Iron and Blood

by Gail Z. Martin

  Just as Drostan moved to cross the street, the stranger moved lightning quick, seizing Drostan’s arm with a steel grip. The man’s head came up, revealing a face that was half-human, half-machine, with a mechanical eye and exposed gears.

  “Come with me,” the clockwork man said. Drostan struggled, but the vise-like grip would have broken bone before it released, and reluctantly, he gave in, knowing that he was in no shape for a fight.

  The stranger steered him towards the next alley. Drostan tried to reach his gun, but his captor bumped his hand out of the way. “You won’t be needing that,” he said in a voice oddly reminiscent of a recording cylinder. The clockwork man looked alive, at least the flesh-and-blood parts of him did.

  Drostan and the stranger started down the darkened alley, and Drostan expected to feel a blackjack against his skull at any moment. Instead, the clockwork man stopped about halfway in, far enough from the street that they were unlikely to be disturbed.

  Two figures stepped out of the shadows. “We heard you had a busy night, Drostan.” Jacob Drangosavich and Mitch Storm stood in the half-light. “Thank you, Hans. That will be all. I think we can count on the detective not to run away at this point. Please see that we’re not interrupted.”

  Hans nodded and retreated to just inside the entrance of the alley.

  “I thought you were working to keep a low profile?” Drostan snapped, still rubbing his wrist. “Why the metal thug?”

  “We figured you’d be a little trigger-happy after what happened, and we didn’t want to surprise you in your room again,” Mitch replied.

  “If you were watching me, I could have used some backup. We nearly got killed.”

  “But you didn’t,” Mitch said.

  Drostan wished he could wipe the smirk off Mitch’s face. “It was close enough. Look, I’m tired. What do you want?”

  “We made sure the horses got back safely,” Mitch said. “You could be nicer.”

  Drostan checked his temper with effort. “Thank you,” he said in a strained voice. “Finian is a good cop—and a good source. I don’t want him to get in trouble.”

  “He won’t,” Jacob said. “The Department will make sure the report gets ‘lost’, and the wagon won’t be a problem.”

  Drostan eyed him skeptically. “I thought you were not acting officially.”

  Mitch shrugged. “We’re not assigned to the case. But I told you—the Department is very interested in what’s happening out at Vesta Nine. If they have any suspicion that the river deaths have a connection to the mine, they’ll cover up anything strange.” He shrugged. “Jacob and I just want to nail Tumblety and Brunrichter for good.”

  He paused. “And before you ask—no one from the Department is saying a word about any of this, which is pretty strange. When we’ve been in trouble before, my sources have kept me updated on everything. This time, they’re dry as a bone. Someone high-up is keeping this very quiet.”

  “All right,” Drostan conceded. “What do I owe you for corralling the horses?”

  “We want to know what you saw,” Mitch replied.

  “I thought you were tailing me. If you saw me, you saw what happened.”

  “We heard about the incident from a third party,” Jacob said.

  “The priest.”

  Jacob shrugged. Drostan felt his temper rise. “I’ll tell you what I saw, but I want to know who the priest was. Dammit! I can’t do my job if I don’t know what’s going on.”

  “One thing at a time,” Mitch said. “Tell your story, and we’ll tell ours.”

  Drostan glared, but recounted the evening’s adventure from the time he and Finian examined the body behind the Highland Club.

  “You didn’t see any kind of witchy objects around the body?” Jacob prodded.

  “No. And no one flew by on a broom, either,” Drostan said. “I saw a savaged corpse, and not enough blood on the ground for what was done. I saw shadows that didn’t come from any natural thing. And I saw a priest appear out of nowhere and dispel what I can best describe as a demon.”

  Mitch and Jacob exchanged a glance. “It wasn’t a demon,” Mitch said “But it might have been a gessyan.”

  “Tell me something I hadn’t figured out for myself.”

  “All right,” Jacob said. “The priest who rescued you was Father Matija. He’s with the Logonje.”

  “What are they, some kind of Slavic community group?”

  Jacob managed a half-smile. “A secret society of priests committed to banishing evil spirits.”

