Gilgamesh Wulfenbach and the Men of Letters 7/?
I'm far enough ahead of where I thought I'd be that I've decided to start posting twice a week so as to be finished with posting before the holidays. Enjoy!
Previous | Master Post
Chapter 7
MacArthur Park Is Melting in the Dark
Tarvek found himself being tickled awake by whiskers. He peeled open his eyes to find his vision filled with a grey, furry face as a cold, rubbery nose mashed against his.
“Dook,” said the wasp eater.
“Thank you,” Tarvek rasped groggily. “I don’t suppose you could go for coffee?”
“Snurf.”
“Didn’t think so.” He closed his eyes.
“Snee?”
“No.” He rolled onto his side.
It stuck its nose in his ear and huffed.
“Oh, all right.” He sat up with a groan. “I suppose Wulfenbach put you up to this.”
The wasp eater chuckled and scampered down to pounce on what looked at first like a lump of blankets on the floor between the bed and the door but turned out, once Tarvek had his specs on, to be Winchester Minor, sound asleep on his stomach and completely oblivious to the weasel dancing around on his broad back with a noise that sounded almost like botherbotherbotherbother. What on earth was he doing down there? He hadn’t even dressed for bed-of course, no more had Tarvek, but he at least had the excuse of not having brought any luggage. He was reasonably sure there had been a bag or two in the back of the horseless carriage Winchester Major was repairing. Yet here was Winchester Minor still in his denim trousers and undershirt.
Tarvek’s head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool, and he realized it had been a week or more since he’d actually gotten a decent night’s sleep-a good two days since the Si Vales Valeo, before which he’d been (in reverse order) deathly ill, badly wounded, and running ragged trying to keep up with Lucrezia, Agatha, and Anevka. One night’s rest wasn’t enough to undo that. But since the wasp eater clearly thought that stupid o’clock was time to get up, he had no hope of being allowed to get back to sleep. Groaning again, he got up and investigated the room. He wouldn’t be able to get past Winchester to get out, but there was a gas ring in one corner with a kettle and other tea-making supplies, all apparently imported from England. This must have been Wooster’s room, then-yes, there were two doors, one of which must communicate with Wulfenbach’s quarters. He’d been too far gone last night to notice. Ah, well, caffeine was caffeine. Tarvek filled the kettle, fired up the gas ring, and started tea.
Unfortunately, that drew the attention of the wasp eater, which scurried up his leg to look over his shoulder, then leapt onto the shelves to investigate every box and tin in search of a treat. He tried without success to get it down, but it did catch a rust spider and crunched its prey happily. Not finding much in the way of people food, Tarvek decided to settle for some dry biscuits to go with his tea. He also located a notepad (new, or at least any pages with indentations had been removed-good spy, Wooster) and pencil, and a few minutes later, he was settled with tea and biscuits and was attempting to write a to-do list. The wasp eater, meanwhile, had returned to the project of waking Winchester and was snuffling its way up his neck, nose buried in the curling ends of his collar-length brown hair. Eventually it tickled its nose too much and sneezed violently directly into Winchester’s hair, then wiped its nose on his scalp. [1]
“Cuddidou’, D’n,” Winchester mumbled into his pillow without actually waking up.
What was Winchester doing on the floor, anyway, and dressed so shabbily when a spark of his caliber should be well settled with either ancestral lands or a high position in the household of a lord? Granted, things were probably different in America, but even Wulfenbach dressed his lackeys better than that. Tarvek himself was going to need new clothes to get by until they could retake Sturmhalten-he quickly sketched a couple of suits to order from the on-board tailor; he was not about to borrow from Wulfenbach, for all they were the same size. But there wouldn’t be many humans aboard from whom Winchester could borrow even if he were willing, and having any of the late baron’s clothes cut down... oh, no, that would never do. Those styles were almost as old as the baron himself. Still, a spark in Agatha’s service couldn’t be allowed to dress so poorly or so strangely, never mind the risk that the rest of Winchester’s shirts would be as eye-watering as that horrid brown-and-blue plaid he’d worn the day before. The lines of the shirt hadn’t been bad, as the way the yoke curved to points looked very American, but since that would be obscured by the waistcoat, perhaps the frock coat ought... hm.... Tarvek sent the pencil lead sweeping across a fresh page, settling what the overall look should be before producing separate sketches of the various pieces and a list of colors and fabrics. He’d need to call the cordwainer, too, as the boots both brothers wore might be practical only for a mechanic or farm laborer, and Winchester Minor needed a proper gun belt. Yet what Winchester Major had been wearing the previous night had suited him well enough, with the notched-collar waistcoat and band-collared shirt, though perhaps a frock coat like Winchester Minor’s might not go amiss, and brighter colors than the sepia palette... maybe a good forest green shirt with a cream trilobite-jacquard waistcoat....
He was still sketching when there was a quiet knock and the side door opened-and Winchester Minor was instantly awake, sitting up, and aiming his gun at Wulfenbach’s nose.
