Gaslight Magick

by Teel James Glenn

  The beast was literally blown backward by the concussion of the gun, tumbling into me and taking me down to the ground. I had the wind knocked out of me but the apparition did not seem to be hurt.

  The beast rolled to its feet, growled once more and spun to leap out through the shattered windows.

  Suddenly everything was still in the silence of the aftermath, with only the sound that of the wounded Hanover Jones gasping for breath and moaning in pain.

  “God’s garters,” Angus said as he reloaded the two barrels of the shotgun and ran to the window to scan in case the creature returned. “What in the name of Satan’s sporran was that?”

  Spike, her courage used up in holding her ground before the monster, was in a near faint, falling to one knee with the release of tension.

  I scrambled to the two bodyguards, but they were both beyond help, having expired from the massive number of glass shards that had sliced them to ribbons.

  The courageous blonde Candy was also clearly dead, a gory mess from the monster’s claws so I did not even try to help her.

  Jones, however, was another story.

  I ripped off my cravat and attempted to staunch some of the blood on the fallen man, but as I applied pressure to some of the wounds I realized it clearly was a wasted effort.

  “Oh my God,” Spike whispered. She saw what I was doing and, spunky young woman that she was, she pulled herself together and crawled to Hanover’s side.

  “Jonesy!” The girl cradled the fallen man’s head in her hands and looked to me but I shook my head.

  “I’m goin’, kid,” Jones said with some cheer still in his voice. He was indeed a rum fellow.

  Jones voice was flat and his eyes were already glassing over. “Really am sorry about Mike, kid, he was a straight shooter,” he coughed blood and there was no doubt that he was dying.

  “What do you know?” I asked, “Where is this Little Tony and –“

  The dying fighter had a violent spasm and then fixed me with his eyes. “Juice Martin- Lordship,” he gasped, “Ask Juice.” Then he coughed once more and was absolutely still. Dead.

  “Everyone wants to elevate me,” I whispered to myself.

  Spike worked at not crying.

  “We had better be going, lassie; baronet,” Angus said from the window. “The wee beastie is gone, but the police will be called after all this clanjamfie!”

  “Right you are, Angus,” I said. I gently put my hand on Spike’s shoulder. “Come girl, we can’t be detained by the authorities now, we have things to do.”

  She reached down and touched the dead boxer on his cheek as if to say goodbye, then crossed herself and stood up with a determined expression on her pretty face. “Let’s go talk to Juice,” she said. “We have to stop this.”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  On the Town

  Angus got us swiftly on the carriage and away from the sight of the carnage. We merged onto Surf Avenue, mixing with the late afternoon traffic and were off in the crowd before the other servants in Jones’ mansion could fully grasp what had happened inside the building.

  The shock of what she had seen was beginning to manifest in Spike, her slight form shaking violently as if for a chill but it was not at all motivated by the salty sea air. The poor child was shaken to near hysteria by the horrors she had witnessed and I cannot say I did not sympathize with her. It was of a level of horror I had only seen on the front in Crimea. Made all the worse by being tinged by dark magicks.

  Though magick was an everyday thing in every culture there was still an instinctive shying in the human heart from things beyond the empirical. It implied that we, with our two arms and legs and stout heart were not enough to make it in the world. It was an attitude Mini had trained me to overcome. “Any tool is only as good as the man- or woman using it,” she said. “Just be the better man.”

  All three of us were also all covered with blood and gore to varying degrees with the resulting mess causing our clothes to stick to us.

  I wrapped my clean cloak that I had left in the carriage while we were in Hanover’s place over the girl to warm her. Angus handed me a Mackinaw that he had under his seat. It was large on me but I was grateful for the warmth.

  I found myself thinking of Nenetl again. It seemed that she often came into my thoughts unbidden. I compared her to the pluck of the teenager I sat with, and found Spike compared favourably. “You would have liked Spike.”

