The Long Chain

by Dan Willis

  “I think you are stalling, Andrea,” Torres said. “Now you get me results or I’ll have the boys cut apart your detective friend piece by piece.”

  Dr. Kellin ground her teeth and cast Alex a worried look.

  “If I may,” Alex said, keeping his voice calm. “I believe I can help speed things along.”

  All eyes turned to Torres.

  “How?” he asked.

  “You don’t want to wait for the doc to brew the foundations of her potion,” Alex said. “So what you need is a supply that’s already been brewed.”

  A long moment passed and then Torres nodded at the man holding Alex. The pressure on his arm vanished and Alex pushed himself up from the table.

  “And you know where to get some?” he asked.

  Alex nodded.

  “I should warn you,” he said. “Dr. Kellin never solved the toxicity problem. If you drink her rejuvenator it will slowly build up in your system until it kills you. The only reason I can imagine why anyone would drink it is if they’re dying anyway.” He shrugged and cast a sidelong glance at Dr. Kellin. “Or if maybe they had something real important to do and they didn’t care if they lived or died afterward.”

  Dr. Kellin couldn’t meet Alex’s gaze, looking down at the measuring spoon she still held in her hands.

  “Well, I don’t see as I have much choice,” Torres said, “now do I? So if you have access to what Andrea needs, you’ll be doing her, and yourself, a favor by getting it for me.” His voice was mild, pleasant even, but the implicit threat was obvious. “Tommy here,” he nodded at the flat-faced thug, “will take you wherever you need to go. And if you give him any trouble, he’ll put a bullet in you.”

  Tommy grabbed Alex’s arm.

  “No need for that,” Alex said, pulling the silver flask out of his jacket pocket. “I have it right here.”

  The look of naked avarice was back on Torres’ face, but it was mixed with caution.

  “Alex!” Dr. Kellin gasped.

  “So he’s telling the truth,” Torres said, smiling at Dr. Kellin’s reaction. He looked back at Alex and beckoned him forward. “Bring that here.”

  “This is just the base,” Alex said, wiggling the flask. “Doc has to add something to it before it will work for you. The good news is that, unless I’m very much mistaken, she carries it on her person all the time.”

  Alex watched Dr. Kellin as he spoke. The expression on her face was one of horror that bled away like water out of a sink, leaving only shame behind. He turned back to Torres and mimed giving the flask to Kellin. After a moment’s consideration, the old man nodded.

  Holding the flask up so everyone could see it, Alex walked around the table and up to where Kellin stood. When he reached her, she looked up at him but didn’t accept the offered flask.

  “Go ahead,” he said. “It’s okay.”

  Reaching inside her collar, Dr. Kellin pulled out a small chain with a little phial hanging from it. Inside, Alex could see a small amount of blue liquid.

  Opening the flask, Dr. Kellin poured the contents of the phial inside, then closed it and shook it up.

  “This is what you want, Connie,” she said, turning to him.

  He reached out eagerly, motioning for her to bring it to him. Alex forced a sly smile onto his face, making sure Torres saw it.

  “Wait,” the old man said, suddenly suspicious. “You try it first.”

  Dr. Kellin went pale and cast a furtive look at Alex, but he just nodded.

  Her hands were shaking as she opened the flask and she hesitated.

  “Do it, Doctor,” Torres said, and the flat-faced thug pulled out his pistol.

  Dr. Kellin put the flask to her lips and tipped it up, taking a long drink.

  “There,” she said, screwing the cap back on. “It’s as I promised.”

  “Boss, look,” Flat-Face said, pointing at Dr. Kellin.

  As Alex watched, Dr. Kellin shivered as if she were cold, then she gasped. A smile of pure pleasure came over her face, and she leaned her head back as her body trembled. Her arms grew thinner and more toned, and her skin lost the wrinkles of age. From the top of her head, her gray hair disappeared, flowing red down to the tips. When she lowered her head, Dr. Kellin was gone, and Jessica stared back at him.

  27

  Lilith

  ”Oh, dear Andrea,” Connie Torres said, practically giggling with glee. “That is most impressive.”

