Hearts of Smoke and Steam (29 page)

Testing each step, and skipping those that wanted to betray his presence, he managed to slowly make his way to the second floor.

As he crept upward, he heard even more thumps and creaks coming from upstairs. The commotion made him wonder what exactly Prescott was planning to do in this place, and if it had anything to do with the object Anubis was looking for. Either way, he was running out of time—he would have to confront the man directly, and if he proved unwilling to succumb to verbal coercion, he'd need to resort to less pleasant methods of getting what he wanted. He was sure that Jack would be pleased.

He poked his head up through the floor and took a look around in the gloom. Anubis had expected the upstairs to resemble the room that Prescott had been hiding in. The reality was far more breathtaking, both in form and scope.

The attic was indeed a secret den, but instead of being a set of living quarters, it resembled a museum. Along all the walls were rows and rows of books and manuscripts. The spaces in between were regularly punctuated by large canvases. Laid out across the floor were sculptures and other objects d'art, ranging in size from tiny ivory carvings on carved wooden pedestals to a massive stone sculpture so large that it had been placed on long beams to distribute its weight. It rose up tall and curved, heading up almost fifteen feet until it stood just below the ceiling, where it expanded at the top like a large mushroom.

At first he couldn't make out exactly what it was he was looking at, as it clearly couldn't be the obvious organ the shape suggested. “Could it?” he muttered to himself. And the more he stared at the erect object, the more it became clear that it was not a metaphor for anything, but simply a massive ode to male sexuality.

Loud footsteps came from the other side of the room, and he could see Prescott sit down onto the edge of a large four-poster bed. It was surrounded by gaslights that glowed in the darkness and made the bed appear to be an oasis in the gloom.

Clinging to the shadows, Anubis pulled his staff off of his back and slowly reassembled it. Once it was completed, he began to walk towards the bed, taking a moment to take a closer look at a tiny ivory statue that stood on a pedestal on the floor. His eyes widened, struck by the act that a well-endowed demon was committing on a tiny, yet startlingly accurate, depiction of a naked young Asian woman. While it seemed like it should be painful, the look on her little face clearly showed that she was enjoying it.

Anubis shook his head and kept moving, ignoring a similarly graphic act being carried out on a canvas on the wall. Seeing that Prescott was busily removing something from a wooden box, he slid out a random volume from the shelf.

The title was startlingly erotic in nature, crudely concerned with methods by which a man might dramatically increase both his own pleasure and that of his partner in performing acts of lust.

After erotic materials had been outlawed by the federal government, there had been no shortage of speculation amongst the more sensationalist newspapers that the wealthiest members of society secretly kept their most perverted documents in hidden libraries. It always seemed to be more of a popular myth than a genuine truth, and yet here was exactly the secret treasure trove that he had dismissed as nonsense. Perhaps he had underestimated the state of modern journalism…

He heard a few loud grunts from Prescott's direction, and he was a bit hesitant about what he might see as he turned to the man. When he did look, he realized that not only had Prescott retrieved his Hydraulic-man costume, he had, with some difficulty, almost completed putting it on.

Anubis had been too distracted by the room, and now he was about to face a man fully armed with acid and flame. He shouted as ran toward his quarry. “Prescott!” The man looked up, startled, just as he had finished hooking a hose to one of the snake heads on his shoulder.

“What? Who is it? What are you doing here?”

Prescott was appropriately alarmed, but Anubis was surprised when he stepped into the gaslight and his target seemed to actually relax. “Is that you, Davies?” Prescott said with a laugh. “I always knew that your predilection for leather would get the better of you someday, but isn't the mask a bit over the top?”

Anubis, annoyed at being mistaken for a wealthy deviant, slammed his staff down on the floor, trying to ignore just how phallic
that
act might appear to be in the context of his location. “I am Anubis!” he said, using the echoing acoustics of the room to his advantage. “I am here to retrieve from you what you have stolen from Lord Eschaton.”

At the mention of Eschaton's name, the look on Prescott's face shifted instantly, his smile melting into wide-eyed fright. “Eschaton? No…How did you find me?”

