Iron and Blood (43 page)

“Did the people in that vision get their power from the big stone, then?” Nicki asked.

“Not exactly,” Renate replied, taking another sip of water. “Some of the magic came from the witches. But the big stone may well have stored magic for them, and it was likely their
inukshuk
, their totem—and their way of recording history. Odds are good that the Alekanovo witches may not only have stored power in the large stone, but also engraved information on it to protect the village—and maybe to preserve instructions for the future.”

“If they had the information, why did people disappear at Alekanovo fifty years ago?” Rick asked.

Renate gave a tired shrug. “Maybe they lost their witches. Maybe they forgot what the stone meant. You saw the images—the last time the creatures rose was a very long time ago.”

“Marcin of Krakow bound the
gessyan
in Poland in the fourteen hundreds. They show up again in Russia a lifetime ago,” Rick said. “Someone—witches, priests, whoever—bound them at Alekanovo. So how did they get here?”

“Hodekin said they not only lived in the deep places, they could move through the Earth’s core,” Jake replied. “The distances would be a lot smaller if you could go
through
the earth instead of
over
it. Maybe they know when someone opens a weak point somewhere. Then they show up until the opening gets sealed again.”

“Which means the secret to fighting the
gessyan
lies with the Alekanovo stone—and Marcin’s book,” Cady said. “What if we aren’t able to find them? What if Veles has already destroyed them?”

“Then you had better say your prayers,” Andreas replied. “Because we will be facing those dark creatures on our own.”

“I
NEVER REALIZED
that a museum could make such a grand place for a reception.” Rick Brand said under his breath. He and Jake stood shoulder to shoulder in their tuxedos, watching the well-dressed crowd ebb and flow in the massive sculpture hall of the new Carnegie Museum on Fifth Avenue. A string quartet played chamber music in one corner. Waiters in formal attire passed out silver platters of delicacies and flutes of champagne, while in the corner, bartenders served up stiffer drinks.

“It’s a brilliant idea,” Jake replied, taking a sip of an excellent scotch from the Carnegie cellars. “No strangers trooping through your private spaces. No missing flatware when they all go home. And it advertises his pet project. There’s a reason the man is insanely wealthy.”

Andrew Carnegie stood at the far end of the huge room, chatting with Thomas Mellon and George Westinghouse. New Pittsburgh’s upper crust were on prominent display, decked out in evening attire. By comparison, Rick and Jake were small fry. Dr. Nils had added them to the guest list, and now Nils’s prominent role within the museum had him glad-handing donors and working the crowd, although he had acknowledged them with a nod when they entered. Jake looked around at the guests, but did not see Andreas Thalberg, and he wondered if the vampire would put in an appearance.

Per Carnegie’s new-found obsession with philanthropy, representatives of his favorite causes were also present, including the administrators from the huge new library that bore his name, and several scholarly men Jake suspected had something to do with the technical school Carnegie was planning to open.

“There he is.” Jake nodded in the direction of a tall, slim man talking with Henry Clay Frick. Drogo Veles looked more like an Eastern European nobleman than a centuries-old dark witch. He chatted with Frick, utterly at ease among the wealthy and powerful. Then again, Jake thought, Veles’s magic probably gave him far more power than mere money or prestige.

“Brand. Desmet. Didn’t think you’d be here, what with the circumstances and all.” Richard Thwaites was suddenly in front of them, a gin and tonic in one hand and a canapé in the other.

“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.