by Kat Cotton
He could be as charming as he liked with his super-toned body and those eyes, but I didn’t fall for that shit. I tucked a lock of hair behind my ear and smiled. Okay, maybe I fell a bit. He was a pretty hot alchemist.
“Where’s Fleur?” I asked. It was best to get straight to the point.
“Thanks to your interference, the Council now have her in their power. But, of course, you weren’t to know that.”
“Dude, don’t put the blame on me. I did nothing.”
“You opened the entrance. You let them in.”
Cripes! I had? I had opened the entrance; that was true, but I hadn’t done it to let them in. I wanted them nowhere near me.
“You mean…”
He turned those blue eyes on me. “Of course you didn’t realize. The Council had hoped you’d find the key to opening my lab from the time you began your investigation. That’s why they wanted you working for them. Unfortunately, I was unable to prevent that. When you opened one entrance, you also opened others. These things are all interconnected, and now the underground world is no longer safeguarded.”
“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
Hell, why had no one told me that? Why did people even give me power? They should give it to someone more responsible.
“I can fix things,” he said. “But it will take me a few days, and with things as they stand, they are going to be a crucial few days. You sure are a catalyst, Clem.”
“Well, I think your habit of plucking tourists out of tour groups was plenty catalyst enough.”
“Follow me,” he said.
I exchanged glances with Kisho. Was this guy safe to follow? I’d had some bad experiences in this life, following people when they asked me to. This wasn’t my first rodeo, by any means.
“You’re safe,” the alchemist said. “I need to show you something.”
I went on glaring at him. Did he think I was a fool?
“I have cake,” he said.
“Okay, I’m coming.”
“My research led me to believe you were fond of cake.”
“Your research didn’t let you astray, Philbert,” I replied. “It was pretty much as on point as you can get.”
“My research often is.”
He smiled at me again. The dude didn’t have great teeth. I guessed back in the 16th century, dentistry wasn’t too advanced. Still, he’d had a few centuries to work on that. Maybe he’d put all his effects into that body instead. Beside him, Kisho looked tiny, and Kisho wasn’t a small guy.
“Tell me more about the Council,” I said as I followed him down the passageway.
“I hate to tell you this, but they used you. They wanted a way into my laboratory, and they knew you’d find it. They’ve been watching you all along, waiting.”
Bastards. I should’ve known. I’d known they were watching me, but I hadn’t known why. I hated those guys so much.
“Why me?” I asked. “They seem to have enough staff of their own.”
Philbert turned to me. “Because you’re special.”
“Yeah, I know that. But, still…”
“You don’t know the extent of your powers.”
“Powers, yeah. They aren’t much use to me with these things on my wrists. Say, with all this alchemy stuff, you don’t have a way of breaking me free of them, do you?”
We’d reached a door, and Philbert did some wavy hand thing to open it. It looked pretty cool. The door opened, and he led us into a cozy little room. If I had to live underground, I wondered if Philbert would share his cozy room with me.
There was a super-comfy-looking sofa in the corner, obviously designed for napping, and some pictures on the walls. Even a sideboard with some knick-knacks.
A prissy lacy tablecloth covered the small round table in the center of the room, and that table been set for a tea party. It all seemed crazy and surreal—this room like a Victorian parlor right under the middle of Prague was weird enough, but that parlor belonging to the super-buff alchemist made it all the more bizarre.
I wouldn’t question it, though. Not when a tiered cake plate full of toothsome treats had caught my eye.
“Take a seat. I’ll make tea.”
We sat down. Kisho didn’t seem very happy, so I reached over and took his hand. While we sat, wondering what the hell was going on here, Philbert walked over to a little kitchen area and set a big cast-iron kettle on the cooktop. The rest of the room had an Old World feel, but that kitchen area seemed as modern as his lab. Well, except for that old witch kettle.
“I’ll take a look at those cuffs while the kettle boils,” Philbert said.
I held out my hands, and he ran his long, slender fingers over the metal. Those fingers seemed so delicate compared to the rest of his body.
While he did that, I stole glances at those cakes. Until Philbert let go of my hands, I couldn’t exactly start eating. But those cakes weren’t getting any fresher.
“There is some strong power in these,” he said.
“Tell me about it. I’ve been zapped into agony too many times. So, Philbert, can you remove them?”
“You can call me Phil.” He twisted his mouth, making funny faces. “I don’t think I can remove them. It would require the kind of powers I don’t have. You have the power, but you can’t use it on yourself, unfortunately. Also, I think those powers are too primal in you.”
My heart sank. Without the cuffs, I had a chance of freedom from the Council, but with them, I was their bitch. And this dude was tripping out, talking about my powers. I’d eat his little cakes, but I’d stay well clear of any brownies in case they were laced with something.
“I might be able to do something to render them temporarily ineffective. In return, I want a favor.”
Yep. Always with the favors. Just once, I’d like to meet someone who wanted to help me without wanting something in return.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I need to rescue your friend, Fleur, from the Council.”
I grinned. We had the same aim. But I had a reservation. “Why do you want her? If you plan to do freaky tests on her, then no deal. I’m not subjecting her to that.”
