Not Even Bones Read online

Nita tried to force a smile, but it wouldn’t come. “I’m tired. I kinda want to go to bed. If you don’t mind?”

  Her mother waved her away. “After you pick up some water. I decided I didn’t want to go myself after all.”

  So her mother didn’t trust her. She’d just sat there, eavesdropping, and knew Nita had lied to her.

  Great.

  “Okay.”

  It was always best to obey her mother.

  Nita grabbed her sweater and a bag on her way out, making sure to lock the door behind her. She took a deep breath, leaning her head on the door and closing her eyes. She felt like she was walking a tightrope. One wrong step, and she could fall to either side. The problem was, she wasn’t sure what exactly she’d be falling into, except that it would be bad.

  Would her mother kill Fabricio while she was out so Nita couldn’t interfere?

  No. Of course not. But she might start cutting off pieces.

  Nita swallowed, hands clenched at her side. Would that be so terrible? It wouldn’t be Nita’s fault then—she wouldn’t be here; she couldn’t do anything about it. She could just brush it aside.

  But she’d still have to dissect him when it was all over. Scoop out those scared blue eyes and put them in a jar.

  Nita let out the breath she’d been holding. It would be a waste to start cutting pieces off Fabricio now.

  She walked down the hall and to the stairwell, heading for the store.

  Outside, it was dark and hazy, but the streetlights kept things moderately well lit. Nita lived in a nice part of Lima, right in the heart of Miraflores district, and she wasn’t too concerned about safety at night.

  The heat of the evening settled comfortably on her skin, and a gentle breeze brought her the scent of something spicy in a nearby restaurant. She’d only been in Lima a month, but she liked it a lot so far. It was one of the nicer places they’d set up shop.

  Nita and her mother moved around a lot. They would move to a central location on a continent, and her mother would target all the nearby countries, hunting for unnaturals she could kill and sell. They’d spent years doing this in the US before they’d moved on to Vietnam, Germany, and now Peru.

  She passed by the open door of a restaurant and saw a pair of American tourists snapping at a waiter. The woman was snarling something in English, and the waiter just stared at her, smile frozen on his face while shaking his head and trying to tell her, in a mix of broken English and Spanish, that he didn’t understand.

  “Well, find me someone who does!” snapped the woman, and then she turned to her husband. “You’d think they could hire people that speak English.”

  Nita rolled her eyes as she passed. Why was there this obsession Americans had that others should learn their language to accommodate them? They were in Peru. Why didn’t those American people learn Spanish?

  She saw it everywhere, the weird entitlement. Tourists who stole pieces of pottery and coins from German castles because they could. Rich men who flew in to Ho Chi Minh thinking they could buy anyone they wanted for a night and do anything they wanted to them, laws of the country be damned.

  Nita kept walking past the restaurant and down the street.

  Her footsteps slowed just beneath a plaque commemorating a battle against the Spanish. She thought about the Spanish conquistadores five hundred years before, who’d swept through South America and painted the whole continent red in their hunt for gold.

  Something uncomfortable and squiggly shifted in her chest. The plaque was talking about Pizarro, the man who’d carved a bloody swathe through Peru. He’d taken the Inca—the ruler of the Incan people—hostage, and then ransomed him for a room full of gold. When the Incan people gave him the gold, he killed the Inca anyway.

  Pizarro wasn’t even the worst of the conquistadores. Christopher Columbus used to cut the hands off indigenous people who didn’t dig enough gold for him each month.

  Like her mother cut off Fabricio’s toes.

  Nope.

  Nita really didn’t want to think about that.

  So she ignored the niggling little voice that told her she had no right to claim the tourists were being entitled jerks when her mother felt entitled to take these people’s lives and sell their body parts for profit.

  She went to the local bodega instead of the giant grocery store. She didn’t like how crowded the grocery store was. People were always talking to her and breathing near her, and sometimes they brushed by her, and she found it uncomfortable.

  The bodega was smaller, and she actually had to talk to the person at the cashier sometimes, but it was worth it to not feel the press of so many bodies around her. Also, the bodega never had a line.

