The morgueatory was the room where the dead bodies were preserved. Dead bodies that held unsolved cases that had left the people in mystery. Penelope had visited the place before the first time she had come here to the council but since the time she had spent in Valeria, she had been meaning to come back here.
Murkh stared at Damien for what he had just requested. He didn’t mind showing visitors around the morgueatory until and unless they didn’t touch or sabotage anything. At the same time, the vampire was picky about whom to allow in there. Not everyone had the luck to take a peek and at the same time, not everyone was interested to look at the collection of dead bodies. People believed that what was dead remained dead and what use was a dead body? But Murkh didn’t see it the same way. More number of corpses meant more discovery and more tests to know the kind of things he was surrounded with.
“Why does the lady need to take a look?” Murkh asked, his sense of being an experimentalist looking at the girl curiously if she was special. He looked into her green eyes that looked back at him right now.
Damien turned to say, “He asks why do you want to see them.”
Penny’s eyes darted from Damien back to Murkh, “I have been reading some of the books in the church and there was a case which Damien brought up. He spoke about a body that had markings on the skin. Markings on the inside of the body,” she said being truthful about what she wanted.
For a good few seconds, Murkh didn’t reply to her and only stared, which made her wonder if he was not going to let her in. Of course, Damien could take her there at any point in time when the doctor wasn’t available but it would be good to get some pointers on what the man found out.
“Being curious is always good. Give me a moment to lock the cabins. There has been a thief that has been stealing my potions. I have been monitoring the room and have barely left it but there’s always something lesser than what is there here,” said Murkh, walking around to the cabin and pulling out its door where Penny caught sight of the number of potions that was in there. They were the similar kind of potions that were there in the secret room of the church as well as in Delcrov’s mansion, but mostly similar to what was there in Valeria.
Unable to hold herself, she asked him, “Where did you get those potions from?”
“A fellow councilman gave it to me as a gift hoping it would help me out,” answered Murkh. While the man was locking the cabinets, Penny turned to look at Damien and mouthed the name ‘Creed’ to have him a nod.
The councilman who had died had not only stolen books from Lady Isabell but had gone as far as to steal her potions. It made her wonder how he did it. To step in and out of the highly secure place where a person would be caught easily at least by the butler, she wondered if there was a story to dig in there.
“He just handed it to me and I had to figure it out on what it was. Told that he found it in the black witch’s lair,” Murkh said, he turned to start to lead the way which was on the lower floor to where they stood right now.
The sun had risen up in the sky and for once, the clouds didn’t hover too much in front of the sun letting its light and heat spread through the atmosphere. And even if there was light outside, the building they were walking in, going down was cold and dark.
Penny didn’t miss the stench of the blood which was rotten and old. It made her frown as they made their way past the cell rooms to stand in front of an iron door. Murkh pulled out the bunch of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door, pushing it so that the two people behind him could step inside.
She looked at the transparent, glass cylinders that were placed upright, each of the cylinders holding one dead body that floated in the liquid that was filled inside it.
Murkh went to the body she had been familiar with the last time she had been here. The little spark of oddity she had felt when she had touched the surface of the glass when she had tried to get a better look at the person.
The man was lean and boney who was in the cylinder. When Murkh pushed a button below the cylinder, the cylinder began to move so that it was positioned to sleep horizontally. The liquid that was in there started to drain out and the front top of the glass opened to let a person be able to touch the dead body.
“How would you like it? Opened on the plate or in here?”
Damien was the one to answer, “Opened on the place. We would like to see his skin.”
“Very well,” Murkh brought the cadaver bed, putting the dead man on it and taking him to another room. Both Damien and Penny followed him, and she stood next to Damien keeping a straight face when the vampire doctor made a cut on the man’s frontal section with a small knife and then used his hands to pull out the skin that covered the bones with little to no meat.
Penny’s eyes stared at the skin which was pulled out where one could see the other side of the skin which had markings. It was written in a similar style as written in the church that Lady Isabell used to work.
“This is the incantation spell,” she whispered, her eyes taking in the spells which she was already familiar with. No doubt, her body would be similar to this person, “Is there a way to find out who he is?”
“The case was closed before it even started. There is nothing mentioned about this person, if it were, the body would not be here right now in Murkh’s collection,” Damien informed her.
Penny’s hand slowly moved to the man’s head and when it made contact she felt the darkness jolt her again that had her quickly retrieve her hand back, “It isn’t safe to keep the body here. It needs to be burnt,” there was no telling if one of the black witches would find out that there were spells available on this dead man which until a few days had been residing only in the cookbooks and this man who Murkh had stored in his morgueatory.
But the vampire doctor wasn’t pleased to hear it. This was the only body that had markings like this, “The body is going to stay here and is going nowhere.”