by C. S. Poe
I was saying, “You’re going to direct me to this warehouse of—what on Earth?”
Parked in front of the FBMS was a pristine white touring automobile. The front body was an open-style with no hood, so as to flaunt the expensive brass and chrome steam engine and radiator. The exhaust pipes on either side spit hot steam into the night air, and pressure gauges whistled in time with the wind. The front grille had been completely dismantled and replaced with a unique Gatling gun that was fired from a crank on the driver’s dash once the roadster hit a certain speed.
I knew this because the Bureau had confiscated the custom automobile several months ago, citing half a dozen illegal uses of steam power. The inclusion of a nonmagic weapon had caused the metropolitan police and FBMS to fight over who had the jurisdiction to see the case to its conclusion, and so the evidence had been parked on the west side of the field office under lock and key since, hell, September, I believed.
Gunner stepped around the front of the auto and said, while putting his goggles on, “You didn’t expect to walk to Mulberry Bend, did you?”
“How did you get this from evidence?” Then I held up my free hand and shook my head. “No, never mind. I don’t want to know.”
“You,” Higgins said suddenly, jutting his chin toward Gunner. “The Waterbury—that atrocious wardrobe—you’re Gunner the Deadly, aren’t you?”
The corner of Gunner’s mouth tugged upward, and I felt I knew his smiles well enough by now to know that particular look wasn’t amusement so much as a warning of danger.
I jerked Higgins’s handcuffs. “Don’t give him an excuse to shoot you again.”
“The Bureau is doing business with an outlaw,” Higgins continued, now struggling in my hold. “I’m reporting this. You hear me?”
“I’ll be happy to look into it for you.”
“Not you!” Higgins exclaimed. “You’re crooked. A double-dealing, two-timing—”
Gunner unholstered his Waterbury and took aim at Higgins’s face. “Stop.”
Higgins immediately fell silent, his mouth still hanging open.
“Where’s your warehouse?” I asked after a breath passed between the three of us.
Higgins sniffed a few times. “Bayard and Mulberry.”
“Nice neighborhood,” Gunner remarked dryly as he put his Waterbury away.
“That’s where Tick Tock is,” I said.
Higgins startled and tried to turn and look at me. “What?”
“Are you certain?” Gunner asked.
“Mr. Higgins’s best customer of his famous Warner’s Elixir is none other than Bligh’s mother-in-law, Martha Olin,” I explained. “Knowing she had access to some quality magic, Bligh could have easily been put into contact with Higgins. All of the social connections immediately fall into place.”
“I’ve never spoken to Mr. Bligh,” Higgins interrupted.
“No,” Gunner said to Higgins, turning his head slightly to study the other man. “But you spoke to Tick Tock—who you’ve never met in person, I’m sure.”
Higgins didn’t have a retaliation to that comment.
“Bligh—Tick Tock—knew you had an illegal caster out West for the aether syrup, so he simply utilized your already-established contact, right?” I asked Higgins.
“Yes, but Tick Tock needed an architect too, to build the manufactured spells. Luther, my caster, found the architect in California.”
“Luther,” I repeated. “Luther Jones?”
Higgins nodded.
“The Bureau’s been wanting him for years—thank you for the intel.”
“Who was the architect?” Gunner asked Higgins.
“I don’t know, honest. Luther only corresponded with me twice—once that he’d find someone so we could take on Tick Tock’s business, then again to confirm he’d found an architect he could work with.”
“Was the architect’s name Weaver?” Gunner pressed.
I shot him a look, but all of Gunner’s attention was on Higgins.
“Yes,” Higgins murmured. “I don’t believe it’s his real name, but you would know— criminals and their aliases.”
“You’re a damn criminal too, Carl Higgins,” I said firmly, giving his handcuffs another shake.
“How long ago was this?” Gunner continued.
“Gunner—” I started, but he held a hand up and cut my protest short.
Higgins awkwardly looked over his shoulder at me, then back to Gunner. “I don’t—that is—just last February? Yes, that sounds right. Tick Tock reached out to me, I inquired with Luther, and he’d found Weaver within the month. There were some prototypes that didn’t make the cut a few months ago….”
