing noise in the circle. “Try looking at the next thing that’s on fire!”

He slapped me so hard, I crashed back to the ground and he staggered, barely catching himself with his cane. He leaned against the edge of the nearest stone and slashed his cane at me. “Don’t toy with me!” Each word brought the cane down in a crashing impact on my body.

I squirmed away and ran into Rui’s foot. He moved within the edge of the spell and flipped me over onto my back like a beetle. “Let me deal with her,” he said. “I know what will bring your son running. . . .”

The light from the circle was intense, searing white around a core of yellow fire, the incantation’s song a mighty roar of sound, shivering on the verge of something. . . .

Rui thrust one shining hand down at me, and I felt my ribs arch toward him, the bruises Purlis had just inflicted burning like napalm. I screamed in agony, and I could see the sound flow out of me and into the spell through Rui’s outstretched hand.

The sound clashed with the song of the conjuration, and Rui made a sour face. He moved his hand over my body, his dissatisfied expression turning to smiles as the timbre of my screaming shifted along the scale, shivering against the music of the bones.

Quinton bolted from the darkness, straight for me and Rui.

His father, still leaning on the stones beside us, drew a gun from under his jacket and aimed it at Quinton’s face.

Chest heaving, Quinton skidded to a halt, the small pistol wavering toward his father, but useless—the slide was locked back and it was empty.

“You may not have had the balls to do it, Son, but I do,” Purlis said, just loud enough to be heard over the sound of the spell yearning toward resolution. “You move, and I’ll shoot you in the head. And then her.”

Rui drew his hands over me again. The tone of my screams blended to the voice of the incantation and the world shouted fire into the sky. All other sounds fell away and I sagged to the earth, aching.

From the column of flame a shape emerged, flapping massive, blazing wings of nightmare sinew and ghost-stuff stretched over fire-limned bones. It flew upward, and all of us, even Rui and his mages, stared after it, struck with awe or terror. Everyone stopped to watch it, and the stars vanished in the glare of the monster as it raced to swallow the moon.

Then the Hell Dragon arched down, turning as it fell away from the apex of its flight, graceful as a falling leaf. Someone shouted and the rattle of automatic gunfire broke the awestruck stillness beside the river.

The beast opened its mouth and roared a gout of flame, for a moment illuminating the silhouettes of men with rifles trained on it before they vanished in the conflagration. The bellow of the dragon was a bass chord that shook the ground and blew trees aside, a sound like mountains shouting. The thing, like living flame, swept across the dry grass, setting fire to the hillside where I’d lain beside Quinton in the sun. I jerked into a ball around the agony of several fiery deaths.

More shouts and screams came from the still-burning truck near the bridge as the dragon bore down on it. It slapped the truck aside and snapped at the men who had been moving behind it, snatching one up in its mouth. The victim screamed, the sound trailing as the Hell Dragon leapt back into the sky with a clap of wings and a sweep of its tail that set the river steaming and flung burning trees and the charred bodies of men into the air to rain down again in the farther fields. It circled into the air and turned, sweeping for a moment over Monforte and setting the hillside village aflame.

I couldn’t hear them, but I felt the panic and death of the people in the town and those on the ground nearby as the drache burned a turning path back toward us. I couldn’t think or concentrate enough to do anything through the haze of anguish and death. I felt our failure crushing my chest and twisting through my guts as I tried to hear anything of the bones, do anything . . . but it was beyond me.

I lay immobile on the ground, barely breathing, sick from pain, remorse, and the continual shocks of death. Then cold flowed over me, drawing the anguish from me as darkness that did not give way before the fires of the Hell Dragon emerged from the shadow of the standing stones.

“I’m late. I apologize.”

I almost sobbed in relief at the rumbling, impossible sound of Carlos’s voice beside me. His presence seemed to draw death away from me, like a lightning rod attracts the fury of the sky. It did nothing for my other pains, but at least I was able to move and breathe again.

Rui laughed and turned to make a mocking bow. “Hah! The very last Count of Atouguia. I thought you were dead.”

