The Fallen (The Sublime Electricity Book #3)

by Pavel Kornev

  "I! Am! Not! Afraid! Of! Anything!" I squeezed out, emphasizing my words. I got up from the chair and spread out my shoulders. "I could make mincemeat out of anyone! Got it?"

  The leprechaun snorted, threw a towel on his arm and started setting the table. The porcelain plate in the middle, the knife to the right and the fork to the left, both silver with handles made of ivory. Next to it was a crystal glass.

  "You're really, really not afraid of anything?" the albino asked and stood up on his tip-toes to get a bottle of vodka from the bar. "Nothing at all?"

  I hesitated, but still confirmed:

  "That’s right."

  "Great!" the albino smiled appeasingly and pointed at the door of the adjoining room. "Then knock."

  "Why?"

  "After all, don't you want to embrace your buxom sweetheart and cover her in kisses from head... hm... to toe?"

  "She's not my sweetheart!"

  "Bugger! Have a conscience, be honest with yourself!"

  "I'm not lying."

  "Then why are you here, and not in the ruins of the family mansion, huh?" The leprechaun pulled the top off the bottle and shook his head. "It's a pitiful sight, let me tell you!"

  The vile pipsqueak filled a glass and poured the vodka down his throat; every last drop splashed down onto the carpet.

  "No, boy. You're sitting in a room waiting for a miracle. You really think she'll knock on your door? Won't happen. Don't be a namby-pamby, make the first move!"

  "Shut your mouth!"

  "Leprechaun one, Leo zero!" the leprechaun grinned and reached for the bottle once again.

  I took it and returned it to the bar. The pipsqueak wasn't at all upset, took a seat at the table and started rocking his legs from side to side.

  "So then, it’s a fact that you are afraid to admit your own feelings!" he said with an important look and scratched his cheek. "So, maybe I'm here because of that?"

  "Are you mocking me?"

  "I am mocking you," the leprechaun confessed. "But if you didn’t need it, you'd have just dreamt yourself up another busty girlfriend, not me." He pulled out his belt, looked down and melted into a self-satisfied smile. "Bugger! Not me, no question about that..."

  I rubbed my temples with a fated sigh. From out of nowhere, my head started getting hot, and the only thing I really wanted was to kick the impudent pipsqueak out the window and get some sleep. And I wasn't particularly far from doing just that.

  "So, has your head started hurting?" the leprechaun inquired sympathetically, stroking his palm, which had a thin scar much like mine. "It's all the waning gibbous moon, boy. By the way, aren't you afraid of the moon?"

  The question didn't catch me off guard. I calmly walked around the table, looked out the window and shook my head. The yellow spot, covered with smog, didn't scare me one bit.

  "Well you should be," the albino said rationally. "That would be a healthy fear."

  "Balderdash!" I turned sharply. "For a year, I haven’t had a single relapse. I have it under control. The moon has no power over me."

  "One year!" the pipsqueak started clucking and wiped imaginary tears from his face with a towel. "You a bit daft, boy? No, no, that isn’t clear enough. Leo, you're an idiot!"

  "Now you're gonna get it!" I warned.

  "A year is nothing! Remember Zurich! Remember what you did to that mugger! Leo, be realistic! Your animal nature could break out at any moment. And I'm a real sweetheart in comparison with what you’ve got hidden away inside. You know that."

  "I take medicine for that. Science is stronger than magic."

  "Blah, blah, blah!"

  It was stupid to try to prove something to myself, yet I still had to get the last word.

  "You're forgetting one fairly important detail," I said calmly, pulling back the right sleeve of my shirt. A set of prayers written in black stood out clearly on my pale skin.

  The leprechaun didn't answer, though; he looked distantly at me and wiped his hand on a towel.

  "My dad knew what would happen!" I announced. "He foresaw it. Nothing can threaten me. And that outburst, well, I didn't turn into an animal. I was still human the whole time."

  "Boy," the leprechaun smiled softly. "Aren’t you forgetting something?" The albino pointed at my left arm. There were no tattoos on that one. There hadn’t been time to do them all before my father's death.

