The Odin Inheritance (The Pessarine Chronicles Book 1) Page 31

  Chapter Forty-Two

  “You’ve got it, Boss,” Toby said agreeably. He moved to obey as Andrew stood, unable to move or defend himself. I tried to intervene, but Laufeson spoke a word and I found I couldn’t move my arms and legs.

  “Your mind may resist my influence, but your body is under my command,” he said dryly. He waggled his index finger at me, reminding me of where my powdered blood had been. “Your blood is still part of me.” Then he turned his attention to Andrew, his demeanor with me becoming one of a teacher instructing a student.

  “You see, that device is extremely crude,” Laufeson said, watching with an academic interest as Toby exposed Andrew’s abdomen and then applied the gear to it. He toggled a button on the side and a set of snakes like Molly Silver’s popped out, then buried themselves in Andrew’s flesh. Silas retracted his silver snake from Andrew’s neck, giving him control of his own body again. He cried out in pain and frantically tore at the gear as I continued to struggle to reach him.

  “It’ll take days to convert him completely with the gear placed there,” Laufeson said, unmoved by Andrew’s attempts to remove the device. “I’ve experimented extensively with its placement. Near the neck is usually the fastest and least painful, in a relative sense. With the device on his abdomen, my probes will have to find his spine by going through all the organs between them and it.” He shook his head at Andrew’s struggles. “You can trust me on this. He may become one of my pets by the time the probes reach their goal, or he may die of sepsis. It’s all a matter of trajectory and luck.”

  “Take that thing off him,” I bit out, horrified. “It’s me you want – not Andrew.”

  Laufeson considered my words. “That’s true enough,” he agreed, “but I have you already, even if you continue to refuse to serve me. I have him as a sort of... bonus, shall we say? You’re not in a position to demand anything of me. So far as I’m concerned, Andrew is expendable in the extreme.”

  The gears on the device turned again and a new set of probes plunged into Andrew’s flesh. He grunted and I flinched, angry that I wasn’t doing enough to make the torture stop. I could see the probes moving around under the skin of Andrew’s abdomen and though he tried to hide it, it was clear he was in agony.

  “I think,” Laufeson said philosophically, “I’d prefer it if he died. I don’t think he’d make a very good pet.”

  “Stop this,” I cried, “please!”

  Laufeson stopped and looked at me for a long moment. “Ah. You wish to negotiate in earnest, then?”

  “Yes, dammit,” I said, stifling a more blistering curse. “Get that thing off him!”

  “I see. Well, here are my terMs. I promise by Yggdrasil that I will not harm Andrew. In fact, I promise not to Enhance him. I’ll even give him up. In return, you allow me Enhance you. You’ll undergo the procedure without complaint, do my bidding without question and assist me in converting the population of Earth. What do you think?”

  “Yes!” I cried. “Just stop hurting him!”

  “Gut. We have a deal.” He clapped his hands and waved them in Andrew’s direction. “Remove the device but hold him without causing him physical harm.”

  Toby and Silas moved to do as they were ordered. I watched as they removed the geared device, pulling the probes out with sickening bloody pops and then caught Andrew as he fell forward. He hung in their arms, blood dripping from his torso.

  “Healer, heal thyself,” Laufeson ordered.

  Andrew, panting from the pain, reached up to grasp his pendant with one hand and mouthed words as his free hand pressed onto the wounds made by the device. He let go of the pendant and dropped his hand. The wounds had scabbed over. He fumbled at the shirt with shaking hands to re-button it, pale as a sheet.

  Laufeson waved a hand and my body became my own again. “You see?” he asked, standing up and coming back around the desk, “I’ve made a gesture to show my good faith, and now you’ll meet your destiny. Come,” he said, “and Silas, bring the American. Toby, attend to our guest of honor.”

  I followed Laufeson out into the great hall, flanked by Toby. We moved to the Diabolical machines. Silas brought Andrew behind us. “Ariana, don’t do this,” Andrew said, walking stiffly in Silas’s grasp.

  “When you get away,” I said, “you have to stop – “

  Laufeson snapped his fingers, and my jaw clamped shut, cutting off my words. He grinned, enjoying his victory. “It’s too late, Andrew,” he said over his shoulder. “She’s made the agreement.”

