The Blood Alchemist (The Final Formula Series, Book 2)

by Becca Andre

  George tugged the neck of my shirt to the side. I opened my mouth, but closed it when I felt the cold touch of steel against my shoulder. My bra strap gave as he severed it and then went to work on the other side.

  Bent back, staring at the ceiling, I blinked my eyes as his hands slid up under my shirt, up over my ribs to grip the bottom of my bra. He jerked it down to my waist. Cold metal brushed my belly, and I held my breath. I couldn’t believe he meant to hurt me—not if he wanted me to brew him a potion. But not even that logic could slow my pounding heart.

  My bra slid off my waist, and I realized that he’d cut through the band.

  “Nice,” Henry said. Did he admire George’s technique or something else? I squeezed my eyes closed, not wanting to know.

  “Don’t be a dumbass,” George said.

  A pause.

  “Damn,” Henry said. “How much shit did she have packed in that thing?”

  I realized he must be talking about my bra. It was a handy place to hide a few vials.

  “But what do they do?” a third voice asked. Brian. I didn’t know when he’d joined us.

  “Probably nothing,” Henry said.

  George caught my wrist, knife cool against my skin, then he ripped open my sleeve, up to the shoulder.

  “No fucking way,” Henry said. “She’s the real deal?”

  “Yes,” George answered. “Our baby brother brought home a real Alchemica alchemist.”

  “But aren’t they supposed to be…” Brian hesitated.

  “Evil?” Henry laughed.

  I sucked in a breath as George gave me a pat down. He was quick and professional. Was that all he was doing? Removing my vials?

  “Aren’t they supposed to rob graves and steal babies?” Brian asked. The guy was five years older than James, but he always seemed five years younger.

  “That true, Addie?” Henry asked me. He sounded like he was holding back a laugh.

  “We had lab assistants for that,” I answered, my eyes still on the ceiling.

  The knife pressed closer, and I didn’t dare swallow for fear of cutting myself.

  “Release her,” George said.

  A pause, and Henry did—so abruptly I stumbled forward. George caught me and immediately shoved me toward Brian.

  “Take her downstairs.”

  “You’re going to give her to him?” Henry asked.

  George ignored him. “Go.”

  Brian gripped my biceps and pulled me toward the door.

  “What a waste,” Henry said from behind me. “I’d never noticed between that mouth and the sloppy-ass clothes she wore around the shop, but she’s stacked.”

  George didn’t comment.

  “Great ass,” Henry continued. “Bet he likes that when he gets her doggie style.”

  “You’re a sick fuck, you know that?” George sounded more amused than angry now.

  I didn’t catch the rest of the conversation as Brian pulled me outside. Oh damn, it was cold. I stumbled along beside him, my bare feet seeming to find every stick and root beneath the snow-covered leaf litter.

  “Do you think I can have my clothes back once George removes my vials?”

  Brian didn’t answer. Instead, he led me around the back of the house and stopped. He opened a pair of ground-level doors, exposing a stairwell leading down under the cabin. The floor was packed dirt, but worn down to the bedrock in places. To my surprise, it wasn’t nearly so cold; then I spied the old-fashioned stove in one corner. Someone had actually started a fire in it. My interest in my surroundings faded when I saw James lying a few feet away. A chain had been affixed to his collar, but that was the extent of the attention he’d been given. He was still naked, his lips blue.

  I hurried over, dropping to a knee beside him. His skin was cool.

  “Can’t you get him a blanket?” I demanded, running a hand over his shoulder.

  Doors thumped and the light dimmed. I looked over my shoulder and discovered that Brian had left us.

  Chapter

  18

  Chains rattled on the other side of the door. Brian locking us in—no doubt on George’s orders. “Bastards,” I muttered for what felt like the hundredth time.

  James mumbled something and drew up his legs, curling into a fetal position.

  “James?”

  He didn’t respond. Why was he unconscious? Was it from exposure, or had he lost more blood than I realized when they shot him?

  I rose to my feet and moved to the stove. The door to the firebox stood open an inch, providing the only source of illumination. I reached for the handle, intending to open the door and let in more light. At the last moment, I thought better of it and pulled my sleeve over my hand before touching the hot metal.

  Some smoke escaped, but not enough to be concerned with. I straightened and surveyed my surroundings. The dimensions of the room were uneven, as if the space had been dug by hand—and I suspected it had been. The support timbers looked hand hewn and the shelving along the wall was held together with wooden joints. This cabin had been here a while.

  On the shelves, I found a collection of old-fashioned canning jars. They’d been here so long that the wire holding the glass lids in place had rusted. A few contained an amber liquid. A heap of rusted metal turned out to be an old still. I shook my head. I had a good idea what the Huntsman boys’ ancestors did in the 1920s. Though, at the moment, I wasn’t going to complain. I had alcohol, various parts, and fire. If I couldn’t do something with this, I truly had lost my edge.

