Dead Iron

CHAPTER TWO

It had been years since Mae Lindson called on the old ways. She promised Jeb she wouldn’t use them anymore. Not out here, so far west, where there was no coven to hide her. It was enough trouble, he had said, for a man of color to marry a white woman. Telling people she was a witch would only bring them quicker to their doorstep with torches in their hands and hanging in their eyes.

But it had been three months. Three months waiting for him to come home. She was done waiting. Done wondering if he would ever come home to her. When she made a vow, it could never be unbroken—so was the way of her magic within the sisterhood. She had vowed her heart and soul unto this man, until death did them part. That vow, that promise, should have guided him home to her by now.

She pushed the basket of dirt sprinkled with rose hips and wormwood closer to the hearth where the light of the rising moon would soon find it. The fire was crackling hot and strong enough to burn on to morning.

The whistle and pop of the steam matics working the lines had quieted since nightfall. All the world of man had quieted. Now was the time for magic.

Mae glanced at her door. A strong bolt made of brass and springs held it tight. That, Jeb had given her as a wedding gift. He had fashioned it with his own hands, as he had fashioned all the other beautiful things of wood and brass that filled the shelves alongside her pots and dishes and herbs and books. Just as he had fashioned her spinning wheel and her loom. He was never without a gear or fancy to carve, but only ever showed his creations to her.

Still, the bundle of protective herbs wrapped along dried grapevines and rowan above the door did as much to keep her safe as Jeb’s bolts and devices. Herbs and spells to keep the Strange at bay.

She pulled her shawl close around her shoulders and knelt next to the basket of dirt. The people of town were beginning to whisper about her. When she walked to town to trade her weaving for supplies, people talked. Said her husband had long left her. Said he was dead.

But they were wrong. She still heard him, heard her husband’s voice in the night, calling her name.

Mae rolled up her left sleeve, exposing her wrist and forearm, strong from tending the field, strong from tending the sheep and chickens. She placed her fingers in the basket of dirt and stirred, fingers splayed, counterclockwise. The dirt warmed slowly, soaking up the heat from the hearthstones. She hummed, settling into the feel of this soil beneath her hands, between her fingers, and breathed in the scent rising off the soil—of summer giving its life away to autumn.

She sang the song slowly, words forming the spell that would find Jeb. Little matics and tickers on the shelf hummed along with her, echoing to the notes of their tuning.

“My hand touching this soil, this soil touching all soil. All soil beneath my hand. All soil I know. The heartbeat, the soul of two who have vowed until death do us part. Jeb Lindson, husband, lover, soul.”

She closed her eyes, held her breath. Pushed away the awareness of the wind outside the door, pushed away the sound of the fire scratching across the wood. Pushed away everything except the one clear need to feel Jeb’s heartbeat, somewhere, anywhere, in this world of soil and stone.

After a long, long moment, there, beneath her palm, she felt a slow thump.

Never before had one man been so difficult to kill. Mr. Shard LeFel watched with detached interest while Jeb Lindson balanced on one good leg and one bad ankle on top of a bucket. The rope around the man’s neck was thick and strong. So was the limb of the oak over which it was thrown.

Plenty strong enough to bear the weight of the man, even though he was twice the size of LeFel and the opposite of him in every way. LeFel’s silver white skin rivaled alabaster, his features so fine and fair, artists and admirers begged to paint his likeness. His hair was moon yellow, left long and sleek with a black ribbon holding it back from his high, white lace collar.

He wore no facial hair, nor powders, and dressed in the finest clothes, no matter the occasion. Suit, tails, and top hat from Paris, black gloves from Versailles, and one of his favorite vanities: a blackened and curved cane, carved from the breastbone of an African elephant, and plied tip to tip with catches of gold, silver, and deep, fire-filled rubies.

But even if all those things were stripped of him, it would still be his eyes that held him apart from any other man. Glacier blue, heavily lidded, they drew people to him witless and wanting, as if they had suddenly seen their dreams come alive and breathing.

It had proved a useful thing. In many pleasurable ways.

The big man atop the bucket shifted again, his unbound hands reaching into the night as if the shadows could aid him. He was stone dark, skin and hair and eyes, his wide hands blistered and calloused from a life of toil, his trousers and plaid shirt torn and stained—even before the five bullets ripped holes through his coat—directly over his heart, which continued to stubbornly, slowly beat.

LeFel had killed him twice. Once with a knife, a rotting scar he bore at his neck. Once with a gun, the small bullet holes in his coat belying the amount of lead burrowed in the meat of his chest. Each time, LeFel had watched his servant, Mr. Shunt, bury the big man. Each time, Jeb Lindson had found a way to crawl out of his grave and go walking.

