Clockwork Looking Glass (Heart of Bronze Book 1)

by Michael Rigg

  It was then my eyes opened wider to the smell of fresh coffee that found me through the pipe and cigar smoke in the cabin. Bryce had arranged a silver carafe of aromatic coffee and a matching silver tray of scones, toast and pats of butter and jelly, sugar, warm marmalade, syrup and tiny silver dollar pancakes.

  "Mm," I smiled. "Smells wonderful. What a treat."

  Bryce lifted the carafe. "May I pour for you, my lady?"

  "Please." I lifted the dainty cup and saucer and let Bryce pour my coffee. He then filled his own cup, and set it back on the tray after Lucien waved off an offer. The butler lifted the newspaper and continued reading.

  "You haven't finished that yet?" I chuckled as I used the tiny tongs to drop a cube of sugar in my coffee.

  "Interruptions abound, but not to worry. All the news is the same," Lucien said.

  "How are the Cubs doing?" I asked, and again, astonished myself with a fleeting memory. Where did that come from? Cubs? Baseball? Chicago? What if the Cubs—what if baseball—didn't exist here?

  Without missing a beat, as though the conversation were completely natural, Lucien said, "Looks like they're bound for the series again," the butler harrumphed. "It would be nice if the Rangers would get their chance."

  Bryce looked at me. "Alice. You are a fan of baseball? You're from Chicago? Metro City?"

  I nibbled a bit on a scone, my gaze a flat daydream. "I think maybe so." I looked at Bryce, recognition dawning. “I honestly don't know why else I would have asked about the Cubs.” I looked to Lucien and put down the dry cookie. "Wait... Again?"

  The butler smiled. "The Chicago Cubs have won four straight World Series in a row, my dear. This looks like a fifth coming up. ...Really quite boring."

