City of Light & Steam Read online

  He had inventions to create.

  “Stella,” his tone was gentler as he rubbed his hands over her arms. He was her big brother, and at times, he needed to remember that. “I assure you, I will be safe. Our family has suffered a great loss, but I will not be adding my name to the list until I am old and gray.”

  Her lips twitched into a semblance of a smile, just as a tear raced down her cheek.

  “Stella.”

  “Oh, button it!” She swiped at the tear quickly and sniffled. “I’m allowed to worry. I don’t want to think what would happen if you were gone the way Christopher was.” She stepped closer and wrapped her arms around his body. “Christopher led the guild, but we all know it’s you who they look up too. If you were gone, things would be in disarray.”

  Dropping a kiss to the golden hair on the top of her head, he gently squeezed her back before stepping from the embrace. “I have no intention of being a victim and have more than enough work that can be done to keep me busy until the dawning comes. I promise, aside from food or a visit to the loo, I will not leave this chamber.”

  “You swear it?”

  Grinning, he shook her outstretched hand. “I swear it. Now, pray tell, why are you here so long after dark?”

  The look on his sister’s face would match that of a cat who had just feasted on a bird. Any semblance of upset seemingly vanished as her lips curled into a smile. “I have found an acolyte who is rather fond of experimenting outside the labs.”

  Chuckling, Ben shook his head and turned away from his sister. She might never have a family, but it was unlikely she would ever actually be an old maid.

  “Good night, Stella. Enjoy yourself.”

  “Stay safe, Benjamin. I’ll meet you here shortly after dawn, and we can travel together.”

  Shaking his head, he watched after her briefly as she left. He couldn’t help but love his sister. Stella switched from mother hen to frolicking fawn in the time it took a person to blink. Dropping back onto the leather stool, he grabbed his goggles. “Now, let’s get back to it. We have a light bulb to make.”

  Chapter Two

  Raven lifted the hood on her cloak, doing her best to conceal her appearance as she stepped into the steammobile. Not a single black curl peeked out from under the hood, and she’d donned peasants clothing to blend in further. As leader of one of the Great Guilds, she was often a target for violence and admiration, even with the sun down, and she didn’t have the time for distraction.

  “Are you certain this must be done?” Joseph fixed his gray eyes on hers. “I see no point in wasting a speech about your safety if your mind is made up.”

  She smiled as she lifted the protective eyewear off the seat bench. Walking to the vehicle in a garage without gear was not an issue, but she would never do it should the mobile be parked on the street. “This is why you are my head of security. You are cunning, lethal, and know when not to question me.” Slipping the goggles on, she blinked, giving her eyes time to adjust to the rose-tinted hue.

  “Would it be requesting too much to inquire why we are going this night?” Joseph slipped his eyewear on, securing the leather strap over his graying head of hair. “I know I am aging, but I had hoped to spend a few more years on this earth.”

  Chuckling, Raven pushed the small button next to her left hand, sending a ping through the carriage of the vehicle. In actuality, the ping was merely the sound made when all the gears aligned correctly just before the boom of steam shot out the back, and the car would move. Though she was not the coachman, she could control the transport if needed.

  Boom. A steam burst rocked the carriage slightly and then the trasnport jerked forward.

  “If I am trying to make a friend of my enemy, showing them the dire need of the situation would be the quickest way to do it. The gamma engine is our fastest prototype, the side walls of our carriages are made of solid steel, and it’s early still. As long as we do not linger, remove our masks, or take the lenses off our eyes and expose them to the steam there’s no reason the travel portion of this won’t go exactly as planned.”

  Joseph grumbled. “At least do me the favor of sitting back from the window. I see no reason for you to lure anyone to the vessel to get to you.”

  “Steward?” She called toward the front end of the carriage, a separate compartment where three guards sat. “Is he this obnoxious with orders to his men as well?”

  A large smile shone through the open hole for communication. “Absolutely, Lady Raven.”

