CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The last thing Hero wanted to do was visit the morgue. Especially a morgue containing two bodies which represented her utter failure as an inspector and death speaker.
They were laid out on tables, side by side, rather than stuffed discreetly inside coolers.
Sheets covered the still forms, tucked up to their necks to offer some semblance of dignity but leaving their faces bare, slack and silent with reproach.
She entered the examination room with a heavy tread, feeling distinctly uncomfortable to be near these particular dead.
An odd and unpleasant sensation. When had she ever felt uncomfortable with the dead?
They had always been with her, for as long as she could remember, telling their tales, begging for her to Speak to them – to Speak for them.
What if I can never trust my abilities again? she wondered, a sharp spike of fear piercing her heart. Even Culpepper might give up on her then and send her back to her cell.
A shudder rippled through her. She hid it with a tug at her scapular.
“Doctor,” she said in greeting, spinning her ebony cane as if she hadn’t a care in the world.
Virchow was hunched over a table near the bodies, one with trays and vials and an impressive-looking microscope gleaming under the bright lights.
He turned to her and lifted the magnifying goggles he had strapped to his face.
Tufts of white hair stuck out from the sides of his head, but his crown was as smooth as an egg.
A short man with spidery limbs and a long face, he was nevertheless a giant in his field.
“Ah. You’re here. Very good,” he said brusquely, not bothering with pleasantries.
Like her, he had little patience for the niceties of human behavior, preferring to get right to the point.
“I’ve narrowed down the source of your spectral chain.
I couldn’t pinpoint the breed, unfortunately, but it is most definitely of Pandemonium. ”
“Let me guess, an Aerial demon?” she said, trying not to sound annoyed.
What a boring development. A puny little demon she could snuff in her sleep had had her chasing her own tail for days.
She scowled. The murder was solved. The investigation was over.
The damnable demon was probably long gone by now, too.
She fought the urge to break that shiny microscope.
“An Aerial demon?” he echoed, then laughed as if she’d made a joke. He gestured toward the microscope with a gloved hand. “Look through the scope and tell me what you see. Without your glasses, if you please.”
She did as he asked and settled her glasses on the table while the doctor watched her expectantly.
His gaze on her was disconcertingly bright.
There was an eagerness in his manner, a snapping energy barely contained, and even a sharp glance with her flaming eyes didn’t deter his staring.
She pressed an eye close to the aperture.
It took her a moment to focus, and then an entire world opened to her.
And it was a bad, bad world. A swirling nightmare in miniature. Pure evil on the head of a pin. A yawning chasm immense enough to swallow existence but no larger than a single cell.
And it was old. She felt like a newborn staring into infinity, helpless, new and shiny against a filthy, decrepit, eldritch authority.
Master…
With a ragged gasp, Hero backpedaled. Her hand moved in an automatic sign of warding, something she hadn’t done since she was a novice. “By the Goddess, the Branch and all the roots of the world! That’s no Aerial demon. It’s not a demon at all!”
“Hence my inability to determine either breed or class,” Virchow said. “The signature upon the chain which held our victim is something new, I believe. It’s something I’ve never encountered, at least.”
Hero focused on catching her breath, keeping her eyes on the microscope and the innocuous sample slide resting beneath the brass tube.
She half expected a void to open up and swallow the entire morgue.
But the substance they’d collected was merely residue.
It couldn’t harm them. Not in this form.
Whatever spawned it was the true threat.
“Not new,” she said, her lips numb. She didn’t want to say more, didn’t want to give it any more power.
“Do you recognize the signature?” Virchow demanded. “I cross-referenced every source I could think of and found nothing.”
She shook her head. She didn’t know the creature behind these samples, only that it wasn’t a demon she knew, that in fact it wasn’t any true demon at all. No, this was something far older. Far more dangerous.
Devourer.
The word whispered through her head and she gripped her cane as if an enemy might appear from thin air.
“Gather all the samples, Dr Virchow,” she said, getting a hold of herself with some effort. “Put them all in a consecrated coffer. You have one, don’t you?”
“Of course. All peacekeeper stations possess one. Why, Inspector? What beast lays claim to this chain?” His beady eyes slid toward the microscope. “Should we be concerned?”
“Yes,” she said. “Very concerned. And, no, I can’t tell you any more. Words have power. You understand me?”