  As Alex watched, Jessica looked down at her hands and smiled. Her face glowed with a delighted radiance, and she drew in a long, satisfied breath.

  The look vanished almost instantly as she seemed to become aware of her surroundings. The events of the last day, in particular the last few minutes, seemed to pour into her, as if the part of her mind that was Kellin and the part that was Jessica were inherently separate — though obviously still connected.

  A look of both shame and chagrin clouded her beautiful face, and she turned to face Alex.

  “I …” she began, the words catching in her throat. “I’m so sorry.”

  Alex gave a slight shrug. He’d hoped he’d been wrong about the real relationship between Jessica and Dr. Kellin, but he’d been prepared to be right.

  Jessica’s eyes hardened and her face fell. She’d obviously expected a different reaction from Alex.

  “How long have you known?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t sure till a minute ago,” Alex admitted. “Your hazel eyes really had me fooled. I didn’t pick up on how you always wore green and Doc always wore blue. Some detective I am.”

  “I hate to break up this tender moment,” Torres said. “But I’ll have that flask now.”

  He nodded at the thug with the unkempt hair and the man took the flask from Jessica.

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered again, as the man carried the flask to Torres. “The potion...it lowers inhibitions. I knew I shouldn’t have pursued a relationship with you, but…” She looked at him with shining eyes. “I just couldn’t help it.”

  “If it helps, you didn’t have to pursue all that hard,” Alex said.

  On the raised platform, Torres eagerly took the flask and unscrewed the cap. His face was pulled up in a rictus grin and his eyes were alight with the same avarice Alex had seen before. Without hesitation, he put the flask to his lips and drank.

  “How did you figure it out?” Jessica asked, ignoring Torres.

  “The students who died,” Alex said. “One was named Jessica Davis. One was named Andrew O’Neil. I knew that couldn’t be a coincidence.”

  She looked down, then nodded.

  “They were my friends.”

  “So you started making your special rejuvenator when Linda got sick,” Alex said. “Sooner or later someone saw you like this, and you needed to make up a fictitious lab assistant to explain how you looked.”

  “How long is this supposed to take?” Torres said, holding up the flask so that he could observe his gnarled, liver-spotted hands.

  “Your body isn’t used to the formula,” Jessica said in her sultry contralto voice.

  Torres raised the flask to his lips again, but Jessica put up a warning hand.

  “Alex was telling the truth,” she said. “The formula is toxic; if you take too much at once, it will kill you.”

  Torres hesitated, then lowered the flask, looking back at his hands.

  Jessica leaned close to Alex.

  “I appreciate your gallantry, coming here to rescue me, but do you actually have some sort of plan? Once the formula affects Connie, things might get dicey.”

  “Of course I have a plan,” Alex hissed back in his best indignant voice. “What do you think all that storytelling was for?”

  “Knowing you?” she asked. “I’d say you were showing off how clever you are.”

  “That was just a bonus,” he said. “I’ve been stalling.”

  “You brought the police with you?”

  “Well,” Alex equivocated. “Danny’s on his way with a few dozen cop
s. They’d already be here if it wasn’t for Leo Burnham’s cursed fog.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind,” Alex said. Torres’ frown had just vanished, replaced on his wizened face by a look of pure wonder. A moment after that, the wonder turned to triumph.

  “Yes!” he shouted, turning his hands over and back again. Even at this distance, Alex could see the skin smoothing, the signs of age vanishing.

  “I hope they get here soon,” Jessica said, inexplicable urgency in her voice.

  “Why?” Alex asked nodding at Torres who was tentatively feeling his face. “I expect he’ll be looking at himself in a mirror for at least the next ten minutes.”

  Jessica turned to him and gripped his hand in a death grip.

  “The potion lowers inhibitions,” she said again, as if that explained everything. “Now that he has what he wants, he doesn’t need us.”

  “What about the formula?” Alex said.

  She looked down and Alex’s heart sank.

  “He threatened to kill Charles if I didn’t write it out for him,” she confirmed his guess. “Now that he knows that it works, and he has the formula to keep him young for long enough, he can make it himself.”

