This choice: Experiment on Will Shabbleman • Go Back...Chapter #53The Return of Frank and Joe Durras by: Seuzz   "You worried it'll hurt, Will?" you needle your cousin. He glares at you from the floor of the church basement, but doesn't speak. Nor can he move, being wrapped in an enchanted, paralyzing chain.
It had been no trick wrapping him up such like after his return from Saratoga Falls. You'd only had to order him to put the chain on, for he was not going to refuse. You'd then had Nate carry him down into the church basement.
It's just the two of you now, and you can't stop yourself from gloating a little. "I don't know but this might sting a little," you tell him as you push the open Libra beneath him. "But no pain, no gain, so they say. Well, no gain for me without a little pain for you." You set a blank mask--one you'd made specially for this experiment--beside him.
You murmur the words that activate the spell.
A shaft of lightning springs from your cousin's chest. Briefly it arcs and branches, feeling about the air before grounding itself on the mask. You shield your eyes; the air crackles and smokes.
And then it's clear. Where Will Shabbleman had lain, there is now a golem.
You unbutton the shirt that still wraps the stony form, then pick up the bowl containing the thin paste. You're pretty sure this will work, but it's still an experiment. Instead of putting a remote-control sigil into a mask, and setting it on him, you're going to put the sigil directly onto the golem, then return his imago to it. You've mixed some of your own essentia into the paste, so if it works as you think it will, he will be your slave, even without there being a mask on him. And if the remote sigil works as you're guessing it will, you will even be able to step in and take control of him directly.
Then the only person in Cuthbert who might guess at your imposture will be your most obedient servant.
You have the mask he'd worn down to Saratoga Falls with you, and you flip through its features until Shabbleman's own face comes up. You tug the Libra out from under him, and set the mask on it. At your murmured words, another bolt of magical lightning bursts out and grounds onto the golem. Where the first bolt had stripped him of his imago, this one will put a copy of it onto him.
The lightning crackles, and fizzles out. Will Shabbleman opens his eyes, and looks over at you.
There is murder in his eyes. But there's fear, too.
"I'm going to release you now, Will," you tell him quietly, and twist the key in the lock. He sits up slowly as the chain falls away, his eyes fixed on your face. "Now put that chain on me," you order him.
He raises his eyebrows, but complies. You sink to the ground.
"You'd like to kill me, wouldn't you, Will?" you ask him.
"Yes'm," he growls.
"Can you?"
Not a muscle moves, except for a twitch in his cheek. "No." He grits his teeth. "No, I can't."
"Good. Release me now."
It wasn't as risky a test as it looked: you'd altered the chain's spell beforehand, so that it wouldn't bind you.
"Now let's get a look from inside you, Will." You brush your hand over your face, flicking between forms, until the control sigil comes up. You plunge into it.
Three constellations hang before you, but you've only to glance at them to know whose they are: Will Prescott, Monique Travers, and Will Shabbleman. You pull the latter onto you.
You blink and take a step back. The skinny form of Will Prescott lays on the floor, staring up glassily at the ceiling. Thump thump thump. Your heart hammers briefly in your chest before settling down.
Your lips twitch into smirk. "Well, hey there, cousin," you drawl. "Wish I could say I was surprised to see it really was you all along, but--" You cock your head as your dick stirs. "Wish there was a way of flipping your face back so you looked like Rosalie again. I wouldn't mind giving her a--"
You cut yourself off. Plainly you won't have any trouble imitating the surly Will Shabbleman if and when you need to step into his place.
But you've got more important business to take care of, you suddenly realize.
Almost from the start, your cousin had wondered if there wasn't some funny business going on with "Grandmother." And he had noticed your problem with the canes.
Worse than that, he had acted on his suspicions. He had made a phone call while down in Saratoga Falls.
Someone very dangerous is now on his way to Cuthbert.
* * * * *
You pull back into your own body, and spend a good thirty minutes working your new slave over, giving him a less hostile, more compliant attitude before sending him away and turning back to the Libra.