  Drostan was silent for a moment. “Well, damn. How’d he know where we were?”

  Mitch shrugged. “That’s what he does. We don’t control him. He answers to a higher authority.”

  “Who, God?”

  “The President’s secret cabinet,” Jacob said drolly. “Seriously. The Logonje have a higher security clearance even than the Department.”

  “But you know each other?”

  Mitch nodded. “Sure. We all know each other. Whether or not we tell each other anything—that’s the rub. But in this case, we’re in luck. Matija is one of the good guys. He plays fair with us, even when the brass is mum.”

  “Tell him thank you for me,” Drostan said, forcing down his bruised ego. “I really thought Finian and I were dead men.”

  “You would have been, if he hadn’t gotten there in time,” Mitch replied. “He’s pretty sure that it was a gessyan that attacked you, but the truth is, we just don’t know much about them. And to our knowledge, this was the first sighting of this particular type of gessyan, since all prior reports have been of the Night Hag. That’s why we need your help.”

  Drostan gave him a quizzical glare. “You’re the high-falutin’ Department. I’m a lousy private investigator. And you want me to help you?”

  “A partnership, then,” Jacob said. “Since I speak the language of a lot of the miners over at the Vesta mines who might or might not have seen something.”

  “And who definitely won’t say anything to anyone who looks like they’re official,” Mitch added.

  “I think Vesta Nine dug too deep and let something out,” Drostan said, deciding that the night had already gone seriously cock-eyed, and one more crazy statement couldn’t hurt.

  “We think so, too,” Jacob said. “But we’ve got no proof.”

  “So we’ve got a supernatural force that just might be something loosed from the deep regions, and we’re flying blind,” Mitch added. “And we’ve got sightings that say Tumblety and Brunrichter are back in the area, but how they’re connected, we don’t know yet. And while we dither around, people keep dying.”

  “About that—” began Drostan.

  “I’m afraid that if anyone goes looking, what’s left of the police wagon and the body will be gone,” Jacob said. “That’s how the Department works, especially if they want to keep something secret. They’ll get to people, pull strings. The police won’t bother about the killing, because their records will say that it didn’t exist. The horses are safe. The dead man was a vagrant, so there won’t be a family inquiring. Only you and Finian—and a few others—will know differently.”

  “I just wish someone would give that poor dead blighter an honest burial,” Drostan said wearily. “I don’t know who stirred up the Night Hag and the gessyan, or what they want, but I can’t imagine that a drunk in a carriage lot had aught to do with any of it.”

  “That’s just it,” Jacob said. “None of us know much about it either. And there will be more casualties—like the miners at Vesta Nine, and like the dead vagabonds—unless we find out.”

  “Father Matija doesn’t know?”

  Mitch shook his head. “He’s an ally, not an investigator. Matija has other responsibilities. He doesn’t kick demon ass full-time.”

  “On the other hand, I’m already in too far to back out, is that it?” Drostan grumbled. He was tired and he hurt, and right now, he wanted nothing more than his own bed.

  “You said it,” Jacob said
with a shrug. “But I don’t think you want to walk away from this. Not when you still haven’t figured out what all this has to do with Thomas Desmet’s murder.”

  “All right,” Drostan said after a moment. “But I want something in return. If there’s anything—anything—you can do to help me find out who killed Thomas Desmet, I want your word that you’ll do it.”

  Mitch and Jacob exchanged glances. “Fair enough,” Storm said finally.

  “Anything else?” Drostan asked. “Because I’ve had a rough day, and I could use some shut-eye.”

  “I’ll send you a mecha-pigeon,” Mitch said.

  “A what?”

  Mitch grinned. “A clockwork carrier pigeon. He’ll roost near your window, until you need him. When you want to get us a message, just slip it in the capsule on his leg. It’s a bit more discreet than blasting out a telegram.”

  Drostan nodded. “When and if I find out anything—I’ll let you know. Now if you’ll excuse me—” He pushed past Mitch and headed for the street. “I could really use some sleep.”

  Neither of the agents tried to detain Drostan as he headed resolutely toward the boarding house.

