14
We climbed the shaft, me leading and two women following close behind. I knew Lyanne, with her enhanced strength, was going to have no problem with the climb, but I was a little concerned for Maura. Turned out I didn’t need to worry; if anything, she was a better climber than either of us. I reached the top floor of the lift and pried the doors open.
I stepped into a snapshot of the late 1800s. It was a penthouse apartment decorated in old-school opulence, reminding me of movies about the dangers of expecting greed to bring about satisfaction set around the turn of the century, such as Citizen Kane or The Great Gatsby. Apparently, whoever designed this apartment had not gotten the moral of those stories.
Large mirrors, adorned around the edges with gold or jewels, lined each wall of the room we first stepped into, and an equally adorned chandelier hung in the center of the room, allowing the mirrors to reflect it a hundred times earlier, creating an effect that was almost painful to the eyes if the light hit it the right way.
“I’ll never understand why so many are obsessed with this era.” Lyanne looked up at the chandelier and shook her head. “It’s been romanticized into the realm of myth, for fuck’s sake. There was so much sitting around and just talking. I swear, the wealthy back then could not keep their mouths shut.”
We crossed into the next room and noticed that the penthouse had an odd layout. There seemed to be one central room, shaped like an oval, and every other room was built to encircle that center. I decided to take a walk around the exterior rooms first before approaching the oval.
Like in the room with the lift entrance, every room was furnished with class and opulence in mind. Though there was something oddly unsettling about some choices. Everything was clearly old and would be considered valuable antiques, but as we passed sculptures of bodies contorted in an usual positions, larger-than-life portraits where the eyes seemed to follow you, and furniture that was arranged in a way to choke off entrances and doorways so the only way to pass through was single-file, I felt a deep sense of uneasiness.
When we finally came into the oval room at the center of the apartment, Lyanne mouthed the word “Lab,” though I probably wouldn’t have drawn that conclusion myself. I took a walk around the strange room with its workstations positioned against the wall on opposite sides of the room.
The first appeared to be a sewing station. It had a loom, rolls of linen fabric, a couple of oddly colored bottles of dye, and some needles. It was everything a seamstress or tailor would need. As I examined some of the oddly dyed rolls, I realized not all the bolts were linen. The leathery texture on one gave it away as flesh. I pontificated on how a few months ago that would have disturbed me, but now I just registered it as fact and moved on. At least I finally have an explanation for the missing flesh that launched this investigation.
The other was a kind of tinkerer’s workstation. It was covered with well-organized bronze gears, silver chains, and other exotic mechanical items from tiny pneumatic cylinders to ball joints. A magnifying glass was positioned next to the seat so whoever was working there could inspect tiny parts while leaning in too close.
There was a blueprint tacked to the wall behind the station, and while I couldn’t understand the fine details of what it was laying out, the overall form was familiar to me: a golem, just like the one that had attacked my house.
Lyanne came up beside me to study the blueprint. “This must be where they make them.”
“Them.” That word was more concerning than anything else we had found here. “Meaning there are more than one.”
“I would assume. This looks to be a very complicated process, a fusion of magic and science that must have taken many years to master. You would not go through that kind of effort for a single creation.”
Maura knelt under the workstation and found a manila folder taped to its underside. She flipped through its contents quickly before handing it over to me. “You might want to see this. It’s from Allgeir Centrifuge, who I recall you were looking into.”
It seemed Allgeir was involved in the same kind of work, though modern medicine was starting to catch up to wear magic left off. Their tests were more on the flesh side of things, with emphasis put on stopping or slowing its deterioration. I supposed it was not convenient for your golem’s skin to rot off once your magic on it faded. Allgeir was getting close, too, with some of their compounds preserving flesh perfectly for months. They estimated they could have the formula work for years in just a few more trials.
Lyanne took a look after me and put the pieces together. “This must be what Pembroke was after.”
“Pembroke wanted to make golems?”
“He’s looking to extend his life. Pembroke’s an undead, not a true immortal, though they live long enough that the two are not dissimilar. Eventually the magic that sustains him will begin to fade, and when it does his body will rot and he will die. But if he could use these techniques and this substance, he just might be able to preserve himself.”
I had a mental image of Pembroke taking off a bit of his flesh, soaking it in some substance, putting a few metal bearings in it, then resewing it to his body, before moving on to the next chunk of flesh in succession. Despite how hardened I’d become, the thought was disturbing.
“So he didn’t come here to take over Tandi’s network like he claimed.” He had been dishonest with me. I didn’t know why that surprised me. He wasn’t an ancient monster anymore, but somehow with the way he claimed to operate in a respectable fashion, I expected more. “He learned that Tandi had been toying with golems and wanted that research for himself, but Benazir beat him here and got her hands on it first.”
Suddenly the objects I had pulled from the sinks of Allgeir’s lab made sense, as did the mummy that attacked me at Benazir’s behalf. Benazir was working on something that would save the mummies from eventual death. No wonder some would side with them. She probably also needed some to be used as test subjects in the lab … voluntarily or not.
