Steam & Sorcery Read online

  He moved across the alley to the other one, just in time to see the glint of another silvery blade as it slashed down, severing the monster’s head from its neck. Thick, inky blood fountained before the head rolled across the alley, beginning to rot. This was a newer undead—it didn’t turn to dust, just dissolved into putrid, malodorous flesh.

  “Be’eading kills them as well as a stick.” That same feminine voice spoke in the local cant, and Merrick realized this combatant was a young woman—probably not more than a girl. Merrick caught a glimpse of copper hair gleaming from under her cap as she straightened, her hand resting on the head of a large canine automaton.

  “I’m aware of that, but a man can’t walk about London with a machete strapped to his waist.” Nodding to his other rescuers, he realized, somewhat to his chagrin, he’d been saved by a band of children. In addition to the girl, there were two youths—one in his middle teens, and the other much younger. Two more children—in between the two boys in age, or size at any rate—stood with lanterns at either end of the alleyway. “Besides, I didn’t expect vampyres to be involved in tonight’s exercises—merely monsters of the human kind.”

  “We’ve never seen two together before.” The older boy began to rifle the clothing left behind by the creature that had turned to dust.

  “They rarely work in groups, especially in conjunction with humans.” Holding his breath, Merrick began to search the pockets of the rotting corpse of the younger vampyre. Nothing. Not a single clue to indicate if someone had sent the pair or whether this was just a team of rogues looking for a meal. He looked over at the boy rifling through the dusty clothes of the elder. “You’re welcome to whatever money he has, but can you tell me if you find anything indicating the whereabouts of a warehouse?”

  “I know the place,” said the younger lad. “I ’eard what the other cove said. We can take you there, guv.”

  The older boy nodded. “You need us, sir. Can’t go up against vamps on yer own now. Not if they’re workin’ together, and if they’ve got the girls ’eld pris’ner.”

  “Can one of you show me the way while another runs to the watch house for help?” He had friends at Scotland Yard, and there was no way he was taking a pack of children into this mess.

  The girl moved over and spoke up. “Some of the missing shop girls are our friends. Piers and Nell will go for the coppers. The rest of us go with you to get Penny and Suze away.”

  He looked at each of them with his Order-trained senses open and came to a startling realization. The oldest boy was a Knight, just like Merrick. Untrained, yes, but the Order’s signature magickal energy fairly radiated from the lad. The younger boy had power as well, of some different kind, something Merrick couldn’t identify. Even the girl gave off a whiff of the supernatural. No wonder this batch of urchins had banded together to protect their home turf. They were all bloody gifted. He hated to involve youngsters in something like this, but even a young, untrained Knight was better help than most ordinary humans would be.

  The girl had begun searching his unfortunate informant. Merrick watched without speaking as she retrieved his coins, along with another small purse. He didn’t ask for the coins back. The children needed them more than he, and certainly more than a dead man. With a sigh of regret, Merrick stepped over and stabbed the man through the heart with his ebony sword. While not all victims of the undead rose again in vampyric form, some did, and even the Order wasn’t sure of exactly what variables made the difference. It wouldn’t do to have another vampyre emerge from this mess.

  Now there was more work to be done. Much as he wanted to stop and talk to the lad about his latent magickal ability, it would have to wait. Two days earlier, he’d been assigned to find the missing shop girls, at least ten of them, and he had to make them his first priority.

  He paused just a moment though, to cast a quick spell over the area, destroying the vampyric remains before nodding to the children. “Let’s go then.” The human body he left for the watch.

  Vampyres and other creatures of the night were more real than most upper-class people chose to believe. The residents of slums like Wapping, however, didn’t have that luxury. This was where the monsters hunted, where defenses were minimal and humans crowded together, too poor to be armed, too weak to fight back and often even sleeping out on the street, making for easy targets. While Merrick was specifically trained to fight the creatures, even in his experience, something was very strange about the events of this night.