  I hesitated for a moment, but just for a moment.

  "That doesn't mean anything!" I announced with all the confidence I could muster.

  The leprechaun shrugged his shoulders.

  "That may be so," he replied, not trying to dispute. "But I am certain I know another thing you are afraid of."

  "And what might that be?"

  The leprechaun gave a gesture suggesting I bow down, but I started suspecting chicanery, and didn't move. The leprechaun wasn't at all thrown off by that. He hopped to his feet and tossed a porcelain plate onto the floor with a careless flick. It hit the rug, but didn't break.

  "I see through you!" the albino announced, standing before me on the table.

  "No, I'm the one who sees through you," I chuckled. I really could see the outlines of the buffet table through the tiny man.

  The leprechaun held his left arm in front of him and began flexing his fingers.

  "You don't have the courage to admit your feelings for the girl. You don't have the brains to be afraid of the moon. But there is still one thing that makes you so scared you wet your little pants."

  "And what might that be?" I inquired, expecting to hear more filth in response.

  "Silver," exhaled the pipsqueak, jumping sharply out in front.

  My head jerked to the side with such speed that my spine cracked, but the leprechaun was faster than my reflexes. The silver fork caught into my temple and pierced the skin. The pain made my breathing seize up for a moment. Sparks flickered in my eyes.

  The fork thrown away, the leprechaun jumped to the floor and ran to the door. In a single burst, I threw the table from my path and dashed off in pursuit. Then, the pipsqueak turned blisteringly and jumped under my arm in an agile roll. He fled through an open window. I came out after him onto the balcony, but found myself too late once again: the albino had already made it from my deck onto the cornice encircling the building.

  "Bugger!" I heard. "Now that's what I call a work of art!"

  I didn't follow after him, returning to my room, even feeling some measure of pity for the guests that vile abomination would be dropping in on tonight. My head was splitting unbearably, and a trickle of blood was rolling down my cheek but, before I managed to wash the wound, I heard a knock at the door. It was coming from the adjoining room.

  "Leo!" Liliana called me in alarm. "Leo, is everything alright?"

  "Yes," I answered, placing a towel against the wound. "I got up to get some water and I ran into the table. Sorry if I woke you up."

  "Can I come in?" Lily flicked the lock open from her side.

  I froze in place. The leprechaun's acrid words had embittered my soul. I wanted madly to forget good sense and throw caution to the wind, but instead of that, I squinted, counted to ten in my head and answered only after:

  "Sorry, Lily. I'm already ready for bed. I'll see you tomorrow."

  "Alright," she said, not insisting on her position. But she didn't lock her door again either. No matter how long I listened to the silence, I never heard the metal click on her side.

  And that fact scared me a bit more than being struck with a silver fork.

  I was afraid that I could now walk into the neighboring room unimpeded, lose control and cause a problem.

  The moon? I wasn't afraid of the moon. I was afraid of myself.

  I slept with the bottle of vodka. No, I didn't drink it, I just pressed its cool glass to my split temple. The scratch bled for a long time initially, but when it covered over, it only became worse – my temperature rose, the skin started burning, and I even twitched a bit. When I got up in the morning, my head was humming.
I felt completely crushed, as if I hadn't spent the whole of last night sleeping, but instead loading coal out of train cars.

  But my arms were barely shivering. The couple of nicks I gave myself shaving, unlike the fork tine-wounds, covered themselves over. I patted my cheeks, spritzed my hands with eau d'cologne, brushed my teeth, looked cantankerously at my reflection and cringed in irritation. There was an inflamed slice leading from my right ear to my eye. My face was sunken, and the whites of my eyes were filled with little red capillary threads.

  All in all, nothing too out of the ordinary. It could have been worse.

  Especially if the fork had hit me in the eye.

  "Damned pipsqueak!" I cursed, returning to the bedroom and taking my timepiece from the bedside table. It was showing five after nine.

