Iron and Blood

by Gail Z. Martin

  “Jesus, Drostan. Point that thing somewhere else,” Sheffield said. “We need to get you out of here.”

  Drostan sat up, struggling against the irrational urge to suck in huge breaths of air, to run around the morgue stretching his arms and basking in the relative warmth of the room. “What happened?” he asked, hoping he sounded steadier than he felt.

  “Couple more cops showed up. Didn’t care at all about the zombies. I told them the clockwork guys hit their buddy,” Sheffield added with a smirk. “Makes me think they might have been the ones that sent them.” He sounded aggrieved. “If that’s the case, I have a real bone to pick with them. Anyhow, all they wanted to know was where you were. Said you were dangerous. Said you were consorting with anarchists. Bunch of hornswoggle if I ever heard it. They picked up the other cop, who was still out cold, and left.”

  “I owe you,” Drostan said, getting to his feet.

  “You sure as hell do,” Sheffield agreed. “I’ve already assaulted an officer and perjured myself on your behalf.” He paused. “As far as the cops know, the zombies assaulted the officer—but you can bet they’ll blame you for it. Which means you really need to get going. And know there’s a warrant out for your arrest.”

  “Won’t they be watching the door?” Drostan asked.

  Sheffield shrugged. “Not if they believed me when I said you were already gone. After all, they searched the place. Lucky for you, they didn’t want to take a risk opening the drawers. Most folks have an aversion to dead bodies—and communicable diseases.” He grabbed his overcoat and hat from a peg on the wall. “Here. Take these. We’re about the same height. Keep your head down, and they’ll think you’re me. If they ask, I’ll tell them you stole them at gunpoint.”

  “Gee, thanks,” Drostan said. “Dig me deeper, why don’t you? And don’t you think the cop will figure it had to be you that hit him when he comes ’round?”

  Sheffield grinned. “Not if I hit him hard enough to scramble some gray matter. What are friends for?”

  Drostan shouldered into the coat and took the hat. As he was leaving, Sheffield called out to him.

  “Good luck, Drostan. Now get the hell out of here.”

  Drostan forced himself to step out into the night as if he had nothing to worry about. He stood tall and tried to walk with confidence, heading down the street toward the streetcar Sheffield usually took home. In case anyone was watching, he caught the streetcar, rode it several blocks, then hopped off, took another streetcar in a different direction, and then another.

  While he rode the streetcars, he thought furiously, trying to come up with a plan. If someone in the Oligarchy had sent the clockwork zombies to kill him and the police to arrest him, then odds were good his rooming house was being watched. Drostan thought of contacting Finian, and dismissed the idea. It was a toss-up whether Finian would weigh friendship over duty, and Drostan did not want to make that wager unless he had run out of other options.

  Then he remembered the pigeon. Agent Storm had left him a clockwork carrier pigeon, roosting outside his room at Mrs. Mueller’s. If Drostan could get to the pigeon, he could warn Mitch and his partner about the clockwork zombies and the Oligarchy’s involvement. Assuming that the federal agents weren’t also in the Oligarchy’s pocket.

  Recovering the clockwork pigeon sounded better to Drostan than aimlessly riding the night trolleys. He took a different route across the Allegheny River than normal, to a stop he had never used before. That meant he had a dozen or more blocks to reach his rooming house, but no one who had been watching his movements would have anticipated him.

  Allegheny’s streets were quiet in the middle of the night; closer to dawn, they would bustle with mill workers coming off third shift. It had rained while Drostan was in the morgue, and the streets and sidewalks were wet, glistening in the light of the streetlamps.

  Drostan walked with the stride of a busy man, someone who had every right to be where he was. He kept his collar up and his head down, just another weary workman anxious to go home. Drostan did not slow his pace as he neared the rooming house. He passed the street by, with only a cursory glance as if it did not matter. He spotted two policemen in front of the house, and guessed that someone was also watching the rear.