  The dockside warehouse district was only a few blocks from the alley behind the teashop. Following the children, Merrick crept along in the dark, dank byways, avoiding the occasional encounter with drunks, whores or pickpockets—other than the pickpockets he was with, of course. He had no delusions about how this motley group of urchins eked out a living. The two boys, in particular, moved like living shadows, barely visible to the human eye as they darted from alley to doorway to street corner. If they weren’t pickpockets, they were wasting their talents.

  Even the mechanical dog was uncannily silent, and since clockwork pets were all the rage in high society, Merrick had seen more than a few clanking canines, though pugs and Pekinese were more common than mastiffs. As a Knight of the Round Table, Merrick was able to move as quietly and swiftly as the urchins, however. He caught one of the boys cocking an eyebrow at the other and shooting a surprised glance at Merrick. They were probably astonished that such an old man—thirty-five had to seem positively ancient to these youngsters—could manage to keep up.

  As they reached the docks, their movement slowed. This area was even more dangerous than the alley and warranted caution. Fog rolled up off the murky water of the basin, yellow with waste and other contaminants dumped by the hundreds of ships per month moving in and out of the crowded, confined inlet. A sickly trickle of moonlight penetrated the fog and cloud cover here away from the tightly packed buildings, but it wasn’t enough for even Merrick to see clearly.

  They rounded a warehouse that was gaslit from within. The building hummed with the sounds of mechanized loading and stacking equipment and it belched vast columns of coal smoke and steam. Not their target, then, but as they crept toward the far side, the younger boy pointed to the next building.

  Ah. This warehouse was a ramshackle timbered affair with broken panes in several of the windows scattered below the sagging roofline. Probably a casualty of the last decade’s technology boom, this simple, non-automated storage facility had clearly been vacant for some time. No lights burned from inside, though it would have been hard to tell, as the only two windows near ground level had both been boarded over. There was a name painted on the building’s side in peeling letters, but Merrick could only make out the letter B. Hopefully, it stood for Benson and Sons.

  “That’s it, guv,” the girl whispered. Her accent wasn’t as thick as the boys’. “Been empty as long as I can remember.”

  Merrick studied the other building. “Wait here. I’m going to go investigate. If the police arrive, ask them to wait for a signal—we don’t want to put the prisoners at risk if they’re being held hostage inside.”

  “Reckon I’m going with you.” The older boy gave a firm nod. “Might be more vamps in there.”

  “Two of the missing girls are from our street,” the girl added. “That’s why we’d taken to watching things at night—to make sure no more of our friends went missing.”

  Yes, he’d been right. There was something about her speech that didn’t quite add up—when she was talking fast, she dropped the street cant that identified her as an East Ender. Unfortunately, Merrick didn’t have time right now to wonder why an educated girl now lived on the streets of Wapping. Instead he shrugged, unwilling to waste time arguing.

  He glanced at the younger boy. “You wait for the others, understand? Someone’s got to clue in the police. Give them my name. Sir Merrick Hadrian. It should make them stop and listen, at least for a moment.”

  “Aye, sir.” The lad gave him a crisp salute an
d a sly grin. “Jamie McCann at your service, Cap’n.”

  “Good chap, McCann.” Merrick saluted back. Major would have been a better estimation of his rank among the Order, had that organization used military designations, but he’d settle for captain at the moment. He turned to the others. “Stick to the shadows and don’t start anything, understood?”

  “Aye,” they both confirmed, though he wasn’t sure he believed them.

  “Again, my name is Merrick, if you need to call for me. What are yours?”

  “He’s Tommy. I’m Wink.” The girl patted the clockwork hound. “And this is George.”

  Merrick held out his hand and shook each of theirs gravely, including Wink’s, though he settled for patting George on the head. “Onward, then. But be careful.”

  “Al’ays are,” Tommy whispered back as they crept across the open dockyard toward the other warehouse.

  No shouts of alarm interrupted their passage, so they reached their target, presumably undetected. Now to find a way in. The only thing that might have been a door on this side of the building was boarded up along with the windows, so Merrick sent his two henchmen around toward the street while he took the wharf side—in his estimate a more likely location. If someone was using the building as a base for clandestine operations, they’d shield their activities as much as possible from the street.

