Chapter 20
The forest of permanently petrified trees had thinned to little more than dead sticks when I suddenly stumbled on some ice and went to my knees, catching myself with my palms. I didn’t scream, but the sudden loss of control sent adrenaline surging through my system.
Manus rushed to help me up. “I got it. Just tripped.” But my eyes focused on what at first looked like a bleached-out piece of wood. It wasn’t the same wood of the blackened forest…
Another scream lodged in my throat. It was a bone—and not large enough to belong to an adult. It was a tiny femur…a child’s femur.
“Bones!” I said as I stood as fast as I could without falling backward. After gathering some balance, I took a step back. The sound that rose from my boots, now that I knew what was on the ground, was a spine-rattling crunch.
The simple act of turning to Manus made me feel weak, as if my blood was draining away from my brain. “They’re everywhere.” The air felt heavy. I had to struggle for a breath as I scanned every direction.
Bones.
“Keena.” His voice was steady and calm, his green eyes locking with mine. “Take a breath. They’re just bones.” He gripped my shoulders, the softness of his expression holding my attention away from the tiny femur at my feet. “We need to figure out what left them here. Steady. You can do this.”
“What ate all the meat off them? That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?
” He nodded his head. I didn’t want to know what ate this much.
I scanned the area again, using the motion to loosen the grip of fear that had clenched my nervous system and was holding me stuck to the spot.
Manus was right. I had to get control, remind myself what I was doing here.
My father…Abbey. I pictured her little face over and over in my mind.
I took a deep breath and looked around, studying the terrain a little closer.
The bones were all dry and bleached. None looked as though they’d recently made their way here. Either that or whatever brought them was damn good at stripping them clean. “They’re either old or…”
“Yeah. You feel any life around us at all?” We had instinctively moved until we stood back-to-back.
I took one of the daggers off my waist. “Nothing really alive except Howard, but something knows we’re here.
” He didn’t answer, but he didn’t really need to.
We started moving toward the mountain again, slowly, trying to step precisely so as not to alert anything to our presence by crunching the smaller bones under our feet.
There was still no sound around us other than our own footfalls on the bones and rocks as we moved.
I felt the brush of something against me. Nothing physical…but I had a bad feeling, an unnatural caressing of something unwanted and unseen on my face.
There were mounds and piles of rocks and large stones all around us, the foothills to the small mountain, which was not as high as I had feared it would be, but nothing large enough for us to hide behind. Nothing for whatever was heading toward us to hide behind either.
I scanned the rocks on the side of the mountain, then I felt the same presence behind me.
I spun, letting Manus come around to cover our front.
Behind me there were only more rocks but the feeling was getting stronger.
Still, I saw nothing but the gray and black of the rocks and shadows.
My heart was beating so fast I heard my pulse roaring in my ears.
I tried to steady my now-splintering nerves.
I spun the daggers in my hands several times for something to do and to keep from gripping the handles so tightly.
I caught a small movement just under my foot. I looked down quickly—and saw another shift from the pile of bones to my left.
Two bones were moving toward each other. A third bone joined them.
I held my breath as the bones assembled right before my eyes. “Manus! They’re rebuilding.” I jumped back.
“I see that.” He sounded almost casual but when I could draw my gaze away from the skeleton forming in front of me, I saw his face was tight with concentration.
We backed up only to find other little piles of bones were also moving, sliding together, some already together enough to begin pulling themselves from the ground.
The boneyard was coming to life.
I backed against the largest boulder I could find to protect my back. I could hear the scraping and grinding of the bones as they stood. The bony carcasses seemed confused as they started to move about and search for us.
“Now what?” I asked. One of the skeletons moved toward the sound of my voice.
“Kill it,” he said, as he stumbled backward beside me, moving up onto a large rock pile. A skeleton, not fully formed, grabbed him around the ankle. Manus raised his foot and smashed the remnants of bones.
Kill it? Right. “Um—already dead!”
“Got a better idea? I’m all ears.”
