by Marty Chan
Bess led the group along the side of the cobblestone lane. The projection from the codex mirrored the street with a slight hiccup, but none of the street vendors or night owls paid any heed to the group behind the image. Ehrich and his allies slinked away from the crowds to the section of the Bowery where the sanatorium was located. He recognized the destination and stopped.
“I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said.
“None of the patients are going to say anything, and Mrs. Sherman sleeps on the top floor.”
“What choice is there?” Amina said. “We can’t stay out on the street.”
Tesla agreed. “Where else are we going to go?”
Ehrich had been outvoted.
“There might be an open window around the side,” Bess suggested.
“Don’t bother, Bess. I can get us in.” Ehrich reached down to the heel of his shoe and retrieved his lock pick set. He opened the door and let in the others.
Once inside, Bess peeked up the stairs and waved back to the group. “Lights are out. They’re asleep.”
The group settled in the unfurnished drawing room, sitting on the floor. Tesla set the codex down. Amina hoisted the oscillator off her shoulder and rested against the striped wall.
Ehrich shook his head. “Never counted on Walter messing up our plan.”
“I should have warned you about him. He’s petty,” Bess said.
Amina whispered, “At least Kifo didn’t capture Edison.”
“But he nearly did,” Ehrich said. “He still might if Edison’s men don’t catch him tonight.”
“Who is Kifo?” Bess said.
Ehrich shook his head, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. The story’s too crazy.”
“I took up dancing even though everyone told me I had no rhythm and two left feet. That’s crazy.”
Ehrich had brought Bess this far. No turning back now. “First of all, my name’s not Harry Houdini. It’s Ehrich Weisz.”
“Mine is Wilhelmina Rahner. We all change our names.”
“I’m not from your world,” he said.
Bess narrowed her gaze and crossed her arms over her chest. He explained everything from his arrival in the dimension to the battle on Devil’s Island to Kifo’s possession of Dash. Her eyes never left his as he talked. When he finished, she let out a low whistle.
“Your entire magic act was a ruse to lure Thomas Edison so you could abduct him?”
Ehrich sat beside Bess. “The long and the short of it is…yes. We need him so we can make a deal with Kifo.”
“Then why don’t you tell him you have Edison?”
“But we don’t,” Ehrich said.
She rolled up the sleeves of her crinoline dress. “What’s the second lesson of show business?”
He cracked a wide grin. “Everybody lies.”
“He’s going to need proof,” Amina said, shooting down Bess’s idea.
“I have Edison’s hat,” Ehrich said.
“That might intrigue Kifo,” Tesla said, musing. “But he’ll want to see the real person next.”
Bess pointed at the codex in Tesla’s hands. “I watched you use this contraption every night. The box has something to do with the effect of Harry…I mean Ehrich running over the audience, doesn’t it? An illusion of some kind, right?”
Tesla raised a dark eyebrow. “She’s rather astute.”
Amina scowled, but angled away from Ehrich.
Bess continued, “Can you make this Kifo think he’s looking at Thomas Edison?”
Amina’s eyes widened. “Yes, we could create an illusion.”
Ehrich clapped his hands. “Bess, you’re right. Magic isn’t about what the audience actually sees; it’s about what you make them think they are seeing. Edison and his hunters are combing the street for Kifo right now. The codex has stored the images we’ve recorded, including the one of Edison tonight. All we have to do is project our image out there and hope Kifo spots it before he runs across the real one.”
“He won’t be easy to catch, even if we can spring a trap on him,” Amina pointed out. “His metal arm is dangerous.”
“True, but what if we can render Kifo helpless?”
“What do you mean?”
“We trick him into possessing another body. Someone we can easily control.”
“Who?” Tesla asked.
“Charlie,” he answered.
“Who?”
“One of the guests here.”
Bess’s nostrils flared. “One of the stroke patients? Have you lost your mind? You’re going to use someone who can’t even defend himself to trap this demon.”
Ehrich explained. “Charlie’s been here so long he’s wasted away. His arms and legs are weak from inactivity. If Kifo possesses him, he’ll be helpless.”
