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

by Andrew P. Mayer

  He was in no condition to fight against two villains. Maybe it was time to take the girl and run…

  But his need to choose was postponed as the ground shuddered underneath him. The man in the insect costume was driving his chisels into the stage, forcing it to collapse around the Automaton.

  The mechanical man was attempting to swat the Steamhammer, but he proved surprisingly adept at avoiding the creature's attacks. Or perhaps the machine had simply sustained too much damage.

  The Steamhammer stepped under a metal arm and drove the chisels deep into the creature's shoulder, and after an instant the arm dropped away entirely.

  “Good boy!” Vincent yelled out.

  Sarah pulled her arm free and pressed her hand over her mouth. “No, Emilio! Leave him alone!”

  The Colossus freed his remaining arm from the curtain and took another swat at the Steamhammer. Emilio crossed the chisels and managed to catch the limb between them, even as the force of it knocked him down to the floor.

  “That's going to be bad,” he heard Vincent say behind him. “Very bad, I think.”

  There was a thundering vibration that threw everyone to the ground, and the chisels and arm shattered simultaneously.

  When Anubis looked up, he saw that the Steamhammer was no longer moving. The Automaton helplessly flailed its remaining stump.

  Doc Dynamite picked himself up off the floor and pulled out another stick of explosive—larger than the one he had used previously.

  “Dynamite! You need to stop! You'll kill the Steamhammer,” Anubis yelled at him. The man was clearly not concerned with anyone's survival, even his own—although somehow he always managed to end up coming out of his explosions unscathed.

  The Doc lit the fuse and looked up at him. “Go to hell, jackal,” he said.

  But before he could throw it, a red-headed woman appeared behind him. “You go to hell,” she said, and shoved Doc Dynamite's arm. “That's my brother.”

  The stick flew only a short distance through the air before vanishing into the tangle of instruments and machinery in the orchestra pit.

  “Run, Emilio!” Sarah screamed, but before anyone could manage to take more than a single step, the dynamite exploded.

  Anubis huddled himself into a ball, his hands wrapped around his head, praying that nothing sharp would strike him as a storm of metal and wood flew through the air. The stage underneath his feet buckled from the blast, and pieces of the shattered instruments rained down around them with the occasional strangled musical note.

  After a few seconds, Anubis looked up, his attention caught by the sound of splintering and cracking that seemed to becoming from all around.

  The Pneumatic Colossus was thrashing its broken limbs furiously, trying to free the remains of its shattered body from the stage by any means possible. It succeeded in flipping itself over, and propped a stump up onto the stage.

  Just as it rose up, there was an ominous groan. This time not only the stage, but the foundations beneath it gave way. As the ground crumbled, the Colossus disappeared from view, tumbling down into the bowels of the theater.

  The man in the Wasp costume was nowhere to be seen.

  Anubis turned to see the Stanton girl running past him toward the massive hole. Almost without thinking, he reached out and grabbed her, his fingers gathering up a handful of her dress. “Stop.” She jerked to a halt, letting out a strained gasp as her own clothes forced the air out of her lungs. “It's too dangerous.”

  She turned to him with fury in her eyes. “Who do you think you are?” She reached out and slapped his face, though it didn't do much except startle him underneath the leather. He had half expected her to knock him unconscious. “Now let me go!”

  “Only if you promise not to hurt yourself.” He was trying to be gentle with her, but it was getting more difficult to do anything with control.

  “I'll make no promises to you.”

  Vincent stood. There was blood on the white sleeve of his costume where a chunk of flying metal had bitten into his arm. “I think you should let her go.”

  Anubis waited a moment, considering the possibilities, but he needed allies more than enemies, and he released his grip.

  “Thank you, Vincent,” Sarah said, “I appreciate that.”

  “But he's not wrong. You do need to be careful, young lady,” the showman added.

  Now that he had a moment to compose his thoughts, Anubis looked out into the audience, seeking out his two “allies.” He found the White Knight almost immediately. The man was crawling along the floor toward the exit, his suit badly tattered. By the way he was moving, he was either hurt or had yet to recover from the explosion.

