by Devon Monk
From the look on Hink’s face, the answer was no. Rose reached over and placed her hand on Hink’s arm. “We don’t want to draw attention.”
Hink considered her for a moment, then loosened his grip on the man. “Hope I didn’t wrinkle your accouterments, Mr. Wicks,” he noted conversationally. “You do understand I’ll shoot you if you run.”
Wicks turned and took a moment to straighten his jacket, cuffs, and collar.
“Well,” he started. “This is unpleasant. May I inquire as to why you are following me?”
“We’re not following you,” Rose said before Hink started yelling at him. “We were following the train car being lifted by an airship.”
“I am extending to you my patience, Mr. Wicks,” Hink said. “But that’s about ran out now. Why are you here? What interest do you have in this enterprise?”
The two men regarded each other for a moment as if Rose weren’t even standing there. Fine, let them argue. She wanted to know what was in the warehouse.
She stepped up and opened the door.
“Rose,” Wicks started, “you shouldn’t.”
“Oh, I think we all should,” Hink said.
But Rose ignored them both. The building was very clearly a warehouse. Stacked within it were crates, just like on the train, and just like the freight in the train, these were stamped with the initials VB. She could guess what was in them. Copper-and-glass battery bits and pieces. Maybe even a few parts of those puppet men.
It was too dark to see much of the warehouse, but the boxes appeared to line the entire place, with at least one or two clear aisles for walking.
And to her left was a small office space, a rolltop desk, and beside that, a table with a closed ledger book, a lamp, and a telegraph key.
“What were you doing in here, Wicks?” Hink asked. “Stealing goods?”
“If you must know, I sent a telegraph. Now, I really do think we should be leaving in all haste. Miss Small?”
“Who?” Hink asked. “Who did you send a message to? What part in all this are you playing, Wicks?”
Wicks smiled, and it was a hard, bright slash in the darkness of the room. “I see no need to tell you, Marshal Cage. My business is my own. And yours, which I believe includes pirating glim, smuggling goods, and trading in secrets, strikes me as against my best interests. Perhaps even against the best interests of this United States. I’ve been sent to look in on you.”
“You’re a spy?” Rose asked startled. “For who?”
“I never said I was a spy, though I do operate under the direction of those few people in higher places than I.”
“So what I’m hearing,” Hink said, “is I should just shoot you now, since you’re just going to talk riddles all night.”
“What you’re hearing, Marshal Cage, is I am your boss.”
Hink opened his mouth, but no sound came out of it. He shut it, scowled, and tried again. “Unless you are the president of this here States United, like hell you’re my boss.”
“Chief Territorial Director of the United States Marshals, Thomas Wicks.” He nodded once. “Recently appointed to oversee all lawmen on the ground and in the air.”
“Horse crap.”
“Appointed by the president himself, as a matter of fact, and sent out to investigate the…goings on out west. I assure you I am your superior.” His smile seemed to add: “in every way.”
“And I’m just supposed to take your word for that? Do you think I fell out the hatch last week?”
“You tell me. Have the doves mentioned a change in the overview of lawmen?”
“Information is cheap,” Hink said. “And can be planted with a penny and a pretty word.”
“So you’re telling me you don’t trust your own spy network?”
“I’m telling you that, as of now, you haven’t done a lick to convince me that I’d be wasting a bullet just to shut you up.”
“Interesting.” And that appeared to be all Mr. Wicks was going to say, for he just stood there, waiting.
“I don’t want to interrupt this, um…discussion, but about these crates?” Rose asked. “Do you know what those devices are being used for, Thomas?”
His eyes shifted to Rose. “Why in the world would you want to know? I find it odd that a woman who claims to have only stayed with the coven in Kansas out of convenience is suddenly mixed up with this glim pirate, stowing away on freight trains and meddling with contents that may be used to destroy this country.”
“Pirate?” Hink asked with a dangerous grin.
