The Odin Inheritance (The Pessarine Chronicles Book 1) Page 20

  I felt my temper rise. Go without a fuss? Not bloody likely. I reached up and plucked the hair clasp from my head, and re-clasped it to the fabric of my skirt within easy reach. I’d probably lose in a scuffle, but I’d draw blood before I went down.

  The ruffian released his grip on Dr. Sanburne’s collar, shoving him toward me. Sanburne stumbled, righted himself, pulled down his shirt and cleared his throat, attempting to regain his professional mein. “Now... ah... if you’d roll up your sleeve...?”

  I pulled myself up to my full height, gripped whatever instruments would fit in my hand from the tray and stood my ground. “I most certainly will not,” I said pointedly.

  Dr. Sanburne nearly melted into tears. “Oh please,” he said, pleading. He indicated the two thugs. “They’ll do something horrible to Mrs. Tirel unless I let them take you!”

  “They have no intention of leaving Mrs. Tirel or you unharmed,” I spat. “Once they’ve taken me, they’ll kill you both.”

  The two men beamed. “She’s a smart one, Doc,” Abe said.

  “Never mind, Abe, my lad,” the other Enhanced fellow said, “we might as well grab the bird and leave the Doc out of it. He ain’t got the stomach for this kind of work.”

  “Yeah,” said Abe with a grin, “but we stomach it just fine, don’t we, Dennis?”

  Dennis reached out, grabbed Sanburne, punched him three times in the face and dropped his unconscious form on the floor. The syringe clattered to the floor, and Dennis crushed it with his boot. He motioned to his partner. “Abe,” he said, shooting his cuffs, “she’s all yours, mate.”

  Abe lumbered toward me. I pulled the instruments I’d grasped off the table with one hand while I grabbed the tray with the other. The bandages went flying, while the bottle of alcohol dropped to the floor and smashed, filling the room with its fumes. My quick moves and my waving the tray around made Abe pause in his efforts to grab me. I felt the mental suspension that came over me when I prepared to throw darts. I took that moment to hurl the handful of medical implements with as much force as I could muster at Abe’s face, where many of them stuck, while the others struck his face, then clattered to the floor. Abe let out an angry howl of pain, backed away and started to pull the instuments out of his lacerated face.

  Dennis stepped in and tried to grab me. I batted his hands with the tray as hard as I could. That made him draw back. Then I reached back to grasp the wheeled steel cart the tray had come from.

  Abe, in the corner by the office door, wailed and continued to remove the knives from his face, hands shaking. He dropped the bloody things to the floor as he got them loose, which only increased the flow of blood from the cuts.

  I added to the din, groaning as I lifted the narrow cart up with my right hand, then tucked the top end of it under my arm so I could use it as a lion-tamer did a chair. The wheels on the other end swirled about on their stems, but Dennis easily grabbed the end closest to him and pulled it from my grasp, leaving me with only the steel tray. He tossed the cart aside. It clattered against the wall and fell to the floor near Dr. Sanburne.

  I transferred the tray to my right hand, then reached down with my left hand and removed the hair clasp from my skirt. It had two modes: one to distract and annoy, the other to cause harm. I toggled the switch for the second option and felt the device hum into life. He was close enough to me I didn’t need to concentrate on hitting him, so I threw it at Dennis and hit him square in the chest. With a whir and a click, the device attached itself to his shirt and started crawling randomly over his torso like a mechanized spider. Blades dropped down from the center of the device and started cutting the fabric of the shirt away, the points of the blades cutting skin and the pinchers of the device’s feet grabbing flesh when it couldn’t grasp fabric. Dennis grunted and batted at the device, trying to knock it off, but the randomization algorhythms I’d included in the clockwork easily outmanuvered the thug’s efforts. It crawled under Dennis’s jacket, and he batted at the moving fabric, trying to smash the thing that chewed up his flesh. Blood bloomed in the cloth of the jacket in a random trail.

  I watched, fascinated. I hadn’t intended the hairclasp to do a great deal of harm. Rather, I’d thought it could be used to make an escape easier, should one be needed. It was a major distraction for Dennis, who clearly had a hard time deciding whether to get the device off before he came at me again, or to grab me and then deal with it. Unfortunately, Abe stood too close to the door for me to slip past Dennis and run.

