The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) (3 page)

Lara stared at Riley. She could see it on his face: He had been asking himself that very same question since he’d heard the message.

“Was that Mercer?” Lara asked him.

Riley shook his head. “No. It’s Rhett.”


Gone with the Wind
Rhett?” Carly asked.

“You told me about him before,” Lara said. “Rhett. He was one of Mercer’s original Four Horsemen. Along with you, Erin, and another guy.”

“Benford.”

“Right. Benford. So what’s it mean that it’s Rhett and not Mercer telling your people in Texas to stand down?”

“It could be any number of things…”

“Are any of them good for us?” Carly asked. “That’s all I care about right now.”

“I don’t know. It would almost entirely depend on what happened to Mercer.”

“What makes you think anything happened to him?” Lara asked.

“Because the only way Rhett would be in any position to order a stop to the war effort is over Mercer’s dead body. I didn’t risk everything to mutiny because the man was stable, Lara. Like all fanatics, he’s committed to the war to the very bitter end. Rhett, on the other hand…”

“Keo,” Lara said.

Riley nodded. “It’s a possibility. It was a long shot, and I didn’t want to invest too much energy in it, but if he’s either killed Mercer or he’s incapacitated him to the point where Rhett was able to take over… That opens up opportunities that didn’t exist before.”

“Keo,” Carly said, breaking out into a big grin. “Good ol’ Keo, always causing trouble. I love that guy.”

“You asked me before what I would do if Keo succeeded,” Riley said, looking across the room at Lara. “I told you I never really thought about it, that getting the hell away from Mercer was always my primary goal. I wasn’t lying. I really hadn’t thought that far ahead, because I didn’t think it would ever happen.”

“And now?” Lara said.

“If Keo somehow actually did it, maybe we don’t have to flee to the Bengal Islands after all. Maybe the answer isn’t out there, but back home.”

“Where is home?” Carly asked.

“Black Tide Island,” Riley said.

2
Will

H
e could hear
them talking through the thick chest that kept the sunlight at bay. They were keeping their voices low enough that if not for his heightened senses, he wouldn’t have been able to distinguish their words from the loud roar of the engine that tried to drown out everything. The walls of the chest vibrated constantly around him and had been since they carried him onto the boat. The cramped space was a nonfactor because he had no uses for comfort anymore.

He was awake, in the daylight. The reality of sunlight inches
from his exposed skin, already so weak after his encounter with the blue eyes in Gallant, had been overwhelming at first. He couldn’t really call it fear because he was beyond that; he remembered what fear was, but to actually
feel
it again was something else entirely.

He could hear them just fine, just as he could hear and feel the
sloshing
of the waves underneath the moving boat and taste the bitterness of the ocean on his tongue. He’d traversed it once before on a much smaller craft, but he would never become used to it. It made him uneasy being this close to something that could end him with so little effort, especially with so many things left to do.

Mabry.

He was there, waiting.

And vulnerable, so vulnerable.

“But you have to be
absolutely sure
,” he heard Lara say now.

“It’s him, Lara,” Danny said. “I made sure of it. He knows things only Willie boy would know.”

How many times had he played this scenario over in his mind, during all the nights and days since his transformation? Too many, and each time the outcome was always different…and always the same.

You’re not a man anymore. Don’t fool yourself.

But he wasn’t fooling himself. He didn’t come here in a delusional attempt to regain his humanity. The only thing left now was action, to strike back at the enemy. To save them. Everyone.

But mostly her…

The grind of the door closing, then Danny, his voice clear as day even through the thick metal: “It’s a lot to take in. It took me a few days to just open the figurative door into the possibility of accepting it was even him, and I never slept with the guy—long, lonely nights in foxholes in the Stan notwithstanding.”

“When did you know for sure?” Lara asked.

“Not until Gallant, but I had my suspicions before then…”

He let their conversation drift into the background in order to focus on healing.

