The ruby felt warm against my thigh. My palm was pressing on it like I was trying to force it into my own muscle and hide it within myself forever where it would never leave me and be safe. I would not part with it, and yet, if we wanted to stop whatever he was up to now, we had to go to him. I would not wait him out and let him complete whatever he was plotting now.
Beside me, Nate took my hand and smiled.
The carbide gas lights used to illuminate the night-darkened rail car corridors burned with a yellow light so bright it made my eyes water. I blinked hard but I could not make my eyes focus. The rocking of the train and the heat from the pot belly stove at the front of the carriage to warm the space made me feel dull and sleepy. The click-clack of the train on the rails made the world zip by but at least during the day there was something to look at. By night, all I had to look at was the reflection in the window beyond Nate and the occasional glimpses of the moon as it peeked out from the canopy of trees. The train was a haven of warmth and light and, yet, also a den of isolation from the world beyond the glass windows.
The lady across the aisle from me slept, her chin resting against her neck. Her husband read a newspaper. He squinted at the page and pulled it closer, then moved it further away. He would have to give up soon.
We retired to our section in the sleeping car and pulled the curtain that separated us from the rest of the passengers. Though airships moved faster than trains, the ship dancing upon the winds was smoother than the train, and the train was more mechanical, more rhythmic in its motion. I stared out the window, letting my eyes fall out of focus. I was not crippled by the terror of being far above the ground as I was in the airships, this was a calm stupor as I watched the land.
Blink. Click-clack.
I saw a man, or rather two men. They stood back to back, alternately smiling and sneering. Both men were beautiful, tall and lean, swarthy with dark brown hair that curled just around his ears. On anyone else it would look shaggy, but they looked rather daring, handsome on the image that smiled, menacing on one that sneered.
No, it was not two men, it was a mirror—distorted like the kings in a deck of cards, flipped and inverse to one another.
Kings. This was a King. He was dressed in green velvet. Not the cool green of an emerald, but the warm golden-green of peridot stretched tightly across his shoulders. A crown sat in his dark hair like flames of gold.
And, like flame, the King shifted, he smiled, he flirted, he glared, he sneered. Fire was mercurial in this way—beautiful and dangerous. In his hand he held a staff, knotted hardwood blackened with char and soot and dotted with small white flowers that curled around the staff with little green vines of regrowth. Fire manipulated, consumed, and made way for the new.
This was the King of Wands; pure fire-energy. Cross him at your peril, for he is a charismatic master, but he could burn you if you displeased him. And fire is a masterful patron when pleased.
The King of Wands turned to me, the left half of his face warm and welcoming. Offering me a smile that was suggestive, lewd, though not entirely unwelcome from such a pleasing face. I reminded myself I was a happily married woman. The other half was mocking, sharp, cruel; each half entirely at odds with the other.
He offered me the staff. I did not want to touch it. I could not resist. I reached out to touch it. Before I could, I was distracted, somewhere off in the distance I smelled smoke. Hot like a coke fire and sharp like over-heated metal.
Blink. Click-clack. Wheels on rails. Such a hypnotic sound.
The king was gone. I looked around. The train was gone. I could still hear it if I strained my ears, but it was far away. And I was not alone. The King of Wands is a man of vision. I stood behind another man, shadowed by a dark brown hat and coat. There was something about him, the odd, off center way he shifted his weight, I knew I had seen him before, but where?
The man stood within a circle, a wheel made of rocks, tiny ones and large ones alike, but all polished smooth by the water.
Long grasses had been gathered and twisted into a long braid, salt poured, a bundle of white, leafy herbs I had never smelled before but were pleasing and sweet sat burning on a wide flat rock. The smoke they gave off was thick but there was nothing noxious about it. Long brown leaves, dried and curled, sat bundled, waiting. Waiting for what?
