Of Steel and Steam

by Pauline Creeden et al.

  But we came carrying powerful weapons and equally powerful magic.

  The last time Trip and I had killed a demon, we had trapped it in a circle like this, held it steady there while we shot it full of silver bullets. I was hoping for a similar outcome here.

  But first, we had to summon it and bind it in our circle. As we had planned, Hattie and Annabelle and I began working to send our magic flowing through our hands. We sent the power coursing through us, clockwise around our circle, or deasil, as my grandmother had called it as she taught me the old ways of magic use.

  I felt the power as it poured through us, moving faster and faster with each revolution around our circle. Next to me, Trip stiffened as the power hit him, gathering up what natural talents he had in that direction and flinging it into me.

  As it went through us, the magic left behind an almost electrical charge. All the hairs on my arms stood up straight, and what little loose fabric I wore floated upward. A silent wind whipped around the cavern, and in the distance, I heard the deep moan of the demon resisting being called.

  Hattie began to chant to force him into our circle. We used different magical languages, but it didn’t matter. It was important to share meaning, not language. And in this, our wills were united. I added my incantation to hers. In a few moments, I heard Annabelle began to speak as well, I thought in English, but I wasn’t certain—I was too deep into my spell to hear anything more than the cacophony of voices that blended into harmony as our magic combined.

  Inside the containment circle, a shape began to form. It pulled against us, even as the men added their voices to the holding spell.

  Whatever this demon was, it was stronger than I had anticipated. I couldn’t reconcile the evidence we had with the feeling of its power against me—and I didn’t have time to think about it right now. After it had been vanquished, I would consider what I might be learning now.

  Inside the circle, it coalesced from mist into a shape that seeped out of the rock itself, flowing up out of the ground, its shape vaguely human but covered with scales, its face contorted with anger.

  And I recognized it.

  “Damnation,” Trip breathed out. Apparently, he recognized it, too.

  This demon was the same one he and I had killed—thought we had killed—in Rittersburg.

  But surely not. Perhaps these demons had similar forms? I glanced at Trip, my voice faltering as he raised one shoulder and a shrug, his eyes crinkled in concern.

  And then the demon laughed. Not the same kind of laugh it had used earlier as part of its whisperings. This one was a deep, full belly laugh—a villainous laugh.

  “I see you got my message.” Its voice was rough, deep, and triumphant.

  Our chanting stuttered to a stop, but it was okay. Our circle was set. The demon was trapped.

  “Message?” Annabelle asked.

  Trip shook his head. “Don’t respond to it,” he reminded everyone.

  “But we have so much to say to one another,” the demon said. “We didn’t have a chance to speak last time we met.”

  Dread speared me through the stomach. It was the same demon.

  “Then again, perhaps I should simply kill you all,” it hissed.

  Forcing myself to avoid even looking at it, I pulled my pistol, loaded with silver bullets, from my holster.

  “Everyone move to this side,” Cole ordered, taking over the operation, just as we had agreed.

  “So you come to do battle on your holy day?” Its voice took on the cadence of many voices, its tone one of pure malignance.

  We continued to ignore it.

  All six of us gathered together on one side of the demon, on the side of the circle closest to the exit. As we prepared to fire, though, the ground inside the circle cracked. The pentagram we’d so carefully drawn broke down the middle, the edges of the circle falling apart from one another as a chasm grew in the trail. And the demon let out a horrific laugh.

  We all opened fire at once. As a silver bullets hit it, the demon jerked and jumped. But he did not fall.

  The dread in my stomach turned to utter terror as the monstrous creature in front of me grew bigger, more solid than I had ever seen any demon look before.

  “I’ve been waiting for you,” it said pointing first to me and then to Trip. “You spoiled my fun. You destroyed one of my forms. And you will pay.”

  Grant Madsden had come to stand beside me, and I handed him my pistol. “It’s loaded with silver bullets. Use it.”

  I began calling up more of my magic, but this time, I had another idea. If the silver inside the mine could weaken the demon, we needed to use it. I couldn’t say anything aloud to Hattie Hart or Annabelle Swansby, but they had already given what magic they possessed to our circle.

  If I could get to that magic, I could use it.

  I concentrated, trying to drag out what was left in the circle we’d drawn.

  “I know what to do,” I whispered to Trip. “Protect me.”

  But before I could gather enough magic, the demon sent another crack through the floor, knocking us off our feet. A giant wind from the bowels of the earth blew over us, hot and sulfurous smelling. I knew why they thought it was a fire demon now. The air whipping around us sent my hat spinning across the room, pulled my hair out of its bun and sent it flying around my face. I fought to concentrate, even as I realized the demon was using the air to slow down the bullets being fired at him. I crawled up toward the entrance, knowing that it was far too far away for me to make it if we didn’t take out the demon now.

  Hattie screamed something, but I couldn’t make it out. All three of the men continued to rain bullets onto the creature, but he deflected them with a single flick of his hand.

