“Where should we look first?” Lilly asked as we went out into the halls again. Behind us the Pinkerton men filed out, nodding to us as we took the lead, though we weren’t really going anywhere.
Yet.
I thought for a moment about Lilly’s question. Where indeed? What would get us an advantage? Before we’d basically just stumbled into the mess. Now we had to look for it.
We had to find what others had gone to great effort to keep hidden, and quickly too.
“Let’s head to the kitchens.” I decided, turning to head that way, with everyone else falling in with me.
“Why there?” Maggie asked, curious. “Staff often knows lots of secrets, but I doubt they’re in on something like this. Job like this is too prestigious to risk losing, much less to go to prison or get a noose for some pack of lunatics.”
“The lack of people at the initial murder scene.” Wyatt explained, nodding to me as we walked. “Someone had to tell the staff to stay away from there, for whatever reason.”
“So, if they were told to stay away from there, they might’ve been told to stay away from other locations?” Lilly mused out loud, a sharp smile coming to her face.
“This is opening night in a new, very big place, that is filled to the gills.” I pointed out with a shrug, feeling a little like I was flailing, but praying it was the right move, and determined to move forward no matter what. “In practice, on such nights at such events, everywhere is busy. It’s all too new, and all has to be checked during the night, even storage rooms. So, the fact that places were empty and silent is something we can look into.”
“Sounds good.” Maggie chuckled. “Let’s go say hi to the cooks.”
On our way there, we picked up our lost member. Princess Ella, it turned out, was waiting for us in the adjoining hallway. She fell in with us as we left for the kitchen area, as though she had never left.
I glanced behind us as she slipped back in among us, and noticed the Pinkertons, who were following along at a distance, looking shocked. I smiled a little smugly at them and just shrugged. One of them actually laughed.
“Ah, the Lost Princess has been found!” Wyatt chuckled.
Ella glanced at him and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“The good Baron was wondering where you’d gotten off to.” Lilly explained, glancing at Ella with an amused look. “Did you not want to go and say hi to him?”
“God no!” Ella shuddered as she fell in with us. “I hate having to put up with him or his friends whenever I visit grandma in London!”
We all laughed as we once more reached the servants halls. I glanced at her and saw a slight tremble in her hands, and a tautness to her otherwise soft features. I also noticed she looked a good deal more cleaned up than when she had peeled off from us.
“Are you doing alright?” I asked her, wondering how she was handling everything, now that she’d had a few minutes to let everything sink in. She nodded and gave me a small smile.
“Thank you, but yes, I will be alright. It’s not the first time I’ve seen dead bodies up close.”
“But I would imagine it is the first tie you’ve actually had to kill someone?” Maggie asked quietly.
“Well, yes.” Ella admitted, taking a breath to focus herself.
“Don’t let it trouble you, princess.” Maggie shrugged nonchalantly as we came to the kitchen area.
“Shouldn’t I?” Ella asked in a small voice.
“No, you should not.” Maggie stated firmly as we came to a stop. Wyatt waved over a waiter as Maggie turned and gave Ella her full attention. I watched quietly, curious where the cat woman gangster was going with this.
“You saw them, what they did, what they tried to do, and what they are more than willing to do.” Maggie said firmly, though calmly and quietly, her eyes fixed on Ella’s. “They are now very dead, as dead as Caesar or Lincoln. Would you rather it was any of us lying dead on that floor? Or you, yourself?”
“No, I would not.” Ella answered back firmly, facing Maggie and meeting her stare unflinchingly.
“Then you have done what is just and right, both in the eyes of God and in the eyes of Man. You have done your duty, and done it well. When this is done, and we’re all still alive, go home, sleep well, and give them not a second thought.” Maggie told her, smiling at her with respect. “They deserve none. They made their choices, and the final debts of those actions are theirs, not yours.”
Ella closed her eyes and took a quiet breath, before slowly letting it out and opening her eyes to all of us once again. She stood straighter, her shoulders strong, and her hands had stopped shaking. Now she was still a small, beautiful woman, but with more strength, dignity and depth about her.
She wore it well.
“May I help you, sirs and madams?” An older server said as he came to stand next to us, pulling everyones attention back to him.
“We were recently at stage number two, by accident I assure you.” Wyatt chuckled good-naturedly and disarmingly. “We’d actually gotten a bit lost. However, while we were there, we couldn’t help but notice that the halls were empty of anyone we could’ve asked for directions from.”
“Oh, well that’s because the staff was advised to focus solely on the area’s related to the main concert hall,” the man explained with a shrug. “With such a crowd as this, we were told to simply ignore various other area’s, even if people happened through them.”
