Simon watched the events unfold, as startled as anyone else in the room. “Keep it occupied,” he yelled to the apothecary.
Emboldened by the discovery, Simon grabbed the second lantern from its hook on the wall and flung it to the ground between Luthor and the beast. The casing around the lantern shattered on impact, spilling oil across the floor. As the oil struck the burning wick, the ground was suddenly consumed with flames.
The Golem’s lips moved as though trying to speak, but all that emerged was a garbled mess of syllables that Simon couldn’t understand. It whimpered, shifting first left then right as it sought an escape from the flames.
Luthor dropped his arm, no longer feeling it necessary to wave his covered lantern as a fire slowly consumed the apartment. To his surprise, a hand closed over the lantern’s handle. The apothecary turned abruptly as Simon pulled the lantern from his grasp. Before Luthor could ask what Simon intended, the Inquisitor threw the second lantern through the flames.
The lantern struck the Golem’s metal breastplate and exploded in a spray of oil and flames. The giant’s whimpers quickly became screams of horror as it battered itself in an attempt to brush away the flames. The fire scorched the soft flesh of its abdomen and rolled upward toward its neck and face.
Though the Inquisitor tried to watch the wailing beast, the fire in the apartment was quickly burning out of control. The tall blaze licked the dried timber of the roof. Simon coughed as smoke filled his lungs. His eyes stung, leaving the Golem as little more than an undefined blur on the far side of the brilliant flames.
“Sir, we need to get out of here,” Luthor yelled over the crackling of the blaze.
“The Golem…” Simon managed between hoarse coughs.
A loud crash startled the Inquisitor. He glanced sharply to his right and noticed the shattered window. When he looked quickly around the room, he found the Golem was nowhere to be seen. Rushing to the window, Simon arrived in time to see the flaming giant staggering to his feet in the mud below. Screaming, it stumbled unsteadily toward the river’s edge, slipping often in the slick, blood-soaked mud.
Though leaning out the window offered a slight reprieve from the blinding smoke, it only infuriated the Inquisitor further. Simon tried to reload, but his mind was muddled with shock and smoke. His fingers refused to cooperate as he fumbled with the bullets. As he watched, the Golem reached the water’s edge and dove beneath the eddying current. The air filled with the sizzling of burning flesh striking the cold waters. The Golem disappeared beneath the surface, leaving behind only concentric ripples that slowly faded away. Simon watched as long as he thought safe but never saw the giant reemerge. Cursing, he slammed his fist into the windowsill, slicing his knuckles on shards of the broken glass.
“Sir, we have to leave at once or we’ll be trapped,” Luthor said, returning to his side.
“Matilda?” Simon asked, his gaze not leaving the river.
“I have her,” Luthor replied, a note of hysteria creeping into his voice. “Sir, there’s nothing more we can do. We have to leave now.”
Furious, Simon turned away and dove back into the smoky room. Mattie had returned to her human form, though Simon wasn’t sure if it was of her own volition or by happenstance as a result of her injuries. The Inquisitor pulled off his longer coat and threw it over her, concealing the fact that she was naked. Sharing Mattie’s weight between them, they hurried to the shattered door and into the hallway. The hallway offered little reprieve as it had filled with smoke as well. Luthor grabbed Mattie’s clothing as he passed and they rushed down the stairs. Though hurt, Mattie was alert and able to walk under her own power, at least enough to hurry down the stairs with a sense of urgency.
They met Doctor Casan halfway down the stairs, the doctor rushing up to assist. “I saw embers falling through the floorboards and heard crashing,” he said breathlessly.
“The building is on fire,” Simon replied. “We need to leave with all haste.”
Casan turned and led them down the stairs. The doctor had been right; embers were raining down on the group as they rushed toward the butcher shop’s back door. They burst into the warm midday air, their faces stained with soot and coughing painfully. Mattie wheezed as well, as much from the broken ribs she’d suffered as from the smoke inhalation.
Simon stared angrily at the river, still seeing nothing breaking the otherwise gently lapping waves.
