Hearts of Smoke and Steam (30 page)

Reading those papers would also be a number of young gentlemen who would probably breathe a sigh of relief when they realized that, while the fire had destroyed their precious artifacts, it also meant that no evidence of their perversions would have survived the blaze.

Anubis sprinted for a few blocks until he was sure that there were no longer any prying eyes. Ducking into an alleyway, he squatted down in the darkness and pulled off his mask, inhaling the cool air and wiping the sweat off his face.

He closed his eyes and rocked back against the wall, gulping in the cool air as he tried to banish the vision of the desperate, burning man that he had just left to die.

S
neaking up behind the knife-wielding thug, Jack raised his birch cane up high, and then smashed it hard across the back of his opponent's right leg. The boy yelped, stumbled down to his knees, and yelped again. Jack attacked again, giving the thug another blow across his back that sent him face down onto the cobblestones. “Now then,” he said loudly, “I'm hoping that you boys will have the good sense to take advantage of the kind offer we made you, and give us back our home.”

The gang that had taken over the Children's courtyard during their absence called themselves the Blockheads, and they wore wooden top hats to prove it. Their headgear was, Jack thought, impressively and expertly made—constructed from thin sheets of wood that had been meticulously steamed and bent into the right shape. No easy task…

Jack hadn't really been surprised to find that there were new residents when they had finally come back to reclaim their abandoned hideaway. The location was hidden, but was also too perfect to go unoccupied for long.

But this gang had been better organized than he had expected for such a young crew, and getting them to leave was turning out to be a chore. Still, they were proving no match for Jack Knife and his boys.

The boy on the ground looked up and snarled at him. “This is our turf, you British bastard!”

“It was ours first!” he said angrily. “And I'm not British!” He hit the downed thug again, this time striking him directly on the top of his wooden hat. The thin wood splintered under the impact of Jack's cane, and when he struck the boy again, the cane left a bloody gash on the top of his head. “Go!” he shouted, and raised his birch stick back up into the air. This time the Blockhead leader scrambled to his feet and ran.

The most frustrating thing was discovering that they had never needed to leave at all. The Children quickly vacated the space after the incident with the Sleuth, fully expecting the Paragons to come roaring in, looking for revenge. But the invasion had never happened, and a few days later, the old man had burned to death when the Darby mansion had gone up in flames.

Soon after that, Jack received a cryptic message from Lord Eschaton— but truth be told, he found all the gray man's messages fairly hard to decipher. Between the usual ranting and other gibberish, the note said that the Paragons were no longer a concern, and that Jack and the boys could safely take back their ground.

Unfortunately, the space had since been occupied by the Blockheads. With the Ruffian still recovering from his failure to stop a group of girls— something Jack still didn't quite believe—he had needed time to gather enough of his boys to take the courtyard back.

As he watched their leader run, Jack gripped the wood of his cane so tightly that his knuckles turned white. Whacking at people with a club was hardly his style, and his fingers were itching to grab at the knives in his jacket and put the cowardly bastard out of his misery. It wasn't until the thug ran into the maze that the urge passed.

Looking around him, Jack felt a sense of fatherly satisfaction—the rest of his boys were doing an equally good job of teaching the rest of the young gangsters not to mess with the Children of Eschaton.

“All right, Blockheads!” he yelled, loudly enough that he was sure everyone could hear. “If you've been too busy to notice, I just whipped the arse of your leader and sent him running away with his tail between his legs.” He unhooked a button of his jacket and let it fall open, revealing the rows of gleaming steel blades secured into the lining underneath.

Jack smiled. He had their attention now! He dropped his cane to the ground and pulled free a handful of his blades. In rapid succession, he threw five of them, one after another.

The first four each landed in a different wooden hat, making loud “thunks” as they did so. It was a sound that Jack could only imagine would be well amplified inside their heads.

