Flawless//Broken (12 page)

The shadow shrank back as a police officer’s flashlight swept over the body. Two officers spoke, observing the body under the light.

“Poor guy. Whoever did it broke seven ribs, and all his fingers.”

“Christ,” the second officer sucked in a breath. “Must’ve had a grudge. Or seven.”

“The Deputy thinks it was torture,” the first officer corrected. “Cult stuff. See the cranial injury?”

They leaned in. The shadow shrank farther, the light concentrating on the corpses’ head practically burning.

“The examiner thinks they removed his brain.” The first officer sighed. They pulled back, the flashlight turning off, and the shadow oozed limply out from beneath the body in relief. A commotion at the police tape pulled the officers away, and the shadow resumed it’s infiltration of what remained of the corpse’s mind.

The officers were not wrong - Terrence had been tortured. Tortured by men in suits, in a grand room with a massive fireplace, and swords on the walls. They broke his fingers one at a time when he wouldn’t talk, and then his ribs when he finally did. The shadow could hear their voices like they were standing right there.

‘You saw her. A girl with black hair, in a shiny black dress. Fairly pretty. What was her ID?’

‘I-I told you,’
Terrence croaked.
‘I d-don’t remember!’

‘Enough of this,’
another voice said.
‘We’re wasting time. Use the Yoretold alchemy.’

‘No!’
The first voice argued.
‘If we do that, he’ll die! We do not senselessly kill, Brother!’

‘Finding Lalei is more important than this man’s life.’

‘P-Please,’
Terrence begged
. ‘Please…don’t kill me! I want to live - I want to -’

A flash of light. The shadow recoiled even from the memory-light. The gunpowder smell of an activated Alchemy filled the shadow’s senses, and then he felt what Terrence felt - the sensation of his cranium opening, and his brain being lifted from his skull as the men removed it to delicately pick through its memories in their labs. There was no pain. But then came the sweet smell of death, and the shadow pulled out of the memory before it too was consumed.

The shadow lingered, waiting for the right time to slip out from the body. It hitched a ride on a rat sniffing curiously at the body. An officer’s heavy footsteps scared the rat back into the mound of trash it came from. The shadow used the trash can’s shade, and from there the shade of a telephone pole, climbing to the very top of the building. Undulating like black water, the shadow razed through rooftop after rooftop back to its host - a shirtless young man standing completely still on the roof of a laundromat. His dark hair shaded his completely white eyes - eyes that snapped back to being a cold ice-blue when the shadow slithered up his jeans and settled on his back. The shadow spread its tendrils across the man’s skin like a snake coiling in a comfortable tree, each tendril turning hard and darker black than ever before. It only took seconds, and when it was done, the intricate symbol on the man’s back could pass for any tattoo - albeit a chilling one. At some angles it looked like a demonic skull, at others, a black moth with terrifying eyes on the wings.

The young man coughed, the information the shadow learned flooding his senses all at once in a waterfall of pictures, scents, noises. As he processed it, he grabbed his shirt from the ground and pulled it back on, his high-collared coat over it for good measure. Tonight was cold.

And tomorrow would only be colder.

***

The house is too quiet.

It’s always quiet, the way a catacomb is; cold silence and lonely marble. I chose it because it seemed the perfect grave for an unalive monster like myself. But for a brief moment when Mia was here, the house had been alive. It’s walls echoed with a new voice, a new presence. Now it’s cold once more.

Reeves fixed the windows with lightning speed and accuracy, and disposed of the Mutus body. All traces of the Mutus attack are gone, save for a rapidly-healing cut on Avalanche’s leg.

I re-adjust a length of prima materia, my lab beakers boiling around me. The weapon I’m making is astounding even me. With the girl’s Azoth, anything is truly possible. It’s an elixir, invigorating even the dullest, oldest scrap of prima materia. It’s potency is nearly ten times the Cochlear average, and it refuses to be filtered to any higher purity decibel. I’m not entirely sure of the power of what I’m making, and it scares me. Thrills me. I am a small god, in a godless land.

I splay my hand on the lab’s stainless steel surface, and measure my fingers carefully. Each finger is worth something different, in order of usage - the thumb is most valuable, and even more valuable when it’s your own. Countless alchemists have sacrificed their thumbs for great feats. I won’t need all the thumb, in this instance.

