The Sorcerer Heir (Heir Chronicles) (28 page)

“But you were still experimenting on unwilling subjects,” Jonah said, looking from one to the other.

“Don’t make assumptions until you know the facts,” Gabriel snapped.

“What a shame, then, that nobody has told me the facts up to now,” Jonah said.

“Our subjects were volunteers,” Gabriel said.

“I don’t remember volunteering.”

We began with adults,
Lilith said.
We actually had to turn people away.

“You had to turn people away,” Jonah repeated. “So—everyone wanted to be Spider-Man?”

“Imagine that you are enslaved by a self-styled superior race,” Gabriel said. “Consider that the disparity in power was so great that you had no hope of throwing off the yoke on your own.”

“And yet it happened,” Jonah said.

“The end of that story isn’t written yet,” Gabriel said. “Don’t count wizards out too soon. They always find a way to win. Anyway, hindsight is twenty-twenty. As I was saying—wouldn’t it be tempting to take a chance on a treatment that might set you free? That might allow you to take revenge on your oppressor?”

And so we set up our lab, recruited our volunteers, and the research began,
Lilith said.
But we soon found that our treatments didn’t work well on adults. That was consistent with my previous research as well. Apparently, the therapies work best on stones that are biologically active, growing and developing, so that a new matrix can be laid down that reflects the desired profile.

“So...you recruited kids?”

“Parents volunteered their children,” Gabriel said. “Again, imagine if you could offer your children a better life.”

“My parents volunteered me and Kenzie and Marcy?” Jonah’s stomach twisted. “They said, ‘Go ahead, experiment on our children’?”

“Those weren’t the words they used, but yes. They were involved in the planning and decision-making process. They were members of the governing council of the collaborative.”

Jonah felt cut loose, set adrift by these revelations. Like most orphans, he’d put his dead parents on a pedestal. Had created in his imagination the kind of life he would have had if they’d survived. Another daydream exploded, reduced to ash. He could almost taste it on his tongue.

“What did you do to us?” Jonah asked. “Gamma rays? Radioactive spiders? Gene splitting? Alien sex?”

Lilith flinched a little.
I compounded potions designed to enhance and expand native capabilities in the gifted by modifying their Weirstones.

“That sounds so much better than ‘We did random experiments on helpless children,’” Jonah said.

It was all science based,
Lilith said.
I
’d
been working in that field for years. I was the foremost expert in the world.

“That’s what she told me,” Gabriel said, with a sidelong look at Jonah.

“Did everybody get the same stuff?”

She shook her head.
It was formulated individually based on what guild the subject belonged to and an individual assessment and treatment goals.

“When you say ‘treatment goals,’ did you try to remake people to fit into a slot, or did you go with—”

Jonah,
Lilith said.
We never meant to do you harm. I don’t know if there’s any way to convince you of that, but—

“It sounds to me like thousands of people knew exactly what you were up to at Thorn Hill,” Jonah said. “How did you hope to keep it a secret?”

“Volunteers were required to agree to memory modification,” Gabriel said. Seeing Jonah’s expression, he said, “We had no choice.”

“So people volunteered, and volunteered their children, and then you erased the memory of that, so they had no idea what was being done to them as it progressed? Must’ve been tempting to just skip the volunteer part.”

“There was no need for that, since we had so many volunteers.” Gabriel sighed in exasperation. “They signed informed consent forms. Would it have been more acceptable to you if we’d imprisoned people at Thorn Hill after the project began to prevent word from leaking out?” Gabriel seemed to be regaining his usual confidence. He was the kind of person who always landed on his feet. “We wanted people to have the freedom to come and go without compromising the project.”

“Just not the freedom to make informed decisions,” Jonah said. “And all of this was strictly for self-defense? Since when is assassination a defensive weapon?”

“It can be, used judiciously,” Gabriel said.

“You’re saying there were no plans for a frontal assault on the Wizard Guild some time down the road?” Jonah persisted.

Gabriel looked away. “In any large group of people, there will be differing philosophies and agendas,” he said. “There were some among us who believed that the only way to convince wizards to leave us alone was to make them pay a blood price. Who favored creating an army of savants and assassins, to be called
Nightshade
.”

