CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
We approached the tower in a loose skirmish line, sweeping down the littered avenue of the boardwalk four across and two deep. Gregory and I took center, flanked on the left by Addie and the right by Nik Tesla, his gauntlets crackling up a storm. I would have preferred some distance from the inventor, given my armor and the casual way he was throwing out static. Chesa, Tembo, and Saint Matthew followed behind. Bethany had disappeared into the shadows as soon as we started moving, though there was an occasional flicker of steel and silk out of the corner of my eye. There was a groundswell of Unreal power seeping into the world around us, or maybe our amulets were finally finding their pace, because I could feel the magic coursing through my system. With the main lights of the amusement park extinguished, and the low clouds of the overhanging storm smothering the sky, we advanced in near absolute darkness. Only the Electr-O-Tower provided any illumination, and the ghastly green glow drifting from its flanks didn’t do much to light the way.
Now that we were closer, I could see that the Tour d’Elysee was a much more complicated structure than I first imagined. From a distance it looked like a cross between the Eiffel Tower and a Van de Graaff generator. As we approached, I gazed up at a madman’s collection of high gothic archways, gargoyles, and arcane symbols worked into the twisting latticework of the main tower. Bundles of thick cable and brass tubing burrowed through the tower like vines dangling from a dying tree. It was as if the steel tower had grown up through the middle of a medieval cathedral, tearing the building apart as it rose into the sky. The main entrance gaped open. If there were once doors, they had been removed long ago. About halfway up the length of the tower, the three arms of the generator tore through the air. The strings of electric bulbs that hung down the outside of the tower oscillated in the wind washing off the rotating arms. The bulbs themselves were shattered, but their filaments glowed with ethereal light.
“Good place for a boss fight,” I said. “Or a glorious death.”
“Think positive, John,” Gregory said. “Why not both?”
We passed into the shadow of the Tower of Heaven, as Tesla had called it. The interior looked like a haunted house crossed with grand Parisian architecture. A steel-and-glass barrel ceiling ran the length of the space, with marble stairs that branched off the main space, leading to lower hallways. The superstructure of the steel tower glittered through the glass dome overhead. At the center of the pavilion was a wide dais, held aloft by a collection of marble figures that struggled under the weight of the platform. The arched entrance to the pavilion was crowned with a verdigris-covered brass monument, backlit with the same ghostly green light that had replaced the electric bulbs running the height of the tower. The statue depicted a robed woman holding a laurel aloft, flanked by four resplendent horses. They appeared to be trampling an old man with a scythe. I paused and gazed up at it.
“Well, that’s the fanciest thing I’ve seen since we got here,” I said. “What do you think it is?”
“Pretty girls and their horses, doing a violence,” Gregory said. “Who knows? This place looks familiar.”
“Yeah? You’ve been to a lot of haunted towers?” Chesa asked.
“No, but in my senior year of high school I went to Paris with the French class,” he said. “I wasn’t taking French, of course, but I was able to talk my way onto the trip.”
I rolled my eyes hard enough to get dizzy.
“Of course you did,” I said.
“This place looks just like the Palace thing. The big one. Next to the small one.”
“The Grand Palais?” I asked. I had never been to Paris, obviously, but I harbored dreams. “I suppose it kind of does. Which means this . . .”
“That is the victory of Immortality over Time.” The voice echoed off the marble and glass, reverberating as it traveled.
A clockwork sarcophagus rose from the center dais of the pavilion, an orchestra of iron, bone, and marble. It looked like a pipe organ with all the machinery exposed. As the sarcophagus rose, plumes of steam and darker gasses rolled out of it. At the center of this hodgepodge of pipes, gears, tubes, and wheels was the Iron Lich, embedded in a niche in the machinery. His body was a collection of polished iron, like the parts of an elaborate statue dissected and then held together by shafts of metal or, in some places, weathered bone. Clockwork glimmered in the construct’s joints, mingling with exposed bone and translucent conduits that throbbed with dark purple light. Exhaust pipes, spewing thick, noxious smoke rose from the shoulders like the decapitated wings of a fallen angel. The creature’s head was an iron cage, in which was suspended a bleached human skull, held in place by a collection of hinged pistons and clockwork gears.
The sarcophagus lurched to a stop. A collection of pipes detached from the immobilized body of the lich, each one releasing with a hiss of steam and foul liquids. Once it was released, the construct took a heavy step out of its tomb. His foot came down on the marble floor with a heavy crash. The Iron Lich stretched, like a man waking from a long sleep, shaking off flakes of rust and cascading sheets of debris. Then he turned to face us.
“Appropriate, don’t you think?” he boomed.
“What have you done, Claude?” Tesla asked. “What have you become?”
“Immortal. Or nearly so, thanks to my dear girl,” the lich boomed. “I have made a miraculous recovery, with the brilliance of my science. And no thanks to you, I might add.”
“There are borders I will not cross in my research,” Nik said. “Something you should have learned.”