Carlos reached for him, hands like claws and black wings of power spreading wide. Rui swept his hands upward. The stones seemed to buck and thrash, throwing Carlos back, but this time he wasn’t knocked to the ground. He turned and swept behind the blood-splashed rocks, Rui pursuing him as the Hell Dragon swirled in the sky and roared back at the ground.

The farmhouse on the hill above the dolmen burst into flames and distant screams erupted with the fire and smoke. The light of the conflagration cast the scene in hellish, flickering light.

The monstrous thing swept onward, raising a bank of flame that caught the second truck and flipped it, tumbling like a toy along the road in the sudden superheated wind. Men crawled from the twisted vehicle, burning like the morbid candles of Rui’s temple and threw themselves down to roll or simply to fall and lie burning on the ground. But their agony was a glancing blow to me now. Carlos had done something to me—or at least for me—and I was grateful.

Quinton started forward under the distraction of the newest assault, but his father twitched the gun a little to get his attention. “Let the mages kill each other. I have other plans for you and your girlfriend.”

“My wife.”

Purlis raised his eyebrows. “Oh, so you did it, did you? I hoped you wouldn’t.”

Brightness fell on the ground and we all looked up, seeing the brilliant flare of the Hell Dragon swooping downward again. It sped, blazing from the heights of the sky toward the highway. Its fiery breath would set the width of the road and a dozen yards on each side aflame. Already the river steamed from the heat of the fires on the hillside, spreading across the dry fields with a crackling roar and the stench of destruction.

I squeezed my eyes closed, rolling onto my shoulders to free my hands and slip them, still bound together, under my hips. The riot cuff cut into my wrists and made my injured hand feel like it was going to explode under the pressure. I screamed into the dirt and rolled into a ball to pass my hands below my feet. Flat on my back, sweating in the heat and pain from every part of my body I concentrated on the skeleton of the Hell Dragon, reaching for the one bone I knew—my own.

It resisted and rang like steel, refusing to come at first. Then it sprang free to fall hot on my hand, blazing and trying to fuse to the finger I’d cut it from. The song of the Hell Dragon altered only slightly and it rippled, the fire within it turning slightly golden, but otherwise the burning construct was unaffected by the removal of the bone.

It wasn’t a key—it wasn’t important enough to bring the beast down. If I kept it, it would burn through my flesh and set the rest of my bones on fire. I yelled and let go my mental hold. The bone leapt back to the Hell Dragon and the light of the dire beast flared white and red again. I could hear it roar and turn in the sky with a sound like wind tearing through the sails of a foundering ship.

I had no other choice: I’d have to swap bones if I could. It would probably kill me—a fiery death from which I wouldn’t stand a chance of waking. But it would be worth it to stop Rui and Purlis. I hoped Quinton would forgive me.

I kept my eyes closed as I tried to remember all the bones, tried to reach for one that I had an affinity for, mentally scrabbling. . . . It seemed far away, but I could hear Purlis talking to Quinton nearby. “She’s too much like your mother. She’ll never really give up her life to be with you. She’ll leave you in the end, like Liz did me.”

“Mom left you because you’re a monster. And you had her locked up in a mental institution because you can’t live with the truth, while your actions only confirmed it. You are a piece of work, Dad.”

I remembered and reached with my hands and my mind for the bone Rui had found such an amusing match—James Purlis’s left tibia. It was the bone of a man who was shorter than I, older, smaller in every way. The bone now inhabited the Hell Dragon Purlis had hoped to control to bring Europe to its knees, but he hadn’t even tried yet because he was too obsessed with his anger at his son to realize he couldn’t. I’d have to take it—it was the only shot I had left.

Heat and light rushed toward me and I felt a tearing, splintering pain in my left leg, my knee and ankle seeming to twist themselves apart as my own tibia started to pull toward the dragon’s skeleton to displace Purlis’s. I resisted the scream that rose from my gut, wrenching my will against it as if the sound would ruin my intent. I could feel blood running from my knee and along my leg like a line of fire, pooling around my ankle and heel. Then a steely cold wrapped around a burning shaft of light seemed to sear me, blinding me through my closed eyelids with hot illumination that rose from inside my own body. But it wasn’t like the burning of my finger bone against my severed knuckle. It felt as if the bone had ripped itself loose and left a hollow filled with some living light that tore through my flesh like a knife, burning with cold instead of heat.