“I don’t know about this, Ehrich,” Amina said.
“Well, I do,” Bess huffed. “You’re not doing it.”
“Mr. Tesla, you agree, don’t you? With Kifo in a helpless state, he’ll have no choice but to give up Dash.”
“And what about our friends on the airship?” Amina asked. “How does this help them?”
“We can hold Kifo as a hostage to exchange for Ning Shu and Mr. Serenity.”
“You’re using an innocent person, Ehrich. This makes you no better than Kifo. This boy doesn’t have a say in what you’re doing to him.”
“Don’t lecture me, Amina. Your rebels chose to fight Ba Tian’s army here, but you haven’t warned the people in this sector about the devastation that’s about to unfold. You’ve given the people here no choice either.”
“You’re twisting things, Ehrich. We’re trying to save entire races. All you’re doing is using Charlie to save your brother.”
Tesla pursed his lips. “She’s right. The danger in obsessing over one goal, Ehrich, is that you lose yourself in the pursuit. Your friend is incapable of defending himself. Could you live with yourself if something went wrong?”
“To get Dash back, I’m willing to take the risk.”
“I wish I had never shown you this place,” Bess said bitterly.
“Ehrich, we have to find a different way,” Tesla said.
“This is the only way,” Ehrich said, raising his voice. “If we don’t nab Kifo now, he will eventually find Edison and take over his body. And when he does, that means he controls Demon Gate and the Demon Watch. He can order the hunters into whatever trap Xian sets for them and wipe out everyone. If we do nothing, New York falls.”
A woman’s voice called down the stairs. “I warn you. I have a pistol, and I’m not afraid of using it.”
“The woman who runs the sanatorium,” Ehrich whispered.
“Who’s down there?”
Bess answered, “Mrs. Sherman, it’s me…”
Ehrich clamped his hand around Bess’s mouth and cut her off. She struggled against him, biting his palm. He winced in pain, but didn’t let go.
“I’m calling the coppers!” Mrs. Sherman yelled from upstairs.
Ehrich bit his lip to fight off the pain. Through gritted teeth, he delivered the ultimatum. “You want to save New York or not?”
Slowly, Tesla nodded. Amina flared her nostrils, but finally agreed. She slipped out the dynatron pistol from the back of her belt and crept toward the stairs. Ehrich hung onto Bess and hoped that she would forgive him, but he knew his star had fallen.
THE TRAP
Ehrich tied a gag around Bess’s face. She tried to kick him, but Darby leg irons kept her legs bound to the foot of the bed. Her wrists were similarly shackled. She squirmed against the headboard of Mrs. Sherman’s bed. Next to her, the frightened operator of the sanatorium stared bug-eyed at the ebony girl who trussed her up with torn bed sheets. Amina set a pillow behind the woman’s hand, but Mrs. Sherman flinched.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Amina said. “We need you to be quiet. Hopefully, this won’t take more than a couple of nights.”
The woman shook her head and squirmed. Her gag
muffled her screams for help. On the nightstand beside her bed, the low-burning lamp illuminated the room, including Mrs. Sherman’s “pistol”—a rolled up newspaper.
Once the woman was tied up, Amina left the room without a word to Ehrich. His gaze followed her out of the room. He fluffed a pillow for Bess.
“I can only imagine what you think of me right now, but you need to understand this is the only way we can save your world. Think of all the people you love wiped out in a bloody war. That’s what is coming to New York. If I don’t do this now, everyone will suffer. Do you understand?”
She glared at him.
“I’m doing this to save everyone,” he said. “Everyone.”
She looked away.
He sighed. “No noise from either of you. When we get what we need, I’ll set you both free. I’m sorry.”
He headed out of the bedroom and closed the door behind him. Ehrich stepped into the main floor dormitory where the patients slept. The odour of human waste lingered in the air and the rhythmic snoring of a half dozen patients filled the room. He wheeled one of the chairs to Charlie’s bed. He picked up his friend and set him into the chair. Charlie’s eyes fluttered open, but his blank stare gave away nothing of his feelings. The blond teen was as light as a breeze. Afraid of breaking his friend’s atrophied limbs, Ehrich gently tucked his arms inside the wheelchair and wheeled Charlie into the drawing room.
