Power Under Pressure (The Society of Steam)

by Andrew P. Mayer

  The door to the office creaked loudly as he opened it. Not loud enough to be heard by the men below, perhaps, but certainly enough to alert anyone inside. Still, he had little time to be stealthy now, and he headed toward the stairs as quickly as he could, urged on by the shouts of the Children outside as they began to piece together what had happened to him.

  Anubis found himself limping as he scrambled down the staircase, but his foot was in surprisingly good condition considering the blood streaming down it. His preoccupation with his physical condition had him almost crash straight into a man with a cleric’s collar who stood on the landing. “Can I help you, my son?”

  “Father,” he said breathlessly, “they’re after me.” He tried to bring his voice down to the bass rumble of Anubis, but without the mask there was really no point. The man already knew the color of his skin.

  “It’s Reverend. Reverend Charles.” The cleric’s shirt was hastily tucked into a pair of riveted jeans. “And who are ‘they,’ exactly?”

  There was a pistol in the man’s left hand, and it was pointed at him. “Bad men, Reverend. They mean to kill me.”

  “In my time I’ve found that men who call other men bad aren’t usually so good themselves.” The Reverend stepped back to take a long look at Anubis. “But I’m more interested in how you managed to end up on my stairs without coming in the front door first. I’d also like to know what the hell you’re wearing.”

  Abraham considered patience to be one of his strengths, but in this case it was already beginning to run out. “That’s a very long story, and one I’d love to tell you if I had the time.” The banging on the church doors was so loud and hard that it sounded like someone was slamming their body against them. “I can only promise you that once they have their hands on me, they plan to do me grave bodily harm.”

  The reverend seemed to be unconcerned by the attack against his church. He narrowed his eyes. “And what have you done that they would wish such ill upon you?”

  It was a good bet that trying to proclaim innocence was not an answer that would satisfy the cleric, but he was running out of time. If God had answered his prayers by sending him this man, he was responding in a very strange way. “I used to run with them, not too long ago.” There was another round of banging. “But now I’m running in the other direction.”

  The man chuckled at that, lowered his gun, and stepped out of the way. “There’s a door in the back, through the kitchen. If you can make it that far, you should be able to escape.” Another crash came from the outside, louder this time. “Go.”

  “Thank you, Reverend.”

  “It’s not the color of a man’s skin, but what’s underneath that counts.” He caught Abraham’s eye as he passed him by. “I hope I’m right about you.”

  Anubis nodded and ran down the stairs. He wondered if the man would have been so eager to let him go if he’d been wearing the full Anubis costume. Perhaps this was the one time where showing his true face had gotten him out of trouble instead of getting him further into it.

  The steps took him down directly into the reverend’s living quarters, and the door he had mentioned was only a few yards away.

  Anubis ran toward it, and was two steps out into the back alley when he heard a tremendous splintering crash from behind.

  The Children had broken in, and for an instant Anubis considered staying to fight. The reverend was armed, but there was no telling what Jack Knife and his men would do to the old man. It was possible they would simply leave him alone and go on about their business, but Clements didn’t seem the type to have much respect for a man of God.

  Still, Anubis was beaten and bruised—hardly in any condition to take on rampaging racist brutes. He took a few more stumbling steps into the alley and heard the shouting begin.

  “This is a house of God!” he heard the reverend yell, his voice projecting the wrath of the Almighty. “You will leave this place in peace!”

  Despite his effective delivery, the men he was attempting to influence were not the type to be easily swayed by an appeal to higher powers. Eschaton had genuine abilities, and he was on earth in the here and now. The gray man’s wrath would certainly be more terrible than any punishment that heaven would be delivering anytime soon. He couldn’t hear exactly what the Southerner was saying, but the guttural laughter of the men was chilling and mean.

  “Stay back! Damn you, heathens!” If the reverend had intended it as a warning, it wasn’t a very good one. A second later Anubis heard the sound of the shotgun’s discharge. At least the man had been smart enough to only shoot off one barrel.

