A Riveting Affair (Entangled Ever After)
Page 22
From her vantage point, she could see more than thirty, their giant wings blotting out the stars in the sky above. They probably formed only a small cadre in the army Julian had designed. He, of course, would be well out of sight. More’s the pity. She’d love nothing more than to put a few hundred rounds in his corpse. Headshots, of course, since she didn’t trust he hadn’t been altered like she had been.
Calloway shouted from below, “What the hell is that?” She swung the gun around to aim toward the cowboy’s view, and just in time. An ashen-faced creature flew toward the train. It was a grotesque mutation the size and shape of a man, but wings sprouted from its back in place of arms.
This must be one of Julian’s newer creations.
The only thing worse was Julian himself. At least there was no mistaking that these creatures were monsters.
“Shoot for the head. It’s the only way to kill them!” She blew one monster out of the sky. It took dozens of bullets. Julian liked his monsters strong and fast and difficult to kill.
When the creature she’d hit crashed to the ground, the others screeched with a sound so piercing, her ears popped and rang.
Vision tunneling, she picked off one creature after another. Calloway was a great shot, and he somehow managed to kill his fair share despite having a less powerful weapon at his disposal. The perimeter fence held, frying many of the dumber creatures that tried to pass too low. Others seemed to learn from their brethren’s mistakes and flew well over the top of the fence. In less than five minutes, only ten remained, but they were a tenacious ten. These warriors had more experience than the fledglings and looked more like the last group of monsters she’d dispatched. Three of them came at her from different directions, and she could only manage to turn the gun fast enough to get two.
The third smashed through the glass and grabbed Maisy by the throat, lifting her a few inches off the grating. She reacted as she’d been trained to do in China, throwing up two hands to pop the creature’s head back and then jabbing the heel of her hands into its eyes. Nothing happened. The damned thing felt as though it was made of stone.
Her head swam and black floaters edged into her vision.
Reaching into the breast of her corset, she yanked out the slim knife she hid there and plunged it into the hole where the creature’s ear should have been. It stumbled back and growled, and Maisy jumped to her feet.
As if he’d read her mind, Calloway charged up the stairs to the dome, gripping Mabel, her most favored gun. He tossed it to Maisy, and she turned and aimed just as the creature launched toward her. She squeezed off two bullets, but not before the creature ripped at her left arm.
The force of the creature’s blow slammed both of them over the dome’s railing, and they fell off the train, landing on the hard Texas dirt next to the track. The creature didn’t stir, but she pulled her gun closer just in case. It was a miracle she’d held onto it during the fall.
Maisy groaned and tried not to cough at the dust settling around her. But when it had cleared enough, she realized Calloway had joined her outside and was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the last two creatures. He somehow held his own against the beasts, and his technique was impressive, but as much as she enjoyed his grace and strength, she was ready for this to end.
“Down,” she yelled.
Calloway didn’t even look back. He hit the ground, and she fired off shots between the eyes of each creature. The screeching finally stopped.
Closing her eyes, she tried to take a deep breath. It hurt like hell. She’d probably cracked few ribs—again. When Barnes returned from his trip into town, she’d make use of his war-time medical training.
“You’re injured,” Calloway said. He held out his hand to help her up.
She felt the need to respond with a rude retort, but he’d just helped her and she no longer had the energy to fight over her own pride. “I’m fine.” When she took his hand and he pulled her up, pain wracked her body.
He ripped off his shirt and leaned toward her, his eyes crinkled with what appeared to be concern.
“What the hell are you doing?” Maisy grunted the words and tried not to notice his muscled chest.
“Binding your arm. I think that thing might have hit something important. There’s a lot of blood.”
“I just need to get inside. My man Barnes will be back soon, and he can repair anything those creatures did.” She turned to walk—or perhaps stumble—toward the entrance of the dining car, but Calloway scooped her up and carried her inside. It was clear by the way he held her and the care he took in placing his feet that he didn’t intend to hurt her, so she didn’t yell obscenities with each jarring step he took.
She only thought them instead—as any properly bred Englishwoman would—and directed him to take her to her lab. He deposited her on one of the steel tables, knocking over a pile of glass slides she’d meant to analyze later. She wanted to admonish him, but the pain intensified.
As luck would have it, Barnes chose that moment to return from his trip into town. He peered down at her on the lab table and shook his grizzled old head. “Lassie, you’ve done it again.”
She pointed with her good arm at Calloway. “Barnes, this is Marshal Calloway. He brought us demons tonight, which I assume is a Texas tradition when first you visit someone’s home.”
Calloway glanced around the lab and gave her a hard look, but he offered his hand to her butler in greeting. Maisy glanced down to assess the damage while Barnes gathered medical supplies. Her arm was in shreds. More scars to add to her collection.
Bile rose in her throat. She loathed Julian. The man’s depravity never ceased to amaze her. Those creatures had once been ordinary men, until that evil masquerading as human had turned them into monsters. He liked to work that way, both on the living and the dead.
The situation was untenable, though, as he had only sent those poor things to test her. He knew she would just dispatch them, like she had done all the others he’d sent.