Tesla had set up the oscillator in the corner of the drawing room and connected the generator to the codex in the middle of the room. Amina stood in the corner, her arms folded over her chest. She said nothing.
“Mr. Tesla, did you find a recording that will work?”
“It’s a short clip of him walking toward the stage. We can show him walking down the street and into the building. Then I can freeze the image of him standing where your friend is. The only problem is that I can aim the projection through the window, but I’ll need to shift the codex over to position the image in the drawing room. Not an elegant method, but I can’t think of how to hide the sudden disappearance of Edison.”
Amina volunteered, “I’ll shut the door when the image comes through.”
“Good idea,” Ehrich said.
“The primary problem will be how to convince Kifo to search here,” Tesla announced.
“I have an idea,” Ehrich said. “Leave it to me.”
Minutes later, decked out in the hunter’s uniform, Ehrich settled near an intersection about four blocks from the sanatorium. He held up Edison’s top hat and pressed the hatband to trigger the sonic scream. The gramophone horn vibrated as its shrieks shred the calm night. Pedestrians scattered with their hands over their ears. There was no mistaking the shriek. If Kifo were near, he would have definitely recognized this.
Ehrich jogged two blocks over with the device and sounded it off once more. He circled around the sanatorium in a wide radius and worked his way closer to his home base.
He let loose one final blast, then popped the top hat on his head, rushed into the building, and waved at Tesla in the drawing room. The image of Edison appeared on the street outside the sanatorium and walked slowly toward the building. Amina opened the door just as he arrived and closed the door behind him.
Tesla shifted the codex, so the image of Edison was projected directly in front of Charlie in the wheelchair. He slipped to the other side of the drawing room to hide with Ehrich and Amina.
The wait began. The oscillator pumped in the corner with a quiet whir, powering the codex. Ehrich hoped the ploy worked. If not, he would have to hit the streets again, but he feared that their window of opportunity might have passed.
The hours ticked by. Ehrich measured time with the number of times he nearly dozed off. Around the twenty-third chin dip, he detected a scratching noise. He bolted awake and nudged Amina and Tesla.
The sound wasn’t coming from the door. A figure stood at the window. Someone was trying to open the latch. Hidden in the shadows, beyond the dim candle burning in the room, the trio observed the raggedy man slipping into the drawing room. The air passing through his sickle nose whistled as he approached the image of Thomas Edison, who had his back to the window.
Ehrich waited, willing the assassin to take over the form of Charlie, but Kifo didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He didn’t even draw out the Infinity Coil. Instead, he dragged the edge of his metal talon across the wall.
“S-s-swivel around, old man.”
Amina tensed, but Ehrich grabbed her arm and held her back.
“You have s-s-something that belongs-s-s to me, and I’d like it back.”
What was Kifo talking about? Ehrich couldn’t understand why the assassin wasn’t using the Infinity Coil.
“You might not even know you have it, but when you cleared out Tesla’s-s-s fac-c-cility, you took my dus-s-st.”
Ehrich stiffened with realization. This wasn’t Kifo. It never had been. This Dimensional was acting of his own accord under no control of the assassin.
He was Ole Lukoje.
HOODWINKED
“I s-s-said turn around.” Ole Lukoje flashed his metal claw and reached for Edison’s shoulder.
Ehrich jumped up and raised a dynatron pistol at the raggedy man. “That’s enough.”
Ole Lukoje hissed and whirled around, flashing his metal claw. A dart slammed into the wall just behind Ehrich’s head. The teen fired the weapon into the man’s chest knocking him back against the wall. He slumped down to the floor, unconscious.
Amina and Tesla rose from their hiding place. “What did you do, Ehrich?”
“That’s not Kifo. It’s Ole Lukoje.”
“Are you sure?”
“Search for the Infinity Coil,” Ehrich said.
Amina searched under the man’s shirt and retrieved the Infinity Coil. The front seemed right, but the back was missing the chimera etching.