  The demon’s next words were spoken as if directly into my mind.

  Fight me on your holy day? Let me bestow gifts on you. A chill wind blew through the cave, and I shivered.

  Merry Christmas.

  It was as if I had been flattened to the ground by a giant hand holding me down and sending bright sparks of pain through me. It ripped into my mind, and my vision grayed out for several seconds. I could feel the demon rifling through my thoughts, and I shoved my plan down as far as I could, erecting a wall around it, concentrating on the pain to block out what he wanted to know.

  He almost got it. But I deflected all the pain into repeating my name. “Ruby Silver, Ruby Silver, Ruby Silver. Mr. and Mrs. Trip Silver.” I repeated the words to myself over and over again until I heard the demon laughing wildly.

  Ruby Silver. Demon hunter. This is your curse. Forevermore to be trapped in this land you profess to love. To be unable to use the metal that is your namesake. To be Called, forced to hunt the very monsters you wish to kill. To live the life you think you want—but without reprieve. So mote it be.

  I didn’t even know exactly what it meant. But I felt his curse slam through me. It left me retching on the floor of the cavern.

  I managed to stand. When I dropped the wall around the intention I had formed, it shot out of me like a bullet from a gun, gathering the silver ore I sensed feel in the earth all around me.

  I had barely enough presence of mind to scream, “Run!”

  My five companions didn’t hesitate.

  As I said, we were none of us greenhorns.

  I’d ripped the silver out of the mountain itself, wrapping it around the demon in strings of molten metal. I didn’t know how I was melting it, but I burned along with it. As I handled the silver with my magic, it burned into me, leaving my hands blistered and steaming. The blisters crawled up my arm until I almost blacked out with the pain.

  The next thing I knew, Trip and Cole had me into their arms and were dragging me up the path, Grant following close behind. I caught a glimpse of the other two women up ahead.

  The demon howled from inside its silver bindings. Maybe we couldn’t kill it with silver bullets, but we could by God—or at least by magic—hold it in place.

  The last thing I saw as w
e retreated was Cole’s recording device ticking away on the shelf where he’d left it.

  “Ruby,” Tripp said intensely, “I need you to take the supporting spell off the beams ahead of us as we pass them. Can you do that?”

  “I think so.” My throat was raw, my voice scratchy. When we got to the supports, Trip said, “These, my love. I need you to take the magic spell off of these.” I nodded, but my hands throbbed in agony. I glanced at them once, then decided it didn’t matter. I reached out to touch the beam with one hand, and the blisters broke open at the contact. As I pulled the magic back into myself, I whimpered, but I didn’t stop.

  “It’s down,” I finally said.

  “That’s the point, right there,” Grant Madsden said, pointing at a spot on the beam. “If we concentrate our firepower there, we can bring the entire thing down.”

  Trip turned to Annabelle. “Take her out of the cavern with you?” He pointed his chin at me even as he readied his weapons.

  Annabelle nodded, but I said, “Wait,” and turned to Hattie. “Come on,” I urged her.

  “I won’t leave him.”

  “Grant will follow us,” I promised, praying I was right.

  Her eyes welled up with tears, but she nodded and came with us.

  We began moving as quickly as we could, retracing our steps. I realized that the blisters on my body extended to my feet, as well, but there was no time to stop.

  I glanced back once to see the three men shooting at the ceiling. At least one of them was using bolts of anti-ectoplasmic energy from one of the P.I. Agency’s guns.

  The creaking, rumbling sound began deep under our feet, and despite the painful blisters inside my boots, I picked up the pace, running as hard and as fast as I could to reach the entrance. We stumbled out into the snow and starlight, the noise of the mine collapsing following us every step of the way. We backed away from the entrance but turned to watch anxiously, waiting for the men we loved to follow us out.

  Cole and Trip stumbled out together, coughing as they came. I dropped to my hands and knees and buried my arms in the snow, sighing in relief as the icy coldness took away some of the heat from my burned hands.

  But Hattie was still waiting for Grant. “Where is he?” she all but screamed.

  “He was right behind us,” Cole said.

  A giant plume of dust erupted from the entrance, and we all stumbled farther back from the tremors it caused. Hattie dropped to her knees with a wail, only to scramble back to her feet when Grant staggered out, a handkerchief held over his mouth. Behind him, the mine entrance filled with rocks, sealing it shut.

  For the first time since we’d emerged, I thought to look around for Mr. Carlisle, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  Everything else was as we left it.

  Chapter 12

  “Should we look for him?” I asked later that night as we sat around a fire we’d built partway down the trail, away from the mine entrance. Hattie had given me a small spoonful of her laudanum, and for the first time since we’d left the mine, I wasn’t in pain.

  Cole shook his head. “The demon said we got his message. I think Mr. Carlisle might have been the demon’s messenger.”

  “That would explain the rest of my dream,” Annabelle said.

  “So does the P.I. Agency even exists?” Trip asked.