  As she was paying, Nita’s eyes were drawn to the television sitting on a chair on the other side of the room, a stack of toilet paper and Kleenex packages on top. It was an old, boxy unit, and someone had put on the news.

  “The debate over whether to add unicorns to the Dangerous Unnaturals List continues, as INHUP starts its third day of discussions over the proposal.”

  Nita smiled as a memory surfaced, one of the few she had where she really felt her mother cared. A man with blond hair and swirly black thorn tattoos had reached to ruffle her hair at a store, and her mother had nearly shot him right then and there. Nita had been swept away before the man could get too close, and while her mother never said, Nita knew that particular soul-eating unicorn was dead now. He would never again target virgins. She’d seen the new powdered unicorn bone stock.

  Letting out a breath, Nita shook her head. Her mother might be many things, but she loved Nita. It was a scary kind of love, but it was there. That was important. Sometimes it was easy to forget, given her mother’s suspicious nature and obsession with money.

  A reporter was interviewing a scientist about unnatural genetics.

  “Unicorns are another type of unnatural linked to recessive genes. This means these creatures can reproduce with humans, and the genetic makeup can lie dormant for generations before the right circumstances combine and two perfectly normal parents give birth to a monster.

  “It’s not only unicornism that’s hereditary,” the man on the screen ranted. “But other creatures. Zannies. Kappa. Ghouls. Even vampires, to some extent.”

  Nita thought of the pieces of zannie in her apartment. She wondered how many people it had tortured in its life to feed its hunger for pain. It was a good thought, because she had no guilt about cutting up a monster like that, and even admired her mother for killing it.

  “Could you describe the proposal you’ve submitted to INHUP, Dr. Rodón?”

  “Genetic manipulation. It’s a very select series of genes unique to each species, so once fully mapped, it should be easy to screen for and eliminate them. If we catch it before they’re born, we can eradicate all dangerous human-born unnaturals.”

  The clerk gave Nita her water with a smile, and she nearly ripped it out of his hand as she stormed out of the shop, unable to listen to another minute of that drivel.

  Nita hated people.

  While Nita agreed it might be an effective, even humane way to reduce the monster population, she knew people would take it too far. People always took it too far. How long before people started isolating genes from harmless unnaturals and eliminating them too? Aurs, who were just bioluminescent people? Or mermaids? Or whatever Fabricio was?

  Or even Nita and her mother?

  Four

  THE NEXT MORNING, Nita woke to screaming.

  She yanked the covers off and reached for the scalpel she kept on her nightstand. Her feet tangled in the sheets as she stumbled out of bed and fell on her knees with a thud.

  The screaming rose in pitch, sharpening into a long, horrible shriek.

  Breathing fast, Nita freed herself and climbed to her feet. She crept out of her room, scalpel first, toward the source of the noise. The screams were punctuated by the rattle of metal against metal, the scraping squeak of something heavy on the linoleum floor, and her mothe
r’s vicious swearing. Nita’s heartbeat stuttered.

  Her mother hadn’t been testing her when she mentioned cutting off Fabricio’s ear. She was actually doing it. Right now.

  Nita opened the door to the dissection room and saw blood. It had spattered her clean white walls and floor. Droplets clung to her mother’s angry face, and streaks of red tears patterned Fabricio’s cheeks. He’d scooted his head as far into the cage as he could and had bunched his legs so his feet were pressed to the front of the cage. He rocked it from side to side, trying to prevent her mother from getting a grip. The padlock was on the floor, but the cage door had swung shut, and Fabricio was holding it closed by wrapping his remaining toes around the door and tugging.

  Her mother was holding a syringe, probably something to sedate Fabricio. He knocked it out of her hand with his shoulder, and it clattered to the bottom of the cage. He used an elbow to smash it, spilling the contents and chunks of broken glass across the ground.

  Both of them turned as Nita entered, and Nita flinched when she saw Fabricio’s face straight on. Her mother had clearly tried to cut off his ear while he slept, and he’d woken up mid cut. His ear had been partly severed, and then the knife had slipped, slicing a deep red line across his cheek.

