Bone Deep(25)

“They swung and bled and bled and swung, their blood dotting the sand at my feet and the walls of our tent. Their blood was so crimson it seemed as black as my new god’s eyes. The sand was hungry that night, ravenous, and it drank their life until it was full. Then the sand offered up something it had created in gratitude for the meal it received.”

She would break his heart with the pain she fought to hide. But he wanted her to know he was there and he’d listen to every word she said regardless of how it hurt him. “What did it offer?” he asked hoarsely.

Her gaze slid away. “Me.”

She walked then, over the dunes and down to the water where she crossed her arms and gazed out over the ocean.

And as she stared at the water, Dmitry stared at her, memorizing her face and form, committing her to his heart.

He was going to kill Joseph Bombardier.

Joseph was his.





Chapter Six


Her heart settled the moment she saw Bullet and Arrow. Her sisters waited in the driveway, hands at their sides, gazes locked on the arriving vehicle. Bone got out as soon as the car stopped and walked to them, not embracing but staring at them, assessing their health and mental status.

Bone herself was still rocked by her admissions to Dmitry Asinimov. She’d never told her sisters of the night that brought her to Arequipa. They’d had too much to deal with themselves. As they’d grown, Bone’s rage had evolved into a wicked thing, living and breathing under her skin, in her sinew and muscles. It wouldn’t have been contained. The others had their own burdens, and she would never add to them.

Bone held each of her hands palm up. Bullet and Arrow slid their hands into hers and then they were holding each other as much as they could allow. Then, as one, they dropped their hands to their sides.

“Sister,” Arrow acknowledged, the sibilant tones of her voice stroking Bone’s eardrums.

“Bone Breaker,” Bullet quipped in her soft, dead voice.

Bone nodded at them. “Blade is well?”

She hadn’t talked to her other sister in over a month, missed the one whose laughter made her smile. Out of them all, Blade alone had the capacity to feel joy. It was rare to witness it but it had saved Bone many times over the years. Saved her from flinging herself off that cliff in Arequipa.

“She is angry,” Bullet returned.

Bone sighed. The boy had been taken and Blade was searching for Ken Nodachi now. Ken had taken the boy on a cold morning in Shanghai, when the woman First Team picked to watch over him had been slain.

He’d dared take something of theirs and he would pay for his folly.

“We are all angry.” Arrow’s voice carried the millennia. Ancient and smooth, it never failed to stoke Bone’s need to kill. She did her best to stay away from Arrow as much as possible, though she would give her life for her. The demons Arrow carried inside stalked Bone as well.

“She will find him,” Bone whispered. She shifted her gaze to Bullet, moving over her shorn hair, which did nothing to detract from her beauty, and meeting her eyes. “Your Mr. Beckett doesn’t know where his brother-in-law is?”

Bullet shrugged. “He would not tell me if he did.”

“Loyalty is a commodity, Bullet. You should be proud of him,” Bone responded.

The gazes of the men in the courtyard were a tactile nudge at the base of her skull—Dmitry, Raines, Adam Collins, and Rand Beckett. There were others, armed and ready.

“I shouldn’t smile, but the thought that these huge men around us, armed to the gills, are afraid of three small women—it does make my mouth curve,” Bone told them.

“It is done?” Arrow asked, switching topics effortlessly.

Bone nodded again. “I will return soon and finish my part. She will need time to regroup after losing Vadim. It is my hope she returns to the Urals though I hold no assurance. I will go after Dostoyev to get her attention.”

“Does Dmitry know the truth?” Bullet questioned.

“No.”

“Joseph is scrambling. It is as we planned,” Arrow mused. “Do you plan to tell Dmitry?”

Bone stared at Arrow but did not answer her question, choosing to ignore it as the implications of her answer might damn them all. “Yesipov is gone. Azrael is gone. Joseph has the scent of desperation riding him now. He sent two of his Sicariorum after me in the forests around Yesipov’s mansion.”

Arrow and Bullet straightened, the need to fight an unseen threat rising in them both. Their rage tainted the air with the bittersweet hint of endings. Sometimes it was the most beautiful smell of all.

“They live,” Bone answered their unspoken question.

“They hunt us and as much as I crave a decent opponent, as much as the death inside me wants to find an outlet, they are as we are. It would be similar to killing myself,” Arrow replied.

The male equivalent of First Team had always been there. While her sisters surmised they were a bit older than First Team, had perhaps been in Arequipa longer, Bone didn’t care. Anyone who presented a threat to her or her sisters was an enemy. It didn’t matter that they’d been raised much as she had. She didn’t know their agenda or their allegiance and though the one told her to run, they took Joseph’s command and as such they were not First Team’s in any way.

“I could have taken them but they are more useful alive than dead at this point. Make no mistake, sisters, they will kill us if given a chance,” Bone said.