Anubis leaned forward, letting the black jackal mask do its work. “I didn't ‘find' you, I followed you.” He waited for a beat, and then continued. “If you remove the suit
now
and hand it back to me, I may let you live.”

Prescott looked angry and whined like a petulant child. “No! I
won't
…It's
mine!”
Reaching down to his wrist on the Hydraulic-man's suit, Chadwick pulled a lever, sending a stream of liquid squirting from one of the snake heads. It was heading directly for Anubis's chest, and he jumped away, realizing that he had reacted too slowly even as he moved.

Anubis could feel the splash, and he expected to next feel the acid eating into his flesh, but there was no burning sensation, just the stink of kerosene rising up into his nose.

Realizing that he was unhurt a moment before Prescott did, Anubis lashed out with his staff. The blow struck the other man square in the stomach, and Prescott tumbled backwards onto the huge bed, tearing out one of the curtains on his way down.

The Hydraulic-man attacked again, but this time Anubis was ready for the assault, and he stepped deftly out of the way. The stream travelled through the air, landing on a nearby vase of porcelain “flowers,” the blossoms all closely modeled after female anatomy. The pot smoked for a moment, then shattered into a shower of breasts and genitals.

“Leave me alone!” Prescott cried as he clawed at the bed, dragging himself over to the other side. The sheets became tangled in his costume, and he fell onto the floor with a thump. When he stood, a large bolt of silk had attached itself to his shoulder, forming an ungainly cape.

“It's time for Anubis to judge you, Chadwick Prescott!”

Prescott pulled off the sheet and twisted it in his hands. “Judge me? Don't be ridiculous!” The tone of fear was replaced by one of outrage. “I paid Eschaton good money for this costume, and it belongs to me.”

Anubis knocked the man out of his outrage by jumping onto the bed and shoving the end of his staff into the man's chest. It knocked enough of the air out of Prescott's lungs to make him gasp. “That's not my business. You have stolen what is not yours.”

When the man looked up at him, there was a mix of anger and terror in his eyes. “So you're Eschaton's errand boy, is that it?”

Angered by the comment, Anubis raised up his staff to strike the man again. Prescott cringed reflexively. It was satisfying to watch the swagger drain out of him, and Anubis held the blow for a moment.

But there was some truth to what the man was saying. He was here carrying out Eschaton's orders. Was he still working in the service of a higher good?

So far his attempts to undermine the villain had failed. Had he spent so much time trying to infiltrate Eschaton's organization that he had finally become what he had started out pretending to be?

It was worth considering, but not at this moment. “Take it off, Prescott.” He let the man's name rumble in his throat for effect as he jumped to the floor in front of him. “Do it and I'll let you live. Otherwise I'll rip it off of your dead body.”

“You can try!”

Anubis had been waiting for Prescott to drop the sheet and activate one of the buttons on his wrist. But his focus had left him unprepared for a more direct attack, and he was unable to get out of the way as Prescott crashed toward him, bowling him over. As Prescott ran by, he dragged the sheet over Anubis's head, plunging him into total darkness. Perhaps the man wasn't a complete fool…

If Prescott got away now, there would be hell to pay. He would go to ground again, certainly doing a better job of hiding than he had before. Anubis needed to complete the mission now, or Eschaton would never trust him again—not that he was completely sure if that was still important.

Anubis stumbled after him in darkness, pulling off the sheet just in time to see the huge stone phallus looming in front him. The Hydraulic-man was hiding behind it, moving his hand down toward his opposite wrist as he prepared to attack.

Unable to stop himself, Anubis smacked directly into the sculpture. The object was precariously balanced on the two spheres that made up its base, and it began to tip over.

Focused on the device on his wrist, Prescott was barely able to let out a scream before the huge statue crashed down onto him, pinning him to the floor.

“Get this damn thing off of me!” Prescott shouted. Anubis smiled. He didn't like relying on fate, but if it came his way, he wasn't going to turn it down. And there was something almost poetic about seeing a dilettante like Prescott trapped by an enormous piece of erotic art. He pointed his staff threateningly at the fallen man. “You
will
give me the suit!”