Not much of a man left to him, really. Still, something drove him. Away from death and toward the living world. A heart like his, a soul that strong, was rare.

And it was a great inconvenience to LeFel’s plans.

LeFel glanced at the canopy of limbs above them. The moon would be up soon, full and strong. Strong enough to make sure Jeb Lindson stayed dead this time.

“Please . . .” The big man’s voice scraped low, ragged. Too much the same as it had been in life.

“You beg?” LeFel tapped the toe of his Italian boot against the wood bucket the big man stood upon. Not hard enough for the bucket to shift. Just hard enough for the hollow thunk to make his eyes go wide. It reminded him he was about to die. Again.

LeFel smiled. It was a lovely thing to see that even in death there was still fear.

Mr. Shunt, waiting at the edge of shadows, shifted, the satin and wool of his coat hissing like snakes against his heels. Too tall, too thin, Mr. Shunt kept his face hidden beneath the brim of his stovepipe hat that seemed latched to his head as if stitched there, and his turned-up black collar. His eyes, if ever they were seen, evoked fear, showing just what kind of creature lurked within the layers of silk. A very Strange man, indeed.

Next to Mr. Shunt crouched a wolf. Common as scrub brush, that wolf was Shard LeFel’s newest and most useful toy. It wore a collar of LeFel’s own devising—brass and copper with crystal and carved gears—and a leash, which Mr. Shunt held in the crook of one finger.

Next to the wolf stood a small barefoot boy. No more than four years old, the child wore nothing but his bed shirt. His skin was death pale, his hair a shock of red. He made no sound, nor did he seem to see the world around him. He gazed off in a middle distance as if still walking his dreams, untouched by the night, or the cold, or his company.

“What do you beg for, dead man?” LeFel mused. “What is there left to you? Not life. Only a mockery of that rattles in your chest. What sweet dream pulls you from the smothering rest eternal?”

“Mae . . .” The single word fell from his swollen lips like a prayer. “My Mae.”

LeFel frowned. “The witch?” He rapped the bucket with his toe again. “She has lied to you, sung you sweet falsities. You thought her magic was yours to keep, but I alone shall have it. Not even the vow she cast between you, the binding of your love, will hold her safe from my needs.” He kicked the bucket hard enough it shifted.

Jeb swayed, but stubbornly held his balance on his battered legs.

“There are things I require in this world. Isn’t that true, Mr. Shunt?”

Mr. Shunt chuckled, the sound of dry bones rattling.

“And when my brother saw to it I was exiled to these foul lands, for nothing more than killing his only heir, I had thought myself without recourse. But he did not know, could not know, the beauty of turned metal. Could not know the power harnessed in steam, could not know the primitive magic inherent in this land, nor the most interesting abilities of those who devise.

“And he certainly could not know that others of our . . . kind . . . would find each of these things pleasing as a midsummer feast.”

Mr. Shunt chuckled again. The wolf at his feet laid his ears back and bared teeth at the sound. The child did not seem to hear.

“You could have given in to me, Mr. Lindson. But you refused. Even in death. And now you, my poor dark man, stand like a mountain in my way. Stand like a mountain between myself and your beautiful living wife.” He aimed another blow at the bucket, but allowed only the softest tap of his boot.

“Mountains cannot stop me. I have hammered iron and silver across this land. I have broken every mountain that refused my harness.”

Jeb, silent, stared at him with a gaze that held too much hatred for a dead man.

“Just as I shall harness Mae—”

“Mae . . . ,” Jeb echoed. “My Mae . . .”

LeFel snarled. “She is mine!”

He slammed his boot into the bucket, shoving it sideways. Jeb rocked, the rope against the tree limb creaking beneath the strain.

Mr. Shunt sucked in a hopeful breath.

But Jeb somehow remained standing, silent, hatred in his eyes. LeFel stepped back, pulled a bit of perfumed silk and lace from his coat sleeve, and wiped his lips in a circle, over and over again, the motion soothing, calming.

All would be well. He would kill this mortal man correctly this time. He would kill him so the tie of magic binding him to his wife would be broken, so Jeb Lindson could not return to his wife, could not lay claim to her soul, her life, or the magic at her hands. The binding that held them together, and kept Mae’s magic out of LeFel’s reach, would be broken.

“You,” LeFel said, his voice shaking, but calm, “are a very lucky man, Mr. Lindson. You still have a small time left to breathe this air. To gaze upon this land. To ponder the life that is no longer yours before I take it from you a third time. Your death awaits the rise of the waxing moon. Poetic for a third and final death, don’t you agree, Mr. Shunt?”

