Tesla's Revenge

by Renee Sebastian

  We approached from behind the house and as we rounded some brush, I could see the fire's light haloing the cabin. There was a monstrous mountain lion that seemed to have lost most of its fur with its muscles torn asunder and put back together slightly wrong. It was mouthing a human's putrefied arm, the blood looking black and thick, was smeared across its muzzle.

  I put away my pistol in one pocket and took out my Westinghouse. I flipped the charge on and crept behind Dorian who had taken point. He also had his blood sword out. We both stopped in our tracks when we heard Bea call out, “Come out you son of a bitch! I know you’re out there. You ain't getting' my boy to muck about in his head.”

  As for the boy himself, he was girdled by his monster cat and dog, ready for the opportunity to prove his salt.

  Dorian called out, “Bea, Wendy and I have returned, don't sick your beasts on us.”

  “How do I know the dead head hasn't gotten to ya'?”

  We cleared the corner of the house and slowly approached the ring of firelight. She stood with one of her contraptions in her hand while she held her elephant-killer shotgun in the other.

  Dorian protested, “Bea, we are having a conversation of the most rational sort. I'm not going to kill you, your son, or any of his pets. Please, put down the gun.” It wasn't the gun I was worried about, but rather the contraption in her hand that was spinning like a top.

  She held the gun steady on Dorian as he slowly rounded the corner of the cabin and came into direct view. “Bea, look at me. I haven't suffered any kind of fatal wound that would have caused a death or that could have resulted in me becoming a deader.”

  She elbowed her son and he sent his dog over to sniff us over. Dorian lowered a hand to the beast and the dog, and in turn, they licked his palm. To his credit, he didn't flinch when the cat’s tongue rolled across it. The beast then loped over to where Jeremy was standing.

  “Awe Ma, he's all right. Put down the gun.” She did just that, albeit very slowly, and then I walked into the dying firelight.

  Bea declared, “Guess you are who ya' say yer' are.” She lowered the converted shotgun to rest on the sand and continued by saying “Damn revenants and deaders. We didn't see nothin', 'ceptin' this zombie grabbin' for that fellar you came with.”

  “Where's Tesla, Bea?”

  “Being distracted and all, like we were, I don't rightly know, since my responsibility was leanin' towards protecting my own.” She patted her son's shoulder. She couldn't be more proud of her son, defending their home and family.

  I immediately looked for my carpetbag and took notice of its absence and Tesla's horse. He took my copy of The Metamorphosis! How dare him! He also took all my extra ammunition, besides the obvious magsticks. How trite I thought, as I remembered about how he said he didn't need the sticks in the first place. I suspected he would try this all along, and maybe once we follow the homing device I had placed in it, we can ferret out his secrets.

  I said as evenly as possible, “Bea, I hate to eat and run, but it looks like our time table has been pushed up.” I then said as evenly as I could, “I suppose that I need to take care of my own as well, and rescue Tesla from his own foolhardiness.”

  Bea replied, “That there is a full time business, sister.” She laughed to herself and said, “If you were going to call someone your own, then I would rather call that fine man right beside you your own. Despite all his fancy dress and fancier words, he doesn't seem as foolish as most.”

  I smiled a wry grin and replied, “I'll take that under advisement.” I sneaked a glance at Dorian and he wore a smug expression on his face that I actually found amusing.

  ···•Ͽ Ѡ Ͼ•···

  This was truly a disaster in the making. We were chasing Tesla, who had the Necromancer on his trail. I hoped, for Tesla's sake, that we caught up with said Necromancer, long before we ever got near Tesla. I shared with Dorian on the road how I had placed the homing bot in my bag, and he agreed that he should take the wand and follow its beacon, since he had the better eyesight. I acquiesced and followed behind him at a close clip.

  The horses didn't like trotting in the dark, especially when they never got the good night's rest that they deserved. They were nervous and sweating three hours on our suicide mission. To add insult to injury, the boy was saddled behind me, and he was squeezing my waist with his deceptively strong and boney arms. If I had worn a whale-boned corset, I might have directly fainted off the horse from lack of oxygen.

