24
Bones
Michael F. Stewart
Genre: Urban Fantasy, Supernatural
Thriller
Publisher: Non Sequitur Press
ASIN: B00BGCQGNG
Number of pages: 305
Word Count: 85,000
Cover Artist: Martin Stiff of Amazing15
Every five hundred years the phoenix
dies.
Samiya, born-into-shadow, is soon to battle her born-into-light brother. Abandoned by their parents, neither wishes to play the preordained role of beast and hero. When their loved ones are taken hostage, they are forced to follow the path laid out in myth, culminating in a battle first fought six thousand years ago in ancient Cairo. A mythic clash where one defeats the other and both become gods.
To break free from their fates, Samiya and her brother must unravel a mystery twisted by cults, greed, and magic. But myth is a powerful force and failure to live up to it may not only destroy their lives but the lives of the ones they love most.
When the phoenix dies, the only certainty is flames.
“Terrific! A successful blend of
genres, complex and fascinating characters, and loads of suspense
make 24 Bones a must-read.” Nate Kenyon, bestselling author of The
Reach, Prime, Bloodstone, and The Bone Factory.
“'24 Bones' is a winning debut. It's well-written and well-plotted, studded with drama, action, history and mythology. There's even a little romance. The conclusion is thrilling with the final outcome of the battle between good and evil held over until the very end...leaving you guessing until that very last page.” SF Crowsnest.
“'24 Bones' is a winning debut. It's well-written and well-plotted, studded with drama, action, history and mythology. There's even a little romance. The conclusion is thrilling with the final outcome of the battle between good and evil held over until the very end...leaving you guessing until that very last page.” SF Crowsnest.
EXCERPT
Present
day—Coptic Cairo, Egypt
“I
want the tablet, Tara.” Sam pointed at her mother,
the accusing finger tipped with a razor-sharp nail. Her other hand
gripped a hound’s leash, and she heeled the dog to her hip when it
threatened to lunge.
On
the bed, a second hairless dog straddled her mother and slavered
drool across Tara’s cheek and lips. She twisted her head away from
the hound’s hot panting.
Sam
knew her jackal mask and assumed accent did not conceal her identity.
She trembled at the look etched on her mother’s face. With most of
their forces deployed elsewhere, Pharaoh, the leader of the Shemsu
Seth, had honored Sam with the task of retrieving the Tablet of
Destiny—her first important mission in which she was the commander.
Sam thumbed the heavy gold ring on her finger, reminding herself of
her goal. Her sentiment was a barrier to her mission’s success. She
coiled her rage inward.
“Where’s
the damned tablet!”
Tara
flinched, then kicked the hound as she jumped upright. With a yelp,
the dog slipped from the bed and curled underneath.
Sam’s
canine headdress obscured her peripheral vision, but it also
prevented her mother from seeing her face, the sweat on her brow, the
strain about her green eyes. Sam’s emotions, like the veins
criss-crossing her dark neck and cheeks, ran too near the surface.
The
window framed Tara’s age-thickened body, the street light shining
through her thin cotton nightgown. Outside, riotous cheers clamored.
A procession wound through the alleys of Coptic Cairo.
The
hound under the bed barked. Tara tossed back the mattress and
snatched the dagger laying on the bed’s wire frame. She stabbed
between the wires until the hound’s howls died.
Sam
knew she should kill Tara—set the other dog onto her back and cut
her throat. Sam’s knuckles were bone white. Her mother turned.
Blood from her blade dripped onto the scorpion hilt and her fist. She
blinked away angry tears and glared.
“Get
out, Samiya.” Her lips barely moved. “The tablet isn’t here.”
“Where,”
Sam insisted and let the dog take a foot of leash. Its front paws
scratched at the air as the black iron collar dug into its scruff.
Tara
waggled the dagger in the direction of the hound like a master
readying to toss a stick. Sam had expected repentance, that age would
have stripped her mother of stature. Sam shook her head and whistled
to the men she led.
“Bring
him in,” Sam called, watching her mother carefully from beneath the
mask. The old woman’s eyes flicked from Sam to the door and back.
Two
figures entered the room, each wrapped in black robes with deep
cowls. From beneath the hoods poked the masks of a falcon’s beak
and a baboon’s muzzle. Between them, they dragged Tariq, his
silver-haired head bowed. The masked men dropped him to the floor. He
groaned when he landed.