The fifth blade whizzed past the face of its target as he twisted out of the way, slashing through his cheek as it went. The man was large—a bearded fellow with a hairy chest so big that it was practically bursting out from underneath his starched white shirt and red velvet jacket. Blood welled out of the wound, pouring down his face, but to his credit, the man didn't make a sound.

Jack reached into his coat to grab a second handful of knives. “Now, if the rest of you are smart enough to follow your boss's example, I may let you live. But first I want to see you throw those ridiculous hats to the ground.”

The gang members paused. Jack knew it would be shameful for them to give up the one thing that gave their sad lives meaning in this world. Clearly they needed further encouragement. “I won't ask again, and next time it won't be the wood that I'm aiming for.”

The large man with the bleeding face bowed his head as he grabbed the rim of his wooden bowler. He lifted the hat off his head and stared at it for a moment. “You like to play with knives,” he said in a soft tone. “So do I.” He flicked his wrist with a practiced motion, sending the hat spinning through the air.

As the hat twirled, Jack saw the glint of a metallic edge hidden in the brim, and he understood the burly Blockhead's cryptic comment. Jack tried to duck, but even as he started to drop, it was clear that he would not be able to move out of the way in time. Watching death hurtling toward him, Jack felt something close to a sense of peace that he would die from a blade.

His calmness was interrupted by a black blur inches in front of his face. The object struck the wooden chapeau from the side, knocking it out of the way at the last instant.

Jack recognized the staff as it clattered to the ground nearby. It belonged to Anubis, and while he was glad to have his head remain in one piece, he wasn't pleased by the thought that he might owe the black-clad man any kind of debt.

But he'd deal with his rescuer in a moment. His first order of business was to make sure that the rest of the Blockheads understood the mistake their largest member had just made.

He flung two knives at the bearded man. Unable to dodge a second time, Jack's target took the blades deep in his burly thighs, and he dropped to the ground with a grunt. The hate in his eyes seemed undiminished by the pain.

“Grab him!” Jack shouted, and two of his men took the big man's arms.

Jack reached the hobbled Blockhead with only a few long strides. He stared into the angry slits of the Blockhead's eyes and smiled. “I could have killed you just now,” he told him.

“You should have,” the burly man replied with a deep growl.

Jack had to admit, despite having a similar physique to the Ruffian, there was something about the
depth
of the man's intensity that set him apart—it spoke to a skill he could use. “Maybe I don't want you dead…yet.”

“S'not how I feel about you,” the Blockhead said, narrowing his glare.

“That's obvious.” Jack stared back at him quietly for a second, and then looked over to his men. “Tie him up and throw him into one of the huts. Let's give him the big fellow a chance to think about his sins before we punish him.”

The man said nothing as the Children dragged him away.

Lifting his arms, Jack turned to the remaining Blockheads and addressed them directly. “Now, if the rest of you can behave yourselves, I'm looking for a few new Children, so come back in a couple of days—empty-handed—and we'll talk.”

Truth be told, he'd been impressed with the raw abilities of the Blockheads, and after the difficulty he had finding the group he'd put together today, it couldn't hurt to pump up his own ranks. If his instincts were right, and they often were, things were about to get a lot more dangerous for him and the boys, and there wasn't just strength in numbers, there was security as well.

As the last of the opposing gang members walked out of the courtyard, Jack looked around at his remaining men and nodded. “A good day's work, boys! The Children of Eschaton are back in charge!”

A tired cheer rose up from his crew. Looking around, he realized that the Blockheads hadn't done much to improve the place. But at least they hadn't done too much to damage it, either. Most of the small shacks were still in place, and the brazier was burning merrily. “Now, let's get this shit-house back in shape.”

It wasn't until he tried to sit down that he realized what was missing. “Where in the hell is my barrel?”

“It'th over here,” shouted out a young lad through his missing teeth. Jack looked up to see him pointing to the edge of a trash pile where the barrel had been unceremoniously dumped.