He was weak. Much, much too weak to do anything for them right now. If they wanted to, they could come in here and kill him. A bullet to the head. That was all it would take. It was ironic that for all the benefits of being turned, he didn’t have the near-invulnerability of the black eyes. But he didn’t have all of their weaknesses, either.

He had reclaimed a lot of what made him
him
, but he would never be whole again. There were moments when the simplest things still eluded him—like the name of a book he used to love reading as a child, his favorite movie, a joke that Danny liked to tell even though it had gotten old a long time ago…

Concentrate. He needed to concentrate on healing.

Even with his pain receptors turned off, he could still tell how bad the injuries were. The muscles were torn and bruised and ripped, the tendons and sinews stretched beyond their abilities. There was no pain, but their current fragile state weighed heavily on his mind. Ironically, all the broken bones made lying inside the chest, crumpled up like a marionette with its strings cut, simpler.

Irony? Or was that tragedy?

Not that it mattered, but it would come to him eventually.

It always did…

* * *


W
here are you
?”

He woke up to soothing darkness, the blue glow from his eyes the only thing keeping the narrow universe around him from being completely pitch black.

“You’re running again.”

The voice echoed inside his head, reaching out to him from the vastness of their connection with a calming hand. He had to resist the instinct to grab it, to beg for forgiveness, to give in and slip back into the hive like a good little boy.

“I know what you’re planning.”

No, that was a lie. A trick. The enemy didn’t know his plans.

“It won’t work.”

Are you sure about that?
he wanted to ask, wanted to pull down his mental defenses—they were stronger now, with the extra day’s rest—and reveal his defiance. But he didn’t. Not yet. Not until the time was right.

“You can still come home.”

More lies. There was no home for him. There had never been. Not with
them.

His home was with her. Lara. It had always been. Even if she turned him away…

Would she?

Maybe. Maybe…

“They’ll never accept you. But I will. What you are now, what she made you, this is the new world. Why won’t you accept it?”

Lies. The blue eyes had tried to kill him in Gallant. They had lured him there, with Danny and Gaby (and the boy, what was his name again?) as bait. They hadn’t brought him there to be embraced as one of them. No, they had meant to destroy him. He still remembered their conversation, crowing about how pleased
he
would be.

“Now you’re going to die.”

“Again.”

“But this time…”

“…for good.”

“And he’ll be pleased…”

“…that we finally ended you.”

“…so pleased...”

He closed his eyes and let the movement of the vessel calm him. He resumed healing even as the voice continued. He couldn’t have silenced it if he wanted to, because the voice prowled the river of thoughts that flowed through the consciousness of the brood that they were all a part of. It was an intimate connection, only possible because they came
(were born)
from the same blood. His life force flowed through their veins. Through his at this very second. They were as much a part of him as he was of them, and it would always be so.

Always…

“Come home. This is where you belong. This is where you’ve always belonged. In another year, in ten years—a century—you won’t remember the old world. The old you. This is the way of things now. The new order. It’s fate.”

I don’t believe in fate
,
he wanted to answer.

“It’s destiny.”

I don’t believe in destiny, either
,
he wanted to shout.

But he kept quiet, because it was a trick. Once he reacted to the voice, he wouldn’t be able to stay hidden from it, and then all would be lost.

“It’s her, isn’t it? You still long for her. Even now, after everything that’s happened. You hold onto the delusion you can be together again.”

No. He hadn’t come here for that. He hadn’t…
right?

“Lara can be yours, and all you have to do is come back.”

Lies. More lies.

“Years, decades, generations from now. You’ll always be together, just the way you want it. You won’t have to worry about disease, or age, or death.”

Ignore his lies. It was all a trick.

“All you have to do is make the choice, and you’ll be reunited again. Just make the choice to come home.”

The choice…

“She’ll thank you for stripping away the pain. No more running, no more suffering. And you’ll be together again. Reunited. Isn’t that what you want? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted?”

