The Element of Death (The Final Formula Series, Book 1.5) Read online

  Spray-painted messages adorned the walls. Words meant to frighten.

  She walks.

  You are not alone.

  Ashes to ashes.

  Several other phrases and warnings decorated the space, no doubt the work of some kids sneaking into the crematorium on a dare. A chalked circle had been drawn in the center of the room, faintly visible beneath the dust. Lumps broke up the chalked line at regular intervals, and James realized it was the congealed wax where candles had once burned. A séance perhaps, or maybe something darker.

  Someone had been here in the not too distant past. One window had been covered with black fabric. An aluminum stepladder stood beside the other window, black fabric draped over the top beneath an industrial-sized staple gun. The kind that shot two-inch staples. Those things were expensive. James would suspect that the owner had intended to return, but everything was coated in a layer of dust. No, this stuff had been abandoned.

  A shoe scuffed the floorboards behind him, and James whirled to face the sound. No one had entered the room. The only tracks in the dust-coated floor were his own. Yet he knew he wasn’t alone.

  “Show yourself.” A growl crept in beneath the words. He quieted his breathing and listened. The wind moaned outside the building, but inside, only silence reached his ears.

  He rubbed the back of his neck. The wrongness of this place tugged at him, urging him to leave. If the place affected him this way, no wonder the person who’d worked in this room had fled, abandoning his equipment.

  “James!” The voice was faint, far away, and undeniably Rowan’s.

  “Rowan, where are you?” James ran from the room, then skidded to a halt when he reached the hall. He’d been right; he wasn’t alone.

  She stood before him, her long white nurse’s uniform glowing in pristine brilliance, though there was no ambient light. The white uniform bore an eerie resemblance to the one worn by the statue in the foyer. She watched him a moment, then gestured at the hallway behind her.

  James followed her gesture and tensed as the door at the end of the hall swung open. He turned his gaze back to the nurse, a question on his lips, but she was gone. Was she helping him, or playing a game to amuse herself?

  Tamping down his sense of foreboding, he hurried forward.

  The door opened onto a stairwell. One set of stairs led up to the second story while the other led down to a basement he hadn’t noticed previously. The scent of damp and mold rose from the darkness…as did the iron tang of Rowan’s blood. He called the hound and his surrounding took on a green glow, not unlike the view through a night-vision camera. He discovered a blood droplet on the top stair. How had Rowan found his way in the darkness? And the bigger question, why?

  The stairs descended more than a story, but not quite two. At the bottom, they opened onto a wide corridor, the ceiling high and the walls at least ten feet apart. Tile had once lined the walls, but most had fallen over the intervening decades and lay broken on the rough cement floor. The corridor curved to his left some distance ahead. He was able to make it out by the flickering, orange reflection. A fire?

  “Rowan?” James’s voice reverberated in the corridor, but only the echo of his own voice answered him.

  James glanced over his shoulder. The corridor ended a dozen feet behind him in an avalanche of dirt. Unease pressed against the edges of his control. He looked up, examining the ceiling for cracks, aware of the tons of brick and stone above him. This place reminded him of the basement beneath the Alchemica. He remembered well when it had collapsed, nearly burying him and Addie inside.

  He shook his head in an effort to dispel the image. He didn’t want to think about that now. He didn’t want to think about her.

  Firming his resolve, he started toward the flickering reflection of flames on the distant wall. Why would Rowan be down here starting fires? He must be a lot more messed up than James realized. He remembered the crazy, uncoordinated attack when they first returned to the mortal plane. That hadn’t been like Rowan at all.

  He took a deep breath in an attempt to calm his mounting anxiety. With a conscious effort, he returned to the hunt, focusing on the scents around him. Damp cement, mold, and earth were the dominant smells, but not the only ones. Underlying those were ash, blood, and an odor the hound recognized immediately: death. He rolled his shoulders to shake off the unease. He couldn’t determine if it was the sheer number of dead that had passed through this place or something more recent. It suddenly occurred to him that there was another reason he’d fail to see a soul: it was no longer on the mortal plane. The muscles of his throat tightened, making it hard to swallow. He picked up his pace, hurrying toward the light.

  The corridor curved in an odd downward arc as if it circled something in the ground. Perhaps the foundation for the smokestack? The flickering light grew brighter, and the corridor spit him out into a large room. The curving wall continued on his right, the light coming from that direction. To his left, he found a bank of mortuary drawers with a rusted gurney parked beside it. But the counter straight ahead snagged his attention. An assortment of early twentieth-century lab equipment took up most of the space. He could imagine Addie rushing forward to inspect the find, unmindful of any potential threats in her surroundings—much as she had the night they’d explored the ruins of the Alchemica.

  James rubbed a hand over his face, forcing his mind from those familiar channels. He had to stop doing that.

  He walked to the counter, trying to puzzle out the purpose of the equipment. The pieces were old, early to mid-twentieth century, but he still recognized most of them: flasks, sample jars, an iron ring stand, and a rack of test tubes. The items were dust covered, and the metal pieces a bit rusted, making it clear that nothing had been touched in decades. But why was it here? Why—

  Then he saw the alembic. Maybe it wasn’t an unusual piece of equipment for this time period, but today, that particular item was most likely to be found in an alchemist’s lab. Was the person who’d put together this collection of equipment an alchemist?

