Tesla collapsed, and I watched with alarming speed as the gray curse twisted to overtake his body. I heard Lovecraft say, “Dammit Nikola. We were supposed to work together again. Now look what you made me do.”
“Never again, Howard. Never again.” Then Tesla turned towards me and said, “Do it, Wendy.”
I lifted up the sight of my Iver Johnson and leveled it on Lovecraft. I asked once more, “How do we get that thing back through the gate?”
Lovecraft laughed and said, “You don't get him back through, Miss Darling. You simply try to survive and keep more from coming!” He laughed again, and I shot him in the head with the magic bullet, leaving me only ten left. He continued laughing all the way to the ground with his dying breath.
Whenever you take a life, especially an important one, you need to watch it expire. Not necessarily for the respect of life you have violated, but for your own sanity. I needed to know that he would never rise again.
Nothing remarkable happened when Lovecraft died. His body did not turn blue, it did not turn to dust, and it did not revive itself and grow horns. Bit disappointing, if you asked me. I simply turned around and saw the blue glow of his gate fizzle out into the ether as his spirit separated from his body.
I then turned to Tesla, who was moaning. His skin had taken on an amazing transformation. What had turned gray was now a sickly red. I saw bulges poking out from his insides, as if something was pressing from the inside out, demanding release from his body.
He waved me closer and whispered in my ear, “You must kill me now, my Wendy. There is a black curse twisting my heart and I can feel an otherworldly plague may pop out of me at any time. My T.R.A.M.s will finish the rest of the job here.
“Wendy, I have accomplished my life's goal of assassinating Edison. There are no heirs. There are no more relatives who could possibly survive the nasty political uprising that will follow in his wake.” He gasped for a breath, “I feel complete. End this for me now, before...”
This one couldn't be wet, just in case there was a contagion, so I went for my whip and made a garrote out of it. I sat behind his head, in case he spat the black magic out through his mouth. I lifted his head into my lap and slipped the garrote around his neck. He said, “Hurry.”
I wrapped it around the ends of my hands and looped it once around his neck. Then as I squeezed, I whispered into his ears, “You are a great man, Nikola Tesla. Know this and keep it close to your spirit, so that the day that I truly die, I will find you on the other side. I will sing accolades about how one man changed the world with his wits and smarts. Pass on, my comrade, peacefully. Know that your great reward awaits you in the beyond. And whatever you do, don't haunt my arse.” He gave a last gurgled laugh at that and died on the spot.
I held the garrote through the body tremors. His body took back its natural appearance, so by the time the tremors ended; he looked to be asleep with a nasty neck burn. I wrapped the whip back up, put it in its appropriate pocket, and laid a kiss on his forehead. I said, “You were a good man. Pigheaded and smarmy at times, but still a good man.”
The noise had died down and when I faced the rest of the room, Dorian stood off to the side of me, splattered from head to toe in blood and gore. He appeared somber. The T.R.A.M.s, evidently on orders from Tesla, I'm sure, held what was the rest of the now unarmed military men at bay on the other side of the room. Probably twenty men and Wolves lay at our feet, with weapons still in their hands, and their heads somewhere else entirely. The smell of burnt flesh was sickening.
I said, “Let it be known to all who were present and all who were not, that the great Upheaval of 2232 was a success. This was when the Revolutionaries rose up and took the Presidential seat from Patton T. Edison, on this seventeenth day of October. Let it be known that Nikola Tesla saved us all from Lovecraft's scheme to end the world as we know it, and should from this day onward be remembered for the hero that he was.”
Dorian bowed slightly and the others followed suit, to properly honor Tesla's ultimate sacrifice for the cause and for humanity.
Then the thing I wanted least to happen, happened. Sometimes I was on a job when it happened. Sometimes I would be brought back just at the moment I left, but not usually. The kiss on my hand flared hot, and then I felt myself falling apart into the ether. Into Neverland. I was being summoned and there was nothing anyone could do about it. I could see myself disappearing. I said to Dorian, not sure if he could hear me or not, “Wait for me.”
Then all I could hear was his roar, “No!”
And then all I saw was blackness and pain. It always felt like I was being lit with a fire from the inside out. There was nothingness for a few moments, not unlike the space between my body dying and the separating of my spirit from it.
Then I was flat on my behind, sitting on a jungle floor, surrounded by the most luscious and verdant greens imaginable. The exotic flowers danced just out of reach – always. It didn't take long before I was bombarded with pixies, brandishing there wooden swords. I batted them away and said, “Where, oh, where can Peter be? I'm counting to twenty, and then I will go and seek your scallywag, asinine, egomaniac of a man out for myself. Hide well. I'm in a foul mood, if you couldn’t tell.” I heard a snickering come out from underneath a sturdy log. That was going to be the first spot that I was going to check.
Epilogue
“In the realm of ideas everything depends on enthusiasm... in the real world all rests on perseverance.”
-Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
From Dorian's Journal of Memorable Quotes to Live By
(Dorian) Somewhere in the Native Nation Desert, beyond the Louisiana Territory.
