The Heir of Death - The Final Formula 3.5 (7 page)

She did as told, straining her ears, but heard nothing. She whispered as much to James.

“Something’s moving around, but the echoes make it hard to tell in which corridor.”

Elysia rubbed the back of her neck, but couldn’t rub away her unease.

“Do you sense anything?” James asked. “A lich? Locked in iron, I can’t search for souls.”

Elysia reached out. There were dead in every direction, the catacombs even bigger than she realized. But she focused on what lay in front of them. Unable to see her surroundings, it was difficult to judge if something lay within the corridors around them, or in other rooms or tunnels. Yet she didn’t sense a lich’s awareness of her presence. She was about to suggest that James had heard a rat, when the distinct touch of another presence brushed across her senses.

What are you doing?
A voice whispered in her mind.

Elysia gasped.

“What is it?” James asked.

“A voice spoke to me,” Elysia whispered.

“I heard nothing,” Doug said. “Maybe it was a ghost. Perhaps you opened yourself too much.”

“God, you’re as bad as Ian.”

“What?” Doug asked.

“You second-guess everything I do, like I don’t know the first thing about my magic.”

“My bad. I forgot what a devout student of necromancy you were.”

“Maybe I didn’t worship it like you did, but I’m not as clueless as everyone seems to think.”

Needing to get away from the constant nagging, Elysia walked past James and hurried up the corridor before them. James was right; it did slope upward.

“Look, I’m sorry,” Doug said from behind her. “I don’t think you’re clueless, but I do know how you tended to avoid your magic when you could. Come on, this is me you’re talking to.”

“Just drop it,” she said over her shoulder.

At the top of the ramp-like corridor, a small room opened before them, a curving stairwell leading upward on the far side, the doorway faintly illuminated by what might be sunlight. Leaving the guys behind, Elysia hurried across the thread-bare rug that covered the center of the chamber.

Where are you going?
the same voice asked.

Elysia stumbled, but before she could decide if the voice belonged to a ghost or not, the floor cracked beneath her. She tried to jump back, but she had walked too far out into the center of the room.

“Elysia!” James shouted.

The floor collapsed, and she was falling.

Swallowed by darkness, with no idea how deep the hole went, she screamed. Her cry became a grunt of pain as she landed on an unyielding stone floor. Her lantern shattered against the floor in a burst of light, illuminating the small chamber that reeked of dust, disuse, and death. She couldn’t help but notice the smell as she struggled to pull air into her spasming lungs. She had fallen only a single story, but the landing had still hurt.

“Ely!” Doug shouted. “Are you okay?”

A thump beside her, and she reached out to find death. Familiar death. James.

He dropped to a knee, and his hand settled on her shoulder. “Hey.”

“Elysia?” Doug yelled from above them.

“I’m all right,” she called out. At least, she hoped that was true. Various aches and pains were beginning to throb from her jammed knee and bruised tail bone, to her scraped elbow and sore ribs.

Oil from the lamp had splattered over the rug that had fallen with her. The fabric smoldered, but didn’t immediately burst into flame. Perhaps it was a little damp. Even so, it provided enough light to see by—for the moment.

“Here.” James slipped a hand beneath her arm and helped her up.

Her knee protested, but it held her weight. “I guess I should have let you go first and not gotten so excited about a little sunlight.”

“You prefer I fall instead?”

“You would have landed on your feet.”

“I’m part dog, not cat.” He brushed away a tendril of hair that had come loose from her ponytail, and tucked it behind her ear. Then trailed his warm fingers along her jaw. “Are you—”

“Is there a way out?” Doug called.

“A shame he didn’t fall,” James said, his voice so low, it was almost a growl.

“Should I hunt for a rope or something?” Doug added.

This time James really did growl.

“Give us a minute to look around,” Elysia called up to him before she turned to James. “And now you’re growling at him?”

“Just like any animal.”

Like his vision, the iron hadn’t affected his hearing much, either. She sighed and decided to get right to the heart of the matter. “You heard the conversation in Alexander’s tomb.”

“It’s so good of him to look out for your best interests, even when he can’t have you himself.”

Now she wanted to growl. “Would you let it go? Yes, we had a relationship, but that was in the past. I can’t change that.”

“I get it, but that doesn’t mean I want to stand around and listen to the two of you laugh about the fun you used to have sneaking off to some mausoleum.”

Her cheeks warmed, and she hoped he couldn’t see that. “I wasn’t laughing.”

“That makes it better.” He turned away. “We need to find a way out of here before we lose the light.”

“Fine.” She took two steps and turned her ankle in a deep indention in the stone floor.

