The Alchemist's Flame (25 page)

“Cole.”

“He said you wouldn’t cure me. That you were weak now, afraid to take a chance.”

A finger of dread stroked along my spine. “Neil.” They hadn’t been alone long at the city morgue, but it might have been long enough. Now that I thought about it, I remembered Colby knocking Neil out into the hall right after Neil mentioned his ability to remove Colby’s power.

“You’ve been in contact with Neil,” I said.

“Yes. He waits for me now.”

“Stay away from him. He’s not what he seems.”

“What’s that? A better alchemist than you?”

I snorted at his effort to rile me. “He’s a self-serving megalomaniac.”

“And you’re not selfish? If you cared at all, you would cure me. I bet you would cure Rowan if he asked.”

“Rowan wouldn’t ask.”

“Right, I forgot. He wants to be a martyr.” He turned and walked away.

“Colby, don’t go.”

He waved me off and climbed into his rental car.

I ran after him. “Colby!”

He gunned the engine, the tires squealing as he pulled out of the small parking area behind my lab. I ran to the curb, but he was long gone before I got there.

“Damn it!” I stomped my foot, then ran back to the lab. I slammed the door behind me and hurried to the phone. I called Rowan’s cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Colby must be right about the reception. I could try to send him a text, but I would need to run upstairs and get my cell phone. It would probably be easier to call the front desk at the lodge and have them put me through to his room.

I picked up the phone book and began thumbing through the pages. A series of loud bangs on the back door made me jump. Had Colby returned? If so, he sounded pissed.

Maybe I should call James. I grabbed the phone just as the back door slammed open. I didn’t have time to make a call.

I ran to my shelf of potions and picked up one of my newly designed Knockout Gas canisters. It was the same formula as my Knockout Powder, just in aerosol form. I doubted it would work any better on Colby than the powder had, but it should give me enough time to call James. I didn’t think Colby truly intended to cause me harm. He probably wanted to scare me into throwing some X Dust at him.

I revised my suspicions when multiple sets of footsteps pounded down the back hall. I armed the canister, ready to throw it, when half a dozen men in black fatigues spilled into the room. I couldn’t help but remember the liches Neil had sent after me time and time again. They had been PIA agents.

A large black man stepped forward,
PIA
stamped in white across his broad chest. “Put down the canister and step away from the potions, Miss Daulton.”

“Agent Johnson?” I recognized him from the night Rowan and I had visited the PIA offices.

“Do as you’re told.” He barked the words, no warmth in his voice.

Puzzled, I returned the canister to the shelf.

“Now move away,” Johnson said.

I took a few steps to the side and a pair of agents came forward. The taller of the pair shoved me against the counter. “Hands on your head.”

I did as told, then chewed my lip as his partner patted me down. He found a vial of lavender oil in my pocket, but that was all.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

No one answered me. The others fanned out and began to search the lab. The pat down over, the first agent pulled my hands from my head and cuffed them behind my back.

Finished, he turned me to face him. “You have the right to remain silent…”

“You’re arresting me?”

He ignored my question and continued to read me my rights.

“Found it,” one of the other agents called. He was going through the cabinets beneath Ian’s workbench. The agent lifted out a large Mason jar and set it on the counter.

I cringed. It must be one of the body parts Ian kept as ingredients. Most were internal organs taken from a funeral parlor where he had worked before his entombment. But the PIA didn’t know that.

“I can’t find the other guy,” a different agent said, returning to the room from the stairs to my apartment.

“Where’s your accomplice, Miss Daulton?” Johnson asked me. “The blond man who was bragging about the body parts he collects.”

They were looking for Ian, too?

“He wasn’t bragging,” I said. “I was teasing him. I—”

“I guess you find this funny.” He picked up the Mason jar and held it before me.

I stared at the fresh human heart floating in a clear golden liquid. That wasn’t Ian’s.

Johnson shifted his grip, exposing a printed label pasted to the side of the jar. Two words were written on the label: Megan Fields. It was the jar Ian and I had seen in Xander’s cooler last December. It seemed that Gavin’s sole reason for visiting my lab hadn’t only been to dismember Ian.

Chapter
25

I
paced from one end of my cell to the other, glancing frequently at the clock on the opposite wall. I imagined James’s brothers doing the same thing while imprisoned here. Pacing like caged beasts. I could almost feel sorry for them. Almost.