“Sweet as a lullaby,” Mr. Shunt whispered, placing his hand gently on the child’s head.

Shard LeFel tipped his face skyward, and gazed at the velvet night caught between the tangle of branches. Soon, soon, the witch would be his.

Cedar threw the brace of wood across his door, and pulled to be sure the hinges were secure. He had already banked the fire, leaving a heart of oak to parcel out heat for the next eight hours, and set a pot on the hook above it. He had already hung the bucket of water up on the ceiling hook in the corner of the room and shuttered the cabin’s single window.

The last thing, the most necessary thing, he did not want to do.

A heavy iron chain thick as his wrist lay across the bricks of the hearth, one end welded through the iron ring pounded into the stone, the other end connected to a wide leather collar.

Cedar knew the chain and collar were unbreakable. He had fashioned both with his own hands.

He turned away from the door and paced in front of the fireplace, careful not to disturb the chain at his feet.

The missing Gregor boy weighed heavy on his mind. There was little information he could rely on. Grieving parents could conjure any sort of story to explain how their child had gone to death—wolf, wandering, or even the bogeyman come stealing in the night.

If the boy had been taken by beast, there would be no hope he was still alive. If the child wandered off, there could still be time to find him. And if it was the bogeyman or some Strange thing that put hands on that small a boy and stole him away . . .

Cedar rubbed his hand over his face. If it was a thing of the Strange, he hoped the child was lucky enough to receive a quick death.

He stopped pacing and took up a cup from above the fireplace in front of the small mirror there. He swallowed the last cold dregs of coffee. He hated the chain, hated the collar. And hated that he’d have to wait out the moonrise to begin his hunt for the boy.

Cedar placed the empty cup on the mantel next to his brother’s pocket watch, then crouched in front of the chain, taking it up in his hands. The call of moonlight in the air burned like whiskey in his blood. He knew just how long he could resist the change. Had spent four years tied to the moon, ever since he’d hunted the red wolf Bloodpaw in Pawnee country, and instead caught the attention of the Pawnee gods.

There was no time left for memories, no time left for bucking fate. He was losing control. Even now, his hands stretched wide, his joints and bones loosened for the change. A haze of luxurious pleasure clouded his eyes and mind like opium, promising unearthly pleasures.

It was a lie. He knew what would happen after the change. The beast inside him would be free. He would kill. And he would not remember any of it until he woke in the morn.

Cedar bent his head and, with clumsy fingers, fastened the collar around his neck.

He stood and stared at his reflection in the small mirror there.

Still a man’s face, strong nose, hard jaw, his skin tanned with something more than pure European heritage. His eyes were his own, hazel, with long lashes, above them dark brows and waves of thick walnut hair. Lines at the edges of his eyes hinted of past laughter, while other lines, at his mouth and forehead, mapped his sorrow. Clean-shaven, he was not a plain man, nor an old man, nor an unhandsome man.

He was, however, a cursed man.

The moon rose, inching higher, pushing his heartbeat to quicken. Fast. Faster.

One single silver ray poured through the shutter. Cedar moaned, not from pain, but from pleasure and sin, as his body twisted, stretched, changed. He clung to humanity, clung to the mind of a man, as long as he could.

But moonlight loosed a flood of quicksilver heat through him and dragged him down with the weight of an ocean. He drowned in moonlight, drowned in the need for blood, flesh, death. He threw his head back and yelled as his humanity shattered. The only sound that escaped his throat was a blood-hungry howl.

The first finger of moonlight slipped like a serpent’s tongue through the canopy of trees. Shard LeFel smiled.

“This is your end, Mr. Lindson,” LeFel said. “Your third and last death by my hand. They say a man can kill another man only three times in this world. Therefore I have gone through considerable measures to see that you stay dead.”

LeFel slid his fingers into his coat pocket. He withdrew a palm-sized silver box and a tiny wrought iron key. The silver box was fine lacework. Held just so, it seemed as if the lace fashioned the box into a tree: thicker silver lines creating the trunk at the base, and thin, beautiful arcs of silver reaching out in branches, leaves, and crown that wove together to make the cage whole.

Within the box was a tiny clockwork dragonfly, gold and crystal wings thin as paper, glinting like dying sunlight as they fluttered beneath the cage that held them. The unearthly green light of pure glim—the rarest of all things—shone out from the dragonfly’s body, blending with the sunlight-flecked wings.