  Doc Dynamite and the red-haired girl were both still flat on the floor, and were completely unmoving—knocked out cold or dead and cooling.

  “I think we should get off of the stage before the rest of it collapses,” Vincent said with great weariness in his voice, and jumped down.

  Anubis tried unsuccessfully to stifle a grunt of pain as he landed on the ground.

  Sarah followed, demurely showing off her skills in skirt manipulation— she descended in a manner that made it appear as if jumping off of stages was exactly what dresses were designed for.

  Sarah reached out and touched Anubis's arm, but he yanked it away. “You're hurt.”

  “A little,” he said gruffly. “Someone hit me in the head—twice,” Anubis reminded her, surprised at his own petulance.

  “I'm beginning to feel sorry about that, but at the time it seemed you were with the Children of Eschaton, and…”

  He held up his hand and dropped his voice to a whisper. “And the longer they continue to think that, the better it will be for all of us.” He looked around again.

  “But how long can you fool Eschaton?”

  The girl was smart, just as the Sleuth had been…But perhaps he could do more for her than he had managed to do for him. “I don't need you. You're only a trophy. Eschaton wants the mechanical man's heart most of all.”

  Sarah stared into his mask, managing the most passable imitation he had ever seen of someone looking straight into his eyes. “You'll have to kill me before I'd give it to him. You know that, don't you?”

  “I don't know anything,” he said looking away. She couldn't have seen his real face, and yet he still felt embarrassed and exposed. The pain was weakening him, letting more of the man under the mask leak out…

  “I don't mean to interrupt,” Vincent said, clearly intending to interrupt them, “but Emilio is missing, and I think we need to find him before the Automaton finds us.”

  “First we take care of the injured,” Anubis growled back. If he spoke slowly, he could manage to almost sound as if he were unhurt.

  Walking over to where Doc Dynamite and the girl lay on the floor, he saw blood spattered across the ground. The cowboy seemed to be unpierced. Anubis grabbed Doc Dynamite's shoulders and rolled him over. The man let out a loud groan. “Now that's what I call a ride.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “If I still got two arms and two legs, then yeah.”

  Anubis nodded and stood. Sarah had already reached the girl. “Oh no,” she said. “No!” she said again, the panic in her voice rising as she dropped to her knees.

  Anubis kneeled beside Sarah, in front of the fallen woman. There was blood on her face, pouring out from a ragged cut that ran from her cheek to her mouth.

  He was glad that the Italian girl was still unconscious. He knew that waking up with a wound like that would be no kindness to her, and would leave a permanent scar.

  Doc Dynamite's gruff voice came from behind him. “That the whore what ruined my aim?”

  Sarah looked up with an expression of pure anger, but before she could open her mouth to speak, Anubis stood up in front of her, blocking the cowboy from reaching her or the girl. “She's hurt. Perhaps you could take a moment to…”

  He felt a pair of hands in his side, pushing him out of the way. “Whatever you
used to get Jack and Eschaton to buy your lies, it don't work on me.”

  Anubis shifted his weight and grabbed the man's arms. It was a weak attack, and if he had been fighting an opponent with genuine martial skills, they would have laughed at his graceless form and broken free, but the cowboy's skills were all bullets and bombs. Anubis shoved him backwards. “Leave her alone.”

  “I warned you,” the cowboy said, yanking his arms down and managing to tear free from his grasp with nothing more than brute force. Anubis cursed himself silently in his head—that should never have been able to happen.

  By the time he could respond, Doc Dynamite had already pulled out his pistol and was waving it at him. “I should do everyone a favor and shoot you both.”

  Sarah's look of defiance only grew sharper. Anubis had great respect for the girl, but he knew Doc Dynamite wasn't bluffing: he'd rather shoot than to have to put his iron away cold.

  Anubis was about to tell the Stanton girl that she needed to be quiet when someone else spoke out. “Good God man, haven't you done enough damage?”

