Page 81 of Midnight Auto Parts

Too bad Matty hadn’t reminded me, or we could have tried it out sooner.

Life had been too crazy lately to recall small details like how to utilize my fancy new TV’s full potential.

“Well, ain’t you a mess getting a permanent?” Her chuckle was short-lived. “You told him what we saw?”

“I did.” I scrutinized her, since she couldn’t hide via video, but she looked good. Healthy. Like I hadn’t done her irreparable harm. Perky too. Like she hadn’t required four hours to recover. Though she had been zipping around without her body since before I was born and might not require any rest to recoup her energy. “The darkness is troubling.”

Head shaking, her earrings glinted sterling. “Whatever is hunting those women is a dark blight.”

“Not a dark blight.” Silver gleamed in Kierce’s eyes as he leaned forward, bracing his elbows on his knees with a predatory focus that lifted the hairs down my arms. “Anunit.” Badb glided to rest on his shoulder, her feathers puffed and her beady black gaze wide as she cawed and flapped her wings. “But how?”

“Anunit was a Mesopotamian goddess of war.” Death followed in the wake of all battle gods. That tie-in was the sole reason I knew the rather obscure goddess. “And the moon.”

“Myths are flawed things.” Kierce stroked Badb to calm her. “The original Anunit was Alcheyvaha. It’s been said her ebony fur was spangled with white stars that glimmered in her coat. Her fangs were longer than a man’s arm. She devoured sunlight and dreams, and she was fiercely loyal to her mate. It’s said, after the gods killed him, they banded together to hunt her before she swallowed the moon and cast the Earth into endless darkness in her grief.”

The moon was alive and well in the sky, but the women had danced around their bonfire for light and warmth. Safety too. Most predators spooked at fire. Divine ones? Likely not.

“She sounds lovely.” I suppressed a chill. “You think she survived?”

“No.” Kierce sounded certain and then baffled by his surety. “None of them did.”

“Anyone with that much fury could manifest in the afterlife.” I chilled at the reminder of how close I had come to death at the clawed hands of a water spirit not so long ago. “Could she have become a guardian of the burial ground?”

Forehead gathering into a furrow, Kierce asked, “How could she have remained hidden for so long?”

Any creature her size, with her appetites, would have ignited a local legend about a beast in the woods that ate travelerswho wandered off the road. Or had their cars plucked up like Hot Wheels and set down again in the forest. Whatever. Since no such lore existed, there must be a reason why she had been absent until now.

“The bones.” Vi worried her bangles on her wrist. “Either Anunit anchored her soul to them, or some of them are hers. Perhaps she woke when they were disturbed?”

Many ancient cultures had believed in sacrificing fierce warriors or ferocious beasts to protect their king, or queen, in the afterlife. Why should the Alcheyvaha have been any different? Someone had to create the burial ground for them. They hadn’t just fallen over dead in convenient proximity to one another. Unless their murderers had been so frightened by them, they created the mass graves to keep an eye on them even in death.

Whatever her role, Anunit was making the women pay for the Morgans’ crimes in blood.

“What if it’s an initiation thing?” I toyed with the hem of my jeans. “Bring a bone to buy your way in?”

“Buy their way in…” Vi’s eyes flashed up to mine. “Your loaner said they couldn’t leave.”

“A bone was required for each woman to enter the ward.” Kierce kept flexing his hands. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense.” A glittering fissure threatened to crack open his façade to expose the divine visage beneath, and I didn’t flinch away from it. “We need to return the bones we took before Anunit turns her anger on us.”

Throat gone dry, I hadn’t considered he and I had been carrying homing beacons in our pockets.

Worse than drawing a dead god’s notice, I had brought mine home with me, making my siblings vulnerable.

“We have to go back.” I wiped a hand over my mouth. “We need to find Tameka and get answers.”

Keshawn was the one who had known where to take her mother to hide her. She could explain how word had spread about the commune. Tameka could act as our go-between and…

…the bottom fell out of my stomach.

The god bones. The Morgans had told others where to find them. The path they had paved with their good intentions might have just killed every single person within their ward.

Dis Pater had tasked Kierce withfixingthis. Kierce couldn’t ignore his master. He had to act.

Already a dangerous energy vibrated around him, stemming from the Morgans’ abuse of a sacred place.

“Return the bones.” Vi made the sign of the cross. “Then gather fresh soil, and we’ll go again.”

Maybe it would turn out not making time to ward the burial ground had been a good thing if we had to keep zipping there and back again.

---