MudMan (The Golem Chronicles Book 1) (34 page)

No. It wouldn’t come to that
.

Chuck would come through with reinforcements. He wouldn’t run off with the eight hundred thousand dollars in untraceable gold bullion Levi had given to him for the express purpose of securing a personal army of mercenaries.
He’ll come through
, the Mudman reassured himself for what seemed like the thousandth time.

For one, Levi had told Chuck in no uncertain terms what would happen if he ran with the gold. He wouldn’t murder him, of course—Chuck may have been a lot of things, but a cold-blooded killer, he wasn’t—but death wasn’t always the worst fate possible. Not even close. And Chuck knew Levi could deliver on his promise. After all, he’d watched firsthand as Levi, burning like the sun, leapt into the jaws of what amounted to a plant-god and walked away.

Fear like that could be a powerful motivator.

Plus, Levi had promised him
another
eight hundred thousand dollars upon completion. Even if fear of bodily dismemberment wasn’t motivation enough, greed would bring Chuck back. True, the gold Chuck already had was enough to set him up for life, but the man was a huckster always working an angle; a man like that couldn’t possibly pass up a chance at such a payday. Like a Vegas gambler on a hot streak, Chuck would let it all ride at a shot for more, even if it meant he might lose big in the long run. Or so Levi hoped.

Chuck would come through. He had to.

The thought of all that gold flowing into the world set Levi’s teeth on edge and got his head to pounding anew. He wasn’t worried about the money—he had simple, inexpensive tastes and could always produce more—but, in time, that gold would be traced back to him, and
that
was cause for concern. The Mudman was a cautious sort and took great pains to exchange gold for cash only in minuscule increments, and he never used the same face twice. And even with his precautions, rumors still sprouted up around him like weeds he couldn’t choke out.

A million and a half in gold flooding the market, however, would make more than rumors, it’d make waves. Big waves, even in the Hub.

Sooner or later those waves would lead to Chuck—because he was an idiot and could keep a secret about as well as a gossip rag—which would, in turn, lead to Levi, the source responsible for those ripples. Then … well then the monsters would come for
him
. For his gold. He took his free hand, unrestricted by the tube, and rubbed at his head, trying to massage the unpleasant thoughts away. So many things to worry about and nothing he could do about any of them.

What was done, was done, and he couldn’t change a thing. He’d just have to deal with the fallout from all this—assuming he lived through
it.

Much as he might like to, he couldn’t afford to mope around and count the minutes as they ticked by, marching onward toward Ryder’s death and the resurrection of a godling.

Carefully, he removed the plastic tubing from the crook of his arm, then pressed a thick thumb over the wound to stop the trickle of ichor. Every drop was important now. He glanced down and surveyed the bucket: three gallons, maybe. Almost as much as his body could naturally hold. He could do a lot of damage with three gallons. First, though, he needed to devise some sort of delivery system. Couldn’t very well march into battle with a mop bucket full of golden-blood at his side.

But he had an idea for that, too.

He reluctantly crawled to his feet, grabbed up the bucket, and headed into the house, bound for the basement.

What he needed sat on the metal cooling shelf, just to the right of the brick kiln: ten circular pots, each the size of a baseball and each decorated in a multitude of hues and textures. The pots were nothing extraordinary—the kind of thing any beginning potter might throw—though still beautiful. Test pieces he’d made to try some new glazes on. For what he had in mind, however, they would work perfectly. He shuffled over to the rack with the bucket in hand and began filling each pot to the brim with golden ichor. Once each jar was full, he tore a small strip of flesh from his side and secured it over the top like a lid. A dash of ichor transformed the malleable clay lid into a rock-hard seal.

The process wasn’t difficult, but Levi took his time since any mistake could be costly. After a half hour, the task was done. The ten pots were now makeshift ichor grenades, each capable of untold amounts of damage in the right hands. Levi’s hands.

With an effort of will, Levi redirected the ichor flowing through him, channeling it away from his formidable barrel gut: he forced open a cavity in his belly, a strip running across his front from love handle to love handle, long but shallow. He sucked in a deep breath and held it before taking the pots, one by one, and placing them in intervals throughout the cavity, wriggling them into his wet clay center. Once he had all ten pots properly positioned, he let out the pent-up breath and pushed flows of ichor to his stomach. Clay-flesh surged around the homemade grenades, covering them completely, leaving behind an unmarked belly.