  Nita took an involuntary step forward to stop this, to do something. Her mouth opened to protest. Then it closed.

  You can’t stop this, Nita. You can’t save him.

  If you show sympathy, your mother will make sure you regret it.

  She wouldn’t hurt me, Nita protested. But that didn’t mean there weren’t worse things her mother could do. The memory of small broken bodies stuffed between her sheets surfaced, but she shoved it away.

  She let her hands fall to her sides as she talked herself out of action and looked away. She was no stranger to blood and carnage, but she hated that shard of hope shining from Fabricio’s eyes. She didn’t want to see it replaced by betrayal.

  “Nita.” Her mother rose, flicking blood off her fingers. “Good morning.”

  “Good morning.” Nita paused. “Are you trying to get the ear?”

  “Yes. He’s not cooperating.” Her mother beckoned her. “Give me a hand.”

  Nita hesitated only a split second before approaching. “How can I help?”

  The hope in Fabricio’s eyes cracked, and then melted into terror and anger. Nita tried not to look.

  Her mother took out another syringe, presumably full of sedatives. “I’m going to try and hold him still. I want you to sedate him.”

  Nita took the syringe with trembling fingers, not letting herself look at Fabricio. It was better this way, wasn’t it? This way he wouldn’t feel the pain when his ear came off.

  Nita wouldn’t have to hear him scream.

  “Why didn’t you sedate him before you started?” Nita asked, hiding her shaking hand from her mother.

  Her mother shrugged, nonchalant. “I thought I could cut it off fast enough.”

  No, Nita realized, looking at the half smile twitching across her mother’s face. You thought no such thing. You wanted this to happen, so I would wake up and be forced to help you.

  Nita was being tested. She didn’t know what the consequences of failure were, but she knew they weren’t good.

  You shouldn’t have talked to Fabricio and then lied about it to her.

  Nita had been stupid. She should have known better.

  Clenching her jaw, she put the syringe down. “I don’t see how it’ll be any easier to sedate him than it would be to just get the rest of the ear off.” She showed her mother her scalpel. “There’s only a strip of flesh left. It won’t take much to finish the job.”

  Her mother’s smile widened until it seemed to consume her face. “If you think so, I’m happy to try.”

  “Nita.” Fabricio spoke for the first time. “Nita, por favor.”

  Nita’s mother laughed. “Oh, it figured out your name.”

  Nita clenched the scalpel in her sweaty palm and focused on the ear, ignoring Fabricio’s crying and continued whispers of her name like a prayer.

  Just get this over with. Then she could figure out where to go from there. But if she failed this, bad things would happen. She didn’t want a repeat of the dact incident with parts of Fabricio in her bed each morning.

  She tried not to look at his face as she pushed the scalpel through the cage bars, but she couldn’t escape his sobs and cries. Her hand was shaking, and her palm was so sweaty that when Fabricio shook the cage again, the scalpel was knocked right out of Nita’s fingers, leaving a deep, bloody gash across her palm along the way.

  Nita yanked her hand back, swearing as the blood dripped down her arm.

  Her mother gave her a tired look. “Well, heal it already, and we’ll try again.”

  Nita turned away so her mother wouldn’t see the flash of anger in her expression. Then she let out a breath and focused her body. She increased blood clotting factor in the affected area to speed up the scabbing process. She didn’t want to do too much repairing until she had some disinfectant, though—while she could stimulate her body’s natural defenses against the microbes, it was just easier to wash the wound in soap.

  Nita wasn’t sure how old she’d been when she discovered that other people couldn’t control their bodies the same way she could. Her mother did it all the time—enhanced her own muscles so she could run faster, hit harder, heal quicker.

  The more Nita understood about her body, the more she could control it. But it was dangerous—there was a reason for swelling, and if you took away the symptom without dealing with the underlying cause, it could make things worse. She’d discovered that the hard way when she was seven and her father had to take her to a hospital because she’d accidentally paralyzed herself trying to make her bicycle-butt bruise go away. Only after the x-rays and scans, and the doctor’s detailed explanation of the precise issue, had Nita been able to fix it.

