XIV #2
“You’re a low-tier, double-dealing street thug. You aren’t privy to any of the details you want me to believe.”
McCarthy smiled that wicked, shining, broken smile again. “I met him, you arrogant pig.”
“ Who ?” I pressed a hand to my side as I lurched to my feet.
“Sawbones, they call him.” McCarthy held his fists out in front of himself and laughed. “Get it?”
“Shut up!” Higgins shouted, his voice pitching high. He brandished a pistol, cocked the hammer, and pointed it at McCarthy’s head. “Shut your metal mouth, you wooden spoon!”
An unaccounted for shot whizzed across the room, so quick and so sudden that the manufactured aether being activated by the Waterbury barely reached me before Higgins was hit in the shoulder and went down screaming.
“I’ve been shot! Oh, God . I’m bleeding!” he cried from the floor behind the glove display.
I looked to the left—there stood Gunner, arm extended and barrels of the Waterbury smoking. Gunner never missed his target, so he must have intentionally wounded Higgins—a lesser threat to handle afterward.
McCarthy spun and let loose his pneumatic fist again.
It shot across the showroom, barely missing Gunner as he spun and fell backward to avoid the assault.
The mechanical fist plowed through a case of fine jewelry, littering the floor with glass shards, diamonds, and wayward pearls, all glittering like dew in Central Park on an early spring morning.
Gunner sat up, sans bowler, and shook broken glass from his hair.
One palm pressed into the glass-ridden floor, and his other hand cocked the Waterbury, aimed, and shot as McCarthy retracted the fist. The round of aether bullets hit the fist just as it locked into McCarthy’s mechanical wrist, causing it to ricochet and punch the gangster in his own face.
“ Fuck !” McCarthy bellowed.
Gunner jumped to his feet, ran across the store, and barreled into McCarthy with his shoulder against the man’s chest. They went flying and sprawling across the floor, McCarthy’s bronze reinforcements screeching and gouging the polished wood as they skidded to a stop.
The few remaining patrons took the opportunity to rush for the exit.
A young woman remained behind, though, the skin of her face and neck red and blotchy, her eyes wet with unfallen tears as she struggled to right her heavy skirts and stand from where she’d been hiding.
The wail of a baby beside her immediately marked them as a target, and I ran toward them, the suddenness of my movement sending a sharp pain throughout my entire right side.
I swallowed a gasp upon reaching her, bent to collect her sobbing boy, not even old enough to be out of his infant dress, and with my other hand, took her arm and led her stumbling to the open doors.
“ Go ,” I said sternly, pushing the babe into her arms. “Hold on to him and leave the building, understand?”
“Y-yes, sir,” she said, biting her lip. “Thank you.”
I waited long enough to see her run for the lifts, despite the restrictions of her fashion choices, and then I returned to Grace Gallery.
Gunner was atop McCarthy, the Waterbury pointed at McCarthy’s forehead while the gangster struggled with one functional hand to prevent himself from being on the receiving end of a third eye.
“—put a hole in your face for every hair on his head you’ve disturbed,” Gunner was saying, his voice low, husky, and frightening in its sincerity.
“Gunner, wait,” I protested. “I need him alive.”
The look Gunner shot me—possessive fury—it did something strange to my already-tender gut.
“Please,” I insisted.
The internal deliberation was evident on his face, and I had to remind myself that this was Gunner the Deadly .
Gunner killed men and did not feel regret afterward.
Albeit, they were bad men, but he still killed them.
But then Gunner rearranged his features into that cool, gentle expression I knew much better than the one of a man incensed, and he climbed to his feet.
When McCarthy started to move, Gunner turned and stomped down on his mechanical hand with the heel of his shoe, causing sparks and steam to spew from the joints, and McCarthy howled.
“Don’t. Move,” Gunner said.
I tugged my trousers up before crouching beside McCarthy. “How’d you know where to find me?”
McCarthy winced as Gunner ground down harder on his mechanical hand, and his upper arm and shoulder spasmed wildly. “Tick Tock has eyes all over the city, pig.” He spit at my feet.
Gunner pointed his Waterbury at McCarthy and cocked the hammer.
“Gunner.” I held up a hand. “He’s having me watched?” When McCarthy didn’t answer, I searched the outer pockets of his winter coat and removed a PDD. “Do you speak with Tick Tock directly?”
McCarthy’s facial muscles, just above the bronze plating, twitched in an almost convulsive manner.