  The night was far spent, and it would be dawn soon. Mrs. Mueller was fast asleep as Drostan trudged up the steps toward his room, trying to tread quietly so as not to wake her. He was relieved to find no surprises waiting for him when he opened the door to his room. Instead. Olivia the ghost girl paced by the window.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” Drostan said quietly.

  I was worried about you, Olivia replied. Bad things happened tonight.

  Drostan tried to shrug it off. “I’m an investigator. It’s a rough business.”

  Olivia turned toward him. Ghosts talk among themselves. The ghosts out there, they’re afraid. Not much scares the dead.

  “Talk to me,” he whispered. “Because I’m missing pieces in all this.” Drostan took off his battered overcoat, stained with grass and mud from the night’s adventures, and pulled off his shoes. Then he sat down in his chair and waited for Olivia to speak.

  There are more miners than usual among us, she said. Always a lot of them. Dangerous business. But now—something’s killing them. Something that lives in the shadows.

  “What? Gessyan?”

  Olivia gave an eloquent shrug. I don’t know everything just because I’m dead. But these new ghosts are in a bad way. Something ate them—took their energy. No one should die like that.

  Drostan was so tired that he was having difficulty keeping his eyes open, and he wondered if, when he woke, he would decide that this was all a dream. “What can I do to help?”

  Find the witch. The Witch of Pulawski Way. Find him and you’ll find answers.

  “What if he’s dead?” Drostan asked. “What then?”

  Olivia’s turned away sadly. Then more people will die. Maybe everyone.

  “EVERY TIME I see this place, I can hardly believe it’s real, it’s so big.” Miska Kovach craned his neck to see the tops of the huge chimneys at the Edgar Thomson Works in Braddock. The massive plant—created to make Bessemer rails for the railroad—took up over sixty acres and had its own wharf on the Monongahela River.

  “They say the Edgar Thomson makes a million tons of steel a year,” Jake said. The huge steel mill was like a man-made mountain, belching smoke, steam and, from the highest peaks, jets of flame. Railcars laden with steel or filled with raw materials clanked into and out of the yard at all hours of the day and night.

  “It’s impressive in daylight. It’s monstrous at night,” Rick observed. The flames from the burn-off cast the night in a hellish glow. Although the plant, a modern marvel, had electric lights around the perimeter, there were large, dark gaps between the light posts where anything might lurk.

  “Let’s see what’s so special about Eban Hodekin,” Jake said, taking a deep breath to banish his jitters.

  “Makes you wonder, doesn’t it, why a man like Dr. Nils knows the night shift supervisor at a steel mill?” Kovach mused. “Wouldn’t think they’d exactly go to the same dinner parties, if you know what I mean.”

  Jake had been mulling over the same incongruity, without coming to any conclusion. “He said Hodekin was a source for a folklore book. Maybe that’s true, maybe it isn’t. One thing’s for sure: if Nils thinks Hodekin might know something about what killed Father, I don’t care how they know each other. Let’s get going.”

  The night guard eyed them suspiciously when they approached the gate. “Hey! Turn around! Factory’s closed for the night unless you work here. Don’t look like you do.”

  Jake suspected the steel mill did not get a large number of gentleman callers with bodyguards arriving in the middle of the night. “We’re here to see Mr. Eban Hodekin.”

  The guard frowned. “Mr. Hodekin’s busy. He didn’t leave no word he was expecting anyone.”

  “We need to speak with him,” Jake replied. “It’s important.”

  “Gettin’ the steel rolled into rails, that’s important. Talkin’ ain’t.”

  “Just tell Hodekin we’re here to see him,” Rick said.

  The guard glowered at him, then called over to one of three other security men who were warming themselves around a barrel fire. “Hey, Miller! Go tell Hodekin he’s got visitors.”

  Miller shuffled off toward the main factory building, in no particular hurry. Jake, Rick, and Kovach waited impatiently for what seemed like forever until Miller trudged back.

  “Boss says to send them in,” he reported with a shrug.

  The guard glowered at them. “All right. Get on with you. No trouble, you hear?”