  Drostan headed for the river. It was quiet along the banks as the dark, swift water flowed past the sleeping city. With a hand on his revolver, Drostan feared little except the Oligarchy and the Night Hag. To his relief, neither seemed in evidence.

  “I need your help,” he murmured to the empty, trash-strewn shore. “I’m trying to find out who was behind your deaths, and someone’s doing their best to stop me. Please,” he said. “I need your help.”

  One by one, the ghosts of the riverbanks materialized. They formed a ring around him, and the hair on the back of Drostan’s neck prickled. No matter how often he spoke with the dead, it struck him anew every time that although they had once been human, they were now something other. And that the longer they remained dead, the less connected they remained to the concerns of the living.

  “What can we do? We’re dead.” The old woman looked at him with a defeated, weary gaze.

  “I need a distraction,” Drostan said. He knew that what he was proposing was a long shot, but getting that mechanical homing pigeon seemed his best shot at staying out of jail. “Two men are watching my room. I need to get something important from my window ledge and get away. That’s all. Can you distract them long enough for me to do that?”

  “You in trouble with the cops?” asked the ghost of a young man with sad eyes and the stocky build of a dock worker.

  “Yeah,” Drostan admitted. “I am. And it’s all over the questions I was asking, trying to figure out what’s going on and how all of you died.”

  The young man’s ghost gave a half-smile. “I always enjoyed giving the cops a good chase. I’m in.”

  “I had my share of run-ins with the police,” the ghost of an old vagrant replied. “I don’t mind foxing them now. Serves them right.”

  Drostan did not pretend to know how ghosts traveled, but he sincerely hoped the revenants would keep their word. He worked his way up the narrow alleys of the Allegheny neighborhood, staying to the shadows.

  He passed the alley where Ralf and his gang were playing cards. It had crossed his mind to ask Ralf and his band of delinquents for help, but Drostan knew the boys were usually in enough trouble with the police. They would make an easy target for reprisal, while the dead were beyond the law’s long arm.

  The two policemen were still patrolling in front of Mrs. Mueller’s rooming house, walking back and forth under the glow of the streetlights. This section of Allegheny was usually safe, and Drostan had never seen officers stay in one place for so long if they were truly walking a beat. Neither man was Finian.

  Drostan slipped down the dark side street that ran behind the rooming house. He did not see any police watching the back door, but the small yard had bushes and a shed, providing ample places to hide. He looked up at the dark window of his rented room. A bird perched on the windowsill, unremarkable at this distance. Pausing in the shadows, Drostan dug out a bit of paper from his pocket and a pencil stub.

  Clockwork zombies. Big fish after me. Help? Riverside. It was all he had room to write on the bit of paper the clockwork pigeon could carry in its capsule. It crossed Drostan’s mind that if Agent Storm was in league with the Oligarchy, he could be delivering himself into their hands. Hoping he was right about Mitch, he tucked the paper into a pocket and set about getting the pigeon.

  He bent down and picked up a rock. Staying to the shadows, Drostan hurled the rock to the other side of the small yard, smacking lightly against the fence. No one emerged from the bushes, and so Drostan ventured out of the alley. He had requested the room at the corner because it afforded an easy way out, with a short drop from his window to the roof over the back door, and from there to the ground. Drostan had never intended to sneak in.

  The hair at the back of his ne
ck prickled, and he knew that the ghosts from the riverbanks had arrived. “If anyone comes around back, distract them,” Drostan whispered, wondering just how much his ghostly informants could do.

  Climbing up to the roof over the back door was enough of a challenge. Doing it silently so as not to rouse the police or the sleeping occupants of the house was even more difficult. Drostan dragged himself up onto the shingled surface, and eyed the distance to where the mechanical pigeon perched on his windowsill.

  The sill was just a few inches higher than his outstretched arm. Drostan looked up, and saw Olivia the ghost girl watching him with concern. Drostan jumped, and missed the pigeon by an inch. He tried to land lightly, but the soft thump seemed to him to echo like cannon fire. Drostan sprang again, and this time his fingers brushed the metallic feet of the clockwork carrier pigeon, enough to jar it from its perch.