“McCarthy,” I snapped. “Answer me. What’s his code?”
Something was wrong.
“Tell me about Sawbones,” I demanded. “He did this to you—how? Is he Tick Tock’s partner?”
McCarthy’s breathing was becoming audibly labored at that point. He swallowed like he had something lodged in his throat, cut his tongue on the razor edges of his new teeth, and his mouth filled with blood.
I dropped the PDD to the floor, pushed Gunner’s foot off McCarthy’s mechanical hand, and held on to the broken contraption.
Magic leached from the bronze, that same wriggling sensation I’d picked up on Mechanical Man in death, but more potent, more alive.
It had a structure similar to aether, but not the elemental qualities.
Almost… the lack thereof. This was as if casting aether through a looking glass.
There was something obscene and other-worldly about it.
A magic with no name.
McCarthy began choking and gasping, his entire body spasming in a maddening way before his back arched him right off the floor. His mechanical hands, one broken from Gunner’s shot, flexed manically, and his bronze teeth gnashed violently as he struggled for air.
Gunner grabbed my arm, pulled me to my feet, and drew me against himself.
I’ll admit that, for a moment, I lost my sense of place and put a hand on Gunner’s chest, gripping at the material of his waistcoat as McCarthy’s entire body suddenly fell limp. The store was quiet. “The goddamn hell just happened?” I whispered.
Gunner holstered his Waterbury, placed his hand over my own, then pried my fingers free, leaving a blood smear on my skin.
He moved to stand on either side of McCarthy’s right leg, crouched, and hastily pawed through the pockets of his waistcoat and trousers before producing a small glass bottle. He slowly stood, studying the label.
“You’re bleeding.”
Gunner grunted.
“What’d you find?” I asked.
“Chocolate-coated strychnine tablets.” Gunner glanced at me and tossed the bottle.
I caught it in both hands, saying, “Isn’t this… used as a therapeutic? Paralysis, irritable nervous systems, that sort?”
“In high doses, it’s a brutal and immediate poison.”
“How immediate?”
“Minutes.”
I looked at the label. “He would have taken them just before breaking through the window.”
Gunner made a sound of agreement.
“But why?” I asked, looking up. “If his intention was to kill me?”
Gunner’s gaze met mine. There was a brittleness about his expression—there and gone, like always, but I saw it.
For one second, the blue of his eyes cracked and a blackness seeped to the surface.
It wasn’t a lie—because Gunner didn’t lie—but a secret.
Something I hadn’t stumbled across, ascertained on my own, so he’d had no reason to explain it. And whatever it was… it hurt him.
“Gunner—”
“My dear,” he interrupted. “Tick Tock and this Sawbones fellow want you dead, and they are not above getting rid of any and all evidence that might lead back to them after the fact.”
I started to speak again, but was distracted by a muffled curse, the chink of glass rolling across the floor, and I remembered Higgins.
I swiped the PDD from beside McCarthy’s still body, pocketed it and the tablets, then ran across the mess of Grace Gallery’s showroom.
I moved around the side of the glove display and pointed an index finger at Higgins.
Sparks of electricity snapped and popped from my fingertip. “Drop it.”
His face white and suit covered in blood, Higgins shakily released a bottle he’d been holding to his lips, the dark liquid spilling across the polished floor.
I retrieved the bottle as Gunner joined me. “Warner’s Elixir,” I read.
“Just a health syrup,” Higgins protested.
Gunner removed his pistol.
Higgins started up that high-pitched sniffle-sob again.
I dipped my pinky into the bottle, collected a bit of the remaining syrup, and brought it to the tip of my tongue. There was a spark of rejuvenation mixed into the gag-inducing medicine. “This is laced with aether.”
“Planning to heal and run?” Gunner asked Higgins.
“Grace Gallery is not a certified pharmacy,” I said, waving the bottle at him. “And even if you had an authorized counter, all medications with aether as an active ingredient are illegal.”
“I do believe he’s well aware of that, Hamilton,” Gunner said, a touch of humor finally returning to his tone.
I huffed but said, “Carl Higgins, I’m placing you under arrest for violation of jurisdiction codes S.
212: The transportation of illegal magic, S.
212.5: Intent to sell said illegal magic, S.
300: Threat of bodily harm to an identified federal agent, and—fuck—I don’t even remember the code for medicinal products, but you’re under arrest for that too, you piece of shit. ”