Man of Steele

by Alex P. Berg

  I couldn’t see anyone. Darkness suffused the hallway, drenching it in shadows. I could make out the edges of a few other piles of scrap, stacked chairs, and coils of rope—always rope—but I didn’t spot the whites of any spying eyes. And yet as I crouched there, coiled and tense with knife gripped tight, my sense of disquiet only grew. I shivered again, a full body tremor that started at my shoulders and shot into my toes. My heart thumped heavy in my chest, and despite the lack of anyone glancing my way, I wanted to run.

  That’s when I noticed it. A clack-clack-clack of nails tapping on tile, followed by a long squeak, like rubber boots being dragged across a floor. It cut through the distant commotion from the meeting room, monotonous and repetitive and even.

  It chilled me to the bone.

  I should’ve stuck my head out, tried to catch glimpse of its source, but the sound had such a nebulous quality to it. I couldn’t tell if it was coming toward me or away from me, from the hallway I hid in or farther past the guards, or even if the damned noise was all in my head. But I couldn’t force myself to look. Something inside me screamed to stay hidden.

  So I listened. I was here for information, not to stick my neck out, not to get captured or die. What use would I be to Steele then? Risking life and limb without a reasonable chance of a reward wasn’t courage but stupidity.

  From down the hallway, I heard a strangled shout, then a thump, followed by another. Voices drifted from the meeting as the commotion lessened.

  “What was that?”

  “AJ? Knuckles?”

  Then the oily voice. “Men. It’s time.”

  Another clack-clack-clack, another long squeaky drag.

  “Holy—”

  “What the hell is—?”

  The room fell into silence. Not a man spoke, but I heard more thumps, crashes, and a haunting peal of laughter from that same voice, the one that was so familiar but wouldn’t ring a bell.

  A new voice, a deeper one laced with self-assurance and menace. One that I recognized right away. Bonesaw’s. “Is it safe, boss?”

  “It is,” said the oily voice. “Go now. Give the word. Let a few escape, to spread fear.”

  A set of heavy feet receded. Then the oily voice again. “Come, my pretty. There’s so much work yet to be done. Follow the sound of my steps.”

  The clack and drag receded into the aether, leaving a void in its wake.

  I exhaled and filled my lungs with air, realizing only now I’d been holding my breath. It was Bonesaw’s voice I’d heard, no doubt about it. I’d recognize his deep rumble anywhere, words spoken like the wrenching of necks and gnashing of teeth. The mere thought of his voice filled me with anger and purpose and fear at the same time, and yet the other voice. The unctuous one. I couldn’t place it, yet I was sure I’d heard it before.

  A crash drew me out of my reverie, followed by shouts. Bangs, thuds, more shouting, cries of fear and anger and pain followed. They cascaded through the ceiling, peppering me from overhead. The oily voice—the head of the Winds of Change I had to assume—had given Bonesaw an order. Were his men attacking the guards? It sounded like a war had erupted over the stage.

  I swallowed my fear and took my chance, heading from behind the crates, down the hall, and toward the makeshift meeting room.

  25

  The two dead guards in the hallway provided me a warning as to what I’d encounter, but I still wasn’t prepared for the scope of what I found.

  My jaw dropped as I took stock of the situation. The orchestra pit had been transformed into an impromptu meeting room, the far side having been barricaded and hammered together with spare planks and nails. The orchestra seats had been torn out, replaced instead with a sprawling table that looked as if it had been slapped together out of whatever pieces were too good for the barricade. A dozen chairs had been assembled on either side of the table. It was on and around those that the carnage lay.

  A quintet of men, dwarves, orcs, and half-breeds sat in the chairs, slumped over or leaning back, some of them with looks of horror carved into their faces, all of them with limp jaws and glassy eyes. Around each of them sprawled several thugs, some having collapsed onto the table or onto spare chairs, others on the ground, clutching their chests or doubled over into fetal positions, some with weapons in hand and other with clenched fists.

  Seventeen men, all told. All of them unmoving. Unflinching. Dead.

