Lunging across the desk, Daniel clamped his hands around the man’s thin throat. They crashed backward in the desk chair and rolled onto the floor.
Daniel sat up and put his knee into the man’s chest. “Where is she?” He clenched his teeth and squeezed.
Four large hands grabbed his shoulders from behind, picked him up, and threw him against the wall.
Gasping, Daniel slid to the floor.
The two men were identical — tall, lean for their strength, eyes bloody gold, features sharp, skin more green than tan. A row of skin slits fluttered on both sides of their necks. They helped Dr. Phoenix to his feet and stood behind him as he stepped toward Daniel.
Daniel coughed, swallowed blood, and tried to stand.
“Daniel Smith,” said Phoenix, rubbing his throat. His eyes were sparking, and clumps of his black hair had fallen forward. He brushed them back. “These, Daniel, are my firstborn. Twins — my Romulus and Remus. They have a human mother, a wolf mother, a mother from among the great orange apes, and a mother devouring tuna in the sea. I am their father, and in them I am well pleased. You could have been their brother.”
He extended his thin arms out from his sides. Behind him, the two gilled men stepped forward and began removing his coat.
Phoenix pulled his arms free of the stained sleeves and crouched in front of Daniel. His black hair began to lighten to white. His pale eyes muddied. His teeth lengthened, and a growl rumbled in his throat. “Now you must meet Mr. Ashes.”
Rocking forward, Daniel slammed his fist into the man’s face.
sixteen. CONFESSION
CYRUS SHRUGGED HIS blankets farther up around his shoulders. He had been awake for a while, but the blankets were warm, the stone bed was cushioned perfectly to his shape, and the night had been long, too much of it spent in the hospital wing watching Nolan writhe. But Horace was doing better — the nurses thought he might even wake soon. And Gunner had been there, watching his uncle breathe and gloating over Maxi’s death.
Cyrus’s sleep had been full of dreams, full of his fist swinging and bones crunching and Patricia swallowing people whole. But all dreams led to the one dream, and eventually, he’d ended up back in the kitchen of the California house. But this time, he’d been holding the tooth in one hand and the keys in the other. This time, he’d walked all the way outside into the rain, and his memory-vision had been clear.
He’d seen the man in the truck.
There was no way to tell what time it was without rolling over and checking the stilted clock. For the past hour, rolling over had seemed like way too much effort. It still did. His mind was too busy chewing.
Antigone’s breathing was steady — slow, out of sync with the ticking clock. She sniffed. No. The sniff was wrong. A throat cleared.
Cyrus whipped over and sat up. Antigone was sleeping, virtually invisible in her nest of blankets. Seated one alcove over, Rupert Greeves was reading a book. At least, he had been reading. Now his eyes were on Cyrus. His forehead and jaw were bandaged. So was his left hand.
“What are you doing here?” Cyrus asked.
Rupert smiled. “Waiting for you to wake up. You earned your sleep yesterday.” He raised his eyebrows, scrunching the bandage above them. “And down here, I do not have so many Keepers demanding access to a certain shard of tooth for their research or the monks asserting ownership and demanding that I immediately execute all the occupants of the Burials. Even some of the Sages have heard the news and wandered out from their rooms. Where is it?”
Cyrus slid Patricia off his neck and held up her silver body. The keys clinked against the tooth as she slowly squirmed, rubbing against Cyrus’s skin. Cyrus had liked her already. He could have spent an entire day just watching her move. But after yesterday, he loved her.
Rupert nodded. “Good. Put it back on.”
“Her,” Cyrus said. “She’s named Patricia.” She went back around his neck. “Why did you let me keep the tooth?”
“Because that is something not one of my enemies would expect me to do. And because I felt that I should.”
Cyrus inhaled slowly, gathering courage. He looked straight into Rupert’s eyes.
“It was you,” he said quietly. “In the truck. The day our dad died. I remember your beard.”
Yawning, Antigone pushed back her blankets. She blinked, looked at Rupert, at Cyrus, and sat up. “What’s going on?”
Rupert Greeves set his book down and cleared his throat. Cyrus watched the man’s big hands clench, and his dark skin glistened with moisture. He tugged at what remained of his short, pointed beard and then scratched the nest of old scars high on his chest.
Cyrus shifted on his seat. Antigone glanced at her brother, eyebrows up, eyes wide.
Rupert sighed and ran his bandaged hand across his scalp. “Two years ago, I was contacted by Skelton. He was insulting, but he was also warning me. Phoenix was quite near to recovering the last remaining shard of the Dragon’s Tooth.” He looked up. “I should tell you what the tooth is.”
“We know,” said Cyrus. “We’ve heard the story.”
Greeves nodded. “Of course. Then you know that it was supposed to be destroyed — even the shards. Well-meaning fools did some horrible things with the Resurrection Stones.” He looked around the little room. “Skelton told me that Phoenix knew where the last shard was — in a place where your father and I had once searched for it. Skelton and others were being sent to collect it, but he wanted me to get there first. He did not want Phoenix to have it. The man was becoming too vile — even for Billy Bones.”
Rupert looked into Cyrus’s eyes, and then turned to Antigone. “There weren’t many people I could trust, and I was in a hurry. Your family had moved to Northern California, quite close to where I needed to be. I knew your father could help me, and I arrived at your house a few hours later — right before a storm. I saw you both then. Briefly. I did not know if you had seen me.”
Antigone sat up like she’d been shocked. “What? You said two years ago. Two years ago when?”
Cyrus couldn’t find words. Blinking, he could see his father smiling, the kitchen door closing, and the back of two heads as the truck bounced away.
Antigone tucked back her hair and stood up. “You were the one! How? You’re supposed to be dead. Were you in the boat? What were you doing? Dad called you Rupe, didn’t he? When Mom got home, she totally lost it. She put us in the Red Baron and we drove down onto the beach and just stared at the island until dark and, and …”
Rupert coughed.
Cyrus tried to breathe slowly. The itch in his memory was gone, but it felt much worse. He didn’t want Rupert to tell the story. He didn’t want to hear what had happened. He was falling again, he was tumbling toward something unknown but awful. He was going to hear something that could never, ever be changed.
His heart kicked hard against his ribs.
Antigone shoved her fingernails between her teeth to keep from talking.
“I was on the island—”
“Elephant Island,” she said. “With all the elephant seals. The sharks live around it. It’s illegal to go on it.”
“Yes.”
“With the ruined mansion,” she added. “And the smashed lighthouse and the tidal caves.”
“Tigs!” Cyrus yelped. He couldn’t have looked away from Rupert’s face if he’d wanted. He needed this over.
“All those things, yes,” Rupert said. “May I go on?”
Antigone nodded, chewing.
“We anchored the boat beneath a small cliff, and the sun was setting by the time we reached the ruined mansion. It was impossible to hear anything with the barking and bellowing seals, and they hated our flashlights. The animals were in every room of the house — upstairs and down — except the one Skelton had told us to search. That room was full of Phoenix’s men. Skelton was with them. They’d gotten there too soon, and we hadn’t seen their boat anchored in a tidal cave.