Simon led the doctor away so that he wouldn’t see Mattie hastily dressing behind the smoking shop, changing out of the long coat and into her regular attire. The Inquisitor counted his blessings that the doctor had been preoccupied with the fire and hadn’t noticed her state of undress. Flames had yet to tear through the room, but a single glance through the windows showed the smoldering embers and heavy smoke filling the air within. Once she was done, the group hurried along the bank behind a few buildings before daring to turn toward Riverbend Street for fear of appearing culpable in the ensuing blaze.
Throngs of people moved quickly along the street, toward the scene of the fire, some carrying buckets of water that sloshed over the rims and spilled onto the street. Glancing toward Mason and Son Butchers, Simon could see flames licking the broken second story windows that overlooked the street below. Glass and singed wood littered the street beneath the windows, a result of the intensity of the heat shattering the flimsy panes as it sought escape.
People splashed buckets of water into the front of the building but no one dared enter and attempt to extinguish the blaze at its source. They all seemed content to watch the upper building burn while trying their best to keep the fire contained. As such, it didn’t take them long to change their tactic. Rather than soaking the butchers, they began pouring water in earnest onto the buildings on either side, going so far as to emerge from sloped windows on the roofs to better soak the thatch.
Embers rose angrily into the air; caught in the breeze they wafted toward buildings nearby. The crowd held its collective breath as they watched the embers fall, each ember holding the potential to start a new uncontained fire.
Simon led the others to the back of the crowd where they stood, soot covered and dour, huddled close to one another. Luthor draped his arm across Mattie’s shoulders, though Simon couldn’t tell if it was done affectionately or simply to help the injured woman stand upright. They were a terrible-looking group, their eyes rimmed in red and their faces smudged with ash. It clung to their hair in tendrils of white, which only spread further into streaks as they ran their hands across their heads. Doctor Casan was the only one of the group who still resembled himself, the man having not entered the upper floor, faced the Golem, or got caught in the ensuing fire.
Simon laughed unexpectedly, unable to contain the nervous energy within him. He felt that his options had dwindled to laughter or tears, knowing that they faced down the Golem and defeated it; yet they fell far short of destroying the beast. He didn’t believe for a second that the creature was capable of drowning in the strong current, though its metal gears would suffer from the soiled water.
The others looked at him incredulously, but they didn’t share his mirth. Mattie’s gaze drifted back to the upper floor just as a section of roof collapsed. The new fuel fed the blaze and flames shot high into the air.
“It’s a shame we couldn’t retrieve his body,” she sympathetically said.
Casan shook his head. “He deserves to burn with his business. He was the villain in our little tale, need I remind you?”
Simon remained silent, his own doubts rattling through his head. Peter Mason hadn’t looked like a villain or a criminal of any sort when he was held aloft by his neck, his face turning purple and his tongue swelling in his mouth. He had looked like a scared child at the mercy of a violent psychopath.
In the distance, they could hear the sound of sirens and the ringing bells of a fire station. Help would be arriving soon, though Simon doubted they’d do more than the townsfolk had already done: wetting the surrounding buildings at the sacrifice of the but
cher’s shop.
Another siren sounded closer, and the Inquisitor turned as a paddy wagon rounded the corner on the far side of the crowd. The constabulary had arrived far quicker than Simon would have believed. For a second, the Inquisitor felt relieved at the sight, but he quickly remembered both their appearance and the good doctor standing by their side.
“You must go at once,” Simon ordered, turning abruptly toward Casan.
“Don’t be absurd,” Youke replied.
Simon frowned. “The three of us are marked for our part in this debacle, but you’re not. Standing by our side isn’t a sign of solidarity; it’s the quickest way to end your current employment with the constables.” He emphasized the last word with a jerk over his shoulder, to where blue uniformed men could be seen climbing from the police cars.
Casan appeared lost in thought, but he eventually nodded his consent. “I’m sorry I have to leave under such circumstances.”
“You’ve been nothing less than instrumental during the investigation,” Simon replied to everyone’s surprise. “I have no doubt we’ll be in touch for future missions.”