The man had strips of white fur, cured and soft. He stroked the fur, burying his fingers in it before he set the twists of grass and brown leaves burning. The scent of charred grasses and leaves broke into fierce competition, creating a choking smoke that was both cleaner than the pea-soupers of London and fouler. The man chanted, the words themselves unfamiliar but there was something unmistakably familiar about them. The language was beautiful, foreign, and yet some words were halting and choppy, like Latin. This was a language the man did not speak. He had learned these phrases, but not the language that contained them.
I knew the voice. I know I knew that voice. The hair on my arms stood on end.
Before my eyes the smoke took on a form, hulking, human-like, tall, taller than me, taller than the man, even taller than Nate wearing his canithrope form. It had sharp eyes, round and reflective like the eyes of a fox catching torchlight. The eyes watched me in a hungry sort of way, as a hawk stares at a mouse. Something about the eyes showed no contempt, no respect, not even hate. Even when the King of Wands looked at me he saw my humanity, though he may have despised it. Whatever this thing was I was a toy, a plaything, I was prey and nothing more.
I wanted to jump into the stone circle but then I would have to touch the man. I could not make my feet move closer.
“Now, monster! Come!” the man commanded in English. He had a Cockney accent.
The smoke and gleaming predator eyes narrowed with mild irritation at the man who spoke, regarded me for a moment more, then turned toward the man and the wheel of stones and salt.
“Those damn savages are cheap drunks. Hope that won’t be a problem.” He pulled a leather wrapped bundle from a basket. It dripped something gooey and inky, foul and unsettling. I wanted to turn and run but found myself unable to. I was dimly aware of the train so far away, rocking me, lulling me, keeping me from waking.
Click-clack. Click-clack. Click-clack. Wheels on tracks. The sound was comforting. It was a prayer to cling to.
I sensed the King of Wands and the mercurial nature of fire, ever shifting, warming and warning, punishing and purifying. He was showing me something I needed to see. I felt the ruby thrumming in my pocket, a heart in panic beating a desperate tattoo and pulling me toward the ground, keeping me from running back to the train.
The man unwrapped the bundle. Something gleamed. Was it gleaming in fire or moonlight? Did it matter? It gleamed like silver, but it was not from within. It was the hand, the right hand, that gleamed, silver and red as though bloody. I blinked hard. My mouth formed the words, but nothing came out: “Please, no.”
I only knew one man with a silver arm. I needed to never see him again.
The bundle he held was meat, oozing, red, raw meat. Though I had no way of knowing how, I knew it was not cow nor venison nor pork nor anything else I would eat. My stomach lurched. I didn’t want to know what it was.
“In the end he was more whiskey than man,” the man laughed.
Human. The meat was human. I retched. The ruby in my pocket jerked me to my knees. Blood rushed in my ears.
The man’s accent was lower-class Cockney, a Londoner’s accent, there was no mistaking it now. “But he was a sinner. I made sure of that.” He poured a flask over the meat—the human flesh, I corrected myself. Blood, it was blood; viscous, pouring out of the flask in glugs. I tasted bitter bile burning in my throat.
The smoke and eyes drifted over the corpse flesh of that poor person, sinner or no, and the blood and meat melted away before my very eyes. The smoke became more and more dense, a black hulking mass of flesh, shaggy and fierce, crouched over where the blood and flesh had lain.
I wanted to run but I w
as frozen. My mouth was dry. I tried to swallow back the bile. My tongue was glued to the roof of my mouth. My limbs were cold. I would shake but it might draw the monster’s attention.
The hulking black mass raised a shining head white as old, bare bone. It raised the head, in profile a coyote head, a bare wolf head, lupine and fierce with jagged teeth, sharp and overlapping. Horns like a red deer sprouted from its bare skull. It sniffed the air with a nose-less muzzle, tasting it, searching for more meat.
The eyes, white orbs but reflective like fox eyes in lantern light, took in the firelight and it shone back, transforming them into reflective opals. They swept the land and passed harmlessly over me once, then swept back as though it caught my breath or my shadow.
I stopped breathing. Could it see me? Like The Hermit, I was here but not here.