  The old man took a dramatic pose and held up a hand to punctuate his points. “What's wrong with you people? Threatening defenseless women?” He pointed a finger at Doc Dynamite and leaned in toward him. Doc Dynamite just smiled in response. It was a curious, tight-lipped grin. “I was a villain myself back in the day, but I had more sense than…” His speech was cut off by the sound of a gunshot.

  Anubis didn't know much about the cowboy's past, but he did know that the man had indeed been an actual doctor, and his surgical precision remained with him. The bullet wound in Vincent's chest was slightly to the right of center—perfectly placed so that the lead projectile would miss the sternum and pierce his heart.

  A cold look of shock came over Vincent's face when he realized that his time was over—his expression a tragic mix of helplessness and resignation. “Oh my,” the showman said, and then dropped to the ground.

  The cowboy turned the gun on Sarah. “Now, do either of you have any more you want to say, or are you going to shut your mouths and come with me?”

  Sarah's lips were pressed so tightly together, it almost seemed as if she were smiling.

  Normally this would have been the exact moment that Anubis would have chosen to strike, plucking the gun out of the villain's hand faster than he could pull the trigger. And if he could have done so confidently, he would have. But after all the blows he had taken, he could no longer be sure of his reflexes. “Eschaton wants her alive,” was all he could think to say.

  “I don't think he actually cares all that much for this little thing anymore, ‘specially now her daddy's dead.”

  “What?” Sarah said. “What did you say?”

  The smile that appeared on Doc Dynamite's face was so deeply satisfied that it looked like the man was in love. It was as if he had just stepped into a warm beam of summer sunshine on a cold winter's morning, and it pulled the scar on his cheek into a tight white line. “Nobody told you? You're an orphan now.”

  Sarah shook her head, her eyes wide. “You're lying.”

  “Sorry to be the bringer of bad news, darling. The White Knight gutted him, and Eschaton buried him. Happened a few days back. Anubis'll tell ya.”

  She turned and looked at him, judging him. “You knew?”

  Anubis had always suspected that the cowboy took pleasure in the pain of others, and here was the proof. He nodded and looked away. “The Industrialist is dead.”

  Dynamite pulled the hammer back and pointed his revolver straight at her head. “Now come on, little lady. You wanted to be a Paragon so damn bad, and here's your chance. So why don't you show me how the Industrialist's little girl is going to get revenge for her dead daddy?”

  “This isn't necessary.” Anubis tilted his head forward. Perhaps he could bully the man into…

  Dynamite turned to look at Anubis just long enough to throw him a threatening glare. “I'll get to you, jackal. There's words need to be said between you and I, but you can sit tight until I'm done with the girl.” He wobbled the gun slightly to emphasize his point.

  Sarah was visibly quivering with frustration, anger, and rage, and Anubis could see that tears were forming in the corners of her eyes. “Damn you!” she shouted at him, but she made no other move.

  Doc Dynamite started to laugh. “That's all right, sweetheart. You tell the doctor where it hurts.” His laughter came out with a rasping sound, and for a moment it blended almost perfectly into the rumbling cacophony that was slowly rising up from the stage. Dynamite fell silent as the noise continued to grow.

  After a few seconds, it became more organized, transforming from a deep rumble to a discordant jumble of notes and booms, almost like the noise an orchestra would made as it tuned up for a performance. The Pneumatic Colossus was rising up from the orchestra pit. It spoke with a voice that sounded like pure anguish. “STAY…SAFE!”

  As the machine rose up, a cloud of bright steam poured out from the gleaming pile of metal that made up its body. The head was still mostly the same, although its eye sockets now each contained the head of a cherub. The body underneath was even more monstrous, and seemed to have been pulled together from almost random elements from the pit. It was still vaguely human in form, but built from a disturbing mosaic of instruments and mechanical animals. Rows of metal wings flapped along its shoulders, and one arm ended in the snapping jaws of a rhino's head. “STAY…SAFE…SARAH!” it said, louder this time.

  “Keep away!” Doc Dynamite yelled back at it, jumping behind the girl. She struggled to fight him off, but the cowboy wrapped an arm tightly around her waist, pointing his gun directly at her head. “Now back off, or I swear I'm gonna send your girlfriend straight to hell.”

