“So you think it’s the offender.”
She tilts her head in a mocking gesture, then looks across the bed of remains. “You know it’s him. There’s only one perpetrator in this town, right?” Her sharp remark teases at a ribbon of fear buried beneath the sarcasm.
Whether or not she fully believes she’s in the Overman’s sight, that’s not what she’s afraid of. She’s not scared of Alister or his empty threats. But she is wary of something. I want to pull at that ribbon until she unspools.
“I’m just cautious with what I reveal to Alister. Before I’ve verified the evidence or have a provable theory,” she amends.
The question of what went down during their meeting is right on the cusp of my tongue, but I decide to give her something instead. “The stag skulls are all different sizes, ages. There are layers of decomp in the heap, ranging from years to weeks.”
“So now you’re a forensic anthropologist.”
The hint of a smile playing on her mouth stokes a blazing brushfire within me, and I want more; I want to earn her laugh. “I am whatever you need me to be.”
Her smile falls. “That’s what worries me.”
She traps me in the intensity of her gaze, refusing to release me until she’s forced to swipe the unruly lock of white from her vision.
I cross my arms and look down at one of the rotting stags. “You don’t agree with Alister’s theory that the Harbinger raided the hemlock.”
Keeping my gaze trained on the hollow eye socket of the skull, I wait for her answer, my inquiry a not-so-veiled attempt to discover if she thinks I’m somehow responsible.
“No,” she says. “I don’t think the Harbinger had any hand in that.”
A small flame of hope unfurls inside me, and as I dare to meet her eyes, some uncertainty passes over her face, dousing that flame just as quickly.
“But then, I’m not sure what I know at all anymore.” She parts her notebook open.
I can work with that.
“Like the hemlock.” She delves straight into the facts. “The offender never wanted this site discovered. We reasoned the hemlock was his contingency plan, his failsafe. If he came to collect it, at the risk of exposing…whatever he was hiding in this ravine, then he’s getting impatient.”
Her thoughts reflect what I told Devyn. “I agree.”
It was our first dinner together at the town diner where I led Halen down the path to the hemlock. Socrates was forced to ingest it when he was found guilty of impiety, for introducing a new deity into society—which is the most important part to remember.
In every society, in every age, if man becomes his own god, then there is no outside force to fear or be governed by. Leaders lose the ability to control the masses. Therefore, the knowledge of this “wisdom” into the Higher Self had to become a secret, hidden.
Fact or fiction, truth or conspiracy theory—it makes no difference.
History is bound and recorded by the violence of those who believed.
“The trunk of the willow tree is where your guy marked his path to ascension,” I say, reasoning out loud. “We discovered no other alchemic symbols at any of the other tribute sites. Only here.”
Those symbols. Three. Always three.
Socrates. The Herd. Dionysus.
I glance around at all the mutilation, at the death. “This site is sacred to him. Not just a practice site.”
“It’s crude. A dumping place for failed attempts.” Halen steps onto a boulder between carcasses. “This is his first site. Where he started.”
“Every alchemist needs a lab,” I remark.
Unlike the other analysts skirting the perimeter, wary of falling into the hovel of decay, Halen walks the scene undaunted, snapping pictures, jotting notes. She goes somewhere inside herself, where all the noise and distractions of the scene fall away. Time and space bend for her as she reaches out to connect with the perpetrator.
Whether it existed before, or was cloaked by a life of love and happiness, she has a darkness inside her—one she taps into to see beneath the veil.
Most people are too frightened to look that deeply.
But this is where she fights her demons.
This darkness cried out to me across the abyss, where I was waiting for her. I’m still waiting for her. Last night, I might have chipped away at her doubt, but like the gorge we’re standing amid now, there’s still a chasm between us.
Halen slings her camera around to her back and rolls off a glove, then takes her phone from her back pocket and holds it up to record her thoughts. “Nietzsche’s allegory described the Overman as a gift, an idealism to elevate humanity, which was rejected by society. If the offender’s gift is rejected by the herd, then just as with Socrates, the hemlock will come into play. But who is the poison intended for? There was always something off about the perpetrator consuming it himself in the initial profile.”
Lowering her phone, Halen finds me across the pile of bones. “Care to share your thoughts, Professor Locke?”
A wicked craving licks my restraint with a forked tongue at hearing her address me like that. “I’m just riveted watching you work, Dr. St. James.”
“Fine.” She gets to her feet. “You tell me when I get something wrong.”
If she keeps stroking my ego like this, she’ll force me to show her how rewarding I can be when she gets something right.
“I profiled the offender as devolving. Out of desperation, he’d resort to a primeval alchemy incorporating human sacrifice, thus sacrificing his higher humans as a more worthy offering to Dionysus. No more pity. No more humanity to bind him to the flesh. His ultimate weakness.” She hunkers and sets her notebook aside, then prods one of the stags with a stick. “Cannibalizing his higher men to consume the aspects of the Overman seems a more logical and direct route. But the offender wouldn’t need hemlock for this purpose. Rather, it would defeat it. You can’t cannibalize people who’ve just ingested poison.”
“Quite the logical deduction,” I say. “Seems like you’ve put the whole puzzle together.”
“Then what am I missing?” Agitation creeps into her locked frame. “Why go through the effort to confiscate the hemlock? It’s a huge risk.”
I cock an eyebrow. “You’re overlooking a vital piece,” I say. “You’re failing to consider that he may no longer have need of his higher men because he’s found someone worthier. In that case, it’s likely they’ve become a burden. Serving up hemlock hotcakes would remedy that.”
She can’t completely accept the danger she’s in, because she can’t trust the source. This is why she has to come to these conclusions on her own.
Trusting that I’m telling her the truth is a double-edged sword—or a doubled-edged tire iron.
If she believes what I tell her is the truth, then she has to contend with a much darker, frightening reality, one where she’s capable of her very own monstrous acts.
That tendril of fear coils tighter, and she wraps an arm around her waist as she defiantly battles her doubts. Then, glancing at the sun-bleached skulls, she says, “Where are the antlers?”
“Maybe he’s fucking with us.”
She eyes me with a healthy measure of contempt. “There’s something else here,” she says, gloving her hand. “Start looking.”
“You mean, like this?” I can’t help the smug smile that curls my lips as I step aside to reveal the symbol.
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8
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PHILOSOPHER’S STONE
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KALLUM
Scored into the hard-packed clay of the ravine wall is the symbol for the philosopher’s stone.
The accusation in Halen’s slitted gaze is adorable. “You really enjoy doing that.”
