Guys his size were usually conceited enough that a bit of flattery was all it took to put them off balance. Under ordinary circumstances, she might have tried to sweet talk her way past him.
But she was in a hurry.
She reached the top of the stairs and moved directly toward him.
“Hey.” He reached out to grab her. “You can’t—”
Rytha slipped under his outstretched arm, grabbed him by his jacket’s lapels, and smashed her knee into his crotch. The thug doubled over with a wheezing squeak, and as his weight pitched forward, she used the momentum to fling him headlong down the stairs. By the time he tumbled to the bottom, he was out cold.
31… 32… 33…
Tibble’s office was located down the hall behind an unlocked door. Rytha entered, locked herself inside, and went straight to the heap of papers that took up nearly half of the desk. An unrepentant packrat, he never threw anything away, especially if it seemed like it might eventually prove useful blackmail material. One by one, she rifled through the various documents, records, notes, and letters, some recent, others several weeks old.
48… 49… 50.
She stopped counting. Tibble wasn’t likely to go more than halfway. If she got lucky, he’d try to catch her outside the front door.
Several shouts rang out from the stairwell, followed by footsteps.
Not so lucky.
Come on, damn it! Where is it?
The door handle rattled as she happened upon a long list of names and addresses; at a glance, it looked like one of the worker lists he compiled every month or so to keep tabs on his employees. Tibble wasn’t the trusting type. He liked to know everything he brought under his roof.
Something heavy bashed against the door. Confused, angered shouts went up on the other side. Tibble’s voice sounded through the din, saying something about a key.
She shoved the list into her coat pocket and turned to the window behind the desk. For a frightful moment, the rusty latch held fast, but she managed to pry it loose. The window opened high enough for her to step onto the ledge outside. She took a deep breath and eased herself through the opening.
The ledge, only a few inches wide, stretched the length of the wall before it reached the ornate stonework that ran up and down the building’s corners. Standing some twenty feet above the alleyway below, Rytha thought better of dropping down to the stone pavement. She inched along the ledge toward the back corner of the building, her back pressed firmly against the wall and her fingers digging into the narrow gaps between the brickwork.
This was a bad idea.
She almost fell twice, but managed to reach the corner before Tibble stuck his head out the window and spotted her.
“She’s on the ledge! Get out to the alley! Take the back door!”
Rytha grabbed one of the stone figures on the corner and swung her body around it to grab the other side. Once she had a firm grip, she lowered herself down to the next bit of stonework. She got as far as the second story when she felt confident enough to hop down. The distance was farther than she thought, but she kept her balance when she hit the ground and avoided rolling her ankles on the uneven cobblestones.
One of Tibble’s goons burst through the building’s back door before she even took a step.
Shit.
She ran.
Another thug joined the first as they gave chase. She sprinted to the next intersection and turned right, cutting back toward Blackoak. It wasn’t a busy street, but she hoped there would be enough foot traffic that she could lose her pursuers, or at least cross paths with enough witnesses to discourage them.
She emerged onto Blackoak as a large wheelbox rolled by, its rubberized tracks clanking along the street while the voidsteam boiler hissed loudly. The carriage, a converted horse-drawn model, tottered along behind it looking ready to fly apart upon contact with the next pothole.
Rytha veered toward the carriage and lunged for the luggage rack protruding from its backside. Her fingers closed around a metal bar and the carriage half dragged her for about a dozen yards before she found a foothold and hoisted herself onto the thing. Gasping for air, she glanced over her shoulder at Tibble’s men making a valiant attempt at keeping up the chase, but they couldn’t match the wheelbox’s speed and quickly fell behind. They followed for about a block before giving up and bending over to catch their breath.
Maybe next time, boys.
After riding for a few blocks, she hopped off the carriage when it slowed to traverse a narrow bridge. She crossed the footbridge and turned south toward the rail lines.
Once certain she wasn’t being followed, she pulled the sheet of paper from her coat pocket and scanned the long list of names.
She found what she was looking for about a third of the way down the roster.
Durgatine, Senantha. 3145 Eisolla Street, unit 26.
Eisolla Street wasn’t too far away.
If she got lucky, maybe Senantha would still be there.
If she got real lucky, maybe Weldon would be there too.
The apartment building near the tracks on Eisolla Street looked newer than Rytha expected. Most of the neighboring structures were at least twenty or thirty years old, scarred by the gas pipelines that traced across nearly every section of the walls. Some of the pipes even crossed windows or jumped from one building to the next. The apartments nearest the tracks, however, showcased a newer architectural style and aesthetic. Only a few exhaust stacks peeked up through their roofs, most of them artfully incorporated into the metal skin that protected the highest ledges from erosion and corrosive rain.
She stepped into the lobby and found a young man half-asleep behind the reception desk. A cheap, paper-cover book sat splayed open next to his coffee cup. His hand concealed most of the book’s title, but she could make out the almost naked woman armed with a sword on the cover.
“Excuse me?”
The receptionist jerked to attention so abruptly that he nearly fell out of his chair. He swept the book off the desk, spilling the remainder of his coffee in the process. The black liquid splashed onto his arm as he shoved the book into a drawer.
