House of Ash & Brimstone

by Megan Starks

  “You can’t let her map your genome. She’ll know what you are.”

  “So? Maybe I wouldn’t mind finding out what my father was.” Gisele rubbed at the base of her horns, tracing the knobby crown in her hair.

  “Give it to me, and I can tell you what your parents were,” Maisie said.

  But Shade spoke over her, refusing to relent. “Not like this, you don’t want to. Gisele, I’m serious.”

  “Enough,” Maisie said.

  The second guard fisted the slim silver collar around Shade’s neck, and it gleamed white-hot, causing his captive to jerk and curse. Shade lolled forward, hanging against the guard’s grip.

  Maisie clinked her fingernails together in a show of impatience. “Now what will it be?”

  Shade groaned. “Hair or horns, nothing more.”

  Eyes wide, Gisele shrugged at the chief medical examiner. She’d heard Shade’s answer.

  The doctor’s sharp-toothed smile slid from her face.

  “No deal,” said Maisie.

  Gisele threw her hands into the air. “Then I guess you’re keeping him,” she said, frustrated to find herself catering to Shade’s absurd demands. What was she supposed to do if he tied her hands on the issue? He’d insisted, so why should she care if he suffered? Warrick could come for him later and work out a deal.

  Couldn’t he?

  They wouldn’t… They wouldn’t disappear Shade first? They wouldn’t deport him, or worse, before confirming he wasn’t a US citizen, right? Out of nowhere, it hurt to breathe. She’d wanted free of Shade since the morning he’d first slouched on the edge of her work desk, hands shoved in his pockets and wearing a half-cocked grin as he ignored every question she lobbed at him. But she didn’t want him gone like this.

  “A pity.”

  Gisele shook her head, biting at her bottom lip. “Wait.”

  It was too little, too late.

  Maisie nodded to the attendants, men too troll-faced and burly to be medical practitioners by any stretch of the imagination. They hauled Shade to his feet and dragged him back toward the brushed metal door. Shade struggled, veins throbbing in his neck, and for a moment she thought he’d break free, but then they were gone, lost behind the swinging steel door. In the end there’d been no slip in his humanity—no bleeding black of his sclera or lengthening of his teeth or claws, not even a partial shape change—which meant he was cut off from accessing the true brunt of his power.

  She felt sure it was the collar that was neutralizing his magic. Shade had mentioned that they kept nullifier technology in the walls of the main floor, but if it was in use, above or on this very floor, she couldn’t feel a damn thing. And her magic didn’t seem to be impaired in the same way Shade’s was. She was healing fine. Her collarbone had been given a clean break and reset by Maisie before negotiations, and she could already rotate her shoulder in almost a full range of movement.

  Which meant most likely whatever he’d sensed in the walls was a transmitter system for the magical receiver he was wearing. It was a spiffier, higher-tech version of what she’d freed Beast from in the Curators of the Cursed’s circus tent.

  “They’re going to break his fingers for ruining our negotiations,” Maisie said, voice matter-of-fact.

  Gisele swallowed, feeling the weight of her rash decision hard. Regret burbled in the back of her throat.

  “No matter,” Maisie continued, waving the discomforting thought away. “He’s a suitable specimen of his own. It’s exceedingly rare to discover a valahan this side of the Gates, especially one without a master. I had read once bound, they became an inseparable pair. There is much I am curious to learn from our newest subject.”

  Sweet Mother of Seraphim—she’d handed him over to be some kind of test subject? What was wrong with her? She dropped her head into her hands, pressing her fingers against her eyelids.

  And what did she mean that Shade also had a master he answered to…like the elghoul did?

  “You aren’t keeping him,” Gisele said, sick with herself for letting Shade get the better of her yet again. She’d let him rile her into making a horrible decision on his behalf—right when he’d needed her to look out for him the most.

  What if she couldn’t get him back? What if they hurt him worse before she could?

  “You can take it to the courts, if you’d like. But we both know a demon of his breeding wasn’t born of this green Earth. Assuming he’s got forged documents good enough to hold up, and you even manage a ruling in your favor—after all, he committed a terrorist attack against this lab—by the time you return with a writ of surrender, how much do you think will be left of him to collect?” The doctor flashed a smile, a glint of razor teeth.

