The Ossuary
title: "Chapter 6" wordCount: 3094
I threw myself sideways as the golden light seared across the space where I'd been standing.
The blood around my waist dragged at me, thick as honey, and I hit the stone floor hard enough to crack my elbow against the altar's base. The copper wire on my wrist bit into skin. Through the spots dancing in my vision, I saw her.
Not a woman. Not anymore.
The figure in the doorway stood seven feet tall, maybe eight, her form shifting between solid flesh and something that looked like molten gold poured into a human shape. Wings—actual wings, not metaphorical—spread from her shoulders, each feather a blade that caught the light and threw it back sharp enough to cut. Her face was beautiful the way a knife is beautiful. Perfect. Deadly. Utterly inhuman.
"Inanna." Asheron's voice was flat. He'd moved between me and the goddess without me seeing him do it.
"Asheron." She smiled, and I watched three people die in that smile—not here, not now, but somewhere in history, their deaths written in the curve of her lips. "Still playing guardian to mortals who will crumble to dust before you finish learning their names?"
"This one is different."
"They always are." Her gaze slid past him to me, and the weight of it pressed down like a physical thing. "Let me see her."
Asheron didn't move.
The goddess laughed, and the sound shattered two of the oil lamps. "You forget yourself. I made you what you are."
"You made me a weapon." He still hadn't reached for the knife at his side. "That does not mean I am yours to wield."
"Semantics." She waved one hand, and Asheron flew backward, his body slamming into the far wall hard enough to crack stone. He slid down, gasping, and didn't get up.
I tried to stand. The blood held me fast.
Inanna crossed the chamber in three steps that shouldn't have covered the distance. She crouched in front of me, close enough that I could see the symbols carved into her skin—the same symbols that covered the temple walls, moving across her flesh like living things.
"You have her eyes," she said. "Ishara's eyes. I would know them anywhere."
My throat was too dry. "Ishara was my—"
"Your ancestor. Yes." She reached out, and I flinched, but she only touched the blood pooling around me. It responded to her, rising up in tendrils that wrapped around her fingers like eager pets. "She came to me four thousand years ago, desperate and dying. Her city was burning. Her children were already dead. She had nothing left to offer except herself."
"The data suggests—" I stopped. Swallowed. "The covenant was supposed to protect her bloodline."
"It did." Inanna's smile was worse than her anger. "Every daughter born of her line has lived to see her children grown. Every son has died in battle with honor. Every generation has prospered." She leaned closer. "But protection has a price, sweet thing. Surely you know this."
That wasn't her phrase. That was—
"Severin." I looked past her to the doorway, where he stood watching with the expression of a man at a particularly entertaining play. "You brought her here."
"Guilty." He pressed one hand to his chest in mock contrition. "Though 'brought' is such a crude word. I simply... reminded her of an outstanding debt."
Asheron was on his feet again, blood running from his temple. "The covenant was fulfilled. Ishara's line has paid—"
"Has it?" Inanna stood, and the blood released me so suddenly I fell forward onto my hands. "Show me your wrist, child."
I didn't want to. Every instinct I had screamed at me to refuse, to run, to do anything except obey. But my hand was already moving, turning palm-up to expose the copper wire I'd worn for fifteen years.
The goddess touched it, and the wire burned white-hot. I screamed, trying to jerk away, but her grip was iron. The copper melted, running down my arm in molten rivulets, and where it touched my skin, it left marks. Symbols. The same ones that covered the temple walls, the altar, her own flesh.
"There," she said, releasing me. "Now we can speak truth."
I cradled my arm against my chest. The symbols were already fading, sinking into my skin like ink into paper. They didn't hurt anymore. That was somehow worse.
"What did you do?"
"Removed the veil." She turned to Severin. "You were right. The bloodline has been hiding from me."
"I am always right, darling." He stepped into the chamber, and I noticed for the first time that he was limping. Something had hurt him. Recently. "The question is whether our dear Mira will be reasonable about her obligations."
"I don't have any obligations to you."
"Not to me, no." He gestured at Inanna. "But to her? That's a different matter entirely."
The goddess was studying me the way I'd studied pottery shards—looking for the cracks, the weak points, the places where pressure would make the whole thing shatter. "Your grandmother came here three times."
My chest tightened. "I know."
"The first time, she wanted to understand the covenant. I showed her." Inanna's voice was almost gentle. Almost. "The second time, she wanted to break it. I refused."
"And the third time?"
"She wanted to die." The goddess tilted her head. "I granted that request."
The chamber spun. I dug my nails into my palms, using the pain to anchor myself. "You killed her."
"I gave her what she asked for." Inanna crouched again, bringing us eye to eye. "She was tired, child. Tired of carrying the weight of the covenant. Tired of knowing that every happiness in her life was purchased with blood. Tired of waiting for the debt to come due."
"What debt?" The words came out raw. "She didn't make the covenant. Ishara did. Four thousand years ago."
