by Becca Andre
“Are you okay?” Ian asked, his voice echoing in the small, steel-lined space.
“This makes my skin crawl,” James admitted. “I can’t even remain the hound here.”
“I suspect a lot of people would be uncomfortable trapped in a small space.” Ian lifted his lantern to examine the room.
Where James had expected shelves or those little bank boxes, he found none. The walls were surprisingly bare. The only object in the room was an oblong wooden box resting on a couple of old crates stamped with a now-defunct gun manufacturer’s label.
“If there’s a book in here, it must be inside.” Ian nodded at the homemade coffin. “Shall I look?”
James swallowed. “It would be silly if I came all this way only to chicken out now.”
Ian eyed him. “The dead do not frighten you. I suspect you know who this is.”
James took another breath of musty dead air. “I have my suspicions.”
Ian studied him a moment longer, then handed him the lantern. He turned to the coffin and slid his fingers beneath the lid.
“Do you need a crowbar?” James asked.
“No. It’s not nailed shut.”
James nodded, though Ian was no longer looking at him.
Ian lifted the lid and set it aside. “The light,” he reminded James.
Steeling his courage, James stepped up beside him. The body in the box had indeed been dead a good while, but the conditions in the vault had slowed the decay process. The skin was mostly intact, though shriveled and sunken in where the muscle had rotted away beneath. The nightgown the corpse wore was stained with decay and what had killed her.
James looked away.
“She’s your mother, isn’t she?” Ian asked, his voice soft.
“I think so. Yes.” James swallowed. “How did you know?”
“Your reaction.”
James pressed his lips together, maintaining his silence. It bothered him that Ian could read him so easily.
Ian studied him a moment, as if considering saying more, then turned back to the coffin.
“There’s a box here.” Ian reached into the coffin and lifted out a wooden box. “Curious.” He ran his hand over the lid. Burned into the unfinished surface was a crude representation of the ouroboros: the twin dragons biting each other’s tails. The alchemical symbol for life and death.
“Henry said it was a box,” James whispered, accepting the worn box when Ian handed it to him.
Ian bent to retrieve the coffin lid. He replaced it with care, tapping it gently in place.
James found himself oddly touched by the reverence Ian displayed. Of course, Ian had worked in the funeral industry, so he knew what it meant to the surviving family to see the dead treated with respect. James just wasn’t certain if he qualified as surviving.
With the lid now in place, Ian faced him. “Shall I speak to Doug? With his resources, he could arrange a proper burial.”
“What does that even mean? She’s no less dead lying here than buried in the ground. And wherever our souls go when we ultimately leave the mortal plane is not the result of where we left our bodies.”
“True, but a burial has never been for the dead; it’s for the living. So by proper, I meant respectful. Laid to rest in love and remembrance by the living—or the almost living in our case.” He gave James a small smile. “I think it will make you feel better to see her treated in such a manner.”
“Instead of hidden away like a dirty secret?”
“Exactly.” Ian didn’t pull any punches. “Let’s take that”—he nodded at the box James held—“back to the lab, and I’ll give Doug a call when the hour is more appropriate.”
“Thanks.” He wanted to say more, but this was Ian. James still wasn’t completely comfortable expressing gratitude to the man.
James lifted the lid on the wooden box and glanced inside. Built-in dividers created smaller sections within the box, the largest holding a very worn leather-bound journal. A rusted iron collar lay in another compartment, its design shockingly similar to the collar James had recently worn—except this one was lined with spikes on the inside. Several of the joints within the chain held tufts of black fur. A smaller partitioned area held a cloth-wrapped bundle. Within the dry-rotted fabric, James found an old-fashioned glass vial containing a smudge of something brown.
“If I had to guess,” Ian said, “I’d say that’s blood.”
“Possibly.” James scrutinized the vial a moment longer before setting it on the counter.
The final item was a small oval frame containing a full-length portrait of an unknown man. A frayed ribbon that might have once been red was tied to the loop at the top.
“The clothing style suggests fifteenth century,” Ian said.
“If so, it’s in really good condition.” James turned the frame over, but found no identifying marks. “I wonder who he was?” He carefully returned the portrait to the box. It was surprising that these old items were so well preserved. George wasn’t the type to take care of anything. Certainly not archaic family heirlooms of no monetary value. They must have some meaning. Perhaps the book would tell him more.
James gently opened the cover to the first page. The ink was faded almost to the point of making it illegible, but he could make out enough to read the owner’s name. Richard Huntsman.
“The devil himself,” James whispered.
“Who’s that?”
“Richard Huntsman. The man who traded his brother’s soul to make himself the first Hunter.”
“Interesting. You know he visited an alchemist. Some say that alchemist was Paracelsus.”
James frowned at the words on the page. That would certainly make him think less of Paracelsus. “Wait. Richard Huntsman was supposed to have lived in the 1600s. Paracelsus died in the mid 1500s, right?”
“Did he?” Ian arched a brow, his expression smug.