“Meddling?” Rose said. “You were the one who broke the lid off the crate. You can’t really think I’m part of some kind of plot?” It both frustrated and saddened her. She had been honest with him when they’d been together. But it appeared Mr. Wicks had been lying about who he was, and what he was made of.
“I really can’t rule it out, can I?” he asked. “You are traveling with this man.”
“Aw, don’t be tender on me, Wicks.” Hink’s voice held a casual sort of threat. “Tell me just what it is you think I am.”
Rose let out a hard sigh. This wasn’t getting them any closer to figuring what the copper batteries and puppets were used for. “Excuse me,” she said, a little louder than necessary. “I am tired of being defined by the men I travel with. I make my own choices. I’m here for my own reasons. And one of those reasons is to find out what those devices in the crates are used for. And guns”—here she gave Hink a hard look—“aren’t going to help with that none. Neither is standing around pissing on each other’s boots.”
Both men looked a little shocked at her language, but Hink smiled.
“Mr. Wicks,” she continued, “I am not involved in any plot. What I am is tired, cold, and in need of a good hot meal. Gentlemen, I’ll leave you to your threats and wrasslin’. I’m going to find a way into town and, if I’m lucky, a warm hotel and steam bath.”
“Don’t go far,” Hink said. “Steam bath sounds nice, and it won’t take me long to send a wire.”
Rose walked out of the warehouse, angrier than she’d expected. She had liked Wicks. But he was yet another man dealing in secrets, like Hink.
No, not just like Hink. She knew for a fact Hink really did work for the president of the United States, and she’d seen him do some heroic things to save lives.
She couldn’t say the same about Wicks. While he had seemed nice, she hadn’t actually seen the measure of his character.
She pulled her coat closer around her shoulders, suddenly all out of fire for adventure. It was bitter cold here, most of the ground covered in snow and ice. She was hungry, dirty, and at the same time, restless to be moving on.
Far off, the sound of music, maybe piano keys, tumbled down in the dark. She didn’t hear gunfire, which meant maybe the men had managed to settle their differences with fists, although it had barely been a minute since she stepped out into the cold. They might just be warming up on threatening each other.
Then she heard footsteps in the snow. More than one person, a lot of people—men. Coming this way.
The Strange in the shadow of the alley drew the pink ribbon closer to its chest. Then it started down the road, not so much clinging to shadows as becoming a part of them, then reforming as a man-shape with the bits of trash from the city whenever moonlight touched it.
“You heard it speak, right?” Wil asked.
“Yes,” Cedar said.
“And you saw it?”
“Yes,” Cedar said again.
“We’re following it, aren’t we?”
Cedar hesitated only a second. “Yes.”
They did just that. The Strange avoided full moonlight, avoided open spaces, preferring to cling to structures. When those became fewer and fewer, it lingered against trees, brambles, and even drifts of snow.
But as soon as they reached the forest, the Strange changed. It dropped all the scraps of trash from the city, and instead drew together a body made of twigs and dirt and snow that glittered darkly
in the shadows.
The only thing it kept with it was the pink ribbon, Florence’s ribbon, clutched with one hand against its chest where a heart should be.
The trail through the woods narrowed until there was no room for the wagon Mae drove.
When they stopped because of the wagon, the Strange did too, just ahead of them, waiting, its hand held out imploringly.
“Following that thing is a trap,” Wil said. “Makes my teeth hurt for the want to do…something.” He gave Cedar a fast grin, and there was more wolf in that look than man.
Cedar felt it too. The curse was returning, growing stronger. Soon Father Kyne wouldn’t be able to hold it at bay.
At that thought, his vision split again. He was running, no, Father Kyne was running, down the roads of the town, following the Strange, following the blood need to kill the Strange.
The rumbling sound of something moving underground caught Father Kyne’s ears. The high-whirring chorus grew and grew, like a great engine building steam.