I struggled to hear the noise of the train, but it was like a drum too far away to hear clearly.
Click-Clack. There, but only when I strained to hear it. I needed to hear wheels on the track. Click-Clack.
The man turned, straining to see what had caught the monster’s attention.
My lungs burned. I needed air. I didn’t remember how to breathe. It was Geiger. Scowling and snarling. He had cut his hair since I saw him last, cropped it short to his skull, and wore a thin mustache and a tight triangle of beard just below his lower lip. He wore a stiff bowler hat and a dark suit, finer clothes than the last time, but I would never forget the man who wore them. The gleam of silver had not been a trick of the light. His right hand, the entire arm, was gone, missing at the shoulder and replaced with an artificial limb made of silver. It was fiercely strong and as dexterous as a flesh limb.
He was a man of ambition and wicked purpose and under the employ of the railroad. But why he would align himself with a creature such as the one he had summoned was beyond me.
Geiger turned back to his protective circle of stones and smoke. I released the breath I was holding and gulped another breath of air. I felt lightheaded.
Geiger chuckled. “Well, aren’t you amazing? My research promised a powerful ally and here you are. I suppose that drunk wasn’t as crazy as they said. You sure are ugly. A true horror to look upon. You’re perfect.”
The monster stared, its fleshless head cocked and staring. Could a monster like that be intrigued by us? But if the monster was moved by this little speech it did not show it. It merely paced and stared, cocking its head, like some sort of awful mix between canine and bird. It bobbed like a vulture, sizing up where to strike, trying to make sense of this man who had summoned it.
That was why Geiger was in America. That is why he was working with the railroad. He could travel across this nation to find and summon another monster of unspeakable evil. His dark ambition was limitless. I could never allow him to get his hands on the ruby now.
“You are immortal, but you are not invincible.” Geiger said to it, “I shall grant you a form, one that is resistant to damage. There is magic in this world, ancient magic that a learned man can combine with the new magic of the age. Science can make a new body that cannot be so easily banished even when the evils of man are less.
“I warn you, creature. You will not betray me. If you lay hands upon me, I will destroy your form. I shall never be without my protective charms. But serve me and there will never be another that can offer you what I can.”
A body? He was offering this monster a body? One that was indestructible? A body that could not be reduced to smoke and mirror eyes? Would it feed upon sinners? Were we all sinners? If so, such a monster would threaten the entire world. If Geiger was right, and he was able to grant this monster a form that could be nearly indestructible, then I needed to stop him.
The realization was a light, a lantern to guide me. A lantern that suddenly moved with my thoughts, carried by a hermit in gray robes. The Hermit was moving ever onward, searching for enlightenment, searching for truth. I had a path. To stop the monster, I had to stop Geiger before he gave the monster a body. I just needed to figure out how.
Click-clack. Wheels on track.
I shook my head sharply.
The files I had stolen from Mr. Cassatt’s office’s office were in my satchel. I needed to see them again. Geiger may have promised a train to Mr. Cassatt, but he was working on much more. In London, he had built a machine designed to force transformation. He tried to use magic to transform men into something else. Now he was trying to transform something else into something living. I would not be surprised if that was what was ruining the steel.
The file was depressingly thin. I took a deep breath and opened it up. Notes, a drawing for what looked to be a boiler, a train engine dissected into several parts showing what pieces should move, all signed “N. Geiger”.
There were diagrams and measurements and figures. I glared at them, daring them to tell me something about the monster he had summoned and the man he had murdered and defiled. Nothing. Worse than nothing, it was a pedestrian promise a man would make in a bid for a job as an inventor employed by the railroad. I flipped through the thin sheaf of papers. Nate peered over my shoulder.
I felt the hot drums of panic beating within me, faster than the wheels against the track, as though it was working in double-time. Click-clack, click-clack, click-clack. It was not the train I was feeling, but the racing of my own heart pounding in my chest, the stone thrumming away in my pocket, and me toward the ground.
