The Engineer

by C. S. Poe

  He turned, his chest heaving and eyes wide with shock. The ends of his impressive mustache were singed. He knocked the smoking bowler from his head and pointed a thick finger at me. “You little cocksucker.” Then Ferguson lunged.

  I sat up, scrambled backward, and rolled onto my hands and knees. But Ferguson grabbed the collar of my coat and slammed me to the ground again. My head cracked against a stone, my vision went white, and I tried to cry, but it came out more like a strangled breath. Ferguson wrapped his brass-and-copper-gloved hand around my throat and hauled me to my feet. He threw me up against the side of the locomotive. The fire spell didn’t hurt, since it had been cast by me, but the heat was intolerable.

  Ferguson tightened his grip on my neck, the cogs of his glove whirring and releasing steam. He lifted me off my feet, leaned in close, and growled, “Not even Gunner will recognize your whore face when I’m done with you.” Ferguson tore the badge from my waistcoat with his free hand and tossed it carelessly over one shoulder.

  I kicked wildly, held his massive forearm with one hand and punched at it with the other, tried to cast a spell—any spell—but I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think.

  “Let him go.” Gunner slid into the edge of my blurring vision, the barrels of the Waterbury pressed against the side of Ferguson’s bald head.

  Ferguson’s hold loosened enough that I was able to gulp for air like a landed fish, but he still kept me pinned with my feet dangling. “Howdy, Gunner,” he drawled, unfazed by the weapon.

  “I said, let him go,” Gunner repeated.

  Ferguson tightened his grip again.

  “I’ll blow your brains out, Milo.”

  “No, you won’t,” Ferguson answered simply.

  Gunner cocked the pistol.

  Ferguson turned his head, allowing the Waterbury to slide across his temple and rest on the middle of his forehead. He grinned at Gunner, utterly wild.

  I didn’t wait to find out if Gunner was going to shoot this time. With Ferguson momentarily distracted and me seconds away from blacking out, I kicked him hard in the groin. So hard that Ferguson dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes. I fell free from his grip, stumbled several feet away, and doubled over as I sucked in a deep lungful of hot air.

  Gunner was at my side immediately, his hand on my back.

  I nodded acknowledgment of his presence, my hands still on my knees and my eyes cast downward.

  Gunner moved to stand in front of me, put a hand under my chin, and with just the slightest pressure of his thumb, encouraged me to stand straight. He tilted my chin to the side, tugged my collar down, and inspected my throat.

  “Fine,” I croaked out.

  Gunner’s hand moved to the back of my head next, and his fingers came back bloody. His eyes were like two sapphires on fire.

  Thud.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  Gunner and I simultaneously looked down. Four brass balls cracked open and now-familiar spider appendages wiggled free. They rolled over, stood on their delicate mechanics, and began to double, triple, quadruple in size with every buzz and whir of cogs.

  I raised my arm up, palm toward the sky to cast a lightning spell. The electricity weakly dropped down into my hold, sparked and sputtered, but I was unable to keep it alive and pulsating for more than a few seconds at a time. That blow to the back of my head left me feeling off-balance—as if I were lost in a cloud where two plus two equaled five, and I knew this wasn’t correct, but I couldn’t figure out the basic arithmetic on my fingers. My life energy was there. The magic was heavy in the atmosphere. But my scrambled brain couldn’t…. I just needed a moment to correct my enchanted footing.

  But we didn’t have a minute to spare.

  Gunner swore, raised his Waterbury, and fired twice—six bullets—into the nearest Gatling spider. It exploded in a mess of brass and copper parts before reaching its full size. He turned, took aim at a second, and pulled the trigger.

  No manufactured aether buzzed along the surface of my skin.

  No crack of a bullet pierced my ears.

  I looked up at Gunner.

  He clenched his jaw and lowered the weapon. “My last two rounds are at the lodge.”

  Ferguson started giggling. He raised his hands, four more brass balls held between his thumbs and first two fingers. “Oh, how the mighty have fallen, eh, Gunner?”

  “This isn’t the end, Milo.”

