So she did not glance at Bullet. Right now she would witness for Ninka so when the darkness fell again she could remember how the smallest of them all suffered the most.
Julio kicked her again, over and over and as the blue completely consumed the pink of the morning, he turned to Minton who simply nodded. Julio grabbed Ninka’s head, her frail body dangling like a wilted vine.
Bone met Ninka’s eyes then and in them she saw peace. A breath, a turn, a hawk’s wicked scream, and it was done. Ninka’s body fell but so did Julio’s. A single, smoking hole, dead-center of his forehead. His death had been too quick, painless. That made Bone sad. He deserved torture and agony, his body writhing in the fires of their hatred.
She watched as his limbs twitched but Ninka’s never moved. She heard the black-eyed man murmuring to Bullet, praising her and then demanding she untie them all and get back to camp.
Bullet did as she was told, untying them all. Bone fell to the ground, her legs unable to bear her weight. It took a few minutes to push her own pain aside but she made it to her feet slowly, drawing in air and feeling her strength return with every breath. She joined her sisters and they pulled Julio’s body to the edge of the clearing for the buzzards to feast on.
Bone gazed up at the bird of prey who still held a winged vigil in the sky above them—a portent maybe of more evil to come.
Slowly, Bone sat down beside Ninka’s body wondering if the tiny girl’s soul had already fled or if she’d remained to watch them all gathering around her. “She’s dead. Why wouldn’t she shut up?” she asked.
Her question had been directed at the God who abandoned her but it was Arrow who answered. “She was breaking.”
“We can’t break,” Bullet said and wiped tears from her cheek.
Bone wished for the desire to cry. Where were her tears now?
“She was a stupid girl and we are already broken,” she responded. Her body was tired, her skin raw and her heart bleeding.
She hated them all in that moment—the black-eyed man, Minton, Julio, Ninka. Hated them with a violent ferocity because they’d each taken something from her she knew she’d never get back.
She was only six and she knew what it was to yearn for revenge.
Blade bent over Ninka’s head, lifted it and placed it in her lap. “We can bend. Like the steel that is used to make my long blades, we can bend,” she whispered.
Bone considered Blade’s words—took them in and processed them but quickly came to the conclusion that bending was nothing more than the beginning of a break. She would never bend. Ever.
“We have to hide her so nothing can hurt her anymore,” Arrow said as she stroked Ninka’s long, mud-stained yellow hair.
They could hide her. It was a way for them to protect her since God had failed in his duty. “Then we’ll have to say a death prayer, but the God of my fathers doesn’t listen to my prayers anymore, so someone else will have to,” Bone replied.
Her bleeding heart stopped for single beat. When it began again she acknowledged He wasn’t there. She would struggle in the land of death for eternity because He had abandoned her. Beloved hate replaced her rage and in it was a coolness she welcomed.
Better to kill with the ice of hate than with the fires of rage. She fisted her hands, really looking at them, seeing the broken nails and short digits and she knew she’d kill many before she revisited this place where Ninka had left them.
She raised her head and stared at her sisters. Bullet rubbed her chest, Blade stroked Bullet’s hair, and Arrow stroked Ninka’s. Bullet grabbed Ninka’s hands, flattening them between her own, praying.
Bone wanted to shout at her He wasn’t listening but decided against it. The black-eyed man would return soon. The warning was on the wind. They needed to get back to camp.
Arrow whispered in her native Japanese and chills danced across Bone’s skin. Bone stared at the ground but her hand was on Ninka’s arm, squeezing and letting go, squeezing and letting go.
They were all there but Ninka was gone from them. Five had become four. Bone finally looked at Ninka so she could remember.
Bullet leaned over the girl’s head which still rested on Blade’s lap, placed a kiss on her brow and whispered, “I’ll kill them Ninka. I’ll kill them all.”
Arrow leaned over and whispered something in her native tongue and then it was Bone’s turn. Righteousness poured through her, floating on a wind she imagined came from the plains of Jericho.
“Baruch dayan emet, aval n’kamah hayah mokesh,” Bone whispered. “Shalom, achot.”
A single tear dropped onto Ninka’s pale cheek. Bone wiped it off, smudging dirt and blood on her sister’s pale cheeks. She stood then, raised her arms to the wind and silently promised that no matter what happened she would live to kill.
She would lust for death and hate would hold her hand but she would survive it all for the ones who remained—her sisters. And in the end they would stand over the black-eyed man and watch the life drain from his eyes.
Chapter One