“You’re not suggesting he was a necromancer.”
“No, but I strongly suspect he knew one. I find it hard to believe that the man who supposedly found the azoth—who might have been the azoth—died in his late forties.”
“I wonder if the answer is here.” James slid a finger beneath the page to turn it, but the corner of the brittle paper flaked away.
“Careful.” Ian clasped his wrist in his cold hand. “This is very old.” He released James’s wrist.
“I know.” James studied the open book. How had George read this? Maybe he was only repeating what their father had told him, passed down through the generations.
“What are you two up to?” Addie walked into the room.
James looked up in surprise. He’d been so intent on the book, he hadn’t heard her.
“And you’d hear her the moment she rose from her bed,” Ian said to him.
James was glad he’d taken a moment to pull on some sweatpants or he’d get a bigger lecture. “I was distracted.” He waved a hand at the box.
“Are you trying to hide something from me?” Addie asked, moving closer.
“No. He’s referring to an earlier discussion about my typical indecency,” James explained.
“He’s decent,” she said absently to Ian, leaning forward to look in the box. “Wow, that looks old. What’s all this?”
“My family history. It was hidden in the vault beneath the gun shop. Ian helped me retrieve it.”
“Oh my God.” Addie picked up the lid and stared at the ouroboros burned into the surface.
“There’s a journal.” James said.
“Seriously?” She laid the lid aside and leaned closer to read the flyleaf in the open journal. “Richard Huntsman?” She looked up at James, her eyes wide. “He’s the one who commissioned the creation of the first grim.”
“At the cost of his brother’s soul.”
“And he was a horrible, evil man to
do it,” Addie agreed. “But how it was done might be in here.” She reached out to turn the page.
James captured her wrist as Ian had caught his earlier. “The pages are too brittle to turn.”
“That’s just cruel.”
“I very much doubt there’s an alchemical formula written inside,” James said, caught somewhere between amusement and annoyance with her interest. “Richard Huntsman wouldn’t record any information on that.”
Addie tapped a finger to her chin, then without comment, walked to her laboratory workbench and pulled out a drawer.
James glanced at Ian, but he just shrugged, his expression amused as he watched Addie root through the drawer. “Ad?” James prompted.
“Here it is,” she announced, pulling a long, slender—was that a spatula?—from the drawer.
“What is that?” James asked as she returned to them. The only lab spatulas he’d seen were small tools, the flattened section only two inches long.
“I found it in a drawer when we moved in. The building was once used as a bakery.”
“Okay.” He frowned as she stopped in front of the journal. He began to understand what she was up to when she carefully slipped the spatula beneath the first page. “Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“No.” She gripped her lower lip between her teeth as she moved the spatula further beneath the yellowed paper. The body of the page seemed sturdier, withstanding her administrations better than the brittle edges. Gradually, she began to lift the page.
Another brittle corner flaked away.
“Addie?” James asked, still not certain this was wise.
“Just one page,” she said. “Later, I can give Donovan a call. I bet he can turn the pages. Maybe he can bring Era over to photograph them.”
“That sounds like a better idea. Why don’t—” James sucked in a breath as the page fell open. It separated from the binding near the top of the page, but otherwise held.
“Ha!” Addie’s tone was triumphant. She laid the spatula aside, then leaned forward to read the faded words on the page.
“Well?” James asked after she had frowned at it for a bit.
“The language is archaic,” she said. “This will take some study.”
“No formula,” Ian said, his eyes skimming over the page, “but I think you’re right about the grim being a product of ash alchemy.”
“You can read that?” she asked.
“It’s easier to decipher than some of the fifteenth century texts my mentor had me translate.”
She arched a brow.
“What does it say?” James asked.
“A loose translation”—Ian stopped to give Addie a smug smile—“is that the author watched the alchemist he had employed add a gray powder to the cooking pot. When he asked, he was told they were the ashes of a soul eater.”
“A hellhound?” Addie asked.
“Hellhounds don’t burn,” James said. “They can’t be ashed.”
“A soul reaper would be my guess,” Ian said. “The ashes of a soul reaper.”
Addie stumbled to the side, gripping the counter to maintain her balance.
James clutched her elbow.
“Déjà vu?” Ian asked, using the expression she always used for her memory surges.
“Yes,” Addie whispered. She continued to grip the counter, but seemed to recover her balance.
“Do you need to sit down?” James asked.
“No, I’m good. It was one of the wimpy ones.” She rubbed a finger under her nose, checking for blood. Sometimes memory surges gave her nosebleeds.
“You didn’t remember anything?” Ian asked.
“Nothing aside from the fact that I definitely studied grim creation.” She gave James a sheepish look.
“What?” James asked. “So you once studied an alchemical puzzle. That’s a shocker.”
She didn’t argue, but her forehead remained wrinkled with concern. She just couldn’t seem to move beyond the fact that her past was a dark one.
“Did you read anything else?” she asked Ian.
