Hearts of Smoke and Steam (The Society of Steam, Book Two)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  Emilio stumbled toward the mechanical man, unsteady in the heavy frame, doing his best to avoid the shrapnel that littered the ground.

  He could see the folds of fabric billowing as he got closer, and somewhere underneath of them there was someone clearly trying to escape. “Sarah!”

  Emilio stumbled as he ran. His hands clutched the handles of the chisels, and he was careful to avoid accidentally pressing the triggers. He stood there for a moment, trying to figure out what he could do, when the edge of the curtain lifted. Sarah, clearly shaken but otherwise unhurt, freed herself from the tangled fabric.

  When she looked at him, she seemed terrified by what she saw, clearly thinking that Vincent had returned as the Steamhammer.

  “It's me, Sarah! It's Emilio!” he shouted, hoping that his voice would penetrate his mask.

  Then he heard a familiar western drawl from somewhere in the theater. “Whatever you are, I hope you're planning on getting out of the way…”

  Emilio turned and saw that the cowboy was standing there, smiling up at him as he pulled on the cigar in his mouth, making the ember glow bright red. He brought a stick of dynamite up toward it, and the fuse began to sparkle. “And you'd better do it fast.”

  With a calm and practiced swing, the man flung the lit explosive straight toward the stage. It flew in an elegant arc, landing perfectly on the curtain, only a few feet away from Emilio and Sarah.

  Anubis opened his eyes, but the world was still pitch black. For a moment he wondered if the blow that had knocked him unconscious had blinded him as well. It was a minor panic, born out of fear, but as consciousness returned, he realized that his actual situation wasn't nearly that bad.

  Reaching up, he adjusted his jackal mask, aligning the eyeholes so that they fit properly over his eyes. The world around him swam back into view. He was still exactly where he was when he had been hit.

  The blow had left a stinging pain in his head as a reminder. It was sharp and searing, as if whatever struck him had embedded a nail straight into his brain. He reached up to touch a new lump not too far away from where he had been hit by the Stanton girl earlier.

  If this was the kind of damage that people took simply from being in the proximity of a Paragon's daughter, then their reputation was well deserved. In fact, it seemed that there was less physical danger to be had from the Paragons themselves than being near to their progeny.

  A loud yell penetrated his pain. For a shout of panic, it was incredibly restrained, but he instantly recognized it as Sarah Stanton's voice—she was screaming to be put back down.

  It was coming from nearby, but he couldn't see either the mechanical man or the girl. Something rustled, and Anubis saw that the hoses that had almost killed the Italian man were still wriggling. Somewhere on the other end, the metal creature must still be attached to them.

  Pulling his staff from its holster on his back, he screwed the segments into place. Sliding off a wooden cap from the bottom of the shaft revealed a sharp metal point. He lifted it up and then stabbed it hard into the side of the nearest tube. A jet of steam sprayed out, and he jumped back as he received a blast of white vapor. It was scalding hot, but once again his suit saved him from the brunt of the damage.

  “You!” someone shouted.

  Anubis looked around, trying to locate the source of the voice.

  “Over here! Now pay attention, Wolf-Man, or whatever your name is!”

  “I'm Anubis,” Anubis replied, finally locating the source of the voice. It emanated from the white-haired head of Vincent Smith sticking out from the floor.

  “Fine, fine—but I need you to stop all that right now.”

  “You hit me.”

  “I did,” the man admitted almost gleefully. “And I'll do it again if you don't stop attacking those cables and let me get on with what I'm doing down here.”

  “I won't let you do that again,” Anubis said. He tried to look imposing, but it seemed that the last blow had left him with a wobble in his step.

  “Yes, yes. I can see you're quite fierce,” Vincent said with some sarcasm. “But perhaps you can go and help your friends capture a helpless girl and leave me alone while I try to save my theater.”

  “I'm not one of the Children,” he said, and then wondered why he had. Why was he trying to convince this man of anything?

  “You came with them. You threatened me.”

  “I'm not one of them anymore.”

  Vincent smiled at that. “You can't ever just walk away.”

