Hearts of Smoke and Steam

by Andrew P. Mayer

  Anubis could feel the splash, and he expected to next feel the acid eating into his flesh, but there was no burning sensation, just the stink of kerosene rising up into his nose.

  Realizing that he was unhurt a moment before Prescott did, Anubis lashed out with his staff. The blow struck the other man square in the stomach, and Prescott tumbled backwards onto the huge bed, tearing out one of the curtains on his way down.

  The Hydraulic-man attacked again, but this time Anubis was ready for the assault, and he stepped deftly out of the way. The stream travelled through the air, landing on a nearby vase of porcelain “flowers,” the blossoms all closely modeled after female anatomy. The pot smoked for a moment, then shattered into a shower of breasts and genitals.

  “Leave me alone!” Prescott cried as he clawed at the bed, dragging himself over to the other side. The sheets became tangled in his costume, and he fell onto the floor with a thump. When he stood, a large bolt of silk had attached itself to his shoulder, forming an ungainly cape.

  “It's time for Anubis to judge you, Chadwick Prescott!”

  Prescott pulled off the sheet and twisted it in his hands. “Judge me? Don't be ridiculous!” The tone of fear was replaced by one of outrage. “I paid Eschaton good money for this costume, and it belongs to me.”

  Anubis knocked the man out of his outrage by jumping onto the bed and shoving the end of his staff into the man's chest. It knocked enough of the air out of Prescott's lungs to make him gasp. “That's not my business. You have stolen what is not yours.”

  When the man looked up at him, there was a mix of anger and terror in his eyes. “So you're Eschaton's errand boy, is that it?”

  Angered by the comment, Anubis raised up his staff to strike the man again. Prescott cringed reflexively. It was satisfying to watch the swagger drain out of him, and Anubis held the blow for a moment.

  But there was some truth to what the man was saying. He was here carrying out Eschaton's orders. Was he still working in the service of a higher good?

  So far his attempts to undermine the villain had failed. Had he spent so much time trying to infiltrate Eschaton's organization that he had finally become what he had started out pretending to be?

  It was worth considering, but not at this moment. “Take it off, Prescott.” He let the man's name rumble in his throat for effect as he jumped to the floor in front of him. “Do it and I'll let you live. Otherwise I'll rip it off of your dead body.”

  “You can try!”

  Anubis had been waiting for Prescott to drop the sheet and activate one of the buttons on his wrist. But his focus had left him unprepared for a more direct attack, and he was unable to get out of the way as Prescott crashed toward him, bowling him over. As Prescott ran by, he dragged the sheet over Anubis's head, plunging him into total darkness. Perhaps the man wasn't a complete fool…

  If Prescott got away now, there would be hell to pay. He would go to ground again, certainly doing a better job of hiding than he had before. Anubis needed to complete the mission now, or Eschaton would never trust him again—not that he was completely sure if that was still important.

  Anubis stumbled after him in darkness, pulling off the sheet just in time to see the huge stone phallus looming in front him. The Hydraulic-man was hiding behind it, moving his hand down toward his opposite wrist as he prepared to attack.

  Unable to stop himself, Anubis smacked directly into the sculpture. The object was precariously balanced on the two spheres that made up its base, and it began to tip over.

  Focused on the device on his wrist, Prescott was barely able to let out a scream before the huge statue crashed down onto him, pinning him to the floor.

  “Get this damn thing off of me!” Prescott shouted. Anubis smiled. He didn't like relying on fate, but if it came his way, he wasn't going to turn it down. And there was something almost poetic about seeing a dilettante like Prescott trapped by an enormous piece of erotic art. He pointed his staff threateningly at the fallen man. “You will give me the suit!”

  Prescott squirmed once more, and then let out a sigh of defeat. “All right. You've won.”

  After Anubis used his staff to heave the statue off of him, Prescott rolled over and sat up, putting a gloved hand to his face. The moment it touched his skin, he twitched, and he jerked his fingers away—his flesh was red and smoking where the glove had made contact. After a moment, he screamed.

