“There, girl. It’s alright. I’m fine. I just need to work.”
She whines again, her ice-blue eyes run through with concern. I laugh and put my forehead against hers.
“Don’t worry. I know what I have to do, now, and I can do it. I have the tools. Everything I’ve been waiting for has come to me, and I can finally finish this. Our long journey is almost over.”
Unconvinced, she pushes her head against mine, tail between her legs. She knows. Of course she knows - she has always known. Ever since that night in the woods, ever since I saw her small, dark body cowering as the homunculi advanced on her, I knew that she would be the one to know. She nursed me when I refused food, she brought me hope and joy when I’d all but given up. Her human body had been taken from her by the Mutus, but Zhen managed to seal her soul in the body of a wolf pup. Gaderi - or, in English, ‘Avalanche’.
“It’ll be alright,” I assure her softly. “You will be fine. You’re a human in another body, not a homunculus. It will not affect you.”
She bark-whines, and I pet her nose. Lying to her pains me, and she knows when I am. But I do my best to hide it.
“I will be fine, I promise.”
Avalanche finally settles after an hour of shadowing me around the lab nervously. She sleeps at the foot of my cot, fluffed tail hiding her nose. She dreams, her little twitches betraying just how much is on her mind. Vox will treat her well, and she will come to like him. It’s his shadow she despises, not him. Reeves, however, can never be told of what I plan to do - he would certainly try to stop me. He has been the constant companion of my many lonely decades, as his father was before him, and he takes his duty to protect my well-being very seriously. Too seriously. I’ll have to make up a story as to what I’m creating down here - a generator, perhaps.
I assemble the silver casing of the machine first, etching the runes needed to hold such power in a relatively small box with a laser-cutter. The work takes me until early morning, the clock on the counter reading nearly 5am. My hands are blackened with soot and the hunger - hunger I hadn’t realized was eating at me. My fingers are dark and swollen - a sure sign I’ve overused them. My eyes ache, so dry even blinking hurts. I’d been concentrating too hard.
I open the doors of the lab to find a tray of sliced raw bison for Ava, and a vial of Azoth for me. Reeves is nowhere to be seen, but I know he left it here. I gratefully down the Azoth, though it’s bitter and weak compared to the mere smell of Mia’s. It sustains me but doesn’t satisfy me. I place the bison in front of Ava and walk into the bathroom. A hot shower will do me wonders.
I come out and am in the middle of toweling my hair when my cell phone rings. I expect it to be Vox, with some argument about why I can’t go through with it, but it’s the one person I never thought I’d see - Rose. I answer.
“Rose,” I say. “It’s not like you to ever speak to me.”
“It seems I have to,” Her impatient voice is even more strained than usual. “And I will have to much more often.”
“Why?”
“The Sage Council has decided,” She says slowly. “You are the one who will retain Mia as an Azoth.”
“No,” The word is out of my mouth instantly. “That will be impossible.”
“It’s been decided,” She insists. “Her Azoth is too much of a threat. It must be contained and watched by an alchemist with adequate skills. And as much as I dislike you, you are the most adequate among us.”
“She cannot,” My fist squeezes around a glass beaker. “I will not have her.”
“Trust me, Darius,” Rose scoffs. “If it was up to me and only me, you’d never see a hair on her head. But logic overrides my personal desire. This is what’s best and safest for the community, until we can determine how to use her strength. In the wrong hands, she’d decimate us.”
She will decimate me.
I’ve already set myself on the path of redemption. If she’s here while I walk down it, my willpower will fade. I’ll want to start living more than rectifying my mistake. What I want is to have her with me, to be with her, but the right thing to do is make this worldwide Pointblank, taking all the homunculi - all my mistaken brethren - with me to hell, or wherever it is the soulless golems go in the afterlife. I cannot want to live. I cannot live, if this plan is to work.
“She will pack and arrive at your house tomorrow morning. Be sure everything is ready for her. I will forward Reeves the billing system for Azoth and assign a Silveria Enterprises account for you in the ledger.” Rose’s voice is ever business-minded, completely oblivious to my inner torment. “And one more thing, Darius. Do not fraternize with the poor girl. She’s been through enough already.”
The phone goes dead, and I slam it onto the table. My fist clamps around the glass beaker, shattering it into thousands of razor shreds. Some embed in my skin - the wounds bloodless reminding me I am dust and ashes and nothing more.
I will not let her sway me. I will not fall in love.