“Hope I’m not interrupting anything?”
“No, no, of course not.” He wiped futilely at his wet arm. He looked her over twice, the first time lingering on her chest, the second on the revolver holstered at her side. “How can I, umm, help you, ma’am?”
Ma’am? So much for looking younger.
“I’m looking for a girl that lives here,” she said. “Goes by the name of Senantha.”
The receptionist shook his head.
“I’m sorry, I can’t give tenant information out to just—”
“Listen, kid.” Rytha pushed her coat back enough to expose the revolver fully. “We can do this one of two ways. You can answer my questions like a good, law-abiding citizen with nothing to hide or I can haul your skinny ass down to the clink while the rest of the constabulary tears this shithouse apart to find out what’s got you so tightlipped.”
She mustered her most menacing glare as she spoke, but she needn’t have bothered. The kid looked ready to piss himself before she even finished.
“R… room 26,” he said. “Second floor.”
“You seen her lately?”
“Not for a while, no.”
“Anybody come by to see her that you know of?”
“There used to be this guy. She brought him home with her a lot.”
Rytha produced the photograph.
“This him?”
The receptionist nodded.
“When’d you see him last?”
“A week or so, maybe?”
A week? Now we’re getting somewhere.
“You got a key to room 26?”
Another nod.
“Better go get it.”
Rytha knocked three times before she slid the key into the lock and opened the door.
The apartment smelled of death and raw sewage. Black curtains blotted out the windows and
the electric lights dangling from the ceiling burned too dimly to cut through the darkness.
Covering her mouth with her sleeve, she stumbled across the room and ripped one of the curtains down to let in some light.
When she turned around, she wished she’d kept the curtain in place.
Oh no…
A tangled mass of rubber tubes and electrical wires ran from a small voidsteam motor in the corner of the room to the iron framed bed, where they fed into a young woman’s mangled body. Bits of metal protruded from her flesh, and one of her arms had been sawed off and replaced by a crude facsimile fashioned from steel rods, gears, and strips of leather. A foul mixture of blood, urine, and feces stained the tattered bed sheets beneath the body. Judging from the stench and the coloration of the skin, the poor soul had been dead for several days.
She moved closer to the bed to examine the body, careful to avoid disturbing the wires and spare bits of machinery strewn across the floor. The woman’s skull had been cut away to replace her left eye with what looked to be a small camera lens.
One of the wires running from her head led to a mimeograph machine beside the bed. Rytha looked at the paper protruding from the device.
He is here. I can feel his touch. Taste his breath. He is everywhere. In everything. In all of me. He can see. Can feel. Can hear. But cold. So cold. Like ice. Pushing deeper. Stabbing. It hurts. It. Hurts. Hurts. It. He. I. Hurts. Hurtshurtshurtshur……ts……hurts…he…hur…no…Weldon…no…nonononononononononononono…help…stop…Weldon…hel…
Rytha staggered away from the mimeograph, stomach roiling and head spinning. She closed her eyes and took a series of short breaths through her mouth to steady her nerves. After a few minutes, she felt calm enough to open her eyes again, but was careful to turn away from the wretched thing on the bed.
She rummaged through Senantha’s closets and cupboards, hoping to find some clue that might explain her horrible fate. It didn’t take long for her to uncover a small keepsake box tucked into the corner of her bottom dresser drawer. Inside, she found a diary. A cursory glance through the pages yielded several mentions of Weldon, all from his carousing days at Tipple’s. Most of the entries were useless, simple daydreams of a naïve girl with far less sense than looks. She clearly loved Weldon, or at least loved his money, and believed he would come back for her one day. When he stopped coming around Tibble’s nearly six months ago, she was crushed.
A folded piece of paper divided the older entries from the new. She removed the paper and unfolded it to read over the short, typed message. There was no mistaking Weldon’s signature below it.
Discard the jewels. Melt the gold.
Forsake the leeches. Deny the flesh.
Repent and be saved. Refuse and be damned.
I am waiting. I am ready.
Time is moving.
He is coming.
Subsequent entries proved far more troubling. After the letter arrived two weeks ago, Weldon started visiting her apartment, and their formerly sexual relationship gave way to a deeply spiritual one. Details remained sparse, but Senantha kept coming back to Weldon espousing some pathway to true enlightenment. Some experience during his absence had changed him, she claimed, and the idea that she might undergo the same experience excited her in ways she never imagined possible.
The last, cryptic entry was only a few days old.
He is near, but I cannot see him.
He is close, but I cannot touch him.
He whispers, but I cannot hear him.
Tomorrow, Weldon will show Him to me.
Tomorrow, He will find me.
Tomorrow, I will touch the iron face of God.
He is coming.
Rytha closed the diary and stepped out of the room, locking the door behind her. When she returned to the lobby, the young man looked relieved to see her alone.
“No luck?” he asked.
She tossed the key onto the desk.
“Nobody home. I’ll try again later.”
The receptionist said something else, but she didn’t stop to listen, instead walking through the main doors and onto Blackoak Street.