  Screaming, I brandished the tray like a club over my right shoulder with both hands. I hoped I looked menacing.

  Dennis gave up on grabbing my clockwork hairpiece and let it roam over his body, wincing and growling at the cuts and pinches as his jacket and shirt continued to soak up blood. He started to move toward me, his face a rictus of pain and fury.

  “You’re a plucky one,” he said through gritted teeth, “but even with your infernal device slicing me to bits and Abe done up with the knives, I’ll still win in the end. Give up now, why don’t you?” His beefy hands stretched out for my throat, and he lunged at me.

  Then the window exploded inward, broken by a black pointed projectile of some kind. Dennis ducked to avoid the broken glass, only to look up into the face of a hovering, very angry raven, his talons extended. Shrieking and growling, Hugo set upon the ruffian, biting and scratching. It was Dennis’ turn to scream in pain, and he called to Abe for help. Abe lumbered over blindly and I took my chance to beat a hasty retreat.

  I dropped the tray and made for the door. I opened it, ran into the hallway, reached the door to the waiting room, opened it and ran in... only to find one more Enhanced ruffian there. He held a gun pointed right at me, and he wore the same sort of work clothes as the ruffians in the examining room had. I remembered the workmen I’d seen talking in a group at the cab station and cursed myself for a fool. They’d followed the cab to the office.

  The man with the gun was steel-eyed and eager for violence. I started toward him, anger moving my feet forward before my brain could engage and look for other, less foolhardy options.

  The thug pointed the gun at my chest. “Hands up,” he said. “Do anything smart and I shoot. Got me?”

  I stopped, cursing the Enhanced ruffians and my own helplessness. “I thought you fellows were supposed to bring me in unharmed,” I said, trying for bravado.

  The man shrugged. “We are, but if we gotta hurt you to get your cooperation, we’ll do that.” He motioned with the gun. “Hands on yer head and no funny-business,” he said.

  I put my hands on my head, feeling my heart thump in my chest at an alarming speed. Down the hall, I heard the sounds of Hugo’s cries fade away and determined with great relief that he’d escaped. I hoped he was uninjured. Hugo, I thought, if you’re truly a spy for Andrew, I hope you get a chance to tell him what’s happened, because dashed if I know what to do next.

  Dennis and Abe, bloody and furious, joined us in the waiting room. The encounter with Hugo had dislodged my device, but cuts and scrapes covered Dennis’s face, torso, and hands, leaving bloody streaks on his shredded shirt, jacket and trousers. Scattered deep cuts dotted Abe’s face, leaking blood in slow streams down his face and neck, dropping plops of red onto his shirt front.

  The thug with the gun looked at their battered forms with some surprise. “Blimey! The little girl did that to you boys?” he asked, laughing.

  “Watch it, Mitch,” Dennis rumbled. He hiked a thumb over his shoulder. “I knocked the Doc out and tied the nurse up. We’ll have to get this bird stowed, then come back to finish the job.”

  “I’ll stow the little miss,” Abe growled, leaning over and wiping his bleeding face with a handkerchief, “I’d love to pay her back for what she did to my face.”

  Mitch motioned toward the door. “We’ve got a cab waiting. Let’s move. The boss wants her with him as soon as possible.”

  Mitch went out the door first, while Dennis and Abe flanked me on either side. We stepped into t
he rain, which seemed to be coming down harder and colder than it had been earlier. The grass of the doctor’s yard and the pavement of the road and sidewalk glistened with the wet. Puddles twitched rapidly as the raindrops hit them.

  I thought to call for help from a stranger, but the weather put a stop to that. Sensible people didn’t go out in torrential downpours. The hard, cold rain soaked us almost instantly. The Enhanced men seemed disinterested in the downpour even as their clothes soaked up the rain. Shivering, I peered at the dark outline of the cab Mitch had mentioned and didn’t pay attention to where I put my feet. I slipped on the wet pavement and felt a large hand grip my arm to steady me.

