“Yer lucky me and my lads happened by when we did. We were on a pub crawl, celebrating the release of our brother, Tullamore. Earlier today I finalized a plea negotiation on his behalf. The felony enchantment charges were dropped down to a D and D, and he was given probation. Speaking of which, I best put him on a leash and get him to a lifter, as his probie is contingent on him abstainin’ from turnin’ folks into pigs for the next two years!”
“Thank every heaven!” Hexe exclaimed as he threw his arms about me. “Are you all right?”
“Forget me—look what they did to you!” I wailed in dismay at the sight of his blackened left eye and split lower lip. “We need to get you to the hospital!”
“It’s nothing I can’t tend to myself,” he assured me as he knelt beside the fallen Son of Adam. “Right now I’m more interested in getting a good look at this bastard.”
I gasped in surprise as Hexe peeled the ski mask away, not because I recognized the dead man as a famous actor or a well-known captain of industry, but because his face was identical to that of Cain, the SOA’s leader.
“They must be twins,” I marveled as I studied his face. “I guess he wasn’t joking when he called his croggies ‘brothers.’ This one is starting to go gray about the temples, too.”
“This one must be Abel, going by the letter
A
scrawled on the tag in his hoodie.” Hexe reached down inside the dead man’s shirt and tugged, removing an octagonal amulet covered in Kymeran script, the center of which contained a circular mirror. “That explains why they were brazen enough to attack us like they did. Reflector charms boomerang spells back onto whoever cast them. He’s got at least a dozen of these things taped around his midsection like a girdle. So much for the Sons of Adam decrying the Kymerans and their magic.”
I coughed and covered my nose and mouth with my hand, suddenly aware of an overpowering odor of putrefaction. “God, what is that stink?”
“It’s coming from the body.” Hexe grimaced in disgust. “It’s already starting to bloat.”
“How is that possible?”
“It’s not . . . unless . . .” Hexe bent down and quickly unlaced one of Abel’s steel-toed boots. When he pulled off the dead man’s shoe, I was shocked to see a human-sized chicken’s foot growing out of his ankle.
“Of course! It all makes sense now!” Hexe exclaimed.
“It does?” I frowned.
“This isn’t a human—it’s a homunculus!”
“A hom-knuckle—what?”
“Homunculus—or, rather, homunculi, seeing as how there were three of them. A homunculus is the by-product of
takwin
, a branch of alchemy that specializes in the creation of artificial life. It’s a supernatural form of cloning. They’re created by taking the sperm from a dead man and placing it inside the unfertilized egg of a black hen, then growing it within a special device called a maternal furnace. The result appears outwardly human, except for the feet.”
My eyes lit up as I finally realized where it was I had seen Cain and his twin before. “
That’s
where I know this guy from!” I exclaimed. “That’s the exact same face as the dead man I saw in the warehouse loft! And I
wondered
what the fuck that chicken was doing hanging around. The reason the other two SOA wore ski masks was to hide the fact they’re clones!”
“You mean this chuffin’ idiot isn’t a nump?” the centaur said with relief. “Praise Zeus! For a minute there, I was afraid my insurance was going to shoot sky-high!”
“Shouldn’t we still notify the PTU?” I asked. “I mean, he
is
dead.”
“Would you call the police to report a dead dog on the side of the road?” Hexe replied with a shrug. “Besides, in a few more minutes there won’t be anything left of him
to
report.”
I looked back down at Abel’s body and nearly gagged. The dead man’s skin had sloughed away, and the underlying muscle and bone were beginning to liquefy. Blood filled his eye sockets and poured from his open mouth and ears, like groundwater rising in a well. As the gore filled the gutter, I felt the hair along my arms and the back of my neck stand on end, and I heard Mr. Manto’s sonorous voice echoing in my head.
Drown will the streets the usurped in blood no mercy for his flesh show.
The Teamster was so relieved that he didn’t have to file paperwork with his insurance carrier that he offered to drop us off at the boardinghouse. Since neither one of us was in any condition to do a lot of walking, we eagerly accepted the ride.
“Homunculi are things, not living beings in their own right,” Hexe continued to explain as the wagon jounced its way along the cobblestone streets. “They don’t have minds or souls, and are utterly devoid of morals or conscience. That’s why they’re usually kept small—normally no larger than a fetus. Having a creature like that the size of a grown man is incredibly dangerous.”
“If they’re mindless, how is it Cain talks and gives orders?”
“Because it’s not Cain who’s doing the speaking,” he replied. “No doubt their master is manipulating them via telepathy. It’s also the reason only one of them speaks—it’s difficult enough to control one puppet, much less three. Why spread yourself even thinner by throwing your voice through all of them? That’s why Abel went berserk and ran out into the street—his master must have lost control of him during the melee with Seamus and his boys.”
“It also explains why Cain spoke as if he knew me,” I said uneasily.
“What did he say?”
I blushed as I repeated what Cain had said to me, even though I had nothing to be ashamed about. His words were so ugly, just speaking them was enough to make me shudder in revulsion.
“I’ll kill him,” Hexe said in a cold, hard voice. There was a grim look on his bruised and battered face I’d never seen before; that of a man on the verge of being pushed one step too far.
“No, you won’t,” I said firmly, putting my five-fingered hand atop his six-fingered one. “Because that’s not the kind of man you are. Besides, we both know who’s behind all this.”
Hexe nodded, the look in his eyes growing even darker. When he spoke his uncle’s name it sounded like a curse.
Chapter 26
T
he 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.”
“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 passageway. 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.