A
squat dwarf followed the men and took the leash of Sam’s dog. He
restrained another red-eyed hound that slunk ahead of him into the
room. The dog rose to the dwarf’s broad shoulder, its eyes glowing
with a whisper of Void and its hide rippling with muscle. The dwarf’s
smile, nearly buried by his beard, vanished when calls for his third
hound failed to bring him to heel. Whistle-like hisses shot from his
lips. The two remaining dogs settled to sniff at the prostrate man’s
buttocks.
“I
ask once more. Where’s the tablet?” Sam repeated, her threat made
potent by the quietness of her speech.
Tara
looked from the dogs to Sam’s jackal mask and gritted her teeth.
Sam spun and kicked Tariq. Ribs cracked. He cried out, rolling onto
his back.
Tara
flung the blade. Sam’s forearm deflected it to the stone wall. The
dagger clanged to the floor. Sam smiled at her mother’s reaction.
She did feel emotion, just not love for her daughter. That made Sam’s
next task easier.
She
concentrated, gripping the copper wire Tariq once showed her long ago
like one holds the root of a tree when descending a riverbank, and
then she reached into the chaotic energy of the Void. The primal well
brimmed with dark energy, so near, so easily drawn. Filled with the
Void’s rage, she raised her arms above her head. Tendrils of
blue-black lightning crackled between outstretched fingertips.
Her
mother stumbled backward, falling onto the bed frame. Mouth agape,
her eyes reflected the snaking Void. Sam’s hands lowered as she
bent toward Tariq.
“Stop!”
Tara screamed.
The
plea crashed upon the dispassionate Void. Worms of energy arced
across Tariq’s back. Sam shook, her teeth clacking together with
each shock. The old man convulsed. The room stank of ozone.
“How
could you?” Her mother’s chest heaved, and her lips trembled.
Sam
released the Void.
Stooping
to retrieve the dagger, Sam drew a deep breath. “The tablet.”
Her
mother remained silent. Sam loomed above Tariq and placed her foot on
his neck.
Tara’s
eyes shut. “I don’t have it.” Her tone appealed. Tariq gurgled
as Sam applied pressure.
He
signed with his hands and fingers. Say
nothing, Tara. This is no longer your daughter.
I
will kill him.
Sam gestured in reply. She had not forgotten the language; she’d
practiced it for years in secret, in the dark, in wait for her mother
to return for her. But she never came. No one ever came.
Sam
leaned farther on to Tariq’s neck. His fingers clawed with pain.
Tara’s
hand slashed. Stop!
Creases radiated from her tear-filled eyes. “It’s gone, but we
have a copy,” she gasped.
Sam
didn’t smile. Her mission was unsuccessful, and she had lost a
hound. Its death required blood sacrifice. Tara indicated a
rectangular box, lying on a dresser. On the box lid were a series of
squares, some of which were marked with hieroglyphs, while others
were blank. It was the game Senet, an ancient Egyptian precursor to
backgammon. Sam had a dim recollection of playing it. Her good
memories were all dim.
She
snatched the box from the dresser and snapped back the lid. She found
not white and black chips, but a sheaf of parchment. The scroll
crackled as it unfurled. A poor rubbing from the original, the
hieroglyphs were distorted. She rolled the paper and banged the box
shut with her fist.
“Where
is the gold?”
For
the dog’s death, the dwarf expected a sacrifice, and his pale eyes
glinted. Sam looked from Tariq to Tara. Once more, her mother was
expressionless.
Sam
bent back over Tariq, who wheezed where he sat on the floor,
clutching his side. With the hilt of the dagger Sam struck him on the
temple, and he thumped to the stone. Tara lunged, but the masked men
caught her and held her by her armpits. The dwarf grinned.
Sam
opened her mouth to speak, but then closed it. Signing three quick
movements, she accented them sharply. Forgive
me, I must.
The
tip of the blade traced across Tariq’s chest and hovered over his
heart. Sam’s vision blurred with tears. Tara writhed in the grip of
the men.
“May
Seth, god of chaos, accept this sacrifice,” Sam said.
She
drove the blade downward until it scored rock.
Tara
choked for air as Tariq shook in spasm.
They
both fell limp.
Sam
knelt beside the corpse. Energy coursed from her fingertips to her
spine. Tariq’s murder expanded her access to the Void. The charge
raced, permeating each cell of her bones, muscles, and blood, arcing
ageless and gnarled. Each caress of the Void changed something, took
something, replaced something.
Tara
sobbed.
Sam
motioned for the men to drag her mother from the room. As she passed,
Sam struck Tara’s head against the wall to ensure no surprises as
they made their escape. Sam stopped her tears, embarrassed by the
show of weakness. She stood and took a deep breath before she, too,
strode from the bedroom.