“What other area’s might those be?” Wyatt asked, his demeanor slowly shifting to that of a hunter on the hunt.
“Told by who?” I asked as well, since figuring out who was pulling the strings struck me as a good idea. And it was just as important moving forward, so we could stop not only this attack, but any future ones.
“An older, well dressed gentlemen who claimed to be a part of the Carnegie Steel Corporations Trust Board.” The server answered me, looking between all of us nervously. “He had the relevant paperwork to prove it as well, or so I heard from management. And apart from the area’s around the other two stages, we were told to ignore the underground level, which is mostly used for storage anyway. The Underfloor we all like to call it.”
“Thank you very much, you’ve been most helpful.” Ella said to him, smiling as she did so. He nodded, looking momentarily spellbound, before he glanced at her dress, and all the rest of us and the clothes we wore, and finally focused on all the blood. Blood that was clearly fresh, and not ours.
“Glad to be of help.” He hastily nodded before he turned and left, though fled might be a better term, given how fast he all but ran away from us.
“I think you frightened the poor man Ella.” Lilly laughed. “Must be the power of all that jewelry you’re wearing.
“Nah, it’s definitely the tiara in her hair.” Maggie giggled. “Definitely not all the fresh blood all over us, or the weapons on all of our hips.”
We all burst out laughing as we backed back out into the hallway proper.
“Well, now it seems we have a possible destination.” I said, sighing. “Of course these lunatics would congregate underground.”
“That means fighting down a set of stairs.” Wyatt groaned. “A couple well supplied, well armed men can hold a set of stairs for a century!”
“We’ll toss some some smoke or fire down and drive them out.” I replied, sharing his concern. “We’ve done it before. Hell, that jackass Wild Bill’s done it often enough.”
“You know I hear he’s still mad about having to share the whole ‘Wild’ nickname with you.” Wyatt chuckled as he waved down another waiter.
“Well tell him for me next time you see him that he can have the damn thing.” I muttered as the waiter approached.
“Oh no he can’t!” Lilly whispered behind me, giggling smugly. “I won’t let him!”
I just rolled my eyes in exasperation at that. Of course she wouldn’t allow that to happen. I thought, half amused, and half annoyed.
Which was a surprising improvement for me, since it used to be all annoyed, and not at all amused.
“How may I help you?” The waiter asked once he reached us. He was barely more than a boy, and was both excited and nervous.
“We have business to attend to down in the Underfloor. Where is the nearest entrance to it?” Wyatt asked, this time in a serious, no nonsense tone.
The boy paled and straightened under Wyatt’s hard gaze, and quickly gave us the directions. Lilly gave him a silver dollar as a tip, and he left with a big smile. I waved over the Pinkertons, and we quickly got them all caught up.
The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.
None of us liked the idea of charging down a set of stairs against prepared opposition.
“I can fire a few rounds of my coppersmith bullets down into the underfloor that can combine together. A sort of mixture of watery fog and electric shock.” Lilly offered, pulling out two differently colored icicle bullets. “That could break any nearby defenses, and let us charge down the stairs. But it will ruin any sort of surprise after that.”
“Surprise is less important than shutting them down.” I replied, feeling suddenly anxious as I heard the sounds of the concert resuming. “I don’t like the idea of these lunatics being underfoot, doing only God knows what.”
“Hit the stairs, break the defenses, see what we’ve got, and go from there with the Pinkertons backing us up?” Wyatt asked as we began walking down another servants hallway towards the entrance to the Underfloor.
“Pretty much.” I replied with a shrug as we came to the door, once more in another suspiciously silent hallway, with the Pinkertons behind us, their guns now out. I glanced at them and they nodded.
“Let’s get this show on the road.” I said, trying the door only to find it was already ajar. We all looked at one another at that. That was not a good sign.
Rather than push it open, I turned to Lilly and gestured for her. She nodded and set about reading her coppersmith pistol.
“Man, I have got to get me one of those!” Wyatt chuckled as he and I positioned ourselves on either side of the door.
“Me too.” I muttered as everyone else slowly got into position.
Princess Ella was still with us, and I had to wonder just how angry her actual bodyguards were going to be when this mess was over. I also wondered why she was coming along in the first place.
“Shouldn’t you have some bodyguards with you?” I asked her, wondering what she thought she was doing. “Or at the very least shouldn’t you be hanging back?”
“I am here, ready to defend all these other people here, and from what I’ve heard, we’ve no time to dawdle.” She replied to me curtly, all but shutting down the conversation. Maggie glanced over at her at that reply and started quietly chuckling, as if the whole thing was suddenly a big joke only she knew about.
