The Mortal Bone Read Free

tugging, pulling, struggling toward the crystal skull in my hand.
    The truck’s engine roared. I jumped back as the vehicle jolted forward, spitting dust in my face. The driver’s side door was still open, swinging wildly, but the possessed woman had pulled her leg inside and was twisting at the steering wheel, her aura flaring wild and dark. I dropped the skull inside the bag, and ran after her.
    Too slow, too late. The front bumper hit my knee as she accelerated past, but the boys deflected the impact. I tried to grab the door, but all I caught was air—and a glimpse of her determined, terrified expression.
    I stopped running and watched the truck tear down the driveway in a choking cloud of dust. Bewildered, feeling stupid. Would that possessed woman have been able to pull off the same escape a year ago? Was I that sloppy?
    Or am I getting too used to letting demons go?
    I hated both possibilities. Might as well stick one foot in the grave. I was losing my edge.
    That, or the edge had shifted sideways. Demonic possession didn’t mean the same thing anymore. It didn’t feel like the same threat I’d always thought it to be—not now, not after being exposed to far more immediate, and terrible, dangers.
    I had lived my life believing that I was supposed to kill demons— all demons.
    But the truth was worse.
    I was the very thing that needed to be feared most. My body, a prison for five of the most dangerous demons ever to exist.
    Reaper Kings. Devourers of worlds.
    And I was their Queen.

CHAPTER 2
    I was back on the porch, sipping that ginger ale, when Grant and Byron came home. I heard them coming before the dust started rising. My mother’s station wagon hadn’t been driven in close to fifteen years, and the engine had a complaint for every half mile—grumbling and coughing, spitting like it was some cranky old man. The wagon had been old before its retirement: one of those gas-guzzling tanks that whole families could camp inside on summer road trips into the mountains. Like a Disney movie, or something.
    My mother and I had lived in that car for years. Comfortable. Lots of windows. Always an interesting view.
    I felt strange every time I heard the engine. Too many memories. But that seemed to be what I needed right now, because I had Johnny Cash playing on the other side of the open window, his thunderous rumbling voce filling the warm air, and there was nothing like his music to inspire some deep contemplation of my mother and magic, demons, and murder.
    That, and what we were going to have for supper. I was hungry.
    I ambled down to meet the station wagon. Byron was behind the wheel, a nervous half smile on his face. He looked like a city kid with his floppy black hair, and the kind of pale skin you could only get from living in a place that never saw the sun. Like Seattle.
    He was skinny, strong, all his fingernails painted black. An earring dangled, shaped like a feather. He’d had it for three days, bought from a local at a farmer’s market, and I was pretty sure it was his favorite thing.
    Byron braked too hard, slamming him—and his passenger—against his seat belt. Dust flew. Creaks and pops filled the air, like settling bones. I bit back a smile, tapping the hot hood with my dark fingernails, and made my way around the bumper to the other side of the station wagon where Grant leaned out the window like he was thinking of crawling free.
    “Save me,” he mouthed. I laughed out loud, and he reached out to hook his fingers inside the waist of my jeans, pulling me close until he could kiss the part of me that was closest to eye level—which just happened to be my hip. Heat spread through me, along with tenderness so big, I didn’t know why my heart wasn’t beating outside my body, maybe in the same spot where his mouth pressed against me.
    “Welcome back, Mr. Cooperon,” I murmured, running my fingers through his thick brown hair. I felt, inside me, a tug—right below my heart—and inside my