“Are you certain, she will meet with me?” I asked my guide for the third time. I had to admit that I wasn't used to having to seek out a female under any circumstance. Usually they came running to me, but this was a strange, uncertain time for me.
On top of this unaccustomed uncertainty, I was knee deep in Apache territory. And this stretch of desert was really starting to annoy me. It was full of thorns and brambles. It made me long for heather and moors. Really, if I was being honest with myself, I felt like I was knee deep in shite and not for the first time in so many weeks.
In contrast, the passage through the Louisiana Territory had been delightful... if I had been on different, more pleasurable business. I might have even stopped to partake of some of the excessive gambling and drinking, but all of those things I used to enjoy, tasted like ash in my mouth now. Frankly, I missed Wendy. A lot. So, after two weeks, I had gotten as far west in the Louisianan territory as I could with the Agora's blessing and an open purse.
I had immediately started asking for Native guides. It was still considered extremely illicit to have any transactions with the Natives, but with the collapse of the Edison empire in conjunction with a very heated political race coming into its own, the Native Nations were eager to rebuild or at least establish some sort of amicable relationship with a new administration. By showing my Governor’s Pass, I may have led them to believe that I was involved in the government's reconstruction. But no one could refute it because no one had, as of yet, been voted in, sworn, and named the new President. This left the cabinet a mess and congress an even bigger one. But those proceedings meant nothing to me now.
It was with some trepidation on my part, that I found a willing enough guide named Bimisi. I only found out after the fact that his name meant “slippery” in Apache. But as he was available and I was desperate, Bisimi it was.
I was on the hunt, for one Gwendolyn Moira Angela Darling. If I were being honest with myself, I would have to admit that I was being a tad naive when I had tricked her and placed a magical mark of sorts on both our wrists. It was supposed to allow me to find her through my mark, but mine had changed to a blue color once she had been pulled into Neverland. It was supposed to be an iridescent red. It was defunct. My mark was supposed to find her anywhere in this world, damn it. Apparently, it didn't work across inter-di
mensional planes of existence. Peter may have found her first, but no one takes what I have marked as mine. He may just not know it yet.
But there she was and here I remained. Maybe if I were in Neverland, it would activate again. I was counting on that. I needed her. Who knew what Peter was making her do? In fact, I was looking forward to meeting him almost as much as I was in finding her.
Now here I am, in some gods-forsaken land, where I'm drinking my water through plant stems from some dirt hole in the ground, and if I had to eat snake shish kabob one more night, I might accidentally let Bimisi get the fang end in his hand. I knew my temper was short. I've lived for over three hundred years and been without the company of a woman for longer than I care to admit. A chiromancer once told me that I had met my other half in Wendy. I was to guard her with my life, or she might be lost to me forever.
Where was my other half now? Every time I found the black rage rising in me and the temptation to fall into the evils of man, I pictured myself killing Peter. It was the only thing that kept me from going insane.
But that way laid folly, since I didn't have the paints ready for her spelled portrait. I needed that done before I could kill the damn Elf. Or maybe I would just kill him and steal that damn elixir he held over her head. That would keep her alive, at least until I finished her portrait.
Besides my Colt P pistols, my sword, a pocketknife, and my pen and pad, the only other thing I carried was my field box of paints, so I could charge them with magic daily. That's not exactly correct, though. There was one other item I held. It was a small miniature portrait of Wendy in enamel. I estimated the age of it to be around the time she became immortal. I had stolen it from her townhouse almost a month ago, when she disappeared. How long would Peter keep her in Neverland?
I just had to get to the tribe with the shaman woman. She was reputed to be able to open a portal to other realms through a system of caves in their territory. That was why I was wearing leathers now, crafted by mountain men for dry, cold weather, instead of my usual leather trench coat. I missed my immaculate French silk suit, complete with matching puff tie. While I did not appreciate the chafing of these leathers, they were satisfactory against all sorts of prickly foliage and cacti that we were now traveling through. Lord, how I missed my puff tie.
Their medicine woman was supposed to test me to see if I was worthy of utilizing her cave portal to the Fae realm. I would pass all her tests and then I would go to Neverland. Once I found Wendy, I would bring her back. It was a checklist in my mind. Sadly, I was only on the first item.
I couldn’t forget that there was also some Lovecraftian demon on the loose and the Agora has had word that the Presidential election may have become jeopardized, if a man named Malcolm Edward Crowley has decided to run for office. He was the head of an Estonian corporation also called the Golden Dawn. It was gaining sway in influential circles due to the dubious circumstances surrounding former President Edison's death.
I needed my partner to set the world right again. The Agora and I will do whatever it takes to get back one of their own, even one who hasn't exactly sworn fealty to them yet.
__________________________________________________________________
Learn more about Renee Sebastian at:
Renee Sebastian’s Wordpress blog
Renee Sebastian’s Web-Site
I would like to thank my husband and fellow Steampunker, Mark Sebastian who helped to develop this story. I would also like to thank my children, Jolie and Lily, for tolerating me during all the mommy time that I used to type. Lastly, I would like to thank the historical characters of Nikola Tesla and H. P. Lovecraft for being muses to my imagination.