Ella’s face, though stubbornly set in determination which mixed surprisingly well with her beauty, started to slowly turn red for some reason. But she still looked no less determined, and stubborn about it.
Fine, hope she knows what she’s getting herself into. I though with a forced shrug. I idly noticed everyone else glancing at her, but didn’t seem very interested in stopping her.
I sighed and rolled my eyes. When did all of this become normal to me? I wondered, at a loss as to how my life had spiraled so wildly out of control. When had the notion of a princess armed only with a sword insisting on following me into battle against lunatic, robe wearing cultists ever become a thing?
“Fine. However, you will stay behind until both our group and the Pinkertons, you know, the folks with guns, have gone in first.” My own face brooked no argument. She looked at me, sighed, and nodded.
Behind her, the Pinkertons who were stacking up behind one another also nodded. A few even grinned smugly at me. They were getting a kick out of the drama it seemed, the smug gits.
I really hoped she survived what was about to happen. Then again, I hoped that for everyone else as well. Especially me!
“Ready to go.” Lilly said, her weapon now held at the ready.
We all nodded, growing serious as I quietly took a breath before letting it out.
“And here, we, go.” I said, reaching over from cover with just my hand and pushing the door open fast.
Several shots immediately rang out as we all leaned to the sides, waiting.
“Well, seems they know to expect company.” I shouted. “So much for surprise!”
After a few moments, the barrage let up, and Wyatt and I whirled around, firing like mad as Lilly came up behind us, readied her pistol, and pulled the trigger.
Twice.
The first shot arced down into the ground near the base of the stairs. There was a strange looking mini-explosion, but instead of a blast, a thick, massive cloud began filling the area down there. It was like watching a miniature fog bank roll in, indoors.
I heard some people yelling, but I couldn’t tell if it was up here with us or down there with them.
Then the second shot landed.
Like the first, it arced down into the ground now obscured by the wet looking fog, and like before there was a flash of light, like a tiny explosion. That’s when the screaming really started, and I knew it was from them, downstairs. The second shot turned the cloud of fog into a lightening storm!
The whole area became lit up with arcing bolts of lightening, and I saw the shadows of people flash in and out of focus as they writhed in pain, before they fell over.
As quickly as it had happened, it was over, and the majority of the fog had dissipated, and the lightening had stopped. Only the echoes of their screams, our gun shots, and smell of burned flesh hung in the air. For a moment, there was a stunned silence.
“Move in!” I snapped, heading down the stairs, shaking off the shock of the coppersmith attack. Right behind me Wyatt was following, both of us with our guns up and ready.
We all but ran down the stairs, with everyone else coming in behind us. Wyatt and I whirled around the sides of the stairs, and I actually almost tripped over the multiple bodies on the ground. It seemed there were several people prepared for us down here.
Too bad for them.
Turning quickly to check the rest of the room, I saw there were even a couple of tables that had been tipped over to be used as barricades facing the stairs we had just come down on. Yet they were silent, and I noticed several more bodies laying on the ground behind them. From the looks of it, there’d been two per table.
If they’d been conscious, they’d have been able to fill me and Wyatt full of holes as soon as we’d reached the bottom of the stairs.
There was lack of surprise, there was prepared, and then there was being forewarned.
Looking at these prepared defenses, I felt a snarl come across my face. Looks like someone warned them ahead of time. I glared before refocusing on the large, well lit room around us. Something to worry about later. I decided as the rest of our large group moved over from the stairs.
The room itself was large, long, curved, fairly well lit thanks to the electric lights, and had several doors that branched off in multiple directions.
“Carnegie doesn’t do anything small, does he?” Wyatt asked, looking around the large, empty room.
“Not that I’ve noticed.” I replied, chuckling as all regrouped and began walking down the long, curved room. “Nice shots by the way Miss L.”
She smiled a large smile before mock glaring at me. “Lilly. Call me Lilly from now on. Regularly.”
I glanced at her, bemused, before I looked back to the room with a shrug and an exaggerated sigh. “Fine.”
Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stick her tongue out at me, while both Maggie me Ella giggled quietly, before becoming serious again.
Women. I thought darkly. They take the most bizarre things seriously, but refuse to take other things seriously unless it’s entirely on their terms!
However, the jovial mood fell away as a table came into sight, with several men in robes standing around it, chanting in some bizarre language. On the table was a strange looking coppersmith device, and it was glowing.
One of the robe wearing cultists glanced over at us and stared in shock for a moment. He stopped chanting as he did so, which caught the notice of the others, who all looked over at us. The chanting stopped, but the strange crackling sound of the large device on the center of the table didn’t, nor did its eerie green glow.