At least they hadn't burned it. “Well then, Donny,” he said, with a note of displeasure in his voice, “put it back where it belongs.”

Cutter jumped in and began to clear away the garbage. The man was eager to help, as always. Cutter did everything with gusto, although his almost dwarfish stature made him less useful for tasks that demanded skill and grace. Cutter's skills lay in his almost psychopathic love of knives, although his abilities were quite unlike Jack's. His passion was wielding a blade, not throwing it. And unlike Jack's throwing knives, he liked his long and sharp.

Jack had first met the man when he had tried to relieve Jack of his purse. But the instant Cutter saw Jack's skills with a knife, he had dropped his own blade and offered his services instead. He'd proved to be a valuable soldier, if not always so good at restraining himself…

Finishing his survey, Jack turned his attention to Anubis. “Hello jackal-man,” he said, finally acknowledging the presence of his black-clad rescuer. “How are you today?”

“Well enough.”

“Nice of you to finally show up,” he said.

“I must have dropped my staff saving your neck.”

“Donny, get the man's staff for him.”

“We haven't seen you around here much lately,” Jack said, staring directly into the jackal's mask.

“I haven't been around.”

“So, how goes the mission?”

Anubis shifted with obvious discomfort. “The Hydraulic-man is dead.”

“Really?” he said, drawing out the word. “I thought you were going to let him live.”

“I didn't kill him.”

“'Didn't kill him' as in ‘I didn't kill him,' or ‘didn't kill him' as in ‘all I did was stick out my foot and the horses did the rest'?”

Donny reappeared with the staff, and handed it back to him. Jack noticed that the weapon looked a bit damaged since the last time he had seen it. “Or maybe as in ‘I threw my staff at him.'”

Anubis stared at him, unmoving and quiet. “Something like that.”

“So you did have something to do with it.”

“He burned to death.”

“And the suit?”

“Burned with him.”

“You were supposed to bring it back to me.”

“The whole building burned down.”

Jack shook his head. There was no doubt Anubis was talented, but there was a moral streak in the man a mile wide that made him close to useless. It also put him at odds with the rest of the Children as often as not, but Lord Eschaton continued to have faith in the jackal long after it had become obvious to everyone else that he was as likely to undermine their plans as he was to support them. “And I don't suppose you have any proof of that? I mean, considering how resistant you were to actually take this mission, and how it would suit your bleeding heart to let your quarry escape, and then say he died in a fire, with no trace left of the man or his suit.”

Anubis nodded and reached into his armored vest. Jack tried not to visibly stiffen as he did so. It always paid to be on his guard, but he didn't want to appear as if he were afraid of the jackal, even if he was. But if Anubis had been planning to attack him directly, he would have made his play long ago.

When he pulled out his arm, it held one of the silver snake heads that had been part of the Hydraulic-man's suit. “Here's my proof.”

Jack took it from his hands and gave it a closer look. The object was melted and burned from a heat that had been intense enough to fuse bits of ash and coal directly into the metal. “And what if you faked this, with Prescott's help?”

“Then I did a very good job.”

Jack squeezed his hand around the metal chunk and pondered his options. “You're more trouble than you're worth.” It was hard dealing with men of conscience when you didn't have much of one yourself. “I don't know why Eschaton doesn't let me kill you.”

Anubis stepped forward. “I can think of two reasons.”

Donny and Cutter had finished rolling his barrel back into place, and Jack was tempted to lean against it as they talked, but there was a long, dark stain on the side, along with an odd smell that made him think the wood would need a good scrubbing before he touched it again. “All right,” Jack said, clapping his hands together, and speaking loudly enough to let his voice reverberate around the square. “I want everything back the way it was by tomorrow—just in case any of those idiots show up again.” He actually hoped that some of them
would
show up. By then they'd either have the burly one with the red beard eating out of their hand or strung up like a Christmas turkey. Either way, the big fellow would stand as a warning to the rest of them…