"And yet the debt remains." The goddess touched my cheek, and I felt the symbols on my arm burn cold. "Because Ishara promised me something she could not deliver in her lifetime. She promised me a daughter who would serve as my priestess. A daughter who would open the gates between worlds and let me walk freely in the mortal realm again."
"Let's table that." I jerked away from her touch. "I'm not opening any gates."
"You already have." Severin's voice came from behind me, and I twisted to see him standing at the altar, one hand resting on the blood-soaked stone. "The moment you entered this temple. The moment you touched the covenant. The moment you let your blood fall on sacred ground."
Asheron moved, fast enough that I barely tracked it, and suddenly he was between Severin and the altar. "Step away."
"Or what?" Severin smiled. "You'll kill me? We both know you can't. Not here. Not on consecrated ground."
"Test me."
"Boys." Inanna's voice cracked like a whip. "Play your dominance games later. We have work to do."
"I'm not doing anything for you," I said. My voice shook, but I got the words out. "I don't care what Ishara promised. I don't care about the covenant. I'm not—"
The goddess moved faster than thought, and suddenly her hand was around my throat, lifting me off the ground. My feet kicked uselessly at air. Black spots crowded my vision.
"You will care," she said, "because if you do not open the gate, I will kill everyone you have ever loved. Your colleagues at the university. Your students. The barista who makes your coffee every morning and always spells your name wrong." She leaned closer, and her breath smelled like burning temples and old blood. "I will make them beg for death, and I will make you watch, and when there is no one left, I will let you live with the knowledge that you could have saved them."
She dropped me.
I hit the ground gasping, my throat on fire. Asheron was there immediately, his hands on my shoulders, but I shoved him away. I didn't want comfort. I wanted—
What? What did I want?
"There is another option," Severin said. He was still at the altar, still smiling that horrible smile. "The covenant has a loophole. It always does. These ancient agreements are like contracts—full of fine print and escape clauses."
"What loophole?" My voice came out as a rasp.
"The original covenant is below, in the heart of the temple. You saw it in the vision, didn't you?" He didn't wait for me to answer. "If you can reach it, if you can read the true terms written in Ishara's own blood, you might find a way to fulfill the debt without opening the gate."
"Might."
"Nothing is certain, darling. That's what makes it interesting."
Inanna was watching me with those terrible, ancient eyes. "He speaks truth. The original covenant contains terms I cannot break, even as a goddess. If you can reach it, if you can understand it, you may find your freedom."
"But?" There was always a but.
"But the path to the heart of the temple is guarded. By things older than me. Things that were here before the first humans learned to speak." She smiled. "Things that are very, very hungry."
Asheron pulled me aside while Inanna and Severin argued about something in a language I didn't recognize. His hands were still on my shoulders, and I could feel them shaking.
"You cannot trust them," he said. "Either of them."
"I know."
"Then why—"
"Because what choice do I have?" I met his eyes. "She'll kill everyone I know. You heard her."
"She is bluffing."
"Is she?" I touched my throat, where bruises were already forming. "You've known her longer than I've been alive. Actually, longer than my entire bloodline has existed. Is she bluffing?"
He looked away. That was answer enough.
"The heart of the temple," I said. "You know where it is."
"Yes."
"Can you get me there?"
"Mira." He said my name like a prayer, like a curse. "What waits below is not meant for mortals. The guardians will tear you apart."
"Then I'll be torn apart." I pulled away from him, wrapping my arms around myself. The symbols on my wrist were still visible, faint silver lines against my skin. "But at least I'll have tried. At least I'll have—"
"Died pointlessly?" His voice was sharp. "Thrown your life away on a chance?"
"Yes." I turned back to him. "Because the alternative is letting her use me to hurt people who have nothing to do with this. People who don't even know I exist. And I can't—" My throat closed up. "...anyway."
He stared at me for a long moment. Then, slowly, he reached up and unfastened something from around his neck. A pendant, small and dark, carved from stone that looked like it had been pulled from the deepest part of the earth.
"This will protect you," he said, pressing it into my hand. "Once. When you are in the most danger, it will shield you. But only once."
The stone was warm against my palm. "Why are you giving me this?"
"Because I cannot go with you." He said it quietly, like an apology. "The guardians below know me. They will not let me pass. But you—you carry Ishara's blood. They may allow it."
"May."
"Nothing is certain." He almost smiled. "That is what makes it interesting."
I closed my fingers around the pendant. "If I don't come back—"
"You will."
"But if I don't—"
"Then I will burn this temple to the ground and salt the earth where it stood." He said it like a promise, like a threat, like the simple truth. "This I swear by my blood."
I wanted to say something. Thank you, maybe, or I'm sorry, or any of the thousand things that were crowding up my throat. But Inanna was calling my name, and Severin was gesturing toward a section of floor that had opened up while we weren't looking, revealing stairs that descended into darkness so complete it looked solid.
"Time to go, darling," Severin said. "The guardians are waiting, and they do so hate to be kept in suspense."
