Empire of Bones by N. D. Wilson Page A

she lost it all at once, right when she woke up. Her body is weak and her mind, well, she spent the last three years dreaming. All she remembers are some weird things about being in a bird. She gets distracted. She has trouble focusing. And when she does focus, she remembers everything and she cries.”
    Cyrus looked up at the swaying trees. They were almost too tall for their trunks, bending and rocking as they strained and stretched to reach the sun. It made him dizzy. But these days, everything made him dizzy.
    “Will she get better?” Cyrus asked.
    “Rupe thinks so,” Dan said. “But not if we keep running like this.” He tucked his final bite into his cheek and folded his greasy plate in half.
    Antigone sighed and looked down between her knees at the forest floor below.
    “Do you think we could get away?” she asked. “I mean just us. And Mom. Could we just change our name to Wankenschnitzel or something and move to, I don’t know, Des Moines? Go back to school. Have friends.”
    “We have friends,” Cyrus said.
    Antigone laughed. “We have Diana, Jeb, and Dennis and a bunch of unstable people who don’t die.”
    “And a short lawyer and his tall driver,” Dan said. “Don’t forget them.”
    “We have Rupert,” Cyrus said. “And Rupert doesn’t have much more than us.” He Frisbeed his paper plate off the roof and watched it flutter into the trees. “No matter where we go, we are who we are. Skelton left us what he left us. I’ve done what I’ve done and started what I’ve started. People who don’t die won’t forget that. Those poor Wankenschnitzels wouldn’t last very long with Radu Bey and Dr. Phoenix looking for them. Skeltonknew a lot more than we do, and he only survived on the run for two years.”
    “You just don’t want to go back to school,” Antigone said.
    Cyrus smiled and shrugged. Then he climbed to his feet.
    Antigone nodded at his plate, caught in a spray of ferns twenty yards away. “You gonna pick that up?” she asked.
    “Nope,” said Cyrus. “But you can. Thanks for asking. I’m gonna go sit with Mom.”
    “Cy,” Dan said. “Hold on just a sec.”
    Cyrus looked at his remodeled brother—at the muscles on Dan’s too-square jaw, at the rope-size veins on his bull neck, at the deep brown eyes that had once been blue, the eyes that saw things. Those eyes were worried.
    “More dreams?” Cyrus asked. “I’ve heard it, Dan. I know.”
    “Cyrus,” Dan said. “This is different. I saw real things … like I did when I dreamed about Dad’s body in Phoenix’s cigar factory. That dream led us to him. You can’t blow this one off.”
    “I’m not,” Cyrus said. “But if I don’t understand it, it doesn’t matter anyway.”
    “My heart tried to stop,” Dan said. “Twice. It hurt like … well, it hurt. Then my eyes stopped seeing everythingaround me and I fell down. Pythia was with me in there, in the vision.”
    Cyrus knuckled his eyes, groaned frustration, and turned away. Antigone, still seated, grabbed his ankle.
    “Wait, Cy,” she said. “Listen to him.”
    “Why?” Cyrus asked. “It’s been the same thing almost every night. I almost have it memorized. Let me guess: ‘Seventy weeks will soon be passed. One comes on the wing of abominations, and there shall be no end to war. He shall be called the Desolation and bad, bad, bad, worse, worse, worse.’ Phoenix is scary. Radu Bey is scary. I know, Dan. I’m scared enough already without you reciting that to me all the time.”
    “But the dream has never been about Phoenix,” Dan said. “And it’s not about Radu Bey. Pythia helped me. I saw …”
    Cyrus tugged his leg out of Antigone’s grip and stared at his brother.
    “Who?” he asked. “Super villain number three?”
    Dan’s dark eyes locked onto his brother’s.
    “You, Cyrus. It’s about you.”

 seven 
    THE DEVOTED
    M ERCY TRIED NOT TO PAY ANY ATTENTION to her warped reflection as she flowed through the people rivers and