“Business goes on,” Rick replied noncommittally. Both he and Jake wore the black arm bands mourning etiquette required. Rick clapped Thwaites on the shoulder, and as he drew his hand away, managed to tip the button-sized listening device Adam Farber had created under the socialite’s collar without being noticed.
“Quite.” Thwaites tossed the canapé into his mouth and followed it up with a slug of his gin and tonic. “Such a loss. And a caution.”
Jake felt his blood rise. “I’m not sure I take your meaning,” he said, steel in his voice.
Thwaites managed to look bored, as if the conversation did not merit his full attention. “Put all your eggs in one basket, that’s what Mr. Carnegie always says,” Thwaites replied. “Your father got involved in things that didn’t concern him. Now he’s gone. There’s a lesson to be learned there.”
“Is that a threat?” Jake said, bristling.
For all that Thwaites sold himself as an errant playboy, Jake glimpsed both malice and intelligence in his steady gaze. “It’s what you make of it,” he said, tossing back the rest of his drink. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” At that, he ambled off in search of a bartender.
Rick laid a restraining hand on Jake’s arm as Jake took a half-step to follow. “Let him go,” Rick cautioned. “It’s likely the gin talking.” He dropped his voice to a whisper. “We’ll see what Nicki picks up on the receiver from that microphone.”
“He threatened us,” Jake retorted.
“Maybe. Richard Thwaites couldn’t fight his way out of a paper bag, but he does have some very dangerous associates.”
Coincidentally or not, at that moment Drogo Veles chanced to turn around, caught Jake’s eye, and inclined his head in acknowledgement.
“I want to know what Thwaites and Veles had to do with my father’s murder,” Jake said, his voice barely restrained.
Rick nodded. “So do I. But this isn’t the time or the place. Accost them here, and you’ll accomplish nothing except getting yourself thrown out, and lose half our business to boot. Destroy their game, and you’ve struck a blow for your father.”
Jake took a deep breath, willing his fists to relax. Raised voices near the door rose above the murmur of conversation and the sedate music.
“I’ll thank you to take your hands off me!” A man’s voice with a distinct Irish accent rang out. “I’ve got business here.”
Heads turned to see the altercation. Jake recognized the speaker—‘Dynamite’ Danny Maguire, the Irish immigrant-turned-construction magnate and councilman whose wealth and solid pro-union views made him a thorn in the side to New Pittsburgh’s elite.
Maguire looked like he would be more at home unloading crates on a dock than hobnobbing with the well-to-do. He was a little taller than average and solidly built, although the belly straining at the pearl buttons of his tuxedo shirt testified to his ability to enjoy his newly comfortable life. Red-haired with a temper to match, Maguire bustled in as if he owned the room.
One of Carnegie’s security men trailed him, and Maguire wheeled on the man. “Don’t you have something better to do than harass guests? Don’t make trouble for me, and I won’t make any for you.” Maguire turned back toward the scandalized socialites and grinned. “Don’t stop on account of me. Carry on.”
Maguire had one of Carnegie’s elegant invitations in his hand, though whether or not it was genuine was another question. As a second security man edged toward Maguire, Jake spotted Clayton Price, one of Carnegie’s more respectable enforcers, heading toward the union man with the expression of a pained maître d’. Around the room, guests whispered to each other, and Jake wondered how many were taking bets that Maguire would end up tossed out on his ear before the evening was over.
Jake glanced away from the altercation, and caught a glimpse of a figure moving off to his left, through a darkened section of the museum that was roped off to visitors. He thought for a moment that it was Drogo Veles, but when he looked back toward the reception, Veles was standing with two of the city’s most notable financiers.
“Something’s going on,” Jake said. “Let’s go.”
He caught Rick up on what he’d seen as they wound carefully through the crowd, doing their best to avoid conversation while trying not to look as if they were hurrying. Maguire provided a convenient distraction, as he struck up a loud conversation with William Flinn and Christopher Magee. The two political bosses were the closest thing New Pittsburgh had to an Oligarchy counterweight, and even men like Andrew Carnegie were obliged to handle them gently or face public unpleasantness. Jake suppressed a smile; Andreas had put Maguire up to the stunt, to create a distraction.