Hate for him burned so hot within her, she could have spit fire.
Barnes tipped a bottle of whiskey over her arm, and the wound stung when the liquid splashed across the wound. The old man went to work, the needle pricking her skin as he sewed her flesh. Calloway, meanwhile, wore a look she couldn’t decipher. He grasped her free hand in his, and against her will, she squeezed when the pain swelled.
“Don’t you have some ether for the pain?” he asked Barnes. “You’re going to send her into shock.”
Barnes grunted. “She can handle it.”
She let go of his hand. “I don’t like drugs that affect my awareness. You held your own out there,” she said, hoping to distract herself from the pain. “Where did you learn to fight like that?”
“Around. Are you going to tell me what those things were?”
That was difficult to explain. “Do you really want to know? I can lie and tell you that they were specially trained warriors.”
“I’m fond of the truth.” His eyebrow rose, and she tried not to notice those beautiful green eyes of his. Or the solid jaw line that belonged on Adonis.
If she weren’t in so much pain, she might endure feverish moments of lust unbefitting a woman of her station. Regardless, she felt compelled to close her eyes and attempt to calm her heightened senses. “The truth is they are demon warriors created by a man named Julian Darvil. I first came across him in London and have spent the last two years chasing him across America. He is evil incarnate, and I think he wants to destroy the world by creating some kind of super warrior.”
“They aren’t human,” Calloway said.
“They were,” she said disgustedly.
“Lassie, this last bit is going to hurt like hell,” Barnes warned.
Nausea threatened, but she refused to be sick in front of Calloway. She took a short breath and nodded for Barnes to continue. “When you’re done with that, my ribs need wrapping—again.”
The old man shook his head but didn’t say a word.
Calloway shifted beside her, leaning closer. “These warriors are what have been draining the cattle of blood.”
She snapped her eyes back to him. “How did—oh, I forgot Garretson enlisted your help. They may be. They feed on blood. But something doesn’t add up on that account. I haven’t figured out why exactly, but my instincts tell me the incidents may not be linked as I had first thought.”
Barnes hit a nerve with his needle and she gritted her teeth.
“So why the missing corpses and all the grave robbing?”
“His test subjects. From what I can tell, the virus is spread through live humans, one bite at a time. But I think he uses dead flesh for some part of the incubation of the disease. That bit of science has driven me crazy for several weeks now.”
“How do we stop him?” Calloway took off his hat and raked his hand through his hair.
There was an earnestness about him she quite admired. This was a man of strength and character. He’d jumped into her fight with the creatures without a second thought to his own safety. It was not often she came across a man she admired.
That’s why she had to make certain he forgot about everything he had seen.
“Barnes?” She gave him a quick, pointed glance. He must have come to the same conclusion, as he already had a hypodermic needle hidden in his palm.
He jabbed it into Calloway’s neck, and then caught him as he slid to the ground, anger and confusion overriding all other emotions on his face, but even those relaxed as he slipped into unconsciousness.
She leaned over him, gasping when her ribs creaked. “Now you won’t remember anything about tonight, and you won’t have to worry about Julian or his monsters.” No one could know about her work with Julian’s demons. Anyone who came into contact with the creatures either died or became one of them.
Everyone except Barnes.
A chill shivered down Maisy’s spine as she realized those who were close to her usually died, too.
“Where should I dump him, lass?”
She shrugged wearily. “Take him to town.”
Barnes might have been old, but he had the strength of five men. He pulled the cowboy out the door.
She felt a slight tinge of regret as she heard Barnes’ horse gallop away with Jake’s horse in tow. Jake Calloway. Why should she care if she never saw him again?
Forcing herself off the table, she picked up the blood samples she had worked on before the interruption. There was no room in her life for a man, especially one who asked questions like Calloway.
No, her life had one purpose. To kill monsters and those who created them.
And she was damn good at her job.
Chapter Two
The Iron Witch
Intuition was a funny thing, and Maisy’s told her both to run and to stay—a contradictory demand and highly problematic. As much as she wanted to head as far away from Calloway as possible, she couldn’t leave Texas. The monsters Julian had sent couldn’t have flown longer than a few miles—they were too heavy for lengthy travel. He was close.
She had to find him. But first, she needed to detoxify.
As she stood in the steambulator, allowing the moisture to soak into her joints and muscles, she considered where Julian might be. Fort Worth and the surrounding area were so flat, one could see for miles. But he could be hiding anywhere. Knowing Julian, he would pick an enormous house in the middle of one of the many vast, isolated properties, outfitted with the amenities he had been accustomed to in London. Unfortunately, she wouldn’t be able to find him unless she had a dirigible she could take to the Texas skies.
The first time Julian had approached her in London, during her ill-fated Season, had been calculated. He’d intended to meet her, to woo her, to coax her into his evil, scheming camp. And when she’d realized what he wanted of her, he’d targeted her instead. Now he used his creatures to track her, to test her, to turn her to his cause. But he was insane, she had no doubt, and could not seem to comprehend that reanimated flesh and Wollstonecraftian creatures would never entice her.
