by C. S. Poe
“Sorry,” Gunner said, raising his hand, and now I could see—that tin had had Vaseline in it. “Did I hurt you?”
I’d wanted to say no. It hadn’t hurt me. Only surprised me. Wanted to say that I’d craved this my entire adult life—to experience for myself what the underground pamphlets described with words like: delicious, heavenly, fullness. That I just knew I needed it like I needed air in my lungs.
But I didn’t tell Gunner any of that. I was in a bed, naked, with a man who should have existed only in fantasies, and I hadn’t the courage to follow through on what was likely my only chance at sex before death.
“I’m not… sure.”
“That I hurt you?”
“About doing this,” I corrected.
Nothing on Gunner’s face had changed, but I was struck by the notion that he was suddenly disappointed. For some reason, that touched me. Brought my defenses down.
“It’s because I’m a virgin,” I blurted out.
And then a sort of softness took over Gunner’s features. He leaned down and kissed my mouth again. “We all are at one point, Gillian.”
“I know that.”
Gunner rested his slick hand just above my prick, stroking my skin lightly. He rubbed the tip of his nose against mine and said, “Another time.”
Another time?
Had Gunner meant to imply—what, exactly? He would delight falling into bed with me again? That I wasn’t a nameless ship sailing through his night? Or were these merely those good manners of his?
Gunner tilted his head and started kissing along my jaw. “We can do something else.”
“We can?”
He murmured an agreement against my skin, moved his slippery hand down, and wrapped it around my length. Gunner stroked a few times and asked, “Okay?”
Was he kidding? Okay?
It was nothing like when I did it to myself. A different angle, stronger grip, callused touch—it was perfect, plain and simple.
“Y-yes,” I gasped.
“On your side,” Gunner instructed. “A bit closer. Good.” His big hand wrapped around both of us and stroked together.
I put an arm around Gunner and gripped his back so hard that I felt my nails sink into his flesh. He growled—an actual animalistic growl—and seized forward to bite my neck. I cried out again, bucked into his hold, and was spending before I could find words of warning.
Gunner let up on my neck. “Harder.”
“Wh-what?”
“Your hands.”
I nearly asked for clarification again, because I was awash in total bliss and Gunner’s request was simply not translating, until I realized I was still digging my fingers into his back.
Harder.
Rougher.
I sat up, throwing him off-balance just enough that I was able to push Gunner onto his back. I climbed onto his hips, slid my softening erection against his, and then dug my fingers into his chest. Gunner gasped and shuddered in arousal. He reached down and stroked us together again. I leaned over and bit his neck like he had mine, and that made him tighten his hold almost painfully. Then jets of warm release erupted between our bellies.
I let up on the soft skin of his neck and saw I’d left a dark purple spot. I raised my hands and could make out red crescents partially obscured by Gunner’s chest hair. “I’m sorry,” I said, glancing up. “I left—what? Why’re you laughing?”
Gunner put his wet, sticky hand on my thigh and stroked. He looked sated—boneless—with a playful sort of smile on his face. “Don’t apologize, dear. That’s what I asked for, isn’t it?”
I timidly set a hand on his chest again and petted once or twice. “Looks painful.”
He let out a contented sigh as he sat up. Gunner took my chin and said, “It’ll remind me of you.” He nudged me, got off the bed, and walked across the room to the bathing basin in the far corner.
I studied him from behind as he washed his hands and then his prick. “Gunner?”
“Hmm.”
“About Ferguson….”
He didn’t rise to the conversation starter. Gunner fetched a new washcloth from the neatly folded pile on the shelf below the bowl, poured water from the pitcher over it, then returned to the bed. He took my face and gently turned it so he could clean the back of my head. I’d all but forgotten the cut, what with the explosion and running and… well, aftermath. I winced but remained silent as Gunner finished. He took my hands after, gently but thoroughly cleaning between each finger from when I’d bled at the canyon. Gunner lastly wiped my stomach and flaccid member before returning the cloth to the basin.
“I had the shot,” he said, walking toward the pile of clothes near the door. Gunner glanced at me. “I owe you an apology for not taking it.” He crouched to retrieve his waistcoat.
“Does Ferguson know your name?”
Gunner looked at me again as he stood straight. “You’re very hung up on that one piece of information, aren’t you?”
“No. I mean—if he did—I’d understand.” I rolled my eyes at the absurdity of my own words. “Not, understand that. With him. But a history between the two of you and you are… human. Is what I meant to say.”
“He doesn’t know.”
“Oh.”
“Every man has a past.”
“Of course.”
“And every man has made at least one mistake that haunts him,” he continued, removing the pocket watch. “It changes who he is. Sometimes entirely.” Gunner returned to the bed and sat beside me.
“He’s your mistake?” I asked, my voice low.
Gunner offered me the timepiece. “I’m his,” he corrected. “You said yesterday it didn’t seem as if I had the element of surprise on Ferguson.”
I accepted the watch but didn’t break eye contact. “Correct.”
“Who in Tombstone would have known I was coming to Shallow Grave?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“No one. No one but Ferguson.” Gunner glanced down and tapped the watch. “He gave this to me.”