“Milo Ferguson,” Gunner replied. “You gave them to Tinkerer to test.”
An automobile rounded the corner of Twenty-Third Street, the hiss of its steam and bump of wheels on cobblestone barely audible over the storm.
“I didn’t!” Higgins cried. “It wasn’t my idea at all. And Tick Tock was—I thought he was going to kill me. He was livid that some of the ammunition had been leaked because fools at the FBMS found out about it.”
I shook Higgins for a third time.
“Ow! My shoulder, little you bastard.”
The other auto, a black touring with brass fixtures so buffed and polished that the housing of the headlights and exhaust pipes built around the shape of the engine hood practically glowed in the dark, slowed its approach, nearly coming to a dead stop as it became parallel with the white touring. Although distracted by the curious onlookers, I drew my attention back to the conversation as Gunner was saying:
“Weaver provided the prototypes to Tinkerer, didn’t he?”
Higgins said in a harassed tone, “Well, it must have been him. It sure as hell wasn’t Luther or myself—”
The activation of fire magic gave a sudden jolt to the atmosphere. It crept up my spine, the spell close enough that I could feel the searing heat on my skin and half expected blisters to begin forming. Then the toxic sensation of manufactured magic hit me, and the current of raw energy around us buckled and tore. I turned to the black touring a second time and watched as Gatling Man, sitting in the passenger seat, maneuvered his weapon out the open window, pointed at us with a silver finger, and opened fire.
XVIII
January 1, 1882
“Gunner!”
I didn’t even think. I acted on instinct—save Gunner at all costs. I shoved Higgins aside and made a grand, sweeping gesture over Gunner, whose back was to the street. A tidal wave of glittering blue water came up from the frozen ground and created an arc over his body just as the gunfire began. I held my other hand in front of myself as the automobile revved its steam engine and started driving, Gatling Man still shooting even as I brought another shield of water up over myself. The crash and roar of fire bullets hitting magic their elemental opposite was so loud, one could believe an airship had exploded somewhere nearby.
It wasn’t until the automobile had reached the end of the block and I had extinguished my own spell that I was able to pick up the bloodcurdling screams among the high-pitched ringing in my ears. I immediately turned to Gunner, but he was okay—more than okay as he raced into the middle of the street, raised his Waterbury, and took shots at the black touring making a successful getaway. When I looked to Higgins, however—
I swore loudly and cast another spell to put out the flames, but by the time they’d dissipated, his anguished cries had ceased and Carl Higgins was dead and burned beyond recognition on the steps of the Magic and Steam field office.
Gunner was shouting from behind me, footsteps pounding the road as he returned to the stolen automobile. “Get in the auto.”
“But—”
A door banged shut, the engine bellowed, and Gunner snapped, “Get in.”
I stood from my crouch at Higgins’s side, turned, and jumped into the passenger seat of the white touring a split second before Gunner spun the wheel and slammed down on the accelerator. “Turn right,” I
ordered.
Gunner made a hard turn and apologized as we momentarily rode the sidewalk. “Never was a fan of these automobiles.”
I pulled my goggles on as the black touring came into view. “No matter what you handle, you look good doing it.”
“Now I know you’re flirting with me.”
“I wasn’t certain how to make it more obvious.”
“Mind that silver tongue,” Gunner replied as he unholstered his Waterbury and shifted it to his left hand.
“Save your bullets,” I advised. I scooted in my seat so my back was to the door, reached out to grab onto the rooftop, then said, “Keep me in the auto and I’ll show you something I’ve recently learned tongues can do.”
“You’re tearing me asunder, Hamilton.”
Despite everything, I laughed while hoisting myself up and out to rest my backside on the edge of the automobile’s door. Gatling Man was miming my actions, though not quite so gracefully as he struggled to hoist his shoulder weapon out the door and take aim. I raised a hand to the night sky and the raging storm that’d been dogging me, tore a billion volts of lightning from the clouds, and hurled the spell at the gangsters. The lightning met a dozen fire bullets in an explosion of heat and static, and the two competing magics screeched so loudly that the windshield of our auto cracked.