I measure again, and raise the cleaver.

The pain is brief, as all pain is when one is a homunculus. It’s not real pain, but a ghost of it. I ignore the dull throb, the bloodless joint, and put the thumb into a bowl next to the prima materia. I sprinkle three grams of Mia’s blood over it, resisting the primal urge to drink it all right then and there.

“
Mutatis mutandis
,” I murmur.

The blood-spackled mess contracts into one perfect sphere of flesh and prima materia, light gathering where the blood gleams. The light spreads across the orb’s surface, changing it, shaping it, making it smaller and sharper. When the light fades, a demure, flawless sapphire rests in the bottom of the bowl, shining like an ocean wave in a mirror.

“How curious,” A deep, sardonic voice resounds. “And here I was, under the impression you’d promised the Sage Council not to use fresh Azoth in your experiments anymore.”

I close my eyes and muster what’s left of my patience.

“I have little time for you now, Rothschild,” I say.

The man emerges from the shadows like smoke, his hair a dark brown and kept ragged, though it lingers in his ice-blue eyes. His looks have kept true over the decades - not a single line mars his fierce face. The women alchemists love that face - they talk of it constantly, and he only eggs it on by being a ferocious ladies man. His hawk nose and proud brow are handsome in all respects, but beneath the savage beauty lies a serpent’s wit, and a serpent’s bite.

“A pity,” Rothschild pulls his peacoat tighter around his neck. “Considering you’re the only one on Earth who has all the time in the world.”

“How did you get in?” I pour the sapphire out and examine it under the light.

“Come now,” Rothschild smirks. “You know the shadow has me. You were there the day it bound me. It lets me walk where I please, when I please. Takes a lot of the fun out of breaking in, regrettably.”

I know very well the dark tattoo that rests on his back. It is power incarnate - though even I have no idea where it came from or how it came to be. It’s not alchemy, nor is it born of the science of humans. I’ve always thought it was something else entirely, though the thought unsettles me. I’ve seen horrors of every kind in my lifetime - war, famine, pillage and plunder. But his tattoo and the faint whispers one can hear if one stands too close to it is the only thing that still makes me shiver in fear.

“What do you want?” I ask wearily. Rothschild sits on the divan, legs crossed confidently.

“I’m doing you a favor,” He sighs. “By telling you this first, and not the Sage Council.”

“What is it?”

“It’s my friends, the Mutus. They think that girl of yours is holy.”

I look up, my eyes piercing into his. Rothschild has long been a double agent for the Sage Council, posing as a Mutus alchemist to feed us information. Why he does it no one knows - but I’ve always thought he did it to rebel against Oliver Rothschild - his father, and the head Archduke of the Mutus.

“She’s not mine,” I correct sternly.

“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” He singsongs.

“What is your point? Get to it.”

“As you may or may not know, we’re at constant war with them,” He continues. “And they’re more or less a cult. But they’ve gone truly insane, now. They think she’s Lalei, back in the flesh. They killed a bouncer with a Yoretold alchemy to try and track her down via her ID.”

My fists clench. Lalei - the Mutus’s version of Jesus. Lalei was the bride of their alchemist god, whose name they cannot speak, calling him only The Deep. She was an Azoth of great power, such that her Azoth enabled The Deep to create the world and everything in the universe. Or so their story goes. The Mutus worship Lalei as a goddess, and their obsession with her ‘return’ is second only to their obsession with creating homunculi, whom they view as her children.

My nerves begin to writhe. If they think Mia is Lalei reborn, they will stop at nothing to have her. Absolutely
nothing
. A Yoretold alchemy - designed to pull the memories from a person’s brain and display them to the alchemist - is forbidden. It’s an alchemy that deserves a life sentence in the Darklands. They’ve always skirted the line between legalities, and murdered to get their way, but the Mutus have rarely used forbidden alchemy. Until now.

Avalanche pads into the lab, her white fur glistening. When her blue hunter’s eyes find Rothschild, she begins to growl, hackles rising.

“Ava, down,” I say. Rothschild chuckles.

“It’s fine, really. All animals hate me on sight. One of the many perks of being shadow-held.”

