Chapter 26
The moment we got home, Hexe made a beeline for the kitchen. "I suspected Esau was behind the demon attacks from the start," he said as he took the tiny bottle of katholikon from the shelf over his workbench. "But it never once crossed my mind that he was behind the SOA." He carefully dispensed a dropperful of the foul-tasting panacea into a small glass, then added a dollop of honey and a couple tablespoons of black cherry syrup, finally topping it off with a squirt or two from an old-fashioned seltzer bottle. He turned and handed me the fizzing concoction. "Here-drink this."
I took a deep breath to steel myself and knocked back the potion. Even with the adjustments to render it palatable to human taste buds, it still went down like the cheapest rotgut whiskey. I blinked the tears from my eyes as the katholikon burned its way down my throat and settled in my gut. Within seconds I could feel the pain from my abused muscles and bruised bones fade, as if consumed by the fire burning in my belly. Once the stomach cramps subsided, I looked at myself in the mirror and saw the necklace of bruises around my throat fading out of sight.
"So what do you plan on doing?" I asked as I watched him fix a second glass of the horrid stuff for himself, this time mixing it with Worcestershire sauce and cod liver oil.
"I have to stop him, obviously," he replied, "before he orchestrates a full-scale race war."
worr rkbench. "Hexe, you have to tell Captain Horn what you know. This is too big for just you to handle. He's responsible for killing at least four people."
"No, you don't understand," Hexe said with a vehement shake of his head. "The royal family handles its own. Besides, do you realize what would happen if anyone found out about his involvement in this? Esau isn't some Kymeran juggler peddling fast-luck soap and hard-on pills in Witch Alley! He's not only a member of the royal family-he would have been the Witch King if my grandfather hadn't disowned him.
"My family has worked for centuries to put the shadows of the Sufferance behind us, where they belong. If a descendant of Arum is revealed to be framing humans for the murder of Kymerans in order to trigger race riots, can you imagine the repercussions? Plus, if anyone finds out what he's done, it'll destroy my mother's career, as well as my own, not to mention set back human-Kymeran relationships a hundred years."
" 'Drown will the streets the usurped in blood no mercy for his flesh show.' That's from Mr. Manto's prophecy," I explained. "I'm starting to understand what it means now. Esau is the 'usurped'-or, at least, that's how he sees himself. And he is determined to make you and your mother pay for his being denied the title of Witch King."
"We've got to destroy the maternal furnace that you fashioned for Esau, as well as the blueprints Jarl created for him," Hexe went on. "Somehow Esau has devised a means of speeding up the gestation time for homunculi. There were only a few days between you finishing work on the maternal furnace and the attack on Jarl. It probably accounts for their rapid aging as well. As soon as these are too old to be of use to him, he'll destroy them and start fresh. As long as he has that artificial womb, he'll have access to an army of mindless drones he can send out to do his bidding.
"Once we take care of destroying the maternal furnace, I can tell my mother what he's done. As justiciar of Golgotham, she has the power to have him arrested under sealed warrant, and as Witch Queen she has the ability to banish him from Golgotham. He'll end up spending the rest of his life in the Tombs or in exile; either way, he'll be out of our hair."
"Well, what are you waiting for?" I asked, pointing to the glass of katholikon. "Drink up. We've got some serious monkey-wrenching ahead of us tonight."
"Not without me you're not."
I looked up to see Scratch perched atop the refrigerator, his eyes glowing like twin stoplights. "How long have you been up there?"
"Long enough to know you two are not setting foot outside this house without me," the familiar replied.
"I appreciate your concern, old friend," Hexe said with a smile. "But I need you to stay behind. Esau has sent an infernal courtier to this house for the last two nights. I have no reason to believe he will stop. I need you here in case the demon gets in, to protect Lukas, Mr. Manto, and Beanie. It is my obligation as their landlord to make sure they come to no harm. Is that understood?"
Scratch scowled. "Yes. But I don't have to like it."
"Are you sure this is the right place?" Hexe whispered as he peered down the darkened alley.
"This is it. It dead-ends at the warehouse," I replied.
We joined hands and stepped into the pitch-black e pto thepassageway. Hexe led the way, his catlike pupils better suited for such midnight excursions. A couple minutes later I could make out the faint outlines of the cramped courtyard at the back of the warehouse. Suddenly Hexe stepped back, pressing himself against the brick wall, and motioned for me to follow suit. Putting a finger to his lips, he pointed to Esau's familiar, Edgar, perched atop the roof, cleaning his feathers with his jet-black beak.
As I wondered how we could possibly get past the creature without it alerting its master, I heard a familiar squealing noise overhead, followed by the scrambling of numerous claws across shingles. Edgar gave an abrupt caw of delight and spread his ebony wings, flapping off in pursuit of a juicy rat king running across the rooftops of Pickman's Slip.