  Gisele crossed her arms over her chest, doing her best to play tough. “You know what I mean. I’m saying I’ll give you what you want for him after we examine the corpse. So let’s just get on with it. And in the meantime, I don’t want you hurting him. You and I both know he had nothing to do with this.”

  “Don’t be bitter, sweetmeat.” The doctor pulled a silver-tipped pen from her coat pocket, clicking it on to scribble on her clipboard. “I knew we’d work something out.” She ripped the paperwork free and handed it to Gisele to sign.

  A consent form for the donation. Shade was right, Maisie had been waiting for her chance to get Gisele’s blood and tissue. But why? What made her more interesting than a rare dragon demon? Maisie had referred to Shade as a breed of dragon native only to Eden, the Sixth Gate, and so rarely seen it was considered endangered. Which meant what the elghoul had shown her was true. He really had been there at the Curators of the Cursed. Because he was also after the curio…

  He must have a plan to take it from her, but she couldn’t fathom how it might involve getting himself trapped at the Office of the Paranormal. Did he not want them to have her blood because she’d survived using the Mardoll?

  Gisele pushed the concerns aside as she signed the document and handed it back, feeling as if she’d just given her life away.

  Lysander stepped forward for the document and pen, scribbling his signature under the witness section. He passed it down the row of agents, each signing and passing it to the next.

  This was the second contract she’d regretted in as many days.

  “All righty, then. How about we go and visit our deceased friend, 09-A388, legally known as Samuel Brown in life, alias Samuel the Stump to his associates and victims,” Maisie said, accepting the paperwork and tucking it away. She waved a needle-nailed hand toward the metal door Shade had disappeared behind earlier. “Right this way.”

  If the other rooms she’d seen on the sublevel had been cold and sterile, the autopsy room several levels up was even more so—a frigid environment that was all gray tile and stainless steel countertops spaced across an expansive room. The tables had drain troughs along the inner edges, and a variety of moldable fixtures dangled from the ceiling over each: a concentrated light source, a showerhead on a hose, an electric device that could take both saw and drill attachments, and a small recording camera. The back wall was lined, half with floor-to-ceiling metal cabinets and half with tilted mirrors over sinks.

  Samuel was laid out in the center, waiting for them.

  “You’ve already cut him to ribbons,” Gisele complained as she peered down at the specimen on the table. He was naked, flaccid and white, beginning to bloat and covered in a grotesque patchwork of his sewn-together bits. The black sutures stood stark against his skin.

  He was also grotesquely lumpy, like his body was one big, interconnected cluster of cottage-cheese-textured tumors, but he’d been a bulbous, piggish man in life as well. From the way his skin roved and gurgled post-mortem, she was afraid to know what made up his insides.

  “Did you expect anything less?” Maisie asked, picking a nail between her teeth. Lifting the metal clipboard hanging near his head, she confirmed, “This record establishes confirmation via genetic sequencing that 09-A388 is the body of Samuel Brown.”
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  No mistakes on the identity then.

  “Well, let’s hear it,” Gisele said. She chewed at her bottom lip, waiting.

  Long, gaunt fingers flipped back the first page as the doctor read aloud, “Body is a normally developed chortaboar male of full maturation, measuring sixty-nine inches in length and weighing 331 pounds. Body is approximated to be eighty-five years of age. The posterior of the head sustained multiple blunt force traumatic injuries resulting in cranial fractures to the occipital bone, here, here, and again here.” Maisie indicated the areas with the tips of her minnow-silver nails. She set the clipboard aside. “The right sternocleidomastoid muscle in the neck has an incised wound that transects the internal jugular vein, here. The neck also has a V-shaped ligature mark below the mandible consistent with hanging.”

  Gisele nodded, thoughts whirling. Samuel most definitely hadn’t been the one to burn down her apartment. He’d died a horrible death, one that she’d witnessed. One that had frightened her.

  “Okay, so we know for sure he was murdered. What else?”