James gripped her arm as Ian cleared his throat. If she had another memory surge, he didn’t want her to fall.
“It seems this potion was prepared for the man’s brother.”
“The one whose soul he sacrificed,” James said. “The one who became the first grim.”
“The author has no interest in what the potion does, all it says is that it will enable his brother to take the power of a hellhound.”
“How?” Addie asked.
“I think we’ll have to read on to learn that—if it’s mentioned at all,” Ian said.
Addie groaned.
James was no longer listening to argument. He frowned at the words on the page. A soul reaper’s ashes had been used to create his ancestor. That might explain why he and Elysia were so compatible, magically. He remembered how he reacted when she fed him her soul. No other necromancer had ever made him feel like that. Then there was her blood…
“James?” Ian’s voice cut into his thoughts, and James wondered if that was the first time he’d spoken.
Addie leaned over and gripped James’s wrist. “What is it?”
“I was wondering if this might be why my magic reacts so strongly to Elysia’s,” James said.
“I suspect you’re onto something.” Addie glanced up at Ian. “What do you think?”
“It’s possible, I guess.” His tone was begrudging.
“It might explain why you can heal her,” Addie said to James. She suddenly smiled. “Maybe you’re her guardian, like your brothers were supposed to be yours—just a little less psychotic.”
“Thanks,” James said.
She gave him a wink, then turned to Ian. “Speaking of healing Elysia, shall we get started?”
“You should be sleeping,” Ian said.
“I should do a lot of things.”
“What do you need me to do?” James cut in.
Addie gave him a big smile. “Welcome back to the lab, Fido.”
Chapter 9
James placed the last beaker on the drying rack and turned to face the room, leaning against the sink behind him. It had been a long night, and his legs and back ached from being on his feet for most of it. But it felt good to be back in the lab. He had missed this.
Addie capped the vial of violet solution and gave it a vigorous shake before passing it to Ian. She looked as tired as James felt.
Ian removed the cap from the vial and took a small sip. Being truly dead, his body no longer functioned, but it didn’t matter. The alchemy worked on absorption, and taking it by mouth was simply a means of opening himself to its full effects.
Ian closed his eyes, and his forehead bunched in concentration.
“Well?” James prompted.
“Nothing.” Ian opened his eyes and his gaze shifted to Addie.
“Damn it.” She took back the vial and upended it in the sink.
James sighed. Hours of work literally down the drain.
“Why can’t I get this?” Addie demanded. “What’s the point of being the Quintessence if I can’t use it?”
“You’ll figure it out,” Ian said.
“Of course, but will I get it in time?” She stopped, her gaze leaving Ian for James. “I’m sorry. It’s just the frustration talking.”
“I know,” James reassured her. “Shall I start a new foundation?”
“No,” Ian said.
“Are you giving up?”
“Of course not, but Addie needs to rest—as do you.”
James crossed his arms.
“He’s right,” Addie spoke up. “I’m flailing around, accomplishing nothing. I need to regroup. To think.”
“To sleep,” Ian said.
She frowned at him.
�
��Well, I need to flail,” James admitted. “Can I prep some ingredients?”
“Mr. I-Don’t-Need-To-Sleep has already been flailing in that regard.”
“Hardly flailing,” Ian said. “I would describe it as keeping busy in a helpful manner.”
Addie smiled. “Ah, that’s what it’s called.”
“I need to do something,” James said, his frustration flaring.
“You could go growl at some of those reporters who won’t leave Rowan alone.”
“In my current state, I might give in to temptation and take a bite.”
“Go for it.”
“Addie,” Ian said.
“My moral compass.” She waved a hand at Ian.
“That’s just scary,” James said.
She gave him a wink. “Seriously, go see what Rowan is up to. He said something about a workout this morning. Maybe you can go kick the crap out of a sandbag.”
“Wouldn’t that make it a crap bag?” Ian asked.
Addie gave him a dark look. “You’re in rare form this morning.”
“It’s not that rare,” James said.
Addie laughed. “True. Go on, Fido.” She made a shooing gesture. “I’ll call you as soon as I establish a new approach.”
He agreed. Hoping it wouldn’t be long.
James grunted as Rowan’s foot collided with his ribs. Good thing all his injuries healed when he changed form. James moved with the hit, landing lightly on the balls of his feet, and tensed for Rowan’s next attack. It never came.
Rowan straightened, a frown shadowing his gray eyes. “You’re not concentrating—and that doesn’t help either of us.”
James rubbed his ribs. “Sorry.”
“Shall we try again or do I spar with Donovan some more?”
“I say try again,” Donovan called from his seat beside the water cooler. He and Rowan had been sparring when James arrived.
James smiled, amused that the big guy wanted a break from Rowan’s relentless workout. It wasn’t the first time.
“We can go again,” James told Rowan, absently sliding a finger beneath the steel necklace clasped around his throat.
“Do you want to spar without that?” Rowan nodded at the necklace.