I walked to the edge of the stairs. The darkness below was absolute. No light penetrated it. No sound emerged from it. It was like looking into the void itself.
"One more thing," Inanna said. She was suddenly beside me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating from her skin. "The covenant was written in blood. To read it, to truly understand it, you will need to offer blood of your own."
"How much?"
"Enough to prove your commitment." She smiled. "Enough to hurt."
I looked at Asheron. He was watching me with an expression I couldn't read, something between fear and pride and a grief so old it had worn smooth.
Then I looked down at the darkness.
Then I stepped onto the first stair.
The darkness swallowed me immediately, complete and total, and I heard Asheron shout my name but the sound was already fading, already distant, already gone. The stairs were steep and slick, and I had to feel my way down with my hands against the walls, the stone cold and damp under my fingers.
Something moved in the darkness ahead of me.
Something big.
I clutched the pendant Asheron had given me and kept walking, counting steps to keep myself calm. Twenty. Thirty. Fifty. The air was getting thicker, harder to breathe, and it smelled like old blood and older stone and something else, something that made my hindbrain scream at me to run.
A hundred steps.
Two hundred.
The darkness ahead of me shifted, and I heard breathing. Not human breathing. Something with too many lungs, or lungs that were too large, or lungs that worked in ways lungs shouldn't work.
"Hello?" My voice was barely a whisper.
The breathing stopped.
Then, from the darkness, a voice that sounded like grinding stone: "Daughter of Ishara. We have been waiting for you."
I opened my mouth to respond, but before I could, something wrapped around my ankle—something cold and wet and strong—and yanked me forward into the dark.
I fell, tumbling down stairs I couldn't see, my hands scrabbling for purchase on stone that was suddenly slick with something that wasn't water. The pendant flew from my grip, and I heard it clatter away into the darkness, and then I was sliding, falling, dropping into a space that felt vast and empty and full of things that were watching me with eyes I couldn't see.
I hit bottom hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
For a moment, I just lay there, gasping, trying to remember how to breathe. Then light bloomed around me—not warm light, not golden light, but the cold blue-white light of deep-sea creatures, bioluminescence that revealed more than I wanted to see.
I was in a chamber. Vast. Circular. The walls were covered in the same symbols that marked the temple above, but here they were carved deep, filled with something that looked like mercury, flowing and shifting in patterns that hurt to follow.
And in the center of the chamber, on an altar made of black stone that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it, was a book.
Not a clay tablet. Not a scroll. A book, bound in leather that I really, really hoped wasn't human skin, its pages visible between the covers, each one covered in writing that glowed faint red in the darkness.
The original covenant.
I started toward it, but the thing that had grabbed my ankle tightened its grip, and I looked down to see—
Not a tentacle. Not exactly. Something that looked like a root, or a vein, or a combination of both, pulsing with that same cold light. It was attached to something in the shadows at the edge of the chamber, something I couldn't quite see but could feel watching me.
"To read the covenant," the grinding-stone voice said, "you must first prove yourself worthy."
"How?" I tried to pull my leg free. The root-vein-thing tightened further.
"Blood," the voice said. "The covenant was written in blood. It can only be read in blood. Your blood."
I looked at the altar. At the book. At the symbols on my wrist that Inanna had burned into my skin.
"How much blood?"
"Enough to fill the channels." The light pulsed, and I saw them—grooves carved into the floor, leading from where I stood to the altar, a path written in stone. "Enough to prove your line. Enough to—"
The voice cut off.
The light flickered.
And from somewhere above, from the temple, from the world I'd left behind, I heard Asheron scream.
Not a shout. Not a cry of anger or pain.
A scream of absolute terror.
The root-vein released my ankle, and the grinding-stone voice said, "Something is wrong. Something has entered the temple that should not be there. Something that even we—"
The chamber shook.
The symbols on the walls flared bright enough to sear my retinas.
And the book on the altar opened by itself, its pages flipping rapidly, frantically, until they stopped on a page near the end, and I saw words written in script I shouldn't have been able to read but somehow could, words that made my blood run cold:
When the goddess walks free and the guardian falls, the covenant will consume the marked daughter, and the gate will open, and the world will burn.
The chamber shook again, harder this time, and cracks appeared in the walls, in the floor, in the altar itself.
I ran for the stairs, but they were gone, collapsed into rubble, and the only way out was up, through solid stone, through impossible distance, through—
The book.
I turned back to it, and the pages were still flipping, faster now, and I saw glimpses of other words, other clauses, other terms written in blood and sealed with power, and one phrase kept repeating, over and over:
The daughter must choose.
Above me, Asheron screamed again, and this time I heard Inanna's laughter underneath it, and Severin's voice saying something I couldn't make out, and the grinding-stone voice was saying "Run, daughter of Ishara, run, before—"
The altar exploded.
Not into pieces. Into light. Pure, searing, absolute light that burned away the darkness and the symbols and the cold blue glow, and in the center of that light, rising from the pages of the covenant itself, was—