  “This manner of homicide was excessive. The victim’s skull was bashed in, his throat sliced, strangled. Any one of those methods would have been fatal.”

  Why? A familiar cold tingle dripped down Gisele’s spine.

  “There’s one other thing,” Maisie added. “There was a message lodged in his pharynx. You’ll have to request the evidence from the case detective if you want to examine it first hand, but I did take note of the words.”

  She flipped to the page in the file and handed the folder to Gisele, cadaverous fingers sturdy as a surgeon’s as she pointed to the words.

  FOUND YOU.

  10

  “Another scrumptious sample,” Maisie said, holding the vial of blood up to the light to admire its contents. She’d taken five more vials just like it, a scraping from inside Gisele’s mouth, four of her back molars, and two of her horns. By far, the horn shearing had hurt the worst and had bled like nothing she’d seen before. They’d had to cauterize the wounds, the stench of burning horn and hair bringing tears to her eyes.

  But now her contract was satisfied.

  “You’re free to retrieve your partner, though he’s caused a rash of trouble in his time here. He broke two of my troll’s necks,” the medical examiner said, irking Gisele.

  “I told you—he’s not my partner.”

  “You might be surprised. But I must wonder what you’d trade for someone you really cared about. A mouthwatering thought, indeed.”

  Gisele paled at the threat, knowing the lengths she’d be willing to go to if it were Beast they’d taken because of her mess, or worse, Warrick or Susanna. She was never stepping foot in the Office of the Paranormal again, not unless Laurel and the entire paranormal division of Baltimore’s Western District PD gave her an armed escort.

  “Where is he?” she asked, changing the direction of the conversation. “If you’ve broken our agreement—”

  The doctor laughed, gnashing her teeth like a dog, lank brown curls bobbing about her head. “You are too precious. Sometimes I wish I could open you up and take a look at your neural pathways. Rest assured, sweetmeat, as you insisted, we haven’t caused any irreparable physical trauma. Of course, I never promised we would send him home without a healthy case of PTSD.”

  Gisele’s throat tightened at the corpse eater’s callous disregard toward Shade. Yet if he were to join the full-blooded agents in the special investigations division, he’d be afforded untold respect. She was certain of it.

  The world could be horribly unfair sometimes.

  “Don’t sulk. It’s only fair. In our short time together, he’s injured several personnel and damaged a number of facilities. He’s a surprisingly resilient specimen. However, being bound to a master—even one he may not presently be with—does make him unsuitable for recruitment.”

  She wanted to feel glad that he’d put up a fight, that he’d managed to be a thorn in their side despite their efforts to subdue him, but instead she felt nervous, her stomach fluttering at the thought of what they might’ve done to retaliate. This was Shade they were talking about. He better be all right.

  The doctor led the way in silence, and Gisele followed. Moments dragged. Her heart hammered in her chest. Finally, they stopped two floors lower, midway down the hall, in front of a bland white door on the right, one of many which lined the walls on either side. It was bolted shut from the outside.

  Gisele’s breath turned choking thick at the thought of what was waiting for her inside. She stood silent as a hulking attendant unlocked the door.

  “We’ve retrieved the bullets, but you’ll want to suture the most severe of his wounds when you’re able. His regenerative rate appears notably stunted, a direct consequence of his master’s disapproval. As I’m sure you’re aware, a valahan’s power—and thus his healing—relies on the grace of his master. It’s entirely likely that this turn of events may send him scampering back to beg forgiveness.”

  Gisele struggled to form a response. These were details she was sure Shade would not have wanted revealed to her. But before she could figure out what to say,

  the attendant opened the door without ceremony, and Gisele peered inside.

  The room was a swath of blackness that stunk like old dishwater and bleach. She stood, staring into the still silence until the attendant flipped a switch from the outside. In the bright, sterile light, she saw that the walls and floor were tiled, white but dingy and stained. Some were a faded, smeared red from wiped-up blood. There was a drain in the center of the sloping floor, beneath the only object in the room—a stainless steel chair that was bolted down on each leg. Shade sat naked and cuffed to the chair, hunched and shivering, dripping wet. They’d hosed him off, but she could still see the damage they’d dealt, the marks and cuts on his skin.