  I whispered over my shoulder, “Stop gripping my waist so tightly, Jeremy.”

  He whispered back, as quietly as one could over galloping hooves, “I can't, Miss.”

  “Why forever not?”

  “Ain't never rode a horse a'fore.” He made dead beasts to do his bidding and he was afraid of a living one?

  I said as much and his reply was strangely logical when he said, “We never could afford to keep a horse. Now if ya' wanted me to ride a boar or a goat, I'd win the race ever’ time. 'Asides, I can control what the dead 'uns do. It's the live ones that I can't predict.” Wasn't that the way of the world? I surmised that all Necromancers were probably control freaks to some extent or other. Who was I to criticize? I was fretting over the misplacement of a book. Alas, all was not in its proper place.

  Dorian led us towards a river, which probably led to the Falls. It made perfect sense that Tesla would have followed it, as well. The thin moonlight sparkled on its broken surface. It was shallow and must have had many rocks, because the noise made it impossible to be heard over the waters rough slapping and gurgling noises. The noise was a welcomed delight, because I figured that if we couldn't hear them, then they couldn't hear us either. The only problem with this was that I had to rely on Dorian's acute eyesight to warn us of any impending doom. Trust falls hard on immortals.

  We found a dirt road that was parallel to river's banks and traveled on it for about an hour, when the moon finally sunk below the horizon. The boy's grip, thankfully lessened, and I fretted for a moment that he may have fallen asleep. I nudged him with my elbow and he nudged me right back. Not asleep then, good.

  Slowly the dawn made its appearance and by the time the sun had cleared the tree line we had reached the outskirts of the city. As we crested a hill that had been cleared of trees, I looked farther down the path and was surprised to see that the hard packed earth gave way to roads made of compressed pebbles and river rock mined from the region. That road meandered into the city that we each, in turn, surveyed closely.

  The city was encircled with a steel wall with several exits evident from our perspective. I surmised that it was to keep poor gawkers from spying the Falls for free. The city had managed to keep the falls itself clean for tourists. Although outside the city, a series of cesspools filled with silvery swirls of radioactive sludge littered the landscape. The industrial parks spewed their heavy metal vapors that hugged the city in a lover's deadly embrace. To make matters worse, the fumes were trapped by the heavy water vapor from the falls, making the entire city a nightmare to navigate and live within. I have heard that there are places out in the Native Lands in the west where the wind blows hard for several months out of the year. If only Niagara could be so lucky.

  The trapped air vibrated with the eerie blue-white glow of Actinium, which by no coincidence happened to be one of their most famous exports out of the city. The metal has the radioactive glow that when encased in a glass vacuum and suspended from the ceilings, it acted as an effective light source. No way to turn it off though, so it stayed lit day and night.

  They say that the radiation had a medicinal effect, but I say it was just another tourist trap attraction. I'll take the Fiji mermaids and two headed goat gaffs for entertainment any day of the week over this technological quackery. I pulled down my hoodwinks and inserted my respirator. Dorian tried to hand over his spare respirator to Jeremy, but he waved him off.

  Jeremy explained, “Yeah, my Pap used to come through here to visit my uncle sometimes and sell some o
f his shine along the way. Ma' gave me his, 'afore we left. See, it's his old nose plugs and winks.” He dug around in his numerous pockets and pulled out asset of ancient glasses and antiquated nose plugs out, but not before I could see some finger bones pop out accompanied by dark earth that drifted to the ground. He quickly pushed the bones back into his pocket, as if we hadn't seen anything suspicious. Then he slipped his apparatus in and propped the winks on above his brow. Maybe to him it wasn’t odd to carry these sorts of things on their person.

  Dorian and I exchanged concerned glances. What did we really know about Necromancers, anyway? All I knew was that thus far, Jeremy appeared to deal only with animals.