  After that, she’d been very cautious about how she altered herself.

  “Are you done yet?” Her mother’s voice was cold.

  Nita nodded and turned back to her mother. “For now. But it’ll take time to fully heal. I severed a tendon—I don’t think I’ll be able to hold a scalpel for a day or so.”

  Her mother scowled, clearly displeased. Nita made no comment and kept her face blank. It wouldn’t do for her mother to see how relieved this injury made Nita feel, or for her mother to realize she was stalling and could, if she wanted, finish healing the wound much sooner than tomorrow. Now she had at least a day where she didn’t personally have to do the slicing. That was something.

  “Fine.” Her mother picked up the bloody scalpel, gave it a quick rinse in the sink, and then, before either Nita or Fabricio had a chance to react, spun with near superhuman speed and threw it. It neatly sliced through the last piece of cartilage connecting Fabricio’s ear to his body, and he screamed as the severed piece of flesh tumbled to the ground. He tried to clap his hands over his ear, but they were still chained to the bottom of the cage, and he couldn’t reach. Instead, he wept as blood coated the side of his face.

  Her mother scooped up the scalpel and speared the ear like a piece of steak. She showed it to Nita with a grin. “You know, I think my aim could have been better.”

  Nita resisted the urge to throw up.

  Five

  THERE WERE STILL zannie parts to be boxed, but Nita couldn’t stand the idea of working with Fabricio’s sobs punctuating her every move.

  Nita turned to her mother. “I’m going for a walk, to get some fresh air.”

  “You do realize how polluted this city is?” Her mother was getting the packaging out for the ear.

  Nita shrugged, averting her eyes. “Whatever, all cities are polluted. Besides, it’s a mental thing. And the walk along the ocean isn’t so bad.”

  Mostly, she didn’t want Fabricio’s eyes boring into her, judging and begging at the same time. She needed time to sort out her thoughts, away from her mother, away from Fabric
io.

  Her mother waved her off. “Pick up something for dinner on your way back.”

  Nita could hardly believe her mother had agreed. Maybe she understood that Nita needed time to not think about Fabricio. Time to settle her thoughts, to figure out what to do.

  Or maybe she just wanted Nita out of the way so she could cut more pieces off Fabricio.

  Nita didn’t want to think about that. She’d never been confronted with this level of violence before. When dead unnaturals were brought to her, everything was calm and structured. Her smooth white walls comforted her as she worked. They didn’t get spattered with blood and gore. That wasn’t what Nita had signed up for.

  Not that Nita had ever had a chance to sign up for anything.

  But she liked it. Had liked it. Nita had always had a scientific mind, and there was something fascinating about dissecting and learning about different unnaturals. And the more she understood about bodies, the more she began to understand the potential of her own ability.

  She’d always wondered if her ability could grant her immortality if she just figured out how to counteract the aging mechanism.

  She’d always wanted to go to college, to study and learn from professionals, to research with proper machines, to publish papers and discuss her theories on unnatural traits with others in her field. But her mother had refused to let Nita go—said she couldn’t be spared for some “waste of time and money.” So Nita contented herself with her biology journals and her dissections.

  But this wasn’t dissection.

  Outside, the sky was gray, sun barely visible. Nita walked out of her residential area, toward one of the main thoroughfares. People hung out the doors of small buses, calling out destinations to those on the street. Boutique stores and small cafés gave way to a wide plaza in front of Larcomar shopping mall, which hung off the edge of the bluffs. The open mall gleamed pristine and white, and beyond it, she could hear the gentle thrum of the ocean.

  Nita crossed the street to the wide path that meandered along the cliffs and overlooked the ocean. It went all along the coast, but Nita’s favorite part was the walk from Miraflores to Barranco. Just the sound and smell of the ocean hundreds of feet below her, and the steady rhythm of her own footsteps.