I finally looked at the watch. Elgin—and solid gold, if the weight was anything to judge by. I wanted to imagine Gunner kept it because of its practicality, but who was I kidding? It was a costly gift presented to a lover, and my holding it was about as wanted as a cart with a third wheel. “It’s, um… very nice quality.”
“I suspect he’s using it to track my whereabouts.”
I fumbled, then snagged the chain before the watch would have dropped to the floor. “What? How?”
“He’s a gifted engineer, Gillian. A little tinkering with the inner mechanics is nothing for him. And it explains how he wasn’t caught off guard in the canyon either.” Gunner stood, still naked and still beautiful. He walked to the window, turned, leaned against the wall, and studied the town below.
“Ferguson is afraid of you,” I said, and when Gunner didn’t reply, I pressed on. “He wants to know your location because he can’t kill you.”
Gunner raised one dark brow.
“They say you’re unkillable,” I replied to that singular change in his expression.
“Do they?” There was no particular inflection in his tone.
“If Ferguson can’t beat you, he means to always remain one step ahead of you,” I concluded. “The silver to counteract your Waterbury. Tracking you.” I held up the pocket watch to stress my point. “Will you tell me why?”
“It’s not relevant.”
Of course not.
It’d been a tumble between the sheets with us. That was all. We were not friends, for God’s sake. Gunner owed me nothing. No details of his past. No explanation of his relationship with Ferguson. No reason to see me again after—
“I think I know how we can find him,” Gunner said quietly. He was studying the sky now. “And end this once and for all.”
VII
October 11, 1881
“Are you certain about this?”
“It’ll be like ringing the chuckwagon bell.”
> I pushed my suit coat back and settled one hand on a hip. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you meant.” Gunner set the gold pocket watch down in the middle of the street outside Bassett Lodge. He returned to my side and loaded a single nonmagic bullet into his Waterbury. Without another word, he cocked the pistol, turned, took aim, and fired. The watch shattered into a hundred little gizmo pieces. Gunner holstered the weapon before the shot even had a chance to echo down the dark, empty street.
I passed him the bundle of rope I’d held in my other hand. “You should come to New York.”
Gunner took the end of the rope, dropped the rest, and began looping a knot. “Should I?” he asked, not looking at me.
“That is—if you’re in the area. I wouldn’t mind seeing you again. Privately, of course. No reason to bring badges into this.”
Gunner pulled one knot through a second and then reached for the other end of the rope. “You’re not wearing yours,” he answered absently.
I glanced down at the tear in my waistcoat, then up at him. “No. Ferguson flung it somewhere.”
After a final loop, Gunner had a lasso in his hands. “I don’t go up North.” He met my gaze stoically.
I smiled, but it crumbled like ash in a light breeze. “I don’t know why I said it.”
“Gillian.”
“Too much law and order,” I said for him.
Gunner still hadn’t looked away. Those blue eyes were diving right into my soul again, only this time, the darkness was clear as day and—hell. Desire? Need? Affection? Whatever emotion I was grappling with, the tangled mess inside me was entirely too visible and he saw more than he should have.
“You deserve better,” he said flatly. “Not a man whose likeness resides in the rogues’ gallery.”
“Men like us—”
Gunner reached out and lightly stroked the gray on the side of my head. What I fondly thought to myself as a wing of Hermes. “Some do,” he said over my protest. “You will.”
There was no better man.
Only Gunner.
Gentle, charming, wicked, and courageous Gunner the Deadly.
It was I who hadn’t deserved his consideration. An officer of the law I might have been, but I was also a selfish and lonely coward to ask of him what I just did.
A thrum broke the stillness of the night. Overhead, blotting out the stars—so many stars, like salt spilled across Heaven’s threshold—came the shape of a massive airship. The blimp sliced through the sky, the steam engine on its stern chug, chug, chugging along. A massive Gatling gun with two ten-barrels hung from the hull, and attached to either side of the ship, like the locomotive, were mechanical arms and poseable claws.
Gunner rolled his shoulders once, gathered the rope, and said, “Hang on tight.”
I shook my head and muttered under my breath, “I swear, if you drop us….” I put my arms around Gunner’s neck.
“Where’s your sense of adventure, my dear?”
“I must have left it in New York.”
I felt Gunner’s laugh against my own chest more than I could hear it over the ship coming in fast and low. He raised the lasso and swung the loop in the air several times, waiting as the starboard arm extended and reached downward. Gunner let the rope go, secured it over one of the arm joints on the first try, and then we were whisked off our feet.
The airship took to the stars again, and we swung wildly from the arm. Steam roared and cogs spun as the apparatus lifted up, ducked under the blimp, and dangled us over the deck of the ship. I let go of Gunner at that point, kept one hand palm down, and caught the magic in the wind to slow my descent. I landed on my feet, looked up, and held a hand out to ease Gunner’s drop.
He hit the deck crouched on one knee, quickly stood, pulled his Waterbury, and pointed it into the dimness. “You got my message,” he stated casually.
I watched Ferguson slowly emerge from the shadows cast by the blimp. It appeared he’d given up the steam glove with remote access, which told me there weren’t going to be aether canisters fired at us from every angle. Ferguson instead held a massive net gun in both hands and had a pistol holstered on his hip. But it was the pistol that immediately set me on edge.
