The Altar Of Bones Part 41

He stopped just inside, holding the lantern out in front of them. Pale, yellow light cut through the darkness, and Zoe gasped.

They stood at the entrance to a small, round chamber, less than six feet in diameter, and it was empty except for the dolmen standing in the middle of it. Three big, flat rough slabs of stone, put together to form an altar, like something you would see on the field of Stonehenge. And seeping up from out of the rocky floor beneath it, like coagulating blood, was a phosph.o.r.escent red ooze.

"We've found it," she whispered.

Ry said nothing. His face was hard, intense, as he stared at the dolmen and the red ooze seeping up from the rock beneath it.

The ooze formed a small pool that was slowly trickling out into the cracks and creva.s.ses in the stone floor. Etched into the floor in front of the pool were three wolves making a circle, noses to tails, chasing each other through eternity.

Don't tread where wolves lie.

A sudden image flashed in Zoe's mind, of Boris the griffin shop man holding one of the keys to the unicorn casket in his hand and saying, "Clever, is it not? But then the Keepers have always been clever at devising riddles to keep the altar safe from the world."

On some instinctive level Zoe felt Ry start to pull away from her, to go the dolmen- "No!"

She grabbed his arm, jerking him back the instant before his foot came down on the circle of wolves.

He half-turned to her. "What-", he began, then his eyes focused behind her, and he flashed a sudden, brilliant smile.

"Pakhan," he said. "What took you so long?" he said. "What took you so long?"

56.

MOTHER?"

Anna Larina Dmitroff stood on the other side of the crude opening in the cave wall, where the altar made of human bones had once been. Snow dusted her mink hat, the mink collar of a long quilted coat, and caked the soles of her fur-lined boots. She held a Glock 37 pistol in her hand, pointed at her daughter's chest, but her eyes, every fiber of her being, seemed riveted on the dolmen and the iridescent red ooze that lay beneath it.

"The altar of bones," she said, awe and a hot, hard desire roughening her voice. "I knew you would lead me to it eventually. All I had to do was wait and be patient."

Zoe shook her head. "But how could you know where ...?" A terrible coldness suddenly washed over her, but she wasn't going to believe what she was thinking. She couldn't believe it, because it would kill her.

Slowly she turned to look at Ry, and it felt as if she were moving underwater. "What did you mean, 'What took you so long?' You were expecting expecting her?" her?"

"I work for her, remember? She told me to seduce you, to worm my way into your trust, and you would lead us to the altar of bones. I gotta say you weren't much of a challenge, Zoe."

The pain in her heart was so fierce, she thought she would faint from it. G.o.d G.o.d, what a fool she'd been. Trust no one, not even the ones you love. But like so many Keepers before her, she'd fallen in love and that love had betrayed her and made a lie out of everything she believed in.

"I hate you right now, Ry O'Malley. I hate you enough to kill you."

"Oh, for G.o.d's sake, Zoe," Anna Larina said, tearing her gaze off the altar with a visible act of will. "You can be so obtuse at times. Can't you see he's improvising? Trying to make me think he isn't the puissant traitor I know him to be. He might have been expecting me, but that lovely smile of welcome he gave me-it was all teeth and no fire. Isn't that right, Sergei?"

Ry let out a deep breath and shrugged. "It was worth a shot." He turned to Zoe and gave her a weak smile. "Sorry, babe."

The wave of sheer, blissful relief coming on the heels of so much pain brought burning tears to Zoe's eyes. "I think I still hate you, Ry. For scaring me like that."

"Are you two done?" Anna Larina said. "As for how I knew where to find you ... I figured you would eventually end up where our family's rather macabre history began, so I decided to come to this frozen h.e.l.lhole directly and skip all the drama in between. I knew you were in town five minutes after you checked into the hotel. Did you really think I was going to let you get away with taking what's mine? I'm the one who should be the Keeper. The altar of bones belongs to me."

"The altar isn't yours, and it doesn't belong to any one Keeper either. Our job is to keep it hidden and safe from-"

"Your job job?" Anna Larina laughed a little too wildly. "Are you getting paid by the hour?"

"Keep it safe," Zoe went on, "from people like you. And if you've come to drink from it, you may as well not bother. It only takes one drop, and you've already had yours."

"What are you talking about?" Anna Larina said, but Zoe had seen something flicker across her face. Secret knowledge, and a sick sort of triumph.

