The Transference Engine (30 page)

The tunnel curved right and then left, inclining slightly upward as it wound into the heart of the mountain.

Low voices, in deep male tones drew me on. I pressed myself against the wall so that I'd cast no shadow in the uncertain light. This section had been plastered long enough ago that little of it transferred to my skirts.

I thought a long moment about how the steps had been hidden in plain sight by the illusion of the same color. My outer rags and boots might be mostly black and dark forest green, but my petticoats, corset, and stockings—my own normal underthings—were bleached and starched white.

Quickly I shed the top layers and shivered a bit in the cool damp. My pale hair, face and arms still held too much color. The ruffles of my topmost petticoat provided a sheer veil I could see through. I wound the long strips around my head and draped them artfully over my shoulders and arms, like an elegant shawl. I hoped this was enough obfuscation for my purposes.

Sidestepping carefully, I pressed my back against the wall and crept forward at an upward angle until the tunnel suddenly opened into a wide room, also whitewashed. On all sides, the walls were lined with niches, each about six feet long and three high. Five in each tier. Four across on each wall.

Skulls and bones lay jumbled together on the lowest rows of funereal resting places. Five or six skulls to each. The upper levels had been cleared to make room for row upon row of clear glass Leyden jars. Hundreds of them. Colored clouds in angry red hues roiled within each.

I'd found Ruthven's crypt.

Chapter Thirty-Two

I
DREW SEVERAL
shallow breaths, not daring to take more of the damp-tasting air, lest the slight sound and movement of my lungs alert the enemy arrayed around the room. Three men only. No fourth groom to stoke the firebox of the engine.

In the center of the domed room, where a funeral altar should stand on a slight dais, three metal tables on wheels sat in a neat row. The one closest to me contained a sheet-draped body. The far one was empty but for a shrouded lump that contained no human shapes, or pieces thereof. I did detect a long rounded shape that could have been a skinny arm. I suspected more likely the barrel of a weapon.

In the center lay a naked girl with masses of dark hair, struggling against wrist and ankle restraints. A metal band attached to long copper wires waited to encircle her brow.

Reva. Jimmy's beloved sister.

I'd been in her position and seethed at the indignity as well as her potential demise. Not even a sheet to cover her, a small grace Stamata had granted me. She needed only my body, not my anger and humiliation.

Drew and Rigby faced the necromancer where he presided at the head of Reva's table. Ruthven's back was to me. I prayed that if either Drew or Rigby noticed me, they would make no sound or expression of recognition.

Ruthven concentrated on the dark flush of anger on Reva's face. “Ah, my beauty, you shall enhance my army of tainted women in powering my lovely gonne.”

Cautiously I took one side step into the cavern, keeping my back as close to the wall as possible. Silently, I slithered closer and closer to the array of Leyden jars and the red sparking along the copper wires.

A rustle of my skirts, or a brush of my arms against a wire, I'm not certain what caused Ruthven to look up.

With a lifted eyebrow and a cruel smile he greeted me. “Ah, Madame Magdala. I'd hoped you would join us. You shall complete my triumvirate of anger to fuel the kinetic galvatron.”

Just because I shed my outer garments didn't mean I shed my weapons as well. Before I could think about it, a throwing star flew from my hand and landed precisely in Ruthven's right shoulder.

He screamed as he yanked it free along with a well of blood. “You shall pay for that,” he sneered. Then he righted himself, absorbing the pain as fuel. “Blood for blood. The Persian promised that the necromancer's own blood triggers the spell much more efficiently than all the angry emotions of the victims. The spell will be stronger for my blood mingled with yours.” He flung the sharp metal back at me.

I grunted with the impact of metal against metal. I felt as if he'd jammed his fist into my gut. I bent double expecting a warm trickle of blood. But the star dangled uselessly from where a point snagged on the wire mesh embedded in my corset.

“You need to put more strength into it,” I taunted him, still bent double, as if he'd truly hurt me.

