Undead Alchemist

by Kat Cotton

  “You haven’t answered our question,” Kisho said. His voice had an authority I’d never heard before. It was pretty damn sexy.

  “I want my girlfriend back,” the guy said.

  “The alchemist took her?” k~12

  He shook her head. “No, she’s gone. Gone to the beyond. But she wants me to bring her back. I know. I’ve read the signs.”

  The dude looked a bit crazed. Did he mean what I thought.

  “You want him to raise her from the dead?” I asked.

  “That’s a blunt way of putting it, but, yes. I want her back.”

  “Dude, no. Just no. She wouldn’t be your girlfriend any more. She’d be a zombie. You want to date a zombie?”

  “If that’s what it takes. Anything to have her back.”

  That felt about fifty kinds of wrong.

  “Grief counseling. That’d be a good start.” I said. “You’re totally heading down the wrong track, here. Get a new girlfriend, move on. There’s no ‘romance’ in necromance, dude. Well, there is, but only in the spelling.”

  He nodded, but in that way that said he was only agreeing with me to shut me up. Kisho didn’t even laugh. Meanwhile, I couldn’t stop snickering. That was pretty damn awesome. I needed to carry a notebook so I could make a list: Awesomely Funny Stuff Clem Says. Maybe start a blog.

  “You guys did hear what I said, right?” I said. “‘There’s no romance in necromance’?”

  Kisho and the guy exchanged looks. They thought I didn’t see them, but I so did. I so needed to start my blog.

  “She was so beautiful,” the guy said. “Like an angel. Why did she die so young?”

  “I don’t know, buddy.”

  I rubbed his arm. I couldn’t comfort him any more than that. All I knew was that he shouldn’t try bringing her back.

  “Hey, what’s your name?” I realized I couldn’t keep calling him Lank Hair, and I wanted to change the subject away from his uncomfortable grief.

  “Tarragon.”

  Yep, that suited him.

  I wasn’t sure if Tarragon was the kind of person I wanted crawling into creepy tunnels with me, but I didn’t have much choice. At least I had the magic ring. I had power even if my sexual aura had taken a walk. It had a pretty red stone, too.

  “Hey, is this a philosopher’s stone?” I asked.

  The magic shop guy laughed. “For what you paid for it? You wish.”

  Chapter 33 Attack

  “I’VE GOT TORCHES AND supplies,” Tarragon said, holding up his backpack.

  He was better organized than we were, but then he’d come to the house with some idea what to expect.

  “Yep. You know the alchemist is probably one step ahead of us. He might be lying in wait.”

  I couldn’t get a handle on this alchemist. Was he good or evil? He’d done bad things, sure, but he wasn’t exactly thrusting the city into chaos. If it weren’t for the Council, I’d rescue Fleur and get the hell out of here, leaving him to his own devices.

  Tarragon handed me one of those headlamp things. I put it on, but I felt stupid. Headlamps are definitely not fashion-forward.

  “Okay, guys. This is it.”

  “I’ll go first,” Kisho said.

  I’d have argued with him about that, but, hey, he was a vampire and all that, while I was human and scared of confined spaces. I had no desire to head into the darkness. I followed with Tarragon lagging behind. The space was only big enough to crawl through. I barely fit, so it must’ve been a tight squeeze for Kisho, with his wide shoulders. They’d have scraped the stone walls.

  I didn’t know if it was soot or other crap, but something filled my lungs. By the time I got out of here, I’d have one of those weird lung diseases, like a coal miner. Already, I had to stifle the urge to cough. It felt like I’d been chain-smoking for the last twenty years.

  I could barely see a thing. I hadn’t turned the headlamp on because, in this narrow tunnel, with Kisho immediately in front of me, there wasn’t much to see. While his butt was worth of many looks, it wasn’t worth wasting battery power on.

  Sweat covered my skin, and I bet that soot and dust coated me. I’d be a mess when I got out. A sweaty, soot-covered mess. I guess I wasn’t doing this because it was good for my looks, but it still felt gross.