Hexe and I didn't waste any time exploiting our good luck. We hurried across the courtyard and were relieved to find the loading dock unlocked. The interior of the building was almost as dark as it was outside, but it didn't take me long to locate the stairway that led to the next story. As we reached the second floor, Hexe gasped in surprise upon seeing the metal arms lining the hallway. Although the glow from the witchfire torches dyed everything blue, and made our teeth and the whites of our eyes glow like irradiated pearls, it at least provided enough illumination for us to see where we were going.
As we opened the door at the end of the hallway, we were rewarded by the sight of the maternal furnace, sitting right where I had left it. Its stylized dragon's head stared blindly up at the warehouse's roof, its jaws frozen in midroar. I glimpsed steam curling from its nostrils, and when I looked down I saw a smudge pot, like those used in citrus groves during the winter, parked between its taloned feet, warming its copper belly.
"It looks like Esau's not wasting any time," Hexe grunted. "He's already incubating replacements."
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and opened the hatch of the turnip-shaped body. There was a rush of steam, followed by the smell of composting plant matter. I looked inside the hollow container and saw a huge mound of rotting lawn clippings, discarded coffee grounds, and less-identifiable organic debris the size of an alligator's nest.
Suddenly there was movement deep within the mass, like a sleeper stirring underneath a blanket. A pallid human arm emerged from the pile of decomposing vegetation, like a grub burrowing out of a rotten stump. I stared in disbelief as a milk white, unfinished thing writhed out of the hatchway, only to flop onto the floor like a sack of wet laundry.
From the waist up it appeared to be a fully grown adult male, save that it was completely bald and missing both its eyebrows and eyelashes. Its legs were fused together, so that it resembled an albino tadpole, and at the very end of its "tail" was a single chicken's foot, the toes of which clawed feebly at the floorboards like a newly hatched peep learning to scratch.
The abomination lifted its head and gave voice to a single, wordless cry, before collapsing dead. Within seconds of expiring, the homunculus's body began to decompose, just like its older brother's had earlier that night.
"Born of corruption, to corruption they return," Hexe said grimly. "At least we've located the maternal furnace. Now all we have to do is find the blueprints."
"I think I know where he keeps them."
As I cautiously peered around the doorjamb into the room across the hall, ossd thiit seemed no different than when I'd last seen it. The stuffed giraffe was still there, as was the black hen sitting in its cage and the pentacle on the floor. Then my eyes adjusted to the gloom, and I saw that the body on the slab had been removed and in its place stood a large cage, like those used to transport dangerous animals.
"It smells like the monkey house at the zoo," Hexe whispered under his breath.
As we neared the cage, I saw a couple of shadowy figures crouched in one corner, eating from a metal trough. One of them turned to look at us with a quick, birdlike movement of his head. It was Cain-or perhaps his identical "brother," Seth, as it was impossible to tell one homunculus from the other now. He was completely naked, his lower body smeared with filth, especially his scaly bird feet.
Despite Cain's hair being liberally shot through with gray, his face remained as smooth and unlined as a mask, no doubt because he had not lived long enough to actually break it in. There was no recognition in the SOA leader's pale gray eyes; instead they seemed as clear as freshly washed windows, and completely unclouded by thought. The homunculus returned to his feeding, shoving a handful of writhing something into his mouth.
"Ugh! What are they eating?" I grimaced.
"Probably the traditionally approved diet for homunculi: live earthworms and lavender seeds," Hexe replied.
A squirt of bile scorched the back of my throat. "I think I'm going to be sick."
"You can puke later," Hexe chided as he rifled through an antique rolltop desk covered in a drift of yellowed newspaper and old parchment. "Right now we have to find those blueprints and destroy them."
A couple of minutes into our search, we stopped upon hearing a pair of male voices, raised in argument, in the hallway. Hexe grabbed my hand and together we scrambled into the deep shadows of the loft. Seconds after we hid behind a large wooden packing crate in the farthest corner, the door swung open and Esau, with Edgar perched on his left shoulder, entered the room, followed closely by his KPU lieutenant, Skal. Esau had his usual imperious look on his face, but judging from the younger wizard's haggard appearance and the massive pit stains on his shirt, Skal had not eaten, slept, or bathed since the night of the rally.
"This is it, Esau-I'm through with this crazy scheme of yours! Seeing that the centaur colt scored an overdose of ketamine was one thing, and making sure the ipotane got drunk and fell off the pier was simple enough. But I should have known better than to get mixed up with this demon shite! I only agreed to help you in the first place because you promised Dori would make the perfect frame for the nump bitch's death. Well, the nump bitch is still alive, Esau, and now Dori is talking to the PTU!
