“They’re from the Foundation. When they sent an official here to question me about the grave-robbing, they brought those photographs and left them here afterward with instructions to report back if I uncovered any clues. I was merely cooperating with their investigation. Mind you, I have my suspicions about who’s behind all this. Your mother never could resist pushing the boundaries of science and morality. She never met a taboo she didn’t want to break.” He let out a flat, bitter laugh.
A thin chill slid down Simon’s spine. He found himself thinking, suddenly, of Olivia’s funeral, his mother’s rage, the whispered argument between his parents. “Mother? You’re saying she took those bodies?”
Dr. Hawking rubbed his forehead with his fingertips. “Veera had been researching cell regeneration for some time. Creatures from the Eldritch Realm have strong regenerative properties. She believed that by injecting the cells of demons into the corpse of a dead animal, she could stimulate the animal’s organs to begin functioning again. Some of the subjects did appear to return to life. But only for a short while, and they shrieked in pain the entire time.”
Simon’s mouth had gone dry. “The mouse,” he murmured.
“You saw that, too, did you? Yes, that’s hers. Foolish of me, I suppose, keeping the results of her experiments here. If they were discovered, the blame would naturally fall on me. But I couldn’t bring myself to destroy them.”
“That means . . . Alice . . .” The pieces were falling together. “Mother is the one who brought Alice back.”
“I don’t know that for sure. But it seems highly likely.”
In Simon’s head, another piece clicked into place. “Olivia.” His heartbeat sped. “She tried to revive Olivia. Didn’t she?”
“Olivia is dead,” he whispered. “The dead do not come back.”
“But Mother did it, didn’t she? Just like with Alice. She brought her back!”
Dr. Hawking ran his hand over his face. “This is why I didn’t want to tell you. Because I knew that once you learned about Veera’s research, you wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about the possibility.”
“How can you not care? Your daughter might be alive, walking around out there right now!”
“Simon, what she created was not life. It was not Olivia. It was a grotesque parody of her.”
“But Alice—”
“Alice is not a reincarnated human; she is a reanimated corpse. A golem made of meat.”
“That’s not true. You’ve talked to her. You ought to know. She has memories, emotions—”
“Simon, listen.” He leaned forward and spoke with a quiet, feverish intensity. “When an animal dies, parasites invade its body. You can see them moving beneath its skin, inside its eye sockets. They eat out its insides and fill it up, so that it looks almost alive. But the animal itself—its mind, its spirit, if there is such a thing—is gone. Now, imagine if it worked a bit differently—if, when a creature died, it was eaten up not by a thousand maggots, but by a single organism that slid into its skin and wore it like a costume. To an observer, it would certainly look like the animal had come back to life. But it would be a lie.”
“So then . . . what? What are you saying?”
“I am saying that whoever or whatever ‘Alice’ is, she is not a human girl.” A muscle at the corner of his eye twitched. “Reanimating a body is not the same as bringing back a dead person. Even if your mother succeeded, what she created would not be our Olivia. Can’t you understand that?” He dragged in a shuddering breath. “I supported your mother’s research, when she first began dabbling in reanimation. Even before we lost Olivia, Veera was always curious about the subject. But the more I saw, the more I learned about the depths of her obsession with curing death, the more horrified I became. The mouse, she viewed as a success, but her failures . . . I saw things that should never have existed, that would haunt your dreams. And then, after what happened . . .” His head bowed. “I couldn’t bear the thought of my little girl’s remains being transformed into one of those . . . things. I didn’t want some half-alive doll stitched together from her pieces. That would have been even worse than putting her in the ground. And you don’t know how hard it was to let them put her in the ground, Simon. To accept, in my heart, that she no longer existed. Your mother . . . she couldn’t accept it. We both chose our paths. And neither one of us can return.”
Simon shook his head numbly. “I don’t know how much of this to believe. I don’t even know who you are anymore. If this is true, it means you’ve been hiding it from me for all these years. You lied to me. Not only that, you drugged me!”
“It was medicine. You needed it.”