When Jake and Rick reached one side of the huge main exhibit area, Jake looked both ways to make certain that the exit did not have a watchful guard in attendance. Then they slipped into the shadowed room on the other side of the rope.
The Carnegie Museum was a massive temple to knowledge. Built of huge, gray blocks of stone and rising three stories high, it was an imposing structure, and equally impressive on the inside. Marble staircases, parquet stone floors, and stained glass skylights in the Tiffany style gave the museum the gravitas of a shrine. But now, the cavernous rooms were shadowed, and what light filtered in through the windows was cold and gray and did little to dispel the darkness.
The hulking shadow of a dinosaur skeleton made Jake shiver as he passed. The bones of other long-dead beasts filled one of the chambers: Irish elk, mastodons, mammoths, ancient horses and saber-toothed cats. In the next room, taxidermied animals watched balefully through glassy eyes as Jake slipped silently past the exhibits, including one of the museum’s most notable displays, a huge glass case showing a lion attacking a traveler on camelback.
Jake glimpsed motion ahead. He signaled for Rick to pause in the doorway to the next room, just in time to see a tall figure slip through the glass cases and dioramas and down a stairwell reserved for museum staff. Jake glanced around trying to get his bearings in the near-dark. He had visited the museum fairly often with Dr. Nils, and taken the back passageways more than once.
The stairwell was lit only by a few ghostly light bulbs hanging far overhead. They reached the bottom, and Jake carefully opened the door. This section of the museum was off-limits to regular visitors. It housed the offices of the museum curator and the staff, several classrooms for special programs, and a large receiving and storage area where items not on exhibit were kept until the curators could ready them for display.
“It can’t be Veles,” Rick murmured. “We saw him standing in the reception at the same time you saw the shadow man.”
Jake nodded. “But I’m betting a witch as powerful as Veles could come up with something.”
Rick looked uncertain. “So is what we’re chasing real or not?”
“At least as real, I wager, as those ghosts you ran into behind Tesla-Westinghouse,” Jake cautioned.
The museum offices were closed for the evening, doors shut and lights out. Jake paused, waiting long enough to allow his quarry to get to the far end of the corridor before venturing out from the doorway. He had brought one of Adam’s latest toys with him, a pocket-sized electric torch. He hoped he would not have to use it, sure that it would make them an easy target. To his relief, the long basement corridor was dimly lit by two flickering Edison bulbs dangling from the ceiling on long cords.
The dark figure passed the room where collections not currently on display resided on endless rows of metal shelves. Perhaps it was a trick of the dim light, but Jake was certain he could see through the shadowy man. From Rick’s unsettled expression, Jake guessed his partner had observed the same thing.
The figure slipped inside the next room, passing right through the closed door. Jake and Rick followed at a prudent distance, and Jake opened the door slowly, praying that the hinges would not squeak.
Jake remembered the storage room being filled with wooden crates and cardboard boxes bound with metal straps. It was the museum’s receiving
room, where acquisitions were temporarily stored until Nils and the curators could tag and document the rare treasures as part of the official collection. And now that he had followed the shadowy man to the room, a suspicion began to build in the back of Jake’s mind.
Jake paused, watching the figure move on. It struck him that the bulbs overhead did not illuminate the figure’s face, even when it passed directly beneath them, and that his footsteps made no sound, even though the intruder was not moving stealthily.
The prowler moved quickly among the boxes, examining the labels, searching for something. Jake and Rick tracked him from a few aisles away, one on either side of the apparition, staying low to remain out of sight. Jake expected the intruder to find what he was looking for and snatch it, but the dark figure never touched anything, going around objects that blocked his path rather than moving things out of the way.
Jake ducked behind a stack of crates to hide. The top crate rocked back and forth at the movement, and the prowler’s head whipped around, staring straight toward Jake’s hiding place.
The intruder had no face.