  The mechanical man leaned over and reached out its arm. A rhino head peered at them, steam pouring from its mouth.

  Now that it was closer, Anubis could see where the Colossus's head was altered from the original design: the faceplate had been split into crude sections, and the thick hoses that had once connected it to its source of steam and gas now ran out from underneath the metal skull and across its body, wrapping around a framework of pipes.

  There was a mouth underneath its head, and it moved when it spoke. “I,” it said in a rumble of steam and woodwind glissandos, “WILL…KILL YOU.”

  “You already woulda if you coulda,” Doc Dynamite replied, “but I've got the girl.” Anubis almost admired the cowboy's bravado, but he wasn't sure it would save him this time.

  Sarah kicked and struggled, clearly sure that Dynamite wouldn't kill her while she was his hostage. “Tom! Don't worry about me, I'll…”

  There was a sickly sounding crack as the bottom of Doc Dynamite's revolver landed hard against the side of Sarah's head. It was another blow applied with medical precision—her eyes fluttered closed, and her head lolled to one side. “That's better,” he said, dragging her limp form farther away from the stage.

  “Now, monster, if you want to see your girlfriend alive again, I need you to back off.”

  The creature rose up higher, extending up from the orchestra pit on a column of pipes and wires. It leaned forward on its odd, snakelike body, closing the distance between them.

  Anubis's mind was racing. He should have tried to disarm Doc Dynamite when he had the chance. But his inability to act had allowed things to spiral out of control. If he tried now and failed, the consequences could be far, far worse—for both him and the girl.

  The ground underneath their feet began to shake, and Anubis grabbed onto one of the theater seats to steady himself. At first he thought the quaking had been something caused by the Colossus, but it continued to grow in intensity, and even the Automaton seemed to be having trouble maintaining his balance. Metal bird wings and other pieces of the scrap that he had used to construct his body were sliding off like scales as the edge of the pit started to collapse, and he had to extend his neck higher and higher to keep his head aboveground.

  Doc Dynamite was d
oing his best to hold onto Sarah, but he was being similarly overwhelmed by the vibrations. Seeing his opportunity, Anubis jumped at him.

  His legs betrayed him, and he landed short of his target. Anubis reached out desperately for the gun, and when he felt his hand close around the barrel, he thanked God for at least one bit of luck today.

  Two shots barked out, close enough to make his ears ring, and he could feel the heat of the shot through his gloves.

  He gave the weapon a yank to the side, and it pulled free from Doc Dynamite's hand.

  His first instinct was to throw the gun away. Anubis had a strong distaste for the way a pistol could give the cold confidence of a murderer to the weakest man, but unfortunately, today the weakest man was him. He took the weapon and pointed it directly at Doc Dynamite's head. “Enough!”

  “All right, partner,” the cowboy said. He raised his hands up into the air, letting the girl crumple to the floor at his feet. “But last time I checked, you and I were supposed to be on the same team.”

  Someone screamed out Sarah's name, and he glanced over to see the Steamhammer running toward her, ripping off the mask to reveal Emilio underneath.

  “I stop the monster!” he yelled.

  Unable to help her with the remains of his shattered metal arms, the Italian began to pull off the suit as quickly as possible, the ornate boiler on his back landing on the floor with a clank.

  There was a blur of motion in the corner of his eye, and Anubis looked back in time to see Doc Dynamite's hand coming toward him.

  Anubis jumped back and landed with a wobble. “Don't make me shoot you.”

  “You're not a killer, boy. And that's too bad for you.” Doc Dynamite took a step forward. “And even if you were, you have no idea how much explosive I got underneath here. One wrong shot and,” he held up his fist and popped his fingers open. “Boom!”

  The cowboy, moving closer, slapped the gun out of Anubis's hand, sending it skittering across the floor toward the orchestra pit.

  Both men leapt after it, but it was obvious to Anubis even as he flew through the air that he wouldn't be the one to reach it first. He had been sloppy, and now he was paying the price.