I didn’t have one. A fully formed creature came at me.
As it stumbled, I decided it was best to replace the dagger with my saber.
I pulled it over my shoulder and swung it through the torso of the zombie skeleton in one smooth motion.
The jarring of steel colliding with bone radiated through my arm.
The shattering bones sent a ripple of disgust through my stomach, which hadn’t fully recovered from the seasickness.
The top half of the body fell at my feet. It dragged itself forward, bony fingers reaching out, legs pushing the bottom half in the wrong direction. I swung at another, catching it through the ribs. The blow and inertia sent it to the ground. Kicking at its head, I managed to knock the skull off.
They weren’t held together too well, but they were tenacious creatures.
The thing just pulled its head back on, looked up at me with empty eye sockets and started to get up.
I kicked out again as it reached full height, breaking the bones at the knee.
It stumbled and fell at my feet but managed to grab my ankle with a strength I couldn’t have imagined from fleshless, unmuscled bones. “Shit!”
I brought the sword down on its wrist and the bones shattered. My ankle was bleeding, but nothing major.
Manus, meanwhile, was in trouble. I tried to work my way closer, hacking through more skeletons as I moved toward him.
He was fighting three at once. One of the skeletons had reached over the boulder behind Manus and grabbed him by the neck.
Yet even while holding it by the forearm, trying to stop it from choking him, Manus continued to fight off a smaller one from the front and a larger one from the left.
The two I had sliced apart to get closer to Manus were looking for their heads, which I had kicked off in the process.
I climbed up the rocks and brought the sword down on the skeleton latched on to Manus’s neck.
It fell to pieces as I sliced downward, shattering its spine and ribs.
Once free, Manus took out the other two with large, sweeping swings of his blade.
I swung at several more that were clawing at the rocks.
Another grabbed my shin. I brought the saber down on its wrist. Bones shattered—and so did my blade. Shocked, I stood there for a second and looked at the broken weapon.
More were heading toward us from the field of bones, and the closest was trying to climb the rocks after me. It skidded and slid back down, the dry, stiff bones too uncoordinated to grip the stone. “Up! They can’t climb!”
The Shifter tucked away his sword and dagger, and we scampered up as fast as we could. We needed to go up anyway. This was as good a place as any. We alternated pulling and pushing each other up the steeper inclines, ascending as fast as we could.
We stopped a ways up to check each other’s wounds.
“That ankle’s going to bruise,” he said as I poured water over the scratches on his shoulder and back.
“There’s a pass over there.” He pointed in the direction we’d been heading before the attack of the skeletons.
“The bones were a trick for misdirection. On the way back, we’ll have to take the pass.
Let’s not forget our new friends when we come back by. ”
“Forgetting won’t be a problem. Zombie skeletons.” I rubbed my forehead. “That’s another first.” He spit his water as he chuckled.
When we finally crested the top of the mountain, the wind had changed from icy cold to scorching hot in the distance of a footstep.
After being cold for so long, the heat was drowning.
It wasn’t a dry heat. It carried the moisture of the ocean, and walking through it was like walking through a sweltering fog.
At least it was downhill. Not that down was easier than up, but it made me feel like we were making good progress.
Halfway down the other side, we stopped to rest. While sitting on a ledge, I cast the spell to invoke Howard’s vision. I didn’t want to get dizzy and fall down the mountain while looking over the island through his eyes, so I leaned against the rock wall to steady myself.
There were a dozen or so small shanty-looking buildings standing in clusters off to the northwest. Wood, just as rotted and decayed as the rest of the trees on the island, made up the three-sided shacks, which faced away from us.
Strips of fabric from makeshift windows danced in the ungodly hot breeze.
Nothing else moved around them. The entire side of the island looked deserted. But then again, so had the last…
Just a short distance past the buildings stood the Castle Bran. From the hawk’s perspective, it didn’t look too large or sinister. I was willing to bet that from the ground, sinister wouldn’t even begin to describe it.