"Oh, I think you know. Your miraculous recovery from leukemia when you were four. The fact that when you look into a mirror, you see a face that doesn't look a day over thirty."

"Then imagine all the money I'll save over the years on Botox and plastic surgery. All the more for you to inherit, Zoe, my dear. Except, oops, too bad for you, I'm never going to die."

"Unless someone shoots you," Ry said. "And there's always stabbing, drowning, and death by garrote."

Anna Larina made a little tsking noise and shook her head. "Sergei, Sergei. For a dumb vor vor, I thought you showed some promise, yet what a disappointment you have turned out to be. The last man to betray me ended up with his head in an ice cream carton. Regrettably I don't have the time to get creative with you. But rest a.s.sured, I will get you."

"Unless I get you first."

She laughed again, as she pulled off her mink hat, shaking out her hair. "What are you going to do, throw a rock at me? Since I doubt you have a gun in your pocket. The only way you can get to Norilsk this time of year is by plane, and they have no problem with profiling here in Russia. Foreigners, especially Americans, are automatically suspect, and liable to be strip-searched at any time. Even a dumb vor vor like you wouldn't risk getting caught with so much as a toothpick in his possession." like you wouldn't risk getting caught with so much as a toothpick in his possession."

"Yet somehow you managed just fine," Zoe said, but it was all bravado. Her mother was right. No way could they have carried a gun onto the airplane, and Norilsk seemed to be the one city in the world where Ry didn't "know a guy."

"I am a pakhan pakhan in the Russian in the Russian mafiya mafiya, darling. I could probably get my hands on a suitcase nuke, if I wanted one badly enough. It is not that hard when you own half the d.a.m.n country."

She made a little movement, as if she was going to step inside the chamber with them, and Zoe felt Ry tense. She knew what he was thinking: If her mother got close enough, there might be a chance for one of them to go for her Glock.

But although Anna Larina's eyes were riveted on the altar again, she didn't come any farther into the little chamber. The red ooze seemed to be pulsating now, brightening, dimming, brightening again, and Zoe saw the naked greed blaze to life on her mother's face.

After a moment, no more, Anna Larina tore her gaze off the altar and focused all her attention back on them. "You, Sergei. Put the lantern on the ground, nice and slowly, and if I even think you might throw it at me, my daughter gets a bullet in the heart. That's good.... Now, starting with you, Zoe, I want both of you to come out here and join me in this lovely cave. Baby steps, though, dear. Nice and slow."

Zoe led the way through the hole and into the cave. Anna Larina backed up as they came toward her, careful to keep a safe distance between them and the pistol pointed steadily at her daughter's chest.

"Very good, children. Now, get over there. On the other side of the pool."

"You should have tried to break into the movies when you were in L.A., Mother," Zoe said, wanting to get her talking, distracted, to buy them some time. Although time to do what, she didn't know. "What with that little acting job you treated me to in your library, pretending you'd never heard of such a thing as an altar of bones in your life."

A brittle smile stretched her mother's lips. "You were not always the chosen one, Zoe dear. The morning before she dumped me off at the orphanage and left me forever, your dear, departed grandmother told me about this wonderment she called an altar of bones. She said it was hidden in a cave deep in Siberia, and if you drank from it, you couldn't die, and that made it dangerous. She said the women of our family were called Keepers, and they kept the altar hidden from the world. A sacred duty pa.s.sed down mother to daughter since the beginning of time. What drivel."

Yet as Zoe watched, her mother's face seemed to soften and she became lost in the memory of those last moments with a mother who was about to walk out of her life forever.

"But I was only nine," Anna Larina went on, "and you know how kids are. All I was interested in was how an altar could be made out of bones. I think that's what stopped her from telling me the rest of it-she was afraid I wouldn't understand or that I'd forget. She did show me the icon, though, of a Virgin Mary holding a skull cup in her lap. She said a Keeper during Tsar Ivan the Terrible's time had created the icon as a way to keep the altar's secret."

"No wonder you collected them all these years," Zoe said. "I thought it was because they were beautiful and it made you happy just to look at them. Your icons seemed to be the only thing in this world you really cared about, and even that was lie."

Her mother's mouth curled into a sneer. "I swear, Zoe, you positively drip sentimentality at times. They were an investment, nothing more, while I searched the world over for the only one that really mattered to me. When Mother didn't come back, I thought she'd died and the thing had been p.a.w.ned or sold. I thought she'd died...."

