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

Gallant, had been overwhelming at first. He couldn’t really call it fear because he was beyond that; he remembered what fear was, but to actually feel it again was something else entirely.
    He could hear them just fine, just as he could hear and feel the sloshing of the waves underneath the moving boat and taste the bitterness of the ocean on his tongue. He’d traversed it once before on a much smaller craft, but he would never become used to it. It made him uneasy being this close to something that could end him with so little effort, especially with so many things left to do.
    Mabry.
    He was there, waiting.
    And vulnerable, so vulnerable.
    “But you have to be absolutely sure ,” he heard Lara say now.
    “It’s him, Lara,” Danny said. “I made sure of it. He knows things only Willie boy would know.”
    How many times had he played this scenario over in his mind, during all the nights and days since his transformation? Too many, and each time the outcome was always different…and always the same.
    You’re not a man anymore. Don’t fool yourself.
    But he wasn’t fooling himself. He didn’t come here in a delusional attempt to regain his humanity. The only thing left now was action, to strike back at the enemy. To save them. Everyone.
    But mostly her…
    The grind of the door closing, then Danny, his voice clear as day even through the thick metal: “It’s a lot to take in. It took me a few days to just open the figurative door into the possibility of accepting it was even him, and I never slept with the guy—long, lonely nights in foxholes in the Stan notwithstanding.”
    “When did you know for sure?” Lara asked.
    “Not until Gallant, but I had my suspicions before then…”
    He let their conversation drift into the background in order to focus on healing.
    He was weak. Much, much too weak to do anything for them right now. If they wanted to, they could come in here and kill him. A bullet to the head. That was all it would take. It was ironic that for all the benefits of being turned, he didn’t have the near-invulnerability of the black eyes. But he didn’t have all of their weaknesses, either.
    He had reclaimed a lot of what made him him , but he would never be whole again. There were moments when the simplest things still eluded him—like the name of a book he used to love reading as a child, his favorite movie, a joke that Danny liked to tell even though it had gotten old a long time ago…
    Concentrate. He needed to concentrate on healing.
    Even with his pain receptors turned off, he could still tell how bad the injuries were. The muscles were torn and bruised and ripped, the tendons and sinews stretched beyond their abilities. There was no pain, but their current fragile state weighed heavily on his mind. Ironically, all the broken bones made lying inside the chest, crumpled up like a marionette with its strings cut, simpler.
    Irony? Or was that tragedy?
    Not that it mattered, but it would come to him eventually.
    It always did…

    * * *
    “ W here are you ?”
    He woke up to soothing darkness, the blue glow from his eyes the only thing keeping the narrow universe around him from being completely pitch black.
    “You’re running again.”
    The voice echoed inside his head, reaching out to him from the vastness of their connection with a calming hand. He had to resist the instinct to grab it, to beg for forgiveness, to give in and slip back into the hive like a good little boy.
    “I know what you’re planning.”
    No, that was a lie. A trick. The enemy didn’t know his plans.
    “It won’t work.”
    Are you sure about that? he wanted to ask, wanted to pull down his mental defenses—they were stronger now, with the extra day’s rest—and reveal his defiance. But he didn’t. Not yet. Not until the time was right.
    “You can still come home.”
    More lies. There was no home for him. There had never been. Not with them.
    His home was with her. Lara. It had always been. Even if she turned