Thrilling Tales of the Ministry of Peculiar Occurrences (23 page)

“I say, Professor,” Wellington said. “Are you quite all right?”

“Splendid!” Axelrod said, forcing a smile that made Wellington wince. “Just, ah…a bit sore from last night. You know how an evening on the town with Eliza can get, eh? Fortunately, I’ve got Doctor Blackwell here, who has volunteered to play nursemaid. She swears this poultice will have me right as rain in no time.”

“It smells revolting,” Wellington said, covering his nose.

“It’s an old family recipe,” Blackwell said. “Would you believe some of the ingredients aren’t even available in this country? What people choose to make illegal always confounds me.”

“I appreciate you making the sacrifice of your personal store,” Axelrod said, gingerly placing a burnt hand on Blackwell’s pale fingers.

“Well, I couldn’t have you suffer, now could I?”

As if this tableau could not descend deeper into madness, Wellington watched as Blackwell
blushed
. He thought the very action impossible.

“So, I... Ahem…I take it the evening went poorly?”

“Oh, no,” Axelrod said. “It went quite well. It’s just…I’m not sure Eliza is the woman for me.”

“Oh?” Despite the fact that it meant being closer to the horrid smell, Wellington inched toward Axelrod.

“It was something she said. She was incredibly irate about her singed dress.”

“That doesn’t sound like her at all,” Wellington said.

“Ah, well, she may have also been on fire at the time. And cursing.”

He nodded. “That sounds like her.”

“You know,” Blackwell said, examining Axelrod’s mouth. “I think I have something that will regrow those teeth. They just might be…sharper than they were before.”

“I can’t see how that would be a problem,” Axelrod said.

“Splendid,” Blackwell said.

Wellington blinked. How did the discussion turned to teeth? “Forgive me for interrupting but why, were you and Agent Braun on fire?”

“Because of my hat,” Axelrod said.

“Your...hat?”

“Yes, see after I subdued the Mad Dog with my waistcoat and braces—”

“Stop.” Wellington held up a hand. “Stop right there. Mad dogs? Flaming hats? Fighting with waistcoats and braces? It is clear you are under the influence of these fumes that Doctor Blackwell’s concoction is creating, and I refuse to converse with you when you are out of your right mind. I bid you both good day, before I succumb to utter madness myself. I must return to the Archives. My Junior Archivist has already shattered an irreplaceable vase that revealed the location of El Dorado, and I just left her alone with a collection of unsolved cases. No telling what disarray she has caused.”

With that, Wellington Books gave a tight smile to Axelrod and Blackwell, turned on his heels, and left R&D, trying to process everything he had just been told.

He had almost made it out the door when the voice of Doctor Blackwell caught his ear. “What did she say?”

Books turned to see Blackwell was applying more of the foul ointment to Axelrod’s face. She was looking deep in his eyes as she asked, “When you knew it wasn’t going to work out with Agent Braun. What did she say?”

“Honestly, I can’t remember much after my head hit the roof. Fossillinen will need a few more refinements before it will ever be an adequate crash helmet. I think it was mainly her attitude. So put out over a little flame!”

“You know,” Blackwell said, delicately running her finger around the burns on Axelrod’s face and neck. “I’m not afraid of a little flame.”

“No,” Axelrod said, giving the closest thing to a smile his maligned face could muster. “I imagine you are not.”

Those lunatics are going to burn this place to the ground,
the devil on Wellington’s shoulder whispered.

For once, Wellington found that voice sensible.

The Boy, the Bomb,
and the Witch Who Returned

Alex White

Whitechapel, East London

England

Winter, 1876

Snow whipped Vasily’s face as the witch threw him to the ground. “Hag,” they called her. “Old Bones,” he’d heard her named. She’d arrived in the night and stolen him, just as his mother warned. His heart pounded to look at the crone, but he could not turn away: crooked nose and spiteful eyes, long white hair, glowing blue in the moonlight. Baba Yaga had stood over him, a nasty smile withering on her lips.

