XVIII
“ Gunner !”
I didn’t even think. I acted on instinct—save Gunner at all costs.
I shoved Higgins aside and made a grand, sweeping gesture over Gunner, whose back was to the street.
A tidal wave of glittering blue water came up from the frozen ground and created an arc over his body just as the gunfire began.
I held my other hand in front of myself as the automobile revved its steam engine and started driving, Gatling Man still shooting even as I brought another shield of water up over myself.
The crash and roar of fire bullets hitting magic their elemental opposite was so loud, one could believe an airship had exploded somewhere nearby.
It wasn’t until the automobile had reached the end of the block and I had extinguished my own spell that I was able to pick up the bloodcurdling screams among the high-pitched ringing in my ears.
I immediately turned to Gunner, but he was okay—more than okay as he raced into the middle of the street, raised his Waterbury, and took shots at the black touring making a successful getaway. When I looked to Higgins, however—
I swore loudly and cast another spell to put out the flames, but by the time they’d dissipated, his anguished cries had ceased and Carl Higgins was dead and burned beyond recognition on the steps of the Magic and Steam field office.
Gunner was shouting from behind me, footsteps pounding the road as he returned to the stolen automobile. “Get in the auto.”
“But—”
A door banged shut, the engine bellowed, and Gunner snapped, “ Get in .”
I stood from my crouch at Higgins’s side, turned, and jumped into the passenger seat of the white touring a split second before Gunner spun the wheel and slammed down on the accelerator. “Turn right,” I ordered.
Gunner made a hard turn and apologized as we momentarily rode the sidewalk. “Never was a fan of these automobiles.”
I pulled my goggles on as the black touring came into view. “No matter what you handle, you look good doing it.”
“Now I know you’re flirting with me.”
“I wasn’t certain how to make it more obvious.”
“Mind that silver tongue,” Gunner replied as he unholstered his Waterbury and shifted it to his left hand.
“Save your bullets,” I advised. I scooted in my seat so my back was to the door, reached out to grab onto the rooftop, then said, “Keep me in the auto and I’ll show you something I’ve recently learned tongues can do.”
“You’re tearing me asunder, Hamilton.”
Despite everything, I laughed while hoisting myself up and out to rest my backside on the edge of the automobile’s door.
Gatling Man was miming my actions, though not quite so gracefully as he struggled to hoist his shoulder weapon out the door and take aim.
I raised a hand to the night sky and the raging storm that’d been dogging me, tore a billion volts of lightning from the clouds, and hurled the spell at the gangsters.
The lightning met a dozen fire bullets in an explosion of heat and static, and the two competing magics screeched so loudly that the windshield of our auto cracked.
“Keep driving,” I called to Gunner when he swerved to avoid a rogue blast of flames.
I raised my hand to the sky again, ignoring the spasm of pain in my nerves as I created a massive, shimmering sphere of water.
Its bright, bright blue was like something from a tropical paradise, beautiful, second only to Gunner’s eyes.
It shifted in and out of itself, like the tides, elegant and smooth around the edges, complementing the wildness of my previous spell.
The driver of the black touring made a quick turn onto Broadway at the split in Union Square, but Gunner kept right on them.
We passed theatre marquees lit up by my magic as if the water sphere were a steam-powered spotlight, and that’s when Gatling Man fired again.
I released the magic and the sphere lunged forward, devouring the bullets midair.
But Gatling Man kept shooting, and the burrowing sensation of the manufactured magic was enough to make me feel as if I were losing my mind.
At the same time, as I pulled more raw energy from the atmosphere around me to strengthen my spell, I could touch that barrier the refuse of manufactured magic was creating.
With every cast of those bullets, the disjoint in the raw currents became a bit more pronounced and that barricade more and more tangible.
My water magic overcame Gatling Man’s gunfire and dumped over the automobile like a flash flood.
The wheels skidded and the driver nearly overcorrected as they shot past Tenth Street, Ninth, Eighth…
. I cast lightning again. The volts shot through the night air, ozone burned, and the magic hit the black touring.
Electricity mixed with water and tore steel and brass, obliterated expensive steam mechanics, and decimated the two souls inside.
Gunner swerved hard to drive around the explosion, and I nearly overturned right out of the auto.
“I said keep me inside ,” I protested, shimmying into my seat.
