“He looked like my sister,” said Molly. “Moved and sounded like Isabella. I was completely fooled. He couldn’t have managed such a close match . . . unless he’d had access to the original. He must have known my sister.”
“Perhaps the remaining Immortals are holding her prisoner,” I said.
Molly grabbed hold of my arm so hard it hurt. “We have to go find her, Eddie!”
“Of course we do,” I said. “You came and found me. But where do we start? Any surviving Immortals will have scattered across the world by now. If they’ve got any sense. The only base we ever knew about was Castle Frankenstein, and that’s in the hands of the Bride now, and the Spawn of Frankenstein.” I stopped as a thought hit me. “Molly, could you use your magics on this body, and get some information out of him?”
“Not really,” said Molly, which I had to note wasn’t an unequivocal no. “My powers are life-based. Mostly. I was never that interested in necromancy.”
“I am,” said Roger. “Death and damnation are my business.”
I looked at him. “You can raise the dead?”
“I can make a corpse sit up and talk,” Roger said carefully. “There’s a difference. And only with the very recently departed, where the soul is still close by.”
“Walker could do it,” said the Armourer.
“He only did it that one time!” said Roger. “And he had the Voice. I’m only a poor half-breed hellspawn, so I’ll have to do it the old-fashioned way.”
He looked around at all of us, making sure he had everyone’s agreement. Not that he gave a damn for our approval; he wanted to make sure we were all implicated in the unnatural and condemned thing he was about to do. None of us said no. My family has always been able to do the hard, harsh, necessary things. Roger crouched over the dead Immortal, smiling down at the corpse and muttering something under his breath in a language I didn’t even recognise. The air seemed to slowly darken around him, as he revealed the side of himself he usually kept hidden. His other, perhaps even truer self: his demonic aspect. Stubby horns thrust up out of his forehead. His eyes caught fire, sulphurous yellow flames leaping up from glowing eyeballs. His fingers grew sharp, vicious claws, and his feet were suddenly rough cloven hooves. Where he stood, the wooden floor began to smoke and smoulder. Dark shadows seemed to wrap themselves around Roger Morningstar, despite Ethel’s rose red glow. Where Roger was, the light seemed bloodred.
Roger’s father may have been my uncle James, the legendary Grey Fox, but his mother had been a lust demon out of Hell. I never did get the full story on that. But looking at Roger now, with all his evil aspect up front and in your face, it was hard to see how we’d ever been able to take him in as one of us. I’d accepted his presence in the family because he was Harry’s love and partner, and because Roger had fought on our side in the past . . . but now, seeing all the darkness in him let loose, I had to wonder if perhaps we’d made a terrible mistake.
He looked like what he was: a hellspawn set free from the Pit to walk up and down in the world, spreading horror and evil among us like some spiritual cancer.
Harry looked at Roger with something very like shock, and I realised Harry had never seen this side of his lover before. He watched, fascinated and appalled in equal measure, as Roger Morningstar pulled back one elegant shirt cuff and cut open a vein in his wrist with one clawed fingertip. Steaming-hot, dark blood streamed down into the corpse’s open mouth, quickly filling it and spilling out over the sides. Roger sealed the wound in his wrist with a touch, and then he leaned forward over the body. He was smiling a happy, satisfied smile, as though he was enjoying doing something he didn’t often get to do these days.
“Blood of my life for you, Immortal, for a time. My life to move within you and raise you up to do my bidding and my will. Sit up and speak, little dead man, and tell me what I want to know.”
The corpse’s mouth snapped suddenly shut, and its throat worked convulsively as it swallowed. The eyes turned to stare unblinkingly at Roger, and then the corpse sat up, the body making loud complaining sounds as it fought the stiffening of rigor mortis. The corpse looked into Roger’s burning eyes. And then the dead man screamed horribly, a lost, terrified, trapped sound.
“Stop that,” said Roger, almost casually, and the scream cut off immediately. The corpse worked its mouth, stained with the poison it had taken and Roger’s dark blood, and when the dead Immortal finally spoke, its voice sounded as though it travelled some unimaginable distance. It sounded like something trying to remember what a human voice sounded like.
“Who calls me back?” it said, and suddenly I didn’t want to hear whatever else it might have to say.
“I do,” Roger said briskly. “Talk to me, Immortal.”
The corpse’s mouth moved slowly, adopting an awful smile. “Do you want to know the secrets of life and death? Shall I tell you the awful knowledge of the Shimmering Plains and the Courts of the Holy, or perhaps the Houses of Pain, in the Pit?”
“Don’t waste my time,” said Roger. “I probably know more of that than you do, at this point. Stop showing off and tell me: Who sent you here to murder Eddie Drood? Are there other Immortals out there in the world plotting attacks on Drood Hall?”
“There are only a few of us left now,” said the corpse, still looking only at Roger. “Scattered. Hiding. I don’t know where they are. This was all my idea. If I couldn’t be a real Immortal anymore, a man of privilege and power, I decided I’d rather die, taking my hated enemy with me.” He turned his head slowly to look at me, and it was all I could do not to flinch back from the sheer hatred in that look. “We were masters of the world, and you took it all away. The barbarian at the gates of Rome. The savage who didn’t even understand the glory he destroyed. I wanted you dead, Drood, and I came so very close. . . .” He tried to spit at me, but nothing came out of his black-crusted mouth.
The Sarjeant-at-Arms moved forward to stand between me and the dead man. He was capable of small kindnesses, when he chose.
“How did you get in here,” he growled, “past all the Hall’s defences?”
“Rafe was one of us,” said the corpse. “He told us everything. Do you really think he was the only one?”
“I have got to get that detector working properly,” said the Armourer. “Sort out who’s who once and for all.”
Molly pushed forward to glare coldly into the dead man’s face. “You made yourself look like my sister Isabella. Where is she? Are you holding her somewhere? Where is she? Where’s Isabella?”
“Damned if I know,” said the corpse. “I never had her. Didn’t need her. I could duplicate anyone I ever met, and I knew Isabella of old. She worked with us several times on matters of mutual interest.”
“Your sister worked with the Immortals?” I said to Molly.
“Oh, hell, Eddie,” said Molly, “Iz has walked along with everybody, one time or another.”
“Even worked with us, on a few occasions,” the Armourer said cheerfully. “On matters of mutual benefit. I made some very useful devices for her, none of which she ever returned. You went out with her for a while, didn’t you, Cedric?”
We all looked at the Sarjeant-at-Arms, but he had nothing to say.
“If we could stick to the matter at hand, people,” said Roger. “You don’t think what I’m doing is easy, do you? The body is already starting to fall apart. Anything else you want to ask, ask quickly. He won’t last much longer.”
We all looked at the dead Immortal. His skin was blotched and cracking, thick fluids seeping out of him as Roger’s dark blood burned him up from the inside out. His eyes had sunk right back into their sockets, nothing but a mess of black jelly now. The corpse moved his head blindly back and forth.
“Don’t leave me like this. Please. Don’t leave me here, trapped in a decaying body.”
“Why not?” said Roger. “You deserve it.”
“No,” said Molly. “Let him go.”