He got up to check the kettle. “What do you think the Council are doing to her?”
As he poured the water into a delicate china teapot, I popped one of those tiny cakes into my mouth. Damn, that was some delicious cake. Alchemy was all well and good for making metals into gold and eternal life and all that, but the greatest alchemy magic was transmuting ordinary shit like flour and sugar into the masterpiece that was those cakes.
“Well, either way, it’s not good. She’s not a test subject,” I said when I’d finished eating the little cake. “For you, or anyone.”
He turned back to face me. “She willingly assisted me in my research once I had explained it to her. I’m not a bad person. I’m a scientist.”
I was pretty sure that in the 21st century, alchemy wasn’t considered a legit science. And I was pretty sure that “bad person” and “scientist” weren’t mutually exclusive things, either.
Philbert poured the tea and sat down. “I guess I should explain everything to you. Help yourself to the cakes. Oh, you already have.”
I smiled at him and got myself one of those chocolatey-looking cupcakes with the purple sprinkles on top. Man, Nic would be so disappointed when I told him about this. If I ever got to talk to him again. Hell, if Nic died, I’d never be able to eat a cake again without a twinge of sorrow. That would suck. Reason enough to keep Nic alive.
“Explain away,” I said.
“I’ve been working on an experiment for a long time. Something that will change the world.”
“Gold?”
“Not gold. That’s child’s play. I’ve been working on something that will unite the vampire and human worlds.”
I didn’t like that sound of that. The last time someone had wanted to do that, he’d ended up being the evil Vampire King, and he’d wanted to destroy all humans. Was it such a wor
thwhile cause, anyway? I thought the separation worked well in most cases. You never saw many humans wanting to live amongst vampires, and vice versa, except in extreme cases, like vampire groupies.
“What were you planning?” Kisho asked.
“The reason humans despise vampires is that vampires feed on human blood,” the alchemist said.
“Yep, understandable. I mean, it’s not that great,” I said. Shit, the look on Kisho’s face. “I mean, if it’s all consensual and safe, then fine, but draining people to death and all that, not so cool.”
“Vampires don’t need blood. It’s not at all about that,” Philbert said. “What do they want from the blood?”
“Food,” I said.
“Energy,” said Kisho.
Philbert nodded. “Energy. Exactly.”
I wasn’t wrong. Food was energy, and since I needed to keep mine up, I took another couple of those cakes.
Philbert went on, “If vampires could bypass the whole blood-sucking process and get the energy directly, it would remove all of the fear and suspicion that surrounds them.”
“So, you’re making an energy drink?” I asked. “Like a Red Bull for vampires?”
He raised his brows. “You could say that.”
“Have you made other stuff like that?” I asked. “Like, say, some steroid substitute for vampires? Because, dude, don’t tell me you had that body back in the 16th century. People in the old days were never pumped, and vampires don’t change body shape.”
Philbert raised his eyebrows. “And you have extensive knowledge of the 16th century because…?”
“Because it’s common knowledge. You never see those dudes in paintings looking super-pumped, do you?”
He sighed. “I might have given nature a helping hand.”
“What about homunculi? Have you made them? And if so, why? What’s the point of them?”
He shook his head. “I’ve never messed with human life forces.”
Kisho clicked his tongue. He looked a little annoyed. “Back to the important facts. The Council wanted to destroy your research,” he said. “Of course, if vampires are no longer feared, then the Council loses its powers. They don’t have an enemy to fight.”
“They have plenty of enemies,” I pointed out. “It’s not all vampires, you know. There’s heaps of other shit out there.”
“But vampires are the main enemy,” Philbert said. “The top of the hierarchy. Close to human, but not quite. All those other demons and pesky things, they’re little more than vermin. They might be called the Demon Fighters’ Council, but their main target is vampires. People are willing to let them get away with a lot of shit because they keep the vampires at bay. If vampires aren’t feared, their power disappears.”
“So, they destroyed your lab?” Kisho asked.
Philbert chuckled. “They destroyed some of my work, but all my research and all my notes aren’t in the lab. What they took was worthless to them. Everything except for Fleur. She had something in her blood that I needed to trace. Something missing from human blood. That’s why I need to find her.”
“This super vampire juice sounds all well and good, buddy, but let’s not forget one thing,” I said. “You captured innocent people off the streets to use in your experiments. That can’t be considered a good thing, no matter what end you had in sight. It’s no better than what the Council want to do to me. It’s no better than what those horrible cosmetic companies do to poor puppies and bunnies.”
The alchemist hung his head. At least he didn’t try to justify himself. We’d seen those people in his cages. There was no way he could say he was being nice to them.
“On the positive side, I did watch them first,” he said. “I only pluck out people who were pretty awful to start with. Drunken sleazes and litterers, jerks with selfie sticks. Anyway, we both have a need, and that need is to rescue Fleur, so we’ll work together for the common good, then go our separate ways.”
“You do not get Fleur, not unless she agrees to it in my hearing.” I needed to work with this guy, but I couldn’t do it at Fleur’s expense.
“Deal,” said Philbert.
I nodded. “Let’s do it. First, we get these cuffs off. Bye, bye, cuffs. It’s been nice knowing you.”