The unexpected compliment left the doctor smiling as he turned away and hurried around a corner, out of sight of the constables. Simon turned back toward the police and saw more vehicles arriving, a mixture of constables and firefighters. Amidst the crowd, he saw a much more familiar face, that of Detective Sugden.
As though drawn to Simon’s presence, the detective caught sight of the trio standing nonchalantly toward the back of the crowd. Despite there now being a number of people who were coated with sweat and ash, he knew instinctively that the Inquisitor had been involved with the fire. The detective pushed his way through the crowd until he stood before the three.
His eyes scanned past the Inquisitor, to the redhead whose smile barely concealed the anguish she felt at standing upright, and finally to the apothecary, who quickly turned his attention away from the prying eyes of the detective.
“Why am I not at all surprised to see the three of you here?” Sugden asked.
“You either suffer from a complete lack of faith in your fellow man or you have incredible insight into the human psyche,” Simon replied. “In your case, I actually presume it’s a bit of both.”
“I won’t be swayed by your silver tongue, Inquisitor. What the bloody hell happened here?”
Simon glanced at his friends but immediately knew he’d receive no help from either of them. Instead, he turned toward the detective. “As you well know, we’ve been investigating the murders of the young women within Solomon’s Way.”
“An investigation I strictly forbid and, I might add, one that mightily overstepped the authorizations permitted to you by the Grand Inquisitor.”
“Semantics,” Simon replied with a wave of his hand. “We can argue the nuances of this all night, but the simple fact is that we solved this crime in a far shorter time than it would have taken you and your fellow constables.”
Sugden turned red in the face at the backhanded insult. He pointed toward the burning building behind him. “You call this solving the crime?”
For his part, Simon’s expression remained impassive. “Of course. Isn’t it abundantly clear?” He turned toward Luthor and Mattie as though the question wasn’t rhetorical. “It was clear, wasn’t it?”
“Abundantly,” Mattie grunted, pained by the simple act of taking in a deep breath.
“Crystal,” Luthor added, though he still refused to make eye contact with the enraged detective.
“Well, one of you had damned well better explain it to me!”
Simon sighed. “Peter Mason, the recently deceased owner of that very establishment—” Sugden mouthed the word “deceased” but Simon didn’t stop his diatribe. “—was your murderer. Using his knowledge of butchering, combined with his rudimentary knowledge of mechanics as seen in the cooler housed on his first floor, he killed and dismembered men and women alike to create part man, part machine abominations.”
“Hold it right there,” Sugden said, finally interrupting. “These crimes were specifically about butchered women. There was never a mention of deceased men.”
“I believe if you examine your files, you’ll find cases of men killed in a similar fashion. Having faced his Golem, I can say with some certainty that there are—or were, at the very least—men in Callifax who had been inexplicably murdered and butchered.”
Sugden’s gaze narrowed. “You say you faced this creation? Is this before or after you killed Peter Mason?”
“During,” Simon replied.
“We didn’t kill Mister Mason,” Luthor quickly added. “We arrived as the creature was concluding with the murder of the butcher.”
“At which time…” Sugden left the sentence hanging.
“At which time, we fought against the Golem, destroying it with the same fire you now see burning merrily throughout the upper floor of the Mason and Son Butchers.” A crash sounded behind Sugden’s shoulder, causing the detective to jump in surprise. “I stand corrected. Burning merrily through both floors of the butcher’s.”
The detective did not seem at all amused, but his expression quickly turned to one of abject concern. “You say you destroyed this Golem, as you call it, in the fire?”
Simon nodded, ignoring the petulant stares of his counterparts. “We did. It seemed impervious to most other attacks, being made up of little more than flesh drawn over gears and other mechanical intricacies, but it seemed quite frightened by the oil lanterns. We set it ablaze before hurrying from the room.”
Sugden seemed pale but composed himself before continuing. “It seems I owe you an apology, Inquisitor. I had thought your interference would be nothing short of a detriment to my investigation, but it seems you solved this crime quite well without the assistance of the Solomon’s Way constabulary.”