“You told me it was just a sedative. But you put vinculum root in the pills. Or are you going to deny that?”
“That was supposed to be temporary,” he muttered. “I was planning to tell you. I waited too long.”
A chill feathered down Simon’s spine. “Tell me what? What are you talking about?”
Dr. Hawking stared blankly ahead, his fingers clenched tight on the glass. “Come closer. I don’t have the energy to shout across the room at you.”
Simon hesitated . . . then approached, slowly, and sat down in the chair across from his father’s. With his anger fading, he felt suddenly small and uncertain and very, very scared.
“You aren’t a normal Animist, Simon,” he said. “Ordinarily, when a child like you is born, the Foundation eliminates them. Quickly.”
“No.” His own voice sounded tiny and flat in the stillness. This was another lie. It had to be. “The Foundation might be corrupt, but they don’t kill children.”
“It’s all very humane, I’m told. A strong sleeping draught, a needle full of quick-acting poison. Quiet little deaths behind closed doors.” He poured himself more whiskey. “The Queen’s eyes are everywhere. But your mother . . . she has the most formidable intellect of anyone I’ve ever known. She devised a way to deflect the Queen’s gaze from you—to hide your power. A metaphysical cloak, she called it.”
“What power?”
“A power the Foundation fears more than anything. And they’re right to fear it.” He tilted his glass, watching the amber liquid slosh around inside. “You are a Chaos Animist, Simon. You can tap directly into the energy of the Outer Realm—the space between worlds. But humans can’t control that energy. It slowly eats away at their minds, drives them mad, transforms them into something unspeakable. Your mother told you the story, didn’t she? How one man destroyed a city, reducing it to a scorched crater, and how Eidendel was rebuilt on the ruins? Do you know what Eidendel means? It means ‘out of the ashes.’ And that’s all that was left—ashes—when he was done. Since then, there have been no Chaos Animists left alive. Until you.”
Simon sat, frozen. The floor had dropped out from under him, and he floated, suspended, like a pebble about to fall into an abyss.
Dr. Hawking took another swig of whiskey and coughed. “Your mother wanted to tell you. She believed it was possible to train you.” He shook his head. “Train you—a six-year-old child. Can you imagine? I said it was far too dangerous, that I wouldn’t put you through that. So I placed a block in your mind. A sort of . . . locked door, to prevent you from using that particular pathway. If you tried to access that power, even inadvertently, you would lose consciousness. For a while, it seemed to work.”
He thought back to that moment during the mission with Neeta, when he’d fainted. That flash of light.
“The block weakened over time, as I knew it would,” his father said. “The drugs were a secondary measure. Vinculum root dampens certain receptors in the brain, inhibits the ability to channel any form of nonmaterial power. Of course, a side effect is that you were unable to use meta effectively. I tried everything to discourage you from becoming an Animist, but—”
“You only started giving me the drugs later. After Olivia died.”
Dr. Hawking set the glass down and rubbed his trembling hands over his face.
Sim
on’s heart pounded. A cold line of sweat trickled down his spine. “Father?”
Dr. Hawking pointed at the bottle and gave him a sickly smile. “Sure you don’t want some?”
Simon wanted to knock the bottle off the table. “Why don’t I remember what happened to Olivia?”
He wouldn’t look Simon in the eye. “I had no choice but to lock away your memories of that night. If you’d remembered what you had done, it would have destroyed you.”
What he had done . . .
The room seemed to be rotating slowly around him. More puzzle pieces were tumbling into place: the gap in his own memories, the vague stories of an unidentified man who had attacked and then fled. The faint, lingering image of a dark figure. A shadow-thing.
“I know that some people believed I killed her,” Dr. Hawking said. “I allowed those rumors to circulate. It was better than letting anyone suspect the truth.” He took his glasses off, set them on the table, and rubbed his watery eyes. The gesture made him look suddenly, strangely childlike. “On that day . . . the day she died . . . your mother and I were arguing about some stupid thing, and you were upset. Olivia started crying. Veera stormed out of the house. Olivia started shouting at me, and I shouted back. You pressed your hands over your ears, shut your eyes, and screamed at us to stop. And then . . .”