“This trinket is worth more money than you have ever known, Mr. Lindson. Kings, emperors, a history worth of conquerors, have fought for this treasure, have torn kingdoms and civilizations down to splinters and dust to possess it.

“Rare . . .” LeFel’s voice, for just that moment, lost its anger and hatred. For just that moment, his voice was a thing of unearthly beauty, clear and full of song. The animals in the night paused at the sound, and even the trees bent to be nearer him.

Mr. Shunt moaned softly, and LeFel seemed to remember himself.

“I think it a shame, really,” he said with cold disinterest, all the song gone from his words. “A shame that it will be wasted on a scrap of meat such as yourself.”

LeFel held the box by its corners, pinched between the black silk fingertips of his gloves.

“This treasure will be the last thing you will ever feel, Mr. Lindson.

LeFel slammed his foot into the bucket, kicking it free from beneath Jeb. The rope groaned beneath the man’s full weight.

Jeb Lindson’s swollen lips mouthed one word, even though no sound came out: Mae. His heart beat slowly once, twice.

LeFel turned away from him and stepped over to the child. “Such a dream, little maker,” he cooed. “Such a strange and wonderful dream you see.” He knelt and picked up the child’s hand. “Can you catch the moonlight, little dreamer?”

The boy did not respond. LeFel had not expected he would. He didn’t need his response. He needed his blood.

LeFel held the boy’s hand toward Mr. Shunt.

“Mr. Shunt, if you please.”

Mr. Shunt extended one long knobby finger, the tip of which ended in a silver needle. He pricked the boy’s thumb.

The boy did not even flinch, but the wolf growled. LeFel met the wolf’s copper brown gaze with his own. “You will play your part, my pet. But not now.”

Then, to the child: “Just a bit of blood and shred of dream, little maker,” he said. “That and moonlight is all I need this night.”

LeFel pressed the boy’s thumb against the silver box until one thick drop of blood fell upon the dragonfly, turning it slick and dark as rubies.

“Such a beautiful child.” LeFel rose to stand in front of the boy. “And so useful.” He held the box over his shoulder. “Mr. Shunt, your service.”

Mr. Shunt stirred free of the shadows and lifted the box from LeFel’s fingers. He crossed the short distance to the hanging man, coats of silk and wool licking his steps.

Then he stretched his arm out to touch Jeb Lindson.

Mr. Shunt’s overly long, knob-knuckled fingers suddenly bristled with delicate tools, things meant for cutting, for hooking, for binding. He made quick work of tearing apart the last of Jeb’s coat and shirt, digging a hole through the cloth to the skin beneath.

He took his time fastening the box into Jeb’s flesh, savoring the dying man’s gasps of pain, batting away his feeble swings.

Once satisfied with his work, he stepped back.

LeFel turned to face Jeb. He removed his own glove, and tipped his bare palm upward, catching moonlight. He closed his fist, pressed his lips against the knot his thumb and forefinger created, and whispered to the moonlight.

A spell. Not of the magic of this world. A Strange spell. Poison from a Strange man’s lips. LeFel released the spell, blowing the captured moonlight like a kiss across his hand toward the man who was still not dead enough.

Moonlight poured into the tiny box in Jeb’s chest, catching like dewdrops on a spider’s web. The ruby clockwork dragonfly clattered faster, wings beating to escape a flame that burned too near, or to shake a poison swallowed down.

Silver threads from the lacework shot out of the cage and sank like roots seeking Jeb’s lifeblood, digging deeper and deeper until they caught hold in his heart.

Jeb stiffened and no longer struggled against the rope.

“Now, Mr. Shunt.”

Mr. Shunt fitted the wrought iron key into the neatly hidden slot in the silver cage. Then he turned the key counterclockwise: once, twice, thrice. The bloody dragonfly’s wings slowed and slowed with each turn. Until it was still.

And then Jeb Lindson’s heart beat no more.

Mae clutched the soil beneath her hands. Moonlight poured through the window, tarnishing her world with pewter light. She held her breath as Jeb’s heartbeat went silent beneath her palms. “No,” she whispered, “don’t leave me.”

The cold scent of winter, of death, drifted up from the soil and filled her with a bone chill. He was gone. Her husband, her lover, her soul.

Mae pulled her hands out of the basket. She wrapped her arms about herself and rocked and rocked until the fire died and the hearthstones beneath her had gone cold. She did not cry. Tears were for sorrow. And sorrow would wait until anger had its due.

In the deepest dark of the night, long before the dawn could grant light’s mercy to the world again, Mae placed her fingers into the ashes of the fire and sang a much different song, wove a much darker spell, and vowed revenge upon her husband’s killer.