  When he rounded the corner, he paused to listen, his ear pressed up against the side of the warehouse. Tuning out the slapping of the basin’s waves on the pier and the drone of an airship overhead, he focused his hearing into the building. The scuttling sound he detected might have been rats, but after a moment, a female voice cried out and was immediately shushed by another. A male barked some sort of command and the female voices stopped. The words were unclear—they weren’t directly on the other side of the wall, but close enough. He’d have to be very careful going in.

  A few more steps led him to an entrance—the enormous barn-style door that would be used for loading and unloading containers onto ships. If the oversized hinges hadn’t rusted shut, the noise from opening even one side of it would rouse half of London. But sometimes… Merrick checked. Sure enough, there was a man-sized door set into one corner of the larger panel—and those hinges had been recently oiled. Slipping a slender steel lock pick from his pocket, he had the latch open by the time the two children had circled around to meet him.

  “There’s someone inside,” the boy—Tommy—noted. “That corner.” He pointed toward the far wharf-side point of the building, the corner the children had just rounded. That tallied nicely with Merrick’s observations and he nodded.

  “I’m going to slip in first,” he whispered.

  “I’m smaller,” Tommy argued.

  “Ah, but can you do this?” Merrick muttered a spell under his breath that he knew would render him nearly invisible to the untrained eye. He was still there, but to the children, it would seem as though he was little more than a blurred shadow.

  “Cor.” Wink gasped.

  “’Ow’d you do that?” Tommy squared his shoulders and his jaw and looked directly into Merrick’s eyes, even through the obscuring spell. Damn, the lad was talented. “Right, then. We’ll wait ’ere for a signal.”

  “If you hear a whistle, slip in as quietly as possible. If you hear a fight, use your judgment.” Merrick eased his sword-stick from its sheath. “If it doesn’t look like you can help, then run.”

  They both agreed before slipping back into the shadows as Merrick eased the door open.

  Not a flicker of movement disturbed the yawning black cavern of the warehouse. Empty but for the shattered remains of a few old shipping cartons, the interior smelled of mildew and dust, as well as the polluted water from outside. Merrick’s eyes quickly adjusted to the new level of darkness, enough to assure him that there was no being—living or otherwise—in the main portion of the building. There was, however, a small area partitioned off—presumably an office—in the far wharf-side corner of the space. The wooden door was closed, and any glass allowing a view out into the warehouse had been covered over with something. Merrick glided closer on his soft-soled boots and touched the substance lightly with a fingertip. Tar paper—a good choice for blocking out light. Pausing beside the door, he listened again, this time able to pick out the individual voices.

  “I said, not until tomorrow night.” The voice was low, male and angry, as well as upper-class.

  “If Marcus and Frank don’t make it back…” This was a subordinate, fearful and whining just a tad. The accent was working-class, and the pitch a bit higher.

  “They will.” The third voice was deeper than the first, with a resonance that made the hairs on Merrick’s neck stand up. Vampyre. “Though I agree with Mr. Butcher. Moving the girls tonight would be wiser. If you have one traitor in your midst, there may be more.”

  “The auction is tomorrow.” The leader’s firm tone never wavered. Whoever he was, he wasn’t afraid of the vampyre. Fool. “Now, if you gentlemen think you can handle a bunch of tied-up women until the others return, I’ll be getting along. I need to reappear at my wife’s soiree and make her think I’ve been there all along.”

  Perfect. Merrick faded back away from the office area. Footsteps sounded, and then the door was opened and shut. He waited until the man had nearly reached the outer door before he slid out of the shadows and caught him, one arm around his neck in a choke hold, the other bringing a small pistol up to the side of the slaver’s head.

  “No further. Not if you want to live,” he whispered in the man’s ear. “Your vampyre friend may come out at the sound of a shot, but you’ll already be dead.”