The train whistle screamed, and I almost echoed it. My head screamed. A flood of images bombarded me all at once, leaving my vision hazy as I tried to make sense of what I was seeing.
The monster, all ragged black fur and a lupine skull of white bone and antlers and soulless white orb eyes, bent over a man with beautiful mahogany skin who moved with the slow reactions of one who was either drugged or drunk. The man only seemed to realize he was in danger as a heavily shadowed figure slashed at him. The mahogany-skinned man was suddenly on fire. The monster was upon him, teeth tearing, flesh rending, his whip thin screams cutting the night.
I closed my eyes. What had I missed? The ruby was warm. Xihuan-Lung, the ancient, long-dead dragon, raised herself from the forest floor where her bones lay. The flesh grew back, covering her bones once again. Tendons and sinew bounded from bone to bone, leaping like trout spawning from point to point, intent on their placement and nothing else. The muscle spread like a red fungus, covering the pale stone bones, a thin layer at first, then spreading in patterns one could predict from a simple knowledge of anatomy. She grew powerful legs, a deep chest, and a well-muscled back; a sleek graceful hunter, both leonine and serpentine in form and function with a long, thin body and four clawed paws. She had four eyes and two sets of horns, one angled forward, like great spears jutting off her forehead, the other curling back like rams horns for slamming and butting into her foes. Her scales were a layer of dark purple-blue that shimmered and rattled like a nest of vipers and, though they were patchy and several of them were missing, it never hinted at a weakness. It was merely a flaw that left her looking deadly and damaged rather than regal. There was nothing noble about this dragon: deranged energy came off her in waves. She opened her mouth and roared a challenge, just like she had when she murdered Nate with fire. My chest burned. My heart ached.
The Hermit walked through our section. He pushed through me as though I was not there. He was always moving, driven onward by whatever he pursued. Knowledge. He sought solitude and, in removing himself from all worldly pursuits, he dedicated himself to introspection and seeking answers from within. The answer was always within.
As the world exploded in a cacophony of noise, The Hermit turned to me, as though he saw me for the first time, and blew out the lantern. Its light guttered and failed, leaving me in silence and darkness.
“Viv!” Nate was shaking me.
Maybe the answer wasn’t within. But if the monster was waiting for us at the end of the line, and Geiger waited holding its leash…The thought was a horrific one.
“Nat
e.” I wrapped my arms around my husband and held him tight. “I-I—” I couldn’t speak.
“What is wrong with you?” My husband said, not unkindly.
How could I tell him what I had seen? Soon, I would have to tell him what I had in my pocket. But I had to tell him of the other monster, the one Geiger had raised from smoke and blood, the one he had promised a body to walk within the world of men so it could hunt and feed. First, Geiger wanted the magic of the earth. Then, he wanted to enslave a dragon. Now, he wanted a terrifying monster he could control. We had to stop him and, this time, for good.
A heavy fatigue settled over me. Nate tucked me into the narrow bed beside him, then he sat up, looking over the pilfered file with the carbide gas light burning, carefully turning the pages, staring at them for a long while. It was a dreadful peace to know the ruby was tucked away in the pockets of my skirt. It wasn’t on my body and not at hand, but I just needed a moment to rest and lay this burden down. For the moment, laying my head in my husband’s lap was wonderful and peaceful.
Thoughts raced through me, like the train. What did Geiger plan to do with that monster? Every thought I came up with was worse than the last. A man in control of a monster like that could murder countless people. Geiger was heartless and amoral, and it was impossible to guess his motives. Whatever they were, they would not be good.
The file lay on our bed, fanned out as Nate read, while he stroked my hair, trying to understand what he was looking at, hoping to discover something we could use to either save our failing investments or figure out how Geiger fit in.
Geiger’s blueprint for an engine had a double boiler. Well, two chambers heavily riveted together with a window, one for fuel to feed a fire and a bellows, or was that steam? It was hard to tell from this angle. In fact, it almost looked familiar. I had seen something like this before.
The Rail Specter Page 5