He didn't pause to gloat but leveled a small pocket pistol at me. I had to stand to make certain the corset did its job in protecting my vulnerable torso. But, oh, Hades, it hurt to do anything but curl around the bruise in the region of my belly.

Ruthven pulled the trigger before I completed my shift in posture.

I screamed from the sharp slash to my chest. Impact spun me backward, around, and down. I let the bullet's momentum take me to my knees. Then I fell forward in a controlled slump. Gasping against the pain.

“Magdala!” Drew screamed.

Dimly I heard him thrash.

“Leave her. She's dead meat. Unless you care to join her and fuel the gonne with your outrage?” Ruthven said calmly.

I crawled beneath the foot of Reva's bier, keeping three pairs of legs in view. Drew and Rigby shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. Ruthven remained hideously calm.

Reva grew still, no more weak thumps and bangs against the metal table as she thrashed against her restraints. But I heard her rasping breath. She lived. From beneath the table, I yanked on the straps binding her feet.

The star dropped free with a gentle ripping of fine cloth and clanked on the floor, chipping the whitewash.

“You've contaminated the whole process!” Ruthven yelled in outrage at the marring of his perfectly clean and bright floor. He bent to watch me as I reached to free Reva's other foot. “You're supposed to be dead or dying. What an amazing creature you are. Your soul will strengthen my spell beyond the addition of my own blood.”

I grabbed the table legs and shook them. Ruthven jerked up and banged his head. Hard.

He withdrew with a grunt, hands clasped to the top his head.

Rigby used the distraction to dive for the shrouded object resting at the head of the empty bed. He grabbed it with his left hand, still not revealing the mechanical nature of his hidden right limb.

And Drew, bless his heart,
my
Drew yanked all the copper wires and glass tubes free of some infernal machine—also whitewashed—that pumped and groaned in the corner.

Ruthven pulled another gun. A revolver fully loaded.

We froze in place. My fingers worked anxiously at Reva's wrist restraints while I assessed Ruthven's intentions. He waved his pistol with the huge bore at each of us in turn and back again. His eyes narrowed and his lips thinned. An ugly sneer of disdain crossed his face.

“Do you honestly believe you can thwart me?” he asked. Too calm. Too focused.

I watched his eyes for clues. They'd tell me when he meant to pull the trigger before his hands did.

Not a flicker. I don't think he even blinked. Slowly he moved the gun back and forth until the barrel pointed at Reva. Shivering, naked, and tied down, she was vulnerable. An innocent girl with everything to lose.

Anger flashed in her eyes as she set her chin and twisted her wrists. If only I could get her free . . .

Then I spotted it. A simple button on the side of the table. I stretched the middle finger of my right hand as far as I could. Not far enough. Was I quick enough.

“Don't even think about it,” Rigby said.

I looked up with a lie on my lips and determination in my heart.

But he had his strange weapon, a collection of bulbs and crystals and barrels pointed at Ruthven's heart. Not mine.

Ruthven turned his head and his gun at Rigby.

Then, and only then, did Rigby thrust his undamaged right hand out, through a slit in his greatcoat. He held the magnificent purple crystal. The eye of Kali that held the captive souls of those sacrificed to the goddess.

Possibly the soul of Lord Byron, the poet king, as well.

Ruthven gasped and made half a step toward his foe. All the while patting his pockets for that crystal. “How did you . . . ? You gave it to me days ago.”

“And stole it back an hour later,” Rigby smiled without mirth. Slowly, deliberately he seated the crystal between the fuel bulb and the head of the barrel.

That must be the kinetic galvatron, the monstrous weapon that shot searing light at great distances.

With Ruthven's attention elsewhere, I slammed my hand against the button. Reva's headband snapped free with a clang as it bounced against the far side of the table.

Ruthven lunged at Rigby, taking him to the floor where they wrestled and rolled for control of the gonne.