  I turned and looked out the window. I muttered to myself. "Now that simply does not seem right.... That does not seem right at all."

  ~~~~~~~

  The whole time I put on a pleasant fresh face for Bryce and Lucien, I was glancing around for any sign of the mysterious woman with the dark eyes and silver hair I'd seen in the restroom. I don't know why it didn't connect with me immediately, but the strange woman I thought I saw had a chilling resemblance to the pale faced goons of my nightmare.

  Then a thought struck me. I reached out and touched Lucien's hand to pull him from the paper. “Lucien, what do ghouls look like? Do they look like us?”

  Bryce gave us each a sharp glance, but listened curiously to the man's answer.

  Lucien lowered the paper to appear over it at both of us. He shrugged his eyebrows. “Dastardly things. Gray mottled flesh with protruding bones, wild black hair like filthy oil, talons that will—”

  “Oh.”

  Both men glanced at me. Lucien held my gaze. “Why do you ask?”

  I quickly threw out, “Something in my nightmare, but it wasn't anything like that.”

  “Oh,” Lucien said as he lifted the paper again. “You would know full well if you encountered one of those beasts in a dream.”

  I gave up after awhile, figuring either I had been mistaken about what I saw—perhaps she too was some kind of dream—or chalked up my reaction to an overreaction and imagined if the woman was here that she was probably asleep in one of the covered bunks.

  After one cup of coffee and two scones, the SkyTrain buzzed and vibrated as it slowed into the Shreveport, Louisiana Tesla Bridge. I looked out the window and watched as the enormous fin lowered into its wing position. I felt us dip slightly as the SkyTrain glided downward. Once the fin cleared my field of vision I could make out a twisting river around the central part of the city. Sky carriages and an enormous airship buzzed across the horizon. The city wasn't as tall as New York or Philadelphia, but the tallest buildings still bristled with iron piers and moorings where winged balloons and other contraptions hung. A river twisted its way through the city.

  “River Rouge,” Bryce said, “Tributary to the mighty Mississip.” I nodded and watched as we drifted over it and rapidly slowed.

  From my vantage point it looked like we were descending too fast as we approached a broad flat building illuminated with bright landing lights. The sky was deep blue but growing brighter by the moment, the distant horizon clearly visible, and just a thin dome of hot orange appeared over the horizon. Suddenly, the SkyTrain slowed and dipped again. Several electronic snaps and pops vibrated overhead and small green sparks of St. Elmo's Fire danced out along the edge of the wing as the SkyTrain hovered into the platform. Before I knew it, we'd stopped.

  Down below a tall set of stairs that rolled up to connect with the forward hatch of the SkyTrain, I saw about a dozen travelers with bags or carts. Several people removed tickets and boarding passes from purses or pockets, some picked up suitcases. Most of them were dressed like cowboys, flannel shirts and leather vests, Stetson hats or bowlers. Some had brass goggles over the brims of their hats. One man carried what looked to be a mechanical umbrella that opened and closed, fanning him. Some women wore gingham or Victorian dresses, parasols collapsed and held down at their sides until the sun came up fully. Only a couple of men were dressed as gentlemen, wearing waistcoats and vests with top hats or stovepipes.

  The passengers of our SkyTrain were fairly quick to disembark and it wasn't long before Bryce took my hand and helped me out of the booth. Lucien trotted off ahead of us. There was no sign of the silver-haired lady. If she were on board, I imagined she'd be bound for Houston or Dallas. I wondered aloud, "I don't see any soldiers, Bryce."

  He smiled at me as he took my arm. "That's because you're in the deep South, my dear, as tucked into the comfort of the Confed'racy as you can possibly be."

  "Oh. That's good, I assume?"

  His response was a toothy smile. “You are ever the surprise and delight, dear Alice.”

  We made our way outside and the first thing that struck me was the humidity and stillness of the air. Many of the female passengers pulled out fans and breezed themselves, a few people grumbled. One man used a metallic inhaler before removing a rubber gas mask from a satchel, and pulling it snugly over his head.

  Lucien, ahead of us, stopped next to a woman in a beautiful wine-colored gown with gold trim and white lace at her neck and wrists. A tall, skinny pale man in a gray shirt and suspenders—who appeared to be her servant—stood nearby with his hands clasped behind his back. Her red hair was bright in the rising sun, tucked and pinned up from her alabaster face sprinkled with freckles. Her blue eyes were large and icy. She wore no makeup of any kind. Didn't look like she needed it. She was a vision.

  Bryce let go of my arm and stepped forward once we were on the platform. "Lydia!"

  Noticing him, the woman beamed, her white teeth shining. She lifted her gown and raced toward him while the skinny man and Lucien stood back and watched. "Bryce!"

  When Bryce told me about his family, he didn't mention a sister named Lydia.

  As I watched, they met and embraced.

  And kissed.

  It wasn't the kiss of a simple greeting and my heart immediately sank. It was the deep, passionate kiss of a soldier and his bride after a long absence during wartime.

  I don't know why I suddenly felt sick and wished I hadn't eaten that scone. Was I feeling something for Bryce Landry? Was it possible he existed somewhere in my hidden memory, or was I really that completely taken with his Southern charms that I was starting to build new memories that favored a hope he would always want to be with me? It wasn't obvious until the pangs I felt just now. All that washed away as holes punched through my chest and a lump formed in my throat.

  When they finally parted, Bryce turned toward me, his smile bright and as warm as ever. The woman took me in from canvas shoes to dirty ponytail. She said, in a very regal-sounding and pronounced Southern Belle accent, "Is this the poor urchin you told me about, Bryce?"

  "She's not an urchin, my dear, and really quite capable in many respects."

  "I'm sure," the woman said. She held out a white-gloved hand to me. "Lydia McFerran. Charmed"

&n
bsp; McFerran? I remembered then something Pandora had said about Bryce and Irish women. I took her hand and smiled with a slight nod. "Alice... for now." I fought the urge to crush her dainty fingers, and smiled to myself knowing I could if I wanted to.

  Bryce stepped up next to her and explained to Lydia McFerran, talking about me as if I were a display in a museum, or the zoo, "She lost her memory, dear, but seems to take a shine to Lewis Carroll's story about—"

  Lydia McFerran held up a hand and Bryce closed his mouth. "I am familiar with the tale, Captain, and the delightful irony of the name."