In a heartbeat, the creature vanished. Jake’s hand fell to the derringer in the pocket of his tuxedo jacket, though what his gun could do against a creature raised by a witch of Veles’s strength, he had no idea. He tensed, expecting the prowler to suddenly appear in front of him, materializing as quickly as he had disappeared. Jake’s sixth sense sounded a warning, and he followed his intuition, moving as far as he dared to find a new hiding place.
The lights went out.
Jake stood completely still, flattened against the crates. He dared not use his electric torch, and in the darkness, he could not see where Rick was hiding. The room suddenly grew cold, as if an arctic wind had swept through. Silvery ripples reflected on the walls, like mercury shimmering in the light.
Jake shifted enough to see the door. Three fluid, silver creatures hovered in the doorway. They glided into the room, rising up so that they could see down the long aisles.
An ear-splitting screech echoed from the room’s stone walls, and one of the silver creatures streaked toward Jake. A second ghost headed into the center of the room, while the third peeled off to the left, heading for Rick, who gave a startled yelp. Jake ran, no longer fearing to flick the switch on his electric torch, sending a bobbing, erratic beam in front of him.
“What’s your plan?” Rick yelled as he tried to keep an eye on the silver ghost behind him while he dodged between the crates.
“Get to the back door in one piece!” Jake replied.
“That’s it?”
“You’ve got something better?”
In response, Rick wheeled, took up a shooting stance, and aimed at the silver ghost that was gaining on him. The shot echoed in the receiving room, and the bullet passed right through the specter, lodging in a wooden crate. Muttering curses under his breath, Rick sprinted for the door.
“That’s likely to bring the security guards down here,” Jake said, ducking as one of the ghosts swooped low enough to slash at him.
“At least we’ve got a fighting chance against the living,” Rick replied as he ran headlong toward the doors.
Jake felt like a cow herded down the chute at the slaughterhouse. The crates were stacked waist high, and the long, straight aisles made a perfect killing zone. At the far end of the room was an exit and the delivery doors, but they might have been half a league away for all the good they did Jake.
The silver ghost dove at Jake, and he threw himself to the floor. Long, silver tendrils scraped across his back, leaving bloody scratches.
“Hey you!” Rick yelled at the ghost, trying to draw it off. “Over here!” The ghost paused, giving Jake a chance to scramble to his feet, then hurtled towards Rick.
“Damn!” Rick muttered, leaping over a low stack of crates.
Jake’s heart sank as he realized that two of the ghostly creatures were heading toward him faster than he could run, cutting him off from the door. He and Rick were too far in to go back, but not far enough to make it to the other side before the silver ghosts caught up with them.
The ghosts rushed toward Jake, and he threw himself over the wooden crates, landing badly. He heard seams rip on his tuxedo and wondered if he hadn’t cracked a rib in the process. Not stopping to look behind him, he ran down the aisle, fixed on the far wall and the exit. Rick was running the same obstacle course, his face pale with fear.
If that door is locked and there isn’t a way to open it, we’re dead.
The ghosts came at him again, and Jake careened into a row of boxes, sending them to the floor and falling head-over-heels behind them. He was past the middle of the room, only a few rows from the exit. The ghosts were growing closer by the second. Jake managed to climb over another set of boxes, and then another, but he was tiring and the ghosts seemed willing to wait for an easy kill. He could hear Rick running nearby, breathing hard.
Jake’s arm ached, and he was shivering from the sudden cold. The light in his electric torch flickered, and Jake shook it, desperate to see where he was going. He kept running, but the torch flickered on and off, until finally dying.
“Why did you do that?” Rick demanded from the next aisle.
“I didn’t!” Jake shot back. “Keep running!”
The ghosts struck. Three silvery, nightmarish figures, faceless, glowing like moonlight, rushed toward them. Jake blundered away, tripping over boxes, throwing crates over, stumbling and falling and regaining his feet. No matter how fast he ran, the ghosts gained on him, and Jake knew he would not reach the exit in time.
He tried to hurdle the next row of crates, only to bring them crashing down around him. He barked his shin, sending pain streaking up his leg. The silver ghosts were nearly on him.