I should have been dying, burning from the diseased and fiery magic that animated the Hell Dragon, but something wasn’t happening as Carlos had said it would. I had no strength to try again, even if I could figure out what to do. I wanted to shout, to scream, to weep, but I couldn’t. I was done and I was broken and it was for nothing. . . .

The strange singing sound in the night broke and soured, the ground beneath the standing stones seeming to shudder in revulsion at what it had vomited forth.

I opened my eyes, mere slits against the anguish gnawing on my body and the despair clouding my mind, and looked into the brightness of the Hell Dragon plunging down.

Then it twisted, coiling, tearing, screeching out of tune, and ripping into pieces as it fell toward the earth. . . .

Beside me, Purlis’s scream matched that of the drache, and I turned my head as he lit like a torch. A fiery shape burned against his leg, sending up a stink of melting plastic and steel as the bone he’d given up returned and sank into the body of his prosthesis, melding to him, knitting back in place now that there was no place else for it to reside. The fire of the Dragão do Inferno blossomed bright, consuming him from the inside out. Another horrifying scream came from the darkness beyond the stones as the scorched debris of the Hell Dragon rained to Earth in cinders and ash.

Against the fire I could see two black figures locked in struggle. The larger had taken hold of the smaller’s head and driven the other to his knees. A flickering ember flared nearby and illuminated them for a moment, and I could see blood coursing down Rui’s face from his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth as Carlos leaned forward as if to whisper to him. As the ember died, I saw the gleam of Carlos’s sharp white teeth and then more blood as the vampire ripped his old student’s throat open.

I closed my eyes and turned my head against the ground, letting go of everything, not sure exactly why I wasn’t dead. What had gone wrong that seemed to have gone right instead?

The blazing light within me died out and the feel of cold steel and hot iron faded, leaving only the throbbing and stinging of torn flesh and shattered bone behind. It felt worse than amputating my fingertip had and I was glad I was too tired to look to see what had happened to my left leg. It didn’t feel right—it felt torn and hollow, the joints ripped apart and twisted, but not the way it had when I’d broken it as a kid or when I’d ripped up my knee a few years ago. I didn’t know if the bone I’d tried to give up was there or not. It had left—I was sure—but I wasn’t sure it had come back and it shouldn’t have. . . . I felt worn too thin to puzzle it out and I didn’t care.

I felt Quinton lift me into his arms and start running.

I raised my head off his shoulder. “Did we live?”

“For now, but you won’t last a lot longer if I don’t get you to a hospital quick.”

“Oh,” I said, feeling light-headed. Blood loss—it was almost familiar now.

Darkness loomed ahead, taking shape like a storm cloud becoming flesh. The light of the fires all around us cast moving light on Carlos’s face, streaked with blood and ash.

“Give her to me,” he ordered.

Trembling, Quinton did and Carlos stooped to sit on the ground with me leaning against his side and my legs laid across his lap. “That was foolish, Blaine. You keep leaving parts of yourself in strange places.” I could feel his hands stroking down my ruptured leg. It felt cool and wonderful, and I sighed, going limp against him.

Quinton’s voice seemed to come from a distance. “Is she . . . ?”

“Dying is not dead. Yet. Be patient,” Carlos counseled him.

I decided the conversation wasn’t real and responded to Carlos’s first words to me in a whisper, because it was all I could manage, “Seemed like a good idea . . .”

“Why did you choose to do this?”

“There wasn’t one I could take. Mine wasn’t a key. I had to swap. The only one that I could move was Purlis’s. I didn’t want it . . . but it didn’t come anyway.”

“Three positions, only two bones. The spell sent the bone back to its original owner as I told you it would. Yours became part of the drache, but it broke the song and now the bone is burned to ash. I can’t restore it.”

“That’s all right,” I said, feeling much too woozy to stay awake. “Just want to sleep.”

“No,” Quinton said in an urgent whisper.

“Quiet,” Carlos whispered back. Then he returned his attention to me. “I can save you, but . . . this is too close to blood kindred and I may not be able to stop the process. You would become like me.”

“No,” I said. “Rather die than be you.”

Carlos’s laughter was the last thing I heard as I fell unconscious.