“Keep driving,” I called to Gunner when he swerved to avoid a rogue blast of flames.
I raised my hand to the sky again, ignoring the spasm of pain in my nerves as I created a massive, shimmering sphere of water. Its bright, bright blue was like something from a tropical paradise, beautiful, second only to Gunner’s eyes. It shifted in and out of itself, like the tides, elegant and smooth around the edges, complementing the wildness of my previous spell. The driver of the black touring made a quick turn onto Broadway at the split in Union Square, but Gunner kept right on them. We passed theatre marquees lit up by my magic as if the water sphere were a steam-powered spotlight, and that’s when Gatling Man fired again.
I released the magic and the sphere lunged forward, devouring the bullets midair. But Gatling Man kept shooting, and the burrowing sensation of the manufactured magic was enough to make me feel as if I were losing my mind. At the same time, as I pulled more raw energy from the atmosphere around me to strengthen my spell, I could touch that barrier the refuse of manufactured magic was creating. With every cast of those bullets, the disjoint in the raw currents became a bit more pronounced and that barricade more and more tangible.
My water magic overcame Gatling Man’s gunfire and dumped over the automobile like a flash flood. The wheels skidded and the driver nearly overcorrected as they shot past Tenth Street, Ninth, Eighth…. I cast lightning again. The volts shot through the night air, ozone burned, and the magic hit the black touring. Electricity mixed with water and tore steel and brass, obliterated expensive steam mechanics, and decimated the two souls inside. Gunner swerved hard to drive around the explosion, and I nearly overturned right out of the auto.
“I said keep me inside,” I protested, shimmying into my seat.
“And you need to warn me before you enact that clever trick of yours during a high-speed pursuit,” Gunner shot back with just a touch of exasperation in his tone.
I stuck my head back out and looked behind at the wreckage and engulfing inferno growing smaller in our wake. Another half a dozen blocks and a left toward Bowery was when I picked up the distant shrill of a patrolman’s whistle and the mechanical wail of a crank alarm. A police-designated prisoner transport automobile came squealing around the corner of Broome as we passed, giving us chase down Bowery. I sat down and yanked my goggles down around my neck.
“Police?” Gunner clarified.
“Never on time and always flirting with the married sister at the party.”
Gunner laughed, slow and melodic and thoroughly amused. “Then what do you say we lose them, my dear?”
“You’re a bad influence on lawmen, Constantine Gunner.”
Gunner was still smiling as he hooked a right turn onto Hester Street, soared down Baxter, and once we’d passed the fork of Canal and Walker, we’d lost the much-slower transport automobile. Gunner parked on the side of the road and climbed out of the extravagant touring, already catching the eyes of several passersby.
A gangly teen in too-short-for-him trousers, with a long nose and cocky smile, came out from under a shop awning, took a few strides in Gunner’s direction, and called out, “Oy, sir, want me to watch this machine for ya?”
“He’s looking to steal it,” I stated nonchalantly as I rounded the rear end of the auto to join Gunner’s side.
But Gunner didn’t hesitate and tossed the lad a set of steel skeleton keys. “Sure.”
The teen caught the ring and flashed a huge, albeit quite skeptical, smile. “Really?”
Gunner unholstered his Waterbury and gave the lad a wink.
“Wait a second… ain’t you—?”
“Take good care of it,” Gunner spoke over him before he strode for the corner of Baxter and Bayard.
I followed at his side, muttering, “You really do revel in the attention, don’t you?”
“I don’t mind it.”
The storm still blanketed the city as we reached Mulberry Bend. Thunder reverberated loose windowpanes and lightning illuminated the seedy streets that should have been bustling, even at night—especially at night—but my magic had sent the masses inside. Undoubtedly, I will have caused a cascade of new wives’ tales, but when I was this angry, the world around me warped and bent and it was just easier to let nature react than to try to contain it inside me.