  She had an air like royalty, but maybe this was just the expected presence of a lady of the deep South. Whichever the case, I felt horribly underdressed. I was surprised that she didn't release my hand immediately, and didn't inspect her hand when she finally did. She simply smiled brightly and said, "I hope that when your memory returns you'll regale me with tales of your adventures leading up to your introduction to my fiance."

  "Fiance?" I blurted it. I didn't mean to and almost gasped.

  Bryce's smile was no longer bright. It sank to a flat grin. I couldn't tell if his expression was pity toward me, the 'poor urchin', or that he wasn't particularly thrilled about marrying her? He said, "Lady McFerran and I are to be wed at Christmas."

  I was afraid I'd choke if I spoke, but had to. I managed, "Congratulations to you both."

  Lydia turned to Bryce and said in her sweet drawl, "My carriage is waitin', Captain. I trust you will be ridin' with me in the coach."

  "Of course, my dear." My heart stung again when he kissed her hand. "Come along, Alice. I simply cannot wait to show you Seven Orchards."

  Feeling like Lucien's dogsbody, I trudged along behind them, between Lucien and the skinny man, suddenly wishing for a nightmare.

  CHAPTER 14, “The Daughter of Lazarus”

  William "Wilco" Rink was dead for a total of 42 minutes.

  When his eyes opened, the first thing he did was roll onto his side and throw up on the floor of the Drake Towers apartment he shared with his daughter. Coughing and sputtering until his head stopped spinning, he reached to the back of his scalp, ripped off his pilot's cap, and felt the numb part of his skull that, less than an hour ago, was pocked and collapsed by lead bullets.

  "Oh, God," he winced, not quite sure what had happened but feeling none the worse for wear.

  He remembered the paddy wagon stopping, complaining voices from outside, then gunshots. There was a loud 'clank' from just behind his ear...

  Then he woke up here.

  No. Wait. There was more. He had knowledge he didn't have before. He knew something about—

  Wincing again, fighting the nausea, and trying to grasp at the floating cloud of a dream somewhere in his healing mind, Wilco opened his eyes wider to take in the dim sunlit room, the bands on the wall formed by the light that broke through the horizontal blinds of the two room apartment. Air traffic hummed beyond the window behind him. The morning rush hour in Philadelphia buzzed along unabated by the evening's events. But where is—?

  He rolled over on the bed and sat up, and came face-to-face with a stranger.

  The woman sat cross-legged on the bureau at the foot of the bed. She had black hair pulled behind her head, deep-set dark almond eyes, and full round lips that considered him with a smirk. Brass and steel goggles, with multiple magnification lenses on adjustable arms, were parked on her forehead. Those were Pandora's "repair specs." The woman wore a red fireman's shirt and riding trousers with suspenders, and his boots.

  "Who... Who are you? Where's my d—?"

  "Right in front of ya," the woman said in a husky voice. Though the voice was considerably deeper and more smoky, the inflections and tiny changes in her face when she spoke were all too familiar.

  "Pandy?"

  "You know I hate that name." The woman sprang from the bureau and tackled the dwarf, wrapping her arms and legs around him in a full-body hug as she kissed his bristly cheeks and cried. "Oh, Daddy! You're back!"

  "Pandy!" he tried to push her off, but she was, well... So big! She wasn't the scrawny seventeen-year-old little girl he'd raised. She was grown. Then it hit him with a deep, cold sour note when he realized the price she paid to bring him back from the dead. "No... No, Dorothea, no. Tell me you didn't."

  She eased up and sat on his legs, thrusting out the noticeably larger bosom contained within the red shirt, and laughed. "Um, yeah. Obviously, I did." She looked down at him with a more serious smirk. "I was only seventeen when I threw the magics, daddy. It was a small price to pay."

  Wilco's chin moved. His eyes watered. "But... Oh, Dorothea, you— you gave up so much—"

  "For you." She smiled, not feeling a single ounce of regret. “And why not? If you were a witch you'd do the same for me, wouldn't ya?”

  He couldn't answer. Of course he'd sacrifice his own life to save his baby girl, but this—this was reversing what had been done. And it carried a huge price.

  There was practically no limit to the power a witch or ghoul could exercise if they put their minds and concentration to it. It was only good fortune that none tried to eradicate entire neighborhoods or create new demonized species of animals to walk the earth, to stalk the night at the top of the food chain.

  While there were some who tried, most notably a witch named Flower who was called upon by the Empire to choke the rivers flowing through the Confederate states, none succeeded. Flower came the closest, standing on the edge of the Mississippi river and touching her left index finger to her right thumb, the tell she used to cast.

  She never woke from her coma. Some say the Empire cut off her hands (just in case she woke up—they didn't want her casting again). Others say the Empire burned her—some say alive, others say she'd passed in the night—and moved on. River experts on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line were left scratching their heads over the anomaly discovered one year later. The water table had dropped by a foot.

  Giving and taking lives, at least one at a time, were part and parcel for the magic set. But each side carried a curse. For the damned, the male witches cast to the dark subterranean alleyways to live their lives as cannibalistic ghouls, every life taken with magic added a life to their own souls, damning them to an eternity of living in darkness and eating flesh. For a witch, like Pandora or Flower, giving a life back cost them ten of their own years. No ghoul ever thought to give back a life, and not many witches thought to take them, after the Magi Riots, but the general thought was that nothing would happen—or that they'd be similarly cursed.

  It was the realization of a decade lost that filled Wilco's eyes with tears as he looked upon his fully grown, albeit beautiful, daughter. "Dorothea, you're—"

  "Only twenty-seven, daddy. I knew the risk and I took it. Don't you think you're important enough to me that I would sacrifice ten lousy years to bring back my—?"

  "But you've missed out on so much!" As Pandora rolled off her father and the bed and stood up, now a full head or more taller than she was an hour ago, Wilco sat up and gaped at her. With a tone painted thick with disappointment, he frowned, "I can't believe you did that!"

  Tears filling her own eyes, she glared at him. "I did it to bring you back! I love you! I need you!" Unable to contain her sobs, Pandora ran from the room, still every bit the teenager she was mere moments ago.