A strange numbness crept over Simon; a high, tinny ringing filled his ears.
A knife of memory cut through his brain—an image of his father cowering in the corner of the dining hall, looking small, pale, and terrified. His leg had been ripped off, and blood pooled beneath the stump.
I did that.
“No,” Simon whispered.
“The younger the child, the purer and stronger the power,” Dr. Hawking said. “And the more easily it escapes.”
More flashes. Whirling shadows. Wind howling, bursting forth, as darkness bubbled out of his skin—as if some terrible, inhuman thing were clawing away at him from the inside, straining to escape. Furniture flying through the air. The table falling, pinning Olivia’s small body beneath it.
I killed her.
Somewhere through the icy horror, he found himself thinking about the tiny, useless imp he’d summoned back in Splithead Creek, hoping to impress Mayor Umburt. All his life, he’d thought his problem was lack of power. If I were only stronger, he had thought so many times, I could have protected her from the monster that killed her. He pressed his hands to his temples, as if he could squeeze the newfound knowledge out of his head.
The monster . . . was him.
The room began to shake. The whiskey bottle toppled off the table and shattered on the floor.
“Simon!” His father leaned forward and gripped Simon’s face between both hands. His palms were rough, and his skin smelled of whiskey. “Breathe.”
“I—I can’t—” A dull rumbling filled the air. The floor trembled beneath his feet. A low, inhuman wail escaped his mouth.
Dr. Hawking reached into his robes, withdrawing something. There was a sharp sting in Simon’s neck, and a fuzzy blanket of calm settled over him. His vision blurred, and he slumped forward, against his father. Dr. Hawking withdrew the needle from his neck. Simon glimpsed the glass hypodermic tube, filled with iridescent purple-black liquid.
Dr. Hawking slipped the needle into his pocket and leaned down so they were at eye level. “Listen to me.” His voice was faintly echoed and distorted. “What happened was not your fault. But you must never use this power again. Not for anything. The risk is too great.”
He wanted to shut out his father’s voice, to escape into sleep. He was so tired . . .
“Do you understand, Simon?”
He nodded numbly.
He drifted in and out of a black fog as Dr. Hawking carried him in his arms, like a small child, up the stairs. He was dimly aware of being lowered into his bed. Dr. Hawking pulled the covers up to his chest. He lingered a moment, staring down at him. Simon tried to focus on his expression, but his vision kept blurring. He heard retreating footsteps, then the click of the door shutting. A tear slipped from the corner of his eye, down his temple. His limbs were too heavy to wipe it away.
Moonlight filtered through the window, spreading softly across the stone floor. The drugs tingled through Simon’s veins, dulling the agony.
He hated it—wanted to deny it—but the familiar numbness felt good. After so long without those little black capsules, the injection had catapulted him out of his own body, and he floated on a little cloud somewhere above his pain. He knew the pain would be there for him, waiting, when he crashed back down. But for now, he just wanted to float.
Alice is still in danger, whispered a voice in his mind. She was locked away somewhere, a prisoner of the Foundation. Alone. She needed him. He tried to sit up, but his body wouldn’t listen.
He stared at the ceiling through hazy eyes, his thoughts spinning in every direction. He struggled to focus.
Mother hadn’t left him to track down Olivia’s killer—she’d left so she could continue her research, away from the prying eyes of the Foundation. So she could bring Olivia back. His sister might be alive and well, walking the Earth right now. And his father had hidden that possibility from him, all this time.
The drugs pressed down on his thoughts in a heavy, smothering blanket of nothing. He slipped into darkness.
When he woke, Simon’s body felt like rubber. His mouth and head were stuffed with cotton. But he was awake. Judging by the light outside the window, it was dusk or dawn; whether he had been asleep a few hours or a few days, he had no idea.