“Stop them! The Great One’s work must be completed!” One of them shouted, whom I noticed was furthest away from us and was dressed in much more elaborate robes. The others, some of whom looked like strange hybrids of people and various amphibians, lurched into action.
“Take ‘em down!” I shouted, bringing my gun up and opening fire.
Next to me, Maggie, Wyatt, the Pinkertons, and even Lilly with her coppersmith pistol all too took aim and cut down the robed cultists. The battle was short, one sided, and didn’t even last thirty seconds.
The cultists had reached for strange looking knives or other bizarre looking weapons that only vaguely looked like pistols. However, none had had time to draw and line up a shot before all of us had cut them down.
“Was that it?” Princess Ella asked from behind us, sounding uncertain.
“Hopefully.” I muttered, walking forward carefully. We all quickly moved forward and looked around, with Lilly and the girls going to the device that had been set up in the center of the table.
I looked at it, and just couldn’t help but stare. It was two different devices worked together, with a base plate that had several dials, switches, buttons, and a few pressure gauges on it, like a most bizarre typewriter. But instead of a page and letters at the top, there was a curling brass holder, with a large glass and brass capsule at a slanted angle sitting within it. The thing looked as big as an adults head, and within it was some kind of glowing, bubbling green concoction that was generating the strange light.
As I watched, a strange shimmer began to appear above it, like the way air looked when waves of heat poured through a concentrated spot.
“Uh, what the hell is that?” I asked, pointing.
“Hey, this fella’s still alive.” Wyatt called out at the same time, standing over the cultist in elaborate robes. He’d pulled back the hood of the robe to reveal an older looking man, one with no obvious mutations.
Honestly, if he hadn’t been here, I’d have never even noticed him in a crowd or in a room.
“It’s a success!” He shouted, elated as he looked at the shimmer above the device, even as he bled from multiple bullet wounds. “We’ve done it!”
“Ladies, turn that thing off!” I snapped, walking over to the old cultist. “And what have you done?” I asked, coming to stand over him across from Wyatt.
“We’ve opened the door and rung the bell!” The old man crowed. “Now our Great Old One shall stretch forth his hand and touch this land from his great resting place! All shall see his touch and know the true form he desires!”
Wyatt and I stared at him before we glanced at one another. I was at a bit of a loss, and I could tell he was too.
“Oh really?” Maggie called over, chuckling smugly. “So, you won’t mind if I do this, will you?”
And then she casually reached behind the base typewriter looking part, and flipped a finger on something. For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, but then the arcing, crackling sound of the device began to die down, the light in the capsule began to dim, and the device seemed to slowly, almost grudgingly power down. A moment later, it was off, and I was able to look at it without any green glowing light getting in the way.
“No!” The old man shouted, glaring at the grinning Maggie. “You damn halfbreed! What did you do?”
“I flipped the emergency power switch.” Maggie replied, shrugging in mock nonchalance. “I grew up around coppersmiths. My best friend is one. And she showed me how they always build in an emergency cutoff switch on their devices somewhere, just in case.”
“It matters not you cursed feline wench!” The old man rallied, glaring at her with an impressive amount of vehemence. The effect was ruined when he let out a wet cough, and between that, the wounds, and the blood loss, I knew he was not long for this world.
“Oh doesn’t it?” Lilly asked suspiciously, coming to stand next me, glaring down at the dying cultist. “Your little device has been shut down, your men are dead, and you soon will be too. Whatever your scheme was, it’s over.”
“Is it now?” He laughed back as he slowly sank to the ground. “Is it truly? So, you got all the other relay points, right?”
I felt cold ice spread down my veins at that. Relay points? I thought, wondering what map-reading had to do with this.
“No?” The dying old man chuckled, looking at us from the floor as we gathered around him. “I thought not! It’ll take longer now that you have shut this one down, but the Great Work shall be done! And done tonight! It will be a show like no other!”
He died chocking on his laughter at that final statement, leaving all the rest of us stunned.
“Well, shit.” Wyatt muttered darkly, pretty much summing up all of our thoughts. “Now what?”
“Seems our hunt has only just started.” I replied decisively. “Reload, take anything of value, look for any clues we can find, and then we’re heading out. It seems there’s lots of these lunatics here, but if that old lunatics remarks were anything to go by, we bought ourselves some more time.”
“So, track ‘em, fight ‘em, shut ‘em down one at a time?” Wyatt asked, grinning. “Until we find the main nest and crush ‘em?”
“That’s exactly it.” I replied with a nod and fierce grin of my own. “Time to get to work.”
It seemed our hunt was only just starting, and now it was a race against time.
Here we go indeed! I thought as we all began searching the room, reloading our guns or checking the bodies for clues.
The race was on!