  Ferguson tossed the balls in between us, and they immediately hatched and started growing. “Time will tell.”

  Something flickered across Gunner’s face at that statement. Too brief, as usual, but I was certain the realization he’d had was an important one.

  Ferguson nodded his head toward me. “I’ll give my condolences to the President, copper-pig.” He laughed wildly, spun on one heel, and disappeared down Boot Spur Street.

  Gunner glanced at one of the full-grown contraptions as its top opened with a hiss of steam and the ten-barreled Gatling gun lifted out. “I’m sorry you won’t have that opportunity to arrest me in the future.”

  “I may forget to mention I ever saw you.”

  Gunner looked at me, an openly quizzical expression on his face.

  The Gatling gun tick, tick, ticked as it lined its sights on us.

  I dropped to one knee, the impact sparking bright stars across my vision and making my head throb in time with my heart. “Keep us alive for thirty seconds and you’ve got my word.”

  Gunner spun the Waterbury still in his hand and ran at the closest spider. He smashed the butt of his weapon against the intricate mechanics over and over, steam and sparks shooting up from the backside.

  I held one hand out toward the battered, melting locomotive, grasping onto the tendrils of fire magic within. I reached the other hand out and felt the faraway touch of water in the horse corral. I pulled my arms inward, pushing that magic into me.

  Gunner holstered the Waterbury, swung around behind the spider as it lurched hard to one side, grabbed onto the base of the Gatling gun with both hands, and spun it toward the two other full-sized spiders as it opened fire.

  I slammed my hands down into the packed dirt. My vision briefly shifted focus as I reconnected with earth magic. Wisps of natural energy ebbed and flowed with the breeze before snapping out of my physical range of sight.

  Both spiders took the full assault of the Gatling gun, one crumpling to a burning heap of garbage, the other’s back legs collapsing, causing it to fire its rounds into the air. Gunner threw the spider in his hands to the ground, took his Waterbury again, and slammed the butt down on top of the other, forcing the barrels into the dirt, where they continued shooting. The spider’s two front legs pushed back to dislodge itself from the ground, but Gunner moved around its backside, kicked it hard, and kept bringing the heel of his boot down until the gears and cogs were silent.

  I held on to the essence of a spiral of air kicking up just outside the limits of town, rode that element into the sky, and reached for lightning again. Like a minute hand that’d been stuck at 11:59 finally jumping to midnight, my sight shifted to the magic plane again and I watched the different elements glitter and unfurl like fiddleheads.

  Gunner’s Stetson hung around his neck, no longer hiding his face. He looked incensed. Cheeks pink from exertion and eyes alight with fury. He was breathing hard as he finished with the three spiders in time for the next four to have grown large enough that the Gatling guns unloaded and started lining up their targets.

  “Thirty seconds or not, you’re out of time.”

  “Get down,” I ordered, standing.

  Gunner dropped to his belly without question.

  I raised both hands to the sky. Thunder boomed overhead, and the reverberations shook storefront doors and windows. Black clouds formed, the streets of Shallow Grave darkened, and then two bolts of lightning came crashing into my outstretched arms. I brought my hands down and out to my sides, dispersing the magic across our immediate area. The four Gatling spiders immediately ex
ploded. The lightning also slammed into the abandoned locomotive, frying the inner mechanics and rendering it utterly useless, even for an engineer as skilled as Ferguson.

  I snapped and the lightning fizzled out of existence.

  Gunner raised his head, looked at me, then sat on his knees to survey the street. “Goddamn, Hamilton.” He got to his feet and dusted himself off. “At least you didn’t set fire to anything this time.”

  He was impressed. I could hear a concealed smile in his tone. It made me feel feverish.

  Gunner reached back to pull his Stetson on but paused when the locomotive began emitting a high-pitched beep. His eyes darted to the husk of hollowed iron, and then Gunner said quietly, “Come here.”

  “What?”

  Gunner reached his hand out for me. “Now.”

  Confused but more keen to hold his hand than I was yesterday, I readily took it.