“I don’t understand,” she said, rotating the medallion over in her hand. “This isn’t the device. It’s a fake. Did Kifo give up the body?”
“Ole Lukoje must know.”
Ehrich cuffed the unconscious man with a set of Darby handcuffs. He snugged the cuffs behind Ole Lukoje’s back. Then they waited for the effects of the electro-dart to wear off.
Tesla shut off the codex and wheeled Charlie to one side of the room. “Have we been chasing shadows?”
Ehrich drew his pistol and spun around to scan the window. “What if he found another body and used Ole Lukoje as a decoy.”
Amina and Tesla drew their weapons and stood back to back. She aimed her pistol at the doorway while Tesla trained his weapon on the man on the floor starting to wake up. He struggled against the handcuffs but couldn’t shake free of the D-shaped restraints.
“Well, well, well, you are brighter than you let on, flesh-sh-sh bag,” the raggedy man said.
“We need some answers,” Ehrich said.
Ole Lukoje squirmed in his cuffs. “A sh-sh-shame our game has-s-s come to an end.”
“Where is Kifo?” Amina asked.
“I am not my partner’s-s-s keeper.”
“Partner?” Tesla asked. “What do you mean by partner?”
“We sh-sh-shared thoughts-s-s for a time, and when Kifo perc-c-ceived I could s-s-serve him better as-s-s mys-s-self, we arrived at a new arrangement.”
“What arrangement?” Ehrich asked.
“He wanted to be in two places-s-s at onc-c-ce. In return, he gave me the opportunity to recover what the flesh-sh-sh bags s-s-stole from me.”
“Your dust,” Ehrich guessed. “Or whatever you call that cloud of material you use to open portals.”
The raggedy man smiled. “One cannot live without his-s-s toys-s-s.”
“And what is Kifo doing while you’re down here?” Amina said.
Ole Lukoje said nothing.
“What is his plan?”
“You will have to as-s-sk him yours-s-self.”
“Where is he?” Ehrich demanded.
“Here and there.”
> Ehrich rushed at him and hauled him to his feet. “You are going to tell us everything we want to know.”
“You have no power over me, flesh-sh-sh bag.”
“I can turn you over to the hunters. Throw you in prison.”
“I highly doubt that.”
“Why?”
“Becaus-s-se you underes-s-stimated my new toy,” Ole Lukoje said, flashing his freed copper hand. The Darby handcuffs dangled from the wrist, severed at the chain.
He slashed his metal talons across Ehrich’s chest. Flames of pain seared across his chest as he recoiled.
Amina raised her pistol, but Ole Lukoje was faster. He flicked his claw. A dart spit out the fingertip. She threw herself to the floor, dodging the flying projectile.
“Stop!” Ehrich yelled, raising his dynatron.
Ole Lukoje backed away toward a window.
“I said stop,” Ehrich said.
“S-s-shoot me and you’ll never find Kifo.”
Ehrich hesitated and Ole Lukoje took advantage of the pause. He leapt through the window, crashing through the glass. Ehrich chased after the man, jumping out of the window and landing in the dark street. He checked both sides of the lane. Nothing. The creature had fled. Ehrich ran to the right until he reached the end of the block. Eerie blue light from hunters’ bowlers lit up the night. Ehrich backpedalled to the sanatorium and met up with Amina. She shook her head.
“He’s gone.”
“Get Tesla out,” Ehrich said. “Hunters are coming down the street. They’re going to notice the broken window. I’ll meet you at the rendezvous point along the Hudson River.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m going to catch Ole Lukoje and find some answers.”
Ehrich ran in the other direction, scanning the buildings for any sign of the raggedy man. The hour was late, and all the pushcart vendors had shut down for the night. He was the only one in the street.
Ehrich wondered what Kifo was up to, in the meantime. Why did he need the subterfuge? And where was he? He recalled the negotiation on the airship and the agreement to take Thomas Edison. Then he recalled how General Xian had agreed to keep his friends onboard the airship as collateral to ensure his return. She allowed Amina to leave, but not Mr. Serenity. Wait, no. He had volunteered to stay. The only one the general cared about was Ning Shu.