As the creatures swooped in for the kill with an ear-splitting shriek, a bright light flared from one of the boxes Jake had broken open with his fall, sending an iridescent cone of power rippling out to meet the attack.
Jake did his best to flatten himself against the wreckage as two forces far beyond his understanding met in battle. The shimmering force that he had seen in Renate’s vision now hovered protectively over him, holding the silver ghosts at bay. Colors, pure and intense, glistened and shimmered, strong enough to stand against the assault of the three angry ghosts. Rick stared at the iridescent dome in wide-eyed wonder.
The glittering power swelled, and fire alarms began to go off all over the museum, tripped by the wall of energy. The silver creatures made one final, desperate assault and then disappeared as quickly as they had come.
The lights flickered back on. Jake struggled to his feet, wincing from his bruised ribs. Rick staggered, looking equally battered. Jake took a step and stumbled, limping from a turned ankle.
“Come on!” Rick said, getting under Jake’s shoulder to help him. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
Jake grimaced as he looked out over the destruction the battle with the silver ghosts had wrought. Alarms blared, and he knew that the building would be evacuated as a precaution. Firefighters might show up at any moment, making it awkward to explain why he was in an off-limits area.
But before they went anywhere, Jake was determined to find the source of their unexpected protector. He turned around, dropping to his knees to begin sifting through the damaged crates that littered the floor.
“What are you waiting for? Security’s going to be here any second, and I don’t fancy explaining this to old man Carnegie!” Rick urged.
“Got it!” he said triumphantly. The piece of broken wood he lifted to the light had a shipping label stamped by Polish and US Customs, and the address clearly read ‘Mr. Thomas Desmet, Brand and Desmet, Smallman Street.’ A glance at the boxes nearby showed two other Brand and Desmet crates, correctly delivered to the museum. Could it be as simple as a delivery error? Jake wondered, and guessed that the answer was yes. A second look at the markings revealed that the crates had been delivered earlier that day. Wrong destination and lat
e—we’ve got to talk to our people.
He would ponder how Jasinski’s shipment got sent to the Carnegie Museum later. Now Jake pawed through the wreckage, looking for the Alekanovo stone and Marcin of Krakow’s book. Rick knelt next to him and helped with the search, digging quickly, fearing discovery at any moment. And there, swaddled in crumpled newspapers and old rags, lay a black elliptical stone the length of his arm, carved with runes, and an old, leather-bound book.
“Grab them and go!” Rick’s tone verged on frantic. He hefted the stone, while Jake held the book and hobbled toward the door.
At the doorway, Jake hesitated; the dim light of the acquisitions room would leave them perfectly silhouetted should an assassin be ready to target them as they stepped into the night.
“Stand to the side,” Jake hissed. “Just in case.” Rick flattened himself to one side of the door and pulled the lock while Jake grabbed the handle and yanked the door open, shielding himself behind it.
A shot fired, splintering the doorframe next to Rick’s head, and they dove for cover. Jake dropped to the ground, protecting the book, while Rick curled around the Alekanovo stone. The stone had been effective against hostile magic, but Jake did not want to rely on it against bullets.
More shots pinged against the huge foundation stones. Raised voices sounded, and in the distance, Jake heard the ringing of police alarms. Three men climbed the loading dock to stand in front of Jake and Rick, shielding them and firing into the night toward the attackers. When the answering gunfire ceased, one of the three headed for the door.
“Jake? Rick?” a familiar voice called.
“We’re here,” Jake replied, rising from where he had taken shelter from the shots. Rick got up and dusted himself off before reaching down to grab the precious Alekanovo stone.
“Come on,” Kovach hissed. “Maguire’s men are covering us. Get to the carriage!”
Kovach and his men escorted them from the dock to the street and into waiting carriages. Kovach shoved Jake into the coach. Rick followed a moment later, falling onto his elbows to protect the Alekanovo stone he clutched against his chest. The door slammed shut, and Kovach swung up beside Charles as the carriage jolted forward. Shots fired behind them, answered in kind by Kovach’s men.
Iron and Blood Page 33
