The Stein & Candle Detective Agency, Vol. 2: Cold Wars (The Stein & Candle Detective Agency #2) (29 page)

I rolled over and grabbed for my automatics. “Kiddo!” I cried. “You… you okay?”

“I b-believe so,” Weatherby muttered. He was leaning against the foot of the bed, cradling his busted arm. His face was red and tear-stained. I remembered that he was still a child. “Great God, M-Mort,” he whispered. “He was like me – all of my skill, my knowledge, my arrogance – all turned to absolute sadism.”

“Nix on that.” I turned both automatics to face the door. The wood was splintering, and it shook in its frame. “He’s nothing like you.” It started to fall, and saw glimmers of steel from blades in skeletal hands. These weren’t courtiers armed with ceremonial swords and daggers. They were soldiers, in armor and helmets, swinging broadswords and heavy axes, which tore chunks from the wood and weakened the door with each strike. They’d be dropping in soon, and unless I had the strength to give them a proper welcome, Weatherby and I would join them in death.

The door came crashing down and the skeletal soldiers charged, blades poised to hack us into bits. I started shooting, blasting dusty skulls and shattering ribcages. I didn’t stop, blazing away with both automatics until bones were strewn before me, and the narrow chamber ran with the clatter of fallen weapons and the endless crackling fire of my automatics. Before I knew it, the pistols clicked empty.

I looked to Weatherby as I went for the Ka-Bar knife in my boot. “Run, Weatherby!” I cried. “I’ll deal with them. You get the hell out of here!”

“No. I w-won’t leave you.”

I stared at him. “Someone has to get out. Someone has to stop Viscount Stein. And it sure as hell won’t be a dumb mug like me.”

Weatherby closed his eyes and stood up, still holding his busted arm. I pointed my knife in the direction of the skeletons and struggled to stand. I waited as they got closer and closer, until I could see the constant grins on their fleshless faces. They didn’t stop smiling, like they were mocking me with each step, each movement a taunt and a dare. I’d make them sorry that they ever came back from the grave – even if it killed me.

I felt a blast of heat from further down the hall, and turned away. I thought it was another one of the Viscount’s black magic spells, a final bit of insurance that we wouldn’t survive. I saw the flame come closer, a blooming red cloud that swept into the skeletons and roasted their bones.

But when I looked behind the burning skeletons, as they collapsed into smoldering piles, I saw Doc Dearborn’s face, looking grim and angry over the roaring muzzle of a flamethrower. He kept on the heat, burning all of those skeletons until they stopped moving and collapsed to the ground. With smoke and fire still in the tomb, he walked forward. He said something I couldn’t hear, and I saw Evelyn follow him, carrying a revolver. She pocketed it and ran to Weatherby — as soon as she saw him.

I nodded to Doc Dearborn. “A flamethrower?” I asked weakly. “You archaeologists don’t screw around.”

He smiled, looking sad, old and tired. “Experience has taught me not to.” He took my hand and helped me up. I gathered up my automatics and turned to Weatherby. Evelyn was gently helping him up, already using some spare bandages to give him a makeshift sling for his arm. “I had a bit of a desire to leave you here, you know,” Doc Dearborn told me. “But Evelyn wouldn’t hear of it. And I don’t mean to offend, but I doubt it was for your sake.”

“No offense taken,” I said. “I wouldn’t come back for my sake either.” I felt a little of the strength returning, and walked over to Weatherby and Evelyn. The kid hung his head, looking weaker than a deflating balloon. He was hurt badly, both in his body and his spirit. “I guess you can guess what happened,” I told Evelyn—”

She nodded. “I can. Viscount Wagner Stein returned to life, incapacitated you, grievously wounded poor Weatherby and departed. Now his evil is unleashed on the world.”

“Good guess,” I said. “But he won’t be living long.” I helped Weatherby stand, looking at his arm. It seemed like a clean break. It wouldn’t be hard to set. But I didn’t think his pride would heal as soon as his arm.

Weatherby sighed. “God,” he muttered. “You were right, Miss Dearborn. You were absolutely right. I am the biggest fool on earth, and I may have doomed everything because of my stupidity. I’ve let everyone down. Including you.”

But Evelyn just shook her head. She put her arm around his shoulder. His face went red, and it wasn’t all from the pain. “That’s quite enough of that,” she said. “You did what you thought was right. You can’t be faulted for that. You wouldn’t be the nice, determined boy you are if you didn’t obey your conscience.” She smiled. “And please, call me Evelyn. You don’t have to be so polite. Come along now, Weatherby. We’ll get you out of here.”

“Then we’ll go after him.” Weatherby wiped the tears from his face. I guess his pain had settled to a dull agony, and determination got rid of that. “We’ll hunt that monster down and destroy him.”

“Nonsense, my boy,” Doc Dearborn told him, as we started to leave the tomb. “You’ve been injured. You need your rest.”

“I’m afraid I won’t have the opportunity,” Weatherby said. “I have simply too much to do.”

We walked out of that damned tomb, helping Weatherby along, and me with my strength coming back, piece by piece. There weren’t any more skeletons, or any guardians of any kind. When we finally reached the top, we saw that Boris Brellnev and all of Moratia had come out to watch us.

Maybe it was their fault that Viscount Stein was loose in the world. But I didn’t blame them. I blamed myself and I blamed Wagner Stein. He had played the whole village for chumps, and me and Weatherby alongside them. I knew the type – content to suck the life from the world, do anything, and become anyone, all in the name of making sure their life was enjoyable. I was looking forward to making the bastard wish that he stayed dead.