She's still that little girl, Zoe thought. That little girl waiting at the orphanage for a mother who never came back. And when Katya pa.s.sed her over to make her granddaughter the Keeper, it must have felt as if she'd been abandoned all over again. Only she doesn't know why. Katya told her about the altar and that she would be the Keeper one day, but then she took it all away and give it to me, and she can't understand why her mother would do that to her. She doesn't know why Only she doesn't know why. Katya told her about the altar and that she would be the Keeper one day, but then she took it all away and give it to me, and she can't understand why her mother would do that to her. She doesn't know why.

"I thought she'd died," Anna Larina was saying, fury and pain in her eyes as she glared at her daughter. "But all this time she was saving it for you."

"You're wrong about her," Zoe said. "What you're thinking about her. She never hated you. She left you in that orphanage to keep you safe from the hunters, and she would have given you the icon later, she would have made you the Keeper, but ..."

"But what, Zoe? I'm beyond giving a s.h.i.+t why the old b.i.t.c.h did what she did, but you seem to need the catharsis, so go on."

"You were her little girl and you were dying, and she couldn't bear it. So she gave you the altar to drink, even knowing what it would do to you. One drop and you would live. But one drop would also make you crazy."

"I don't ... What are you saying?"

Zoe almost took a step toward her mother, wanting instinctively to comfort her, but the pond was between them now. And the gun still pointed at her, unwavering, deadly.

"She's saying the altar of bones is a real fountain of youth," Ry said. "But there's one disastrous consequence to drinking it, and I think you already know, deep in your heart, what that is. All these years, while the face in your mirror barely changed, you've felt the crazy growing and twisting inside of you, consuming you. You might stay forever young and beautiful, pakhan pakhan, but the price you're paying is your sanity. Without your knowledge, without your consent, you're paying the price. And it will only get worse. Every year on this earth is going to cost you another piece of your mind."

Anna Larina shook her head. "No, that's a lie. Some kind of trick to get the altar away from me, and it's not going to work."

"Haven't you ever wondered," Zoe said, "why your mother gave you the altar because you were dying, but never drank from it herself? The reason why she didn't make you the Keeper was because she saw what you've made of your life. You're a pakhan pakhan in the Russian mafia. How much more depraved and crazy-" in the Russian mafia. How much more depraved and crazy-"

"I am not crazy!" Anna Larina shouted, shocking even herself. But then she shrugged it right off, even gave a little laugh. "Well. That might've been just a little too telling. And you can stop your smirking, Sergei, because it doesn't matter. You two can think what you want. I'm taking what is mine."

And then what, Mother?

Zoe couldn't see how her mother was going to let them leave the cave alive. Ry she would kill on principle alone, because she was the pakhan pakhan and he had betrayed her. But would Anna Larina really kill her own child? What lived inside her now? Was it a disease, or was it evil? and he had betrayed her. But would Anna Larina really kill her own child? What lived inside her now? Was it a disease, or was it evil?

Whichever it was, it didn't matter. Because as she looked from her mother's soulless face to the barrel of the Glock, then back to that face, Zoe knew in her gut that this thing couldn't be dealt with or rationalized with or bargained with or wished away.

Yet still she tried. "Mother, please. Why are you doing this?"

"Why?" Anna Larina's laugh was wild now, out of control. "I should think it's obvious. Why don't you tell her, Sergei? You're standing there, suddenly silent as a bloodsucking leech, probably plotting how you're going to leap across the pond and wrest this gun from my hand. Explain to my naive daughter what I could possibly want with the altar of bones."

"Besides the fact that you're bats.h.i.+t crazy? Money and power. The usual suspects."

"Bingo, and give that man a prize. Think of the billions of dollars people spend every year in the vain attempt to fool their mirrors. Botox, face-lifts, liposuction, tummy tucks-all to look younger than they really are. To convince themselves, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, that with every breath they take, with every minute that pa.s.ses, they are not dying."

Zoe realized that while her mother was talking, she was also backing toward the opening in the rock wall. The chamber beyond it was glowing red like a beacon now, pulsing, pulsing ...

"n.o.body wants to believe that the wonderfulness that is their wonderful, exceptional self will just end. Simply dissolve into nothingness," Anna Larina said, and backed up another step, then another, her voice rising with excitement, antic.i.p.ation. Pa.s.sion. "Imagine what the rich would pay, what they would give up to me, in return for not having to face their nothingness. And I could choose who to bless and who to d.a.m.n. I would be G.o.d."