  Before he could think, Anubis found himself heading back up the stairs and into the kitchen. As he passed by the sink he grabbed a wooden rolling pin off of the drying rack. As weapons went it was hardly the most elegant, or the most stylish, but at the very least it was reliable, and close enough to his missing staff that he was hopeful he might get some use out of it.

  The main church was just beyond the living room, and as he opened the door to the sanctuary Anubis could see four men surrounding the reverend. Two of them were dressed in costume.

  “You killed the Pugilist!” The man was dressed in thick leather, and was reaching into a bag at his side with a pair of iron tongs.

  Whoever it was on the floor was unmoving, his hands bound up inside a pair of large metal boxing gloves. From the wounds on his chest he had been the recipient of the reverend’s buckshot.

  “It was God who brought him down. I was only his instrument!” The reverend’s voice was thunder and fury, and Anubis was impressed to see that although the Children of Eschaton might not be believers, at least the White Knight had the good sense to take a step back when presented with such a powerful voice behind a loaded shotgun barrel.

  The man with the tongs drew a glowing plug of metal out of his bag. “This is my instrument, priest.”

  The shotgun barked out a reply of fire and brimstone that knocked the villain to the ground. “It’s Reverend.”

  “Well, Reverend,” the White Knight said, advancing toward him. “It’s just you and me now, and it looks like you’re all outta shots.”

  “But not out of friends,” Anubis said. He ran forward, swinging the rolling pin in front of him.

  The White Knight brought up his hands in time to deflect the blow before it could smash into his head, but he shouted out in pain as the heavy chunk of wood crashed into his arms and shoved him backwards, throwing him off-balance. “There you are. We’ve been looking all over for you.” As Clements pulled off his mask he seemed to be growing taller. “Now I’m finally going to kill you, Negro!”

  Anubis was astonished by the speed and ferocity with which the villain leapt toward him. Despite his weakness and injuries, the attack was clearly superhuman. Anubis was thrown to the floor, the rolling pin spinning from his hands. Before he could react the man’s thick hands were around his neck. The man definitely had grown bigger. This was clearly part of the powers that Eschaton had given him.

  Anubis knew he should have run away and never looked back, and yet in the end it was his kindnesses that defined him. They were what made him a hero.

  Once again the blackness closed in on him, but this time there was no respite. The roaring grew to fill his ears. He had tried to be good, he had even tried to be just, but in the end it was nothing compared to the overwhelming power of human cruelty that was the true legacy of mankind.

  As his thoughts finally disintegrated into darkness, Anubis heard a crack that he was sure must be his neck giving way to the unbearable pressure that had been put to his throat. Then a burning rumbled up his chest to become a desperate, sputtering cough.

  Air flooded into his lungs as his vision swam back into focus. The first thing he saw was the pasty pink of Jordan Clements’s face as he moaned next to him. There was a gash in the side of his head, blood already welling up from the wound.

  Anubis tried to talk, but the only sound he could make was a pitiable, guttural cry.
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  “Time to get up, son,” the reverend said as he reached for his hand. “You were certainly right about them: they were very bad men.” He let the reverend help him to his feet. “I’d still love to hear the story of how you managed to make them so damn angry.”

  Anubis exhaled. He saw the White Knight starting to move despite his brutal wound. There was no way the reverend could know that the man on the floor was no longer simply human. He knew what Clements was capable of, and the White Knight clearly had more control over his abilities than the last time he’d fought him. Looking around the room, he saw the rolling pin on the floor. He stumbled toward it just as the White Knight roared up to his feet.

  “You’re going to pay,” Clements bellowed. “You’re both going to pay.”

  “Dear God, protect me!” the preacher said, backing away from him.

  “That’s right, Reverend, you call on your precious savior. But I’m something new under the sun, and I don’t think he’s ready for me.”

  He took a step forward, and Anubis could feel the ground shudder from his step. “The Negro will have to wait his turn while I send you off to heaven.” The White Knight’s baggy clothing was filling with the villain’s expanding bulk as the man continued to grow.