  It fell, and Drostan lurched to catch it before the precious gears and mechanisms could tumble and break. As he lunged, just before the pigeon landed in his outstretched hands, he glimpsed Olivia’s ghostly face in the glass.

  She was shouting a warning.

  A shot fired over Drostan’s head, barely missing him, chewing into the clapboards of the rooming house. Had he been in his room, the bullet might have hit him as he lay in his bed.

  “Drostan Fletcher! Come down with your hands up. You are under arrest.” The voice announced itself from the shadows, but even now, Drostan could not see anyone lurking there.

  This is what I get for having ghosts for bodyguards.

  Clutching the clockwork pigeon close to his chest, Drostan dropped and rolled, tumbling from the pitched roof over the back door to land in a crouch in Mrs. Mueller’s peony bushes.

  A figure rose in the darkness across the yard. Drostan heard running feet coming from the other side of the house.

  “He’s out there!” a voice said. “I just can’t get a bead on him.”

  “Better bring him in, or there’ll be hell to pay,” the second voice replied.

  Just then, a blue orb floated out of the climbing roses. It stood still, as if waiting for the officers to notice it, and then began to zig-zag across the yard.

  “D’ja see that?” the first man said.

  A second, yellow orb drifted up from the hemlock bush by the side of the house. It hung at eye level, bobbing and weaving to make sure it was seen, then slowly and deliberately began to advance on where the two policemen stood.

  “What the hell is that?” the second man said, and Drostan heard fear in his voice.

  Overhead, the windowpane in Drostan’s room began to rattle and bang so loudly that he expected to be showered with broken glass. The sound grew louder and louder, like someone slamming a fist against the glass, shaking the window frame. The officers’ attention rose to the sound of the noise.

  Framed in the window was the ghostly apparition of young woman in her twenties. Drostan recognised Olivia, and she was angry. She’d taken a shine to him, happy that he could see and hear her, lonely after all these years for company. Now he saw what she was capable of doing.

  Olivia’s hair streamed out around her; a blue glow suffused the room behind her, making it impossible for an observer to mistake her dead-white skin for a living person. Olivia’s fists beat on the glass, and her lips drew back to reveal a feral expression.

  The green and blue orbs began to fly across the small back yard, diving directly at the officers and making them duck. A sudden loud rat-a-tat-tat exploded in front of the officers, who dove for the ground with a shout.

  Drostan held the clockwork pigeon to his chest with his left hand while his right held his pistol. He was edging his way out of the yard, staying close to the house and making a mental note to apologise to Mrs. Mueller about her garden. He took advantage of the distraction to make good his getaway.

  A hand rested on his shoulder and he swung, finding his gun pointed at Ralf’s nose.

  “Saw you slink by earlier,” Ralf said. “Knew something was up when the police were waiting outside your place. My boys are throwing some fireworks at the coppers. Let’s get you out of here.”

  Grateful for whatever help presented itself, Drostan followed Ralf’s lead. The young hooligan knew the neighborhood’s back alleys and hiding places much better than he could ever hope to.

  More loud bangs split the night air. Lights were coming on up and down the street, as neighbors rolled up blinds and opened windows, wondering what was going on.

  “Hey, you!” Drostan heard Mr. Mueller shouting at the cops in heavily accented English. “Get the hell out of my yard!”

  Drostan ran, keeping pace with Ralf, and despite the dire circumstances, he chuckled, imagining the reception the two police officers were likely to receive if they tried to convince Mrs. Mueller that he was a dangerous criminal. They were going to get a tart piece of the landlady’s mind, along with a thwack of her broom. Mrs. Mueller would not take kindly to strangers disparaging one of her favorite lodgers.

  With a silent thank-you to his ghostly protectors, Drostan followed Ralf through a warren of back streets and alleys barely wide enough for him to fit through sideways. Finally, they came to a deserted house many blocks away from the rooming house.