Prescott squirmed once more, and then let out a sigh of defeat. “All right. You've won.”

After Anubis used his staff to heave the statue off of him, Prescott rolled over and sat up, putting a gloved hand to his face. The moment it touched his skin, he twitched, and he jerked his fingers away—his flesh was red and smoking where the glove had made contact. After a moment, he screamed.

Anubis looked down to see a growing puddle of smoking liquid around Prescott, and a gouge on the container on his back where the statue had smashed it open. It gave off an unpleasant acrid smell, and he took a step backwards as the puddle rolled towards him.

Without the ability to see the damage, it took Prescott another moment to realize what was happening. When he did, he looked up at Anubis, his eyes filled with horror. “Help me!”

Anubis lifted his staff and popped out its barbs, hoping that he could snag the man and drag him out of the deadly pool. The acid was eating into the floor now, sending up a thickening cloud of heavy smoke. If he was going to have any chance of saving him, he would need to act fast.

Eschaton clearly hadn't been interested in the safety of the wearer when he had created the outfit, and its design didn't do anything to protect its inhabitant from the liquid it contained. Prescott's screams started to rise in pitch.

“Grab this!” Anubis said, poking his staff toward the desperately flailing man.

Prescott reached out towards the pole, managing to wrap his smoking hands around it. Anubis tried to tug Chadwick to safety, although he was unsure just how he could truly “save” the poor man, short of throwing him into a river.

Then, in an instant, something blue flickered and rippled across Prescott's body. Both men were visibly stunned by the speed at which the heat seemed to grow, and the fire was almost invisible until hair and clothing began to burn a bright yellow.

Anubis jumped to safety. He tried to think of a way to save the burning man, but the fire was ferociously hot, and there was, it seemed, no way to reach the flailing figure. He turned to grab the silk sheet that had fallen a few feet away, thinking that he might smother the flames. But by the time he picked the cloth up off the floor, the screaming had stopped.

Anubis forced himself to take a last look, and saw that a hot jet of burning vapor was now spraying out from the container on the back of the suit.

Something clicked in his mind, and Anubis dropped the sheet as he ran past the dying man, racing as fast as he could toward the exit at the far end of the room. He had almost reached the trapdoor when the Hydraulic-man exploded, showering the room with burning liquid, the caustic mixture igniting everything it touched.

As he dropped down through the floor, Anubis turned to look back at the hidden museum. The paintings had ignited quickly. Coupling nymphs, excited satyrs, and frolicking faeries all were turning black as the flames rose hungrily up across the canvases. It was something out of a Puritan's dream.

He watched for a few more seconds as the bookcases quickly transformed into burning pyres and the roaring flames shot up the walls. The heat was already intense, and he could feel it growing dangerously hot underneath his leather costume.

He dropped to the ground as quickly as he could and dashed out of the building. By the time he had run through the offices and back onto the street, the entire structure was ablaze. Someone nearby had already pulled a fire alarm, and he could hear the loud ringing coming from the nearby boxes. It would only be moments before curious onlookers and desperate neighbors would fill the streets. It was time to vanish—quickly.

Holding up his staff, he fired the grapple toward the sky. It landed on the edge of a nearby roof, and Anubis gave the wire a tug to steady it. Instead of the solid jerk he expected, he heard the sound of breaking metal, and the head of the staff tumbled back to the ground, the metal spine having snapped from where the acid had eaten into it.

He cursed under his mask as he reeled in the cable. There would be no easy path to the rooftops tonight.

He dashed into the shadows, pulling apart his staff as he ran. By the time he had finished putting it away, the roof of the building had collapsed, unleashing a pillar of flame into the sky. He hoped that the fire brigades would arrive before the neighboring buildings caught, although time was not on their side.

Seeing no other easy exit, he ran out of the alleyway, pushing past a small crowd of surprised onlookers, some of them wearing nothing more than their nightgowns and bath robes.

He was sure that by tomorrow morning the papers would be full of descriptions of a “man dressed in black, last seen fleeing the scene of the terrible crime.” Hopefully that would be the only details they would remember.