Iron and Blood (45 page)

I
NSIDE THE VAST
complex that was the Vesta Nine coal mine, Drostan Fletcher did his best to be invisible. He had a dark woolen cap pulled down over his red hair, and he wore a black sweater and pants over sturdy work boots equipped with steel toes strong enough to break bone.

Jacob and Mitch had insisted on coming with him. They made it through the fence together, before Jacob veered off with an ironic salute, while Mitch headed to the mine offices. Jacob was wearing a strange set of goggles and the uniform of a Vesta Nine miner, and he carried a counterfeit union card, in case he needed identification. Hans the clockwork man was with him, also dressed as a miner. Jacob intended to infiltrate the mine and record evidence of what he found with Adam Farber’s special goggles, with Hans along as back-up.

Jacob headed for the mine entrance, intending to lose himself in the crowd heading for third shift. Dangerous as Drostan’s own mission would be, he did not envy Jacob his job.

Jake Desmet had sent Drostan to scout the area, see what he could learn in the storage buildings topside, and discover any weakness they could use to their advantage. Drostan had asked Mitch and Jacob to act as back-up, happy not to be going underground himself. While Jacob and Hans went below, Drostan poked around the warehouses and Mitch headed into the mine office to see what he could learn from their files.

Drostan was used to reconnaissance. Watching and waiting were the meat and drink of a private investigator. Now, he relied on his skills learned in the British Army in the Sudan; stealth, observation, and if it came down to it, hand-to-hand combat. Desmet had supplied Drostan with a map, and several unusual gadgets that Drostan eyed with suspicion. All the same, he was grateful for the light of the electric torch, filtered through a black scarf to dim its beam.

All he had to do now was get in and out alive.

Vesta Nine was a huge, sprawling complex of buildings and railroad spurs. Getting inside the fence had been surprisingly simple. Drostan’s wire cutters made a neat break and he left a small gadget of Farber’s behind to help him locate the exit on his way out of the complex. Inside, he paused in the shadows, observing the pattern of the guard patrols and watching where the miners came and went. It did not take long for him to note that Vesta Nine’s guards were exceptionally well-armed, unusual for a coal mine.

A good lock pick got Drostan into the first storage building. The guards, Drostan noticed, walked past but did not enter. Inside, he found mining equipment—drill bits, and various mechanical odds and ends of no interest to him. The second building was equally mundane. But in the third building, Drostan found rows of crates stacked shoulder high, and toward the front, three large boxes gave him one of the answers he had come looking to find.

“‘Tesla-Westinghouse: Deliver to Adam Farber,’” he murmured, staring at the shipping labels on the three crates. He withdrew a small crowbar from his pack and jimmied open the top of the first box. Inside lay cardboard boxes full of clockwork gears of varying sizes. A second box held a variety of metal rods and pins. The third crate contained a baffling array of rubber hoses, springs, and flexible tubing. He replaced the lids carefully as a worrisome idea began to form in his mind. The stolen items weren’t something normal miners might need, but if Mitch Storm was right about Tumblety and Brunrichter being part of the Vesta Nine situation, the pieces might be something the resurrectionist doctors would want. He dropped one of Adam’s listening and tracking devices into the space between the stacked boxes and moved on.

A cold breeze stirred and Drostan dropped to a crouch, gun in hand. He heard no footsteps, but every instinct told him that he was not alone. Something skittered past in the shadows with a faint clicking sound that sent shivers down his spine. A few moments later, the chill in the air faded and the sound receded. Only then did he realize he had been holding his breath.

Drostan straightened, glanced around to assure himself that he was alone, and made a cautious exit. He had moved towards the back of the Vesta Nine complex and, from here, could see the huge hulking buildings, the tipples and the pit heads along with the structures housing the entrances to the shafts down into Vesta Nine’s depths. Electric lights lit the shaft entrances and the doors to the other buildings, and widely spaced lamps dotted the night along the railroad lines that carried cars filled with coal out to market.

A guard came around the corner of the nearest building and Drostan crouched, sure he had been seen. But the man was more intent on his cigarette than on security, and he ambled past the high grass where Drostan hid in the shadows. When Drostan’s heartbeat finally slowed again, he made his way to the next storage building and picked the lock.