  “Jonesy was a jerk,” Spike whispered, “ but—but he didn’t deserve-“ She was at the edge of tears. “That—that was how Mike died.”

  We were held in the flow of traffic and slowed to a crawl so I decided to occupy the young girl’s mind.

  “Why do they call you Spike,” I startled her with my non-sequitor question. I knew I needed to distract her and occupy her mind to keep her from dwelling on the horror she had witnessed.

  “What?”

  “How does a young lady with the perfectly lovely name like Bathsheba end up with such a different a nom-de-guerre like Spike?”

  The girl focused on me and I saw the panic in her eyes fade a bit as she cast her mind back to a better past to find an answer for me. “We grew up in a pretty tough neighbourhood and I wanted to be like Mike-- my wonderful big brother, you know, and I dressed like him in pants and all--” She indicated her split-skirt riding habit that had seemed so unusual on a city girl. “They were his hand me downs at first, really. Giant pants and jackets that I had to roll the sleeves up on; but I loved that they were his. I decided that Bathsheba was too girly a name as well and a neighbour had a big, mean looking dog named Spike that nobody would mess with so I decided it was a good name for me.”

  Tears came now, but gently as she spoke, her eyes focused not on me anymore, but on her memories. She looked away, out toward the city. “Mike always looked out for me, tried to teach me how to be a good person and to take care of those with less. He told me that cause someone was strong meant they had to use that strength for others, not against them. And he was strong, but he never was a bully to the others in the neighbourhood. I was.” She giggled like a schoolgirl. “He was constantly having to rescue people from me, you know, cause I would get into fights and kind of beat up on anyone I thought was talking bad about Mike or about me. I was a small kid, but kind of bossy, I guess.”

  I laughed. “I’m familiar with that kind of gal,” I said, thinking of my dear Aunt Mini. I found myself wondering what Nenetl had been like as young girl as well; and I was sad that now I would never be able to ask her.

  “Mike got daddy to send me to finishing school to try and make a lady of me, ‘to give me better prospects,’ he said. It was all the way up in Tuxedo, up state New York, but it didn’t take.” She laughed and it was good to see my distraction stratagem was working.

  “I hated the school. All of it. All the girls were stuck up, lily livered and wouldn’t have lasted a day on Fourteenth Street; but I tried for Daddy’s sake. Then when daddy died while Mike was on his trip, I ran away. When Mike came back he hunted me down over in New Jersey and he promised me that he wouldn’t send me back to the school. He bought the bar on Twenty Third Street I think so he could keep an eye on me, but we were happy. It was a dream to run the place. We were a very good team.”

  I could see the tears were going to start again so I interrupted her train of thought.

  “Loathe as I am to bring it up, Spike,” I said, “ but we have to consider that since Master Jones was fourth in a line of pub owners who this beast has killed-- with Mike number three-- we have to think about the possibility that it followed you here or the beast is taking out all the bar owners.” Her eyes widened when I added, “And now you are a bar owner you could certainly be on any list. This is not just about finding Mike’s killer anymore—it is about protecting you as well.”

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  In the Old Town

  “Dat is real prime, eh, Athelstan,” Mad Mike Ellenbogen said in his quaint American idiom as he pressed
his nose up against the glass window of the curio shop.

  We were on a back street in the Motkattam Highlands section of Cairo and it was a hot afternoon. “Wouldn’t that make a guy look the potentate wearing it?”

  It was exactly the type of outrageous statement Mike had made regularly during our month wandering the bazaars and alleys of the ancient city the natives called Masr in Arabic.

  The brusque American was a refreshing breath of fresh air with the stuffy crowd of English ex-patriots that, though only five percent of the population, occupied most of the government positions since the Albion Empire took over Egypt. He reminded me of my Aunt and her very direct ways, though she had some forty years of exposure to the peers of the realm to learn to be circumspect now and then. Mike didn’t have any such restraints.