Safe, secure, and handy when the time came to use them.

All that remained to do now was grab the rest of Chuck’s gold and head over to the Hub.

He picked his way toward the office, but stopped midstride as Jacob-Francis strode into his path, yellow eyes glaring up while his tail swished in agitation. He didn’t meow—that was beneath him. Rather he stared at Levi with a look that said,
feed me now, servant, or suffer unimaginable consequences
. Levi crouched down and ran a hand along the cat’s back; the furry beast arched into his palm and offered a slow, pleased blink. Not much time, but time enough to say goodbye to the miserable creature and ensure he would have enough food and water for several weeks. He patted the cat, then went over to his bowl in the corner, topped it off, then set out a second bowl, which he also filled to the brim.

If he did survive, he knew he’d be finding cat vomit all over the house for the next two weeks. Whenever he left out extra food, the fur-ball would gorge himself, vomit, then repeat the process ad nauseam. The cat looked on with smug approval, then darted up the stairs, disappearing back to wherever he’d come from.

That done, Levi headed over to the office, disarming the wards without a thought. The trunk in the corner clicked open, revealing the counterfeit documents, his stack of prepaid cell phones, and the gold bullion bars and cash beneath. He pushed the cell phones out of the way and pulled out the silver-lined box with his secret weapon stored inside. He set the heavy box down and instinctively ran a crude hand over its lid, ensuring all the containment wards were intact and holding. All good, which was a small relief at least.

He turned his attention back to his storage chest; as he pushed the cell phones back in place, a thought hit him like a freight train barreling into a car stuck on the tracks—it was something the professor had mentioned in passing back in the Sprawl. He’d said the resurrection ritual required a sacrifice. A sacrificial murder, which required one sibling to willingly kill another—a reenactment of Abel’s murder—in order to complete the summoning. Ryder was carrying the homunculus, the physical vessel, but what if she was
also
the sacrifice?

Ryder had a sister—what was her name? Jennifer? Jane? He couldn’t quite recall—but he
knew
Ryder had one. He ran a finger over one of the disposable phones. He’d given Ryder one just like it so she could call her sister.
The only family she had left
; those had been Ryder’s words. Levi couldn’t imagine a reason Ryder’s sister would be involved in this mess, but he couldn’t rule out the possibility, either. After handing the phone over to Ryder, he’d told her to shut it off and leave it on the coffee table once she’d finished with the call.

Hopefully she’d done as he’d instructed. He had to be wrong, but if he could find that phone it would put his suspicion to rest one way or the other. And, even if the sister wasn’t involved, perhaps he could put her mind at ease.

Quick as he could, he reengaged the trunk lock, threw a blanket back over the box, and scooted out of the room, lead-lined box in one hand. He locked the office—even in his rush, there was no point in taking unnecessary risk—and hoofed it upstairs, heart pounding in excitement. He headed into the living room, gaze landing on the table like a sledgehammer. His heart fell: nothing but a stack of neat coasters. He ground his teeth and grimaced.

The guest room, could she have left it there after showering?

He was moving even before the thought had fully formed. He streaked down the hall and pushed the door open, eyes sweeping the room. There, the burner phone sat on the nightstand beside the bed. He grunted—the grinding sound of a rockslide—which was as close to celebrating as Levi ever came. He snatched up the phone and flipped it open. Ryder hadn’t bothered to turn it off as he’d instructed, but for once he didn’t mind. He pulled up the recent-call log and found what he was looking for inside. A lone phone number, which had to belong to Ryder’s sister.

He selected the number and punched the call button with his thumb.

Berrr, berrr, berrr
.
Berrr, berrr, berrr
.

Nothing. He tried again.

Berrr, berrr, berrr
,
click
.

“Hello, Levi,” a lightly accented voice, vaguely European, said from the other end of the line. Hogg. “So you’ve managed to put all the pieces together. Quite clever, considering what a rudimentary beast you are.”