  Dorian said, “Tesla's in the city.” I wondered if the Necromancer must be there too. To be frank, it left me more than a little queasy.

  “You'll have to leave your quadrupeds behind, Master Tallow,” Dorian called over while staring up into the sky. “But keep the bird flying high. We will call it to our hotel room once we are settled.”

  The boy nodded in understanding and then we followed the path into the city.

  ···•Ͽ Ѡ Ͼ•···

  The city was a study in contradictions. Firstly, we had to stable our horses outside of the city where all the noxious gases were, and then we had to pay a substantive amount of money for a city entry tax. Outrageous. Next, we rented a rubber overcoat at the gate store for Jeremy and hats for the both of us. Dorian made due with his leather trench coat, but had to sign some papers waiving his rights to sue the city should he develop skin cancer when he refused to wear a hat. On the other hand, the attendants gave us complimentary scarves with their city logo on it, a stylized abstract of the Falls, with the phrase, “Fall in Love with the Falls.” Fortunately, the gate did not scan anyone for magical items or we might have been detained indefinitely.

  We left the welcome center with the recommendation of a small, but clean hotel with food accommodations that we had no intentions of using. We left armed with a pamphlet of the schedule of tours for the Falls that we did have every intention of using.

  We followed the city map to our first stop of my choosing, a second-hand ammunition shop. I needed some additional ammo, preferably some silver rounds, if I was going to be taking on werewolves at the White House. Not that it actually killed them, but it was said that it smarted them worse than regular lead ones. Besides, I didn't feel safe pursuing Tesla, with a crazed Necromancer on our tails, without a little extra oomph in my chambers.

  Dorian mentioned to us as we walked the relatively empty streets, “Tesla is in a residential section of the city. I wonder what allies he has found in this city to aid him on his quest.”

  I shrugged in response, “It doesn't really matter if he has friends here or not, does it?”

  “No, you’re quite correct, he is here for one purpose and that is where we will find him. The only question is the timing. I think we will have plenty of time to run some errands. Let’s find you some bullets now.”

  Contrary to what Tesla thought, there were more outliers out in the world that used bullets than he cared to believe. It was with this thought that we came along a chain ammunition store called, “Madison's Munitions”, named after Dolley Madison who opened the first store hundreds of years ago to help pay off her sons gambling debts. We walked in and saw a pretty lady behind the counter wearing a period low cut dress with a white, ruffled cap over her hair, as was the customary uniform in this chain of stores.

  Dorian and Jeremy took off to look over the rifles in the display cases. Dorian decided to use this as an educational lesson as he divulged the merits and flaws of each brand to Jeremy.

  The salesperson curtsied to me and said, “How can I help you today, milady?”

  “I need some additional bullets for my pistols, please.” No use asking for additional darts. The ones attached to my Widow under my coat would have to do since I didn't trust others mixing my darts' potions.

  “What were you looking for?”

  “I would like some blended metal, black powder, .32 S&W short bullets. And maybe some silver rounds, if you have them.”

  “We have some short bullets, but neither in the black powder, nor the blended metal style. Also, you will be hard pressed to find any silver bullets. They are outlawed in this state.” Interesting. Well, all right, no silver for me today. I'll have to rely on my silver-alloyed stilettos.

  My disappointment must have been apparent, because she leaned over. Now, if I had been a man, I might have been impressed with her ample cleavage, but as I was not, I eyed her suspiciously.

  She said in a conspiratorial manner, “But I do have something you might like better than either one of those modifications. It’s in the back room.” She tilted her chin behind her shoulder and then opened up the docket in the display case that she stood behind.

  I worried my bottom lip. Most likely, the backroom would be an enclosed space with one way in and out. I glanced back over my shoulder at Dorian and noted that he already had his eyes on me. He smiled a closed lip smile, so he was a little nervous about me heading out of the main showroom too. I hoped that this gamble would pay off, so I nodded tersely in response to him.