  Anubis looked down to see a growing puddle of smoking liquid around Prescott, and a gouge on the container on his back where the statue had smashed it open. It gave off an unpleasant acrid smell, and he took a step backwards as the puddle rolled towards him.

  Without the ability to see the damage, it took Prescott another moment to realize what was happening. When he did, he looked up at Anubis, his eyes filled with horror. “Help me!”

  Anubis lifted his staff and popped out its barbs, hoping that he could snag the man and drag him out of the deadly pool. The acid was eating into the floor now, sending up a thickening cloud of heavy smoke. If he was going to have any chance of saving him, he would need to act fast.

  Eschaton clearly hadn't been interested in the safety of the wearer when he had created the outfit, and its design didn't do anything to protect its inhabitant from the liquid it contained. Prescott's screams started to rise in pitch.

  “Grab this!” Anubis said, poking his staff toward the desperately flailing man.

  Prescott reached out towards the pole, managing to wrap his smoking hands around it. Anubis tried to tug Chadwick to safety, although he was unsure just how he could truly “save” the poor man, short of throwing him into a river.

  Then, in an instant, something blue flickered and rippled across Prescott's body. Both men were visibly stunned by the speed at which the heat seemed to grow, and the fire was almost invisible until hair and clothing began to burn a bright yellow.

  Anubis jumped to safety. He tried to think of a way to save the burning man, but the fire was ferociously hot, and there was, it seemed, no way to reach the flailing figure. He turned to grab the silk sheet that had fallen a few feet away, thinking that he might smother the flames. But by the time he picked the cloth up off the floor, the screaming had stopped.

  Anubis forced himself to take a last look, and saw that a hot jet of burning vapor was now spraying out from the container on the back of the suit.

  Something clicked in his mind, and Anubis dropped the sheet as he ran past the dying man, racing as fast as he could toward the exit at the far end of the room. He had almost reached the trapdoor when the Hydraulic-man exploded, showering the room with burning liquid, the caustic mixture igniting everything it touched.

  As he dropped down through the floor, Anubis turned to look back at the hidden museum. The paintings had ignited quickly. Coupling nymphs, excited satyrs, and frolicking faeries all were turning black as the flames rose hungrily up across the canvases. It was something out of a Puritan's dream.

  He watched for a few more seconds as the bookcases quickly transformed into burning pyres and the roaring flames shot up the walls. The heat was already intense, and he could feel it growing dangerously hot underneath his leather costume.

  He dropped to the ground as quickly as he could and dashed out of the building. By the time he had run through the offices and back onto the street, the entire structure was ablaze. Someone nearby had already pulled a fire alarm, and he could hear the loud ringing coming from the nearby boxes. It would only be moments before curious onlookers and desperate neighbors would fill the streets. It was time to vanish—quickly.

  Holding up his staff, he fired the grapple toward the sky. It landed on the edge of a nearby roof, and Anubis gave the wire a tug to steady it. Instead of the solid jerk he expected, he heard the sound of breaking metal, and the head of the staff tumbled back to the ground, the metal spine having snapped from where the acid had eaten into it.

  He cursed under his mask as he reeled in the cable. There would be no easy path to the rooftops
tonight.

  He dashed into the shadows, pulling apart his staff as he ran. By the time he had finished putting it away, the roof of the building had collapsed, unleashing a pillar of flame into the sky. He hoped that the fire brigades would arrive before the neighboring buildings caught, although time was not on their side.

  Seeing no other easy exit, he ran out of the alleyway, pushing past a small crowd of surprised onlookers, some of them wearing nothing more than their nightgowns and bath robes.

  He was sure that by tomorrow morning the papers would be full of descriptions of a “man dressed in black, last seen fleeing the scene of the terrible crime.” Hopefully that would be the only details they would remember.

  Reading those papers would also be a number of young gentlemen who would probably breathe a sigh of relief when they realized that, while the fire had destroyed their precious artifacts, it also meant that no evidence of their perversions would have survived the blaze.

