The Bones of Valhalla (Purge of Babylon, Book 9) Read Online Free PDF Page A

resolve.
    He closed his eyes and concentrated, willing the bones to mend faster, for the muscle tissues to regrow. He needed to be at full strength for what was to come. And maybe even that wouldn’t be enough.
    “Something’s come up, too,” Danny had said. “Our mutual buddy Mercer? He’s either dead or dead-ish. Or, at least, that’s the going theory. You said we were going to need a hell of a lot of luck to make this plan of yours work. Maybe this little revelation can help with that. What do you think?”
    A new development that he continued processing, adding to what he already knew, what lay ahead for them. For him.
    The news was unexpected but not unwelcome, and he did what he did best—he adapted.
    But even as he shifted the plans around in his mind, he reached out with his senses, throwing them outward and beyond the lower deck, searching for the snippets of conversation, the hushed whispers.
    “Is he dead?” someone said. “Is he really dead?”
    “I don’t know,” someone else said. “Rhett’s in charge now…”

    * * *
    I t was dark outside the boat, and had been for a few hours. He knew without a doubt because he existed on two simple measurements of time—day and night.
    And right now, it was the latter. He didn’t need a watch to know. It was in the way the air changed, even inside the tight confines of the chest. The gradual drop of temperature in the room, digit by digit, and the dramatic plunge in degrees beyond the boat’s thick walls.
    His guards, who had been talking on and off, had gone quiet. The boy and the woman. Their names still escaped him, but he reasoned if he didn’t recall them then they probably weren’t important enough to his survival.
    His body responded to the shift from day to night by cranking up, the blood in his veins flowing faster and freer, the mutated cells coming even more alive as they targeted and closed the wounds and repaired his injuries. He always healed faster at night because darkness was where he belonged. If traveling with Danny in the day had been nauseating, he was in bliss now as—
    The boat. It had stopped moving.
    How did he miss that before? The vessel was adrift under him and would be still, except for the occasional swaying against the waves. Why had they stopped? They were far from land; he knew because he could taste nothing but salt water all around him. So much of it that he grew agitated and had to refocus on something else.
    There. Footsteps.
    So many footsteps above and around him. Men and women of all sizes, and children. They were on the upper decks moving around. And talking. The buzz of excitement he had picked up earlier was still there.
    “Is he really dead?” someone said.
    “Maybe,” someone answered.
    “What does it mean?” someone else said on another part of the boat.
    Mercer. They were still talking about Mercer.
    The new development, and the reason he’d had to restructure the plan.
    “Adapt or perish,” someone had once said.
    Had it been him? Lara? Or Danny—
    A very distinct pair of footsteps intruded on the hushed conversations around the boat.
    Heavy. Male. With purpose.
    They were moving through the now-silent engine room toward the back. Toward him.
    He shut out the rest and zeroed in on the new arrivals.
    “What are they doing down here?” one of his guards said. The boy whose name he couldn’t remember.
    “You know them?” the woman asked.
    “Riley’s men. I don’t know their names, but I know they’re not supposed to be down here.”
    “We should radio Danny…”
    “Wait, let me talk to them first,” the boy said, even as his heartbeat accelerated slightly.
    The woman was calmer, but not by much. “You sure?”
    “Yeah,” the boy said. Then, “You guys aren’t supposed to be down here.”
    “Hey, Benny,” a new voice said. Male. Older.
    “You’re not supposed to be down here,” the boy named Benny said again.
    “Lara sent us.”
    “No one told us,” the female guard