  I got dressed in no particular hurry, moved the table back to the wall, and gathered the rounds in my tin. I then picked up the plate, miraculously still intact, from the floor and returned it to the cupboard. I threw the knife and fork in the silverware drawer. Touching the silver made my fingers start trembling, but the effect was merely psychological – a werebeast could only be burned by mere contact in animal form. And even that wasn't for certain.

  Standing at the adjoining door, I listened closely; all was quiet. No rustling, no running water. I raised my hand to knock, but remembered that I had totally forgotten to call Ramon yesterday, and headed off to the nearest coffee shop.

  The wind, which had been running wild last night, brought a long-awaited cooldown to the city. The sun still hadn't fully managed to warm the causeways yet either, so there was still a pleasant chill. Or had I simply grown accustomed to smog? Perhaps that was it.

  I didn't rush the phone call. Instead, I studied the menu on its little blackboard, placed my order and took a seat at a round table near an open window. The waiter came not long after, placed a bulbous coffee pot on a saucer in front of me, a condensation-covered pitcher of milk, a sugar dish, a mug and saucer and a basket of fresh cinnamon buns.

  After adding milk to my coffee, I picked up a couple sugar cubes with the nickel-plated tongs and threw them in the cup, mixing the aromatic beverage and taking a long sip. I started feeling good.

  My distemper gradually abated. I even entertained myself for a few minutes by staring at my warped reflection in the polished side of the bulbous coffee pot. Depending on the angle of view, my face took on utterly side-splitting appearances.

  After eating breakfast, I paid up and asked once again for permission to use the telephone. Despite the early hour, Ramon was in his office.

  "Why didn't you call yesterday?" he asked immediately.

  "Was there really a need?" I replied, not crawling in my pocket for a clever response.

  "No," my former partner admitted. "We didn't find your Indian, but I know who to interrogate to find him."

  "And what's holding things up?"

  "What do you think?"

  "Money?"

  "Money."

  "I'll be over in an hour," I announced, hanging up and leaving the coffee shop.

  I went outside, not at all concerned about pursuit – while looking at my reflection in the coffee pot, I had carefully been studying the square, which was quite empty at this hour, and none of the rare passers-by aroused any suspicion. And the street sweeper, ambling over the paving stones with his broom, cleaning the sidewalk, had already finished his work by that time and taken his cart down to the next alley.

  "Fresh press!" a young boy hurried to me with a bag packed to the brim with papers on his side. "Schism in The Sublime Electricity! Edison pitted against Tesla! One conference in New York, another in Paris! Offshoot in Constantinople! Negotiations in Alexandria to decide the fate of the straits! Rebels under siege in Rio de Janeiro! Offensive in Texas! Aztecs on the run!"

  The paperboy was warbling fervently; I bought the morning edition of the Atlantic Telegraph, and rightly so: I was going to Foundry Town, which is what they called the private manufacturing district that adjoined the factory outskirts. It would take no less than an hour, so it was nice to have some way to pass the time. I spent most of the journey in a self-propelled tram car, but the line, which had recently been acquired by an electric company, passed around the factory outskirts, so I had to transfer to a steam tram. It was smoking away mercilessly. Not used to it, my nose and throat started tickling. I was coughing the whole ride.

  The sky on the outskirts was drawn over with a tarpaulin of muddled smoke. Freight dirigibles furrowed through it like ships through a gray sea. The walls of the factory workshops were caked in old soot. The tall factory smokestacks were expelling stinking wisps of smoke. Everything around was gray and dirty. It seemed I was simply in hell, but instead of cauldrons of boiling pitch, there were steam boilers and gluttonous furnaces.

  By the way... for some, this really was hell. Fortunately, not for me, though.

  At the final stop, next to a faceless factory, I got out of the tram and walked along a fence, which seemed to stretch on endlessly. From time to time, I was overtaken by goliath self-propelled vehicles with an irritating hum; these many-ton monsters were not allowed into the city, all dented and rusted, but here, they were the unquestioned rulers of the road. I had to press myself up against the wall, waiting for the steaming hunk of metal to slowly roll past.