When he pushed himself to his feet, his legs wobbled but held. Leaning against the wall, he made his way slowly over to the door and tried the knob. Locked. He tried to channel, but when he reached for the warm, ever-present glow of meta, he ran into a cold wall inside himself. The drugs had left him helpless . . . or maybe his father had placed another block in his mind while he was unconscious.
He thought of Dr. Hawking’s face, his whiskey-reddened eyes, the way his voice had trembled.
His own father was terrified of him. And why not? Simon had ripped off his leg.
He forced his mind back to the present. Think. There had to be another way out. His gaze strayed briefly to the window, but no—it was too small to climb through, and even if he could, the drop would kill him.
A heavy, paralyzing despair crept through his body. He sank to the edge of the bed and bowed his head, burying his fingers in his hair.
No. It was too soon to give up. Think, think, think. The fog of the drugs still clung to his mind; he pinched the back of his hand and twisted, focusing on the pain. Slowly, his head cleared. There must be something here that could help him. He patted himself down, checking his pockets—empty, save for a stray coin and a bit of lint. Then his fingers found the amulet, still resting against his chest.
He pulled it off his neck and cradled it in one palm, studying the smooth green stone. At a glance, there was nothing special about it, but the old woman had seemed so strangely insistent about giving it to him.
What were the chances that a scruffy, half-crazed seller of gossip rags possessed an object of real power?
His fingers wandered over the gem’s surface. He breathed in. Focus. There. He could feel . . . something. A resistance in his mind, similar to the simple spell that held his compass shut. It required meta to open. He focused, gritting his teeth, trying to think past the wall in his mind, to think around it. Just a little. All he needed was the tiniest thread of meta, the barest flicker . . .
Come on, he thought. Come on, come on.
There!
The amulet snapped open. He let out a gasp, fumbling as the amulet slipped from his grip and bounced off the floor. A tiny glass bottle rolled out. Simon picked it up and examined the contents. It was filled with powdery gray ash.
Summoning ash.
He uncorked the bottle and spread the ash in a circle on the floor. He didn’t have a knife, so he bit down on his thumb. He had to bite
very hard—human teeth weren’t that sharp—and tears of pain stung his eyes. At last, he tasted the copper tang of blood. Panting, he squeezed his thumb, and three fat red droplets fell into the circle. “I call upon you, servant of the Eldritch Realm,” he whispered. “Claim my toll and lend me your strength.”
A puff of greenish smoke filled the air and stung his eyes and nose, making him cough. When the smoke cleared, a tiny creature sat on the floor. It was no larger than a squirrel, and resembled—more than anything—a furry orange newt with six short, plump limbs. A pair of sluglike antennae protruded from its head. It sat back on its haunches and blinked large black eyes up at him. “Huzzuh,” said a tiny, gruff voice.
Simon stared blankly.
“Huzzuh?” the imp said again. He thought he detected a trace of impatience in its tone.
“Uh . . . hello. My name is Simon Frost.”
The imp raised its paw—one of the middle set of limbs—and scratched behind its tufted ear.
His hopes were sinking rapidly, but he plunged ahead: “I’m trapped here, in this room. I need to get out. My friend is in serious danger.”
The imp peered up at him for a moment, then yawned, showing a curled purple tongue. A pair of iridescent dragonfly wings unfurled from the creature’s back with a snap. Simon gave a start. The wings were twice the length of its own body, damp and shimmering. They fluttered, then whirred, and the demon lifted off the floor like a fat, furry bumblebee. It drifted toward the window and bumped against the glass.
Simon opened the window.
“Huzzuh,” it said, with the same inflection as thank you, and flew out, vanishing into the darkness.
He paced the room for a while, then stopped, leaning his forehead against the wall. So much for that.
Tap. Tap-tap-tap. Something was knocking at the door. There was a scrape, then a click, and the door opened. The imp hovered outside.
Simon stared, openmouthed.
The imp turned, whirred down the hallway, then paused and glanced over its shoulder at Simon. “Huzzuh!” it said, and it sounded almost like hurry up.
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