  James continued down the counter and stopped before a desiccator that sat at the far end of the bench. The old-fashioned glass jar was used to hold samples in a low-humidity environment. James leaned closer and eyed the dozen or more vials lined up within. Yellowing labels were affixed to each. He squinted at the fading letters. Were those names? Other than the labels, each vial appeared to contain the same thing: ash.

  The light had grown brighter, and heat now warmed his back. He glanced over his shoulder and found the cremator set in the base of the curving wall. He’d been right about the smokestack foundation, but that observation was a fleeting one. For a long moment, he stood and stared at the flickering flames. Why would Rowan light the cremator?

  “Rowan?” No answer.

  James raked a hand through his hair. This made no sense. He’d followed the trail, and it led to the basement. Had he missed another room?

  He left the odd lab and cremator behind, and hurried through the door. Rounding the curved wall, he stepped out into the corridor and pulled up short.

  “What the hell?” This wasn’t the way he’d come—or was it? James stared at the white tiled walls and freshly painted cement floor. It no longer looked like it had been sitting dormant for decades. It looked like he imaged it would during the crematorium’s early days. Even the mound of dirt was missing at the far end of the hall. Instead, wide double doors took up the space.

  It occurred to him that he could see much better than he could before. Wall sconces he hadn’t noticed earlier glowed with a soft light. How, he had no idea. There was no electricity here.

  A thump sounded from the room he’d left, and James spun toward the sound.

  “Rowan?”

  He returned to the room and stopped inside the door. Like the corridor, the room looked like it probably
had during the crematorium’s operation. Unlike the corridor, this room was occupied—and it wasn’t Rowan. A man in a white lab coat pushed the same gurney to a stop beside the mortuary drawers. Except the gurney was no longer rusted—nor empty.

  “Hello?” James took a step closer, but the man didn’t acknowledge him. Stitching on his coat pocket spelled out a name: Winters. Was this the crazy doctor that Rowan had mentioned? The owner of the crematorium, the building’s namesake?

  A woman in the long-skirted nurse’s uniform lay on the gurney. A tingle of unease danced across James’s nerves. It was the ghostly nurse he’d met upstairs. He was witnessing a vision from the past.

  The man held her pale hand in his own. “This wasn’t suppose to happen,” he whispered. “I’ll make it right, Gertie.” James didn’t need to check for a soul to know she was dead.

  The image around him changed. The gurney held another body, but Dr. Winters still stood beside it. He pushed up the man’s sleeve, and with a syringe, injected something into his forearm. Dropping the syringe onto a cluttered cart, Dr. Winters began to push the gurney over to the cremator, then slid the body onto the waiting slab. The man groaned with the movement.

  James gasped. He was alive.

  Dr. Winters began to push the slab into the flames and the scene changed. Once more, Dr. Winters didn’t seem to move, though his lab coat was filthy and his previously neat hair stood up in gray clumps, revealing a lot more scalp. A different man lay on the slab, this one bound and gagged and clearly wide awake as Winters shoved the slab into the flames.

  Another change of scene, and now Winters was completely bald and the person on the slab was a child.

  “Jesus, no.” James took a step toward him, but the scene changed before he was forced to watch more.

  Winters stood by the mortuary drawers again. He opened a door and slowly pulled out the drawer. James recognized the nurse’s uniform, but it had been years, no—decades since he’d seen her last. Nothing remained except bone and desiccated flesh in a decaying dress.

  “I’ve done it, Gertie. I found him. The perfect sacrifice. He was at the cemetery. Can you believe it?” Winters laughed then selected a golden bowl from the cart he’d pushed over beside the open drawer. The bowl contained a heaped pile of ash that James needed no explanation for.

  A slight shift of scene, and Winters was standing in the center of the room beside a circle eerily similar to the one upstairs, except this one was drawn in ash. The golden bowl sat empty outside the circle. Winters ran a scalpel along his inner arm.

  “With my blood, I call him back.” He allowed the blood to drip upon the ashes.

  Winters was a medium? James glanced at the counter full of lab equipment. With the ability to summon and bind souls, Winters was capable of worse things than bottling the essence of powerful emotions.

  “His power will be mine, Gertie, then I will wake you!” Winters almost sang the last part.

  A crash behind him, and James whirled to find a large blond man standing inside the doorway; his wide collar and flared slacks looked like something from the seventies, and perhaps it was.

  “Did you find him? Is he here?” A woman in a red trench coat pushed past him. She stepped into view and a snarl rose in James’s throat.

  It was Clarissa. The necromancer who’d held him prisoner only hours ago.

  Chapter

  4

  James tensed, ready to spring, before he reminded himself that what he was seeing wasn’t really happening…now. Clarissa wore vintage 70s clothing, and she was much younger. Besides, it couldn’t be her. He’d killed her, or rather, his blood had.