  We reached the Diabolicals. The two Enhanced men who had been monitoring the machine from before were still there, and stepped back in deference to their leader. I noticed the gun in a holster on the hip of one of the men.

  “Leave us,” he ordered them, and they beat a hasty retreat. Laufeson turned to look at me. “Kneel,” he ordered.

  I did so, fatalistic and ironically hopeful the Enhancement process wouldn’t work on me… or that if it did, I’d end up like one of the ‘poor sods’ Mr. Toby had mentioned. Unpleasant as such an outcome would be, if I had to be ‘put down’ like a dog or an injured horse, that’d put an end to Laufeson’s plans. It was a price I found I was willing to pay.

  But if the process worked, what then? When will Odin decide to make his move and stop this? I wondered, my fear increasing. What if he doesn’t do anything?

  Laufeson took my left hand. The blade-filled bracelet I wore there toggled partially open and cut a gash across two of Laufeson’s fingers. A drop of his blood fell on my skin and I felt a rush of Odin’s power flow through me to consume the blood.

  Laufeson pulled his hand away, surprised, rubbing the small cut to wipe away the blood on his fingers and checking that none of it had landed on me. He saw no trace of his blood.

  “It seems you have teeth well as talons,” he said and removed the bracelet, putting it in my hand. I wished I could toggle it open and cut his throat, but if I made a mistake and failed to kill him, it’d only make things worse.

  “Perhaps the conversion process will find a way to incorporate your sharp little bracelet device,” he said. “Now, swear you’ll serve me.”

  “Ari, you can’t trust him,” Andrew cried. “I beg you—don’t do this!”

  I nodded in an affirmative response, since Laufeson’s magic still held my jaw firmly shut.

  Laufeson pulled the jar of my blood out of his pocket, removed the stopper and turned to the machine behind him. He pushed a couple buttons so a small flap opened. He emptied my dried blood into the machine, picked two small silver spheres off a console and turned back to me.

  “We’ll start your service with a kiss,” he said, motioning for me to stand up. I did so, reluctantly. God knew I had absolutely no desire to kiss Laufeson. Toby stepped up to stand behind me while Silas kept his hands on Andrew, who struggled in his grasp.

  Laufeson stepped forward and kissed me. His lips were soft and warm. He tasted of rosemary and cloves, which turned my stomach as the odor made distant shadowy memories of pain and horror curl and coil in my thoughts. I sensed the decay and death in him from his dabbling with black magic and connection with Hades. It was all I could do not to recoil from his embrace.

  Then I felt the cool metallic spheres touch my temples. Laufeson broke the kiss and whispered: “Að byrja.”

  My world abruptly turned steel grey as the metallic spheres melted into my skin, sending tiny magical tendrils into my flesh and mind. The world spun and I sagged into Toby’s arms. Andrew cried out. I was beyond being able to respond.

  “Put her in the Diabolical,” Laufeson ordered, “so she may fulfill her role in the new world order.”

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Toby moved me forward and placed me in the rectangular chamber. I wasn’t sure which way was up, and couldn’t seem to coordinate my movements. Toby leaned me against a back corner of the chamber and I slid to the floor in a heap as he shut the door. I tried to get my bearings, but the walls of the chamber spun like a top. />
  Outside the chamber, Laufeson spoke a few more words I didn’t understand and the Diabolical sprang to life. The air filled with the sounds of turning wheels, steam, and gears as I felt the tingle of magic along my skin. My body floated up to hang suspended in the chamber within a nimbus of green energy. It felt very much as if someone had grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me up so my toes dangled a couple inches above the floor. I struggled, trying to get out of the grasp of the magical energy as it swirled about me.

  I heard the thunk of a lever slotting into place and the machinery began to hum and grate as it began its work in earnest. Magic moved around my body in a whirlwind, erasing the enchantment on my jaw. The device in my left wrist broke through the skin, a blood-covered two-inch long silver centipede-thing waving in the green magic. I yelped from the pain as it pulled itself out of my body and melted onto the surface of my left arm. The beginnings of arcane silver tracery formed on and in my skin from the place where the silver centipede had been. My clothes disappeared as the green magic, now mixed with silver, ate them away. I distantly felt something weaving in and around my body to create new garments, but I didn’t know what they would be.