Agent Johnson had brought me straight down here the moment we arrived. I demanded to see Waylon, but he had ignored me, locked me up, and walked out. I hadn’t seen anyone since—and that had been almost two hours ago.

The rest of the cells were empty—for which I was grateful—but being alone down here was unsettling. I couldn’t help but think about Gavin popping in to free George and Henry. I hoped Gavin didn’t find out that I was here, alone. I remembered the way his eyes had dilated when he said he wanted to taste me. I shivered.

A bright yellow mop bucket on wheels sat at the far end of the corridor. A mop handle stuck out of the top and several bottles of cleaner hung by their nozzles around the perimeter of the bucket. I could probably formulate something from them, if I could reach them. But nothing I could make would help my situation. It would most likely get me in more trouble.

“How about my phone call!” I shouted.

Silence answered me.

“Damn.” I walked over and sat down on the edge of my cot. What if they let me sit in here all night? It was already after six o’clock. Aside from a few guards, everyone else had probably gone home.

I pushed up off my cot. I couldn’t sit here.

“I need to use the phone!”

The door buzzed open and Waylon walked into the corridor. He stopped beside a panel on the wall and inserted a key. The panel opened and he inserted a second key. With a loud thump, my cell door slid open.

“You will get your phone call, just not right now,” Waylon continued.

I stepped out of my cell. “Look, buddy, I don’t know why you have such a bee up your ass about me, but if you don’t let me use the phone right
now
, you are putting a life in danger.”

“Is that a threat, Miss Daulton?”

The question threw me. “What? No, of course not. I’m telling you someone is in danger. I need to call Rowan and—”

Waylon laughed, though the sound was bitter. “Call Rowan? Of course. You think your boyfriend can get you out of this. Well, you’re in for a rude awakening. Rowan might keep me on the outside, but he is a man of honor. When he finds out what you’ve done, he’s going to drop you like a bad habit.”

“Would you care to enlighten me? You can deny me my phone call, but I’m pretty sure you have to tell me why I’m being locked up.”

“You’re being held under suspicion of murder.”

“Murder? You think I killed—” The door opened again and she walked in. “Megan.”

“You were supposed to wait upstairs, Miss Fields,” Waylon said.

I stared in horror at what had become of the pretty reporter who had once tormented me. Her dark hair hung lank around her pale face. Dirt streaked her skin and clothes—the same sweater and dark slacks she had been wearing the last time she interviewed me. The worst were her hands. The manicured nails were ragged and torn, or missing altogether. The remains of her once white French tips and perfectly shaped cuticles were caked in dirt as if she had been digging in the soil—or had dug herself out of her grave.

She walked with a limp, mud speckling her heels and leaving the occasional clump on the floor behind her. Between the lurching walk and appearance, I would have thought her a zombie. Then she looked up and intelligent dark eyes bore into my own.

“You,” she whispered. “You killed me.”

I backed away from her. “I’m not a necromancer.”

“Your assistant is.” She continued toward me.

“Who told you to say these things, Megan?” My back bumped against the bars of the cell I had just left. Suddenly, I wished I was still inside. Where was Ian when I needed him?

“Miss Fields, please.” Waylon stepped between us. “Justice will be served, but there is a protocol. If you would return to—”

She shoved him aside. It wasn’t an attack or anything of the sort, but the push sent him stumbling and forced him to catch himself on the bars of the next cell.

“You dug up your assistant.” She leaned in closer to me. The scent of rot and damp earth enshrouded her.

I covered my nose and mouth with one hand.

“If you don’t cooperate,” Waylon tried again, “I’ll need to place
you
in custody.”

Megan didn’t glance at him. Her hazy eyes were locked with mine. Something shifted in those eyes and she smiled. Dirt coated her teeth.

I gasped and threw myself to the side, my shoulder smacking the wall beside the panel Waylon had just unlocked. I reached up under my shirt, fumbling for the vial in my bra.

“Is that you, Alexander?” I asked.

Megan grinned and took a step toward me.

“Addie?” Waylon sounded concerned. I wasn’t certain if it was due to the question I asked, or the fact that I had produced a potion. He could grill me about it later—if I lived.

“Addie,” Megan repeated, drawing out the vowels. “You have something that belongs to me.”

