Page 46 of Birthright

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.

The compound was oblong and wrapped around the single tower that jetted skyward at the back of the walled courtyard. The keep was attached to the tower and the open yard was cluttered. The big gate was down at the front center of the wall and the drawbridge lay open over a dry, empty moat. Maybe they were expecting us. Who could tell?

I couldn’t control where Howard flew, so my view remained well above the island.

He didn’t seem to want to come too close to the ground. I didn’t blame him.

In between the base of the mountain and the shacks was a whole lot of nothing.

Sand, random boulders, and waves of heat rippling up from the ground.

“Where are all the Slaugh during the day?” I asked as I slipped getting up from the ledge.