  He now stood like a hungry child at a confectioner’s window, looking at all the oil lamps, icons, prayer rugs and such in the display, as he had in many shops as we wandered. He talked of furnishing a ‘perfect gin joint’- a pub or saloon as the Americans called them, when he got home at almost every shop we passed. It would be a future for his sister and himself.

  He had obviously had a hard life, raised by a father who was a saloon owner and exposed to gangs and violence on the streets of the American capital in New York yet he never spoke about revenge, or getting more than the other guy, only his own goals, making his own way, succeeding by his own work. I liked that about him-- he was his own man and didn’t blame the world or any other man for his misfortunes or expect succour from them. He believed in hard work and ‘running his own race.’

  We had become as close as brothers within minutes meeting in a not so reputable café when a fight broke out. His unrelenting sense of humour and ‘taking the world as it came’ reminded me of Aunt Mini. Maybe it was the American frontier spirit so many spoke of but unlike so many European who seemed to think the world owed them Mike Ellenbogen was grateful for whatever he had and was willing to work for more.

  “We’d better be going, “ I said to Mike, “We have to meet my Aunt Mini over in Medieval Cairo at the Madrasa of the Amir Sarghatmish before their evening prayers. And I do want to see it before sunset.”

  “Alright, buddy,” Mike said. “But I really like those medallions, the ones behind that lamp there. Gonna come back for ‘em tomorrow.”

  And Mike did, and gave me one of the medallions which I clutched as I rode with his sister along Broadway of Manhattan, heading up town.

  The girl had been silent after my proclamation of fear for her safety, lost in her own thoughts, but to her credit and my delight, she was not cowed or overcome with the very real fear she must have felt. She had set her jaw in a determined attitude that told me she would see this through to the end to find out who controlled her brother’s killer and find a way to destroy the monster. She was very much her brother’s sister.

  I grasped the Horus medallion and thought again about not only Mike but the story of Horus and Set. The ancient Egyptian name for the Cairo was Khere-Ohe, "The Place of Combat", supposedly in reference to mythical battles that took place between the ancient gods, Seth and Horus.

  They fought be the successor to the throne of Osiris to see who would be king. Was that what was happening to the saloon owners? If so, who was the Seth is all this? I held the Horus medallion and smiled, remembering that in the various battles Horus beat Seth each time.

  There was a time when Albion, or even Europe acknowledged no gods of different religions and arrogantly held that their view of the universe was dominant. Holy wars (an oxymoron if ever there was one) had been fought over it. But when Merlinian magick was codified and recognized by the Catholic Church it was impossible to ignore that there were other methods and magicks, that there were other pantheons who were conduits to power.

  By 1890 there was an uneasy but essentially stable balance between forces across the globe-- despite what the official Merlins wanted to believe. The dead Merlin Aldwyn learned abruptly that different systems of magick had different characteristics, different strengths and weaknesses.

  I had been exposed to more systems than many with my travels and had fewer prejudices than many of my fellow countrymen so I looked beyond the Merlinian for solutions. Now that I knew dark magick was involved with Mike’s death I would be on the look out for traces of it in my interactions with suspects.

  “We’re here, M’lordship,” Angus called back from the driver’s seat. While I was woolgathering we had made it all the way to the gin parlour run on 14th Street by Juice Martin, one of those contending for kingship of the saloon set.

  The gaslamps were lit along the darkened streets by now and the evening crowds were out and about. It seemed that there was little or no diminishment of the number from the daytime throngs that populated the thoroughfares though the nature of the habituates of the night was subtly different than the day light inhabitants. This city was indeed a marvel unlike Paris or London in make up; this new country was vital and untamed even in the cities.

  The establishment of Juice Martin was two blocks from the rival general emporiums of Macy and James A Hearn & Son and across from the urban oasis of The Union Square Park. The other end of the block was a number of piano stores, as the area seemed to be a hub for such places; all now closed with the fall of night.