“Science is no place for cowards. Now, let’s end this. I have work to do.” The monstrosity that had once been Claude Lumiere held out one mechanical arm. A door dilated open in the floor, and a staff rose out of the ground. It was classic undead stuff, straight out of the props department of an eighties horror flick. The body of the staff was made of mismatched metal pipes, sprouting tubes and wires that crawled along the length like burrowing vines. The whole contraption was crowned by a winged skull with glowing, iridescent eyes. Claude pointed the staff at Tesla dramatically. “I will crush you like the mortal bugs you are.”
“Look, I’m no mad genius super scientist trapped in a body of his own creation, but last time I did math, we outnumbered you,” I said.
“For now.” The Lich nodded toward us. “Ladies? See to our guests.”
“With pleasure.” Evelyn whirled out of the shadows, landing with a thump in front of her resurrected father. Her face was scarred along one side, and the charred gap in her chest told the damage the sun-bright arrow had wrought. But she looked fit to fight.
“You’re going to just feed her to us? Your own daughter?” I asked. “Or did she not tell you we already beat her just now?”
“I warned her of the bloodsucker’s weakness,” Claude said dismissively. “She has seen the truth of her father’s guidance.”
“I’ve had some upgrades,” she snarled, then sprinted toward me.
A pair of metal wings unfurled behind her as she ran. Like a whip, a stroke of lightning traveled from her shoulders to the tips of her wings, forking outward in jagged lines of bright white light, finally grounding in the surrounding iron framework of the Palais. As she ran, the electricity traveled with her, dancing from wing to ground in a flickering strike that stitched a line of soot into the marble. The air hummed with the sound of constant electrical discharge.
“She just got lightning wings somehow?” I asked. “Seriously?”
“SCIENCE!” the Iron Lich boomed, striking the floor with his staff.
I was made sharply aware of my metal underwear. Beside me, Gregory swallowed so hard I thought his throat was going to detach from his spine. I took a step back and bumped into Adelaide.
“Mind if I step in?” she asked.
“Be my guest,” I said.
The crack of gunfire was impressive. Evelyn twisted to the side, catching the bullets in the protective corona of her lightning field. Molten lead sprayed across the floor, hissing as it hit the marble. She continued to bear down on us.
“Huh. Well.” Addie slapped her rifle back into place into something larger. “Worth a try.”
“Let a professional scientist handle this.” Tesla raised his coiled gauntlets, bumping his knuckles together with the crack of electrical discharge.
Evelyn screamed as she closed. Lightning sprouted from her wings. Tesla met it with a cloud of static discharge. Forks of blue-white electricity tangled in the air between them. The grounds on Tesla’s generator clacked open, feeding current through his insulated boots and into the ground. Wave after wave of high voltage force washed off the pair as they wrestled in the middle of the pavilion.
I took another step back.
“I’m staying away from that,” I said. Adelaide nodded numbly as the air sizzled and cracked. The smell of burning oxygen, fried hair, and hot metal filled the air.
“Come now,” Cecilia purred as she descended from the ceiling. Her wispy form was wreathed in green light. “Don’t be shy. We’ve only just gotten started.”
“I feel like I can manage the insubstantial ghost woman,” I said. “Saint, you want a crack at this?”
“I’m just here for the heals, man,” Matthew said, holding up his hands. “Little enough Brilliance to go around. And I get the feeling we’re going to need all of it.”
“Show some faith,” I said.
He laughed. “You’re a trip, man. Faith. That’s good.”
“They’re just trying to distract us,” Chesa said. “Go for the lich. We’ll take care of the girls.”
“I’m afraid I can’t allow that,” Cecilia said. She raised her translucent arms overhead, twirling her hands together, as though she were gathering yarn.
In the distance, the sound of torquing metal and groaning wood rose above the howl of the storm. Black shapes whirled past the glass ceiling, like leaves in autumn, but the size of cars.
“What have you done, Rast?” Gregory asked.
“Me? Nothing! I just made fun of her, just a little bit. This isn’t my—”
A dozen panes of the ceiling shattered, spraying the interior of the Faux Palais with splintered glass that fell like diamonds to the marble floor. Misshapen metal plates, some small, some as tall as a man, flew into the room. They fell on Cecilia as though she was a magnet, forming first a box, then a larger, more familiar shape. The sound of their impact was like buildings falling. I covered my head and ducked, afraid of losing my head to one of the scything steel plates. When the noise died down, I stood and stared at what Cecilia had become.
“Is that . . . a tank?” Gregory asked.
“British Mark V, unless I miss my guess,” Tembo said. When we all turned to stare at him, he shrugged. “I had my hobbies as a boy. She’s replaced the sponson cannon with Vickers light machine guns, though. A clever choice, considering her opponent.”
“Us?” Gregory asked.
“Well, yes. A pair of knights on foot, and a collection of frankly unarmored fools.” Tembo gestured at Knight Watch. “We’re hardly equipped to handle such a weapon.”
“Good thing guns don’t work on us,” I said, squaring up to the still-immobile tank.
“Mundane firearms, no,” Tembo said. “Haunted steampunk machine guns, driven by the ghost of a spiritualist?” He shrugged.