Through Father Kyne’s eyes, sharpened as they were by the curse, Cedar could clearly see the Strange. And he suddenly knew it was that underground sound that pulled the Strange into the city and pushed them, unwillingly, through the streets toward the men with guns.
Father Kyne ran for the Strange, jaws snapping. He was no longer in the form of a man. The curse had taken him whole, his body and his mind. He ran the streets as a beast. But it was not just the Strange that he wanted to kill.
Cedar opened his mouth to tell him to stop, but could not manage it.
Father Kyne ran after the Strange, followed them as they followed the call. Kyne might not recognize where the call took him, but Cedar did. The entrance of the copper mine. Where the Strange hovered outside the metal door that still stood ajar, caught like flies in a web made of sound. Sound coming from Vosbrough’s generator.
“Cedar?” Mae’s voice shattered his vision and brought him again to his own surroundings.
“Kyne,” he said. “I think the curse has him. I think it has changed him.”
“What?” Wil asked. “How?”
“Can you see through his eyes?” Cedar asked.
Wil frowned. “No.”
“I can. Just flashes. He hunts the Strange. And the Strange have taken him to the copper mine.”
Mae set the brake on the wagon and made sure the mules were secure. “What copper mine?”
“Just north of town,” Cedar said. “It looks deserted, but there is a chamber there, with tanks and other devices built to create or store energy. There are copper wires connected to it, cables that run underground.”
“And you think the Strange want that device?” she asked.
“No,” Cedar said. “I think they fear it, but cannot resist it.”
“But the preacher,” Wil asked, “he’s not…not in his right body?”
Cedar tried to see through Father Kyne’s eyes, but couldn’t. “I don’t know,” he said. “It seemed that way. Felt that way.”
Wil exhaled one hard breath. “So do we go find the preacher and take back our curse? Or do we look into whatever it is that is leading us to first?” He pointed through the trees to the Strange that stood there, still clutching the pink ribbon.
It moved aside, revealing a small opening in a moss-covered tumble of stones. It took a step toward the opening, paused to see if they were following, waited.
“It wants us to go in there,” Wil said. “Trap, of course. So, brother? A plan?”
“Mae,” Cedar said, “I want you to stay here.”
“No.” Mae caught his sleeve. “I don’t think that is just a tumble of stones.”
“Neither do I,” Cedar said. “There are pockets where the Strange gather. Where they dwell. Pockets like that.”
He dismounted. “Stay here, I’m going to see what I can.”
Wil dropped off his horse right behind him. They approached the edge of the clearing, the sound of their boots breaking the snow and filling the night air.
Cedar and Wil stopped twenty feet away from the tumble of rocks.
The Strange remained beside the cave, its body a swirl of tiny snowflakes that rose and fell. Thin catches of moonlight slipped out of the clouds to pour patches of white on the ground through the gaps of its skin.
“We followed when you asked,” Cedar said, his voice pitched low. “We followed because you have a child’s ribbon. Do you know where the missing children are? Do you know who has taken them?”
The Strange nodded, an odd bowing motion for a creature with very little neck. And then it tipped toward the opening in the stones, and slipped inside it like smoke in a draft.
“Me.” Wil clamped his hand briefly on Cedar’s shoulder and ducked into the narrow opening that Cedar would have had a hard time squeezing through.
“Wil, don’t,” Cedar said, but Wil was already off, swallowed by the darkness.
Cedar pulled his gun, knowing bullets would do no good against the Strange.
After a moment, Wil called out. “Children. Dozens. Maybe a hundred. They’re…sleeping, I think. I can’t quite reach them; it’s too narrow in here.”
“Can you wake them?” Mae asked. “Can you bring them out of there?”
“I…I’ll try.”
And then a force, as strong as an explosion, pounded through Cedar’s head. He stumbled back as his surroundings faded and the vision took him.
Mayor Vosbrough stood in front of that huge copper contraption in the mine beneath the city. In his hand was a gun, smoke curling out of the barrel. In his other hand was a heavy metal bar, which he swung with vicious accuracy.