  “Xander, make him tell me where Carl is,” Clarissa said.

  “You’re too late!” Winters cried, his tone gleeful. “You’re much too late!” He stepped into the circle.

  A wind stirred the ashes, and they billowed into the air, swirling around the perimeter before coalescing into the form of a boy within the circle with him. The form was so perfect that James could make out the features of his face and even the individual strands of his hair. Winters had summoned the boy’s spirit from beyond, the circle providing a portal into the land of the dead.

  “Carl!” Clarissa cried. “Baby, is that you?”

  James flinched. Dear God, had this boy been her son?

  “If death is what you seek, old man, let me introduce you.” Xander’s blue eyes faded to white.

  A rattle from the mortuary drawers, and the nurse rose to her feet. It appeared that Clarissa’s large blond friend was a fellow necromancer.

  “Gertrude?” Winters whispered.

  She moved toward him, her step so disjointed, James expected her to collapse. Yet she kept lurching forward.

  “But I haven’t finished the incantation.” Winters glanced from her to the ash figure of the boy. Had he been attempting to take the boy’s necromantic power to bring back his dead love?

  Gertrude continued toward him until she joined him in the circle, dragging one foot across the line as she stepped within. The wind died and the ashes drifted to the floor.

  “Gertrude.”

  She reached up and wrapped her fleshless fingers around his throat.

  Sobbing, Clarissa dropped to her knees beside the ashes.

  Winters began to gasp for air.

  “Easy.” Xander stopped beside the dead nurse and laid a hand on her shoulder. “Leave a little life in him.”

  Another shift of scene, and this time it was Winters on the gurney. Xander and Clarissa were literally up to their elbows in his open chest.

  “You got it?” Xander asked.

  In answer, Clarissa lifted out his heart. James wasn’t squeamish, but this made the bile rise in his throat. The heart was still beating.

  Time skipped forward again, and now Xander and Clarissa stood beside the open mortuary drawer where Gertrude’s body once more lay. In a macabre twist of what they’d just done, they dropped the glistening red heart into Gertrude’s chest.

  Xander pushed Gertrude’s rotten rib cage closed.

  “Animate her now.” Clarissa giggled.

  Xander chucked as well, then pushed the drawer back into the wall before closing the door.

  “Locked inside a corpse, he can’t move,” she said.

  “Buried alive.”

  “Forever.”

  “Forever.” Xander brushed a tear from her cheek, leaving a smear of red.

  Clarissa fell into his arms. “It’s not enough. It’s not enough!”

  “I know.”

  They stood that way for a long moment, then he released her.

  “Let me gather his ashes.” She took a step toward what remained of the circle.

  “No. They’re tainted. Let him go.”

  She tried to speak, but choked instead.

  “Focus on this one.” Xander pushed aside her coat and placed a hand on her rounded belly.

  James stared at the red handprint Xander left on the white dress she wore. She was pregnant. With Neil?

  “If he’s half as talented as his brother, I’ll name him my heir.”

  Another hiccupping sob, and she pressed her face into his shoulder.

  Wordlessly, Xander wrapped an arm around her shoulders and propelled her toward the door.

  The scene faded, and the room slowly reverted to its present day form.

  James blinked. He’d heard about residual haunting of a location, but he didn’t expect it to be so…chronological. It was almost as if someone wanted to show him the sequence of events that led to Winters’ downfall.

  “An explanation,” he muttered, walking over to the bank of mortuary drawers. It had to be the nurse, Gertrude. She’d shown him a glimpse into the past. Perhaps that was why she remained here, paying penance for the har
m caused by Winters’ obsession with her.

  James pulled out the drawer.

  Gertrude still lay on the steel tray, though only her bones were left, wrapped in thin swatches of what had once been white fabric. But those were passing observations. James stared at the blackened, shriveled organ lying among her ribs.

  It twitched.

  James resisted the urge to step back. He’d read about this in regard to lich making, but he’d never heard of it used as a punishment. “Necromancers are twisted bastards.”

  “Indeed, they are,” a familiar voice said from directly behind him. Something slammed into James’s back. A rapid series of thunks accompanied piercing pain along his right shoulder blade. His awareness of the hound faded and his senses dulled. James threw himself to the side, his shoulder slamming against the mortuary drawers before he could turn to face his attacker.

  Rowan smiled and held up the staple gun James had seen among the abandoned equipment upstairs. “Got you back.”

  James’s jaw sagged, too stunned to speak. Rowan had shot several steel staples into him. Steel contained iron, and Rowan was very aware of what iron did to him.

  “Not so cocky now, are you?” Rowan asked.

  “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Didn’t you try to kill me?”

  James reached over his shoulder, and the tip of his middle finger brushed a staple. He tried to slip a fingernail beneath and pry it out, but it wouldn’t budge. Trying to get better leverage, he gripped his shirt and pulled it away from his skin. The thin cotton fabric ripped, nowhere near strong enough to pull the staples free. James suddenly understood why Rowan had chosen that spot. The staples were sunk into bone.