down the hall.
I lean against the wall and light a Malediction.
I’ve got to remember not to drink anything I don’t get myself, preferably from outside the palace. It might not be poisoned but it will definitely be pissed in.
I guess now there’s another thing Candy doesn’t get to know about. I should start keeping a list.
I stay put until I finish my cigarette and everything is quiet but the air-conditioning. Closing my eyes, I try to reach out. Feel if there’s anything or anyone hiding nearby. I don’t get anything.
I take a long look at the false wall. Sometimes objects can pick up residual magic when someone throws powerful hoodoo nearby. When that happens, a lamp, a chair, or that massager mom keeps in her bedside table that you’re not supposed to know about can give off the same vibes as a genuinely enchanted object. That can happen to, say, a wall if someone was doing heavy spell work around here. There’s no absolute way of knowing without going forensic and that was Vidocq’s area, not mine. I wish he was here.
I step back and take a good look.
I charge at what I hope is a door and not a crossbeam. It’s harder to menace people when you’re gimping around with a broken nose.
I pass through the wall like it’s air. And hit something hard. It cracks open. Wood splinters. Something heavy falls behind me. I think I found the door.
I’m in the middle of a dark, cluttered room. Behind me is the hoodoo wall, rippling like water on this side. The door is on the floor, in pieces. Someone isn’t getting their deposit back.
Wherever the hell I am, it’s dark. All I can see in the feeble pool of light through the wall is something that looks like a cluttered garage. Somewhere Dad keeps his tools for the weekend projects that help get him out of having to talk to the family.
Crates are piled all over the place. Scraps of cut and hammered metal on the floor. Tables with vises and C-clamps. Someone forgot their lunch. It stinks in here.
I feel along the wall. Find a light switch and flick it on.
Turns out it wasn’t lunch after all.
Five body bags are stacked in the corner. A sixth body wrapped in plastic is strapped to what looks like an old wooden electric chair. There’s a tear in the side of the shrink-wrapped shroud, leaking Hellion juice and exposing a black, bloated hand. It gets worse when I uncover the body. It’s the kind of stink that would turn a buzzard vegan.
It’s a woman. She’s in a legion uniform but I can’t read her name or tell what regiment she’s from. The top of her skull is missing. It looks like someone was dissecting her brain. Clamps and sutures still cling to the rotten meat.
This is new. I never heard of Hellions vivisecting their own. They do it to some of the more heinous dead souls in the House of Knives, but not to each other.
Whatever this is, it doesn’t look like torture. This was an experiment and this soldier was the lab rat. I bet if I checked the body bags I’d find more head-bone excavations. What kind of Dr. Moreau shit was going on in here? And who was doing it? Only one name comes to mind.