Chapter 38 Cuffs
“SO, OKAY, HOW ARE WE going to do this?” I asked.
We’d been taken to another room. This one was an older version of the lab we’d found, more like the old labs at the museum, all rough stone walls with some medieval-looking furnaces and a fuck-ton of dust. The earthy smell was strong here, mixed with the sweet and bitter scents of the various herbs drying around the room.
This guy had a veritable suite of apartments under the city.
“It’d be a lot easier if I could use fire,” Philbert said. “But that might cause irreparable damage. It’s a very delicate process, transmutation. We don’t actually need to turn the metal to gold, of course.”
I didn’t want to mention that turning it to gold would be pretty damn cool.
He put his head to the side and went on talking a lot of technical talk I didn’t really understand. I tuned him out. I didn’t need to know how he’d do this, just that it was done. As he talked, Kisho interrupted occasionally with questions.
I’d expected the alchemist to have this figured out already. It’d be, like, abracadabra, and the cuffs would be all harmless. Instead, he seemed to be running through a list of possibilities.
“Drink this,” he said, handing me a glass of something milky-looking.
I scoffed it down, then choked and spluttered. That stuff was more bitter than the matron at the orphanage where I’d grown up. “What the hell was that?”
“Something to help the process. It’s an herbal mixture. It will protect you.”
“It tastes like shit. You could’ve warned me. Do you have something to take the taste out of my mouth? More of those little cakes, perhaps?”
He shook his head and kept examining the cuffs.
I bet he hadn’t even needed to give me that stuff. He just wanted to make me suffer. Even if it was in my best interests to work with him now, I couldn’t forget that the guy had just plucked random tourists off the street to use in his experiments. That really wasn’t cool. He’d probably ruined their entire vacations, maybe their lives.
At the moment, he was just the lesser of two evils.
I looked at those cuffs again. “Hey, Philbert, is there a reason they don’t work down here?”
“The same reason you can’t get WiFi.”
“We could take the battery out,” I said. Then I laughed, because, obviously, it wouldn’t be that easy.
“That’s it!” Philbert grinned.
“No, that’s not it,” I said. “If that was it, we’d have done it already. I sent photos to Andre, and he couldn’t work out a single way to incapacitate them. There’s nowhere to get at the battery, not without taking the cuffs off, which is impossible. It’s not like there’s a little slot you can shove a knife into and remove the casing.”
He turned my hands over. “I’m not taking the battery out. I’m going to destroy the power source so they become useless. That will be much easier than trying to alter the cuffs themselves.”
“You can destroy all the zappy bits, while you’re at it. They’re the real evil.”
“This will deactivate them for about a day or so before the Council can get them functioning again. The clock is ticking, but it’s the best I can do.”
I nodded. A day without these cuffs would be sweet.
He drew a design on the floor with chalk, all criss-crossed lines. Then he made me stand in the middle of it. I shivered, the room suddenly feeling very cold. That was weird. Most of the underground areas had been so warm.
“You feel the cold?” Philbert asked. “That’s good.”
I guessed it was good if he said so. I wasn’t the one with the alchemy knowledge, here.
“It means you feel the power,” he added.
&
nbsp; I wasn’t sure if half of what this guy said was trickery. I didn’t feel any power. Just cold.
Philbert unlocked the bottom half of a cabinet and got out a small vial.
Kisho moved closer, peering at the red powder. “Is that a philosopher’s stone?” he asked, his eyes widening.
I wouldn’t have called it a stone. More like a philosopher’s powder.
Philbert covered the vial with his hand. “No, no. It’s nothing like that. Not at all. Why do you think that? Now, stand back, please.”
Kisho gave me a look that said, This guy is lying his pants off. He wasn’t wrong there. Philbert rubbed his nose, another obvious sign of lying, on top of everything else.
But then, Kisho didn’t have to fangirl over some red powder, either. If it did the job, I didn’t care what kind of a stone it was. Philbert was obviously very protective of that red powder, and he was using it to fix me. I had to appreciate that.
“I thought the philosopher’s stone was a myth,” Kisho said.
“It is,” Philbert said, his gaze darting around the room. “A total myth. More than anything, it was a metaphor. Never a real substance.”
Philbert grabbed a small dish from the top of the cabinet and poured a tiny amount of the red powder into it. He then locked the vial back away and hid the key to that cabinet.
“Okay,” he said with a concerned expression directed at Kisho. “You hold the dish. Do not touch the powder. Do not even look at it.”
He held the dish in front of me, and Kisho put his hand underneath it. No matter what the alchemist had said, Kisho looked at that powder. He stared at it. I did too. It didn’t seem like anything special to me.
Then Philbert grabbed my hand and held it over the dish. He took a knife and slashed one of my fingers, then squeezed a few drops of blood into the powder.
“Is that knife sterile?” I asked. “I don’t want to be freed from these cuffs only to get tetanus or some olden-days disease.”
“It’s sterile,” he said. He used the tip of the blade to mix my blood and the powder, then for me to put my arms up. He put his fingertip into the powder mix and then worked a strange pattern over the cuffs.