  ~~~~~~~

  It was the smell that hit Perek Grubbs first. The dank, horrifyingly strong humid stench of sewage and human waste made his eyes water and his nostrils burn. He tried breathing through his mouth, but then he could taste it as well.

  Grubbs stood in a cubical room, chest deep in filth, and naked except for his bandages. The room was composed of black stone, windowless, the ceiling arched and trimmed with a meticulous hand-carved cornice of marble. Stone imps and angels frolicked between the stone teeth, carved to look as though they were crawling up to a skylight in the ceiling. The skylight, nothing more than a portal the size of a dinner plate with rusted iron spokes fashione
d like a spider web, faintly glowed gray and was the main source of light for the latrine in which Grubbs waded. He imagined he was still in Philadelphia, probably in one of the ornately-fashioned city sewers.

  He faced a barred door, set high in the stone above the level of the filth, with a raised walkway above it. He could only imagine there was a ladder or something submerged below the pool of sludge with which he would have to climb if he exited the room. Given the circumstances, he didn't think such a thing was going to be allowed any time soon. Grubbs heard distant moans, gibberish like prayer in some foreign tongue, and the skin-crawling sound of nails scraping on stone.

  A burning tickle in his nose made Grubbs lift his hand to scratch it, but the hand and forearm that came out of the filth only further stirred the sewage around him and made it more pungent. His hand and arm dripped with black slime. Grubbs tried wiggling his nose to stave off the tickle, but it was no use. His face was still bandaged, his nose still splinted.

  Then he heard the footsteps. Dipping his head slightly, craning to see through the bars to the raised walkway, he saw the orange reflection of a torch on the far walls as it illuminated the arched doorway of the "cell" across from him. Then the ghoul appeared.

  Since the door and walkway were above his position, Grubbs could only see the tall black boots and velvet trousers, a shining silver belt buckle and the silver buttons on a black vest that absorbed light, probably velvet.

  The ghoul crouched and peered in at Grubbs after setting the torch in a holder outside the cell. The orange light now flickering above the ghoul gave his black shiny hair a fiery halo and made the eye shine of his retina's flicker. His gray face, still shadowed, was pinched around a pointed hawk-like nose. If not for the fact he was a ghoul, Grubbs might mistake him for a rather slimy Prussian prince of some kind with flared nostrils and weak chin.