  Joseph cleared his throat, and Steward coughed.

  “Though he’s the only man to work under, better even than the commander of the guard at the palace. I practically begged to work with this detail.”

  “That’s quite enough. You’re still the youngest in our midst, let’s cut the chatter and say our prayers for the ten and thirty-minute journey to be as dull as it is dark outside.”

  No one responded, and though she had wanted to discuss strategy with Joseph, she understood his concern. It had been light enough earlier that she had been able to see the ground from her high chamber. Now, she could scarcely see it out the window – though she chose to ignore the ridiculous order not to look out.

  The city had once been beautiful in the eve. She had been very young but was still able to recall the way electricity had lit the world. The streets had been not only bright, but busy and crowded. Neon signs donned above business doors, and steammobiles once drove through the streets where the aristocracy called home. Every so often, the wail of a steam train would pierce the air as well. People walked in the streets far later than she had been able to stay awake as a babe, but she’d always heard them just outside her window. Sometimes, the sounds proved little more than the hushed tones of a couple returning from a night of theater. Other times, drunks wandered where they did not belong and howled loud, until a copper came and dragged them off. Still, the world and London had been filled with life.

  Pressing her face against the glass, ignoring the way the goggles crushed into her cheekbones, Raven sighed. Her breath fogged the window, obscuring her vision as much as the lenses over her eyes did. No matter how closely she aligned herself with the panel, she would never see what she once saw in the streets.

  A shroud of fog clung just above the surface of the streets, mostly from the vehicle she rode in, but likely a small amount from the few others that raced about in the late hour trying to return home or protect the city. She’d never seen a palace guard riding on a motorbike, but she knew they patrolled. She also knew the danger they faced, having little more than guns that only stunned vampires to protect against the threat. The infection that turned their appetites to blood also gave them an unnatural amount of dead cells – meaning bullets did little good unless they were straight between the creature’s eyes.

  That is precisely why you are risking your life, and your guards, at this hour. Once you make your case to the Electric Guild, there is no way Christopher Abbott will dare deny the need for a treaty.

  Allowing her eyes to close for less than a moment, Raven took in a deep breath, blowing it out against the window. Everything was so very different and so very dangerous. Goggles had to be worn when out in the street, whether in a vehicle or on foot, to protect from the heat burn the steam engines put out. If a person walked, they had to wear a mask to ensure they did not ingest the airborne substance which created the illness, and the alchemists and physicians were no closer to learning what caused the danger to help create a cure. Windows were never opened, for fear of the chemical coming in. All homes had dual entrances. A person could only ever enter after a period of a minute, allowing whatever lived in the air to die out. Every entrance from the palace to the local pub had airtight doors. The only reason she was able to be free of her mask for the moment was that this particular steammobile doors and windows had never been opened anywhere but inside an underground sealed tunnel attached to her guild.

  Something that would change this night and make it as dangerous to
be in as any other transport. The world was not what it once was.

  It’s not a place worth living in.

  The bitter thought crept into her mind for at least the tenth time in a fortnight. Once upon a time, she’d wanted to be wed to a handsome man and bear him at least three young. Now, she was uncertain if there was time for love in such a dangerous world. There were rumors that the plague had not reached the coldest parts of the earth, but she was not interested in living amongst the wilderness. Raven enjoyed the things she had access too. Sher merely wished people could walk the streets whenever they wished and without so many devices to keep them alive while doing so.

  Out in the distance, between a stack of crates and a building, movement whizzed by. Not even animals dared to be out in the night, not any longer. The illness did not affect any but humans, but the sick did not care what blood allowed them to live just a little longer. Animals learned quickly.

  “Joseph.” The edge in her voice prevented her from needing to go on. The hair on her arms stood on end, and nausea rolled through her like a wave. She’d never encountered a vampire before, and she wasn’t ready to presently.

  “Guards, weapons out. Masks in place. Something has been spotted in the night.”