  In the workshops, there was something knocking away resonantly. Time and again, the earth underfoot shook. Tall cranes lifted pallets of freight and moved them. Not far away, a huge dirigible shone forth like a beacon. It was being loaded.

  I turned left at the very first intersection, and very soon, the factory area was left behind me. The monstrous haulers were replaced by horse-drawn carts and even hand carts. Behind the rickety fences, chained up hounds started barking. From time to time, suspicious looking figures jumped out to meet the eye. Work was fervently underway all around. Hammers beat, drills whirred, and manufactory smokestacks smoked. There was also a good deal of trash built up on the sides of the road.

  If my appearance did attract the attention of the locals, they didn't show it in any way. But I was sure that, if I had suddenly decided to ask one of the working stiffs the way, I wouldn't have gotten anything of use. That's solidarity for you.

  When I’d last seen Ramon Miro, he was planning to become part owner of a workshop with one of his many cousins. Recently, he’d had an additional wing built on, where he ran a little business of his own. After turning down a blind alley, I stood at the gate and pressed the call button. I heard an unpleasant metallic ringing just past the door, then a little slit slid open and an impolite voice sneered out:

  "Whadda you want?"

  I lowered my dark glasses, showing the man my colorless illustrious eyes, and announced:

  "I'm here to see Ramon."

  The lock clanked open. A short swarthy man with broad-shoulders threw open the gate and moved aside, letting me pass. His grease-stained proletarian jumper had a suspicious bulge on one side, but I walked fearlessly into the compound and pointed at a stoop.

  "That way?"

  "Yes, just walk right in," the man confirmed, locking the gate behind me.

  I went up a little flight of sloping stairs, ducked under a door and walked into a small room. A mustached man was sitting at a desk in silence and sharpening a good-sized clasp knife, which was pointed up at the ceiling.

  The newly minted investigator’s office was located on the second floor. By the way it was furnished, one might guess it belonged to an accountant. There were several metal boxes, a nice heavy safe, a table with a telephone, a stack of writing paper and a pile of rumpled bills.

  Ramon Miro himself was standing at the window with his hands folded behind his back, taking in the industrial landscape.

  Why industrial? Well, it's just that the view consisted mainly of smoke-shrouded workshops and smokestacks puffing their char up to the heavens. The altars of Moloch of our enlightened era.

  "An engrossing landscape," I said with unhid
den sarcasm. "Oh, the unending delight it could bring me!"

  Ramon turned and extended a wide palm.

  "You're a pest, Leo," he said, squeezing my hand.

  "Come off it," I chuckled, taking out my wallet and throwing a couple hundred-franc bank notes on the table. "At least I always pay my bills."

  "I could never take that away from you," Ramon confirmed, walking around the table and taking his seat. "Please, sit," he offered, placing the money in the pocket of his light shirt with rolled-back sleeves.

  I sat down in a creaky chair and tossed one leg over the other, looking at my friend. Since our last meeting, the former constable had grown even broader at the shoulder, and his high-cheekboned face had become more severe and decisive.

  The easy life of a welding shop co-owner had left the former constable feeling unfulfilled, so he was now a private investigator, taking full advantage of his skills and connections in the Newton-Markt. The life of a hired gun came naturally to him, but the hulking man was now plainly wavering, and his ruddy face was marked by a look of unhidden doubt.

  "Are you afraid of something?" I asked, throwing out a feeler.

  Ramon ran his fingers through his coarse black hair, but quickly withdrew his hand and shook his head.

  "I'm not afraid, Leo, I'm being prudent. You have a talent for... sucking people into problems."

  "We must let bygones be bygones, isn't that so?"

  "I’m not talking about bygones."

  "Tell me."

  Ramon sighed.

  "First, as I told you already, we didn’t see anyone fitting your description at the train station."

  I took out the pencil portrait of the runaway barman and handed it to the investigator. He glanced at it and admitted:

  "This will make my job a lot easier from here on."

  "So then, you mentioned problems?" I reminded him.

  "Indians," Ramon said with unhidden disgust. "It's a hot topic. I’m afraid of getting burned."

  "Are you serious?"