  I did have unspent bullets in the pistols, not to mention the Westinghouse, and of course my Widow. My magwhip was in the bag with the sticks. I would loathe wasting darts on a shopkeeper, who was in all likelihood an Ordinary. I kept my hands near my pockets, but in plain sight, no need to raise suspicions. Then I followed the girl into the back storeroom.

  Sure enough, there was only the door I came through and no windows. There were many rows of the metal bars inlaid into the ceiling illuminating a bluish white light on the work benches below. Several people were at work at their tables, with a small forge in the middle of the room. The lady said, “Normally, what we buy from the factories is pre-fab, but we will do any legal modifications back here that a customer may request.”

  Then she started rifling through the shelves around her. I heard her mutter, “Now, I know that I have a box of .32 bullets that you may be interested in somewhere over here.” She continued rummaging through some shelves and finally pulled out an ornately carved ebony box that was hidden behind and underneath several other boxes. Uh oh, I could already tell that this was going to cost me. The only question was how much.

  She opened the box and showed me some hand-forged bullets made of some sort of silver alloy engraved with a rune based design. No one took the time to decorate their bullets... except Fairies. I tried to hide my excitement.

  She picked one up and held it up to the light. It glowed blue in the light. Astonishing! That's Fae Silver, created by the Fairies, for Fairy executions. I would say for their wars also, but I had never seen them fight anyone in the past three hundred years.

  She had precisely one dozen in the box. It would probably kill a deader and maybe even a Necromancer alike with a single shot. I began to calculate if I could even afford one of them. I looked around the little shop and wondered if I could break into the shop later and steal them.

  She said, “Don't even try. This room is Magsteel reinforced and we have several Users, who act as guards. As good as you may be, I wouldn't try it. I also maintain a nasty little automaton with an illegal modification for killing on sight and asking questions later.”

  “That obvious, huh?”

  “Yeah, but I don't want money for them. You don't look like you have much, besides.”

  “That obvious, huh?” I couldn't give out any more favors, since I was up to my armpits in promises currently. “What do you want?”

  “I understand that the boy that you came in with is a Tallow. Am I correct?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She smiled knowingly and said, “You met his mother?”

  “Maybe.”

  “I understand that she makes things.”

  I didn't respond this time and waited for her to continue.

  “I was curious to see if, perhaps, we could make a trade?”

>   I decided that being shy about the exchanging of information would be to my detriment, so I said, “I have a bot that I might be willing to part with that does a most peculiar thing.”

  She unsuccessfully suppressed a grin and then she asked, “Really?”

  I then thumbed through my pockets rather dramatically, I might add, until I produced the bot that could bore through a person's brain. I held out the small brass mechanization and said, “This little beauty will search out any human orifice in which to bore, until their... ultimate demise.” We both smiled at that.

  “Is it reusable?”

  “I can't say for certain, but it would be logical that if you could retrieve it, from said hole, that it might be reusable for a second shot at it or another person altogether.”

  She gave me her beady eyed, calculating expression and then said, “That's worth half the bullets.”

  I wanted all those bullets, but I also wanted to keep the other bots. I thought I might have something else to see her bet. “As I understand it, the mother might want to part with some of her creations for fair coin, to an honest person of the correct persuasion.”

  “And what persuasion might that be?”

  “The female kind,” I say bluntly.

  She responded appropriately with her eyes going round and her smile turning hungry. Then she said, “I don't merely sell guns and their accouterments, but I am also the proprietor of this shop too. There is a certain clientele that would pay handsomely for her offensive weapons.”

  “I see.”

  “Do you know how I might get in contact with Mrs. Tallow? The only person in the region who seems to know her whereabouts is the tax collector and that man is impossible. The Post claims she doesn’t even exist.”

  I smiled like the cat that got the milk. Then I decided to change gears and get to the root of this exchange, for me anyways. I asked, “How did you recognize the boy? How did you know to tempt me with these bullets? Whom did you get these from? And I want all the bullets for her coordinates.”