“And you need to warn me before you enact that clever trick of yours during a high-speed pursuit,” Gunner shot back with just a touch of exasperation in his tone.
I stuck my head back out and looked behind at the wreckage and engulfing inferno growing smaller in our wake.
Another half a dozen blocks and a left toward Bowery was when I picked up the distant shrill of a patrolman’s whistle and the mechanical wail of a crank alarm.
A police-designated prisoner transport automobile came squealing around the corner of Broome as we passed, giving us chase down Bowery.
I sat down and yanked my goggles down around my neck.
“Police?” Gunner clarified.
“Never on time and always flirting with the married sister at the party.”
Gunner laughed, slow and melodic and thoroughly amused. “Then what do you say we lose them, my dear?”
“You’re a bad influence on lawmen, Constantine Gunner.”
Gunner was still smiling as he hooked a right turn onto Hester Street, soared down Baxter, and once we’d passed the fork of Canal and Walker, we’d lost the much-slower transport automobile.
Gunner parked on the side of the road and climbed out of the extravagant touring, already catching the eyes of several passersby.
A gangly teen in too-short-for-him trousers, with a long nose and cocky smile, came out from under a shop awning, took a few strides in Gunner’s direction, and called out, “Oy, sir, want me to watch this machine for ya?”
“He’s looking to steal it,” I stated nonchalantly as I rounded the rear end of the auto to join Gunner’s side.
But Gunner didn’t hesitate and tossed the lad a set of steel skeleton keys. “Sure.”
The teen caught the ring and flashed a huge, albeit quite skeptical, smile. “Really?”
Gunner unholstered his Waterbury and gave the lad a wink.
“Wait a second… ain’t you—?”
“Take good care of it,” Gunner spoke over him before he strode for the corner of Baxter and Bayard.
I followed at his side, muttering, “You really do revel in the attention, don’t you?”
“I don’t mind it.”
The storm still blanketed the city as we reached Mulberry Bend.
Thunder reverberated loose windowpanes and lightning illuminated the seedy streets that should have been bustling, even at night—especially at night—but my magic had sent the masses inside.
Undoubtedly, I will have caused a cascade of new wives’ tales, but when I was this angry, the world around me warped and bent and it was just easier to let nature react than to try to contain it inside me.
On the corner of Bayard and Mulberry, between a four-story tenement and a dry foods shop of questionable quality, stood a one-story factory, the overhead sign lit by a single steam lamp reading: Warner’s Quality Medicinal Remedies. And underneath that: Factory workers’ entrance on Bandit Alley.
“How apropos,” Gunner said, his breath like little plumes of smoke as he spoke.
I snapped my fingers and the lamp’s globe shattered, shrouding us in dark. “Bligh knows I’m looking for him.”
“Certainly explains our Gatling friend’s sudden appearance.” Gunner pointed his three-barreled pistol at the hefty chain keeping the front door locked and shot it off.
I grabbed the handle, paused, and then said, “If we survive this, I’d like to discuss… ah… I mean, my birthday is next month.”
“Is it?”
“February sixth.”
“I’ll remember.”
“Perhaps we could meet.”
Gunner glanced down at me. “It’s a date.”
I smiled and eased the door open. We both slipped into the facility, unlit save for a bare bulb every dozen or so feet—emergency lighting, not that this was the sort of factory that needed or would even invest in such precautions.
There were at least six long tables situated in the main room, down the length of the building, likely where the workers sat all day, filling bottles, applying labels, and packing boxes.
After our eyes adjusted to the dimness and not so much as a rat scurried by, we silently crept toward a small-looking room off to the right.
The door had been left ajar. Gunner nudged it with the barrels of the Waterbury, letting it fall open onto a cramped office that Higgins had probably used when he was down at this end of the city.
Gunner strode inside, moved around the desk, checked underneath, then went to a closet, although there didn’t appear to be anything inside but for a few aprons and drab coats.
I tried the desk drawers—typical stationery and bookkeeping, but I’d need a forensic accountant to really comb the details of those ledgers—then I found a handful of unmarked bottles in the bottom compartment.
I selected one at random, shook the clear contents, wriggled the cork free, then winced and looked away as a blinding white light poured out of the head like a dense sea fog.
“The hell is that?” Gunner whispered.