Pain cut across Cedar’s ribs, buckling him to his knees. Pain that exploded through him again and again as Vosbrough beat Father Kyne bloody.
“Cedar!” Mae called. She was beside him, her hands on his arm to try to steady him.
The vision went black.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Vosbrough. It’s…Vosbrough.”
Cedar pushed up onto his feet. “Wil.”
Wil was thrown out of the rocks and slammed into the ground in an unconscious heap. The Strange burst out of the cavern right behind him.
Moonlight, full and hard, finally broke the clouds and shot white fire against the earth, bathing them all in its light.
The Strange screamed and launched itself at Cedar.
Just as the curse dug teeth into his bones and blood, demanded its due, and racked his body with pain.
Rose ran back into the warehouse and quickly closed the door behind her. “There are men coming.”
Captain Hink still had his gun drawn. Pointed straight at Mr. Wicks’s head. Mr. Wicks held his gun at Hink’s belly. Apparently, they hadn’t pulled the trigger to decide who was boss yet.
“I suggest you settle real quick if you’re going to work together, or just kill each other,” Rose said. “There are men coming. Men who won’t want us to be nosing around their warehouse. Do we hide? Fight?”
“Hide,” both Hink and Wicks said simultaneously.
“Dammit,” Hink added.
Then they both offered their hands to her. Rose just rolled her eyes and jogged down the row of boxes on her own, looking for decent cover in case the men came into the warehouse and decided to put on a light.
Hink and Wicks did the same, all of them settling near one another between a stack of boxes and a boarded-up window.
“How many?” Captain Hink asked.
“I heard maybe six voices.”
“How far?” Wicks asked.
“Close. Very.”
The door opened and Rose curled down lower.
“. . .isn’t any better, I’m telling you,” one of the men said. “Hob, get the light.”
“How can you know?” another voice, this one accented with a southern sort of drawl, asked. “They aren’t like buffalo. Can’t just stand on a hill and count out the herd. Ain’t no bones left behind either. Might be we’ve done our part to kill th
em off. Might be this is the last night we’ll see them on the street.”
“You can’t be that dumb,” the first man said. “Until we go a full moon without someone losing their youngest, they aren’t gone. Maybe not even then. It ain’t just children they snatch. There’s crops going bad, and that bout of fever that set in last spring? Brought on by the Strange, plain and clear.”
A switch snapped, metal against metal, and gaslights caught one to the other in a line across the top of the building. Rose blinked hard to get her eyes adjusted to the bright, and hunkered down a little tighter. They’d chosen a good enough hiding place, and the men, five she could see still near the door with Hob walking back from a little farther off, didn’t seem to suspect they were anything but alone in the big building.
The men were of a height to one another, most of them wearing beards and mustaches cut trim to their faces. She’d guess them all of an age too, maybe even as old as thirty or so. They wore a mix of styles: pants in dark, heavy wool plaid, plain leather, or sturdy denim blue; boots in black polish or oiled hide. The only thing their coats and hats had in common was they all looked warm and useful in the hard weather.
But there was one other thing that they each sported—a wide-muzzled gun of some sort with a copper box attached to it, hanging at the side.
One look at that gun sent her mind spinning with possibilities. She’d never seen anything like it, and her fingers itched to figure what it was made of and why, exactly, it was modified in such a manner.
A hand reached out and pressed gently downward on her arm. She glanced up. It was Hink. He wasn’t looking at her, but crouched as he was at her side, he must have sensed her coiling up with curiosity. He must have known she was pulled by the knowing of something worse than a cat by yarn, and given too much a chance, might just walk up there and ask those men what the guns were for and how, exactly, they worked.
“Mayor says there’s an end to them,” the second man said. “Won’t need a second warehouse, and this one’s nearly full. I say there’ll be no ghosts in the night come spring.”
