THE BASEMENT OF ADAM’S LONDON HOME felt bare without his abductees. They’d escaped after Bellerose’s ball. Yet another mistake he’d made because of his hyperfocus on Iris.
There were to be no more mistakes.
For two days he’d sat in front of the rotting and helpless Dr. Heidegger until Adam’s clothes were as filthy as his. He did not eat, nor did he feed the former serial killer as the man mumbled feverishly. Sitting with his legs crossed and his back hunched, Adam listened to each detached sentence, using what he knew of the Fools to discern which persona the doctor was channeling at each moment.
“Yes, Madame, I agree. If Malakar is not able to produce a power source in time, we would have to make our guests wait in such uncomfortable tropical lodgings while we procure Hiva’s heart…. Oh yes, Alva Vanderbilt looks quite beautiful—many would say so—but she pales in comparison to Madame’s beauty. Indeed, the African sun has been shown to be a horror for Alva’s already patchy skin….”
The Pompous Fool. No doubt he was buttering Madame Bellerose up. But if the Vanderbilts were already in Africa, that meant Adam’s Fool was correct: the invitees of the Ark had begun to gather in the Atakora Mountains. Their interdimensional voyage, exclusive only to the rich and powerful, would soon set sail—that is, if all the pieces were in place.
The Fools were the Enlightenment Committee’s greatest source of intelligence. Right now they were Adam’s best bet to gather the information that he needed.
“You blasted twins! I swear to God, I’ll tear you limb from limb!”
Adam flinched. Heidegger’s yellow teeth gnashed at the air, his lips curved into a snarl for a moment, before:
“Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, my sweets, I would never…”
And Heidegger’s body went languid. The Impulsive Fool, then. Without context, the threat was meaningless. Yet he listened for hours more, waiting for information he could glean. And when he was done, he put each fragmented line in logical order, like pieces to a puzzle.
“That bastard Bosch has secured the mining site. But so far none have dared venture into the Coral Temple, not after what happened to the last soldiers that went inside. They’re scared, the little cowardly shits.”
“Bellerose’s new toy, Bately, will force them to go inside. Don’t worry, Doctor Pratt’s going with him. He’ll be able to bring Bately back to life if he croaks.”
The Spiteful Fool was the gabbiest, it seemed. It went along with his crankiness.
“A Fanciful Freak? Where? Why is that boy in Lagos? Shall I follow him?”
As Heidegger’s lips trembled shut, Adam frowned. A Fanciful Freak in Lagos? A male… surely he didn’t mean Maximo or his friends.
Unless, Adam thought darkly, he means him.
He pushed the thought of that circus clown out of his mind. No more of that. With his new purpose, he was through with such petty emotions as jealousy. He’d promised himself.
“Hiva’s Tomb! I want to see Hiva’s Tomb inside the Coral Temple!” Heidegger cooed like the Desperate Fool Adam knew him to be, probably on his back, begging to be petted like a dog. “I wonder, how shall I go? Through the wicked labyrinth of Heaven’s Shrine? Or shall I jump there from the lagoon? Jump! Jump! Jump!” He began giggling. “Yes, I want to disappear and reappear again. How exciting…. Please take me with you…. Lads, don’t leave me behind….”
Out of hundreds of ramblings, these were the threads of thought Adam had picked out over the course of two and a half days, without eating, without sleeping, without so much as bathing. And there was one more.
“Yes, Madame Bellerose. Hiva’s Tomb is, as far as we know, the greatest weapon against Hiva. Imagine a machine that can disassemble a man’s body into its finest of atoms…. Oh, no, Madame—well, it hasn’t been tested…. I’m not sure if it could destroy the crystal heart…. Ah, yes, Madame. We will attempt to retrieve it. And the Moon Skeleton. For the sake of the Ark… no, no, you won’t be embarrassed. I, on my grandiose honor, fully guarantee—”
The Pompous Fool fell silent. Madame Bellerose was probably screaming at him.
Adam searched his memories, every recollection he had of his father’s research and writings that he had been able to get his hands on throughout his lifetime. Every mention of Hiva. Yes, he’d mentioned it before: a way to clip a god’s wings. A way to destroy Hiva. Was it the Hiva’s Tomb? A machine capable of disassembling man… breaking down human flesh…
The Naacal would have been able to do so with their technical prowess. But surely they’d known that the Tomb would not be able to destroy the crystal heart. It could be damaged but not destroyed. Seymour Pratt’s experiments had proved it.
Adam’s own experiments as well.
Adam looked down at the crystal heart on his lap. Pale pink with a faint, dull glow. Round, just bigger than an apple. The gash that Iris had made still throbbing.
He’d tried everything in the days following his sojourn to the South of France, using every resource he could muster, and it seemed Pratt had been correct: It could not be melted or burned. It could not be sliced or broken. And eventually, no matter what damage it had incurred, it would mend itself. And Hiva would form anew.
It had taken Iris’s own crystal heart decades to mend. Was this Hiva different? Adam didn’t want to take any chances, for on the night he’d been rebuffed by his Hiva, he’d made a decision that defied even the cruelest and most foolish of minds.