  Without warning, Gunner burst into a sprint, hauling me with him. The beeping grew louder, despite the distance we put between us and the locomotive. We skidded around the corner of Applejack Row, and Gunner shoved me toward the back of a saloon. We crashed to the ground behind a pile of rotting sun-bleached barrels as a detonation from Boot Spur Street shook the ground.

  I felt it was fairly safe to assume Ferguson had built and installed some kind of security device. Should he lose access to the locomotive, it would… self-implode. And my lightning had no doubt activated that trigger.

  Whistles for the fire brigade sounded almost immediately.

  Voices of citizens—shock, fear, surprise—filled the streets as they came out of hiding to inspect the damage.

  Gunner’s breathing was heavy against the side of my face.

  I turned my head to look at him.

  He slid a long leg between mine and took my chin. “Gillian.”

  This was it.

  The moment I’d feared—needed—my entire life.

  And to hell with the consequences.

  Just once, let me be happy.

  I grabbed the back of Gunner’s head and pulled him down into a kiss. His mouth was strong, insistent, hungry for what it wanted. And I had no idea what I was doing. I felt clumsy and awkward in my attempt to keep up with his demand.

  Gunner let up enough to whisper, “Open your mouth.”

  “Wha—”

  And then he dipped his tongue into my mouth. It was so obscene, so indecent, so brash of Gunner, yet I heard the sound that escaped me. It wasn’t pain. It wasn’t distress.

  It was hunger. A thirst for more.

  My entire body thrummed in a way I hadn’t been able to imagine was even possible. This—Gunner’s tongue twined with my own, sucking and caressing, dominant and masculine—this had to be why, once experienced, men with our inclinations were willing to brave any danger to feel this desire again.

  This want again.

  Rightness again.

  Although pinned underneath him, I snaked my hands between us enough to attempt pushing Gunner’s coat from his shoulders. I didn’t get very far and instead loosened his tie with a firm tug.

  Gunner grunted and broke the kiss. He stared at me for a beat, put his hand over mine, and pulled his tie free from my hold in order to sit up. “Not here.” He grabbed his hat and got to his feet in a quick, seamless movement before reaching out to me.

  I was not as graceful as I stood. “Where are we going?”

  “Bassett Lodge.” He moved around me, taking a shortcut through the back properties of shops along Applejack Row.

  “What about Ferguson’s locomotive?” I asked, following close on Gunner’s heel.

  He looked over his shoulder but didn’t stop walking. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Do you?”

  “Well, no—”

  “Then don’t worry about it.”

  I opened my mouth to protest further. We couldn’t leave the site as-is. We ought to return and oversee the situation. But the objections were halfhearted at best and never made it past the flutter of terrified excitement in my throat.

  Upon reaching the back entrance of the lodge, Gunner knocked on the door as he had done yesterday.

  I watched a bead of sweat roll down the contour of his jaw and disappear underneath the collar of his shirt. I wanted to follow that line of perspiration with my hands and mouth, divest Gunner of his renowned black wardrobe, and experience the body underneath in the same wicked ways as men before me had. I prayed this moment of intimacy we were to share would sate my starvation for years to come.

  Because Gunner had been clear about how he handled sexual encounters.

  Because he was an outlaw and I was a federal agent.

  Because men like us did not have the possibility of… anything more.

  Gunner looked down at me just then. Those blue eyes met mine, a smile ghosted across his face, and my heart panged with a profound longing to know his real name.

  The door unlocked from the inside, Alice peered through the crack, then she immediately moved aside. She had a blush on her face as Gunner stepped past her and into the kitchen. No doubt the sight and smell of masculine physical exertion affected her as it did me.

  I followed him inside, inclined my head to Alice in thanks, and trailed behind Gunner through the next door that exited the kitchen. He led the way single file up the stairs that, despite the afternoon light from the front windows, was still shrouded in relative darkness. The only indication of our ascent was the creak and groan of weathered floorboards underfoot.