  I bashed into something. Kisho?

  “Sorry,” he said. “There’s a trap door.”

  “That’s it,” I said. “That’d be where the alchemist is.”

  “Unless the trap door is a trap,” Tarragon said.

  “Nope. This tunnel ends just up ahead.”

  Kisho opened the trap door. The light flooding into the tunnel wasn’t strong, but it seemed intense after the complete darkness. I wasn’t sure where the light came from. Maybe the alchemist had some lights rigged up down there.

  I waited until Kisho had dropped down the hole. It didn’t take long to hear him land.

  “All clear,” he said. “It’s just a passage.”

  I threw my feet over the edge of the trap door and Kisho grabbed me and eased me down. In the spaciousness of the passageway, I stretched out my limbs. The walls were still rough stone but worn from centuries of use. The dank smell of earth mixed with other smells: sulfur and herbs and something sweet I couldn’t identify but which had a ring of familiarity about it.

  Tarragon paused a moment as though he was waiting for Kisho to help him down too, but Kisho walked off, exploring the passage. I turned on my head torch.

  “Which way?” I asked.

  “This way. The other way heads back to the house.”

  I remembered what Ivana from the tour had said about the network of tunnels underneath the city. We could walk for miles beneath the city and not find the alchemist. I’d thought finding the hidden doorway was the end of our search, but it had just been the beginning.

  “He could be anywhere,” I said.

  “He’ll be close by,” Tarragon said. “Why pick that entranceway if his lab is on the other side of the city? No one is going to walk for miles unnecessarily.”

  “Yeah, true. Thanks, Tazza.”

  I followed Kisho down the passageway. He had to walk hunched over because the ceiling was so low. Even I almost grazed my head. Tarragon walked behind me, and seriously, that guy had no idea. His foot thuds resonated down the long passage.

  “Shh!” I said to him, turning to put my finger to my lips.

  A hissing noise startled me. Not the echo of my hushing but a sound like steam escaping. Those furnaces at the alchemy museum—I bet they made a noise like that.

  “There’s a door,” Kisho said.

  A wooden door with wrought iron hinges, like something from a movie. All dramatic. There was no lock on it. I guessed if anyone got this close, they’d be prepared to kick the door open, anyway.

  Except it wouldn’t open. Kisho pressed against it with all his strength. It didn’t budge.

  “Try the ring again,” he said.

  That made sense.

  There was no handy “press ring here” sign or even an indentation. I pressed my hand against various places. Nothing. I glanced back at Kisho again. As I did, the door swung open. Hell, that wasn’t creepy at all. There were way too many doors opening on their own in this city.

  The room wasn’t dusty, like the passageway. It had much more of a modern science lab look than that old alchemy place we’d gone to. White walls and stainless-steel workstations. On one of those workstations, weird solutions bubbled away in glass beakers. Well most of them weren’t bubbling, but there was definitely some bubbling going on in some of them. Others had tubes going all over the place, like a whiskey still.

  I bet if I drank the wrong one, I’d end up shrinking to two inches tall, and Kisho would have to carry me around in his pocket.

  A faint mumble turned my attention to the other side of the room. Shit, I’d missed that. Cages stacked two high. They looked hastily slapped together and not that securely locked, like homemade chicken coops.

&
nbsp; Those human cages lacked the clinical sophistication of the rest of the lab. They’d been a last-minute thought.

  “Help!” yelled one of the captives. Their voice was weak, suggesting they’d been held here for a while.

  Kisho and Tarragon moved to free them, and pried open the makeshift locks while I checked for Fleur.

  “Fleur? Fleur?”

  She wasn’t in any of those cells. Where was she?

  The cages ended, and there was a gap between them and the wall. A door. It was white like the walls and not easy to see, but it was definitely a door.

  Kisho and Tarragon were too busy with the captives. Some of them had trouble standing. There were about half a dozen, all up.

  I pushed on the door. It wasn’t locked.

  The second room was just as clinical-looking.