  Anubis stood a little taller. “I plan to stop them all.”

  “Good luck,” Vincent said, as another of Sarah Stanton's screams pierced the air. “But if you're not going to kidnap Sarah Stanton, perhaps you should save her. Either way, you can leave those cables alone.” The white-haired head disappeared back underneath the floor.

  Taking a deep breath, Anubis turned around and stumbled out toward the stage. He was still dizzy, and if he couldn't find some untapped fortitude—and quickly—he wouldn't be able to stop, or save, anyone.

  As he pulled back the front curtain and walked out into the auditorium, Anubis saw that the audience and crew had abandoned the theater. At least someone had had the good sense to turn up the gaslights before they'd left.

  The Pneumatic Colossus, Automaton, or whatever it was now, stood near the front of the theater, its back to the stage, legs planted in between the fourth and fifth row. It looked like a gigantic, malevolent tin toy, with wires and steam streaming out in random directions from all its joints.

  It took Anubis a moment to discover the location of Sarah. She was still in the creature's arms, but it had split open its left limb into a metal sling, and it had her cradled inside of it.

  “Put her down, ya dumb machine, before you make me shoot ya both!” The thick drawl was unmistakable, and he could see Doc Dynamite and the White Knight standing in the aisle, facing off against the metal monster.

  The Pneumatic Colossus's head jerked back as the cowboy fired off his guns, smacking the metal head with four bullets.

  When it turned back to face them, it unleashed a jet of flame from its mouth. Both men jumped out of the way as it scoured the space they had been standing in. The attack left a row of chairs on fire, filling the air with an unpleasant scent of burning horsehair.

  Vincent had wanted him to leave the hoses connected while he worked on whatever plan he had in mind, but clearly the gas line was what gave the creature the ability to breathe fire, and to Anubis it seemed obvious that it also presented the greatest danger to the theater itself. Anubis muttered an apology under his breath as he stabbed at the hoses with his staff.

  Each one let out a hiss when it was punctured, and it only took an instant for the spout of flame coming out of the Colossus's mouth to sputter and die along with its burning eyes.

  Anubis jabbed a few more holes into the hoses for good measure, but any small hope he had that cutting the creature off from its power source might cause it to cease moving were completely in vain.

  Equally as futile was the thought that his attack had gone unnoticed. Without moving its head at all, the mechanical giant simply reached its right arm all the way behind itself and began groping around, ignoring any limitations a human limb might have had. The arm seemed far too short to reach him, until the material at the joint stretched and split. Then the grasping metal fingers shot towards him like a harpoon.

  Too woozy to try jumping out of the way, Anubis swatted at the hand with his staff. The arm was lighter than it appeared, but it was still heavy enough that the weight of it threw him backwards. The tin limb swung off in the other direction and landed with a thud on the stage. Rods and wires shifted and writhed like snakes where they had been exposed at the broken elbow.

  He heard Sarah Stanton yell, this time clearly enough to make out the words. “Stop it, Tom!” The Automaton seemed to ignore her and reeled the wobbling limb back into place.

  Anubis swallowed a shout as the head of the Colossus turned t
o face him. Its eyes were dark now, leaving only a pair of soot-covered sockets with a series of bullet holes perfectly stitched in between them.

  Anubis had to admit that Doc Dynamite's skills with a gun were almost as impressive as Jack's with a blade—for all the good it had done.

  His head was pounding and his feet were unsteady. Anubis rallied himself and held up his staff in front of him. “Listen to the girl, Automaton. Stop this nonsense!” He glanced around, determining which way to jump when the mechanical man attacked again.

  Anubis wasn't disappointed when the Colossus raised its right arm into the air, then smashed it down toward him like a flail. He jumped left and felt a nauseating flash of pain in his skull as he flew through the air.

  Despite his attempt to gauge his leap beforehand, he landed hard and inelegantly on the ground, barely keeping his staff in his hands. A fresh jolt of pain shot up from his left foot, warning him that he had come close to breaking something.

