Bone Deep(50)

“You have made him comfortable?” the woman asked and in her tone was a slyness that coated Bone’s skin with acid.

“We have,” Dostoyev responded on a laugh.

“Take her there. It is as Joseph said it would be. This is one of his prized assassins,” the woman sneered. “She came for me and the prodigal son followed.” She stepped up to Bone, stroking a fingernail down over her collarbone. “They call you Bone Breaker but I think it is I who will break you. Thank you for bringing Dmitry to me, Bone Breaker. I wish I could say it will be a joyous reunion.”

Then the woman stepped back, chuckled and was gone.

“Take her down and drag her to the tower,” Dostoyev ordered.

His men stepped in and did just that. Bone was in a bra and her underwear. They had discarded her clothes after they searched her yesterday. When they took the ropes out of the bolt hole she slid to a heap on the floor.

She coughed loudly and then gagged, throwing up stomach acid. The men backed away, not wanting to be in the middle of all that. The swelling in her eyes had gone down enough for her to see through slits. She allowed them to pick her up by her armpits and begin half-carrying, half-dragging her to one of the towers that surrounded the Kremlin.

She contained her excitement that everything was going as it should because it wasn’t. Somehow, someway, Dmitry was here. It was Bone’s worst nightmare. It could only be worse if it were one of her sisters.

It seemed to take forever to get where they were going. Behind her eyelids she saw low light and heard the lapping of the Moscow River at its banks. The smell of stagnant water was strong here. It reminded her of the water pits in Arequipa.

Soon now, she thought. Please let him be okay.

A door opened and then she was thrust into a room that held low shadows. She hit the ground and rolled, again absorbing the impact.

“And now we are all here,” the woman said with a clap.

Bone looked through the long skeins of her hair and found Dmitry being held up by an enormous mountain of a guard. The guard looked familiar, something about how he held himself niggling a memory. She pushed it aside. It mattered not who he was. He would die for harming Dmitry.

Whether he ever admitted or accepted it, Dmitry was hers now.

Her gaze tracked over him. His face was bruised. The fingers on his right hand were bent at odd angles and his fingertips bled. They’d made him suffer. His shoulder was bleeding too, the rust red of his blood marking his olive green T-shirt.

Bone came to her feet, threw back her head, and screamed to the heavens. Dmitry flinched, and his eyes, swollen shut opened to bare slits.

“You are angry, child,” the woman queried.

Bone counted the men in the room with them—four including Dostoyev. She did not like that someone held Dmitry but she would have to work with what she was given.

“You should not have come,” she spit at him.

He remained silent and Bone wondered what had been done to him.

The woman walked to stand beside Dmitry and stroked his hair. Dmitry’s eyes closed and on his face was a curious hope. It hurt to see it.

“You will speak to me and only to me,” the woman ordered Bone in a strident tone. “Dmitry cannot be bothered with trash like you.”

The hope on his face disappeared and in its place confusion took residence, followed by a hardness that could only be one thing, hate. He pulled away from the woman. “Do not touch me.”

“You missed me, eh? It has been a while, Dmitry. You have grown to look like your father. Strong and beautiful. But your mind, it is as weak as Sacha’s and that affirms I made the right decision.”

Bone watched the woman step away from Dmitry and tsk softly.

“What decision is that?” Dmitry asked, his voice rough and bitter.

“To leave. Weakness cannot be tolerated,” the woman responded softly. She turned then and glared at Bone. “Why are you here?”

Bone let her muscles loosen, accepted the pain of every single broken rib, bruise and cut. She opened herself up to the agony and it washed over her in a red tidal wave, sucking her under.

“I came here for you,” Bone said, spearing the woman with her gaze.

The woman smiled at her and nodded. “I know. Joseph told me it would be so and it is.”

“You have sold children to The Collective but more than that you sold your own into the clutches of the devil. You abandoned your family and ordered your husband murdered,” Bone stated and it rang throughout the room.

A cold wind drifted in from the tower window holes but it did nothing to cool her rage.

“Ninka was mine. She was Bullet’s, Arrow’s, Blade’s, and mine.”

The woman’s face lost its mask of indifference and it was if she were a demon clothed in flesh. “She was mine to do with as I wanted. No one understood that true power comes from your ability to control life. I did what had to be done. The child was weak. I sent her to Joseph so she could be more and she failed me! All of my children were weak. Their father was as well. They deserved what they got,” she hissed, hands forming claws as she lost her cool and attacked Bone.

Bone sidestepped and chopped the woman in the back of her neck. She fell and looked back, horror on her face, fear a shadow in her eyes. They thought they’d broken her. Never.

One of the men attacked Bone and she stood tall, meeting his rush with a single punch to the chest. She channeled the rage, let it grow in her chest and then pushed it through her fist into his body. She’d struck him right over his heart. He fell without a single sound, unmoving, dead. The other guard, the one not holding Dmitry, ran. Her body protested but her mind demanded more.