Now Available
The Cthulhu Crisis
Prologue
Lars Reidwarbler played with the electrons orbiting the atom under his biophotonic microscope. For not the first time, he took pause to run his fingers in simple adoration over the lost notebook of Max Planck, the grandfather of quantum physics. Purchasing agents for his employer had travelled all the way to the Fascist Germany, where a mysterious millionaire had died and his quibbling family decided that liquidating his empire in a secret auction, for the auspicious purpose of evading the taxing authorities, would be a grand idea.
It had cost his employers more than the Republic collected in revenues from train fares for an entire year to purchase the book that he now held reverently in his hands. But it was worth it, if only for the Planck laser diagrams that he had been able to duplicate. His employers were almost ready to go to market with the prototypes and would have already, if not for the assassination of President Edison weeks earlier. Getting government approval for any new patents was becoming a red tape nightmare. Lars chuckled to himself; the Westinghouse gun would become antiquated once the first laser handgun became available for the general populace.
The lab that he considered his home away from home was located in a secret location in Stonecala, the northeastern most tip of the Republic. He was thankful that the labs remained cold enough most of the year, to require little in the way of the sulfur dioxide artificial coolant. Nasty business sulfur dioxide was. He had seen more than one of his colleague's perish from it.
Instead, he watched as his breath pleasingly pooled into a white cloud in front of him from natural frigidness. He absently rubbed his numb hands for warmth for about the hundredth time that hour, with the same futile result. The cold was a necessary prerequisite for the delicate scientific maneuvers he was orchestrating.
While it was the laser diagrams that had piqued his employer's interest, it was the possibility of quantum teleportation through entanglement that had his employers nipping at his toes late into the night, long past everyone had left for the evening. He positioned his blood and electrical charge to create the quanta energy needed to split apart the diamond crystals under the microscope that he hoped would cause the telltale sounds of the phonons he hoped to produce.
He had already manipulated one photon and then another, following the polarization process, until they became entangled with each other. With that little experiment, he was able to discover that if he embedded the rare earth element of gadolinium within the crystal node, he could produce a pair of electrons… a pair of electrons that he could manipulate.
According to the directions from various scientists of the twenty-first century who last had access to Planck's notes, he then rotated one of the pair in a clockwise motion, all the while observing the second one, spinning in a counterclockwise direction. Success at last. He would send his note over to the Strategies for Defense Division when he was done this night, so they could continue where he had left off. His quarry led him elsewhere.
···•Ͽ Ѡ Ͼ•···
Deep into that night, Lars Reidwarbler discovered something so alarming, that it would change the way war was conducted. He experimented with the entangled phonons in a vacuum with his blood. He was a User, in particularly a Geomancer, a specialty of Hemomage that could manipulate the earth's geological elements using his blood.
Long ago Geomancer's learned how to change gold into lead, although the reverse of which still eluded the most accomplished President of the Guild. Now, even though he was using lead to line the exterior of the chamber holding the vacuum, it was not being used in the experiment. Rather, he chose a bar of neodymium, known for its magnetic resonances.
He placed the bar into the vacuum and fed it a little more of his blood. He rotated the molecular structure and then he added the last ingredient. He betted with himself that if this did nothing, then he would read Jackson’s Chemistry for the Feebleminded, truly a tortuous task for one such as himself. If he got a result that proved interesting then he was to go home, but not before he stopped at Chen’s All Night Steakhouse for some Teriyaki strips.
He flipped the switch to blast the vacuum full of electricity. He couldn’t control the stream, as much as he might have liked to channel the concentrated streams of electricity where he liked, but that still
eluded the scientific community. Once the laser could be developed, by the other division within the company, concentrating the electricity would prove to be child’s play. So in this experiment the stream poured in from a side port.
Then he felt peculiar. He swore that the moment the plasma from his blood mixed with the electrons of neodymium that something foul was sent outward right through him. Even though he couldn’t see anything, it seemed to not be hindered by the lead chamber. He pondered for a moment about what had happened and then asked out loud to no one but himself, "Now, what was I doing?"
Chapter 1
Wendy in Neverland
"Work is the best antidote to sorrow."
Sherlock Holmes, from the Adventure of the Empty House.
-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1903.
From Dorian's Journal of Memorable Quotes to Live By
I leveled my aim and steadied my grip. I had the Lady within my sights. There she was. A dark haired beauty with snow-white skin that was bending ever so gracefully to collect the winter flowers. Only here would there be flowers whilst the snow danced to the ground. She was as vain and arrogant in her immunity to danger as a Fairy could be.
Her ignorance would be my bliss.
I knew that if I pulled my trigger, mass havoc would follow in Neverland. One that just might cascade throughout the realm of the Fae. With all the enemies she had made during her long life and with only one pull of my trigger, her life was about to end and then everyone would be accusing each other of killing her for many years to follow. There was bound to be some additional life lost in the fallout, as old grudges were brought to the forefront again.
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