Boris Brellnev let us use his house to plan our next move. It was a neat cabin in the center of Moratia, with electric lighting just installed, and plenty of soft couches and beds that Weatherby and I could lie on while a local sawbones patched us up. He reset Weatherby’s arm and did a fine job fixing it. The kid seemed embarrassed by the sling around his arm, and never mentioned it. But I saw the way Evelyn Dearborn’s eyes stayed on that wound. Weatherby liked her. That was certain. And I guess she liked him too.

But there wasn’t any time for schoolboy crushes. Doc Dearborn, Brellnev, Evelyn, Weatherby and I sat around the dining room table that night, looking at a map of the area and plotting our next move. That meant figuring out what Viscount Wagner Stein would do, and that was harder than it sounded. He was cruel, but also clever – the combination you don’t want in a sworn enemy.

Doc Dearborn had an idea. He puffed his pipe and pointed to the east. “He’ll go to Russia, I believe,” he said. “The country’s magical community is still somewhat strong. Perhaps he can find some mad pagan priests — who he will bend to his will. Or perhaps he will try to find a pack of man-eating werewolves, who will learn to serve him.”

“He will return to Moratia,” Brellnev said. “In death, he stole away our children, and now he’ll try and kill the rest of us. We should stay here, and prepare our defense.”

Evelyn disagreed. “I think he’d gain very little by doing that, Mr. Brellnev, and Viscount Stein is interested exclusively in his own gain.” She examined the map. “I think he will attempt to learn about his new environment – and how best to control it.”

I opened a fresh deck of Luckies and fished out a cigarette. “Bumping gums ain’t getting us nowhere,” I said. I looked across the map at Weatherby. “He’s your ancestor, kiddo. What do you think? If you were a psychotic evil necromancer, returned from the grave after hundreds of years of the Big Sleep, what would you do?”

Weatherby considered the question. “I’d want to go somewhere where I could engage in the decadent bacchanalia of my own time, a place where mad delving into occult secrets is dismissed as eccentricity, and I could acquire the same breed of simpering sycophantic hangers-on that I had at my court in the past.” He shivered a little, and touched his wounded arm. “I’d go west – to New York. For him, the culture there must seem like a ripe fruit, easily plucked.”

It made more sense than any other theory. I nodded and took a long drag on the cigarette. “Okay. Now, judging by how much Viscount Stein loves his comforts, I’ll bet he’s taking a first class train to the west. Mr. Brellnev, where could someone hop on something like that?”

Brellnev considered the question. “Budapest,” he said. He pointed to the map. “The railroads there go all over Europe – including to numerous port cities on the coast.” He stood up, thinking to himself as he stroked his moustache. “It’s a day’s drive from Moratia. I am the only one in the village with a truck. Come, I will take you. It is the least I can do, for the trouble I have brought on the world.”

“Thanks for the ride.” I stubbed out my cigarette. I didn’t get time to finish it.

Doc Dearborn looked up at me in surprise. “We are departing now?”

“No time for waiting around. We kill him at the train station or we miss him all together. And I really don’t want to see what Viscount Stein gets up to in the modern world.” I looked at Weatherby. “You still got a clipped wing, kiddo. Maybe you ought to stay here and—”

“Please.” Weatherby had already come to his feet. He held his busted arm, and winced a little. “Don’t bother arguing, Mort. Like you said yourself, we’re wasting time the more we slap our mouths together.”

“That’s bumping gums,” I corrected.

“I don’t exactly care.” Weatherby headed outside, following Brellnev and Doc Dearborn.

I stood up and grabbed our suitcases, and Evelyn stayed next to me. She was watching Weatherby leave. “He drives himself so hard,” she said. “He’s utterly determined. I don’t think most boys his age are anything like him.”

“They’re busy chasing girls and playing football. He doesn’t bother with any of that stuff.” I looked down at Evelyn. For just a moment, her composure left her, and she seemed nervous and hesitant. “It’s because of his parents,” I explained. “He lost them when he was little, in the worst possible way. He tries to follow their wishes, to do good in this rotten world of ours. I don’t know if he likes it, but he never gives himself a choice.”

Evelyn started for the door, her hands in the pockets of her coat. “I think it’s charming,” she said. “His devotion is charming, and everything else about him is too.”

I nodded. “Sure, sister. Now let’s not keep him waiting, or he’ll call me a word I don’t understand.”

We headed outside and got into Brellnev’s truck. It was an old auto, used for moving lumber or crops through the wild mountain roads. There was plenty of room in the back, and I joined Weatherby, Doc Dearborn and Evelyn there. Evelyn sat next to Weatherby, and though his face burned and his fingers twitched like he was being electrocuted, he gave her a content and satisfied smile. When she put her arm around his shoulder, his face grew even redder.

He didn’t say anything. I guess he didn’t need to. Evelyn was the first – and probably only — girl his own age that Weatherby knew, and I was glad that he liked her. But I thought about the devotion to his parents’ memory that filled Weatherby, and wondered if there was any room in it for the affection of a teenage girl.

I realized the answer when Weatherby leaned his head against Evelyn’s shoulder and closed his eyes. The kid was still beaten and battered from going into the crypt, and he fell asleep quickly. Evelyn joined him, and the two of them snoozed together, all the way to Budapest. I think that when a pretty girl was nearby, Weatherby could forget his mission. Or at least, he let it drop from the front of his mind.

I didn’t have that luxury. I opened the suitcase and started loading weapons. I had my two automatics, a bunch of grenades, a twelve-gauge shotgun, and my Ka-Bar knife. I thought I’d like to use the blade on the Viscount. Maybe his sword was bigger but he was gonna find out that I was meaner, right after I cut him open and let him look at his guts and he went screaming back to Hell.

I thought of that on the journey to Budapest over the rocky road and through the night. It made the time fly.