“You have your fists, Blade her knife’s edge, Bullet her rifle, and Arrow her bow. My weapon is my mind and he almost took that from me,” Nameless imparted.
“You did not break and that is good, but you are not as we are.” Bone shifted, sliding to her right preparing herself. The woman’s body had coiled, muscles tightening. Blade was correct—she wasn’t trained. Whatever she’d learned hadn’t been at Joseph’s hands. “And I am not your abyss.”
The woman remained in shadow though it mattered not to Bone. She had fought shadows her entire life.
“You are all a product of my abyss. It is the truth I don’t whether to destroy you all or seat you a table of royalty and worship you. Perhaps I owe each of you something different. But you, Bone, you I owe more than the others,” Nameless whispered.
She’s having a child, Arrow had whispered so long ago, the demons she carried inside her swirling and reaching for Bone even then.
More screams and then a plea from the girl to get whatever was inside of her out. Bone had reached for her, seeing the darker shadow of her body lying on a cot of some short, legs bent, body heaving.
Help her, Bone! It was if Blade was there and Bone actually looked around, seeing the cobwebs and the dirty walls of the present.
“You do remember,” Nameless said with a small laugh. “That’s good. I had hoped it haunted your every waking moment but you remembering here, where I can watch your face, is enough.”
Take it out of me! The girl labored. Bone checked her pulse, finding it weak and thready and knowing she didn’t have much time left. She had only known death but she remembered a time when her mother had dragged her to the heart of Jericho. A fellow Zionist was giving birth and Bone’s mother had been a midwife.
Bone had remembered her mother reaching between the girls legs and pulling a baby out.
Get it out, please!
Her screams were weaker and with Blade’s fear scenting the air, Bone had done what her mother had done. She’d reached between the girl’s legs and pulled.
She remembered the wet feel of a rounded head, so tiny and fragile and she remembered grasping that head and tugging. She remembered the snap of tiny bones and a feeling that she had done something wrong—that this was not how it was supposed to go.
Push, she had said to the girl softly after begging Blade to shut her up.
The girl had pushed and the child had fallen into Bone’s hands, unmoving. Its head flopped to the side and Bone’s heart had shattered. It isn’t breathing.
Her own words echoed through from the past to the present.
She had broken its neck with her clumsy attempts. She had taken an innocent life and it had ripped her soul in two.
“You killed the first one,” Nameless said, her body shifting sinuously as she prepared to strike. “I have always wondered if it was intentional.”
Bone could not answer her because it was a truth she did not know and it tortured her unlike anything Joseph or Minton had ever done. Had she? Had her rage and fear been so great that maybe in the grips of it she had succumbed to the only thing she’d ever known? Death bringer.
“After all, you were created and honed to kill,” Nameless finished bitterly.
She struck then and Bone took the fist to the side, right over the area where she’d been shot and she staggered back doubling over.
Nameless followed it with another kick to the abdomen and Bone absorbed the blow. The pain spread like poison through her veins, wracking and demanding she fight this woman who thought she could take Bone down.
Another kick and a shot to the side of Bone’s head and she spit out blood, stood tall and said, “Enough!”
“It could never be enough,” Nameless spit out.
Bone took her measure and spun to meet the next kick, catching the other woman’s leg and twisting until Nameless spun and fell to the ground. She was up almost immediately but Bone was ready.
“I allowed you those strikes because a part of me feels as I deserve them. But you will get no more,” Bone promised in a deadly voice.
“Where is the other boy?” Nameless asked.
Bone closed her eyes and simply listened. A shift of boot over dirt and gasp of pain. Fighting was ninety-nine percent awareness. The other one percent was training and motivation. Bone was at one hundred percent right now. “The boy is ours.”
“He. Is. Mine!”
Nameless attacked again but Bone met each thrust and parry with a sharp, definitive blow, rocking the other woman on her heels until she finally fell in the dirt and scrambled backward.
They were away from the entrance of the cabin now and the low light told Bone the truth of Nameless. She was a fine-looking woman—even with a cut above her eyes and a now-broken nose she was startling. Her face was a symmetry of classical perfection—well, maybe not so much now with the broken nose.