  Anubis sprinted for a few blocks until he was sure that there were no longer any prying eyes. Ducking into an alleyway, he squatted down in the darkness and pulled off his mask, inhaling the cool air and wiping the sweat off his face.

  He closed his eyes and rocked back against the wall, gulping in the cool air as he tried to banish the vision of the desperate, burning man that he had just left to die.

  Sneaking up behind the knife-wielding thug, Jack raised his birch cane up high, and then smashed it hard across the back of his opponent's right leg. The boy yelped, stumbled down to his knees, and yelped again. Jack attacked again, giving the thug another blow across his back that sent him face down onto the cobblestones. “Now then,” he said loudly, “I'm hoping that you boys will have the good sense to take advantage of the kind offer we made you, and give us back our home.”

  The gang that had taken over the Children's courtyard during their absence called themselves the Blockheads, and they wore wooden top hats to prove it. Their headgear was, Jack thought, impressively and expertly made—constructed from thin sheets of wood that had been meticulously steamed and bent into the right shape. No easy task…

  Jack hadn't really been surprised to find that there were new residents when they had finally come back to reclaim their abandoned hideaway. The location was hidden, but was also too perfect to go unoccupied for long.

  But this gang had been better organized than he had expected for such a young crew, and getting them to leave was turning out to be a chore. Still, they were proving no match for Jack Knife and his boys.

  The boy on the ground looked up and snarled at him. “This is our turf, you British bastard!”

  “It was ours first!” he said angrily. “And I'm not British!” He hit the downed thug again, this time striking him directly on the top of his wooden hat. The thin wood splintered under the impact of Jack's cane, and when he struck the boy again, the cane left a bloody gash on the top of his head. “Go!” he shouted, and raised his birch stick back up into the air. This time the Blockhead leader scrambled to his feet and ran.

  The most frustrating thing was discovering that they had never needed to leave at all. The Children quickly vacated the space after the incident with the Sleuth, fully expecting the Paragons to come roaring in, looking for revenge. But the invasion had never happened, and a few days later, the old man had burned to death when the Darby mansion had gone up in flames.

  Soon after that, Jack received a cryptic message from Lord Eschaton— but truth be told, he found all the gray man's messages fairly hard to decipher. Between the usual ranting and other gibberish, the note said that the Paragons were no longer a concern, and that Jack and the boys could safely take back their ground.

  Unfortunately, the space had since been occupied by the Blockheads. With the Ruffian still recovering from his failure to stop a group of girls— something Jack still didn't quite believe—he had needed time to gather enough of his boys to take the courtyard back.

  As he watched their leader run, Jack gripped the wood of his cane so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Whacking at people with a club was hardly his style, and his fingers were itching to grab at the knives in his jacket and put the cowardly bastard out of his misery. It wasn't until the thug ran into the maze that the urge passed.

  Looking around him, Jack felt a sense of fatherly satisfaction—the rest of his boys were doing an equally good job of teaching the rest of the young gangsters not to mess with the Children of Eschaton.

  “All right, Blockheads!” he yelled, loudly enough that he was sure everyone could hear. “If you've been too busy to notice, I just whipped the arse of your leader and sent him running away with his tail between his legs.” He unhooked a button of his jacket and let it fall open, revealing the rows of gleaming steel blades secured into the lining underneath.

  Jack smiled. He had their attention now! He dropped his cane to the ground and pulled free a handful of his blades. In rapid succession, he threw five of them, one after another.

  The first four each landed in a different wooden hat, making loud “thunks” as they did so. It was a sound that Jack could only imagine would be well amplified inside their heads.

  The fifth blade whizzed past the face of its target as he twisted out of the way, slashing through his cheek as it went. The man was large—a bearded fellow with a hairy chest so big that it was practically bursting out from underneath his starched white shirt and red velvet jacket. Blood welled out of the wound, pouring down his face, but to his credit, the man didn't make a sound.

  Jack reached into his coat to grab a second handful of knives. “Now, if the rest of you are smart enough to follow your boss's example, I may let you live. But first I want to see you throw those ridiculous hats to the ground.”