Now, the icy cobblestones scraped Vasily’s hands and knees. Clanking factories and bells in the mist rattled in his ears like bones. He begged in his native Russian for her to take him home. He cried, tears streaming down his face in the winter air. He wet his pyjamas. She laughed, her shrill cackle echoing through the alleyway. Vasily clenched his eyes tightly, certain the hag would eat him soon.

He waited for the death stroke, his skin electrified with fear. It never came.

He sensed light behind his eyelids and opened them to a roaring green bonfire. Baba Yaga sneered as she backed away into the flames, and they consumed her before vanishing with a sucking pop. The wet cobblestones where she’d been standing hissed and steamed with her passage.

Vasily was now alone.

The little Russian peasant boy whimpered and stood, his hot urine now frigid on his legs. The foreign city echoed around him, and he smelled a river nearby. He dared to look beyond where the witch had stood and saw something of which he’d only heard tales—a tremendous clock tower watching over the city like a second moon. And in the same way he’d recognised the legendary witch on sight, he recognised the legendary clock, as well—Big Ben. Surely, this was London, which meant Baba Yaga had taken him quite far from home, indeed.

When he turned to see the rest of the alleyway, he spied a fat man in a bowler hat, making steady progress toward him with the aid of a cane. The fellow called out to him in English, but the young boy had no knowledge of the language.

“I can’t understand you,” Vasily sobbed.

“I said,” came the fat man in perfect Russian, “It looks as though you’re having quite the extraordinary evening.”

“Who are you, sir?”

The man smiled and doffed his hat, his nose chapped red. “My name is St. John Fount. I’m a scientist and a servant of Her Majesty’s government. I’ll give you a hot meal in exchange for a good story.”

Outside Chudovo, Russia

Field Agent Vasily Zinchenko dropped onto the snow bank, splashing little flurries into the air as he readied his rifle. He’d trekked in through the quiet countryside, past burning cottages and ruined farmsteads, the night sky the only other witness to their fate. Vasily had been tracking the movements of a battalion of Lev soldiers for two weeks, and they’d led him to the mother lode. From his perch at the pine thicket’s edge, he could see a hive of men centered about a place his map called “Bugorski Hill”.

Whatever the Lev were planning, they’d set up camp on the long railway that ran from Moscow to Saint Petersburg. Vasily looked over the tall, windowless wooden structure they’d built alongside the rails. It looked to be about the size of three large barns stacked on top of one another, and it was packed with men coming and going at all hours. He shuddered to think what was in that wooden fortress. The agent wondered if the newly-coroneted Tsar Nikolas knew the Lev were about to wrap his favourite railroad around his country’s neck like a silvery noose. The only thing between the colossal structure and Saint Petersburg was two Imperial Army detachments, and Vasily wondered if that would be enough.

He peered through his rifle’s scope, a gift from the Ministry clankertons. He sighted in a distant pair of men and clicked a button on the side. Twisting a few dials locked a light green lens over the hood, and night became day. A subtle whirring from the tally counter told him the range was locked in at three-hundred yards. And to top the whole thing off, a little spinner popped up and measured the crosswind. Vasily had once played golf in Scotland, and the caddy was ever so helpful with advice. He liked to think of the scope in very much the same way as his caddy, but with more killing involved.

Ten men patrolled the perimeter, but the pair in his sights had just opened a flask and lit cigarettes. The others would leave, but the two in his sights would stay, and they would die. Then, Vasily could sneak in, ascertain the contents of the building, and move from there.

He remembered Doctor Sound’s assignment:
“Our man on the inside only got us one message—Koschei the Immortal is coming to destroy the capital. Find out what the Lev are up to and cripple them if you can. The Queen rather dislikes the Russians, but she likes the Lev even less.”

A normal man would have scoffed at the idea of Koschei the Immortal—a god, whose soul is locked inside a chest, inside a hare, inside a duck, inside an egg, inside a needle. Open the chest, and you must catch the hare. Kill the hare, and the duck flies away. Only by smashing the egg, can Koschei be killed.

