Late on Thursday Night Amanda made her way to the local town morgue. The sun had set not long ago and purple streaks still highlighted the edges of the sky. She cast a quick eye about but the nearby street was empty. She’d parked her horse down by the bar which was where she planned to head after for a few games of poker, maybe a drink or two. She’d technically already broken her promise to Gemma, not that she thought the girl had noticed, so really what was a few drinks as long as she kept it to just that? But before she could relax there was work to do.
She pushed her way inside the morgue with the barest of plans in mind. In her experience, something based in truth was usually the most convincing. She figured getting someone to let her see the body wouldn’t be too difficult. She considered Lily family now, and so by extension then, so was Cornelius O'Hara. Family could usually view a corpse without needing to show too much proof. Hell, if you spun a sob story well enough about how you knew the victim they were usually pretty lax. Worst come to worst, bribery sometimes worked. It had worked before, when they’d had bodies they wanted to look at, but she’d also been kicked out of the morgue before too.
The problem was, this time she didn’t just want to look. She wanted to perform a resurrection and for that she would need a reasonable about of time alone with the body. A few minutes she could probably snag but more than that was going to be a challenge, one she was still trying to figure out as she approached the reception desk.
A young girl with dark mousy blonde hair and sad sombre sort of a smile glanced up.
“How may I help you?” she asked.
“I’m here to see a body. Cornelius O'Hara.” Amanda told her no more than was required. Let the girl ask the questions. It was better not to lie if she didn’t have to.
“Cornelius O'Hara?”
A strange look came over the girl’s face and for a moment Amanda worried that perhaps he had been moved already.
But then the girl smiled, a wide and welcoming smile. “Of course. Follow me.”
Surprised that was all it had taken, Amanda didn’t look the gift horse in the mouth. Her focus was still on how she was going to get this girl to leave her alone with body. There was also the issue of what state the body would be in once she was done with it.
It wasn’t until they were half way down the hallway that Amanda realised the girl hadn’t made her sign in. Always in the past there had been a sign in process. But it had been awhile since she’d been here, perhaps their system had changed? She glanced about for cameras but could not see any. She doubted the council could afford anything hidden. Besides, given how Coal’s jobs had occasionally required them to pay a visit to the morgue, she suspected he, and the other aristocrats, preferred no one look to closely at what went on here. This time, however, she was going behind his back. Indeed, if it weren’t for the location the body had been found in, she would have suspected that it was Coal who put the body here. Truthfully, she still wasn’t certain that it wasn’t. Tonight she would find out though, and she’d get answers about exactly how Lily has been resurrected. Answers that maybe, just maybe could help her save Lily.
The morgue attendant took Amanda to an L shaped room where square silver drawers lined the walls. It was much colder in here than it had been outside. She felt her larger of her two satchels moving in response to the temperature drop, shivering maybe. It reminded her of what she had come here to do. She did not shiver, she had come prepared. Except, she still hadn’t figured out how to ensure enough time alone with the body.
“Cornelius O'Hara is in that one.” The girl pointed at one silver door, one square up from the floor. “I’ll leave you alone now.”
Amanda watched her go in surprise. She hadn’t expected that. Usually they waited unless you requested them to leave and that wasn’t a guarantee. Things had been weirdly easy tonight. Amanda didn’t dwell on it though. She had no idea how long the girl would be gone for and she planned to make the most of the time she could, even if it meant she got kicked out half way through. Resurrections were illegal without a license but she could burn any evidence quick enough if she needed to, then the most she might face was a charge for corpse desecration.
She had brought two bags with her. One full of ingredients, dried flowers and powders that she wasn’t sure were needed but which she dare not risk leaving out, as well as a book with incantations which she was also uncertain were necessary. She had begun to get a sense lately that it was less about the ingredients and more about the thought process but she couldn’t be certain, for thoughts were hard to replicate and seemed themselves somewhat related to the act of carrying out the spell. There was one thing however which she was certain of, and that was the blood. All spells required blood, whether the caster’s own or that of another.
She followed the spell’s instructions to the letter. It was safer that way, if a little more expensive given some of the ingredients, but tonight she was taking no chances.