"My mother was sent to the Tombs to take her testimony. She saw me buying the binding talisman when Dori breathed on the scrying stone. Mom just called ten minutes ago to inform me that she's through covering for me. She says I have two options: either turn myself in or never set foot in Golgotham again."
Esau gave his second-in-command a withering glance. "You're as mother-haunted as my wretched excuse for a nephew. When you first came to me, you had fire in your belly. You wanted revolution, and you wanted it now! I told you how we could bring it about, and you swore to it in blood, if you remember." The necromancer reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a small parchment scroll bound with a red satin ribbond snot e, holding it up so Skal could see it. "Are you reneging on that oath?"
The young wizard's face went pale. "Of course not. I'm not the kind to go back on my word, Esau. You know I'm as dedicated to the cause as you are. But what are we going to do? The Paranormal Threat Unit has traced the demon attack back to us."
"I'm afraid you're mistaken, my friend," Esau replied with a humorless smile. "The PTU has traced it back to you."
The scroll Esau held abruptly burst into flame. Skal opened his mouth to scream, but all that came out was a jet of blue fire. Twin tongues of flame shot from his eye sockets, then his ears, as if someone had poured gasoline into a jack-o'-lantern. Skal dropped to the floor as the fire burned him from the inside out, his arms and legs drawing into his body as the intense heat shrank his tissue and muscles.
I covered my mouth in horror, for fear I might give away our position, and quickly looked away. Skal was a loathsome person, and responsible, by his own admission, for the death of two of my friends-but nobody deserved to die such a death.
When I looked again, Esau was nudging the smoldering remains with the tip of his shoe, nodding his head in apparent satisfaction. His familiar, Edgar, spread his wings and cawed raucously, as if laughing.
"Take this traitor's body and dump it in the deepest trench in the ocean," Esau commanded, giving the charred corpse a final, dismissive kick. "Let Skua think her precious son has fled Golgotham rather than face the GoBOO's so-called justice. I will make a show of disavowing his 'extremism' at the next rally, to throw the hounds off my scent."
Edgar obediently hopped down from Esau's shoulder, taking on his demon-bird aspect in order to better carry out his master's bidding. Sinking his talons deep into what was left of Skal's body, the familiar clattered its toothed bill in farewell, then, with a single beat of its monstrous wings, flew out through the open skylight.
"Well, that settles that little problem," Esau announced to the empty air, wiping his hands against his lapels. The necromancer walked over to the cage containing the remaining homunculi and leaned against its bars, studying his handiwork. "Now if only you morons could tell me what happened to Abel." Seth and Cain barely glanced up as he spoke, preferring to shovel their meal of earthworms and lavender seeds into their mouths. Esau scowled and picked up an instrument from his nearby workbench. "Look at me when I'm talking, you misbegotten idiot!" he snapped as he thrust the electric cattle prod into the side of one of the homunculi.
The creature shrieked in pain and surprise, but instead of striking out at its tormentor, fell instead upon its companion, who returned the attack with equal vehemence. Esau stood and watched the two roll about on the floor of the cage as they fought tooth and nail, a cruel smirk on his face. After a couple of minutes the homunculi ceased their fighting, whether out of exhaustion or boredom, and returned to their feeding trough.
"You're no different than the nump who fathered you," Esau sneered, his voice dripping with disdain. "Reacting to all uncomfortable stimuli with brute aggression; striking out at the closest thing at hand, regardless of the role it played. Your lust and hunger control you, just as they do your father's race. My mistake was in allowing your base nature to inflame my own. That was sloppy of me."
Putting aside the cattle prod, he reached inside his shirt and pulled out ad py you moron amulet affixed to a long golden chain. He wrapped his left hand about it and made a noise like a farmer calling hogs: "Sooo-ie!"
There was a ripple in the air of the loft, like that of heat rising from a sidewalk, accompanied by the strong smell of brimstone, and the pig-faced demon that had attacked me appeared before the necromancer. The demon knelt on one knee before Esau, raising its claws in ritual supplication. "Master, I implore you," the demon begged in a deep, grunting voice. "Release me from your service. I cannot recover from the wounds dealt me by the warlock prince and his human bitch in this realm." The infernal gestured to its mangled, melted face and missing eye. "Every moment I spend on this plane of existence is agony to me. I must return to my home, so I may bathe in the brimstone pits and make myself whole once more. I only ask this of you so I may serve you better."
"You must think I'm as empty-headed as those things over there," Esau said with a dry laugh, pointing to the homunculi in their cage. "I have set you to a task, and you have failed at it twice. You fail a third time and you are bound to my will for eternity. I'm not about to let you off the hook. You'll suffer your wounds until you bring her to me-is that understood? "
"Perfectly, Master," the demon replied, disappearing as suddenly as it had first appeared-
Only to materialize at my side.