  The man jerked his chin in a sharp nod to indicate that he’d heard. Merrick then marched him toward the door and gave a soft whistle. When Tommy opened the door, Merrick shoved his captive outside. Wink darted off to find rope while Merrick and Tommy hauled the man into a sliver of moonlight near the wharf.

  “Lord Haverston,” Merrick noted with disgust. “Why? You have all the money you could ever need.”

  The thinner, balding man in evening clothes sneered. “Hadrian. I should have suspected someone of your caliber would be crass enough to work with the police. To think, Her Majesty herself received you at a garden party.”

  Merrick shrugged, his pistol not wavering from Haverston’s forehead as Wink returned and she and Tommy set to trussing the man up. “I’m not so low as to work with vampyres and human traffickers.”

  Once their prisoner was secured and gagged, they dragged him over to where Jamie waited and left that lad watching. He’d produced a wicked-looking knife from somewhere in his clothing, so Merrick had no doubt Haverston would think twice before attempting an escape. Then Merrick and the two older children returned to the abandoned building.

  “One vampyre, one human I believe, but there could be more.” Merrick sketched out a plan that the children agreed to, before they all ducked into the warehouse, George the clockwork dog included. Tommy and Wink still had the weapons they’d used in the alley, and Merrick had his sword-stick out. Merrick cast his vanishing spell and stood to one side of the office door while Tommy took the other. Wink banged open the main warehouse door yelling, “Here, kitty, kitty. Come on, puss,” at the top of her lungs.

  As Merrick had hoped, the door burst open. Two burly humans ducked out, leaving the door open behind them. There was no sign of the vampyre but Merrick didn’t have time to look into the room as he slammed his fist into the beefy midsection of the nearer thug. Caught unprepared, the bruiser stumbled, allowing Merrick to land his next punch to the man’s jaw just as he let out a bellow of rage. The bruiser went down hard and didn’t move. Meanwhile Tommy had apparently tripped the other, while George had bounded over and sat on the man’s back, pinning him to the ground.

  Tommy stood beside the fallen thug, the tip of his sword poised at the man’s left ear. “Don’t move, ye bugger.”

  The commotion had also brought out the rear guard. Three of t
he pallid undead drifted in mist form through the door. Only the fact that Merrick had been specifically watching for one allowed him to detect the slightly darker shadow in the dimness. As they began to coalesce, the rancid stench nearly made him retch.

  “Three undead. Watch yourselves.” He called the warning at the same time he stabbed the first vampyre with his ebony stake, regrettably missing the heart. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Wink launch herself out of the darkness at the second creature just before the vampyre could take a swipe at Tommy with its claws. The third faded back into the darkness of the warehouse, dissolving into fog. Damn, there was no way to damage one in its gaseous state. He hoped to hell it had cut and run, and wasn’t going for help.

  He’d seen these children fight in the alley. They could hold their own, though it went against the grain to let them. With one sharp kick to the side of the fallen human’s head, Merrick focused his attention on the vampyre he was fighting, ducking his shoulder to avoid a bite. The monster had moved in too close for an effective strike from the swordstick, so Merrick threw a kick at its knee, which made it stagger enough for Merrick to jump back. Before the fiend could recover, Merrick had skewered it through the heart.

  The vampyre fell, flesh dripping from the skeleton as the corpse devolved into rot, and the two thugs on the floor began to retch. Good, that would keep them from getting in the way. In the background he heard the sound of multiple running footsteps, and he hoped to hell it was the police who’d arrived, not reinforcements for Haverston.

  Before Merrick could move to help Tommy, the boy managed to slice one of the vampyre’s legs out from under him. When the creature fell, Wink was there, neatly severing its head from its neck. She stepped back, panting, and pointed at the open office door. “Any more inside?”

  “No,” Merrick said after a brief look. His stomach lurched as he saw the women. Probably a dozen of them were each chained, ankles and wrist, to a pair of iron rails that had been fixed into the two exterior walls. One rail ran about six inches off the floor, the other at about two feet, allowing the women to sit on the floor, but not to stand or lie. Each captive had one hand free, presumably for eating and other bodily functions. Chamber pots in both corners were full and reeking.