  Wrapping his hand around the handle of the rolling pin, Anubis stood up. He coughed, and then shouted, “Come on, you white monster. If you want to kill me, now’s the time.”

  What turned to face him was no longer human, but simply a leering smile in the middle of a vast field of dough. The face had grown unevenly, and the grin revealed teeth separated by wide gaps along the gums. “All right, boy, if that’s the way you want it, you go meet God first.”

  Clements plodded toward Anubis. “I know you think you have something in mind. But whatever desperate plan you think is going to save you, it won’t help.”

  As he got closer, Anubis reared back with his rolling pin and looked up. The White Knight towered over him now, arms raised, each hand big enough to crush his entire head.

  Anubis realized that even if he attacked, his swing wouldn’t reach up past the White Knight’s chest. Once again it seemed that he hadn’t had the good sense to simply run away. He made a small prayer to God for forgiveness, and held his ground.

  “I still can’t believe that Eschaton thought you could be purified.” Clements said. “I’ve always known that no matter how much you try, you can’t wash the black off of a nig . . .”

  The sound of the shotgun was deafening as it loosed both barrels. For an instant it seemed that even the Remington might not be enough to stop the monster.

  Clements just stood there, looking stunned. Then he let out a gurgling sigh as his eyes rolled back into his head. He teetered forward slightly before his legs gave way, and the huge man crashed to the floor, revealing that the back of his head was mostly gone.

  Anubis let out a sigh. “Thank you, Reverend.”

  “You came back to help me.”

  Anubis nodded. “I’m stubborn that way. But some people wouldn’t have looked past the color of my skin.”

  The reverend laughed and cracked open the breach on the barrel. “What a man looks like on the outside has never been no never mind to me. I was an abolitionist before the war, and I snuck plenty of men up into the North.”

  The preacher reached down into one of the pews, pulling out a few more shells from underneath a hymnal. Now it was Anubis’s turn to laugh. “I don’t suppose the congregation minds you hiding your ammunition down with the prayer books.”

  He slipped in the second shell, then snapped the Remington closed with a practiced hand. “Not so many people share my enlightened views, so it isn’t very often we fill them enough for anyone to notice. Besides, I’m the only one in the church allowed to carry a shotgun—on Sunday, anyway.”

  Anubis nodded and looked around. He’d lost Nathaniel, and his costume, but he’d somehow survived once again.

  He reached down and picked up the White Knight’s hood.

  “Looks like one a those gentlemen adventurers the papers are always going on about,” the reverend said.

  “A pretender and a villain.”

  The reverend eyed him up and down. “And I suppose you dress up in a costume, as well.”

  Anubis looked down at the ragged outfit he was wearing. He had some older pieces, and at least he still had his chestplate. “Hard to deny it.”

  “What do you call yourself?”

  “Anubis.”

  “Not exactly a Christian name—or,” he said, wagging a finger at the golden ankh on his chest, “a Christian symbol.”

  Faced with the priest’s condemnation he felt duly chided. “That’s why it’s supposed to be a secret identity.”

  “So, what’s next?”

  He pulled the mask down over his face, trying to ignore the scent of the dead man that clung to it. As sweaty as Clements had been, it seemed he’d at least bothered to bathe, and there was a faint scent of lavender behind the sour odor. “How does it look?”

  “If you follow me you can have a look for yourself.” Anubis did as the Reverend asked. They left the sanctuary and headed back into the living area.

  Once inside the living room, the holy man lit a chimney lamp and held it up in front of a mirror. “What do you think?”

  Seeing himself wearing the stolen face of his enemy, he felt as if he had been reborn. The white of the mask would be a good match for his Egyptian skirt.

  “Anubis. Something to do with the underworld, right?”

  Abraham nodded. “He weighed the hearts of dead men, and determined if they were fit to go on to the underworld.”

  “Seems a bit dark for a man wearing a white mask. I’m in the redemption business, myself, and when a man rises up after being saved, I always say it’s time to take on a new name.” He rubbed his chin. “Usually I tell people they should keep it a secret, but in your case, I—”

  “How about Ra?” Abraham said. It had come out of nowhere, but it seemed absolutely right. “That’s the sun god.”