  I crossed to the nearest seated body, that of a dwarf with a wild, bushy beard, a crown shaved clean as a whistle, and a slew of dark tattoos encircling his eyes. I vaguely recognized him. The head of the Razors, a guy by the name of Redmace who’d taken over after I’d helped put the previous head, Occam Silvervein, in jail on drug charges. I placed a couple fingers against his neck, hoping to feel a pulse, but I might as well have been holding my digits to a slab of beef. A warm slab, but a stiff one nonetheless.

  A stiff one… I knelt down and tested Redmace’s arm, trying to flex it at the elbow. It resisted—vigorously.

  I flashed back to Biggie’s corpse in my apartment, sitting there, eyes open, clutching his stomach. Cairny had been baffled at how he’d undergone rigor mortis in an hour or less, but Redmace had been dead for, what? Three or four minutes? I checked his elbow pit for tract marks, then his neck, but I didn’t see anything. Not that it could’ve been drugs. Injecting one man with a cocktail to force his body to seize was plausible, if firmly in the realm of the bizarre. Administering it to an entire room of drug lords, dons, and bodyguards simultaneously was nigh on impossible. It would’ve taken an army of ninjas to inject everyone. Unless a chemical had been administered through drinking water, or aerosolized in the air.

  I pulled the mask off my face and took a tentative sniff, taking note of an odd, musky odor in the air, like that of a pet ferret. A cold dread filled me, and I briefly wondered if I’d already been exposed before realizing how stupid of an idea that was. Anything potent enough to drop a dozen and a half men in their tracks would’ve knocked me to the ground as I’d made my way down the hallway. Besides, Bonesaw had been in the room, as had his boss with the cold, fulsome voice, and they’d been unaffected.

  Even though logic reigned supreme, the cold dread didn’t dissipate. It only grew stronger, because if drugs hadn’t been to blame for Biggie’s death and subsequent rigor mortis, then what had? What could cause a score of bruisers and badasses to keel over mid-breath? When I’d delved into the sewers hoping to catch word about Shay, I’d known full well I might be faced with violent psychopaths, murderers, and thugs for whom cruelty was second nature, but this? Something powerful had torn the life force from everyone in this room. Something evil. Something…with claws.

  I knelt down further, casting my eyes to the ground. The years of decline hadn’t treated the King’s Theater’s floors well. Between the removal of the orchestra seats, the construction of the barricade, the carpentry of the table and chairs, and the heavy boots of countless thugs and homeless people who must’ve called the room home at one point or another, it was hard to find a scrap of wood that hadn’t been scratched, scuffed, or dented. But there were sections here and there with fresh scuffs, fresh scratches. Some in sets of three. Just as there’d been in my apartment.

  A werewolf or griffin subservient to Bonesaw or his boss would’ve been terrifying enough, but not one motionless thug had been torn open at the throat or had his entrails littered upon the floor. Not one man was soaked in his own blood. They all simply lay there, frozen but warm.

  And yet at least two people had survived it.

  I just had no idea how.

  I kept gazing around the room, unable to process the scope of what had happened. Redmace, dead. An old guy wearing a black suit, clutching a cane and with an eyepatch over the right side of his face. The head of the Blacks. The orc contingent from NWX. Two other gang bosses. All dead. The underworld would be thrown into chaos. There’d be infighting for weeks. Months, probably. People would die, not just gang
members but the more vulnerable members of the city, those at the bottom of the pecking order who’d be easy pickings for whoever filled the power vacuum—unless Bonesaw and his Winds of Change gang could consolidate everything.

  From the sounds of fighting trickling through the walls, they were trying. I heard more shouts, more slams and crashes and whumps, more cries of pain.

  It occurred to me I should get out while the fighting raged. I couldn’t have more than twenty minutes until the Captain would pull the cord on her strike teams, and even though the infighting would weaken the gangs, I didn’t want to subject my fellow police officers to crazed knife-wielding hooligans and mysterious dark magic if I could avoid it.

  And yet… I wasn’t any closer to finding Shay. I had a name—the Winds of Change—and a vocal assurance that Bonesaw was involved, and that was it. I hadn’t heard mention of her. No mention of any prisoner at all. I hadn’t caught so much as a whiff of her lilac-scented perfume, just a weird acrid stink that faded with every passing moment.