Sidelined mine cars, lengths of replacement rail, rope, chain, and lumber filled the huge building. Drostan saw more of the same in the next building. Which left the last storehouse, the one farthest away from the rest of the mining operations.

Drostan picked the lock and entered the building through a side door that appeared to have been unused for some time. He hesitated. Instinct warned him to run but he ignored it, and slipped further into the building.

Something low to the ground and not entirely solid tripped him, sending him sprawling. An overpowering stench made him want to retch. He fumbled for his electric torch and flicked it on, careful to shutter the light through his fingers.

A partially decomposed human head stared back at him.

Drostan swallowed back a yelp. The body was in the latter stages of decomposition, split open like a ripe fruit, rippling with the thousands of maggots feasting on the putrefying flesh. He tried to remind himself that he had seen far worse in Her Majesty’s Service, men he had known well reduced to worm fodder. The thought did not blunt the revulsion, but it did help Drostan get a rein on his emotions as he backed away.

From the clothing, he guessed the body was male, a little shorter than he was. The cut of his clothes told him it was someone either newly immigrated or who returned frequently to Europe. A glint of silver caught the light, and Drostan shifted for a better view.

Around the corpse’s neck was a silver pentacle.

Drostan let out a breath that hissed through his teeth. New Pittsburgh had a secretive magical community. Symbols like pentacles were not openly worn, certainly not unless the person was a devout practitioner willing to bear the consequences of exposure. And in the close-knit neighborhoods of recent immigrants, tales and the fear of witches were real and strong.

He was willing to bet the dead man was the missing witch, Karl Jasinski. And since a powerful witch would usually be difficult to kill, Drostan’s money was on Drogo Veles as the murderer.
Want to bet that Jasinski heard about the Night Hag, went poking his nose in, and got more than he expected?

Drostan’s hands were shaking as he pulled out another of Adam’s locators and tucked it near the body, shuddering as something sticky brushed his fingers. With a sigh, he murmured a few words of blessing, the least he could do for a human being who had not come to a good end. Then he turned his attention to the rest of the warehouse, and felt as if he had tumbled into Hell.

Six other corpses lay on big blocks of ice set upon sawdust. They looked fresh, a day or two old at most. Four stainless steel surgical tables were lined up beneath large operatory lights. On the tables, Drostan saw more well-preserved corpses, and near them, a large vat of embalming fluid. Drostan felt his gorge rise as his light played over the modifications that had been made to the cadavers. Bits of metal had been sunk into the flesh of knees and elbows, wrists and jaws. Glass eyes glittered in sightless sockets.

He looked up, unsurprised to see a crowd of ghosts hovering nearby. They hung back, watching him. Many of them bore the evidence of horrific burns and crushed bones. Some of them glared at Drostan with accusing looks, as if to challenge him to do something about their deaths.

Missing people. Missing bodies. Missing crates of equipment a genius inventor had used to build his prototype mechanical
werkmen
. This was where the clockwork zombies had come from, the ones who had attacked him at the morgue. They’d tried to get to him before he could learn anything from Sheffield, tried to keep him from putting the pieces together.

Mitch was right about Tumblety and Brunrichter being back,
Drostan thought. He’d seen their abominations before.
What a ghastly way to create workers that don’t tell secrets.

His electric torch flickered past the autopsy tables, and shone on four pale faces. Four dead men, standing at attention, pale as moonlight. Glass eyes reflected the light of Drostan’s torch. Clockwork gears shone against dead skin at jaw and wrist, though the rest of the bodies were covered in workman’s clothing. These were the finished products of the nightmare tinkerer.

With a click and a hum, the clockwork corpses woke up. An unearthly red light pulsed in their eyes, which fixed on Drostan, and the creatures took a shuddering step toward him.

Drostan turned and ran. But before he could reach the side door through which he had entered, the overhead lights over the autopsy tables at the front of the building blazed on. He dropped to the floor, trying to stay in the shadows at the back of the laboratory, and found himself lying next to Jasinski’s corpse, between the decaying body and the wall. So very close to the side door, but unlikely he could make it out without being spotted.