  As Raven wrapped her left hand around the pistol in her utility belt, the carriage was rammed, knocking it sideways, and over. The engine chugged, but thankfully, the connection was not lost, and the steam continued to power them.

  “Raven, as we’ve discussed, you get down and stay down. I don’t care what you see!” Joseph barked the command just as a strike occurred to the front carriage. Darkness rushed at them as the front half was slammed again and disconnected from where she and Joseph rode. She inhaled on instinct, trained at a young age.

  The section she sat in shook, and Raven dropped herself to the carriage floor as quickly as she could, scarcely safe from Joseph’s boots. A hiss sliced through the night, too loud for a human. Her hands groped for her mask, latching the safety in place as best as she could given the circumstances she was in. The small communication hole seeped the deadly virus in every second that ticked by.

  Three screams filled with terror echoed through the night before the sounds of gunfire.

  “Gunner!” Steward screamed, followed by three quick shots.

  “Stay down,” Joseph repeated himself, his body filling the space and blocking her from the communication space that would likely be where the vampires attacked.

  Another cry sounded in the empty street, human again.

  Her guards were losing and there had to be more vampires out in the darkness than she realized. Nigel’s fear of her brashness had been well founded.

  Her body shook with terror, her blood feeling as if it ran cold. Raven had no intention of letting these men die for her. She would never live with herself if there had been something she could have done to help.

  “Sorry, Joseph.” Jumping upright, she aimed her weapon at the window, scarcely firing off a round into the rushing beasts head. No blood came as the man fell back, an indication that he hadn’t fed in days.

  The cabin rocked as one launched itself at them, quickly falling away as Joseph emptied his gun into its chest – if she’d counted the shots correctly.

  “Remind me to thank your father when I see him in Heaven for teaching you to shoot.” Joseph dropped back into the seat, still purposefully blocking her. “Fucking hell.” He sucked in a breath through his nose. “They’re gone. The vampires and our men. Please don’t request to look.”

  Tears streamed down her face, a mix of fear and sadness leaving her soul for the death she’d caused. She’d never dreamed they’d be attacked in a steammobile. The vampires were fast, but she had no idea they would have kept up enough to attack as the driver slowed to take a turn.

  “I caused this.” Pain pricked at her eyes, and she realized she’d torn the goggles from her eyes at some point during the struggle.

  “You did. You couldn’t have foreseen the abilities the demons manifested, but aye, ‘twas you who insisted we come.”

  Joseph hadn’t said the words to be a bastard, he’d always been frank with her.

  “I’m so sorry.” Her trembling lip made the words near impossible to squeak out.

  “They’ll be time for that later. Perhaps, if we are lucky, no more will come, and the ones who do will take heed of the dead and leave once they drain my guards.” Unmistakable sorrow swam in the words.

  There was now a weak point in their vehicle and a missing engine. They were vulnerable, and there were still hours until the sun began to rise.

  There was no time for fear or anger, yet Raven knew she experienced both. She wanted to leap out and slash at the vampires, destroy their bodies. It would do no good and being out of what reminded of the vehicle could get them both killed.

  There was no warning, merely a flash of a sickly gray hand. Nails sharp as daggers punctured into Joseph’s neck. His blood sprayed, hot and bitter, across Raven’s face –across the mouth of her mask as she screamed.

  She’d dropped her gun and groped around the mobile floor hoping to place her fingers on it. Her index finger wrapped around it just as Joseph stopped struggling.

  “Run!” The command was gargled because of the blood in his mouth.

  She listened.

  Kicking against the door, Raven burst free of the transport as Joseph cried out in agony. Her hands shook as she raced behind the female vampire who attacked Raven’s fiercest protector. The trigger squeezed effortlessly, dropping the bitch to the fog covered London street.

  “Joseph!” her throat burned as she screamed, and she realized her eyes stung like hell as well. “Joseph.” She looked through the opened door of the turned over vehicle and uttered a soundless scream.

