Franks had been spending time in Washington, DC, since they’d drained the marsh to build the place. He would have preferred the swamp. However, because of his history with the city Franks knew the well and he especially knew its secrets. For two days after the attack, he had hidden in a chamber beneath the Rammage building. It was a historical landmark now, but Franks had been there when engineers had dug the secret bunker beneath it to stockpile gunpowder in case the Confederates had laid siege to the city. It had been forgotten after that war. Now it was a moist hole in the earth and his only company was the rats and spiders.

That suited him just fine.

Franks spent the time plotting and digging bullet fragments out of his body. There had been a field surgery kit inside the cache he’d left with the gnomes, so he had forceps and scalpels, but the angle made it extremely awkward to get everything out. Once the wound was clean, he had taken another hit of the Elixir of Life and it had burned his flesh pure. In the privacy of the hidden passage, Franks was free to scream as it ate through him, but he still didn’t, just on principle.

The Elixir was really Dippel’s greatest work. Franks’ existence was at best second place. The Elixir could heal any wound. It could seamlessly meld transplanted organs, even limbs, to a new host. It was really too bad that the mixture instantly killed most mortals who tried to use it. Even if they were anesthetized or in a coma, it still caused an agony so excruciating that it would snuff their lives out. The spirit’s hold on the flesh was tenuous at best. Something about Franks’ physical makeup enabled him to use the Elixir and live. Government scientists had never been able to figure it out. Perhaps he was too stubborn to let go, because he really knew what it was like to not have a body, and he would not go back to Hell willingly.

MCB R&D had recreated Dippel’s Elixir of Life in order to keep Franks supplied and combat effective. He’d given the recipe to them only after warning them of its effects, but of course they hadn’t listened. Many test subjects had died before they’d finally given up. To the R&D geeks, it was a chemical curiosity, a mystery. To Franks, it was the key to his continued existence. The best chemists in the world could not figure out why it worked the way it did, as its odd ingredients should not have such a miraculous effect, but none of them were as brilliant as Father had been.