  “Maybe in the same way I do?” Grant suggested.

  I shook my head. “No. You are as real as you were before you died.” I was certain of that after my magical tour of Grant’s mind and heart. “We don’t have any assurance that Mr. Carlisle was real in any way.”

  “And what did the demon mean when he said I was cursed?” Hattie asked. “Did anyone else hear that? Was that for all of us?”

  I held my hands out. “He said I was cursed to react to silver. This happened when I bound him with the silver I pulled out of the mine—and that was without even touching it.” I turned to Trip, ready to test my theory. “Hand me one of the silver bullets.”

  He looked surprised. “You sure about this? He told me I was cursed, too.”

  “I’m sure.”

  He reached into his saddlebag to take one of the bullets out. Even from where I sat across the fire from him, I could hear the sound of sizzling when his skin touched the special ammunition. He jerked his hand back with a yelp.

  “Let me,” Cole said. He pulled the bullet out without any problem whatsoever and handed it to me. My skin sizzled, too, and I dropped it instantly.

  “He told me I was iron-cursed,” Hattie said.

  “And you?” I asked the Swansbys.

  “Bronze,” they said in unison.

  “There was more, too,” Grant said. “Something about being forced to hunt monsters?”

  “And that I’d be confined to the land I’ve chosen,” Cole added. “What does that even mean?”

  We all stared at each other for a long, silent moment. I didn’t want to voice my theory. But I suspected I would never again leave the West.

  Cole finally spoke. “I’m not sure, but it can’t be anything good.”

  “It means we’re cursed,” Hattie said. “We will have to spend the rest of our lives dealing with the curse that was just put on us.”

  I couldn’t imagine what that meant. But I knew that I needed to get away from this place. “Whatever it is, we can deal with it tomorrow. Right now, we need to get back down the mountain.”

  “As soon as the sun rises. We don’t want to risk taking the horses down the mountain in the dark.” Grant spoke with the easy authority of a federal Marshal.

  “I’ll take first watch,” Cole said.

  But none of us slept that night. As soon as the gray light of dawn brightened the skies enough for us to see—enough to make sure our horses didn’t break their legs or necks on the way down—we mounted up silently, gathering what was left of our supplies and our weapons.

  The future was uncertain.

  Then again, it always was.

  Trip and I would continue to face it together, no matter what happened. And now, it looked like, we had four other people we could call on in times of need—not counting the P.I. Agency itself, assuming it actually existed.

  We might be cursed, but I didn’t believe in curses that couldn’t be broken. We just had to figure out how.

  For now, though, I had to keep hoping that we would eventually, somehow, rid ourselves of these unwanted gifts.

  We pointed our horse’s noses back down the mountain and rode as quickly as we could back to Leadville, planning to leave on the first train out of the mining town.

  THE END

  About the Author

  New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author Margo Bond Collins is a former college English professor who, tired of explaining the difference between "hanged" and "hung," turned to writing romance novels instead. (Sometimes her heroines kill monsters, too.)

  You can read all of Margo’s books on Amazon.

  Cogs & Robbers

  A Steampunk Caper

  Bokerah Brumley

  Cogs & Robbers © 2020 Bokerah Brumley

  All rights reserved under the International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Warning: the unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

  Purloined

  New London

  Spring 1885<
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  Suspended from the master bedroom ceiling, Beatrix Smith breathed as quietly as she could and re-checked the wire connected to the front of her many-a-gadget belt and harness. The overcast sky hid the moon and assured an inky darkness. A cool wind blew in through the open balcony door. Thunder rolled in the distance, and a flash of lightning lit up the space.

  Beatrix shifted, and a chunk of plaster broke free from the ceiling where her bolt had struck through the beam. As if in slow motion, the piece dropped onto the ornately embroidered bed canopy beneath her, landing beside the hidden pocket that held the leather folio she had been hired to retrieve from a corrupt magistrate.

  How she hated ceiling plaster. It often made her sneaking harder. Two guards waited outside the magistrate’s heavily fortified door. At least the harpoon bolt had lodged in the beam securely.

  The judge’s snore paused, and she held her breath. Her pulse pounded in her ear. The slightest sound could wake the man if the maid hadn’t slipped the drug into his wine. Perhaps she’d managed that, at least.

  The man’s snore started up once more, and Beatrix blew out her breath. She had been hired to collect evidence the magistrate had been using to blackmail a young woman. The young woman’s sister had been working as a maid at the mansion for two months and been unable to procure the photographs. The magistrate never let anyone but his butler into his private quarters, so they’d hired Beatrix Smith.

  Beatrix checked the locket watch pinned to her chest. Midnight. She gritted her teeth. Her feet were going numb from the pressure of the harness against her hips.

  Once Beatrix was certain the magistrate had been drugged, she’d get a move on. Though, the numbness had move up to her ankles. Being seated in the harness and sitting completely still had somehow compressed a nerve or cut off circulation.