Foolish, yes. But in his heart he knew it to be the only course of action he had left. Perhaps this had been his fate all along. A blessed fate. And a cursed one.
Adam left Dr. Heidegger to rot in his basement, dismissing his maids. Without anyone to care for him, he would starve and die soon. Then so too would the Fools. An acceptable loss. He didn’t need them to interfere with his schemes. It was a fitting end to the Harlequin Slasher.
So then what should be my father’s fitting end?
He readied himself for a hospital visit.
Sitting at his father’s bedside silenced his macabre thoughts. A strange irony, for if Adam had ever been seen as a bloodthirsty demon by his friends or by his enemies, then it was his father’s actions that were to blame. His father had started everything.
There wasn’t any use in hating him now. Not now that his father’s body had finally begun to fail, despite the doctor’s best efforts. He could no longer eat, not after the parasites had eaten his stomach and intestines. Funny how, despite his medals and accolades, despite his great discoveries and his fame, those tiny creatures had defeated him. They had won the war against science. The laudanum would only keep his emotions steady, at least until the time came.
John Temple was half his usual size underneath the white sheets of his hospital bed. With great effort, he pried open his struggling, milky eyes and looked upon his son. A gentle smile crossed his face. The opium, perhaps. Adam returned it, though his carried no feeling.
“My son,” John Temple said, with a voice that more believably belonged to mummified remains. “You’ve come to see me. That means… you’ve forgiven me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. That was how Adam knew that his father had learned nothing. Unable to put himself in the shoes of his son, who had suffered and spiraled without him. It was his own thoughts, his own feelings, his own aspirations, that mattered most. He desired a son who didn’t hate him, and so he’d invented one. Adam had only played his part.
“It’s been a long time, Father,” Adam said. “I’m quite sorry I tried to kill you.”
The cough from John Temple’s lips was perhaps meant to be a laugh. His pale face looked as if all the fat in his cheeks had disintegrated.
“If only there were a panacea to cure all humans of their misery,” he said. “Then there would be no need for apologies. No need for woe.”
But you have not once apologized to me. Adam cleared his throat.
“Many things are happening, Father,” Adam said. “I need your great mind and wisdom. Hiva’s Tomb inside the Coral Temple—”
John Temple’s eyes widened. “You know of it?”
“There are many things I’ve been able to piece together, Father. I know it’s a great machine created by the Naacal. I know it’s the only way to stop the threat of Hiva, which sadly has befallen our world since your disappearance.”
As John Temple’s parched lips rubbed against each other, bits of dry skin flaked off. “Yes. Of course you know, Adam. You’ve always been a smart lad.” He fell silent. “So the threat of Hiva hasn’t been quelled.”
“How can one stop a god that cannot be killed?”
“But Hiva can be killed for good. Only Hiva’s own bones can destroy her.”
Hiva’s own bones? Adam unconsciously placed a hand on top of his jacket pocket. Inside, Hiva’s crystal heart was quite heavy. Iris had taken his heart but not killed him. Was Iris unable or unwilling to procure his bones? It didn’t matter. Iris’s oversight was his boon.
“To my understanding, the female Hiva had been stabbed through the heart with a sword made of her bones. This was what Malakar told me before my voyage back to London. But there’s another Hiva. One, perhaps, from another world. I believe he can be killed by his bones.”
But that was just the thing.
Adam did not want this new Hiva to die.
“Father, what about Hiva’s Tomb?” he pressed gently, so his father would not suspect the sudden shift in his questioning. “The Naacal had devised it thinking it would kill Hiva.”
“Not kill. No, darling boy, they knew it would not kill her. It would disassemble her body down to her atoms, but only as far as the Tomb draws power. But there is no energy source that lasts forever. Eventually, Hiva’s atoms would reassemble inside the glass.”
It was as Adam had hypothesized. What the Naacal had created was nothing more than a cage meant to stall the cataclysm until they could truly destroy her.
If that was the case, then Hiva’s Tomb would be of use to him.
“Adam, my boy.”
Adam waited through the long pause that felt as if it would last forever. He waited as if he were a small child again and hated himself for it. But feelings of sentimental nostalgia were soon wiped away. John Temple suddenly managed a smile. A proud one.
“You’ve done well.”
His father was a fool. But here, at least, he was quite right.
Throughout the several days he’d locked himself in the basement with Heidegger, he’d only once looked at the portrait of himself as a boy in the corner, the one painted after he’d just graduated from Eton. A charming prince from a powerful family.
A weak, pathetic bag of flesh. Just like all humans.
He only once looked at it—not because he was ashamed. Not because he knew that the boy, by that time, had already succumbed to his worship of death. It was because Adam’s new schemes had seized him wholly. His goal—his new goal, which was not at all different from his first—played out in startlingly vivid fashion in his own mind. A cruel and foolish endeavor. But one that needed to be done.
If only there were a panacea that could clear all human misery. Or the misery that was humanity. But if one didn’t exist…
Then one could be made.
His father was right. Adam had done well.
“Tell me everything, Father, about how Hiva’s Tomb works.”