  There were strollers in the park and not a few of them came across the street, dodging the clanging streetcars, to head into Juice Martin’s large saloon that was called The Iron Apple.

  It was a brassy sort of place, loud and garishly furnished with bright colours and mirrors everywhere. Two large Iroquois in full battle regalia and war paint stood at the door.

  “You sure you don’t want me to come in with you, lassie?” Angus called down to Spike as she hopped down from the hansom.

  “No, Angus,” she said. “If we need to make a quick get away we’ll need you out here.” He didn’t look like he liked the idea but he was loyal and obeyed her.

  “She is right, old man,” I said. Angus’ mack’ hung a bit loosely on me but, while not fashionable, it covered the bloodstains on my trousers and shirt cuffs. “I have a feeling we may need to exit expeditiously; and keep your coach gun ready.”

  Spike threw off my cloak and seemed mindless of the bloodstains on her dark split skirt.

  “The gun did nae seem to do much in Brooklyn,” He said.

  “Take heart,” I said, “from the looks of this place we might be chased out by any number of disreputable types that I am sure it would be perfectly suited for.” That did not seem to put his mind at ease at all.

  My diminutive companion marched right up to one of the totem door guards, past a line of attendees waiting to enter the saloon. The native-- a Mohawk from his dress and markings-- put a hand out to stop her.

  “I need to see Juice,” she said with an edge to her voice.

  The stone-faced Cerberus flicked a look to his partner, who was Seneca and the two of them stepped in to block Spike.

  “Go,” the Mohawk said. Spike tried to shake off his hand but he clamped a grip on her shoulder. She squirmed but made no sound, though I could tell it was a painful hold.

  “You have till three to remove your hand, my good fellow,” I said. “Or I will become angry.” The Mohawk stared venomously at me.

  I smiled. “Enhskat, Tekeni-“ I counted in his native tongue. His stoicism cracked and his hand eased up. Spike used the distraction to slip from him and headed into the noisy interior.

  In answer to his unasked question I said, “I served with the Her Majesty’s First Iroquois Skirmishers in the Crimea; your people fought well.” His confusion transformed to curiosity.

  “Akweks?” He said with a moment of recognition, calling me by the name the warriors on the line had given me after a particularly rough engagement with the Russian troops. It meant eagle.

  “I have to see Juice,” I said in his language. “It is important for me and the girl. We are not here to bring any harm to your employer; this I swe
ar by my honour.”

  Spike had stopped just inside the door and was looking back at me, not sure what was going on with my conversation with the guard.

  The Mohawk warrior nodded to his companion and waved me on.

  “What was that?” Spike asked in awe.

  “I’ll tell you later if we survive this.” I took her arm and we entered The Iron Apple. “But it does seem as if we can not enter anywhere without some sort of furore!”

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Pow Wow

  Furore was not strong enough a term for the cacophony within The Iron Apple itself; it was a madhouse of debauchery to rival anything on the west bank in Paris or the East End in London.

  Through the cloud of acrid tobacco smoke the packed main room of the saloon was a garish tableau, with a dozen scantily clad women on a stage at the opposite end of the room doing a vulgar version of the Parisian dance (that I had first seen in Marseilles) called the Can-Can.

  To say that it was not the sort of thing one should allow a young girl like Spike to see is an understatement, but it did not seem to disturb the young Miss Ellenbogen.

  “There’s Juice,” she said, pointing through the haze toward a theatre style box overlooking the stage, wherein sat the owner of the establishment.

  “That is Juice?” I asked, incredulously.

  My shock came from the fact that the individual she indicated was a busty, red haired Amazon, dressed in a gown of silks and feathers and flanked by two equally impressive females in lesser flashy dresses.

  “Sure,” Spike said with an expression that seemed to doubt my intellect. “What did you expect?”

  I was at a loss for words and just shrugged. ‘Well,” I said, “Shall we beard this beardless lion in her den?”

  The girl nodded and we proceeded into the smoke and chaos to our appointment with destiny.