Zoe saw the white flash shoot out of the muzzle of the gun barrel, a split second before she heard the report of the shot.

Ry grunted and fell face forward, into the black, oily pool.

ANNA L LARINA HEARD the echo of her own voice, the echo of her own voice, G.o.d ... G.o.d G.o.d ... G.o.d ... along with the gunshot, bouncing against the rocky walls, as she whirled and ducked through the opening in the wall and into the red, pulsating chamber. ... along with the gunshot, bouncing against the rocky walls, as she whirled and ducked through the opening in the wall and into the red, pulsating chamber.

But then almost against her will, as if she didn't really want to know, she looked back, and she saw Zoe trying to haul Ry out of the pool by the back of his coat.

Yes, that's my girl. I knew you'd try to save him because that's what you do. So get him to a hospital, before he dies, only he's probably going to die anyway because I aimed for his gut, to make him suffer, make him hurt. hurt. Take him away, though, Zoe, and leave the altar to me, and later on we'll figure out just what we're going to do with you Take him away, though, Zoe, and leave the altar to me, and later on we'll figure out just what we're going to do with you.

The altar of bones ... It looked like blood on the floor, s.h.i.+ny, viscous. She thought it even smelled like blood, and it seemed to be calling to her, drawing her into its beating, red heart.

She went toward it, her eyes on the prize, on the power. She didn't see the wolves on the floor.

She stepped into the circle they made, and the world seemed to fall out from underneath her. Something was wrong with the floor, the stones were disintegrating like sand beneath her feet.

Anna Larina screamed and screamed as she fell back, falling down into blackness, falling forever, and above her, so very far away now, she saw the pulsing red light. It was very bright now, lighting the darkness in a strange swirl of color, as if reaching for her, and she wanted to scream for it to save her, but it didn't even slow her down.

And then, in the instant before she hit bottom, she saw, silhouetted by the bright glowing red light, the tons of rocks and boulders coming down on top of her.

57.

RY, PLEASE ... ...

He was so heavy, so unmoving. Please, G.o.d. Ry, don't you be dead on me, don't you dare be dead Please, G.o.d. Ry, don't you be dead on me, don't you dare be dead.

Zoe dug her fingers deeper into the folds of his coat and pulled with every bit of strength she had. It was enough to keep him from sinking to the bottom; it wasn't enough to get him up and out of the pool.

"Mother, d.a.m.n you. Help me," she shouted.

For a moment Zoe thought her mother might have paused and looked back, but then Anna Larina kept going, through the hole and into the glowing red chamber.

Zoe felt Ry thrash beneath her hands, heard him cough. She sat back on her heels and pulled again, sobbing his name, while he clawed at the rocky ledge of the pool, and then he was out, streaming black water, shuddering with every harsh breath. He rolled over and half sat up, bracing his back against a stalagmite, pressing his hand to his right shoulder, and Zoe saw blood seep out between his fingers.

Then she heard her mother scream.

Zoe's head jerked around, and what she saw didn't seem real. The ground beneath Anna Larina's feet had disappeared. "Mother!" Zoe shouted, horrified, wanting to run to her, to save her, but she couldn't let go of Ry. For an instant, her mother seemed to hang suspended over a gaping abyss, and then she plunged, and she was screaming, screaming.

Her mother's screams seemed to turn into a high-pitched whine, and the whine got louder and louder as the ground began to vibrate and then to shake.

"Get out!" Ry shouted above the noise that was now like a train bearing down on them.

Zoe tried to grab him, to wrest him up onto his feet, but he pushed her away from him. "No. I'll slow you down. Go Go." And he shoved her again, harder.

"I'm not leaving you, you idiot!" Zoe screamed. She knocked his flailing hand aside and covered his body with hers, as dirt and bits of rock rained down on them.

She thought, I'm going to die I'm going to die, and she was engulfed by a terrible sadness. It was too soon.

GRADUALLY THE GROUND stopped shaking and the terrible shrieking noise became a low rumble and died. stopped shaking and the terrible shrieking noise became a low rumble and died.

Slowly, Zoe lifted her head off Ry's chest. "Is it over?" she asked, more of the G.o.ds than of him.

But something in her already knew that it was over, that this was the final riddle. Rocks and boulders and debris now filled the hole where the chamber with the altar of bones had been. To protect the altar from the world, it had been taken from the world forever.