  Gunner removed a key from his inner coat pocket, unlocked the last door, hooked a finger under my collar, and tugged me inside. He shut the door, then shoved me back against it. He loomed over me, all heat and hard planes, dangerous as sure as the sun was to rise each morning, but unlike yesterday, I didn’t push him away.

  I grabbed Gunner’s slender hips, yanked him closer, and pressed our bodies together. He threw his hat somewhere over his shoulder before leaning down to kiss me. He shrugged out of his coat at the same time, letting it fall to the floor, and brought his hands up to hold my face as he pushed his tongue between my lips. My hands fumbled as I again tasted the tang of licorice while Gunner’s thumbs caressed my cheekbones. A few more of those kisses and I’d spend like an adolescent boy with no control.

  With renewed desire to not let this end before it began, I broke from Gunner’s kiss in order to look down and work the buttons of his trousers. He made a sound in the back of his throat—approval, that much I knew—and hastily unbuttoned his waistcoat. It dropped to the floor with a thud—the pocket watch, I suspected. Gunner pushed the braces from his shoulders, made short work of his tie, collar, cuffs, bandana, and goggles, then shoved my own suit coat off as soon as I’d finished with his trousers.

  “You’ve much too many layers on, Hamilton.”

  “Gillian,” I corrected.

  Gunner smiled. It wasn’t big and wide, nothing so bold for a man as subtle as himself, but it was still genuine. Enough to make my heart trip a few beats. “Gillian,” he repeated in that low voice of his. “Finish up.”

  He pulled his boots off, turned, and walked to the foot of the bed, where he looped his holster around the railing before dropping his trousers and shirt to the floor. I tried not to gape at the openness in which Gunner disrobed, his casualness in removing vest and drawers, like he enjoyed his audience of one. And when his pale body was finally exposed, naked and handsome, backlit by the afternoon sun, my mouth had gone completely dry.

  Gunner had black chest hair and a fine line that traveled from his navel to the groomed bush around his erect prick. His thighs and calves, much like his forearms, had fine, soft-looking black hairs. He bent down to rummage in what sounded like a carpet bag on the floor just out of sight, then straightened with a tin in one hand.

  “Your unwavering interest is appreciated,” Gunner began, looking at me as he popped the lid off. “But I had thought to use more than eyes.”

  I blinked, looked down at my state of partial undress, a
nd felt a blush creep up my neck and cheeks. “Yes, of course. Sorry.”

  I made it a point to not look at Gunner again as I undressed. My own manner was methodical. Nothing so natural as how he had shed his garments. I wasn’t sensual. I couldn’t have been. I was so… God. I had no idea what I was doing.

  I cast my undergarments to the floor and stared at myself. Not nearly as toned as Gunner. I touched my chest and thought, Less hair too. In fact, if I was correct that Gunner had a past with Ferguson—a man who’d proven he could squash me with his bare hands given the opportunity—why the hell was Gunner even interested?

  “Gillian?”

  I jerked my head up.

  Gunner sat on the far edge of the bed. “Come lie down.”

  I felt automated as I moved forward, awkwardly sat, then scooted back enough to lie as instructed. Belly-up was the ultimate act of submission, wasn’t it?

  Gunner rolled onto his side and draped his body over mine. The shock of bare skin on skin was immediate. I think I cried out, because Gunner was shushing and kissing me. My replication of his earlier ministrations wasn’t perfect nor seamless, but I tried. I grabbed a handful of his gorgeous black hair, gave it a tug, and tentatively slid my tongue between his parted lips. Gunner eagerly opened to it. He thrust his hips lightly against my leg, drawing his hard prick up and down my thigh.

  He broke the kiss, took a deep breath as if he’d been running for miles, and whispered against my ear, “Raise your leg. Knee to chest—that’s it.”

  Was Gunner providing directions because he simply found me too slow for the upkeep of his own interests, or had he realized my earlier deflections, my unattachment—it was because I was a virgin? That I hadn’t even been kissed, so of course I’d needed that explained too? My spiral of self-loathing was halted abruptly when Gunner moved his hand to my backside and pressed a slick, cool finger in my hole. I jumped and scooted back from the invasion.