  The gang members paused. Jack knew it would be shameful for them to give up the one thing that gave their sad lives meaning in this world. Clearly they needed further encouragement. “I won't ask again, and next time it won't be the wood that I'm aiming for.”

  The large man with the bleeding face bowed his head as he grabbed the rim of his wooden bowler. He lifted the hat off his head and stared at it for a moment. “You like to play with knives,” he said in a soft tone. “So do I.” He flicked his wrist with a practiced motion, sending the hat spinning through the air.

  As the hat twirled, Jack saw the glint of a metallic edge hidden in the brim, and he understood the burly Blockhead's cryptic comment. Jack tried to duck, but even as he started to drop, it was clear that he would not be able to move out of the way in time. Watching death hurtling toward him, Jack felt something close to a sense of peace that he would die from a blade.

  His calmness was interrupted by a black blur inches in front of his face. The object struck the wooden chapeau from the side, knocking it out of the way at the last instant.

  Jack recognized the staff as it clattered to the ground nearby. It belonged to Anubis, and while he was glad to have his head remain in one piece, he wasn't pleased by the thought that he might owe the black-clad man any kind of debt.

  But he'd deal with his rescuer in a moment. His first order of business was to make sure that the rest of the Blockheads understood the mistake their largest member had just made.

  He flung two knives at the bearded man. Unable to dodge a second time, Jack's target took the blades deep in his burly thighs, and he dropped to the ground with a grunt. The hate in his eyes seemed undiminished by the pain.

  “Grab him!” Jack shouted, and two of his men took the big man's arms.

  Jack reached the hobbled Blockhead with only a few long strides. He stared into the angry slits of the Blockhead's eyes and smiled. “I could have killed you just now,” he told him.

  “You should have,” the burly man replied with a deep growl.

  Jack had to admit, despite having a similar physique to the Ruffian, there was something about the depth of the man's intensity that set him apart—it spoke to a skill he could use. “Maybe I don't want you dead…yet.”

  “S'
not how I feel about you,” the Blockhead said, narrowing his glare.

  “That's obvious.” Jack stared back at him quietly for a second, and then looked over to his men. “Tie him up and throw him into one of the huts. Let's give him the big fellow a chance to think about his sins before we punish him.”

  The man said nothing as the Children dragged him away.

  Lifting his arms, Jack turned to the remaining Blockheads and addressed them directly. “Now, if the rest of you can behave yourselves, I'm looking for a few new Children, so come back in a couple of days—empty-handed—and we'll talk.”

  Truth be told, he'd been impressed with the raw abilities of the Blockheads, and after the difficulty he had finding the group he'd put together today, it couldn't hurt to pump up his own ranks. If his instincts were right, and they often were, things were about to get a lot more dangerous for him and the boys, and there wasn't just strength in numbers, there was security as well.

  As the last of the opposing gang members walked out of the courtyard, Jack looked around at his remaining men and nodded. “A good day's work, boys! The Children of Eschaton are back in charge!”

  A tired cheer rose up from his crew. Looking around, he realized that the Blockheads hadn't done much to improve the place. But at least they hadn't done too much to damage it, either. Most of the small shacks were still in place, and the brazier was burning merrily. “Now, let's get this shit-house back in shape.”

  It wasn't until he tried to sit down that he realized what was missing. “Where in the hell is my barrel?”

  “It'th over here,” shouted out a young lad through his missing teeth. Jack looked up to see him pointing to the edge of a trash pile where the barrel had been unceremoniously dumped.

  At least they hadn't burned it. “Well then, Donny,” he said, with a note of displeasure in his voice, “put it back where it belongs.”

  Cutter jumped in and began to clear away the garbage. The man was eager to help, as always. Cutter did everything with gusto, although his almost dwarfish stature made him less useful for tasks that demanded skill and grace. Cutter's skills lay in his almost psychopathic love of knives, although his abilities were quite unlike Jack's. His passion was wielding a blade, not throwing it. And unlike Jack's throwing knives, he liked his long and sharp.