“I don’t know what you’ve done with Ryder’s sister, don’t know how you’ve wrapped her up in your schemes, but I better find them both alive and well.”

He laughed. “Don’t be a fool,” he said. “I didn’t force her to participate against her will—the ritual requires a willing accomplice. And Jamie was quite willing, I can assure you.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “Why would she do that? Who would ever do that to someone they love?”

“Why does anyone do anything? Revenge? Jealousy? Loneliness? Fear? Humans are not complex creatures, nor are their motives. Now, I’m busy, preparing for tonight’s ritual. So what do you want?”

“I want to know she’s okay. Sally.”

“That worthless sack of meat is fine, golem. Fine until the equinox, when she will stop being fine.”

“Prove it. Let me hear her,” Levi said.

“No.” Hogg spoke the word slowly, indifferently. “I will not condescend and take orders from a puppet of mud. You belong to me, not the other way around. You have my word. That is all you’re going to get. Now, if that is everything—”

“You evil, murdering bastard,” Levi blurted out, surprised by his own words. “Why are you doing this? Why release this thing back into the world?”

“More
whys
. Always with the whys,” Hogg said. Then he laughed, a booming belly-chuckle. “You’ve grown too much like them. I made you better than that, made you to be above these idiotic notions of good and evil. You’re too much like these weak human beings, so concerned with morality. Always asking
why
, as if understanding that question will somehow make the situation different. As though understanding the
why
will impart significance and meaning to suffering.

“Why am I doing this, you ask. But there is no why. Perhaps you want to hear that I was tortured or beaten as a child, as if that might explain my madness. I wasn’t. Quite the opposite, in point of fact. My parents were loving, nurturing, supportive. So were my kin. Good
people, all of them. I enjoy torture and experiment purely for torture and experiment’s sake. I slaughter people because it gives me pleasure, and it has always been so. Believe it or not, but I am very, very old, and after several lifetimes, I’ve found that slaughter and torment simply make me content. The only reason
why
I do what I do is because I can. That is the truth that drives me.

“And I am specifically releasing Cain because I owe him a great deal. Let me spin you a tale of yesteryear. This story starts thousands of years ago, before the downfall of Atlantis. I was a boy then, Levi, which ought to give you some idea how long I’ve been around. When I was seventeen, I bludgeoned a neighbor boy to death. Smashed his head in with a rock because he was alone, poor, and I wanted to do it. Wanted to end him because I could. Killing him, it made me feel like Atropos the inevitable—she who cuts the thread of fate. I killed him and buried his body in a shallow grave behind my house.

“I was young, then, and quite sloppy. The boy’s corpse was discovered by the authorities several weeks later, and because of my carelessness, his murder was rightly laid at my feet. In those days, despite the technological advances, they still executed murderers by hanging until dead. Can you believe that? The barbarity of it all?” He took a deep breath as though savoring the notion. “I should’ve been hanged more than four thousand years ago, but I was spared. In those days my people were at war with themselves, and the rebels were doing surprisingly well. Capturing new territories by the day and executing nobles by the score. Bloody times, dark times.

“That is why they spared me, because they were losing their war. You see, my brother worked for Atlantis Correction Systems as the high-warden over Cain’s prison, and the authorities—the greatest of all black-hearted murderers—agreed to pardon me in exchange for using my family connections to gain an appointment in the temple. Even at seventeen I was an accomplished technomancer, so my government funded my research, hoping I could covertly find a way to control Cain and release him as a weapon against the upstarts. Lir, good brother that he was, was only too happy to offer me an appointment as an under-warden.

“While working there, though, my eyes were
opened
. Cain connected with me, thought to thought, mind to mind. He spoke through the walls of his dimensional prison directly into my consciousness. I could hide my heart and intentions from Lir, but not from my master. Cain set me free. He understood my truth. He understood the joke of black and white, good and evil: there is neither, only power. And murder? Murder is the ultimate power. The power of God. It was a truth I always knew, but which he encouraged me to embrace. He took me under his wing as a disciple, taught me the ways of killing, genocide, dark alchemy. Taught me to embrace what I am instead of hiding from it.