  I came to a stop when I found a tarp covering something near the door. Some dry-rotted burlap sacks of what had once been corn. The mice had long since made away with the kernels, but it wasn’t the corn I was interested in, it was the canvas tarp. Like the bags, it had begun to dry rot, but enough of it was still intact to be useful. I dragged it back to James and covered him with it.

  A stack of wood lay near the stove, and I added another log. Would the Huntsman boys give us more if we ran out or should I ration this?

  Just one log then. A large ember popped out of the open door, just missing my bare foot. I pushed the door closed, leaving only the slim crack for light.

  “Addie?” the sound of James’s voice in the stillness startled me.

  I hurried back to him, dropping to my knees. “Hey, you okay?”

  He sat up with surprising ease and looked me over. “Oh, sorry.” He averted his gaze.

  Did he think I’d been changing clothes or something? “George took my vials—and my clothes.”

  “What? That shithead.” He tried to get up, but the chain pulled him back. For the first time, he looked around, seeming to take in his surroundings. “The cabin,” he whispered.

  “A cabin, yes. Somewhere east of Cincinnati.”

  “Actually, Adams County.”

  I didn’t realize we’d come that far. “Oh.”

  His attention shifted back to me. “Here.” He started to hand me the tarp. “You need to keep warm.”

  I pushed the tarp back to him. “At least, I have two articles of clothing.”

  “Sorry,” he muttered, dragging the tarp back across his lap. A little color bloomed in his cheeks, a pleasant change from the blue tinge earlier.

  “It’s all right. It’s not like you can help it.” I gave his shoulder a light nudge. “The full moon. The bane of the shapeshifter.”

  He snorted and shook his head. “That’s so wrong.”

  “No, that would be your piece-of-shit brothers.”

  “I’m sorry I had to shoot Rowan at the Institute. I was almost to him when I heard you scream. Rowan took off toward the sound, and I had to shoot him before Brian did.”

  “Brian had him in his sights?”

  “I’m sure he did. I�
��d already found Rowan, so I assumed he had, too.”

  “Because he’d ingested your blood? What the hell was that all about? Is he part vampire or something?”

  James snorted, though he dropped his eyes. “My blood gives my brothers a temporary power boost. They, in turn, have the ability to heal me.”

  “How does that work?”

  He shrugged. “The same blood that flows in my veins flows in theirs, though to a much weaker degree.”

  “Can they heal anyone?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Gavin claims that it’s a boon granted to the grims’ keepers.”

  “Seems an odd gift for those murderers.”

  James looked up, frowning. “What happened?”

  I pulled my knees up and wrapped my arms around them. “They killed Lydia.”

  “What?” he whispered.

  “Well, they shot her. I failed to save her.”

  The chain rattled and James’s shoulder brushed mine. “Tell me about it.”

  I took a deep breath, then did as he asked. I didn’t leave anything out, not even those decadent little pastries Rowan had shown up with. When I finished, my eyes were burning and my voice had grown thick, but I’d kept it together.

  “I’m sorry I called you,” I finished. “But I couldn’t see a way out of—”

  “It’s okay,” he whispered, and to my surprise, wrapped an arm around my shoulders.

  I leaned into him and, after a moment, turned to wrap my arms around his waist. His other arm came around me, and I squeezed my eyes closed. Oh God, I needed this. We sat that way for a long time, my ear pressed to his silent heart.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I never should have left you.”

  “No. No, you did the right thing.” I pulled back out of his embrace and rubbed my eyes. Damn, I’d cried a lot today. “You get to go to college.”

  “That hardly compensates for losing my best friend.”

  I choked on a sob and rubbed the heel of my hand across my eyes. “You never lost me, but I deserved it, so please don’t apologize.”

  “Addie.”

  “Let’s not go there.”

  He sighed, but did as I asked. We sat in silence for a few moments, listening to the wood pop in the stove.

  “There is one thing I need to apologize for,” he said.

  I glanced over.

  “I shouldn’t have kissed you.” He kept his head down, toying with the tarp in his lap.

  Oh. I probably should have seen that coming, but with everything else going on, it hadn’t been on my mind. I didn’t want to go there, either, but if we were clearing the air, I had to.

  “The fault was mine,” I said. “I never told you that I thought of you as—”

  “A younger brother?” he cut in. “Yes, you did. I just chose to ignore it.”

  “I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You thought I was twenty-two for the first three months of our acquaintance.”

  “Even so…”

  “Come on, let it go.” I bumped my shoulder against his. When he didn’t respond, I plunged on. “Have you ever loved anyone before?”

  “You mean, aside from my family?” He snorted. “No.”

  “It’s amazing you turned out as you did.” I shook my head. “But there’s your problem. Having never experienced love, you just mistook one for the other. Platonic for something else.”

  He didn’t speak, so I hurried on.

  “One day, you’ll meet someone, and then you’ll see the difference.”

  “A girl who accepts me for what I am: a dead man with toxic blood?”

  “Any girl who gets to know the real you won’t care about those things. Trust me.”

  He pressed his lips together, but if he wanted to add something, he didn’t.

  I sighed. “This is one of those things you can’t be told, you have to experience it.”