“Place
her in the bier,” Sam ordered the men. Two long handles protruded
from each end of the white-draped, rectangular litter squatting in
the centre of the living room. The men turned up its curtain and
revealed a bed of gold and silver stitched pillows.
Sam
couldn’t know if the tablet rubbing was authentic, but she could
take her mother and keep their link to the tablet intact. It was the
only excuse Sam could find not to kill her.
Sam
studied the surroundings. The living room had not changed in a
quarter-century: pale green couches draped in embroidered fabric,
books, everywhere books, candles, and blown-glass vases. Unconscious,
Tara slipped from the litter’s plush confines, and her head hit the
floor. Sam winced.
Tucked
into the corner of a shelf was a
small
case made of leather with brass clasps, covered with stickers of
flowers and fish. She squinted at it, then jerked it from the shelf.
When she opened the case, a strangled moan escaped her lips. It was
the bag she had packed before her delivery to the Shemsu Seth.
The
lid snapped shut on the dolls and dresses of her childhood. One of
her doll’s legs, a ragged favorite, stuck out of the suitcase seam.
Her mother had been right; Sam had needed none of it.
Sam
backed away and then spied a computer tower wedged between two
bookcases. She tossed it in with her mother. Its files would be
scoured for the tablet’s translation and potential location. Sam’s
hands left red sticky fingerprints on the casing. Her stomach rolled
at the sight of Tariq’s blood. The tiny kitchen, complete with
miniature stove and fridge, held no tablet, nor did Tariq’s
closet-sized room.
Sam
whistled to the sentry.
Another
robed man entered and stood at one corner of the bier. After lifting
the body of the dead hound inside, the dwarf dashed aboard with his
dogs.
“No,”
Sam demanded, her voice cracking. “Leave one dog here.” The dwarf
whistled, and a hound jumped from the bier, crouching when it landed,
ready to leap again.
With
the curtains of the bier drawn, Sam and the men each hefted a corner
and shuffled out into the courtyard.
No
moonlight filtered through the sycamore branches. A carving of Saint
George mounted on an Arabian horse and spearing a dragon hung above
the yard’s iron-studded door. They exited onto the streets and
caught the tail of the procession. At this late hour, the parade had
slowed but remained festive still, in celebration of some saint Sam
could not recall.
She
whooped as they joined the end of the train that snaked its way past
the Babylon Fortress and the Convent of St. George. The Coptic
revelers took up her cheer. Sam stumbled, awkward on the uneven
cobblestone as they jostled amongst the partygoers, threading through
the streets until they breached the walls. The procession continued
into the next neighborhood, but Sam’s entourage slipped from the
rear and turned toward the tombs.
As
they entered the City of the Dead, she nodded to a man who lurked in
the shadow of the gates. The bier’s handle chafed, and she switched
shoulders for the tenth time.
They
turned down a thoroughfare lined with windowless mausoleums. Family
names rather than street numbers were inscribed on marble, granite,
and limestone façades. Eyes stared from the safety of their
sanctuaries. A propane lamp’s hiss was silenced. The Shemsu Seth
ruled these people by fear and myth. Sam struggled to her full
height, her chin high.
When
they stopped in front of a large marble mastaba, they lowered the
bier.
The
dwarf and his dog scrambled out and clambered around the side wall,
disappearing into another sandstone crypt, one of the many entrances
to an underworld that stretched from the City of the Dead to the
suburb of Heliopolis and the pyramids of Giza. Other dwarfs would
return to take care of the hound corpse.
The
baboon and hawk-masked men slipped Tara’s arms around their necks.
She seemed smaller, but Sam felt no satisfaction in the change. She
was glad she had been given this task; any other Shemsu Seth would
have killed Tara. But as they entered the arched entry of the crypt,
unease twisted Sam’s stomach. Death might have been a mercy.
She
watched Tara—her mother—descend ahead of her into darkness.
After
crewing ships in the Antarctic and the Baltic Sea and some fun in
venture capital, Michael anchored himself (happily) to a marriage and
a boatload of kids. Now he injects his adventurous spirit into his
writing with brief respites for research into the jungles of Sumatra
and Guatemala, the ruins of Egypt and Tik’al, paddling the Zambezi
and diving whatever cave or ocean reef will have him. He is a member
of the International Thriller Writers and SF Canada, and the author
of the Assured Destruction series, 24 Bones, The Sand Dragon,
Hurakan, Ruination and several award winning graphic novels for young
adults.
DISCLAIMER: I was not compensated.
Thanks so much for the spotlight! If anyone has any questions, just ask, and I'll answer. :)
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