But there was one more thing that still didn’t add up. “Why would Benazir go through the trouble? Just to recruit a few mummies to her side? Or is she hoping to force Pembroke himself to declare loyalty to her? Cause I’ve met Pembroke, and he doesn’t seem like the type who would bow before … well, he called her an ignorant desert hag.”
Lyanne shook her head sadly. “That’s not how someone like Benazir works. Desert Witches—their magic pre-dates most of recorded history, in the days before Egypt, when this kind of power … well, it was still associated with godhood, and its practitioners behaved as such. They were solitary, cruel, brilliant, and most importantly, they didn’t have the same desires as other undead predators. Benazir, she wants to bring dryness and silence, to create a place to rule without being disturbed. In a way, she’s a creature of anarchy, of chaos, as she dismantles the power wherever she goes, but she wants her power to be the one around … until she packs up and moves on to her next target, anyway.”
“So she wouldn’t want someone like Pembroke, a figure of stability and a threat to her authority, around.”
Her eyes were hard as they stayed fixed on the blueprints. “Whatever it is Benazir has planned for her research, I doubt it is a procedure Pembroke would volunteer for.”
“The golem we fought at the estate seemed to have no will of its own,” I realized. “It didn’t speak, didn’t seem to feel any fear even as its body was torn apart, and it ignored everyone else in favor of attacking me. Like it was on a fixed mission. Completely under Benazir’s control.”
“Turning her biggest rival into a puppet for her to control ... that is more a Desert Witch’s style,” Lyanne agreed.
“I wonder if Pembroke realizes all this. He’s bringing his whole family over, and if he doesn’t realize it …
Monster of not, Pembroke deserved to be warned. I was not getting any cell reception in the apartment building, so we had to climb our way down the lift shaft and walk back out the front.
Before I coul
d call Pembroke, he called me. “Kurt! Where have you been, my boy, I have been trying to reach you for an hour.” Despite the nature of his words, being as formal and polite as ever, I thought I sensed something else behind them. Distress.
“I was in a building with bad reception. What’s going on?”
“There is no time to explain. I’m going to send you a Brooklyn address. I need you to meet me there at once. It is urgent.”
Before I could ask what he meant, the line went dead.
I sighed and looked over to the two women. “How much do you think it would cost for us to get a cab to drive urgent-speed all the way to Brooklyn?”
Lyanne and I arrived on a darkened street on the west end of Brooklyn in record time, Lyanne being sure to give our driver an incredibly generous tip for his troubles. As I looked toward the address Pembroke had given us, I couldn’t help but wonder if there had been some kind of miscommunication. Maybe he had hit the wrong number, because I couldn’t think of what a man like Pembroke would want with what appeared to be a shuttered factory.
The side of the building read “Franky & Sons Tools and Dyes,” and my mind immediately went to the workshop, with its odd colored dyed flesh fabric and the tinkerer’s gadgets. Maybe we were in the right place inside. As we got close, we noticed a light from one of the corner windows.
We peered through the window and saw the light was coming from a single oil lantern, positioned to illuminate a single body, hanging from a meat hook, and tortured beyond recognition. A single chair positioned on the other end of the room told a story: whoever did this had an audience who sat back and watched it happen.
“We were too late.” Pembroke’s accent took me out of my study of the room.
I turned to face the mummy. “Do you know who that is?”
“It is impossible to tell for sure, with his face as mauled as it is, but if I had to hazard a guess, based on his size, his dress, and build, I’d wager it was Franklin Allgeir.”
Looking back at the battered remains of someone who clearly died a very unpleasant death, I couldn’t help but feel a degree of sympathy for him. He might have been an amoral researcher who had accepted money first from a murderous Succubus and then a murderous witch, but no one deserved that fate.
“I take this to mean Benazir has no further need of him or his lab,” Lyanne commented. “She must already have everything she needs.”
We walked around the side of the building and found a black Mercedes tucked behind a sagging metal gate. I shined my phone’s flashlight inside and saw a microchipped keycard with the Allgeir Centrifuge label on it. It seemed Pembroke was right about the victim’s identity.
The car’s trunk had been broken into. Inside there were some metal shavings and the indentation of something heavy that had been recently removed. A light scent of oil lingered in the air near the trunk.
We were careful not to touch anything. Allgeir was an important enough figure that his death was going to warrant a full-scale investigation, and that was not something any of us wanted drawn to us.
Pembroke wanted to discuss this further with us, but we couldn’t stay there. He had parked a few blocks away, and the three of us followed him back to his car.
In the car, he casually picked a fingernail off and held it up for inspection. “I’m dying. Well, again, but you understand my meaning. I hoped to find a way out, but my body is failing me faster than magic can keep me alive,” Pembroke said.
“Humor me. You have a friend who is an honest-to-god vampire, right?” I asked him.
“Trust me when I say god has nothing to do with Culverton, but yes. He is of the fanged variety, despite his moth-eaten appearance. I could say the same about myself, actually.” Pembroke flicked a speck of dust from his sleeve and regarded me with a cool gaze. “You think to have him bite me and turn me into an undead? And what makes you think this has not been tried before?”
“Oh, I’m sure it has, but not by anyone I’ve seen. That’s not my idea. Can Culverton still hunt?” I asked.
