Hearts of Smoke and Steam (34 page)

Emilio could hear the sound of people shrieking above his own desperate gasps for breath. The Colossus must have reached the main stage, sending the audience into a panic. Emilio wondered what would happen to him when the creature moved. Would he be dragged to death by the hoses that were draped over him?

The screams of pandemonium grew louder, and he could feel the heavy vibrations of the mechanical man's footsteps through the floor. But instead of the expected sensations of being torn to pieces, he felt the weight rolling off of him. There was another booming voice, but this one was clearly human, and it was talking to him. “Are you all right?”

As he finally managed to take a breath, pulling air back into his lungs, Emilio wasn't really sure if he had all the information he needed to answer that question, let alone the wind to form an answer.

Taking a moment, he began to move his arms and legs, checking one after another until he was sure that they were all in working order. Once he was satisfied that he was still in one piece, he sat up. The moment he did so, he felt a pair of hands grab his shoulders, roughly dragging him away from the wriggling steam hoses that lay nearby.

The face of a jackal peered down at him. There were two black holes where its eyes should have been. Perhaps he had died and was already on the way to hell.
“K
rie, eléison,”
Emilio whispered. Perhaps this was the visage of the demon that had been sent to bring him there.

“I am Anubis. Are you ready to be judged?”

“Am I dead?”

“Not yet.”

As Emilio's vision began to clear, he realized the man above him was the costumed adventurer who had been standing next to Sarah, and not a creature from the underworld. “Thank you.”

Anubis's head shuddered as a wooden beam impacted with it from behind. The man moved woozily for a moment before crashing down onto Emilio, unconscious.

“Are you all right, my boy?” Vincent grabbed the black-clad figure and rolled him roughly onto the floor. “For a moment I thought that man might have done you grave bodily harm!”

Emilio sat up. “He saved me!”

“Do you see this?” he said, waving the jagged piece of lumber in his hands. This close, the stage makeup on his face made him look like a madman, although Emilio supposed that was always true of Vincent. “Up until a minute ago, this was a piece of my stage!”

The showman held out his hand, and Emilio took it. “But what does that have to do with him?”

“He's one of the Children of Eschaton.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because the villains were
blackmailing
me. They wanted me to give them the Automaton's heart! You really need to keep up.”

“The Automaton! Sarah!” he said. A hundred thoughts collided in Emilio's head at once.

“She's out there.” He pointed his stick beyond the curtain. “I don't think the pneumatic man means to hurt her, but if we're going to save her
before
he finishes tearing apart my theater, I'll need your help.”

If Vincent had been blackmailed, then he had planned to give the heart to the Children. Had Sarah been right all along? “Why, Vincent?”

“The rest of my staff has run away, and I know that you've faced some of these men before.”

Emilio shook his head. “No. Why did you bring the Children here?”

Vincent frowned. “I'm sorry, Emilio, I truly am.” He suddenly looked older than he had before. “But there aren't that many men in New York whom one can turn to when looking to repair the heart of a mechanical man.”

Emilio nodded. “They came before us?”

“They did. And I was one of them once, a long time ago.”

“Why don't you tell me?”

“Because they threatened everything I had. I just wanted to be left alone. I'd forgotten that once you've played heroes and villains, you can never truly escape.” There was a wistful look in the old man's eyes as he looked around his theater. “I should have known better…”

He turned toward Emilio and smiled. “But never mind all that now. It's something you have to discover for yourself, I think. Now let's rescue your girl.”

They began to run toward the back of the theater, following the steam hoses. Near the back wall they attached to a series of brass pipes that stood straight up out of the ground. Next to it was a wooden hatch. When Vincent threw it open, a blast of steam rose up out of it. “That's not good,” he said to no one in particular.

Vincent began to climb down into the hole. “All right, Emilio, I'm going to try to cut off the machine's supply of steam.”

“You think that will stop it?”

The showman looked at him and smiled, shaking his head slightly. “You spent a day working with me on it, and you haven't figured out what the real function of that creature's heart is yet, have you?”

“It makes Automaton live?”

“Of course, but how?”

Emilio felt like he was being scolded by a teacher, and he didn't like it. “I don't know.”

“Ask Sarah Stanton. I'm sure she'll tell you.” Vincent stopped for a moment, only his head remaining aboveground. “Or we'll discuss it later. Right now there's no time to waste if we're going to stop this thing. And I need you to go get my costume from outside while I'm down here.”

“What?”

“My Steamhammer outfit—in the workshop.” His head followed the rest of him down into the hole. “You'll need to hurry!”

After a moment of indecision, Emilio headed for the courtyard door. There was, he supposed, no better plan for him now than to follow Vincent's orders, and it was where he had been headed in the first place.

He had just made it down the steps into to the garden when a shuddering explosion from inside the theater shook him out of his reverie. “Sarah?” For a moment, he considered going back inside, but there was little he could do to stop the mechanical man even if he faced him.

The door to the workshop had been left wide open, and Emilio ran through it, stopping to turn up the gaslights.

As the room brightened, there was a shout. A squat figure rose up from floor. The man was surprisingly short, and as he stood up he stretched out his neck and body. “I feel like I was kicked by a damn horse.” He noticed Emilio. “Who the hell are you?” the man asked.

“Emilio. Who are you?”

“They call me Cutter,” the man said, pulling out a long, nasty-looking knife.

Staring at the blade, Emilio wondered if there was anyone in the theater who
didn't
want to attack him. At least this one was alone.

Emilio lifted up his arm and then extended it fully, keeping his fingers pointed toward the floor. He could feel the brace underneath his jacket lock into place at the elbow.