  He looked over, a frown wrinkling his brow. “If you can’t remember your past, how can you know that?”

  “Emil’s memory wipe wasn’t clean. I can’t remember people or events, but it’s like the knowledge, the emotions remain.”

  His expression moved toward confusion.

  “I don’t know how to describe it. My forty-two years of life experience are still here.” I touched my temple. “But it feels as if it belongs to someone else.”

  “That’s…disturbing.”

  “Maybe a tad schizophrenic.” I made a face.

  “But if you took the Formula…”

  “No! No. I’m fine with crazy. Not so good with sociopath. Speaking of…” I got to my feet. “We need to do something about your brothers.”

  “Like what?”

  “I have a plan.” I walked over to the old still.

  “Should I be concerned?”

  “Possibly.” I pulled a wooden box of scrap parts from a nearby shelf and began to dig through it.

  “A formula?” he asked.

  “Alchemy is out, so I’m going with the only strength I have left.”

  He sat up straighter. “Oh no.”

  “Yep, I’m going to do my Fire Element impersonation.” I pulled a jar of moonshine off the shelf. “But with a tad less finesse.”

  “My brothers were real dumbasses to take you.” He frowned. “They have me. Why are they still keeping you?”

  “I promised to brew them the Final Formula—with your blood.”

  James’s eyes widened. “What would that do?”

  “I’m—” I remembered what Ian had told me about Paracelsus, whose talents, like opening a portal, sounded necromantic. Maybe it hadn’t been a necromancer he’d taken the power from.

  “Addie?”

  “Well, I can’t brew it for them anyway.”

  “What are you thinking about?” James cut in.

  “I’m concerned about Rowan. He’s too much of a liability. If the Extinguishing Dust wears off—”

  “They’ll keep him weak.”

  “Weak?”

  “Lack of food, cold…and blood loss.”

  I wondered how often James had experienced just that. And why had he always remained so loyal to his brothers?

  “They’ve already started.” I thought about Henry’s butterfly collection comment.

  “We need to get out of here. The sooner, the better.” James slipped a finger under his iron collar.

  Rowan wasn’t the only one they were keeping weak.

  Morning arrived, and though shivering and hungry, I was hard at work in my new lab. It took a great deal of effort to focus on my work and not distract myself thinking about Rowan lying in the next room, helpless and hurting.

  George had been surprisingly efficient with the ingredient list, and a few hours later, I had three vials—or shot glasses—of my formula. I hated to make Rowan suffer any longer than necessary, but I couldn’t give the Huntsman boys their potion twenty minutes after I started. Instead, I spent the time cluttering up the lab to give it some semblance of verisimilitude. Good thing they didn’t know how long it took to brew the Final Formula.

  Brian lounged in one corner, supposedly keeping an eye on me. But when he wasn’t making suggestive remarks about my attire or what he thought I’d been doing with James, he was dozing. I had to wake him to go collect his brothers. The potion was ready for James’s blood.

  It seemed only moments before Brian returned with his brothers in tow, Henry leading James, now clad in gray sweatpants, by his chain. They gathered around my cluttered bench eyeing the shot glasses.

  “You better have gotten this right, alchemist.” Henry tapped a finger against his knife handle. “Any deceit and the Element dies.”

  I looked up at George, but he didn’t counter
mand his brother. I swallowed. I was taking a huge gamble, but without alchemy, what could I do?

  “Here’s how it works,” I said, trying to adopt a confident tone. “It’ll take several days to come to full effect. In the meantime, you will experience some discomfort as your body remakes itself.”

  “Define discomfort,” George said.

  “Cramps, muscle aches, that sort of thing.” I shrugged.

  “Like the flu?” Brian asked. He eyed the glasses with a lot of apprehension.

  “Yes, but without the cough and sinus issues,” I answered. “There’s also the added uncertainty of James’s blood. I’ve never used grim blood.”

  “His blood doesn’t bother us,” Brian said, his tone smug. “We use it all the—”

  George elbowed him, cutting off whatever he was going to say.

  I glanced at James, but he kept his attention on the glasses. I’d never asked, but now I wondered how frequently his brothers had tapped into the power of his blood.

  “You’re still messing with the magic of the dead,” I continued. “This is borderline necromancy.”

  “His blood won’t harm us,” George said.

  “You think that’s my concern?”

  “Get on with it,” Henry added.

  “Each glass needs a drop of his blood, then it’s yours to consume.” I laid a wrapped needle and syringe on the counter. I’d found a whole box of them in the little closet near the door.

  “That won’t be necessary.” Henry drew his Bowie knife.

  “The needle is made of steel. All the formula needs is a drop.” Maybe I should have insisted on drawing James’s blood myself, but I didn’t want his brothers to know I was immune to it. If I could have just found some gloves—

  Without warning, Henry brought the knife down on the back of James’s hand where it rested on the counter.

  I cried out, then tried to muffle the sound by covering my mouth with both hands. I could envision Henry lopping off a couple of James’s fingers, but when I forced myself to look, I saw that he’d stabbed the back of James’s hand, impaling it to the counter.