She brought along an infusement stone as well. There was a time when she had thought that all spells required infusement, as well as some form of the raw power, in this case necromancy magic. This too was something she was not longer certain of. She’d noticed Katrina mixing magics in a way that almost made something new, and magic itself varied so substantially across people even within what they called a singular type of power, and yet they could often achieve the same effects. There needed to be a relationship though, that much was obvious. Perhaps with the right focus a telekinetic could create flight but no matter how she looked at it she could not see how a firestarter might create life. The power had to relate to the outcome and tonight was not the night to test it and so she had acquired a necromancy infusement at some cost.
They quality of the magic in bone she had purchased was questionable but she had noticed that as she had aged the infusements and tools she needed no longer had to be as powerful as they once did. These days, a small infusement stone, the barest minimum was all she needed to create a spark to bind the spell and she wondered if one day perhaps she could do without one at all.
But they did make things easier and the easier a spell, the less energy and the less blood it needed, almost as if there was a trade off, up to a point. The effect definitely tapered off and Amanda has been disinclined to waste that many raw infusement stones just to test a theory. They did not come cheap. Infusements themselves were made by infusers but no one knew how the raw infusement stones were made, no one but the sorcerers and they guarded that secret closely, but sometimes Amanda wondered if there weren’t blood in the making of those too.
She lay the ingredients out as instructed. She’d memorised most of these steps so she could perform quickly and with only the barest of glances at the book.
From the second bag she pulled a live rabbit. Dead worked too but live was better. Fresh blood held more power. It squirmed in her hands as if it knew what was coming.
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‘Sorry, and thank you,’ she thought to it, and then she slit it’s throat.
She lay it on the floor where the blood could spill out naturally as the book instructed. As the flow slowed she reached forward with ungloved hands, also as the book instructed, and painted around the rabbit’s body a sort of incomplete circle, wavy in places and broken in others. This spell would not last forever, certainly not this long after death and with only a rabbit as a sacrifice, but Amanda only needed a few minutes. Just enough to time to gather whatever information she could.
With bloodied hands she pulled open the drawer, half worried the morgue attendant had gotten the wrong one. Even as the drawer pulled out Amanda could not be certain this was the correct body. It looked like no man ever should, all bloated and decaying. He had been lying in a swap for sometime. The flesh had soaked up the swamp water and the fish had nibbled little bits off his face. A name tag on his toe suggested this was the right person but the only way Amanda could be sure was to ask him and so with the blood from the rabbit she anointed his rotting flesh and then she chanted the words.
For a time nothing happened. The still silence of the morgue appeared to echo indefinitely and the air grew ever so slightly warmer. For several seconds neither the living of the dead stirred, until the body suddenly sputtered and spat fowl-smelling swamp water into the air. Then it sat up and it looked around.
Amanda kept her distance and her hand at the ready, just in case.
“Are you Cornelius O'Hara?” she asked, doing her best to ignore the ever increasing smell of decay or the literal emptiness of the eye sockets that looked at her. She did briefly wonder if he still could see at all. At least his ears and mouth looked for the most part intact, even if his nose holes were a little larger than they should have been.
The corpse made another sort of splutter and then something that sounded like it was trying to clear its throat. Then, in a guttural sort of voice, one that sounded a little rusty, it spoke.
“Who’s asking?”
“My name is Amanda. I have your daughter Lily. I took her from that facility, the one where you resurrected her. Now she’s in danger and I need your help to save her.”
“Lily...” the corpse croaked.
It sounded like he understood and that he was lucid enough for her purposes but for how long she had no idea. His external flesh had made no reparations but it was not what she had been focusing on restoring. She didn’t bother beating around the bush or waiting for any further reply. Instead she got straight into her questions, starting with the easy ones.
“I have questions and we don’t have a lot of time. Who killed you?”
There was a pause and Amanda worried perhaps the spell hadn’t worked well enough. But then he answered. “The aristocrat. Coal Chase.”
“Why?”
He hesitated. “He didn’t like that I tried to use you as components in the spell.”
“He didn’t know about that? When you hired him.”
His voice grew a little smoother, still not perfect but clearer with a slight catch, almost as if his vocal chords had remembered how to work and they were doing the best with what they had. The new clarity of his tone contrasted with the state of his face.