  Anubis wondered what he would find when he had the chance to sit down and take stock of just how much damage had been done to him in the last half hour. But first he had to avoid being crushed to death by a thirty-foot-tall mechanical man…

  “Are you all right?” he heard the Stanton girl yell down to him.

  He turned and looked up at the machine. Even with its unmoving face, it somehow gave him the feeling that he was being sized up by an angry dog. “I'd be better, but someone hit me in the head.” He frowned under his mask, angry that he'd let the pain make him drop his persona.

  “Perhaps if you hadn't been chasing me, Tom might not feel the need to protect me!”

  Anubis felt a flash of anger through his pain. “I'm trying to save you!”

  She looked back at her captor. “Tom would never hurt me.”

  At least their conversation seemed to be keeping the creature at bay. “Are you sure this is the same machine you knew?”

  The look on the girl's face grew more concerned, her doubts floating to the surface.

  Just beyond the Automaton, Anubis could see the White Knight pulling out a long strand of wire rope from his belt. The braided steel line had a large metal ball at one end, and the pudgy villain threw it at the metal man, wrapping the cord around his tin legs.

  The creature's head snapped around to face the new threat. Anubis lifted his staff, aimed it at the metal giant, and pulled the trigger. The tip of it shot outward, making a solid clanging noise as it impacted with the metal skull.

  The Colossus whipped back around to face him again, angrier than it had been before. The right arm rose up, but this time it stayed there, waiting for him to jump before it attempted to swat him. The machine was learning…

  “Any time now, White Knight,” Anubis shouted through his mask. If there was a good reason why Clements hadn't already tugged on the wire and brought the creature down, he couldn't look away to discover what it was. The tiniest break in his attention would give the mechanical man the opportunity he was waiting for.

  “Don't provoke him!” Sarah screamed, but if the girl had any genuine control over the Automaton, the theater wouldn't have been burning.

  “Damn thing's stuck!” he heard the Southerner shout back.

  “Then just pull on it!” The stand-off between man and machine could last only so long, and there were no happy possibilities in his future if something didn't happen soon.

  Almost miraculously, the Colossus wobbled slightly, and its head turned again.

  Seeing his opportunity, Anubis ran straight at the metal man.

  The creature seemed confused as Anubis propelled himself into the air. He landed hard against the back of the machine's left leg, the impact smashing the air out of his lungs and setting off a wave of pain in his head so powerful that for a moment he found himself literally blind from the agony.

  Anubis tried to hold on as tightly as he could, but the machine man was falling over. His hands slipped free, and Anubis fell for only a moment before he felt his back crash into something. Whatever it was he had hit let out only a single deep note before it shattered underneath his weight. Anubis felt the staff being ripped from his hands as he dropped into a tangle of wires, brass, and wood.

  When his descent stopped, he hung there for a moment, blinded by pain. In the distance, he could hear the sounds of tearing cloth, splintering wood, and screams.

  Turning his head, he saw that there was a violin next to his face. He had fallen into the mechanized orchestra pit, and the instruments had collapsed under him. The wire strings from the broken piano held him in the air.

  Looking up, he could see the Colossus's metal legs a few feet above him, the creature having sunk into the stage.

  Anubis tried to clamber out, but besides the pit being a tangled briar of instruments, pipes, and other broken mechanisms, he was beginning to realize that the numerous impacts his head had been subject to over the course of the evening were coming very close to overwhelming him completely.

  When he had dragged himself to the edge of the pit, a brown-gloved hand reached towards him. “Need a little help?” Doc Dynamite was smiling behind the cigar in his mouth.

  “What about the Automaton?” Anubis replied as he took the offered help and dragged himself out.

  “Seems he's down for the count.”

  A few feet away, he could see the White Knight frantically playing with the mechanism that controlled the other end of his wire cord. “I can't get the damn thing off of me!”

  Anubis, thinking he could help, stepped toward the Knight, but he felt a hand against his chest, stopping him. “Wait a second,” Doc Dynamite said. “We still got business to attend to.”