  The reverend made a show of thinking about it, and then nodded. “It’s not the son of God, but for a pagan deity, it just might do.”

  Abraham was already thinking he liked it. He’d have to make a few changes to the costume. First and foremost, he’d need a new mask. Ra was a bird-headed god, but at least he could still carry a staff. He didn’t want to give that up. But being the light-bringer certainly seemed like a better job than being the judge.

  “Now, son, I’ve got three dead bodies on my floor, and I’m going to need a hand cleaning up the mess before my worshippers get here in the morning.”

  Chapter 23: No Joy in Revenge

  CHAPTER 23

  NO JOY IN REVENGE

  Somewhere deep inside his body, Nathaniel felt something like a twinge of guilt as he ran into the Hall of Paragons. He had left Sarah’s suitor standing at the bottom of a very deep hole, and despite strong feelings of jealousy and anger, he had begun to have a grudging respect for the man who had stolen Sarah’s heart. And he suspected that the Italian had taken more than that from her. Possibly her honor, as well . . .

  All the same, there was very little either of them could do from inside a pit, and Emilio had been adamant that Nathaniel go and provide the distraction that would protect Sarah.

  Still, someone should have warned Emilio. Any new hero, when given a power they didn’t fully understand, had a tendency to fall prey to unfortunate circumstances. His own first attempts at flying in the suit Darby had created for him had been full of near misses, and his death-defying stunts had been far more about desperation than grace or planning.

  But the true reason for his guilt was that despite the realization that he would never have her, he still wanted to prove to Sarah that he was worthy of her love. No matter how ruined or ridiculous it was, it was impossible to ignore that he wanted her to believe in him. He had thought his transformation might have made him inhuman enough that he was beyond petty jealousie
s, but his return to the Stanton household had shown him that no amount of “purification” could make him immune to the pain in his heart—even if he wasn’t sure that he actually still had anything like a heart beating in his chest anymore.

  As he ran across the front foyer, the ground shook under his feet again. “What the hell is Emilio doing?” he muttered to himself. The fresco of the ceiling above him had already been damaged by the birth of the Shell, and defaced by the Children of Eschaton, but with the Steamhammer’s attack the few remaining pieces were giving way—collapsing in large chunks, battering Nathaniel with the dusty remains of the idealized Paragons.

  There was a time when that would have struck him as ironic, but as he brushed the plaster off of his transparent skin he realized that the time of those old heroes was now so lost that he could no longer feel much sorrow at their passing. Of all the men who had once stood proudly in these halls and called themselves Paragons, only he and Grüsser were left, and he was hardly the man he used to be.

  Across the room a number of men poured into the Hall. Some of them he vaguely recognized from the trial, the others wore the distinctive jackets that marked them as Jack Knife’s Blades. “If you’re looking to find out what all the trouble is about,” Nathaniel said, reaching down to his side, “you’ve found it.”

  He lifted up an iron flask wrapped in asbestos, and pulled free with his teeth the cork that stoppered it. Even through his smoke-ruined senses he could smell the whisky inside. Opening his mouth wide, he poured the brown spirit straight down his throat. The effect of the strong liquor on his system was almost instantaneous.

  In the days since he had first come into his new powers, the delay from the time he consumed the alcohol until he felt the liquor course through his body and light his nerves on fire was becoming less and less. This was genuine irony, at least: the very same liquid he had once used to dull his senses now inflamed them.

  The last few days in the mansion, Nathaniel had spent his time beginning to learn to “speak” with the quicksilver that lived inside his skin. While it still seemed to act on its own, he had at least managed to get it to pay attention to him from time to time. As the Children rushed toward him, he called the silver up into his arms and ignited it. The flare of heat surged out of him with an almost physical force, and the men threw their hands up over their faces and stumbled backwards, their hair shriveling from the heat. The ones in front crashed into the ones behind, and they all landed in a heap on the floor.