“Well, then what do you suggest we do?”
“Defeat it quickly,” he said. “Instead of yammering on about it.”
A gout of greenish-black smoke erupted from the back of the Mark-Cecilia. The tank didn’t have a turret, and its long, rectangular body was unwieldy on the marble floor. But as Tembo had pointed out, mounted in each side sponson was a nasty-looking machine gun. Bright green light pierced every crack in the armor, and poured out of the half dozen vision ports on all sides of the vehicle. The clamorous engine fired up, and Mark-Cecilia rumbled toward us. The machine guns twitched, as the woman inside tried to get a handle on her new body. The barrels eventually pointed at me.
“Everyone behind me!” I shouted. “I’ve got this!”
I grounded my shield just as the rattle of gunfire burst from the haunted tank. Pouring magical energy into the bulwark, I expanded it and thickened the steel. A deafening clatter came from the other side, as a seemingly endless stream of bullets slammed into me. The impact sent jolts down my arms and into my bones, but the barrier held. Closer and closer she rolled, the treads tearing at the marble as she bore down on my position. My shield was so heavy that I couldn’t move. The steel dimpled and began to glow red hot.
“John, we have to move!” Chesa shouted. “She’ll run us down.”
She and Adelaide both crouched behind me. Gregory was to one side. I had no idea what had happened to the rest of the team.
“You go! Fall back and then scatter,” I shouted back. The drumming staccato of the hail of gunfire nearly drowned out both our voices. “I’ll hold her attention.”
“How do you plan on doing that?” Gregory asked.
“I’m a tank, too, aren’t I? I’ll think of something.”
With another burst of magical energy, I expanded the size of the shield even more to the sides, giving them room to maneuver. Chesa and Addie went first, carefully creeping backward, trying to stay out of Mark-Cecilia’s line of fire. After a few seconds, Greg gave me a sharp nod, then followed. The shield wavered as he retreated, but I buckled down and held it in place.
When they were far enough back, Chesa and Addie leapt clear of the enfilade. Ches did something elven and strange, twisting the light. It made me dizzy, but apparently the spirit in the tank didn’t notice them go. That left me. The clanking of her treads on the marble was getting awfully close. I could feel the rumble of steel through the floor, and taste the necrotic smoke boiling out of her engine. Time to do something clever.
The closer Mark-Cecilia got, the wider apart the impact of her shots became. If you know anything about First World War tanks, you’re not surprised by this. The sponson guns can’t target anything closer than a dozen feet, because after that the body of the tank is in the way of their shots. Cecilia noticed, of course. For a second, I was worried she was going to back up. Instead, the hammering of her Vickers died out, and her engines roared into high gear.
She was just going to run me over. Perfect.
I drew all the energy back into my soul. The shield returned to its natural shape, a round Viking targe, much the worse for wear from all the machine-gunning, but still intact. The front of the tank loomed over me. She was coming fast, green light playing over my face as she charged. I grabbed the front glacis plate, heaving myself onto the sloping nose of the vehicle just before it ran me down. There was a view port, but I figured Cecilia wasn’t really using it. Sure enough, there was a shriek from inside the crew compartment, and she slammed on the brakes. Thankfully, inertia is still a thing in the Gestalt.
The Mark-Cecilia slid across the marble floor, sponson machine guns cranking up and down as she tried to get a bead on me. Chesa and Addie watched from cover, horrified expressions on their faces as I clambered onto the top of the tank. I jammed my dagger into one of the dozens of revolver ports to help me hang on.
“What now, insect? Are you going to stab me to death?” Cecilia demanded, her voice echoing through the hollow interior of the tank.
“Not exactly,” I said, producing the Immortality Scarab Ida had given me. I hadn’t had any time to study it, what with the haunted amusement park, the murderous vampire slayer turned lightning angel, and the ghost tank, but there was one thing I knew about the device.
It sucked spirits. Hard.
I slapped the scarab onto the top hatch of the Mark-Cecilia and turned it on. The little bugger’s sharp claws burrowed into the steel like they were butter, digging in like a tick. The twin vials on the back started to pump, their pistons cycling madly. At first, nothing happened. Then a trickle of green light dripped into the vials.
Cecilia shrieked once again. Both Vickers opened fire, spraying lead indiscriminately across the Faux Palais. Even the Iron Lich dove for cover as the tank spun in circles, both guns blazing, engine roaring, soul screaming in protest. I wasn’t sure it would kill Cecilia, but it obviously bothered her. All I had to do was hang on for dear life.
It didn’t take long. About thirty seconds after I had applied the scarab, Cecilia abandoned ship. The plates of the Mark V collapsed in on themselves, reverting back to the random pile of junk and debris they had been before Cecilia gave them life and purpose and form. The Vickers fell silent, then dissolved into base parts, filthy with rust and coagulated grease. The tread flew apart, and the whole vehicle settled in on itself. Cecilia’s spirit shot through the roof of the tank, shrieking as she fluttered around the ceiling, like a firefly in a jar.
Eventually she landed next to the construct of her husband.
One down. Two to go.