I will only protect her.
***
The shadow curled on Vox’s back as he watched the man wake.
Man? No, it would be presumptuous to call him that. He was a homunculus, risen by his father’s hand. But Vox had seen thousands of homunculus rise at the Mutus’ alchemy, and none of them looked like this man. Vox took in the man’s tattoos - an awful mishmash of tribal tattoos and big-breasted women and latin quotes about power over love. He was tall, nearly a half-foot taller than the 6’2 Vox, but it was hard to tell when he was lying down on the steel cot of the Mutus’ underground bunker. The Mutus had enhanced his body with prima materia, making his bones and muscles unnaturally large and strong. It gave him the visual effect of a doll stuffed too tight, but where it would’ve made most men look ridiculous, the man looked terrifying. Beastly.
Redfield. George Redfield. Vox had spotted the name on his father’s desk in a dossier. Employed as a security guard with occasional bouts of unemployment, with a nasty temper that resulted in many domestic violence calls to the police. His wife had taken off four years into their only daughter’s life, leaving her to take the brunt of his fury, no doubt. Child services had deemed him ‘suitable’, which meant the man definitely wasn’t stupid - he knew how to hide his vicious behavior.
Vox pitied the girl. Darius’s girl. Was it alright to call her that? He was going to die creating that monstrous Pointblank before he’d admit to his feelings for the girl, Vox knew that much. She’d had a hard life. And it was only about to get harder.
George stirred in his sleep. His skin was pitted and scarred, open patches of flesh still visible - reversing necrosis was a lengthy and messy process. A homunculus hadn’t been created from a corpse for centuries - not since Darius. It was dangerous, and only possible at the hands of the most skilled alchemists. Even now, Oliver was bedridden, his power spent and barely returning.
Something was wrong, though. Vox had never seen a homunculus grow so strong. They usually capped out at birth - but George continued to climb the echleons. He bent tin plates in half with his thumb and forefinger. His punches to the cage walls shuddered the ultra-strong mithril, and just yesterday he had dented it. Dented mithril.
Vox knew his father had created an atrocity of nature.
Is this what Darius had created too with the body of Amelie, all those years ago?
Vox nodded at a Mutus alchemist, who scurried in with a vial of noxious-smelling blue liquid for George. Vox unlocked the cage door, and the Mutus ducked inside, warily approaching the hulking mountain of man. He poured the liquid liberally onto the man’s open flesh patches, and George instantly reared up, frizzy black hair as wild as his soulless eyes. His roar shook the windows, and the Mutus hurriedly backed out of the room. Vox slammed the cage door shut just as George leapt for it, his massive hands straining the bars to their limits.
“Let me out, you little pigs!” He spat. Vox felt his grip weakening, struggling to barely keep the door shut.
‘Shadow,’ he thought. ??
?I need you’.
His back exploded with white-hot pain, the shadow emerging from it and snaking over his shoulders and down his arms as one smoky mass of darkness. The shadow reinforced his every muscle, giving him enough power to shove the cage door shut and lock it. The shadow retreated the instant it was locked, scared of the light, and Vox collapsed to the ground panting.
“Hah!” George laughed. “You’re pathetic! Can’t even match me, not without that monster. When I break out of here, I’ll snap you like the stick you are.”
“You will not,” Vox struggled to his feet, brushing off his leather jacket and composing himself. “Break out. I will see to that.”
“You’re weak,” George leered, his fingers twitching unnaturally.
“And you’re my father’s slave,” Vox sneered. “You are bound to his will.”
“His will is weak,” the man-monster spat back. “And I keep growing stronger. I’ll break out easily. And the first thing I’ll do is kill you. Then your dad. Then that bitch daughter who put me in the ground in the first place.”
Vox felt his face fall. George’s only grew sickly amused, his incisors growing long.
“You didn’t know? Your dad did. She killed me. After everything I did for her, that bitch killed me and ran off.”
George grasped the cage bars, smile hungry.
“And this time, I’m gonna return the favor.”
TO BE CONTINUED
About the Author
Sara Wolf is the author of FLAWLESS//BROKEN and LOVELY VICIOUS series. She’s addicted to the Orphan Black, loves chocolate and romantic angst, and can’t get enough of Anne Bishop. For additional books, news, teasers, and giveaways, visit her at sarawolfbooks.blogspot.com or facebook.com/sara.wolf.3304
Sara Wolf, Flawless//Broken
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