“If you mean the heart,” Waylon said, “it’s upstairs, as I mentioned earlier.”

I ignored him, as did Megan. “What do I have?” I asked her.

“My brother.”

That wasn’t the answer I expected. “Is that why you’re here?”

“Not tonight.”

“So why are you here?” I gripped the vial. The potion was designed to remove Elysia’s magic, but this might be close enough. After all, he was one of the sources of her magic.

“I am here to see you locked up for your crimes.” She began making that huh-huh-huh sound I had first heard from those zombies at Grams’s funeral home.

“Megan, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.” Waylon took her arm.

Without even glancing at him, Megan threw him aside.

I used the diversion to pop the cap off the vial, then slung half the vial’s contents in Megan’s eyes.

She sputtered and doubled over.

“Leave her,” I said, recapping the vial. I laid a hand on the back of her dirty shoulder. “Megan?”

She straightened and her eyes went wide when she saw me. She screamed and lunged at me.

Somehow, I ducked her grab and spun away from her.

She screamed again and came after me, only to be forced to a stop when Waylon stepped between us.

“Waylon, no!”

She swatted at him, the back of her hand catching him across the jaw and knocking him aside. It slowed her down little.

I backed away, though I was going the wrong direction. The door out of the cell block was behind her, but I didn’t think I was fast enough to elude her in the narrow space.

Waylon had dropped to a knee, but now pushed to his feet.

Something bumped my calves and rolled a few inches. I glimpsed yellow out of the corner of my eye. It was the mop bucket. I considered grabbing a squirt bottle and giving Megan a shot to the eyes, but I had been around Ian long enough to know that it was pointless to try to hurt the dead. Ian was always more annoyed about getting acid on his clothes rather than his skin. And considering the condition of her clothing, I doubted Megan shared his views.

“You did this to me,” she rasped, then lunged at me again.

I ducked the uncoordinated move, but at the last moment, she threw out a hand. The blow took me in the back of the shoulder and drove me to my knees. I caught myself, somehow managing not to break the vial I still held.

A gun went off, the sound deafening in the confined space.

Megan staggered back a step, bumping into the cell bars before righting herself.

Waylon leveled his gun for another shot.

“She’s already dead,” I shouted, pushing myself to my feet. “Won’t work.”

“Bitch!” Megan ran at me.

I grasped the rim of the wheeled bucket and shoved it into her lower legs.

She lacked the coordination to avoid it and fell face first over the rolling bucket. Her forehead hit the floor with a sickening crunch.

I sprinted toward Waylon and the door beyond. “Run!” When he didn’t immediately move, I caught his arm and pulled him with me.

I shoved him through the doorway ahead of me then reached for the handle.

Megan screamed again, and I made the mistake of looking back. She ran at us, her mouth moving, but making no sound. Her headfirst dive on the concrete had busted open the skin of her forehead. There was no blood, but the tear exposed her cracked skull beneath. I reached for the door handle and missed.

“Down!” Waylon shoved me down and a split second later, his gun went off.

Megan’s head jerked back, but the impact only staggered her. It did give me enough time to grab the handle and pull the door closed.

“Nice shot.” I took a couple of deep breaths. “But only fire and decapitation work on the dead.”

“You know this from experience?” Waylon lowered his gun.

“Unfortunately.”

Megan slammed into the door, her face smacking against the glass. Waylon’s shot had taken her right above the eyebrows. The bullet had broken the skull further, leaving an indention that exposed the gray-brown tissue beneath. Her brain.

I backed away from the door. “I also know from experience that that glass isn’t going to hold.”

“I’ll call the SWAT team to—”

“Don’t endanger them. Where’s her heart?”

Waylon eyed me—until Megan smacked against the door again.

“Upstairs,” he answered. “Why?”

I turned toward the stairs. “She’s a lich. That opens a third option to eliminate her.”

“Eliminate the woman who accused you of killing her.”

I faced him. “That,” I pointed toward the door, “is what’s left of Megan Fields. What you spoke to earlier wasn’t her.”

“Then what was it?”

“The ghoul master riding her.”

Waylon’s brows rose. “What—”

Megan slammed into the door again.

“You need to trust me.” I gripped his wrist, just above the hand that still held the gun.

“You’ve never trusted me.”