Avalanche, never lowering her hackles, trots over to me and nuzzles my hand reassuringly. She will protect me, her eyes say, against anything and everything, even my guest, even his shadow, and even my own sadness. I look down at the weapon I’m making, the sapphire waiting eagerly to become part of it. The weapon must be more powerful than all the Mutus in the world. I must see to it that Mia is safe - that my one chance for redemption is safe.

“If you’ll excuse me,” I say. “I have much more work to do than I previously imagined.”

“So much work,” Rothschild complains. “Leave it to the Sage Council. I thought you stopped trying to beat the Mutus a long time ago.”

“I did. But now I have a reason to try again.”

Rothschild stands, flicking hair out of his eyes and laughing. “You’re so fickle, Darius. Stop wavering and start choosing. That girl will need protection, and if we leave it all to you and your deathwish, who knows what will happen.”

“Shut up,” I snarl.

Rothschild is ice where I am stone, and fears me least of all alchemists. His shadow and my ancient homunculus soul are evenly matched. He is the only one who could kill me. I am the only one who could kill him. Over the years we’ve found some grudging semblance of brotherhood. He flinches at my tone, and I regret it.

“So does this mean you won’t keep trying to off yourself?” He murmurs, fierce brows drawing together.

“No. I’ve found a reason to live again.”

“Is it the girl?”

I don’t say anything. Rothschild tugs his coat tighter around him and walks through the door, his words echoing.

“Just make sure she doesn’t become a reason to die, Darius. I’d hate to see you broken for good.”

Avalanche calms when he’s gone. She licks my hand in a gesture of both comfort and question. What’s wrong?

“War is coming, Ava,” I say softly, kneeling to pet her. “And I’m afraid it will tear the world in two.”

***

Ellie gets used to Lake following me around after a few days. She invites him over for dinner, when he’s around. Half the time I think he’s gone, he appears just behind me - when I’m shopping at the grocery store, when I’m doing laundry, when I’m cooking. I get paranoid that he’s watching me change, and shower, but he promises me on his mother’s honor that he isn’t.

“I’m not a total perv,” Lake insists as we walk down the sidewalk. “Just…a sometimes perv.”

I roll my eyes. “That’s not very comforting.”

“Look, I’ve never spied on you, or Ellie. That goes against my principles.”

“What principles?”

“My principles to always protect my clients. And if they’re ladies, protect their honor, too.”

I laugh and shake my head. “So, wait. Where do you go when I can’t see you?”

He smirks. “That’s a trade secret.”

“You’ll have to tell me someday,” I say, hefting my cloth shopping bag higher. “Or I’ll sniff it out.”

“Is that a threat?” Lake teases.

I don’t answer him, the food bank coming into view. The line around the building is long, just the same as in Idaho. Turns out hungry people look the same everywhere. Moms with kids try to keep them from running into the street, scolding them and wiping their sticky cheeks with their thumbs. Old veterans in tattered army jackets clutch cloth bags, smoking cigarettes or looking too tired to do much more than close their eyes and sigh. I get in line behind a tall, ragged homeless man. Lake stands beside me. If this was my first time coming to the food bank, I’d be embarrassed. But I’ve been coming to these guys for years to get food when Dad slacked or forgot. If Lake has anything to say about us coming here, he doesn’t show it - his face is carefully blank.

The man in front of me drops something, but he doesn’t see it. He moves forward with the line, and I scoop the thing up - a wallet. I tap his shoulder, and he turns.

“You dropped this, sir,” I say. His eyes twinkle behind his tangled beard as he takes it.

“Thank you, that’s real nice of you.” He rummages in the very-empty wallet, and takes out a dollar, one of the few dollars in it. He offers it to me. “Somethin’ for your niceness.”

“No, I couldn’t,” I smile. “I’ve got enough.”

“So do I,” he grins crookedly. “A good deed deserves another. Go on. Please.”

I look to Lake, who nods. I take the dollar and thank the man. He walks into the food bank’s doors, and we wait outside for our turn. Lake nudges me.

“Good work.”

I stare at the dollar. “I feel bad taking it.”

“Don’t. That guy might be homeless, but he’s still got his pride. That’s probably one of the only things he’s got left. It’s important to him. You did the right thing by honoring it.” Lake smirks, opening the glass doors for me as the line moves up. “After you, Princess.”