  Odin moved to the forefront of my mind, bringing blue-gold light into the steel-grey that gripped my consciousness. I felt him subtly modify Laufeson’s magic. Images of all the devices I’d made for myself, or for sale or even for the Bosch, filled my thoughts while schematics and algorithms danced in the air. Odin created a barrier between my mind and Laufeson’s magic in sort of a protective embrace, lessening my fear. Then all traces of him completely disappeared.

  Laufeson’s magic overtook me then. My body changed at a faster and faster rate, so much so I couldn’t keep track of what the magic did to me. The machine groaned and rattled around me and then something… just… broke.

  The grinding sound of the gears and machinery slammed to a halt and something hissed angrily. The magic that held me suspended in the chamber cycled down and my feet touched the floor. I wobbled on my feet and put a hand out to steady myself, looking down at my body. I gasped at what I saw.

  Silver tendrils covered my exposed skin, but instead of the gentle curves I’d seen on Molly Silver, mine were angular and resembled the sorts of gears and circuits I put in my mechanical devices. A blue wool sleeveless dress that dropped to the floor covered my body. A corset-like silver breastplate chased with angular designs and clockwork that resembled my brooch covered my torso on top of the blue dress. The back of the metal corset was heavier than it should be, but I couldn’t tell why that was. Silver bracers matching the breastplate covered my wrists, with hints of the mechanism from my bracelet in their design. I wore black boots on my feet, chased with silver gear designs.

  I brought a hand to my head and looked at my reflection in the glass of the chamber door. I saw pupil-less steel-grey eyes staring back at me. My red curls intertwined with silver metal strips that formed a clockwork-winged helmet on my head. I felt my face. Silver emanated from my temples where Laufeson had pressed the metal spheres. The silver in the skin on my face and neck emanated from those two points, the outlines of gears prominent in the tracery.

  The chamber door opened. “Step out and let me look at you,” Laufeson ordered.

  My hand dropped away from the wall of the chamber and though I tried to fight it, my body responded as ordered. I stepped out of the chamber stiffly and stood while Laufeson circled me, inspecting his new creation. My heart pounded in my ears. What if he orders me to do something horrible? I wondered. Could I stop myself?

  “Mien Gott,” Laufeson breathed, “you are fabelhaft.” Toby and Silas nodded in agreement. Andrew looked equal parts fascinated and dismayed.

  My skin crawled at the way Laufeson looked at me, the memory of his kiss still very vivid. I’d have blushed if my flesh were still capable of showing my embarrassment, but I didn’t think it was. I looked at Andrew, hoping to communicate something with my glance, but my steel orbs conveyed nothing to him. He simply stared back at me in horrified astonishment. The bleak look on his face showed he believed me lost to Obscurati magic. My heart sank. I had no way to indicate that wasn’t true… or at least I didn’t think it was.

  “Ari? Are you in there?” Andrew asked. I tried to say something, but nothing came out.

  “Don’t waste your time, Heir of Khonshu,” Laufeson said, amused by Andrew’s reaction. “She’ll speak when I require it. My machine scrubbed her uncooperative personality away. Now her thoughts are only of how she can serve me and my goals. Nothing else remains.” He turned to consider the machine I’d emerged from.

  “Ariana – no,” Andrew whispered. “Show me you’re in there – fight him!”

  I tried, screaming in my mind to give him any sign I could that Odin had protected me. Nothing worked. I stood, silent and still, and waited for my next order.

  “You damaged my Diabolical,” Laufeson said to me. He waved a hand at it. “Let’s see what you can do with it. Take the elements of the two machines here, make sure you understand how they work, and make me,” he paused, his eyes narrowed in calculation, “...five hundred miniature, functional insectoid Diabolicals.”