James caught her elbow before she fell. “Watch where you step. The floor isn’t even.”

“I noticed.”

“Perhaps you’d better stand still. I’ll look around.”

“Since your sight is as good as your hearing, perhaps that would be best.”

He studied her a moment as if intending to speak, then abruptly walked off.

She considered apologizing, then decided she wasn’t the one at fault. Doug was messing with him. Why couldn’t James see that? And more importantly, why wouldn’t he believe her when she said there was nothing but friendship between her and Doug?

James moved into the shadows, walking slowly around the room. The space wasn’t as large as she expected and lacked the body shelves they had seen in the other room.

“Elysia?”

She inhaled as the bond tightened. It was so annoying that he could do that—especially when she wanted to be mad at him. She walked carefully toward the far wall. His silhouette stood near what might be a dark opening, though it was oddly shaped, like a door on its side.

Drawing closer, she opened her mouth to ask what he had found, and recognized what he stood beside. It was a sarcophagus made of the same flat black stone that both Ian’s and Alexander’s had been made of. And like theirs, the lid was off, leaning against the side facing her. A name was carved on the surface, but the flickering light made it difficult to read.

“What does it say?”

James looked up, the light reflecting in his eyes the same way it would in an animal’s eyes. “Matilda Grace Nelson.”

Chapter 8

E
lysia stared at the name carved on the sarcophagus lid. “Dear God. We found her?”

“The sarcophagus is empty.”

She stepped up beside him and looked inside, though it wasn’t necessary. She felt no death except his.

“Check this out,” he said, circling around behind the sarcophagus.

She followed, shocked that he could see anything.

“Careful.” He held out his arm, blocking her next step. “It’s a set of stairs leading downward.”

“How the hell can you see that?”

“Wait here. I’m going to see if I can improvise a torch.” He disappeared around the front of the sarcophagus, leaving her in the dark.

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, straining her eyes in the darkness. She could make out the shape of the sarcophagus and the irregular stones that formed the nearby wall. And if she didn’t look directly at it, she could get an impression of the gaping maw that was the stairwell. It wasn’t total darkness. Not like the time Neil had locked her in Ian’s tomb.

The space around her brightened, and she looked up. James approached, a candle in hand.

“Where did you get that?”

“In the brighter light of the chamber, I noticed a couple of wall sconces. One still held a candle.”

She glanced back at the chamber. The brighter light? The rug had never truly caught, and the oil had nearly burned away. She wouldn’t be able to see her hand in front of her face.

He held the candle aloft, illuminating the stairs. The steps were rough and irregular, as if someone had dug the opening by hand, then added a few large stones to make it a little easier to navigate.

Elysia moved to his side, staring down into the darkness. “All the way to the bottom.”

“What?”

“At the cemetery, when I was offered Alexander’s flesh, Neil asked me how far down the rabbit hole I was willing to go, and I said—”

“All the way to the bottom.”

She looked up, meeting his eyes in the candlelight. “I’m glad you’re with me. I mean, I’m not glad you were taken and forced into this hell hole, but…”

“I get it. I’m glad I’m here, too.”

She took a deep breath and released it. “Okay. Let’s see how deep this rabbit hole goes.”

The stairs were narrow, so she had to settle for a hand on James’s shoulder as he led the way down the uneven steps. They were about halfway down when it occurred to her to send her senses outward.

“There are a lot of dead down here,” she whispered.

“Any moving around?”

“I would need to attempt to animate them to track individual movement among so many.”

“Okay. I’m sure it’s not anything you can’t handle.”

His faith in her should have made her smile, but after Doug’s criticism of her ability to use her magic, the comment depressed her instead. She chewed her lip and followed in James’s wake, hoping they wouldn’t have to rely on her magic to get out of here.

They reached the bottom of the stairs. A crudely dug tunnel stretched before them. How deep the tunnel went, Elysia couldn’t say. The light from the candle didn’t go far. A few feet in, two smaller tunnels opened to each side. James would have to duck if he chose to take one of them. He didn’t.

A short distance further down, they found two more openings, these also lower than theirs.

James stopped and lifted his candle. “The pattern of openings continues,” he whispered.

She squinted her eyes, trying to see what he saw. “Like rooms, at a hotel.”

“Like cells, in a prison. Some are occupied. I hear movement.”

Once again, she sent her senses outward, listening closer to the death around them. “They’re all occupied.”

“If they’re moving, they’re liches. What I don’t understand is why none have shown themselves.”

“Probably because their maker commanded them to remain in their cells.”

James glanced down. “Alexander?”