“Catchy name,” Jonah said. “What about you, Gabriel? Where did you fit on that continuum?”

“That’s not important,” Gabriel said.

“It’s important to me,” Jonah said. “You were the one who bought the property, who established the commune, who hired Lilith to brew up her potions. What did
you
intend?”

Gabriel stared straight ahead for a long moment, clenching and unclenching his jaw. Then he looked up at Jonah without a trace of apology. “I intended to go to war,” he said.

Jonah cocked his head. “You...you meant to hurt them enough to convince them to leave us alone? To demonstrate that we could defend ourselves?”

Gabriel smiled, a hard-edged bitter smile without a trace of amusement in it. “I intended to hunt down and destroy every last member of the Wizard Guild. I intended to extinguish that genetic line.”

Jonah staggered back a step, wrapping his arms around himself, feeling as if he’d taken a serious punch to the gut. “Wh-what?” he choked out.

“Consider this, Jonah,” Gabriel said, briskly, as if referencing an argument he’d made many times. “From the very beginning, from the founding of the guilds in Dragon’s Ghyll, from that original betrayal, wizards have never swerved from their purpose: to gain power by oppressing others. It’s gone on for centuries. I believe the desire for power is built into the matrix of their stones. They cannot change, and we can’t live with that any longer.”

Jonah’s skin pebbled as he broke into a cold sweat. “DeVries was right,” he whispered. “DeVries was right all along.”

“
W
hat did you say?” Gabriel asked, though Jonah was sure he’d heard.

“Rowan DeVries. He claimed that Thorn Hill was conspiring against the Wizard Guild, that it was a nest of terrorists, and they died of a self-inflicted wound. I told him he was wrong.”

He
is
wrong,
Lilith cut in.
About that last part, anyway.

You wanted the truth, Jonah thought. Be careful what you wish for.

“So.” Jonah extended his hands, palms up. “Lilith says I’m a spectacular success. A success at what? What was my role supposed to be?”

“Whatever I intended, it didn’t work out,” Gabriel said, shrugging as if to dismiss the question.

Jonah slammed the chair aside so that it hit the floor with a clatter. “No,” he growled, gripping the front of Gabriel’s leather jacket and lifting him, chair and all, off the floor. “Don’t think you can put me off with a pat on the head this time.”

“Jonah!” Gabriel cried, staring down at Jonah’s ungloved hands, his face shiny with sweat. He struggled once again to free his arms.

Jonah!
Lilith cried.
Put him down. We need him. Enough knowledge died at Thorn Hill.

Jonah took a deep breath. Let it out. Set Gabriel down.

I knew this would happen,
Lilith murmured.

Jonah whirled on her. “Why? Because the two of you created a monster?”

You were meant to be a weapon, not a monster,
Lilith said.
The keystone of our defense. A physically gifted predator who could adapt to multiple situations. Who could go unarmed into secure facilities and come away with a kill. Someone with acute hearing, vision, and sense of smell. Someone so physically strong that you would prevail in any physical fight, and so beautiful and charming that no one would ever question your intentions.

“Someone who could kill his little sister with a kiss,” Jonah said, feeling oddly hollow, as if even his most painful wounds had lost their ability to torment him.

No.
Lilith took a step toward Jonah.
That was not part of it. That was not our doing. Why would we create someone who kills accidentally?

“So you’re saying that you had nothing to do with the fact that your assassin has a killing touch?”

Gabriel and Lilith looked at each other, radiating mingled guilt and deception.

“If you wanted to get away with lying to me,” Jonah said, “you shouldn’t have created an empath.”

“All
right
,” Gabriel said. “That
was
part of the build. But it was meant to be a weapon, not a curse. You were supposed to be able to turn it on and off at will.”

“Whose will?”

“Yours,” Gabriel said.

“Oops,” Jonah said. “You want credit for my uncanny good looks and my remarkable grace and skill with weaponry, but not for—for this.” Jonah held up his bare hands.

Lilith and Gabriel said nothing, like parents who don’t know what to do with their tantrumming child.