“I wouldn’t have had it any other way,” Simon said, missing the venom in the detective’s words. “Will there be anything else? Do you need us to come to the station and file an official report?”
The detective shook his head. “I believe I’ve heard all that I need to. You’re all free to return to your homes.”
“Detective,” Simon said, “it’s been an immense pleasure working with you. I hope we’ll have the same honor again in the near future.”
Sugden glared daggers at the Inquisitor before turning away and hurrying back toward the constables, barking orders as he passed through the crowd. Simon seemed intent on watching the fire continue, but Luthor pulled him away.
When they returned to the terrace in the Upper Reaches, Simon helped Luthor bring Mattie inside and up the stairs. They sat her in the tub and retrieved water with which she could clean before leaving her to her work. Through the closed bathroom door, they could hear her grimace as she removed her clothing and exposed the broken ribs.
The two men retreated to the first floor, where Luthor pulled some washcloths from a pantry. They wetted them and did their best to remove the soot covering their skin. As the apothecary furiously scrubbed his muttonchops, trying to remove the unsightly streaks of gray from his facial hair, he glanced over toward Simon.
“You don’t honestly believe what you said to Detective Sugden, do you, sir?” Luthor asked. “The blatant lie about the Golem dying in the blaze aside, is there a chance it truly did die even after its escape? Could it have drowned in the river?”
Simon paused his cleaning and frowned, his stare locked on the nondescript wall before him. “I don’t think anything’s over, Luthor. I think we came close to stopping the beast today, but our best wasn’t enough. It escaped to kill again.”
“But its master’s dead, killed by its own hand,” Luthor pleaded, wanting this string of murders to be done.
Simon shook his head and dropped his soiled washcloth into the basin. “Someone went to great lengths to have us believe the butcher was the Golem’s master, but I don’t believe it for a moment. I saw the frightened look on Peter Mason’s face as the mo
nster choked the last vestiges of life from his body. He was a man as startled by the Golem’s appearance as we were.”
“Is it so hard to believe that the Golem could have turned on its master?”
“A mindless creature doesn’t turn on its master; that’s a distinct trait of the sentient. Neither was there any indication within the butcher’s shop that he had more than a passing knowledge of machinery, especially the type necessary to animate so large a creature. The lie I told the detective was clearly flawed logic. The doctor confirmed that the cooler was of a similar design to the ones used in the morgue. I would venture a guess that with more time to investigate, we would have found a maker’s mark on the steel box. The Masons may have purchased the cooler, but they certainly didn’t craft it themselves. Moreover, Luthor, did you see a single female’s body parts concealed within that cooler?”
“They could have been stored elsewhere within the shop,” the apothecary replied, grasping at any hope that the crimes would end with the day’s foray.
Simon shook his head. “If you’re insinuating that there could have been a hidden basement, let me stop you there. The water level of the river was too high to have dug beneath the foundation of the shop. Any basement, no matter how well crafted, would have eventually flooded, especially with heavy rains like we suffered recently.”
Luthor dropped his cloth into the basin as well before drying his face. He stood upright and leaned against the wall as he placed his glasses back on the bridge of his nose. “Then why did you lie, sir? If we stopped nothing tonight, then why tell the detective that the Golem and its master are dead?”
Simon angrily slapped his hand onto the table before him. “Because, Luthor, Detective Sugden has lied to us since this investigation began. He swore he knew nothing of the murders until our evidence revealed otherwise. He provided a convenient story about his involvement due to the loss of his son, yet what did you note about the Golem today? It was decidedly male in every way. Yet you heard Sugden when I brought that to his attention. He knew nothing of what had to have been a previous string of incredibly similar crimes.” Simon stood upright, and his eyes narrowed dangerously. “What you may not have noted was the man’s lack of expression when I told him the Golem was male. Like the murders before, the detective knows more about the goings on than he revealed to us.”
The Golem of Solomon's Way Page 25