“That’s a high possibility, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Nelson family used this as their personal jail. Perhaps they still do.”

“It’s really not a good thing to piss off a necromancer.”

“Especially the psychotic ones, and as you’ve no doubt noticed, there tend to be a lot of those.”

James grunted and continued down the tunnel. She followed, listening for shuffles of movement from the tunnels they passed. She soon lost count, but there had to be at least ten or twelve.

The tunnel they were following finally ended in a large hand-dug room. The center of the space was occupied by a heavy, wooden table. James continued forward, lifting his candle when he reached the table.

Elysia stopped inside the door, crossing her arms against a sudden chill. The candlelight cast odd shadows against the walls, unsettling her more. It was silly. The only things down here were the dead. What was there to fear?

“I smell blood,” James said, his soft voice echoing in the empty room. “Old blood and death.”

“This is a catacomb,” she said, keeping her voice low.

“Not
the
dead. Death, as in the act.”

“There’s a difference?”

In answer, he bent and lifted something hanging from the table. It clanked like metal. Then she saw that it was a shackle attached to a chain. An oil lamp similar to ones upstairs hung from the low ceiling, and she realized that this was an autopsy table.

“Yes, there’s a difference.” He dropped the shackle, and it swung by its chain before clanking against a table leg.

Elysia cringed at the noise, but James casually walked away, examining the room. He crossed to the far wall, and she saw another table, this one cluttered with a small collection of bottles, wooden boxes, and a few books.

A bracket on the wall held another oil lamp. James removed the glass chimney and touched the flame of his candle to the wick. When it caught, he took a moment to adjust the light, then pushed the base of his candle into the mouth of a half-empty bottle. She hoped the bottle’s contents weren’t flammable.

She crossed the room to join him. As she drew closer, she could see other things lying on the table. Tools. There were clamps, scalpels, forceps…embalming tools, though these were really old.

James was leaning close, looking at an open journal that lay to one side. He flipped a page, but maintained his silence as he studied the elegant writing that graced the yellowing pages. He read for a moment, then flipped a few more pages.

“What is it?” She rolled her shoulders, trying to work out the stiffness.

“Theories on…soul transference?”

“What?” She stepped up beside him.

“Is that even possible?”

“Transferring a soul from one body to another?”

He lifted his head. “Yes.”

“It’s a myth,” she whispered, hoping he didn’t hear the quiver in her voice. The myth also stated that only a soul reaper could do it. Why did everything keep coming back to that particular blood gift?

“The author of this journal doesn’t believe it a myth.” James turned back to the aged paper. Another moment’s silent study, and he gently turned another page. “Huh.”

“What?” She leaned in closer and saw what appeared to be a list and a set of numbered instructions.

“Alchemy,” he said. “It’s an alchemical formula.”

“What would an alchemist be doing here? Alexander hates alchemists.”

“I think…” His voice trailed off as he continued to read.

She rolled her shoulders again and realized it wasn’t stiffness, but unease that was tensing her muscles. She turned to look behind them. It almost felt like they were being watched, but there was no one in the room. Though the tunnel they had just traversed was an open mouth of inky blackness. If she listened closely enough, she could still hear the rustling from the prison tunnels—or had the occupants shuffled out into the main hall.

“Ha, I knew it,” James said, his tone triumphant.

She turned to find him studying the inside cover of the journal.

“Look.” He pointed at the words written on the flyleaf.

She leaned in for a better look.

Private notes of Ian Mallory, June 1823 to
… There was no ending date.

“Ian was Made in 1825.” She rubbed her arms against the chill. “He wrote this when he was alive.”

“It looks like he was studying some dark stuff.”

Elysia frowned. What was he doing studying soul transference, the ability of a soul reaper? She remembered Alexander claiming that Ian had used the soul reaper ability as the basis of his curse. What did that mean?

“Addie needs to see this,” James said.

“She can read it after me.”

He looked up. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking that Ian has some explaining to do.”

“True.” James reached out and picked up one of the clamps. “But he wasn’t the one working down here. Do you think Alexander was interested in soul transference?”

“A vain man who is now a rotting corpse?”

James lifted his eyes to hers. “What if the liches in those tunnels are the result of his experiments?”

“You might be right.” Elysia swallowed, hating to continue. “But it wasn’t Alexander. Soul transference isn’t his blood gift.”

James studied her, understanding lighting his eyes. “That ability belongs to a soul reaper.”

“Supposedly.”

Oh, it does,
a female voice spoke from behind them.

Elysia whirled, but found the room empty.

“What is it?” James asked.

Would you like to see?
The same voice asked, this time from the other side of the room.