  A creaking noise pulled Alex’s attention back up to the platform. Torres stood up from his wheelchair. He looked only a bit older than Alex now, with coal-black hair and handsome features. His face wore an expression of ecstasy, and he laughed with an almost childlike delight.

  “Oh, Andrea,” he said spreading his arms wide as if to embrace a whole new life. “Why didn’t you market this? You’d have made a fortune.”

  “You know why,” she said. “It’s far too dangerous.”

  Torres laughed again.

  “Then just sell it to rich people who want to be young again and charge a fortune,” he said. He put his hand to his chin in a thoughtful gesture. “Yes, I like that idea. That’s just what I’ll do.” That cold, hungry light was back in his eyes. “Just imagine how much money I’ll make.”

  He held out his hands again and admired them.

  “How long does the effect last?”

  “About twelve hours,” Jessica said. “Then you’ll revert back to yourself.”

  “This is who I am now,” he shouted at her, leaning on the railing that ran around the raised platform. “I’ll never go back.”

  He held up the flask as if it were his child, something to be loved and protected, and Alex felt a shiver run down his back. Jessica had said the formula lowered a person’s inhibitions, but Torres was ranting like a loon.

  “Then you’ll need more of that,” Jessica said. “A lot more.”

  Torres’ face hardened, going from elation to anger in an instant.

  “And you mean to say that I’ll need you for that,” he accused her. “You’re saying that you didn’t write everything in that formula you gave me. Take him.”

  This last was addressed to the flat-faced thug and he pulled out his .38 and pointed it at Alex. The blond thug grabbed Alex from behind and they led him away from Jessica.

  “Well?” Torres said to Jessica.

  “Don’t be foolish, Connie,” she said, sounding more like Dr. Kellin than Jessica. “Of course I wrote the formula down correctly, but it is fairly complex. You’re going to want someone who’s done it before helping you.”

  Alex wondered how much Jessica shared with the doc’s personality; were they the same person, or two different ones that shared a body? He reasoned the answer was probably somewhere in between.

  Torres sneered.

  “I don’t need your help to read a recipe. But…” He scrutinized her thoughtfully. “I do want to be sure you haven’t lied to me, Andrea dear.” He looked to the men holding Alex. “Start breaking his bones until I’m satisfied she’s telling me the truth.”

  Alex pressed his thumb against his flash ring as the flat-faced thug grabbed his wrist. If he timed it right, he’d be able to blind them long enough to escape. He still had two shield runes on his jacket so flat-face’s gun shouldn’t be a problem.

  “Stop!” Jessica shouted in a manner that again reminded Alex of Doc. Her voice was both loud and commanding, and all eyes in the room turned to her.

  Alex knew instantly that something was wrong. Very wrong. Jessica was leaning heavily against the lab table and her breathing was shallow. She was looking right at Alex, but he didn’t see fear in her eyes, only a deep and abiding regret.

  “You didn’t believe me,” she gasped. “About the formula being dangerous.” She collapsed to the top of the workbench, leaning on her elbow.

  Torres watched her with a look of disdain. Clearly he thought she was acting. Jessica’s feet went out from under her and she dropped to the floor with a noise that sounded like someone had punched her in the gut.

  “You’re boring me, Andrea,” Torres said, stifling a yawn.

  Alex could feel his own breathing coming faster and his heart racing. Dr. Kellin had said that the potion was toxic over time; she’d told him so the very first time she’d made it for him. Jessica had said that the potion lowered inhibitions. He’d seen how maniacal Torres had become with just one sip. What would happen to someone who had been exposed for years?

  The sound of laughter brought Alex’s galloping thoughts to heel. It wasn’t Torres this time, it was coming from the spot where Jessica had vanished beneath the table, but it wasn’t her voice.

  “I think your day is about to get more exciting than you bargained for,” Alex said to Torres.

  The young, old man looked at him with a sneer, but it vanished when he read the look on Alex’s face. Before he could call a warning to his men, a hand rose up and grabbed the edge of the workbench. It wasn’t Jessica’s feminine hand, but a rather smaller, younger one.