Drew clattered with the connections and machine behind me. I hadn't time or attention to spare him.

I grabbed the sheet from the dead body on the other side of Reva and threw it over her. She had one hand, her head and feet free. I trusted her to help herself.

But my eyes sought the face on the body.

Toby!

My precious moon-faced boy who performed every task I asked of him without question. The small boy inside a man's body who loved cleaning my stoop because it pleased me. His innocent blue eyes stared sightlessly at the white ceiling, mouth agape with his last scream of pain and frustration. I knew that scream. I knew his anger, blind rage when frustration and his own limitations kept him from doing what he wanted to do.

Toby.

More clatters and clangs behind me. I had to turn away from my grief for now, as I had with Kit Doyle, though this gaping hole in my gut felt larger, like my very being seeped out of me.

Toby's death damaged me more than a throwing star and a bullet ever could.

With renewed resolution and determination, I turned back to face Ruthven. I had to stop him from murdering more innocents for his own senseless revenge. For his own perverted, selfish, vile, sense of justice.

My own anger roiled and I whirled to face him, a scream on my lips, my hands curled into claws.

The light in the room changed. I saw red everywhere, swirling and stabbing. I winced against the fiery glare but felt no heat.

Drew backed away from the machine toward the obscured white stairs that spiraled upward toward a white trapdoor.

Rigby and Ruthven rolled on the ground, still wrestling for control of the kinetic galvatron. I pulled my tiny, one-shot gun from the back waistband of my petticoat. All I needed was a few seconds of a clear shot at Ruthven's head.

Swarms of red light blinded me. Spiraling into a tighter and tighter vortex. The light generated a cold wind that drew me toward the center, compelling me to join the core of the light storm.

Rigby noticed the change and rolled free, flailing for balance, eyes wide with horror. He tried to rise to his knees. The lights pushed him back down.

But the necromancer had better tools at his behest. He chanted a fierce litany in an ancient language with the liquid syllables of Ish's native tongue. The blood on his shoulder thickened and clotted before my eyes. He gained strength with each word.

Rigby's hold on the weapon weakened.

Ruthven rolled to his feet in one graceful move worthy of the best opera dancer. He had his kinetic galvatron in hand and aimed it.

“No!” Drew and I screamed at the same moment. He leaped and took Ruthven down in a flying tackle.

The gonne rumbled and hissed, emitting a long shaft of green light. The red light in the room screeched in accompaniment.

The green light caught Rigby's hand as he tried to cover his eyes with his arm. His dominant left hand.

He screamed.

I kicked the real gun away from where Drew fought Ruthven to the ground, flat on his back, hands pinned by his head. The kinetic galvatron skidded across the floor, the purple crystal worked free of its slot and slid across the floor to stop at my feet.

I bent, painfully, to grab it and hide it in my cleavage.

The red lights continued to roil around and around concentrating on Ruthven.

And then I knew what Drew had accomplished while I dealt with Ruthven and Reva.

He'd broken the hundreds of Leyden jars, freeing the trapped souls. Hundreds of angry women concentrated their life's essence into a furious mass. As one, they formed a spear of red light that pulsed with green and yellow and blue. Together they plunged into Ruthven's open mouth, his eyes, his ears, up his nose. Like a swarm of bees they buzzed and whirred as they took possession of his body. His skin mottled back and forth with the bright jewel tones of his invaders. His teeth turned green while his hair took on the hue of fresh blood. Blue pinpoints of light sprouted like whiskers from his face.

Drew flung himself away from the necromancer, lest he be caught in the fury of Ruthven's victims.

I could not hear Ruthven's screams. The shouts and curses of his victims drowned him out with a fury akin to a stormy sea crashing against broken cliffs. In their last act of life they invaded his mind and yelled abuse at him using his own voice. He flailed and struck at his eyes with his own fingers, digging and plucking, driving him blind.

Driving him mad with hundreds of tortured voices bent on destruction inside him.