  “All right, Fletcher,” Ralf said, ushering him into the parlor of the abandoned house. Heavy blankets covered the windows, hiding the light of a kerosene lamp. Inside, Drostan recognized half a dozen of Ralf’s gang. They relaxed when they saw their leader enter, flipping closed their switchblades and straight-razors and tucking their weapons back into belts and pockets. “We saved your ass. Now you owe us a good story—and a nice big wad of tobacco in the bargain.” He eyed Drostan dubiously. “And you can start by telling us why you’ve got a metal chicken.”

  Drostan let out a chuckle. “Give me a moment to catch my breath, and I’ll tell you the best story you’ve ever heard.”

  “AFTER ALL THAT, the thug knew next to nothing,” Andreas Thalberg said.

  “You glamoured them, and they still couldn’t tell you anything?” Jake asked. He and Rick sat on a flocked velvet couch in the elegant parlor of the Thalberg home. Andreas had offered both of them fine scotch, while the deep red liquid in his snifter was something definitely other.

  Just a few days had passed since the near-catastrophe at Brand and Desmet’s headquarters. Kovach had brought the three would-be bombers to Andreas, hoping that the vampire-witch could use his considerable skills to pry loose information.

  “They could not tell me what they did not know,” Andreas replied. Had he needed to breathe, Jake got the feeling the centuries-old man would have sighed. “That isn’t the same as having no information of value. It just required a different method of inquiry.”

  “You magicked them,” Rick said.

  Andreas gave an eloquent shrug. “I assumed you brought them to me for a reason. Was I mistaken?”

  Rick was a little more squeamish when it came to vampire interrogation after his own personal encounter a few years earlier. Jake had long ago made peace with the idea that the world contained many strange and horrifying realities. “Of course not,” Jake replied. “What did you find out?”

  In the adjacent sitting room, Nicki, Cady, and Renate toiled over scraps of information that they had removed from Jasinski’s apartment. They felt sure the items would yield something important with a little more investigation. The door had been closed, so they would not be distracted by the men’s conversation in the next room, though from time to time, Jake heard excitedly raised voices or Nicki’s curses in French.

  Andreas paced in front of the fireplace. “Not surprisingly, they were told nothing except their task and the payment they could expect for doing the job. But there were bits of information they observed or overheard, things that meant nothing to them, that might prove quite valuable to us.”

  “Like?” Jake asked.

  “Combining my magic with the glamouring, I was able to see what the miscreants witnessed, and come to my own conc
lusions. The man who hired them, someone they had never seen before, is in the employ of Drogo Veles.”

  Rick gave a low whistle. “That’s not good.”

  Andreas shook his head. “It is never a good thing to draw the interest of a powerful dark witch.”

  “Veles’s name keeps popping up,” Jake added. “Along with Richard Thwaites.”

  “Why is someone as high and mighty as Drogo Veles hiring thugs? Doesn’t seem like his style. Doesn’t he have his own people for that kind of thing?” Rick wondered.

  Andreas nodded. “Both men are quite well staffed when it comes to private soldiers, and Thwaites has a number of police on his payroll. But those are men they’ve trained, fighters with special skills. In this case, I suspect Veles needed someone disposable.”

  “He expected the false plumbers to get caught or killed in the blast,” Jake said.

  “Exactly. But it’s difficult to screen out everything someone may see or hear. And that’s where we hit gold. Or coal, as the case may be.”

  “Let me guess,” Jake said. “This has something to do with Vesta Nine.”

  “Yes.” Andreas resumed his pacing, and Jake found it interesting to note how many mortal mannerisms a man of Andreas’s considerable age still retained. “All three men came from the tenements in Vestaburg, the company housing of the mining firm.”

  “Not an unlikely place to hire muscle desperate to make a little money on the side,” Rick observed.

  “Granted. But while the men were waiting for their contact, they saw what was going on around them, although they paid it no heed. My magic showed me what they saw. And one of the things they saw was a large delivery wagon with a huge wooden crate on the back.”

  “A big concern like Vesta Nine must get all kinds of shipments,” Jake said. “Drilling equipment, replacement parts, that sort of thing.”