Jonah wished he could bring the other shadeslayers in, and let them listen to these revelations directly. But he was afraid that it would turn into a melee.

“There’s something I don’t get, though,” Jonah said. “Why just one of me? While you were at it, why not create an army?”

You must understand, we were in the beginning stages of our research,
Lilith said.
We did not know what the possibilities and limitations were. Some therapies didn’t turn out the way we expected, and it often took years to find that out. If we
’d
had a tested protocol from the beginning, we might have been able to create an army of Jonahs. As it was, you were the best candidate and the best outcome in the military trials.

“So what with all this trial and error, you don’t think you could have messed up and poisoned us? Assuming that you didn’t intend to kill thousands of people.”

“You’ll have to ask Lilith,” Gabriel said. “I wasn’t there.”

How many times do I have to say this—I did
not
make a mistake.
Even without the benefit of facial cues, even mind-to-mind, Jonah could tell that Lilith was furious.
Believe me, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it. There was
nothing
in my therapies that could have caused these results. Besides, I just told you that each person received personalized therapy. So how could it be that on one particular night, everyone was poisoned?

“There wasn’t some common element in all the treatments?” Jonah persisted, “Something that could have been contaminated or used at too high a concentration or—”

No,
Lilith said. Then paused.
That’s not entirely true. Everyone received life-extension therapy, no matter what their ages or home guild.
She paused.
I’m guessing that’s why we’ve persisted as shades. Our bodies were damaged beyond repair, but our minds and memories survive.

“Where is your evidence, Lilith?” Gabriel exploded. “It may be appealing to blame this on some mysterious poisoner, but in science we go with the least-complex explanation. I know you never meant for it to happen, but it did. The only justice in all of this was that you were a victim yourself.”

Jonah had an epiphany. “Gabriel.
That’s
why you refused to target wizards, even though you told us they were to blame for the massacre,” he said. “You were ready to slaughter them to begin with, but now you couldn’t, because of your own guilt.”

Gabriel resisted the admission for a long moment, then nodded. “How could I favor bringing wizards to justice when I was responsible—at least in part—for the largest slaughter of Anawizard Weir in history?”

“Especially when you’re still walking around free,” Jonah said. “Awkward.”

Gabriel bowed his head. “Even if I didn’t intend it, it happened. For months after the disaster, I couldn’t bear to return to Thorn Hill. I even considered suicide. When I did go back, and I saw what was going on there, I realized that the survivors needed an advocate to protect their interests.”

“So you decided not to kill yourself,” Jonah murmured. “Damn noble of you.”

Gabriel bit back his first response. “I couldn’t undo what had happened, but knew that I could be of more help to the survivors by establishing the Anchorage and developing treatments that might help them. I kept the mines going in Brazil, and did a lot of my ongoing research there until the Anchorage was built. At first, I hoped for a cure. But, despite Lilith’s meticulous lab reports, nothing seemed to help. All I’ve been able to do is treat symptoms.”

That’s because you’re not treating the real problem,
Lilith said.
The problem is not the therapies I compounded. We were poisoned, plain and simple. The poison interacted with our treatments, producing this result. Who would want to do that? It had to have been the Wizard Guild.

Gabriel was still shaking his head.

Don’t forget that my daughter died, too. And that proves it was the water supply or an aerosol or some other method of poisoning, because she was not receiving any therapy at the time. In fact, there were a number of people who were in the middle of a treatment window. They still died.

That argument seemed to make an impression. Gabriel thought about this for a while, then said, “You’re sure it wasn’t a cumulative effect?”

All at once? On the same night?
Lilith snapped.
On thousands of people receiving starkly different therapies? No, I don’t have any proof. Being dead, I haven’t been able to do a thorough investigation. That, it seems to me, was your job. But you were too busy blaming me and trying to hide your involvement. You cared more about your reputation than finding real help for these victims.

“That’s not true,” Gabriel fired back. “I have dedicated my life to the survivors. The profits from the club, everything from the mines, relentless fund-raising—it all goes to provide for them. I relocated here, because it’s much easier to access staff and supplies, and it’s a good place to raise funds for support of the foundation.”