  I wrinkled my nose, sucking in more of the off-putting scent. I hadn’t noticed it until I stepped into the room. I stepped back toward the hallway and took another sniff. Nothing. I crossed to the far side of the orchestra pit and did the same. There I smelled it. Kneeling, I searched for claw marks and found them, outside in the adjacent hallway.

  Come, my pretty, he’d said. Follow the sound of my steps. I was too late for that, but I could follow tracks and a scent. And if Bonesaw was working for the man with the voice of a greased fish, then he’d be the one with knowledge of Shay. He was the one I wanted.

  And pet gargoyle or not, I’d find him.

  I sent a prayer to the gods to keep the Captain, Rodgers, Quinto, and the rest of the tactical strike officers safe when they inevitably came after me before setting off into the hallway. The pervasive darkness outside of the meeting room made tracking the claw marks difficult, but I did the best I could, hoping beyond hope that my nose led me in the right direction.

  I followed the faint, weasel-like aroma more or less in the direction I’d come from, up a spiral staircase to the theater’s backstage area. I paused in the shadows as a pair of panicked thugs raced by, shouting for help before exiting stage right, then kept going, using my nose and the power of insincere prayer to guide me as I hopped from shadow to shadow, taking refuge behind everything from a wooden cutout of a pirate ship to a grove of faded pine trees. The darkness of night enveloped me in its quiet embrace as I slinked by, hiding the claw marks but also myself. It was all I could do not to bumble into stacked boxes, giving myself away.

  I stopped as I broke free of the backstage curtains and props, pausing at the edge of a warm glow radiating from two lanterns in the center of the storage and loading room. I would’ve welcomed the light if not for what it illuminated: eight thugs, all pacing in the center of the space. Two dwarves, four men, an orc, and an ogre—not Bonesaw, though. His complexion was too light, and his head too narrow. They carried bats, clubs, and knives, some of them bloodied. Rival gang members lay prone here and there, surrounded by pools that glistened in the near darkness.

  And wouldn’t you know it, at the center of the group of eight was the subbasement hatch, thrown open, lantern light illuminating it from within.

  I glanced at the loading doors, which remained chained from the inside. I’d been right, in a way. Someone had planned on using the sewer entrance, same as me. It must’ve been how Bonesaw’s gang had moved their men in, allowing them to take the rival gangs by surprise.

  I sniffed the air. Maybe it was my imagination, but I swore I could still smell the ferret stink. And there. Near the hatch. Were those scratches? Was the sewer the gang’s escape route as well?

  The thugs wandered around the stacked crates and coils of rope, some of them serious, others chuckling. They probably thought they’d eliminated their threats, and in terms of the gangs, it looked as if they’d succeeded.

  But I was still here.

  I hadn’t planned on plunging myself into danger. I liked living. My life had sucked once upon a time, but it didn’t any longer. But the only reason it didn’t suck, the only reason my life was full of joy and laughter and good cheer, was because of Shay. She’d been the one to pull me back from the brink, to sit through my blatant sexism and asinine jokes, the one to nurture the good that lingered inside me, the one to push me to rekindle my relationship with my son and my ex-wife and father, to put down the bottle of whiskey and limit my beers to meals. She was the shining light in my life.

  If she wasn’t worth risking my neck for, who was?

  I took a deep breath to settle my nerves. I was outnumbered eight to one, locked in a hostile abandoned theater with backup too far away to make a difference, chasing a man who commanded the power to stop twenty men’s hearts with the snap of a finger.

  At least I had the element of surprise on my side.

  26

  Hiding behind the edge of the curtains at the tail end of the backstage, I took off my pack and lay it down before me. From it, I retrieved a bottle of water, which I used to soak the cloth mask I’d been wearing, a trick to keep out smoke that I’d learned long ago while fighting a serial arsonist. I slipped the mask back on and double-checked my belt and jacket. I’d filled my pockets and pouches as best I could, so I tucked the backpack behind me on the floor. It would only restrict my motion during the coming fight, and if I survived I could always come back for it.