“I told him we had a monster loose, which was true. The mimics had escaped and it was a problem that needed dealing with. I figured two birds one stone. But that damn Trevor was taking his time. He was supposed to help corral them into one area, along with you lot, but he kept making excuses like the place itself was fighting back or something stupid like that. The blood has to be relatively fresh though and I was running out of time, what with when the previous sacrifices had been made, and the scientists were getting shitty that their damn pets were still on the loose.”
“Their pets? The mimics?”
“Yes. I didn’t really expect you to be able to get them back but I was so close and, I told the aristocrat I needed someone with a lot of power. I figured, a couple of powerful witches and that’d be enough.”
“They were experimenting on the mimics?”
“Yes.”
“What were they testing?”
“I don’t know. That’s not my department. I was just borrowing the facility in exchange for money. Look, a few months back, before the accident, the Department of Transportation got a huge cut in funding-”
Amanda waved a hand. “I don’t care about Mercy politics. What were the other components of the spell? What else did you do to make it work?”
“No, listen, this is important. One of the guys in the transportation department died very recently. The circumstances of his death got covered up but there were rumours, even before he died, that someone from the Department of Necromancy ordered a hit out on him.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know exactly but he did have some very controversial ideas.”
“Like what?”
“He wanted to regulate teleporation the same way necromancy is. And he wanted to create a more accessible bridge between the two worlds, reassimilate us with the old world. The transportation department’s been researching the splice for years but they didn’t really start making progress until several months ago. He made a big announcement about some important discovery they’d found, then suddenly went on sabbatical to write some book. He never came back.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah.”
“So?”
“So he had supporters, none who can really take his place, but rumours got around and if they start making noise... things in Mercy are delicate at the moment, there a plenty of people looking for an excuse... if it had gotten out that one department ordered a hit on another...”
“Okay, so what does this have to do with the splice and your spell?”
“Well, things kind of fell apart in the transportation department. I’m with Department of Finances. I move the money. I oversee purchases. I rub elbows with people from every department. Everything goes through me but I’m relatively out of the public eye. When I lost my wife and child, a close friend of mine in the Transportation Department said he could help me out in return for a few favors. I shift some money about and he’ll let me use the facility.”
Cornelius paused and took a deep breath.
“Go on,” Amanda encouraged.
“Some more deals were made and in exchange I acquired some spells from the history department, criminals from the rehabilitation department, and silence from the poodle department.”
“Where are those spells now?”
“They’re in the facility, buried beneath the rubble. We could have worked together back then you know.”
“You’re the one who fled.”
He nodded. “I was trying to find my wife. I don’t know why it didn’t work. Even without you lot, it should have been plenty. I wasn’t skimping.”
“You didn’t have a necro.”
“I did. The twins. One’s a seer, one’s a necro.” He sighed. “But not a very good one. They shared powers you know. In close proximity each of them could do what the other could. Their whole lives they’d pretended like they had the same power but all along, they’d been sharing. People aren’t a big fan of necros in Mercy you see so they acted like they were both seers but I think they made each other weaker too.”
“You killed one of them?”
He nodded. “I thought it would make the other twin stronger, give her both her sister’s powers.”
“Did it?”
He was silent for a while and then he groaned. His expression twisted. “I don’t know.” He shook his shoulder and then he twitched slightly.
Amanda took a small step back. Her spell was wearing off. She didn’t have much time. “Even if it had worked, what was your plan? Where were you going to go? How were you going to make it last?”
“We were going to meet a friend in Witchaven. Hide among the humans for awhile. Part of the spell, made Lily human, took her powers, in exchange for her life.”
“She’s not human. It didn’t work.”
“The friend we were going to meet there said he had a back up plan, in case things went wrong, a way to make it last.”
“Which friend?”
“I don’t know. Argo organised it.”
He folded over then and grunted. He rolled his neck, then he seemed to come right again, at least for now.
“Where is Lily? What happened to her?” he asked.
“She’s safe.” Amanda told him.
He looked straight at her. She still didn’t think he could see. He was probably just looking in the direction of her voice. “Look after her for me. Please?”
Amanda nodded. “I will.”
Relief filled his face, what little of it what left, and then a moment later it was gone, replaced by something inhuman and hungry. He growled and his half eaten nostrils twitched in her direction.
The spell had run out of energy.
With a slight wave of the hand Amanda set him on fire. She closed her eyes briefly and then opened them again and forced herself to watch until nothing of Lily’s father remained but the ash.