III #3
The city could have John Gaylord.
Only I could have Constantine Gunner.
Upon reaching the fourth floor, I walked to the door closest to the stairs, removed a ring with a few skeleton keys from my coat pocket, and inserted one into the lock.
I tapped a button on the key bow to activate the wards, and the tumblers audibly clicked into place.
I pocketed the ring once more and pushed open the door.
The first room was a small parlor, but seeing as I was an unattached man who was hardly home, that didn’t much matter.
A water closet was behind a closed door to the left, and the adjoining room to my right was the bedroom that overlooked Twenty-Seventh Street.
The steam radiators hissed and sputtered in the dark parlor.
I flicked a wall switch and the overhead glass globe bathed the apartment in a warm tungsten glow.
Gunner stepped inside behind me, set his carpetbag on the floor, and I turned as he shut the door. He took the lapel of my winter coat in one hand and tugged me forward while he backed himself up against the door. Gunner raised his hand and knocked the bowler from my head.
“I had to buy a new hat because of you,” I warned.
A smile tugged the corner of Gunner’s mouth, and he guided my bare hands into the folds of his coats to rest on his slender hips. “You’ll have to teach me a lesson.”
“To never touch another man’s hat.”
Gunner rested his gloved hands on my shoulders. “Kiss me.”
I rose up on my toes to meet Gunner as he leaned down, but his gaze flicked from me to the floor and he froze. Curious, I looked down as well. The snow that’d collected on both our shoes had melted and left a small puddle on the hardwood floor, but just to my right was an unaccounted for droplet.
Another.
And another.
I let go of Gunner’s hips, took a step backward, and tilted my head to study the water.
At the right angle, the overhead light caught the surface and the glimmering trail led all the way to one of the parlor windows.
I spun toward Gunner again, who unholstered his Waterbury and cocked the pistol.
I looked to my bedroom. The door had been partially closed, which was my intruder’s mistake, because I never shut that door in winter.
I moved toward the room, stood to one side of the threshold, and pushed the door open the rest of the way.
The bedroom was dark—curtains pulled taut across the windows to keep out the relentless glow of red and green streetlamps—so it took half a second too long to make out the shape of furniture and the out-of-place mass at the foot of my bed.
The shadow charged forward without warning, grabbed my shoulder, hauled me forward and then back against the door.
I heard the knob bust through the wall and my head knocked against the solid wood.
A massive hand wrapped around my neck and squeezed.
I grabbed the man’s wrist with both hands and released an explosive fire spell.
The stench of burned hair and seared flesh filled my nostrils as he screeched in pain and released me.
I dodged to one side, and when the man doubled over, cradling his smoking wrist to his chest, I slammed my elbow down on the back of his neck.
The intruder grunted and fell to an unceremonious heap.
I took a deep breath, shoved my two-toned hair away from my face, and demanded, “Who are you?”
The man cocked his head up, and illumination from the parlor cut a harsh line of light across his face.
His left eye was gone, replaced with the housing of a compass.
The needle bobbed with his movements as if always trying to direct him north.
His lower jaw was all brass and silver, cogs spinning and steam releasing from sockets as he bared sharpened silver teeth like those of a wild animal.
A mechanical man.
He climbed to his feet and raised a gun—no. The gun was his arm. His arm was a gleaming four-barreled piece of deadly weaponry. “Tick Tock kindly requests you look the other way in this matter regarding Fishback.” His jaw snapped and the words had a metallic ring. “Enjoy the holiday, Mr. Hamilton.”
I bristled. “It’s Agent . And I will do no such thing.”
He sneered, cocked his weapon, and manufactured magic was activated.
It was a fire spell, but with a makeup so very different from my own.
And once again, raw magic was ripped from the atmosphere, and the lifeforce around me felt battered and broken without a caster replacing the energy.
The man’s four-barreled pistol began to glow red.
A magical mechanical man.
I took a mental step back from the moment and let everything slow.
The mechanical man bared his teeth again and roared.
He pulled the trigger, and a sensation, much like that of an unwelcomed touch, clawed its way up my spine.
Only one barrel released a magic bullet, and I shot a hand out in time to raise a shield of bright, shimmering water.
The fire slammed into my magic and sounded a crash so loud that I was certain it shook the walls, before it was put out and only a haze of smoke remained.
I’d begun to lower my hand when the man fired again—all three remaining bullets releasing at the same time.
Gunner grabbed the back of my collar and yanked hard.
I was slammed into the floor and time jerked, lurching forward in a jumble of misplaced seconds as my senses recalibrated.
I rolled onto my side, propped up on an arm, and looked behind me.
The fire shots had missed me, gone through the open doorway, and set the wall beside the water closet on fire.
Gunner had flattened himself against the front door, narrowly missing the explosion after pulling me out of its path. He raised his Waterbury and fired.
The mechanical man jerked as he was hit in the chest with a round of aether.
He staggered a step, stumbled back against the foot of the bed, then managed to turn and trip toward the window.
He yanked the curtains back, pulling the rod clean from the wall.
Mechanical Man hoisted the windowpane up one-handed and began to climb out.
Gunner cocked the Waterbury for a second shot.
I looked back toward the water closet a second time, raised my hand, and cast another water spell, hammering the wall with it until the flames and smoke had dissipated and my apartment resembled a very disappointing aquarium.
Gunner fired again.
I rolled onto my backside as Mechanical Man climbed out of the window and onto the fire escape before taking another round to the back. He spun like a prima ballerina performing her final show, dipped against the railing—then fell.
There was a loud silence for one, two, three seconds, and then my PDD, still sitting atop the bureau where I’d forgotten it that morning, began emitting a series of tones.
Two high pulses followed by three, short low beeps.
33678 was Director Moore. Except why would Moore be trying to reach me on a holiday he knew I had plans for—possibly the first in my adult life?
It would have to be an absolute emergency.
But Moore would need to wait a moment.
I scrambled to my feet and ran into the bedroom.
The tones on the PDD began for a second time as I climbed through the open window.
Dark blood and broken gears painted the walkway.
The sting of icy snow on my cheeks felt like a dull razor pulling at facial hair.
I leaned over the railing and studied the scene below.
Mechanical Man lay in the middle of the road, a tangle of broken bones and weaponry.
Gunner maneuvered his body through the window behind me before stepping close enough to put a hand on my shoulder.
“I’m fine,” I answered before looking up. “Are you?”
But of course he was. He was Gunner the Deadly, not Gunner the Dead.
The PDD was emitting its third series of tones, and if I didn’t know better, I’d say the device was becoming exasperated.
“What’s going on, Gillian?”
I shook my head and looked to the road once more. “Something terrible.”