  Anubis followed Doc Dynamite's gaze up to the stage. Sarah had managed to crawl away from the Colossus, but something was already stirring under the thick folds of cloth that had covered it as it fell. “Not for the count.”

  “Guess not,” the cowboy replied.

  Meanwhile, another man in a costume had entered into the scene. Anubis recognized Vincent's Steamhammer costume from the wall of the workshop. It looked even more insectlike now, with two long metal shafts coming out from his arms, one of which he was waving at the girl. “It's me, Sarah! It's Emilio!” he yelled out in a voice clearly too young to be the showman's.

  But Doc Dynamite didn't seem to notice. “Whatever you are, I hope you're planning on getting out of the way…” Doc Dynamite inhaled deeply, making the ash of his cigar glow bright. In a single practiced motion he brought a stick of dynamite up to its ember. The fuse sparked to life the instant it touched it. “…And you'd better do it fast.”

  Bringing his arm around in a lazy arc, he chucked the explosive into the air. It landed perfectly in the lap of the fallen Colossus.

  “We might want to duck,” he said to Anubis.

  They both dropped to the floor a second before the dynamite exploded in a deafening roar.

  Anubis's head and ears were ringing as the smoke from the blast cleared. Looking up, he could see that Clements was now flailing more than ever—desperately trying to free himself from the chairs he had fallen into when the explosion had severed the other end of his metal rope. The remaining wire had finally reeled back into the device on his arm, stopping where the ruptured end refused to go back into the hole.

  “Let's go!” Doc Dynamite yelled loudly enough to be heard even through the ringing in Anubis's ears. “You grab the girl and I'll finish blowing that thing apart.”

  “We need to get the heart.”

  Dynamite laughed. He shook his head and pulled out another stick of dynamite from his bandolier. “Eschaton can go to hell if he thinks I'm givin' that metal monster an operation. If there's anything left after I blow it to pieces, we'll scoop ‘em up and give ‘em to him.”

  Anubis nodded. He was in no shape to try to argue. At least it wouldn't be his fault this time.

  Underneath the velvet cloth, the Colossus was struggling more violently now. The remains of the stage were collapsing around the metal m
an as it tried to find the purchase it needed to pull itself up.

  Walking past the end of the orchestra pit, Anubis hauled himself up onto the stage near where Sarah Stanton was standing. Every movement was agony, and he wanted nothing more than to find someplace where he could lay down and sleep.

  Instead, he pulled himself to his feet and walked unsteadily towards the girl. Standing next to her was Vincent. He wondered what bad advice he was giving her now.

  The old man took a step toward him, and he held up his hand. “Not now,” Anubis said firmly, and the man stopped in his tracks.

  “Sarah Stanton,” Anubis said. He was still trying to use the deep voice he had mastered to strike terror in his foes, but what came out of him sounded wavering and unsure.

  She stepped forward with a look in her eyes that said she was clearly unafraid of him. “What do you want? If you've come to try to steal me away, I can assure you that I won't go quietly.”

  Anubis grabbed Sarah's arm and pulled her close to him. “Trust me,” he whispered into her ear.

  Sarah looked up at him with a furrowed brow. “Why should I?”

  He gave a quick nod in the direction of Doc Dynamite and the White Knight. “Because I don't want to let them get their hands on you.”

  Sarah tried to pull her arm free, and Anubis was surprised to find that he still had the strength to hold onto her. Sarah seemed shocked as well. “Let me go!”

  He looked at Sarah again and shook his head. He had made many sacrifices by becoming one of the Children, and many more while he had waited for the right moment to strike. Now he realized that the right moment would never come. And while Eschaton had been planning and plotting, there hadn't been lives at stake. But now the madman's plans were being put into action, and people were dying.

  Whatever fate Eschaton had in mind for the girl, it certainly wasn't one that Anubis could ignore. Now was the moment to strike, and it always had been.

  “Bring her down here,” Doc Dynamite yelled to him. “We need to go.”

  Anubis looked back at Sarah. “Did you have a plan,” she asked, “or am I supposed to let you continue to manhandle me until you come up with something?”