  “Where exactly do we find Mr. Hodekin?” Jake asked. Kovach had grown testy with the guard’s attitude, and had moved close enough to loom over the man. If the guard suspected that the bulge beneath Kovach’s left arm was a gun, he did not scare easily.

  “Take the first door, up the steps, go to the right. You’ll see a sign that says ‘office’. That’s the place—if he’s not out on the shop floor like he’s supposed to be. But you can’t just walk in there. I’ll have to send an escort. Wait here.” The guard’s expression made it clear that he did not appreciate the extra work. He walked a few paces to speak with one of the security guards, and both men leveled a suspicious glance in their direction. After a bit more muted discussion, the two men walked back.

  “Come with me,” the guard said grudgingly.

  Kovach said something in Hungarian beneath his breath. Jake did not recognize the phrase, but from the way the guard stiffened, he assumed that it was not complimentary.

  “Try not to annoy the natives,” Jake murmured as they walked away. “I’ve got no desire to have a ladle of hot steel dumped down my back.”

  “Maybe we should have brought Charles with us,” Rick said. “I wouldn’t mind the extra muscle.”

  “I didn’t want to explain a werkman,” Jake replied. “And I wasn’t sure how well he’d fare with the heat and smoke at the mill.” The smell of the coke fires filled the air, and dozens of other materials added their tang. Jake resisted the urge to hold his nose, and wondered how the men who toiled in the huge mill managed to cope.

  “He’d be handy in a fight,” Kovach added.

  “I’m hoping to get out of tonight without a fight, thank you very much,” Jake replied.

  “What fun is that?” Rick replied with a lopsided smile.

  The guard opened the door to the mill, and a blast of air hit them, so hot it made Jake take a step back, thinking they had nearly entered the furnace instead. The guard gave a nasty chuckle.

  The heat was unlike anything Jake had ever felt. Even the scorching heat of the Egyptian desert was different. There, the heat was natural. Here, the heat was contained within a cavernous building, where the air was foul with the smell of coal smoke and machine oil and unwashed bodies. Jake felt sweat bead his forehead, and by the time they were halfway across the room, rivulets were running down his back, so that his shirt clung to his
skin. His eyes burned and teared. The clank of the chains and the bang of tools and molds was deafening, enough to make him feel as if his head were inside a ringing bell.

  How do they do it? he wondered, watching the red-faced men who toiled at the machinery. It was common knowledge that the workers of New Pittsburgh’s steel mills worked twelve-hour days, seven days a week, save for the Fourth of July. Not a wonder few live to old age.

  They approached the office door, and the guard rapped once, then turned the knob. “Mr. Hodekin? These are the men here to see you.”

  “Send them in,” a gravelly voice replied.

  “Thank you, Mr. Hodekin,” Jake replied, pushing past the reluctant guard. “This truly is a matter of life or death.”

  Hodekin muttered something under his breath while the guard eyed them warily, ready to escort them out. “All right,” Hodekin replied grudgingly. “But make it quick. I’ve got work to do.” The guard stepped back, making it clear that he would wait outside to escort them back out of the mill.

  Jake glanced around the room, and the dim light revealed little except a battered desk piled with papers. He had to look twice to spot the top of a man’s head nearly hidden by the stacks of documents.

  “Mr. Hodekin. I’m Jake Desmet.”

  “Desmet. Any relation to Brand and Desmet?” Hodekin replied, not stirring from where he sat.

  “Thomas Desmet was my father,” Jake said. “I’ve stepped up as one of the managing partners in the firm since his death. Rick Brand,” he added with a nod toward his friend, “is one of my business partners.” He let Kovach go unannounced, which was how his bodyguard preferred things, but Hodekin could probably figure out his reason for being present.

  Jake heard shuffling and the creak of a chair. A short man bustled around the desk, barely standing taller than Jake’s waist. Eban Hodekin was a stooped old man with wisps of gray hair straying from his mottled scalp. His eyes were wide-set and large, with a jutting jaw and a crooked nose that seemed out of proportion to his face. Hodekin had a barrel chest and muscular, bowed legs. His hands were calloused from hard work and scarred from dangerous jobs. Jake thought he looked more like a gremlin than a mine foreman.