“Of course. He’s British, and he has a cold. Doesn’t mean he won’t fancy a bite now and then,” Pembroke said in a wounded voice.
“And he has the strength and speed of a vampire?” I pressed.
“Does this have a point? Yes. He does,” Pembroke said, peeved.
“Then why don’t we have him bite one of Benazir’s goons and see what they’re made of?”
“I—” Pembroke said, but faltered. “But why?”
“If they’re human, he binds them to his blood, you know—all that vampire clan bullshit. If they shake it off and fight, then we know they’re not human, and Benazir has plans for you and your people that go beyond simply seizing Tandi’s holdings. She means to make you into something she can own. Like puppets, but made of flesh and bone,” I said.
“You must be daft. I would never—oh, dear.” Pembroke grew even more pale, if such a thing was possible.
“Yes?” Lyanne prompted.
“Well, it’s just—you see—I, ah—invited all of my people here, and yet, most of them will be weak as kittens for the first few days, having just woken from their slumber,” Pembroke said.
“So you brought your entire force of undead here without allowing them time to wake up properly?” I asked.
“It sounds rather silly, now that you put it that way,” Pembroke admitted. “I do many silly things, like answering Sara’s call to investigate that dreadful warehouse—”
“Sara didn’t call you. She’s on the farm, buried in paperwork. How could she have known about Franklin Allgeir’s corpse?” Lyanne asked in alarm.
“Well, I—I thought it was Sara. Sounded young and bright, all full of pumpkin spice or whatever the youths drink these days. She said her name was Sara, at any rate, and she knew exactly who I was. And where you were, too,” Pembroke said.
A chill crawled up my spine, so I had Lyanne text Sara. “It wasn’t her.”
“Then who?” I asked.
“And why?” Pembroke added.
“I think we need to know, and I think it’s time to take the fight to Benazir. Call your thirsty friend. We need his fangs,” I said.
“I’d be delighted, but we don’t call. We telephone, like civilized people,” Pembroke said with a wan smile.
15
“You want me to what?” Culverton said, horrified at our suggestion. We stood in front of his polished desk, surrounded by things a lifetime of being extremely British would produce—flags, cultural items, multiple teapots, and a teak oar inscribed “To Culvy, damned good rowing!”.
“We want you to bite one of Benazir’s golems.” I said it so naturally that it sounded like something everyone does on the weekends, as opposed to a possibly crazy plan that might not work.
Lyanne sat at the edge of Culverton’s desk, not afraid to keep his attention by crossing and uncrossing her legs. “We need to learn more about them, particularly how human they are and how much command over them Benazir has. If anyone could help us figure it out, it would be a strong, strapping vampire like yourself.”
Culverton licked his lips, clearly tempted, but still managed to shake his head. “That’s not what you said about me back in Vermont.”
“Playful teasing, and if I’m being honest, crude behavior on my part. I apologize without reservation for being so, ah—” Lyanne faltered.
“Common?” I said, helpfully.
Her glare could have melted ice, but she squished her face into what was technically a smile. “Yes, common.”
Pembroke had been grumbling the entire time as we failed to convince Culverton to join our cause. Finally, he slapped his hands down on the desk. “Damnit, man! Benazir’s Dragomen have been traitors to the crown for as long as I’ve known them! Also, I personally heard Benazir slur the queen back in 1951. Will you let that stand?”
A flash of righteous indignation passed over Culverton’s features. He picked up an umbrella and brandished it like sword, swinging it around for dramati
c effect. “I swear to all who can now hear me, I will avenge this mortal insult!”
I scratched my head in confusion. “But aren’t you a vampire?
Culverton drew himself up to his full height and spoke with great dignity. “Yes, but I am British first.”
“I don’t see why we have to be sneaky about this,” Pembroke complained for the hundredth time. “There’s no honor to this.”
Lyanne shook her head. “We need to be careful with this ambush. If our target thinks they’re outmatched, they might flee. Besides, you can’t keep living in the days when soldiers lined themselves up in rows and took turns killing each other like a bunch of fools. That’s just not how wars are fought now.”
Pembroke scoffed. “That was gentlemanly warfare. Not like today’s. There’s no class in war today.”
Culverton chuckled nervously. “You know, maybe Pembroke has a point. I mean, the whole point is for me to bite him, right? So I have to be the last thing he sees coming. If I’m the only one hiding and the rest of you confront him out in the open, then I have a better chance of sneaking up on him.” A sudden coughing fit called into his question his ability to be stealthy at all.
I gave Culverton a pat on the shoulder as he shook out a tired handkerchief that looked like it had been around since Queen Victoria. “I wonder if this would also be a good time to test whether vampire fangs still work after they’ve been removed from the bloodsucker’s skull.”
He flinched but then gave a victorious smile. “Ha! No it doesn’t, because it needs my saliva!”
“So you’re saying I just need to remove your fangs and collect some of your spit?” I shrugged. “That’s not a deal breaker for me.”
His eye twitched. “It was just a passing thought. Of course we were always going to go with your plan. Just keeping the dialogue lively and such.”
Succubus Hunter 2 (The Succubus Series) Page 12