  There she was, inside the next room. Strapped to an operating table. There were medical things around her, none of them currently attached, but someone had taken blood from her at some point. Getting her out of here was the main thing.

  I rushed to unbuckle the shackles binding her arms. “Are you okay?” I whispered.

  She groaned slightly. She didn’t look good. The life force seemed have been drained from her, making her look withered and wan. He’d been taking more than just blood from her body.

  I held back all the questions I wanted to ask her. She was too weak to answer now. Getting her out of here was the most important thing.

  I unbuckled the shackle from her left wrist, then ran around the table. “It’s okay,” I whispered. “You’ll be free soon.”

  Luckily, her legs weren’t bound. It wouldn’t take long to get her out of here. Kisho would need to carry her, and I wasn’t sure how we’d get her up through that trap door, but we’d worry about that when we got there.

  My fingers fumbled with the second buckle. The more I rushed, the harder it was. I took a deep breath. I had no idea how much time we had, but I had to slow down and do this right.

  I had the leather strap almost undone when I heard a noise.

  “Kisho, give me a hand.”

  A strange laugh was all I heard before the world went black.

  Chapter 34 Fleur

  I WOKE UP BACK AT THE hotel with Kisho beside me.

  “What happened?” I asked him, reaching for his hand.

  “I didn’t see. I was busy freeing everyone. I went in the other room, and you were out cold on the floor.”

  It took me a minute to get my brain working. Then I remembered everything. The weird smells, the tunnels, that lab underground. And Fleur.

  “But you freed Fleur? Where is she?”

  Kisho shook his head. “Fleur? I didn’t see her.”

  “She was there. On the table, shackled. I almost had her free.”

  “Are you sure?” he asked.

  “Of course I’m sure. I just got a bump on the head. It’s not like I’ve got brain damage.”

  “There was no one there when I came into the room. Just you. I heard a noise, but that was you hitting the floor.”

  I closed my eyes. Fleur had definitely been there on the table, but how could anyone get in or out of that room without Kisho seeing them? Unless there was another door. I hadn’t really taken that good a look around. I’d been too concerned about getting Fleur free. Of course there had to be another way in and out. Someone had come in another door. The alchemist or someone else.

  “We need to get back there,” I said. “There’s another doorway into that lab, and someone kidnapped her. We need to find out where Fleur has gone. Fuckity fuck. We came so close.” The frustration almost made me cry.

  “You can’t go back today,” Kisho said. “You need to rest.”

  “Pfft, rest. I need to find Fleur.” But as I sat up, my head went all swimmy. “I’m fine. Just give me a moment.”

  “Don’t be silly. You might have a concussion.”

  Kisho put his arm around me, but the gesture was more to contain me than to help. I let myself relax in his arms, but only because I liked it, not because I was incapable of sitting up. Resting pissed me off. I wanted action. I wanted to win, not loll around in bed.

  And, seriously, if I wanted to get up and find Fleur, that was my business. It was one thing for Kisho to be kind and caring, and another thing altogether for him to try to overrule my own judgment. This was no time for being a wilting violet. Shit needed to be done. Where was Nic? Nic would back me up.

  “Concussion is for the weak,” I said.

  “Not true,” Tarragon said. “Concussion is a major concern. It has nothing to do with strength or weakness. It can be serious, even fatal.”

  What was Tarragon even still doing here? We’d fulfilled our part of the bargain, and he obviously had no further information we could use.

  I shot Kisho a questioning look.

  “Tarragon helped bring you back,” he said.

  That didn’t mean there was any reason for him to be in my hotel room, hovering by my bedside. That guy creeped me out. The whole wanting to bring his girlfriend back from the dead thing was wrong. Not just wrong in an “against every rule of nature” way, but also in a way that seemed non-consensual. Maybe his girlfriend liked being dead? Had he ever thought of that?

  “What about the prisoners?” I asked. “What happened with them?”

  “They’re all free. Weak and confused, but free.”

  “Shit!” I sat up so fast, it made my head rush. “But we need them. We need to question them. They might have vital information. Now the alchemist knows we’re onto him, and we’ve gained nothing. You can’t have those people wandering around the streets, willy-nilly.”