“What are you doing?” Cutter asked him, but Emilio didn't say a word. Better to concentrate rather than waste his time.

Emilio slapped his upper arm using the palm of his left hand. A single, massive spring-powered bolt flew out from the sleeve. It covered the distance between the two men in an instant. The large wooden head of the projectile hit the man hard in the jaw, and he dropped back down onto the floor.

For a second Emilio wondered if he had killed him—although having a few less Children of Eschaton in the world might be good for both his own health and Sarah's.

Rotating his arm straight up, Emilio felt the device under his coat unlock, allowing his elbow to once again move freely. It wasn't a bad design—if he could find a way to make it more useful in close quarters, and fire more than a single shot.

When he heard the man let out a groan, Emilio grabbed a roll of twine from one of the workbenches and quickly lashed Cutter's hands and legs together. He was glad the short man wasn't dead, despite any tactical advantage it might have offered him.

He doubted his knots would hold the man for long, but if Cutter escaped after Emilio had gotten the costume, it wouldn't matter much, as long as he disarmed him first.

After doing his best to tie the man up, Emilio retrieved his bolt and the man's knife. The blade was savage-looking, although it had obviously been well cared for—and well used. Emilio almost felt guilty when he shoved it into a vice and snapped it in half.

Having dealt with the villain as best he could, Emilio pulled down the costume from the wall. The suit was heavier than it looked, the chisel arms made from solid steel.

Up close, he could see that the thick glass lenses on the mask had been designed so that they could open and close, and even though they had been well polished, there were still chips and gouges in the surface of them.

He flung the costume over his shoulders, grabbed the portable boiler by a handle near the top of the device, and headed for the exit. As he stepped out the door, Emilio could hear that Cutter was awake and shouting out a stream of curses. They grew louder when he saw his broken blade.

Outside, by the light of the rejected, he could see Vincent peering out through the courtyard door. “Emilio?” he said in a half shout.

“I'm here!” he yelled back.

“Hurry up, boy. They're blowing the place to hell and back in there!”

He raced across the courtyard, moving as fast as he could with the unwieldy device in his hands. “I sorry. The Children of Eschaton are everywhere.”

Vincent dragged him through the entrance and slammed the door shut behind him. The showman grabbed the boiler from his hands and began to check it. “I've tried to keep this thing in working order, but it's been a while since anyone has actually used it.”

“When you were a villain…”

Vincent looked up at him and smiled. It was both mischievous and fatherly, with a look in his eye that seemed more genuine than his usual showmanship. “I wasn't just any villain, my boy, I was the Steamhammer—the man who shook the very foundations of the Hall of Paragons!”

“And now you think you can do this again?”

He laughed as he pulled the suit off Emilio's shoulders. “Not me, lad. I've grown too old to go mucking about with this suit now. It would rip me to pieces.” He held it up it up toward Emilio, “You're going to wear it.”

“What? No. You crazy!”

“Maybe.” Another thundering boom shook the building. “But if you want to save the girl, this is your best chance.”

He wanted to complain, but he realized that Vincent was right. He couldn't face a metal monster with his secret gun. “All right, all right,” Emilio said, kicking off his shoes and stepping into the metal leg braces. The boots were too large for him, but not by much.

As Emilio pulled off his jacket and revealed the mechanical bolt thrower attached to his arm, the grin on Vincent's face grew wider. “I had a sneaking suspicion that you were the right man for the job.” He helped Emilio undo the straps and pull it off. “Now let's get the rest of this on.”

Emilio pulled the codpiece and leggings up over his suit while Vincent knelt down in front of the boiler and fiddled with a series of brass taps. “Getting this up to pressure used to be the most difficult part, but I've made a few improvements to it over the years.” He flicked a few switches, and the water inside of the glass sphere began to bubble and swirl. An electrical device was heating the water rapidly, and some kind of black smoke was being released into the chamber.

Emilio had no idea what the purpose of the smoke was, and he could think of any number of flaws with bringing electricity and water that close together at the same time. “Is it safe?”

“My boy, you'll be wearing an untested steam accelerator on your back. You need to have an adventurous attitude.” He let out a maniacal cackle, deeply out of character with his usual theatrical façade, and it was anything but comforting. “Now get suited up and we'll get this on you.”

Emilio slipped his hands into the canvas arms and grabbed the handles inside. There were triggers on each one that had been clearly designed to turn them on and off.

As Vincent hefted up the device and slid it onto Emilio's shoulders, he could feel the heat of the boiler against his back. The wasp-faced helmet came down over his head, and Emilio felt as if he was seeing the world through someone else's eyes. It had been a long time since he wore a mask, and it was an uncomfortably familiar feeling.

But it was also different from when he had been Il Acrobato. The goal then was to hide his true identity from the world, not to try to boast that he had become someone even more powerful. But inside this costume…

“How are you in there?” Vincent's voice was muffled by the helmet.

Emilio nodded. “Is okay!”

“Good. Good! Now give the arms a try. I've got it on a low setting, but be careful—if the hammers aren't pressed up against something when you activate them, the vibration could break your arms.”

Emilio nodded again. He pushed the jackhammers against the ground, then pressed his thumbs gently against the activation switches.

The jackhammers shook like two angry beasts made entirely of sound and teeth—hungry to destroy the world. The feeling was both shocking and incredible at the same time. After just an instant, he released the triggers.

“How was that?” Vincent asked him.

Emilio had no idea, except that he had been transformed from a simple man into something else. Was this really what he had wanted to become? Was this what he was working toward in his laboratory? He wondered how it could possibly end well.