Empire of Bones by N. D. Wilson Read Free Book Online Page B

myths and legends and storybooks are now erupting. We and the world will see the beginning of such …  magical times. And, please God and all His angels, may we see them end.”
    Cyrus shifted on his leg, watching Rupert’s eyes lose their focus and wander somewhere distant. Then Cyrus coughed.
    “I’m sorry,” Rupert said. “I shouldn’t make this your burden.”
    “Why?” Cyrus asked. “Because I had some pellets in my leg? Because I whined about it? I promise I’m done. Next time I’m shot, I won’t even mention it.”
    Rupert smiled, but his eyes were still heavy.
    “Seriously,” Cyrus said. “I’ll just think about human sacrifice and bite my lip. And I always want to knowwhat’s going on, no matter how bad it is. I started all this—”
    “No,” Rupert said. “Cyrus—”
    “Fine. I was part of starting all this,” Cyrus continued. “It’s kinda my burden already, Rupe. William Skelton made it my burden when he tossed me his stupid key ring and the Dragon’s Tooth with it.” Cyrus reached up and felt the keys and the empty silver sheath hanging from Patricia’s cool body. “So just tell me what we’re doing next. Another two months of hopping around and meeting with scared people? Hunting Phoenix? Hunting the Ordo Draconis ? Even if it’s all math with numbers and cartography, I’m in.”
    Rupert laughed. “You don’t even realize how much you’re like your dad. Just go jump in the lake. Get clean and move around on that leg. I have to skewer that Flint character and then listen to the ramblings of a Mohawked Irishman.” He grinned. “We’ll talk more after. I promise, you’ll hear all the news.”
    Rupert gripped Cyrus’s shoulder and then smacked him lightly on the back of the head before he turned for the door. Cyrus watched his Keeper go, and an old spring banged the door shut behind him. Whatever news had come in, it wasn’t good. Rupert could always be a storm cloud, but he didn’t worry easily.
    Cyrus exhaled and did what he’d promised. He bit his lip and thought about the stories Nolan had told aboutRadu Bey and the Dracul family, stories Antigone had refused to listen to, stories about kids his age being carried into sacred groves and stretched over mossy stone altars, about forests of stakes sharpened to hold bodies, about whole buildings made of bodies. Then he tried not to limp as he walked to the door.
    Cyrus limped less as he moved over pine needles and roots and bare earth beneath the huge cedar trees. He passed two quiet cabins and a leaning outhouse and then made his way slowly toward the lake. Old Llewellyn Douglas was down by the water, seated in his wheelchair on a tiny battered dock, with a big wool blanket and a rifle across his lap. He was wearing a green stocking cap with a pom-pom on top, and a red flannel shirt under a puffy down vest that had once been cream with bright stripes across the chest but now featured a number of large coffee stains.
    One of the Boones’s amphibious jets was floating just thirty yards offshore.
    Cyrus shuffled out onto the dock, barefoot and shirtless, and stood beside the old man in the wheelchair, squinting into the sun. The air was warm and dry, like California, and he filled his lungs with it. Even if he hadn’t been the one flying the plane last night, the taste of the air was all he needed to tell him that he was in the west. Above the dark lake and its fir-covered mountain walls, the sky was low and large. A migrating herdof cumulus clouds seemed to barely clear the jutting trees as they slid east, and the loud blue all around them was close enough to taste. Cyrus loved being among old trees, breathing their breath, rich with age, and giving his own breath back. This air was mixed with the taste of running water from the mountain stream rippling the lake not far from the dock, and damp earth, and even in the sun, it had the small sharp teeth of air that has flown high and grown thin, air that has seen the poles