  “We didn’t have any choice in it,” Tarragon said. “Those bastards from the Council swarmed us. I dunno how they knew where we were or what we were doing, but as soon as we got out, they were waiting. They took all the prisoners in a van. Where to? Who knows?” He shrugged.

  “You didn’t try to stop them?”

  “Your boyfriend had to carry you out, and I couldn’t take on a bunch of trained fighters in riot gear,” Tarragon said.

  Damn it. If I’d been conscious, I’d have taken the bastards on. That made my cuffs zap again, but screw it. I couldn’t not fight. Well, except when I was knocked out cold.

  This situation seemed dire. The alchemist might move his entire lab while I was lying around swooning. “You two go back,” I told them.

  “We can’t,” Kisho said. “Not without you. You’re the portal-opener, remember?”

  He could be so annoying with his logic sometimes. Even if he stroked my hair nicely, it didn’t help my frustration at being so useless. And Tarragon was a total nerd.

  There must be another way into the lab. There were so many tunnels and so many ways into them. They could go back and do something.

  The door to my room swung open, and Nic walked in.

  “Are you still lazing around?” he asked.

  “I don’t want to, but these guys won’t let me up.”

  I knew Nic would be on my side. He never let little things like concern about my heath get in his way. Usually, that made him annoying but right now I needed that.

  He sighed. “I debased myself so the mayor wouldn’t ask too many questions when you were late getting back, and instead of sorting everything out, you manage to get yourself clocked on the head.”

  He sat on the bed beside me, and I gave him a poke in the ribs. “You loved debasing yourself.”

  He grinned at me. “Yeah, it was totally awesome.”

  “Now, get away from me. You reek of the mayor. Also, if you’ve visiting a sickbed, you should bring cake. Everybody knows that.”

  “I just came in to check on you. I have to get to my room and work. Business is down, and I haven’t released anything new to my YouTube channel since I’ve been here, but I had to get rid of the mayor first.” Then he noticed Tarragon. “Who’s that guy?”

  “I’ve been helping out. I can stick around,” Tarragon said.r />
  “You don’t seem to fully understand what I’m saying,” Nic told him. “We don’t want you to stick around. We want you to leave.”

  “We need to get together to discuss our plans,” Kisho said. “Maybe you should get the mayor in on this, too.”

  “With cakes. We need cakes for the meeting,” Nic said.

  That made me so happy. Since Nic had gotten all wrapped up the mayor, his interest in cakes had waned. It wasn’t nearly as much fun eating cake on my own. Half the fun of eating cake was eating Nic’s cake.

  “Kisho, you don’t want to run down to the cafe and grab us some cakes for the meeting, do you?” I asked.

  Kisho leaned against the desk. “Actually, I’d prefer not to. I might take a shower before the mayor gets here.”

  With that, he went into the bathroom.

  Nic and I stared at each other with our mouths open.

  “Did he just say that?” Nic asked.

  “I think so. I mean, it’s nice that Kisho is learning to speak up for himself and not just be your lackey, but… well, no, it’s not nice. Not when it comes between us and our cakes.”

  “It’s like he’s hit a teenage rebellion phase or something. I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all. It hurts, Clem.”

  “We can’t just order him to get to the cakes, right?” I asked. I knew I couldn’t, and I shouldn’t expect Kisho to run at my bidding, but I’d become so used to him jumping at my word that his refusal really hurt me. I felt rejected.

  “I could,” Nic said.

  I folded my arms. “If he won’t do it for me, he won’t do it for you.”

  “Pack leader.”

  Tarragon coughed to get our attention. I’d forgotten he was still here. “A group of vampires is called a kiss, not a pack.”

  “A kiss?” Nic said. “That’s the lamest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  It only took one glare from Nic for Tarragon to back away.

  After the mayor arrived and Kisho got out of the shower, we had our bleak, cakeless meeting. As I went through what had happened, I kept glancing at Kisho. What had changed? Had I done something?