The upside was he made it easier to track him. He wanted her to find him, though he might regret that desire when she killed him.
Stepping out of the steambulator, she waited for the dryer to do its job. The warm air saved poor Barnes from doing more laundry. He used the machine to steam the clothing and then dry it easily. In the Texas air, dirt abounded and when they first arrived, Barnes had complained about the constant laundry duty. Of course, it was not that different from London, where even in the toniest neighborhoods there always seemed to be soot and filth layering one’s skin and clothing. At least Texas’s dirt wasn’t greasy and diseased.
Wrapping a robe around her, she returned to the lab and took a seat at her table. She wondered if the cowboy would have any ill effects from the drugs they’d administered. The man was bright and curious, which was probably a necessity for a Marshal. Few people could have tracked her to the train like he had. Years of practice left Maisy quite good at covering her trail and the fence worked as a shield to protect the Iron Witch from curious intruders.
Unless those intruders were hard-headed cowboys or demented monsters. Whenever she traveled, she and Barnes always found a side track where they could remain undisturbed by passing trains and easily hide their location—at least whenever possible. The last thing she wanted were townspeople tripping into her electrified fence.
Her thoughts, of course, had nothing to do with the memory of his rather hard physique or that square jaw. Then there was the hat pulled low over his green eyes. He’d been wearing that hat even in the dark, a mark of a true cowboy.
Stop.
Romantic notions had been nothing but trouble for her since her debut a few years ago. What a disastrous night that was. Rawley Snodgrass III still did not have use of two of his fingers—served him right for sliding his hand down her hip while they danced. The man still turned and ran the other way if he saw her strolling through the park. Unfortunately, most of the men in London acted that way when they saw her.
Ninnies.
That was one of the reasons it had been so easy for Julian to fool her. After a childhood raised by a father who had engineered her to hunt supernaturals, she had yearned for the normalcy and romance she read in books, and it had left her scarred and used. Targeted.
A risk to anyone who came close.
Never again.
“Miss?” Barnes knocked on the lab door but did not open it. “I deposited the cowboy and his horse in front of the saloon.”
“Well done, Barnes.” He would wake in a few hours believing he’d had too much to drink. “I’ve decided we shall stay put for a bit.”
There was a long pause. Maisy waited for Barnes to respond, watching the night sky creep ever closer toward dawn. “The creatures know where we are, which means he knows,” Barnes said.
“I had been wondering when we would hear from him, considering we’ve been in Fort Worth for two weeks now. And since we had a rather easy time dispatching his creatures, it will take him a few days to regroup. I feel the need to explore. How is he moving so fast if he isn’t using the rails?” They had been following Julian for months and eventually would have run into him if he had traveled by train. “You head to bed, I’ll be doing the same quite soon,” she said.
Sleep was unfortunately unavoidable. While Maisy had the special ability to go several days without it thanks to her father’s tinkering, her brain worked at a higher capacity if she allowed it rest.
After checking the perimeter with Henry and setting the alarms, she opened what Barnes called “the crypt” and she called her healing compartment. Hidden behind a fake wall in the car she used as a bedroom, the chamber used a variety of healing herbs enveloped in steam. A few hours in the bed and her body would be well on its way to h
ealing. The first few seconds inside felt as though the fires of hell licked her skin, but her body was accustomed to pain, and the burning quickly passed.
Three hours later, she woke, alert and ready for the day. The tea-o-rator had a cup of East India tea waiting for her. One of Maisy’s favorite inventions, it provided the perfect mix of tea, milk and sugar at a precise temperature. A small sensor was triggered when she opened her wardrobe to dress in the morning so that by the time she was clothed, the tea was ready.
Pots and pans clanked in the galley kitchen when she approached, her mouth set for tea and toast. The horrendous clatter meant the lovely Miss Clancy, her current ghost-in-residence and former nanny and later governess, was angry about something. More than likely she was upset about the noise from the night before, but one never knew with her. She could as easily have decided to resent her unfortunate demise a decade ago.
Maisy made a preemptive strike.
She poked her head into the kitchen. “Good morning, Miss Clancy. Something smells delicious.” Maisy attempted a cheerful smile, though she knew she didn’t fake those well.
Miss Clancy wore a lavender dress that had been quite the fashion ten years ago. Though she could appear any way she liked, she always chose styles nobody in London would be caught dead in nowadays.
The specter didn’t bother with the niceties. “We had a guest last night,” she said with a look of reproach.
“We had several, actually. I’m sorry about the noise. It could not be helped.” For as long as Maisy had known her, Miss Clancy suffered from a nervous condition. She liked her world orderly and quiet, quite the opposite of the usual governess’s experience. “I apologize, but it was a surprise attack.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I was not discussing the attack,” she said through gritted teeth. “You had a gentleman caller and you were dressed in your britches—again. For once, it would be nice if you could remember you are a young lady of means.”
Grisly, frightening creatures did not register, but clothing did. Maisy stifled a laugh by coughing.