You need Frank and Joe back. Nate might raise an eyebrow to see them resurrected, but you can handle him with a word or two. And your experiment with Will Shabbleman shows how you can do it.
But you need two golems first, and there's no time to make them up the old-fashioned way.
Of course, you could find two victims in town and turn them into golems. But your eye instead wanders over to the bottles in the corner.
You're pretty sure that the bottles with the heavy gray goop contain substantia. And a golem is itself just substantia; in a sense, you're pretty sure, you've got four bottled golems already on hand.
But how to get them out of the bottles?
After racking your brains, you decide to just try it out on the bottled stuff. The results might be messy, but with Grandmother's memories you've got a lot of experience dealing with messes.
With great difficulty you roll one of the bottles of substantia onto the page that copies imago. Beside it you set the mask your cousin had been wearing, and flip the face to Frank's. You take several steps back before activating the spell, and shield your face. You mutter the incantation. There's a loud crack, and when you peer out find your experiment a success: Frank Durras is now laying on the Libra, surrounded by a fine dust of shattered glass.
He doesn't move, for you'd only activated that part of the spell that copies physical imago; you tug the book out from under him, flip to the spell that erases imago, and turn him back into a golem. Then it's a simple matter of painting a remote sigil onto the chest and putting Frank's physical and mental imago back onto it.
Now he does sit up. There's a confused look on his face. "The fuck has been going on," he growls. "I feel like--"
"Like what, Frank?"
His eyes narrow. "Like a lot of assholes have been using me as a sock puppet." He flexes a strong hand, but nothing happens. "Shit. I'm still a golem, aren't I?"
You can't resist smiling. "Sorry, but yes you are. And who's your boss?"
"You are," he says glumly. He looks around. "Is Joe here? Misery loves company."
"Not yet. He's next. You can do the honors, in fact." You pull up the control sigil: There's Frank's, hanging with the others, and you dive into it.
You get up with a groan as Will Prescott sags onto the cold floor. "A sock puppet again," you murmur. Then you smirk. "Yep. Rick Bredon'll be in a for a real surprise when he gets here."
* * * * *
Rick Bredon. One of the most dangerous of the Stellae Errantes. It was he who Will Shabbleman had called while he was back in Saratoga Falls.
It was the deadliest stroke your cousin knew to make against you. Or his Grandmother. By the time he'd screwed up his nerve to make the play, he probably didn't much care who he was fighting. All he knew was that he wanted to destroy the master-mistress of Cuthbert.
So, in Frank's mask, he had called Rick, and told him that he and Joe had traced the Libra back to Cuthbert. "Keep your distance from that place," Rick had growled.
"We kind of figured that," your cousin had said. "We made a quick drive through, and got out fast. We couldn't put our fingers on what was wrong--"
"But there's plenty. I checked it out a couple of months ago, got out fast myself. How'd you trace the book to Cuthbert?"
"Through that magician, Blackwell. Either he had a connection up there, or he made one. Someone from the town was working with him. He went back to Cuthbert. Me and Joe staged a quiet raid on Blackwell's, but turned up nothing, so we're thinking the Libra went up into the mountains. That's where it was originally headed, right?"
"Right. I'll be out in a day or two, make another recon of Hell's Little Acre, then meet up with you and kid, plan from there."
Your cousin had hung up feeling very pleased with himself.
But you only feel pleased after you've manufactured a replacement for Joe. "You guys are going to be meeting up with Rick Bredon in a day or two," you tell him after you're done, and are back in your own form. "Is Rick going to be able to pick up on the fact that you guys are ... missing something?" Though there are no masks in play, your puppets lack both essentia and anima.
"Oh, who knows with Rick," Joe sighs. "The guy is spooky. Eldibrian and all that. You say you painted sigils onto our substantia? He might pick up on that. Oh, you bastard, Will!" He mimes throwing a punch at you. "And there we were, thinking we had you under our thumb back in Saratoga Falls. "   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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