Moans began to echo out of the black tunnel they had just traversed. A moment later, the first of the imprisoned liches shuffled into the room.

No one had bothered to give these liches robes. Quite a few appeared to have been in here as long as Alexander. Little flesh covered the desiccated muscle that clung to the exposed bones, and what clothing still hung from their frames was in tatters. Even so, Elysia could see that many wore styles from centuries past.

They drew closer, and her eyes were drawn to one with an odd, lurching gait. It wasn’t until it moved into the light that she saw what was wrong.

She took a hasty step back, bumping into James.

“Ely?”

“It has a hand where its foot should be.” She gestured at the lich with the odd gait. Even in the low light, it was obvious. She didn’t know if modern medicine could pull that off, but judging by the lich’s tattered clothes and state of decay, it had been in here since the early to mid 1800s.

James grunted. “Weird. It’s like someone mixed and matched the parts.”

She glanced up at him.

“What?” he asked.

“You. Doug’s right. This stuff does not faze you.”

“Why would it?” He leaned down, his mouth close to her ear. “I’m the scariest thing on the mortal plane.”

She smiled, oddly comforted by the statement, even as she watched two more liches shuffle into the room. That brought the total to eight.

“Do you have this one, or shall I take it?” James asked.

Elysia freed her soul and reached out to the nearest lich, the one with a hand for a foot. “Stop,” she said.

The lich paused, his weight shifting as he watched her from a single, glazed-over eye. Abruptly, he pushed back. The sensation was so unexpected that she instinctively pulled away from him.

Female laughter echoed around the room.
He was blood bound by a soul reaper. Only the blood of one can take him from me.

Elysia stilled. “You’re a soul reaper?”

More laughter answered her.

“Who are you talking to?” James asked.

Elysia gave him a quick frown. “You didn’t hear her?”

“Hear who?”

Not again. She remembered how ghosts had plagued her after Neil had stunted her. No one else could hear them. No one except James. Until now.

“Ely?”

“There’s a woman. She claims to be a soul reaper, and these liches are hers.”

“Is she the one who mixed up the body parts?”

Elysia stared at that lich with renewed horror. When Ian had been dismembered, she had used her own blood to reattach his limbs. She thought she was healing him, but if what she saw before her was the same blood gift in action, then perhaps healing wasn’t the right word.

A soft chime of metal drew her attention to James. He had picked up a heavy cleaver from the table of more common embalming tools. She didn’t want to think about why there was a cleaver in this soul reaper’s chamber. What if this woman was one of Alexander’s daughters? What if this was the work of an ancestress?

“Here.” James tucked Ian’s journal into the large pocket of her robe. “Hold that for me. I don’t do well with pockets.”

“With clothes in general.” She picked up one of the scalpels, keeping an eye on the liches moving toward them. It was strange. All the liches she had met were like the living—personality wise. These behaved more like zombies with no consciousness of their own.

“What are you doing with that?” James asked.

“Apparently, only the blood of a soul reaper can take these liches.”

“I thought we decided you weren’t a soul reaper.”

“What if I am?”

He reached over and captured her wrist. “I got this one.”

“You’re bound in iron.”

He shrugged, then stepped forward to meet hand-foot guy. The lich reached for him, but James easily ducked the grab, then came back at the guy so fast that it was still reaching for the place James had been when James cleaved his arm above the elbow.

The arm dropped to the floor and broke into pieces, much like the zombies Elysia and Doug had used earlier. The lich stared at its fallen arm, not even looking up when James used the cleaver a second time to take off its head. This time, the entire body crumbled.

“See?” James said. “Nothing to—”

The remaining liches charged forward, their silence as unsettling as their appearance. Had their decaying bodies robbed them of the ability to speak?

James growled, then ran right at them.

Elysia pressed a hand to her mouth. Had he forgotten that he no longer possessed the strength of the dead?

With reflexes more animal than human, he sidestepped the closest lich and somehow sprinted through the group without a single one touching him. He rolled beneath the reaching hand of the last in line and lashed out with his cleaver, catching the lich above the knee. The decayed flesh broke apart, sending the lich to the floor. James turned and brought the cleaver down on the lich’s throat. Two down.

James sprang to his feet and continued across the room. The rest of the crowd turned and ran after him. Elysia realized that he was decoying them away from her. He vaulted the autopsy table in the center of the room, landing on the far side before he faced the liches. None were as agile as he was, and they were forced to circle the table, coming at James from both ends, thinning their numbers so he only faced one or two at a time.

One of the liches stopped short of the table and slowly turned to face Elysia.