“I do, Inspector. I’ll do as you ask.”
She retrieved her glasses while Virchow started to gather up all the samples he’d collected from Catarine’s body. “Keep your results quiet for now, Doctor. I have some further investigating to do. I want to make sure there’s something there before I bring anyone else into this.”
Virchow was slipping his vials into a small wooden rack, readying them to be placed in the coffer. He paused and lifted a brow in her direction. “Where are you taking your investigation, if I may ask?”
“To Hell, Doctor. Straight to Hell.”
It was dark where they’d sent her, and the walls were made of bones, brown with age and covered with a thin film of moisture, as if the long-dead still sweated. Or wept.
She huddled at the center of her “room” – a crypt, in fact, empty of any desiccated corpses, but no less welcoming for it; she tried not to dwell on the fact – keeping as far from the walls as she could.
Her head ached from the blow she’d received, but it was just one more discomfort to add to her misery.
During the first few hours of her incarceration, she’d been in hysterics, laughing and weeping simultaneously, uncontrollably, until someone came and doused her with a bucket of ice cold water.
Now, huddled on the floor, hunched over her knees, palms pressed flat to the damp earth, face smashed against the back of her hands, Molly felt hysteria rising again.
Giggles bubbled up from her empty belly, bursting from between her lips no matter how tightly she held them closed.
She didn’t want another bucket, but she couldn’t help it.
The situation was hysterical. Hysterical, hysterical, HYSTERICAL!
A shrill keen leaked from between her teeth. This was it; she’d finally lost it completely–
“ Franke! ”
A whisper. Molly froze, her rising scream lodging in her throat. She strained to listen, holding her breath along with the screams and mad giggles. It wouldn’t do to move, not yet, not until she was sure. Movement brought pain. Punishment. This could be another trick.
“Can you hear me?”
Yes . She mouthed the word, still too afraid to speak. No speaking allowed!
There was movement somewhere outside her cell, a shifting, and she heard her name again, spoken with a desperate urgency.
Slowly, carefully, she lifted her head. Light from unseen fires flickered on the walls outside her crypt.
This prison was an ancient catacomb and hers wasn’t the only crypt within it.
Someone was talking to her from another of the tombs. A fellow prisoner?
“You can’t give in to the despair, Franke,” the voice continued. “That’s how they get you.”
“Cole?” Her voice wavered, certain she was speaking to the dead. “They killed you.”
A grunt of laughter. “They tried,” he said. He sounded very much alive.
“What is this place?” she asked.
“Solitary.”
The word held layers, all grim. “What’s going to happen to us?”
There was a silence, stretching uncomfortably. “This time? I don’t know.” He sighed. “I don’t think I’m leaving here again. But if you can keep yourself together, you might have a chance.”
A chance. Molly crawled closer to the bars sealing her inside the crypt, her knees scraping across ancient brickwork.
She grasped the bars and looked out – the first time she’d ever dared to see beyond her crypt.
With her face pressed hard against the cold iron, she could see a vast cavern down a short length of tunnel.
There, the fiery light was strongest, limning dripping stalactites and rough, rocky walls.
“Do you… do you think they’ll really let me out of here? ”
“I don’t know.”
“We aren’t supposed to be talking!”
A new voice, shrill, farther away than Cole’s. A girl’s voice.
“Who’s there?” Molly demanded in a loud whisper. There were crypts lining the dark tunnel on either side, all barred like cells. So “solitary” wasn’t so solitary after all. She waited for an answer, holding her breath.
Finally: “I’m Katy. Katy Bell.”
The name was familiar, and Molly realized she knew her. A thin, dark-haired girl from Otherside. The Guardians had accused Katy of wanton behavior, a common accusation against the girls sent to Bright Renewal. “I’m Molly Franke.”
“You went to Clem Prep,” Katy said, sounding almost resentful. “Your dad is a PK, right?” The resentment turned to eagerness. “Can he help us?”
Bitterness welled up in Molly. “He sent me here.”
A low moan echoed down the tunnel. Molly gripped the bars. “Who else is down here?” she demanded of the darkness.
“Jonathan Dell,” said another of the prisoners. “I know you from Circle, Molly. You too, Katy, and Cole.” He huffed a laugh. “Everyone knows Cole!”
“I know you, Jonny,” Cole said. “You’re tough.”
“Thanks. Lot of good it did me.”