CHAPTER FORTY
Two thousand degrees. That's what it took to render a man into his component elements.
Carbon, calcium, phosphorus. Stardust and sentimentality, as all those New Age types liked to say. But that was the easy part. Rearranging those elements into something new, something better? That took more than fire. That took vision.
Glass clinked against glass as The Alchemist packed away her laboratory. She wrapped everything in old newspaper, watching chemical formulas disappear beneath headlines about missing persons and mysterious deaths. The irony wasn't lost on her. This was once a temple of precision, but now it was just an empty barn.
She'd already disposed of the sodium pentobarbital. One vial at a time, watching clear liquid spiral down the drain. The rest would follow - the pentobarbital, the other compounds she'd collected over months of careful preparation. No evidence, no traces. Just like the transformations themselves.
The last vial of sodium pentobarbital clinked in her pocket - one final hurrah, carefully measured. She'd saved the purest batch for tonight. The last transformation demanded perfection. Unlike the others, this vessel required special handling. After all, what was more delicate than the spirit itself?
The ancient texts had warned about this moment. About the temptation to keep trophies, to maintain some connection to the Work. But she knew better. Everything had to go - the beakers, the digital scales, the careful notes detailing dosages and timing. Let the police find Ezra's costume-shop occultism. Let them waste time decoding his metaphysical ravings while she completed her transformation.
Newspaper crackled as she wrapped another set of beakers. The sound reminded her of Marcus Thornton's last moments, of earth accepting its own. He'd followed the email's trail like a moth to flame, never suspecting that geology would be his undoing. Amateur sleuths always thought themselves cleverer than they were.
Sarah. The marine biologist had been so pliant, so trusting. A spiked drink, a reservoir's embrace, and then nothing but the slow, cold work of elemental change. Water washed away more than fingerprints. Given enough time, it washed away everything.
The texts were harder to part with. She'd scoured the world for these moldering volumes, traded favors and threats, spent money that should have gone to rent on crumbling vellum and faded ink. Ezra's books were a joke by comparison - mass market reprints and New Age nonsense. But these? These were the real deal. Wisdom of the ancients. She’d already ditched her most important volume – the Corpus Hermeticum – at Madam Butterfly’s. Luckily, the knowledge of that ancient text was already locked away in her head. The Corpus Hermeticum had been her guide and gospel. Its author had promised that the elements held the key to ultimate transformation, to shedding the imperfect flesh and emerging as something greater. Something perfect.
Into the furnace they went. One by one, releasing their secrets to the flame. Augurello's Chrysopoeia, Philalethes' Introitus apertus, Flamel's Book of Hieroglyphic Figures. Centuries of alchemical thought, reduced to smoke and ash. Not that she’d really connected with them anyway. She’d just collected them on her journey to her new life. The only book that mattered was the Corpus Hermeticum.
The police had nothing. No fingerprints, no DNA, no witnesses. She'd been meticulous. They'd chased Ezra's shadow, arrested Todd Peterson the family man, not Ezra Crowley the ersatz messiah. By the time they untangled that web, she'd be a new person. Untouchable.
Tessa had been the real gamble. So many variables at play - wind speed, atmospheric conditions, the pilot's tolerance for sedatives. But in the end, air had claimed its own. One drugged thermos and a sleepy angel spiraling earthward on wax wings.
She still had the charts. Altitude versus time, body mass against chemical concentration. Tessa's fate had been sealed the moment she handed Hermes her flask.
And fire had been much simpler than she imagined. All it had taken was a little help from another element, then fire had done the rest.
She'd protected herself well through all of this. No traces left on Marcus's body - earth had taken care of that. No fingerprints survived Sarah's transformation - water purified everything it touched. Gloves had kept her separate from Tessa's coffee, from Victor's water bottles. And tonight, well, tonight she had unlimited access. The perfect cover. The perfect end to the sequence.
Only the quinta essentia remained. The strange nitrogen of the soul that bound all the rest together .
Spirit, they called it. The divine spark. The axle on which the elements turned. The Alchemist knew better. Spirit was just another form of matter, as above so below. Transform one and the other followed; an occult call and response as old as time.
She'd dared what none of the old masters had. Those doddering fools with their eggs and their athanors. Nibbling at the edges of ultimate truth, never bold enough to seize the whole. They'd stopped at the gross matter, never realizing that the real gold lay in rearranging the subtle body. Chrysopoeia was for chumps. Apotheosis, now that was the ticket.
Four elements, four sacrifices. Four steps to glory. She'd proven her devotion, earned her place among the immortals. Now it was time to collect her reward.
Because after tonight, she would never need to turn away from her reflection again.