Yes
,
he thought,
Yes…

* * *


A
priest
, a rabbit, and a horse walk into a bar…”

Medical ointment passed through the chest’s walls, and though Danny wasn’t talking very loudly, he had no trouble hearing him. He almost smiled, and maybe he did, but simple tasks like that were harder to accomplish these days.

“Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…”

He didn’t stop him, even though he had heard it many times before. The exact number escaped him, but that was nothing new. Information he didn’t need to survive was buried deep down in his mental recesses. Maybe one of these days he would release the box and let them all out, or maybe he would fling the lid open only to discover there was nothing left, that they had all dissolved away.

One day, he hoped to find out.

But that day wasn’t here yet.

“Ah, never mind. It’s just not the same when you can’t see the absolute joy in the other person’s face as I present the joke to end all jokes,” Danny was saying. “I’d open the lid, but I’m thinking you would have done it yourself if you wanted to. Surely those little strips of duct tape aren’t holding you back, are they?”

No, they weren’t.

“And that door… I bet you could breathe on it and bust it down, huh?”

It wasn’t that easy, but Danny wasn’t wrong. He could take it down with little effort.

“I would offer you something to eat, but I’m not sure if you even eat anymore. Or is it just a liquid diet these days? Food through a straw?”

This time he was sure he must have smiled. Maybe.

“She’ll be down here to talk to you soon. I don’t know when, so don’t ask. She just needs time. Can’t say as I blame her. The first time you dropped in on me… Well, you’re not exactly your old self anymore, are you?”

No, he wasn’t. He wasn’t sure how much of his “old self” was even still left after the transformation. He had done things that he wouldn’t have before, things that would have turned his stomach back when he was…still human.

“Something’s come up, too. Our mutual buddy Mercer? He’s either dead or dead-ish. Or, at least, that’s the going theory.”

Mercer
. The name hung like a sword over the hive and made the blue eyes frantic. Mercer was the human who had brought death and destruction to the food supply, and in doing so, introduced doubt about the future. Just a sliver, but it was there.

“The food!”
the ghouls shouted day and night.
“Save the food!”

“I’m of two minds on the guy myself,” Danny was saying. “While on the one hand he’s a murdering sociopath, but we might not have made it out of Gallant without that little Hog of his showing up. So there’s that.”

Mercer’s warplane had saved them, though not on purpose. He was sure of it. It had come there to burn the town down, wasting its armament in what amounted to a revenge attack. Even if there were ten of them—or a hundred—it wouldn’t have mattered. The ghouls were endless, and there was only one way to defeat them…

“You said we were going to need a hell of a lot of luck to make this plan of yours work. Maybe this little revelation can help with that. What do you think?”

Yes. Yes, it could. He hadn’t considered it because it wasn’t something he had any control over, but if Mercer was gone, if there was an army out there…

“The more the merrier, right?”

Yes. The more the merrier. The more, the better the chances of success. He was ready to do with less, but if there was a choice...

His mind churned, processing the new information.

“Anyways, thought you’d want to know. Maybe you can do something with it.” A slight grunt and tired knee joints popped as Danny stood up. “I hate to chat and run, but the redhead’s expecting me topside. Nice talking to ya as usual, buddy. I don’t suppose I should call you Will anymore, huh? You got a new name you prefer?”

Frank. Someone had once called him Frank.

Who was it? It hadn’t been that long ago since he saw him, but the man’s face was starting to fade from his memory, pushed into the background to make room for the here and now.

“Sit tight; I’ll be back when I can.”

Footsteps, then a door opening and closing. The scent of two additional people outside, mingling with the oil and grease from the machines. A man and woman.

Silence again, except for the
sloshing
of the ocean under him, the roar of the engines. Footsteps moving around above him, men and women and children talking, laughing. He listened for Lara, but she wasn’t among them.

“What’d he say?” a voice asked in the hallway. Young, but familiar.

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