Deathstalker 07 - Deathstalker Return

place.Douglas leaned forward, offering his hand. Treasure accepted it, and rose to her feet with dignity. She brushed herself down here and there, adjusted her decol-letage, and ran her hands through her long white hair. Her breathing was perfectly calm now, as was his.
    "It's Jesamine, isn't it?" she said. "After all she's done to you, it's still Jesamine."
    "Yes," saidDouglas . "I'm afraid it is."
    "What could she offer you that I can't?"
    "If you have to ask, my dear, you'll never know."
    Two bright spots burned angrily on Treasure's cheeks. "I will be your wife, and your Queen, Douglas."
    "Yes, I'm afraid you probably will be. I hope you get more out of it than I ever have through being King."
    "Someday," said Frankie, "you will kneel to me, Douglas."
    "I suppose Hell has to freeze over sometime. Thanks for dinner. We must do this again, sometime."
    Treasure Mackenzie swept out ofDouglas 's quarters, trailing her tattered dignity behind her.Douglas went back to the dinner table, and wondered if he could find the room for just a little more. It really was excellent food, and it would be a shame to let it go to waste.
    Finn Durandal was having an equally unsatisfying meeting with the clone representative, Elijah du Katt, in the secret laboratory Finn funded deep in the rotten heart of the Rookery. It was the only place such a lab could be kept entirely secret and properly guarded. And given what du Katt was doing, on Finn's instructions… The half dozen long rooms, set some distance under a main street, were crammed full of the very latest tech, some of it legal only because no one had found out about it yet.
    Du Katt was all over the place. He'd cloned himself—quite illegally, and now there were nine of him—on the unanswerable grounds that he was the only person he could trust to work with on such a clandestine and dangerous project as this. Finn was also pretty sure there was a touch of narcissism involved in the decision, but he said nothing. He liked to know other people's vices and weaknesses. It made them so much easier to control. The clones darted back and forth around the lab, somehow never quite getting in each other's way, and occasionally moving in eerie symmetry. The original du Katt identified himself with a sloppy hat of no discernable style or purpose. He hovered uncertainly beside Finn as he strolled through the laboratory. Finn wasn't smiling. Du Katt was sweating.
    "Well," murmured Finn, letting one hand trail dangerously close to some delicate-looking apparatus just to watch du Katt flinch, "how goes our little project? You've been very quiet just lately. I'd hate to think you've been keeping secrets from me."
    "There's been nothing to tell," du Katt said quickly. He looked to his clones for support, but they were all busy being busy and keeping their heads down. Du Katt glared at them venomously, and then tried an ingratiating smile on Finn. It wasn't successful. Du Katt dropped the grin and settled for being businesslike. "It's all been in my reports, Sir Champion. Using your authority, my people sealed off the Victory Gardens behind the House of Parliament—there's never any shortage of terrorist scares to take advantage of—and then we dug up the graves of Jack Random and Ruby Journey. The preserved corpses were still in surprisingly good shape, and we were able to obtain good cell samples from both bodies. We then destroyed the remains using transmutation bombs, following your instructions, to ensure that nobody else would be able to make use of the bodies, and then we filled in the graves again. No one saw anything, no one suspects anything. The men you supplied me with to do the actual hard labor—they have been… taken care of, I trust? Good. Good… If word were to get out that we were trying to clone two respected heroes of the Great Rebellion, I'm pretty sure we'd all be dragged through the streets and burned at the stake. This goes well beyond disrespect, and into desecration and blasphemy."
    "You let me worry about things like that," said Finn. "You still haven't answered my question. How goes the work?"
    Du Katt turned away to fiddle with some equipment so he wouldn't have to meet Finn's cold gaze. "You do ask a lot, Sir Durandal. First, you wanted me to produce clones of Random and Journey, that you could brainwash and control. Failing that, you wanted me to discover the source of their powers, so that they could be bestowed on… persons of your choosing. Well, I and my