Of course, a normal man had never met Baba Yaga, either.

The agent was about to screw a sound dampener onto his barrel when he spied a figure creeping toward the structure from the east. Closer inspection revealed a woman in a strange uniform with locks of wavy blonde hair spilling down her back. Vasily watched her unholster a strange pistol as she moved toward his targets, and she took careful aim at one of them.

His eyes darted to the patrols, still in the area. “You can’t be that stupid,” he whispered to no one.

When she fired, a soundless heat wave swept across the sentries, felling them instantly. She set upon their pockets like a vulture, tugging at them for some keys. The gun was a very cute toy, to be certain. Vasily cocked an eyebrow, watching the scene unfold through his scope. What was she thinking? She hadn’t given the other patrols enough space.

No sooner had she come up with her prize than another Lev guard rounded the corner right in front of her. The guard brought up his rifle to gun her down, but Vasily put a shot through the man’s head before the sentry could even take aim. A thunderous crack rolled through the valley, and the pines over Vasily rained snow with the force of the shot. The field agent’s eyes drifted to the sound dampener at his side, the one his clankerton friends had worked so hard to make. They would be angry, if he lived to tell them.

“Oh, no,” grumbled the field agent as klaxons spun up all over the camp.

Men emerged from the building at all angles as searchlight spots spilled over the ground like a bag of marbles. The structure lit up with a crackle of gunfire, spattering the ground all around Vasily. If his cover hadn’t been so good, he would have been Swiss cheese right then. He had just enough time to see the blonde hunker down behind a couple of crates before he had to duck, as well.

He dashed along the snow bank, hidden by the forest, before dropping back down and firing another two shots into the closest Lev soldiers. Both men fell as the remaining guards re-centered their fire on his new position. Not to be outdone, the blonde jumped from her hiding position, spraying the men nearest her with her queer pistol. She took out another three. Between the two of them, Vasily optimistically wondered if they could take this base alone.

No sooner had he completed that thought than the top of the wooden building lit up with cannon fire, shredding his cover. The field agent sprinted from his shrapnel-filled nest, near certain that he’d feel the killing shot any second. He chanced a look back to his hiding spot, only to see a fountain of dirt, fire and splinters. He could see great gouts of flame blasting out of the structure’s roof and ripping into the countryside. What the devil sort of gun did they have? He ducked back into the tree line, trying to stay hidden.

The klaxons ceased abruptly, and over a loudspeaker came a deep, Russian voice, “Prepare for launch.”

Explosive bolts tattooed the sides of the building, and the wooden planks fell away, revealing an iron fortress on tank treads, bristling with guns. Her Majesty’s dreadnaught fleet inspired less fear than the Lev monstrosity. Vasily’s eyes bulged when he saw just how many of those guns were trained on him. He shouted every curse the Russians knew as he sprinted along the forest edge.

The firing stopped, and the gargantuan contraption rolled out over the tracks. Interlocking sections disengaged, and the massive tank sprawled forward across the tracks like a cat stretching in the sun. They didn’t need to waste any more ammunition on Vasily when they were about to make their move on Peter. He’d never catch up to them again.

The beastly machine rumbled away as Vasily emerged from his concealment and killed the last of the remaining guards with several well-placed shots. He’d have to find a horse if he wanted to run the tank down. What had become of the blonde woman who’d blown his surprise? When he scanned the surrounding countryside for her, she was nearly on top of him. She levelled her pistol and shouted for him to put down his own weapon. He lowered the muzzle.

“All the way down,” she said.

“I saved your life,” he snapped, complying with her command.

“That you did,” she said, stepping closer. From this distance, he could see her full lips, her bright eyes. She had a flowing voice, like Lavrovskaya, and a little shiver ran up Vasily’s spine. He hadn’t expected to find a flower on a battlefield. “What’s your name?” she asked.

“Do you mind, miss? I believe the Lev are escaping.”