  My body turned to face the machine I’d just stepped out of. The gears and circuits in my skin moved, much to my surprise, and information on the malfunctions in Laufeson’s device filled part of my mind beyond the protective barrier Odin had erected. I read the information there the way I did a mechanical diagram. In a heartbeat I understood the hateful device completely, knowing how it worked, why it turned some people into crippled, mangled monsters while others came out ‘improved’, and how Laufeson had rigged the device to enslave those who braved its workings. Fury burned in me. I wanted to destroy the horrible machine and its twin.

  Instead, compelled by Laufeson’s command, I had to make five hundred of the damnable things as a test of his hateful, horrible plan. I didn’t want to do it, but I had to obey. My mind spun as I tried to find a way around the order, but the best I could do was make sure the changes made by the Diabolicals I created could be reversed. Using that as my secret template for the work, I gave into the compulsion to do Laufeson’s bidding. The gears in my skin moved as my magic evaluated the Diabolicals and plotted the necessary circuits, structures and magical requirements necessary for small versions of the ponderous, unpleasant machines.

  At my command, the big machine gutted itself of its important parts. I shrank them down, replicated them by the hundreds, and configured them to fit within the bodies of small mechanical scorpions, wasps, and cockroaches.

  He hadn’t specified what sorts of insects he wanted. I’d be damned if I made him any dragonflies and I’d also be damned if I made them attractive like ladybugs or butterflies. They had an ugly purpose, so I chose ugly, unpleasant insects.

  The infernal insects cut their way out of the carcasses of their parent machines in a sick parody of birth. Glowing green with Laufeson’s magic, the crawling insects poured out and down the sides like lava flowing over the edges of a malevolent active volcano, their metal legs, geared wings and clockwork claws clicking and clacking as they rolled down to the floor in a wave. The wasps flew out of the top of the mass of machines, buzzing around the great hall in a swarm above their crawling brethren. When the scorpions and cockroaches hit the floor, they crawled and buzzed over top of each other, roiling like foam in an agitated mechanical sea.

  When they all had exited, I commanded them to stop. The wasps landed themselves along the edges of the gutted Diabolicals, while the crawling insects slowed their rolling and stopped, poised statue-like waiting for their next order. Laufeson’s eyes glittered with triumph as he reached down and picked a scorpion up off the floor, inspecting it carefully.

  The body of the scorpion, a mixture of tiny bronze and steel parts, was the length of an index finger, with its tail curled up over the top of its body. The legs were coiled wires attached to gears and levers in the body of the scorpion. The claws were hinges, and the
tail consisted of circuits and wires woven within washers and other flat circular parts. The algorithms and circuits that made the scorpion move were deep within the body of the mechanism, and the magical power source of the device was in its belly. It glowed a sickly green, illuminating Laufeson’s palm.

  I started to sway, suddenly fatigued. Toby quickly stepped up and grabbed me before I fell and held me steady. Even though the magic that Laufeson forced upon me had powered the vast majority of the insects’ creation, some of Odin’s magic and my life force had gone into the spells as well, it seemed. Therefore, creating five hundred brand new mini-Diabolicals had drained me. I felt my vitality return slowly, but I felt very much like I needed a lie down.

  “Do you see, Andrew?” Laufeson gloated, holding out the small mechanical scorpion. “I’ve crafted her mathematical and mechanical skills to serve my interests. I’m using Odin’s magic in new ways, and neither he nor the Facti, can prevent it. My creation,” he indicated me, “straddles the space between mechanics and magic and she’s adept at both.”

  “Making those devices knocked the wind out of your creation,” Andrew noted grimly. “I don’t see how she’ll have the stamina to create millions or billions of mini-Diabolicals to fulfill your insane needs.”

  “Ah. With the appropriate amount of magical power, Ariana will craft all the devices I require to change the world. I just have to access it.”

  “You can’t access more magical power,” Andrew retorted. “You’ll need an infinite source. Even if you make another ritual sacrifice and worship Loki at that disgusting altar in your office forever, the amount of magical power any human can possess is finite.”

  “Listen to the clever American,” Laufeson taunted, “so wise in the ways of Obscurati power. I’ll gain the power I require.”

  “We’ll stop you,” Andrew said, fury in his voice. “By Osiris, I swear we’ll stop you.”