  “Boys,” Alex said, trying very hard not to be terrified. “Meet Lilith.”

  The girl who rose up from behind the table couldn’t have been more than thirteen. She was slender and small, with the delicate features of a youth. Now that Alex knew what, or rather who, she was, he could see the ghosts of Jessica and Dr. Kellin in that young face. Her hair wasn’t platinum blonde, like Johansson had said, nor gray like Doc’s, rather it was utterly white, like Alex’s. Lilith’s eyes were hazel, just like the others, and because she wore no colored clothing, they looked iron gray.

  Those eyes swept the room, as if she didn’t know where she was for a moment. When they locked on Alex, her brows dropped down over her eyes and her angelic young face twisted into a snarl that would set a feral dog running. He felt his blood run cold as he looked into those eyes. They were the exact opposite of Jessica’s, cold and utterly devoid of human feeling.

  “Shoot her,” Torres yelled, perceiving the danger before his men could react.

  Everything seemed to happen at once. Flat-Face released Alex’s wrist and went for his gun. Lilith reached into Dr. Kellin’s medical bag and came out with Charles Grier’s missing kukri dagger. Torres turned from the platform and ran out of the lab through the side door.

  Alex activated his flash ring.

  Blinding light bloomed up into the room, pulsing and blazing as the rune expelled its suspended magical energy. Alex had been so focused on Lilith that he’d forgotten to close his eyes and he swore as the flash temporarily burned away his vision. The blond thug cried out and let go. Alex jabbed an elbow behind him as hard as he could but missed, causing him to fall blindly into a heap on the floor.

  From the direction where he’d last seen Lilith came the sound of a lab table being turned over. Glass and liquid hit the floor with a cacophony of sound and two shots rang out in quick succession. Someone screamed and Alex was sprayed with a hot liquid he felt sure was not spilled potion.

  Hoping not to cut himself on shards of broken glass, Alex pushed himself up, blinking in rapid succession, hoping to clear his vision. He bumped into the blond thug and the man grabbed at him. Alex pushed the groping arm away and punched where he assumed the man would be. He hit somethi
ng solid but yielding, and heard the man’s breath whoosh out.

  Gut punch.

  Alex’s vision cleared enough to see the blond thug whirl around and point the muzzle of his pistol at him. Alex leapt forward, but the blond man was faster. The gun barked and Alex grunted as the slug hit him in the left side of his chest. His shield rune stopped the bullet, but it still felt like getting hit in the ribs with a Louisville Slugger.

  As painful as the shot was, bullets didn’t have much mass. Alex continued forward without stopping, driving his fist right into blondie’s jaw. He felt the bone shift under his hand and the thug collapsed into a heap.

  Alex grunted, shaking his stinging hand and trying to stand up straight with the pain in his side. Behind him, he could hear the sound of liquid dripping onto the hardwood floor. He turned as quickly as he could and found a scene out of a nightmare.

  Lilith stood facing him, just a few feet away. Her white shirt was stained with blood and her face was spattered with drops of red. The wicked kukri knife hung down from her hand, dripping slowly on the floor with heavy, wet splats. Behind her, Flat-Face’s body lay on the floor, flayed open from hip to shoulder across his torso. Alex could see the man’s guts spilling out of the horrific wound and it turned his stomach.

  Looking away, he found Lilith just staring at him. Her eyes weren’t dark and cold, like they had been before. Instead they burned with a manic fire and energy. He thought her unhinged...until she smiled at him. It was a wide, eager, hungry smile that stretched across her young face.

  Lilith wasn’t unhinged, she was fully insane.

  “Hello, Alex,” she said in a voice that sounded excited and perky. “I was so hoping to meet you.”

  Alex had no idea what to say to that, so he forced an easy smile on his face.

  “Nice to meet you too,” he said, not really knowing what else to say.

  Apparently, that wasn’t it. Lilith’s cherubic face hardened into a mask of fury and she jerked the Kukri up, splattering the front of Alex’s suit with cast-off blood. Before Alex could move, or even object, she hurled the bent dagger right at him.