  Even had she produced sound, none were around to hear it. Joseph’s throat was a gnarled mess, blood black as the night puddled around him as his once stern gaze stared lifelessly at the roof.

  “No,” her whisper was deafening in the silence.

  Death was all around her. Human and monster lay in bloody heaps whether she looked on the street or in the steammobile. She’d never seen death up close, and her eyes burned more from tears than the steam leaking all around without her goggles on.

  “Looks like you put up a fight. Surprised to see a member of the fairer sex has destroyed my entire sect.” A voice slurred as a tall, pale man stepped out of the shadows.

  There was no hesitation. Raven fired, a glancing shot that danced uselessly off the man’s arm.

  “Mistake!” His eyes flashed in the dull light from the still lit bulb in her destroyed mobile.

  Pain, unlike anything she’d ever experienced, slashed through Raven’s body as the vicious creature latched himself to her neck. Her blood mixed with the stains from Joseph’s, and she flailed, trying to smack the vampire with the butt of her gun to gain some ground to fire again – she wouldn’t miss at such proximity.

  Her nails clawed at the man, the sensation of peeling skin lodging under nails brought bile up her throat. Yet, he did not let go. Slowly, the blood draining from her body took the fight from her. It went on forever. The spill of blood down her neck grew thinner as he stole from her, drinking what he needed to live a little longer with fresh blood in his body.

  This is it.

  I failed my guild.

  I failed my city.

  I’m so sorry.

  She wasn’t certain who the apology was for. The only thing Raven knew with clarity was how cold her limbs felt against what was supposed to be a creature without warmth in its body. It felt as if someone had strapped a sack of weights to her body. When her head dropped against her murderer's body, she knew it was over, that there were mere seconds before she saw the last of the world.

  “Delicious,” the man purred as he lifted his mouth away. “I like to do more than just feed.” A single nail slit her breeches, and dragged over her thigh. Raven doubted any blood remained to spill as the world spun.
<
br />   The gentle caress of a breeze over her face spurred her to life. Though she could hardly focus, she managed to lift her left hand, the gun still somehow clutched in her grasp. There was no melodramatic moment, no taunting him as he had done to her.

  She just pulled the trigger.

  Blood covered her – her blood as that was the only blood the man had in him.

  Her head smacked into a stone as she fell. The steam burned her skin, and the light from her mobile was a cruel joke. She’d fought, but she wouldn’t survive.

  There were too many hours left in the night, and the light would ensure more vampires came.

  You tried.

  There was nothing left to give. Raven would wait, and she would cry for those she led to their deaths as she awaited hers.

  I’m so–

  Her eyes closed, the loss of blood lulling her to a peaceful end.

  ***

  Silas allowed his eyes to rake over his nested home. The sun would rise in a matter of minutes, and he must count his brethren. His eyes moved slowly over each and every body. They had feasted this eve. A group of drunkards had not made it to the safety of their homes. It hadn’t been the most pleasant experience, but it had been blood that would keep them as alive as they could be considered.

  Finishing his count, Silas smiled that his entire family made it home that night. Many of his kin had been with him since the great illness swept the world. Others were far newer to their way of life.

  “Vampires,” he spat, referring to the name the uninfected had given his kind as if they were a different species.

  They were still unsure as to what happened, merely that an air traveling toxin created their sickness. It started simple enough, scarcely feeling more than a sniffle. Then it grew. Silas would never forget the burning sizzle of blood as it necrotized in his body. He was a victim of the first wave, one of the original to fall sick.

  Many had died, and he’d watched. In the beginning, the sick submitted to physicians and even alchemists, praying for a cure. Their lives lasted mere hours once all the blood died and thickened in their veins. It was only thanks to one man, Bernard Du Monte, a Frenchman, that they learned how to live. The man had shown them that all it took was an occasional dosage of healthy blood to revive the dead blood in their body for a time. Silas did not know or care how the man had known. It had only mattered that Du Monte had figured it out.