“Couldn’t there have been accidental contamination of the water supply, as the Wizard Guild claims?” Jonah said, eager to get back to possible causes of Thorn Hill. “Something that came from the labs?”

Lilith shook her head.
I just don’t see how it’s possible,
she said.
A totally separate water supply served the labs, and we were acutely conscious of protecting the environment against spills and contamination. I’m a scientist, and I was extremely selective in choosing the staff who worked with me.

“Were you working on poisons as well as genetic modification?”

Lilith glared at Gabriel. Finally, reluctantly, Gabriel nodded.

He did, I didn’t,
Lilith said.
Poison is—poison is—
She shuddered.

“So,” Jonah said, “you created your own chemical dump in the Brazilian jungle, and yet you think it’s more likely some unknown person crept in and put poison in the water?”

We used very careful techniques and controls,
Lilith said.
I’ve worked around dangerous compounds for years. My little girl was living there, for God’s sake. Even if I were careless with my own life or that of my friends—which I’m not—I
’d
never risk her. I was doing it for her, after all.

“That’s what motivated most of the parents at Thorn Hill,” Gabriel said. “They didn’t want their children enslaved in the same way that they had been, to have to look over their shoulders all of their lives. To risk death if they ran away.” His voice trembled.

“What about you two?” Jonah asked. “Were you receiving treatment as well?”

Gabriel nodded. “At first. But, as I said, the treatments seemed to have little effect on grown people.”

You are
not
responsible for what happened,
Lilith said.
Don’t you see? The difference between us is that I was there the night of the massacre, and you were not.

Hope flickered across Gabriel’s face. More and more, his attention was shifting away from Jonah and toward Lilith. She’s winning him over, Jonah thought. She’s telling him what he wants to hear. He wants desperately to believe it after a decade of blaming himself.

“How did you find out about shades?” Jonah asked Gabriel, trying to nip the lovefest in the bud. “How did you know they existed? What made you decide to make them a target?”

Gabriel looked from Lilith to Jonah, licked his lips, and said, “I stayed in Brazil for two years after the accident, treating the survivors, burying the dead, and optimizing the mines. Most of the shades remained near the site of the massacre—at first, anyway.”

“Like ghosts of the murdered, haunting the scene of the crime,” Jonah murmured. “Maybe hoping to get their bodies back.”

“Maybe,” Gabriel said. “We began hearing wild reports about zombies, some from our own employees. Turnover increased—it became difficult to keep fully staffed for any length of time. In those days, of course, shades were merely possessing those who were already dead. We had no idea what was going on. We began hunting the undead, but when we chopped them to bits, the shades slipped away invisibly. We didn’t realize what was going on until we discovered that the Nightshade amulets made them visible.”

Jonah recalled wondering how Emma had acquired a pendant. “You know, Gabriel, I thought you had those pieces made for us, to help in the hunt for shades.”

Lilith shook her head.
Those were made before the massacre, to help members of our community to find the gifted at a distance—to pinpoint the gifted over a large area.

“So you could hunt them down?”

“So we could locate our enemies—or our friends,” Gabriel said. “Shades must have a magical component, or aura, because the amulets make them visible.”

This is what I don’t understand,
Lilith said.
How did that hurt you, that we sought out cadavers to live in?

“Because we couldn’t communicate with you, we didn’t know what your intentions were,” Gabriel said. “And once you discovered the advantages of claiming a fresh corpse, we knew we had to take action. I knew that I had an obligation to help them, too—to put them to rest.”

Willingly or unwillingly,
Lilith said wryly.
You might have asked whether we wanted your help.

“How could we do that?” Gabriel snorted. “It wasn’t until Jonah joined Nightshade that we realized that he could communicate with you.”

“How disappointing this must have been,” Jonah said. “We were supposed to be holy warriors, fighting the oppressors, our signia emblazoned on our arms.” Jonah ran his fingers over his sleeve where the tattoo was. “And now we’re fighting with one another. The Wizard Guild should be laughing at us. Maybe they are.”

It doesn’t have to be this way, Gabriel,
Lilith said urgently.
We still have an army. If we join forces, we can restore the dead warriors of Nightshade. And then nobody can stand against us.