Bone Gods

and blocking the door with his bulk. “We just want—what’s the bastard’s name?”
    “Carver,” Pete supplied.
    Nasiri looked between the two of them. “You don’t want to do this,” she told Pete. “Whatever they’ve promised you, you have no idea what you’re about to do.”
    “They didn’t promise me anything,” Pete said. Nasiri’s calm and her lack of expression weren’t jibing. She should at least be furious, if not scared out of her wits. “What I’m doing is nothing you need to be concerned with.” She took Nasiri by the shoulder of her coat and steered her to the door. “I’m sorry to say this, but I’m going to have to get rough if you make noise or don’t cooperate. Let’s go. Get him out of the fridge.”
    Nasiri shuffled into the hall with Pete’s prodding, head down. “All right. If that’s the way you’re going to be.” She glanced back at Pete with each step as they walked to the cold room. The arctic air flowing from the vents above ruffled the plastic sheeting that lay over the corpses, transparent shrouds that did nothing to hide their last wounds and grimaces. Aside from the dead, the room was deserted.
    Jack shivered next to her. His eyes were nearly white, and she knew the dead in the tiny, metal-lined room were troubling his sight. She nudged Nasiri. “Just give us Carver and we’ll be out of your way.”
    Nasiri began checking the dead’s ID tags. “You still have to get out of here with him, you know.”
    Pete cast her eye on a pair of jumpsuits hanging on hooks by the door. “Nobody will notice one more body wheeling in and out, Nasiri. You know as well as I do the dead spook the holy Hell out of most decent sorts.”
    The doctor stopped at Carver’s corpse, double-checking the metal tag holder affixed to his body. “Then I suppose you’ve thought of everything. I won’t try to talk you out of this terrible choice again.”
    “That’d be nice,” Pete agreed. “Get his paperwork, too.” Nasiri was entirely too calm. If someone had snatched Pete and forced her to hand over a corpse, she’d at least give a try at bashing them in the teeth.
    “All right,” Nasiri said sadly, and turned to move among the carts to the wall where a row of clipboards with intake paperwork for the dead resided. Even in the arctic chill, Pete felt sweat on her palms. Her aches were a hundred times worse after having a few hours to set in, and dizziness was coursing over her in waves. At any moment they’d be discovered, by another pathologist or simply a hapless mortuary assistant going about their morning routine. Jack could take care of that. She just had to focus on getting Carver. Get the corpse, and she’d have leverage on Nick Naughton.
    She wasn’t terribly surprised, still, when Nasiri swung the metal clipboard holding Carver’s paperwork in a wide parabolic arc, slamming into Pete’s injured shoulder. The clipboard came back and smacked Pete across the temple.
    There was a flash, like a camera in her face, and Pete was on the floor. The cool tile pressed against her face, leaving a crosshatch of marks.
    Nasiri’s foot, in its plastic mule, came close and nudged Pete, who decided it was best to simply stay still. Above her, Nasiri picked up something from a surgical tray and pointed it at Jack. “I’m a doctor, crow-whore. I know how to cut a man so he bleeds. Get down there next to your woman.”
    Jack stayed where he was, the animal stillness that came over him when he faced something unexpected freezing him in place. “How’d you know who I am, luv?”
    “You people assume everyone around you is a blithering idiot,” said Nasiri. “You assume we think about takeaway and telly and football, and that we don’t see.” She went to Jack, grabbed him by the neck of his shirt, and yanked him to his knees, pressing the scalpel against the soft part of his neck, beneath his jawbone. “I see you, crow-whore. I see those bony, bloody wings across your back, and I can taste the ashes in your mouth.”
    Pete’s temple had started up a rhythmic throbbing, and she felt blood trickling down the edge of her eye socket and following her cheekbone. It cooled almost as soon as it hit the air. Another damned head wound for her collection. “Leave him alone. This was my idea.”
    Jack shook his head as he got down on all foors, and then touched his stomach to the floor, keeping his chin up. “She’s not just an especially observant sawbones, luv.”
    Nasiri