On the corner of Bayard and Mulberry, between a four-story tenement and a dry foods shop of questionable quality, stood a one-story factory, the overhead sign lit by a single steam lamp reading: Warner’s Quality Medicinal Remedies. And underneath that: Factory workers’ entrance on Bandit Alley.
“How apropos,” Gunner said, his breath like little plumes of smoke as he spoke.
I snapped my fingers and the lamp’s globe shattered, shrouding us in dark. “Bligh knows I’m looking for him.”
“Certainly explains our Gatling friend’s sudden appearance.” Gunner pointed his three-barreled pistol at the hefty chain keeping the front door locked and shot it off.
I grabbed the handle, paused, and then said, “If we survive this, I’d like to discuss… ah… I mean, my birthday is next month.”
“Is it?”
“February sixth.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Perhaps we could meet.”
Gunner glanced down at me. “It’s a date.”
I smiled and eased the door open. We both slipped into the facility, unlit save for a bare bulb every dozen or so feet—emergency lighting, not that this was the sort of factory that needed or would even invest in such precautions. There were at least six long tables situated in the main room, down the length of the building, likely where the workers sat all day, filling bottles, applying labels, and packing boxes. After our eyes adjusted to the dimness and not so much as a rat scurried by, we silently crept toward a small-looking room off to the right.
The door had been left ajar. Gunner nudged it with the barrels of the Waterbury, letting it fall open onto a cramped office that Higgins had probably used when he was down at this end of the city. Gunner strode inside, moved around the desk, checked underneath, then went to a closet, although there didn’t appear to be anything inside but for a few aprons and drab coats.
I tried the desk drawers—typical stationery and bookkeeping, but I’d need a forensic accountant to really comb the details of those ledgers—then I found a handful of unmarked bottles in the bottom compartment. I selected one at random, shook the clear contents, wriggled the cork free, then winced and looked away as a blinding white light poured out of the head like a dense sea fog.
“The hell is that?” Gunner whispered.
I hastily plugged the bottle again and waved a hand to dissipate the magic vapors
. “Aether,” I said, my voice low. “Higgins probably took a case at a time from the line, mixed the aether into the syrup himself, then brought it to Grace Gallery to sell under the table.” I put the bottle back and shut the drawer. “No indication the front deliveries from Pinkerton’s ever came through here.”
Gunner shook his head. “I suspect those all went to the warehouse on Hester. Never smart to keep all of your eggs in one basket.” He returned to the door and stared out across the work floor. “There’s another room on the opposite end.”
We stood in the threshold and listened to the building settle, but beyond the natural sounds of weight-bearing pillars sighing and the wind kicking up outside, we were alone. So where was Bligh? Gunner strode across the work floor, sure steps leading the way around supply and tool chests and work benches, until we reached a room that I suspected mirrored Higgins’s office, although this door was firmly closed.
As Gunner touched the knob, I wasn’t certain which sensation hit me first in that singular second: the nightcrawler magic from the dead and dying mechanical men, squirming under my skin, its intention and origins completely and wholly foreign to me, or one picked up by my physical senses—a stench. One I knew well. One I had never been able to forget.
Gunner shifted his weight and looked at me. He smelled it too.
I cast a ball of lightning in my hand and gave him an affirmative nod.
So he cocked his Waterbury, and the manufactured aether activated as Gunner opened the door.
The stink of death and decay was immediate. Gunner brought his forearm up to his nose as he took a step inside the room, but I couldn’t move, couldn’t follow, couldn’t be his backup. The putrid smell of rotting flesh and bone dropped me into the immediate chaos of a field hospital. Men were crying and screaming and vomiting and dying. Doctors used primitive surgical tools on soldiers, hacked off body parts, and nurses discarded the remains into piles stacked as tall as me. Muskets cracked the air, cannon fire shook the ground. A uniformed officer dragged me from the tent and onto the battlefield. I had only wanted to wash my hands. They were caked in dirt and filth and someone else’s blood and… I had only wanted to wash them.