I wasn’t familiar with the origins—it was a bit larger than Gunner’s weapon, brass, and four barrels. The only firearms that had been fabricated to shoot magic ammunition were the Waterbury pistol and Jordan rifle. That being said, I didn’t believe for one minute that an engineer who had at his disposal Gatling spiders, a wall-climbing locomotive, and a goddamn private airship was going to apply black gunpowder and lead to his current situation.
“Gunner,” Ferguson said, sounding thoroughly amused. “You finally figured it out, you sentimental bastard.”
“This is your only chance to surrender to Agent Hamilton before I take you out myself,” Gunner replied.
Ferguson’s wicked grin encompassed his entire face. “I don’t think so.”
“Three,” Gunner stated.
“You should have stopped me before Baltimore.”
“Two.”
Ferguson cocked the net gun. “I’m going to make you suffer.”
“One.”
“The same way that Danny did.”
And then they both fired.
The kickback of the net gun was powerful, even for a man of Ferguson’s stature. In fact, it nearly saved his life by deflecting two of the Waterbury’s aether bullets. The third, however, hit him square in the chest, and I felt my own magic attack his lifeforce. At the same time, a heavy, intricately woven rope ensnared Gunner and he dropped the Waterbury. The weights crossed around his back, thoroughly tangling and throwing him to the deck.
Ferguson roared in pain as he dropped the net gun. He put a hand to his chest, and I swear I heard the distinct squish of torn flesh and blood. With his other hand, Ferguson took the pistol from his hip, raised it above his head, and shot.
There was a crack of four bullets, but the sizzle of heat that wormed its way up my spine warned it was anything but regular bullets. Jagged coils of artificial magic followed the trajectory upward, and then it exploded—a fire spell.
Not possible.
Christ Almighty, this was not possible. The Bureau only employed the very best of the magic community, and all of our architects swore the only illegal magic we had to protect against and control was aether. No other elements could be manipulated and stored within a tangible item—a bullet, for example—or utilized by a noncaster without them having a connection to the magic that encompassed the world.
And yet there it was.
Fire.
The artificial spell hit the blimp overhead, and flames immediately spread across the cotton lining. Hot steam began to escape through the ruptures and the airship listed to one side. I righted my footing and made for the helm, now visible in the light of the fire, but was stopped when Ferguson sidestepped and pointed those four barrels at me.
“If I’m going out,” he gasped. “I’m taking the pig and pig-fucker with me.” He pulled the trigger again.
Lightning bullets.
My warning was only a split second, just a whisper on the back of my neck. A bastardized version of that prickle my electricity caused right before I cast a spell. So I raised my hand and called the real deal. Billions of volts tore down from the sky and followed the motion of my hand as I pointed it at Ferguson. My lightning met his as it was released from the ammunition, and the two burst and shattered in a storm of sparks. Arcs of energy sporadically danced across the deck of the airship, and I heard Ferguson cry out—likely having made the very rookie mistake of staring directly at the center of the spell without protective goggles.
But my assumed victory was short-lived, as his spell began to twist and shudder, like an animal in death throes. His electricity doubled in size, wild and unmaintained without a caster, and then it all but swallowed mine without warning. His lightning engulfed my hands and ran up my arms, and I screamed from pain I’
d never experienced in my twenty-nine complicated years of life. It was nothing like the magic hurt I knew and was trained for.
It was feral. Sadistic. Vicious.
All of the veins in my hands glowed bright and my skin was translucent.
Then I smelled smoke. Burned flesh.
As the light waned, my hands were left striped—red and raw, bloody, and quickly losing all sensation. I dropped to my knees, cradling my hands against my chest.
“No! Gillian!” Gunner shouted from my right. He was still fighting to escape the net.
Debris fell from overhead. The airship was starting to dive straight down.
Ferguson was coughing up blood and laughing like a goddamn monster.
I raised one shaking hand, my palm toward the blimp. I cast another wind spell, and the raw energy coming into my body, mixing with my lifeforce, and escaping as controlled magic rubbed against my exposed nerves in such a way that I was sobbing in agony as I tried to save our hides.
But the fires diminished and the airship slowed its fall, then I collapsed on my back, unable to feel my arms. The edges of my vision were going dark—with blood or inevitable unconsciousness, I wasn’t certain.
Ferguson staggered over to me, his entire chest stained with blood. He let out a wet laugh and weakly pointed the pistol down at me. “Say good night.”
“Good night.” Gunner put the Waterbury to Ferguson’s head and pulled the trigger.
VIII
October 14, 1881
It’s funny, the extraordinary lengths the human body goes through to protect our mind after a series of horrific events. I remembered the airship on fire and the unavoidable crash that would have killed Gunner and me if I didn’t do something. I also remembered my hands, burned and blistered and quite likely annihilated by manufactured magic gone haywire after being cast by a madman.
But then there was nothing. I had no sense of time—whether minutes or hours or days had passed—certainly no sense of place.
And the first impression my body registered as I came to was not anguish or death.