“Rowan thinks he’s protecting you. I told him he needs to respect your willingness to put yourself in danger.”

“He’s protecting
me
?”

“Well, the PIA in general.”

“It’s our job to protect.”

“Rowan’s an overprotective control freak. If you’ve ever ridden in a car with him—”

Glass shattered behind us.

“Move!” I shouted.

The heart was in the PIA forensics lab, three floors above us. Unfortunately, a mindless lich bent on wringing my neck wasn’t willing to wait while we called the elevator, so we had to take the stairs.

“Dear God.” I stumbled out of the stairwell behind Waylon. “I can’t feel my legs.”

He glanced back, a small smile on his face. “This way.” He took off at a jog.

I groaned and ran after him. He led me through a maze of short, interconnecting corridors until he stopped before a row of windows. On the other side, I could see a series of workbenches loaded with microscopes and several other pieces of equipment.

Waylon unhooked the badge from his lapel and ran it across the card reader by the door.

I bent over and gripped my knees, trying to pull some air into my lungs. Waylon wasn’t even breathing hard.

“I know Rowan is a big believer in physical fitness,” Waylon said, his tone conversational. “Perhaps you should consider joining him when he goes to the gym.”

“I’m going to cuss you out when I get my breath back.”

Waylon chuckled and pushed open the door. “I—”

A crash echoed down the hall from somewhere behind us.

“I’ll cuss you out later.” I straightened and hurried into the room ahead of him. “Where?”

He pushed the door closed behind us. “Over here.” He led me across the room to a large, stainless-steel door. A cooler. Unlike the ones I had encountered in various morgues, this one had a keypad. Waylon punched in a number and pulled open the door.

The shelves within were loaded with an assortment of zipper bags and sample jars. I stepped inside, my eyes scanning the shelves. I noticed a stack of bags, each containing a single bullet. They were arranged in a box dated in December. I sighed, feeling guilty that the PIA had never been told about my magic bullets.

Waylon stood in the doorway watching me. “Those bullets are yours, aren’t they?” He must have realized what had caught my attention.

“You figured it out.”

“I put two and two together after I saw Megan Fields’s interview of your colleague, Neil Dunstan. Do you know Rowan continued to deny it, even after the interview?”

“He and the Deacon were both adamant we keep that to ourselves. Those bullets kill the magical.”

“And you designed them.”

I turned away and located the heart on the next shelf up. “That wasn’t what I designed them to do.” Trying not to look too closely, I pulled it off the shelf and hurried back into the lab.

I no sooner stepped out of the cooler than something thumped against the windows lining the hall. I looked up and gasped. Megan stood on the other side.

“Help me find some alcohol or an organic solvent. Look for a cabinet labeled Flammable.” I hurried to the sink as I spoke. Setting the Mason jar beside the basin, I pulled a pair of rubber gloves from a nearby box and tugged them on. No way was I touching anything inside that jar with my bare hands.

“Found it,” Waylon called. Metal scraped against metal as he opened the steel cabinet.

Another thump from the opposite wall. Megan now stood at the door, punching her fist against the narrow pane of glass above the handle.

“Here’s some ethanol,” Waylon shouted.

“That’ll work.” I unscrewed the lid to the jar and gagged at the strong formaldehyde odor. Holding my breath, I poured off the liquid, holding the lid over the opening. The heart tumbled forward and bumped against the lid.

“Not a human heart,” I mumbled. “Not a human heart.” I carried the now liquid-free jar to the fume hood and up-ended it on the stainless-steel surface. I tried to ignore the wet splat when it hit.

Waylon stepped up beside me and handed me the ethanol. By the small smile on his face, I suspected he found my muttered litany amusing.

Glass shattered. Megan had punched her fist through the middle of the glass pane in the door. Fortunately, it appeared to be safety glass and didn’t fall to pieces. She punched again, knocking out a second chunk.

Twisting the lid off the ethanol bottle, I doused the heart liberally with the clear liquid. One of those long-handled lighters lay on the bench beside the hood. I snatched it up and pulled the trigger. Nothing.

More glass hit the floor behind us.

“Shit.” I flipped the trigger a few more times.

“Here.” Waylon pulled a box of matches from his coat pocket.

I arched a brow. Who carried matches these days?

“I prefer to light my cigars with wooden matches.”