  When I survived. No need to be morbid.

  I stared at the assembled thugs, trying to burn the surroundings into my memory. The crates. The ropes. The barrels. The location of the hatch, the placement of the two lanterns. I’d need to know where to go instinctively if I was to make it. My gadgets would only serve as a hindrance if I wasn’t prepared.

  I fingered the knife at my belt. I’d brought it for a reason, and the Captain wouldn’t blink if I told her I’d been forced to end someone’s life to save Steele. And yet...barring the occasional filleting of a fish or whittling exercise, I’d barely ever used one. I’d probably be as liable to cut myself as someone else.

  I reached into my jacket and withdrew Daisy, which I slipped into a belt loop at my right hip. She was bent, battered, and dented, a dull implement of pain best suited to guys with two word vocabularies, not senior homicide detectives, but I knew her. Her weight, her heft, her balance. I’d been blasting thugs in the cranium with her for over a decade. I knew how she danced, and I wasn’t sure I could learn a new set of steps on the fly. I’d have to roll with her and hope for the best.

  From the safety of my hiding spot, I took one last look at the assembled gangbangers, trying to craft the order I’d take them in. The dwarves I’d deal with first. They were small, but squat. Their kind had wrecked havoc on me before. Best to incapacitate them. Then maybe the orc. Being a human myself, I knew how to handle the men. And the ogre? Well, if I got that far, I’d bring whatever I had left.

  I closed my eyes and thought of Shay. Here goes, babe. Wish me luck.

  My eyes snapped open and I reached into my utility belt, pulling a couple of sealed glass bottles filled with white powder. The fire mage I’d secured them from, the subject of Shay’s and my first murder investigation, said all I’d need to do was throw them hard to make sure the glass broke and they’d start smoking like a fire full of wet leaves, no ignition required—or rather, they’d ignite themselves, which sounded like a useful bit of fire magic if ever there was one. The old mage had countered, saying it was chemistry, not magic, though the magic certainly helped in getting the chemicals into the bottles in the first place.

  All I cared about was them working. I burst from behind the curtain and darted toward the thugs, hurling the first bottle toward the feet of the dwarves sixty feet in front of me. I had the second bottle airborne, headed toward the orc, and a third in hand before anyone noticed me.

  One of the men pointed a finger and shouted “Hey!” as the first bottle hit th
e ground. I heard a crystalline crunch and a crackle, followed by an unexpected puff. White smoke shot out in a cloud, sending bits of broken glass flying with the force of its expansion. I threw the third bottle at the quartet of human thugs as the second bottle broke and sent more smoke flying, then dove into the first cloud.

  White smoke hung thick in the air, creating a screen far more dense than I could’ve imagined, and I was immediately thankful for the mask. My eyes itched the moment I stepped inside the cloud, and I could hear the two dwarven skull-crackers hacking and coughing from somewhere within the smoke.

  Even having surveyed the storage room from above, I’m not sure I would’ve found them without their barking. I slipped a syringe from a custom made wooden block tied into my belt loop and sprung toward the first source of hacking coughs, barely spotting his doubled over form before I crashed into him. With all the grace of a first year medical student, I plunged the needle into the side of his neck and slammed on the plunger.

  One.

  The dwarf grunted, spun, and took a swing at me, but I’d already danced back into the smoke. I heard him gurgle as I turned to the next source of coughing. I counted the seconds in my head as I searched for the next cougher. One. Two. Three. Thump. Cairny had said it would take about five seconds for the sedatives to take effect, but dwarves didn’t carry as much mass as us full-sized folk.

  The second dwarf saw me coming a half-second too late. He brought up a hatchet handle to ward off the blow he assumed was coming, but it didn’t do anything to block my downward needle chop. I plunged the syringe into his shoulder and moved on.

  Two.

  I burst from the cloud of white smoke, my eyes watering. An eerie yellow lantern glow suffused the cloud to my right, shouts and coughs emanating from within. I heard another bellow behind me, as well as heavy feet and curses.