When the lights went on, the clockwork hum stopped.

Two men entered the building from the front door, walking towards him, one with brown trousers and the other with black pants that were a bit too short for his height.

“What’s this?” one man exclaimed, seeing the clockwork corpses out of line. He had the burr of Drostan’s native Scotland in his voice. “Something’s set them off again.” Drostan’s heart sank as he recognized Francis Tumblety’s voice.

He’d had the misfortune of running into them before. Francis Tumblety, quack doctor, charlatan soothsayer, and one-time suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders, was the man in the brown trousers. Adolph Brunrichter, vivisectionist, disgraced physician and convicted felon, was the other fiend.

Just a year ago, Drostan had helped Mitch Storm and Jacob Drangosavich blow up a house with both Tumblety and Brunrichter inside. He had hoped that was the end of them, though both men had a reputation for being hard to kill.

“Go have a look around,” Brunrichter said in a thick German accent.

The first man walked toward the darkness that shrouded the rear of the building. He played his light around the corners of the lab and the stacks of wooden crates. Drostan froze, trying to flatten himself beside the corpse, holding his breath as the light touched on the body beside him briefly before moving on.

“Probably just rats,” the first man said, turning back.

“Veles wants twenty more of these before the end of the month,” Tumblety said.

“Veles can kiss my ass.
Werkmen
can’t be built that fast. He’ll have to wait,” Brunrichter replied.

“The miners are scared.” Tumblety’s voice was arrogant, and the man was quite likely insane. The last time Drostan had seen Tumblety, the mad doctor had sported a ridiculous moustache and affected epaulettes and brass buttons on his coat like a military officer. Drostan did not dare raise his head to see whether Tumblety’s wardrobe had improved.

“And Veles thinks they will be less scared when they see more of these?” Brunrichter replied. “Right now, they have legends of the Night Hag to explain the monsters in the dark. Do you think that, given the choice between two nightmares, they’ll prefer walking dead men to deadly shadows?”

“Word is they’re scared enough to go on strike.”

“Let them. They can be replaced. Veles has enough enslaved to handle the tourmaquartz processing. He only needs the living men to mine the coal. There are more where they came from.”

“If they strike, we’ll have fewer bodies to choose from to replace the clockwork corpses. Veles will want more, and he’ll want them fast, and he won’t be happy.” Brunrichter grunted. “I never promised Herr Veles enough clockwork miners to dig all his precious crystals. I only promised enough to go to the deep places. That was our bargain.”

“And if more
gessyan
escape?” Tumblety challenged. “Bad enough that the Night Hag and the wraiths have gotten out. Other things, too. We don’t need any more monsters running about. People are talking. Even Thwaites won’t be able to keep the police away forever, if the murders continue.”

“Veles set spells. It’s kept the rest of the
gessyan
in their place,” Brunrichter replied.

“What if the spells don’t hold?” Tumblety argued. “I told you it was a mistake for him to kill the other witch. Thwaites said that the witch had a plan to stop the
gessyan
, put them back where they came from. Now what? All those deaths along the rivers, they’re attracting too much attention. Sooner or later, someone’s going to come looking around here.”

“Like that Scottish detective?” Brunrichter said contemptuously. “After what happened at the morgue, no one will listen to him. Thwaites said he fixed it with the cops.”

“I don’t like it,” Tumblety replied petulantly.

“Gah. You worry too much. Herr Veles is a powerful
Zauberer.
He’ll take care of it.”

“If he’s so powerful, why hasn’t he sent the
gessyan
back where they came from? And why’d he need that Polish witch?” Tumblety said. “Maybe he doesn’t
want
the spirits to go away. Maybe he’s got a plan he hasn’t told anyone about.”

“These new bodies appear to be usable,” Tumblety replied. “I would have liked to see some bigger men, heavier boned. Easier to sink the mechanisms in when the bones are strong.” He walked over to one of the bodies. “This one will be tricky. Young and strong, but slightly built.”

“I’ve talked to Veles about the possibility of pre-selecting our corpses,” Brunrichter said. “Identify the workers with the right body types, and then make them available to us. Cuts down on waste.”