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Flint and I pull him back down. “That’s still hours away. Sleep until then.”
Sharpe stares upward, his star-filled eyes unblinking. “Does anyone else see the ceiling pulsing?”
We all look up at the perfectly still ceiling.
“That’s probably the wards you’re seeing,” Flint says. “They’re just there to keep us safe.”
Sharpe bolts upright again, shouting, “Bingo!”
“Perhaps he would be more comfortable sleeping in the bathtub,” Darius suggests. “It would allow the rest of us to rest.”
“No moresty’ra hy’nfor you.” Flint pulls Sharpe back down and drapes an arm over him for good measure. “Just close your eyes.”
Sharpe squeezes his eyes shut. “The madman was right, you know. When one fell, another rose. The Bone Men. We couldn’t stop it from happening, but we prevented it from reaching Clearhelm. Someone should tell Phillip that I won bingo.”
I stroke his hair. “Those weren’t real prophecies, remember? And there weren’t enough to make a bingo.”
“Oh, yeah, there was another.” His breathing slows as he drifts off, mumbling, “They ride with death, and the world burns.”
Disquiet fills me, and I meet Flint’s eyes.
After a moment, he shakes his head. “They’re not real prophecies.”
“Right,” I agree, and burrow deeper beneath the blanket, taking comfort from the warmth of the men beside me. “They weren’t real.”
The light shuts off, and Sharpe’s gentle snores fill the darkness.
We had survived another deadly battle, and we’re still together.
There’s no need to worry about what the future holds. We’ll take it on when it arrives, just like we always do.
Together.
the bone guard
- Sharpe -
“Ugh, not another one.”I tear down the notice for the special election that someone had taped to a lamppost. “If I catch whoever keeps posting these, I’m going to throw them in prison for littering.”
Mayn looks up from chomping on the leg bone she holds. “Don’t you want a new mayor to be elected, so Bailey gets tossed out of office?”
After Berdherst’s death, Bailey had somehow weaseled his way into acting as the interim mayor. While I don’t like it, he can’t pass any laws, and it’s keeping him busy, so he leaves us alone.
“If I wanted to deal with politics, I would have taken Lynch up on his offer when he tried to return my badge.” After all the news coverage with the Bone Man, Lynch tried to sweep everything under the rug and pretend he never had me arrested.
But I refused to return to the JTFPI. As much as I believe in what I was doing, I can’t work with a city council that would willingly sacrifice children, and Lynch already proved he can’t be trusted.
At least he had forced Bailey to drop the charges against me and my people. Not that any real charges had been filed.
To my surprise, all my officers declined to return to their duties, too. It seems I’m not the only one who lost faith in the system.
With the doors to the JTFPI closed, it left Lynch scrambling to figure out how to police the Others with no one on the police force who is magically resistant.
But, hey, he can always hire the Cleaners if he needs help.
A demon in a smartly tailored jacket that fits all six of his arms approaches, on his way from the Grave Yard. The new demon-owned city had sprung up within the area of forest destroyed by the Bone Man, with the underground tunnels providing access between the two cities.
Overnight, the demons’ foothold within Clearhelm had doubled.