She made it about a block before she ducked into an alley to throw up. The stench of that room seemed to cling to the inside of her nostrils. No matter how much she tried to shake it off, she couldn’t drive away the sight of that ruined body. The final words of Weldon’s letter and Senantha’s diary continued to drift through her mind.
He is coming.
Two letters, two murders.
No… three letters.
Vellorax.
Oh, shit!
The Vellorax estate was located in Cloudview, the newest neighborhood in the city. Wealthy industrialists like Vellorax, the steel magnate Lepek Olegorn, and the voidstone baron Mindrol Pazanscabb invested heavily in its construction so they could finally have a home far removed from Linton’s riotous, frothing masses. Situated atop a massive platform one thousand feet high and supported by a series of steel columns, Cloudview remained accessible only via the skyrail lines.
Rytha had visited Cloudview a few times, but never found it quite as impressive as the press and the politicians liked to make it out to be. While the architectural achievement was certainly praiseworthy, she didn’t see what made it any more special than the gated estates that used to cover the city’s wealthier boroughs.
The skyrail line terminated at Cloudview Gate station on the platform’s southern end. A group of armed guards waited inside to check everyone’s identification. Rumor had it that any scamps caught trying to sneak past them got tossed over the side, but she didn’t put much stock in the story. Even so, the guards took their jobs seriously, diligently checking each and every passenger’s identity before allowing anyone to pass through the gilded archway that led out of the station. Normally, someone of her standing wouldn’t be permitted entry, but Vellorax had wisely added her to the authorized visitor list, so the guards let her in without much hassle.
She thought about asking them if Weldon had passed through recently, but knew they wouldn’t answer, and didn’t have enough kopeks to bribe one out of them.
A short ride in a wheelbox carriage taxi brought her to the front gate of the Vellorax estate. Surrounded by a series of well-landscaped gardens, the whole place took up the equivalent of about six city blocks. The mansion looked like a castle inspired by some child’s fairytale. Brilliant shades of red, gold, green, and blue adorned the walls, parapets, and spire-crowned rooftops. It hardly seemed to match the personality of the woman who financed its construction.
Maybe that was the reason for the divorce.
She rang the bell next to the gate and waited.
No answer.
She rang again.
No answer.
Dammit.
Carefully, Rytha climbed the gate’s gilded railing and dropped onto the estate grounds. No one seemed to be around. No guards, no groundskeepers, nobody.
She headed for the mansion.
The front door, which stood almost ten feet high, was ajar. Rytha peeked inside and found a butler’s body sprawled across the marble floor, a thick puddle of blood pooled around his head.
She drew her revolver and stepped through the doorway. Several corridors and staircases branched off from the immense foyer, each one doubtlessly leading to a different wing of the vast mansion. Searching them all might well take hours, provided she didn’t get lost in the process.
A woman’s scream tore through the air from upstairs.
Vellorax!
Rytha bounded up the nearest staircase and followed a hallway leading into the mansion’s western wing. She found two more servants along the way, one bludgeoned like the butler, the other stabbed and left to bleed out. The hallway veered to the left and opened into a large circular room covered by a glass ceiling. Three well-dressed security men stood outside the double doors opposite the hallway.
As soon as they spotted Rytha, they reached for the pistols at their sides. She level
ed her revolver at them.
“Don’t move!”
They ignored the warning and drew their weapons.
Shit.
Rytha fired, hitting one of the men in the neck before he could raise his gun, but the other two opened up before she could shoot at them.
She dove behind a lounge chair as bullets shattered the wood paneling on the wall behind her. They fired again, the second volley punching through the chair and nearly striking her shoulder. When they paused, she leaned around the chair, took aim, and squeezed off a shot. The high caliber round caught one of the men square in the chest, sending him staggering back against the door as he choked on the blood pouring into his lung.
The final gunman ran for cover, firing as he went. His poorly aimed shots whizzed over Rytha’s head as she slid over to the other side of the chair. Her new vantage point gave her a good view of her target and she caught him in the thigh, which sent him stumbling to the floor before he could reach his intended cover. He hit the ground hard and lost his grip on the pistol.
She rushed forward, kicked the gun away, and pointed the revolver at the wounded gunman.
“What the hell is going—”
The words dried up in her throat when she got a closer look at the man’s face. A thick, white film covered his bloodshot eyes and a tangled pattern of blue blood vessels stood out beneath his pallid skin. A metal device about the size of a teacup protruded from the back of his skull, the scalp around it shorn. Six rivets held the device firmly in place. Every few seconds, it gave of a tiny puff of smoke.
A voidsteam engine?
Before she could decide what to make of the thing, the gunman tried to stand.
“Stay down,” she said. “I won’t tell you again.”
He struggled to one knee and lunged for her.
Rytha fired. The bullet tore through his skull and shattered the metal device. The gunman dropped to the ground limp.
She looked at the other corpses. Similar devices stood out on the back of their skulls, bolted securely to the bone. Rytha took up one of their guns and shoved it into her coat pocket.
Distant Worlds Volume 2 Page 9