  He squinted against the harsh flood of light, trying to make out the forms in the doorway with his eye that wasn’t swollen shut. When he recognized Gisele, he jerked against his bonds, panicked. Then he seemed to realize why she was there, and he sagged, exhausted, in the chair. He closed his good eye and tipped his head back, a mix of emotions evident in his face—fear, relief, discomfort, and anger.

  The sound of annoyance he made was muffled by the rubber gag they’d fitted him with. He still wore the slender silver collar, but she could see even from this distance that the band, while not broken, now sported several spindly stress fractures. When he grunted, the lean muscles in his throat flexed. At some point the metal had heated enough to sear a bright line above his clavicle.

  Gisele slid into the room, keeping to one side, an eye on the attendant and one hand hovering near her gun in case either he or the medical examiner got the idea to try locking her inside. As she stepped deeper into the room, she felt it, a steady pulsing from the upper four corners of the walls. A built-in transmitter. It was a strange sensation, like a niggling thrum in the back of her head, but aside from that she didn’t feel any different. Likely the only reason she was feeling anything at all was because it was such a small, confined room where the waves could be concentrated. For the first time she wondered, if someone collared her, would her human blood protect her, diluting the effects? Or would it wreak as much havoc on her as it clearly had on Shade? He looked ready to vomit—clammy and pale, the veins in his face blue and stark beneath his unmarked eye.

  Wrists cuffed, several fingers broken, collared, and gagged—they really didn’t want to risk Shade casting any magic. Yet he looked provoked, snappish bordering on feral.

  Unease edged up her spine on tiny mice feet. Shade was a powerhouse. A frightening one to have invoked such an overkill of security. Even an organization that routinely contained subjects of a demonic nature thought he was dangerous.

  And that ought to scare her.

  Maisie jiggled a fat ring of keys, sorting through several with her long nails until she found the one she was after. Her heels clipped on the tile floor as she approached to unlock the sha
ckles around Shade’s hands and feet.

  “Are you okay?” Gisele asked, stooping to Shade’s height, using both hands to unbuckle and remove the gag.

  “What did you do?” he spit as soon as he was able, voice hoarse. “What have you done, Gigi?”

  “A stray dog should know when to be grateful,” Maisie chastised. She ratcheted the bands around his hands free, and he winced as blood rushed back to his skin. “One with barely a tie to you was willing to pay your price in both flesh and blood. She donated more than I imagined I’d ever get so easily.”

  Shade flushed and fell silent, covering his nakedness with his battered hands. It was clear he felt shamed by the doctor’s words, but Gisele didn’t understand why. Sure, they weren’t the best of friends, but he was her coworker, and he’d protected her from the elghoul. He was in this mess because of her in the first place.

  Even if it was what he’d told her to do, she couldn’t leave him behind, not even temporarily. It was absurd to even think about it.

  “It doesn’t matter. It’s what she really wanted. She’d have gotten it one way or another, eventually. I’m sorry I didn’t give it to her as soon as she brought you out. I shouldn’t have let you talk me out of it.”

  Shade looked away, making a frustrated sound followed by a sharp intake of breath as the doctor pried his ankle cuffs free. “You never listen to me. I’m supposed to protect you, not the other way around.”

  “It’s not your job to look after me,” Gisele argued, incensed. “If Warrick hired you as some kind of babysitter, I swear to Lucifer I’ll—”

  “That’s not—” He cut himself off. A muscle in his jaw ticked as he reconsidered his words. “Look, you don’t have to tell me. I’m sorry. Forget I said anything. And thanks. For, ah, you know.”

  “For ignoring you when you’re being an idiot?”

  He snorted. “Was going to say ‘for caring.’”

  Ah. Gisele swallowed her anger fast, feeling like an ass. She had no idea what Warrick might or might not have asked of Shade. If he was trying to look out for her on account of her overprotective boss, she couldn’t hold that against him. Especially considering the shit it had gotten him dragged into today.