  “Don’t you fall, missy,” Abe hissed. “I want my full fee for this here job.”

  Suddenly, a woman stood between us and the cab, covered in a brightly-colored flowing garment. Her dress, if one could call it that, gave no indication of the size of the body it enclosed, but flowed down from her shoulders like a waterfall. The vibrant colors of the fabric seemed to change as I watched. Her hair was short, black and curly, and wisps of it peeked out from under a yellow turban, decorated with one peacock feather. The woman waved a hand dismissively behind her, and a wall of rain formed between her and the cab, obscuring it from our sight completely. The watery wall expanded to encircle us, effectively cutting us off from the rest of the world. Mitch stopped. My captors stopped as well, grabbing my forearms to prevent my running away.

  I didn’t know what to think of the colorful woman who stood before us, but I’d never seen water behave like that before.

  “Out of our way,” Mitch ordered and pointed his gun at her.

  “Let the girl go,” the woman said simply, her accent giving her origin away. I couldn’t believe it. Another American? Where had she come from?

  “No chance,” Mitch sneered. “Get out of our way or I’ll shoot you. I’m sick to death of uppity women.”

  “No!” I tried to run toward the woman, but Abe held me in painful check, giving me a rough shake for good measure. Mitch took aim with the gun and fired.

  Faster than my eyes could follow, the woman easily dodged the bullet. When she stopped, the American woman brought her hands together in a clap that echoed back and forth within the watery enclosure she’d created around us. With a roar, the rain increased in intensity, but only on the ruffians. Water sheeted down their faces, covering their noses and mouths so they couldn’t breathe. The three men, moving with jerky, panicked strides, moved off the pavement and into the street, trying to escape the deluge and get out of the cocoon of water that surrounded them. They clawed at their faces, trying to prevent the water from shooting down their throats and up their noses, but to no avail. Seeing their struggles to breathe made my own throat close up, and it was as if time elongated in proportion to their desperate struggles for air. The horror of it transfixed me to the spot. I watched, shivering and astonished, as the three men drowned like rats.

  Eventually, the Enhanced men stopped struggling. They slumped in limp poses of death, face down in the street. The wall of water fell heavily on top of the corpses. To my great surprise, the bodies melted into the rain, and as the water flowed away down the street drains, all that remained were the ruffian’s empty clothes and their metallic Enhancements. The silver spheres that had been their eyes lay in the gutter along with three ugly artificial legs, tense in a rictus of mechanical mortality. The rain continued to come down in a torrent, but at least it seemed to be a natural phenomenon.

  I didn’t know what to do. The woman had saved my life, but why? What if she’d only killed the men so she could take me somewhere else? How can I hope to outrun someone who controls the rainstorm itself? I don’t even have an umbrella. What if she decides to melt me?

  The brightly garbed woman crossed her arms over her chest and graced me with no-nonsense sort of look. “Tell me,” she said, indicating the mechanical bits of the men in the street, “do you still refuse to believe that magic is real, or shall I make another attempt to convince you otherwise?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  I put my hands up in surrender and shook my head to get some of the water out of my eyes. “No further demonstrations necessary,” I spluttered, feeling the damp of my clothes seep into my bones. “Begging your pardon, I’ve no idea who you are or what you want, but… please, don’t melt me.”

  “Melt you?” she asked, surprised by the request. “Of course I won’t,” said the woman as she walked toward me. “I’ve gone to considerable trouble to save you from those ruffians.” She stuck out her hand. “Hypatia Downs, Facti and Heir to Tlaloc at your service,” she offered as an introduction in a business-like tone. I noticed her eyes were as green as the jungle, and she was bone dry even though it rained all around and on me. Remembering that Andrew claimed he could read thoughts when he touched someone, I did my best to construct mental defenses against such an intrusion before I put out my hand and shook hers.

  “Pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” I said, withdrawing my hand, grateful my thoughts seemed to be my own. “You’re a Facti?”

  “As Andrew is, yes,” Miss Downs said with great patience. “Take a moment to organize your mind and think things through,” she said. “I often find, when presented with notions completely beyond my usual realm of experience, a good minute or two of evaluation and adjustment goes a long way toward avoiding foolish questions.”

  I opened my mouth to respond and she held up a hand to stop me. “Fret not, young woman. I will wait.”

  I nodded and pondered as ordered. Though I loathed admitting it, nothing about the behavior of the rainwater I’d just witnessed could be accounted for by any mundane force of nature I knew about. The water had formed barriers and waterfalls very clearly at the command of the woman who stood in front of me, and she had no mechanical enhancements that I could see. I didn’t feel like I’d been mesmerized, and the empty clothes and Enhancements of my attackers sitting limply in the street were certainly real. The only explanation for what I’d seen her do was the use of magic, barring some other process with which I was unaware.

  I didn’t like that notion at all. Where did science end and magic begin? Could anyone do her sort of magic? What if someone used that sort of magic against me? Little mechanical scalpel filled devices would have no chance against something like what this woman had done. I felt very fortunate that Miss Downs seemed to be on my side at the moment.

  Obviously, this woman knew Andrew, and whatever the Facti were, they meant to keep me safe. The Enhanced men worked for someone at odds with the Facti, who also cleary needed me for something. Somehow, Miss Downs had known I needed help. Had the request for assistance come from Andrew or Hugo?

  “Thank you, Miss Downs,” I began slowly, “for saving me from those fellows.”

  She smiled. “Please, call me Hypatia. You’re very welcome. I trust you are not injured?”

  “A little bruised, perhaps,” I admitted. “Can you tell me who those men were?”

  “Them?” she waved a dismissive hand at the remains in the street, “they were lost to Obscurati thrall. Best to kill the fiends when they get that way. We’ve yet to find a method that reverses the effects of the conversion process. The poor devils think they’re choosing a path that will make them better, but it only leads to ruin.”

  “Obscurati?” I asked.

  “The Obscurati work to bring chaos and evil into the world. Facti work to prevent their efforts at destruction as best we’re able, with magic,” she waggled her fingers at me, “provided by certain artifacts from certain pagan gods with whom we have a connection.”

  “And the Obscurati ‘converted’ these men? Was that conversion mechanical?”

  “Partially,” Hypatia said, “but the Obscurati have access to magic as we do. They worship the pagan gods they serve, which is how they get their abilities. We,” she indicated herself, “do not worship the gods who work with us. Our pagan affiliations are with the… how shall we say… more positive gods of the
various pantheons. The Obscurati gods are scoundrels to a deity, and they want nothing more than to cause harm at every opportunity.”

  “So they subvert the Enhanced as a way to do that?” I asked.

  “Sadly, yes. The Enhanced are particularly vulnerable to their most recent method of ‘abomination’, for lack of a better term. Once the eyes of the poor buggers are full silver with no pupils, their tendency to violence increases, as does their resistance to most conventional methods of Enhanced control.”

  “Like the men in Seven Dials,” I breathed. “Like Sophie’s friends.”

  Hypatia inclined her head in agreement. “Indeed. The Obscurati have been very busy as of late.”

  I stepped closer to her hoping to avoid being rained on since I had little rivulets of water running down my back. Unfortunately, being closer to Hypatia and her brightly colored garment did not prevent the rain from finding me. I’d never been so wet in my life, and I was sure my entire body was prune-y and wrinkled. “But I’m not Enhanced. Why do these Obscurati want me so badly?”

  “You’re not like most people,” she said simply.

  “You don’t even know my name,” I said, hands on hips.

  She sighed. “You are Lady Ariana Trevelyan, the very strong-willed Mathematics student who lives in Towson House and rides about in airships without her parents’ knowledge.”

  My jaw dropped. “Does everyone know about the airship, then?” I demanded, annoyed. “Damn and blast!”

  Hypatia laughed at me then, a rich, pleasant sound. “Your parents are still in the dark though none of the Facti are.”

  “Ah,” I said, still annoyed but less concerned. “I suppose you do know me, then.”

  Hypatia smiled. “I suppose I do... if only by reputation.”

  I put my hands on my wet hair, interlocking my fingers so my elbows hung down on either side of my head. “How is it you see me as being not like ‘most people,' as you say?”