“Whoa!” yelped Wulfenbach, falling back a step. “Sam, it’s me!”
Winchester sighed wearily, relaxed, and lowered his gun. “Sorry, dude.”
“How did you...” Tarvek began but backtracked. “I barely saw you move!”
Winchester snorted. “Old habit. In our line of work, you get used to things tryin’ to break in and kill you. ’Course, it’s not much defense if another hunter comes after you and manages to steal your gun before making any sort of noise that could wake you.”
“I... don’t suppose you survived that one?” Wulfenbach asked.
Winchester chuckled. “Nope. That’s the time we remember having gone to Heaven. Angels made sure of it. But hell, you’re not a hunter until you’ve died once.”
Tarvek’s mouth fell open. He covered by asking, “This is probably a ridiculous question, but how many times have you died?”
“Me?” Winchester thought a moment. “Five, I think? Dean’s died over a hundred times, if you count the run-in with the Trickster. Even Cas has died three times. And that’s not counting the last-second healings.”
“Sweet lightning.”
“Yeah. Like I told Gil last night, Death’s probably glad to be rid of us.”
Wulfenbach took a deep breath and said, “Right. I don’t know what you and Dean are used to having for breakfast....”
“Cereal or grapefruit for me, usually,” Winchester replied. “Eggs or pancakes sometimes-depends on where we’re eating. Dean will eat anything that’s not a salad, but he usually wants some kind of meat, like bacon or sausage.”
“Ah, good. I’ve ordered a full breakfast sent up for us; there should be enough variety for you, and we can take Dean a tray from what’s left when we’ve finished. I found him asleep in the lab.”
“Guess he’ll still be working on the car today.”
“Oh, no. He’s finished.”
Winchester’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? Huh.”
Tarvek frowned. “I thought you knew he was a spark.”
Winchester turned to stare at Tarvek with nearly neck-breaking speed. “He’s what?!”
Wulfenbach rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, yeah, you were asleep when Theo explained. The Spark is a particular kind of combination of intellectual gifts and abilities, and people who have the Spark are generally called sparks. You’ve already met several-me, Agatha, Sturmvoraus, Theo. And we all have our specialties. Dean’s is clearly mechanical engineering. I’m guessing yours is something to do with the science of information.”
“My-”
“I concur,” interrupted Tarvek before Winchester could object that he wasn’t a spark. “When we arrived last night, you hadn’t even seen Anevka to know anything about her design, yet you sounded like you knew exactly how to retrieve data from both her and the beacon eng-oh. Red fire, I forgot. The beacon engine’s not in Sturmhalten Castle anymore. The Geisterdamen took all the equipment with them when they left, burned all their papers, and collapsed the tunnels behind them.”
“WHAT?!” Wulfenbach exploded. “Where were they going?”
“I’m not sure. Lucrezia didn’t trust me that much, and neither did the Geisters. I wouldn’t have found out that they planned to burn down the chapel dedicated to Lucrezia if I hadn’t been talking to Vrin when she gave the order to set the fire.”
“A chapel?!” Wulfenbach and Winchester chorused.
“Er, yes. The Geisters consider Lucrezia their mother goddess and Agatha her holy child.”
Winchester frowned. “These Geisterdamen. How many of them are there?”
“I... I’m not sure. The White Elite alone number three thousand. Why?”
“Because belief can have incredible power-and give incredible power. In our world, the strength of the pagan gods depended on the number of worshippers they had. And we once had a case where enough people believed a house was haunted that they made it haunted by a Tibetan thought form called a tulpa. If Lucrezia found some way for her soul to absorb the power offered by the Geisters’ faith, that could be what made her The Other... and it could make defeating her more difficult than we thought.”
“B-but Geisters are revenants! Lucrezia probably ordered them to believe in her!”
“And that changes anything how? Look, I know I don’t know much about the situation, but it sounds like Lucrezia was able to upload herself into the beacon engine, mind and soul. That’s not a typical haunting. She shouldn’t have been able to choose the object to which her ghost was tied. That alone suggests that the Geisters’ faith has some effect.”
“And the same could be true of the other revenants,” Wulfenbach added, “the humans with no symptoms. If Lucrezia ordered them to worship her, could they resist?”
Tarvek’s heart sank. “No. I mean, it is possible for a revenant to shake off Lucrezia’s control of his own accord-Von Pinn did it, and from what Zola said, a few of the Geisters were able to-but it would take an incredibly strong mind. Vrin, the high priestess, could resist Anevka but had trouble resisting Agatha. Your father might have managed it eventually.”
Wulfenbach held up Tarvek’s notebook. “You’ve got a formula in here that should break the mental control without causing the wasp to release the neurotoxin that killed my father.”
“Should, yes, not that I knew about the neurotoxin, but I’ve had no way to test that formula. If Winchester hadn’t shot out Anevka’s voice box, we could use that, but... huh. I might be able to rebuild it. Of course, my oscilloscope readings of Agatha’s voice are still in Sturmhalten, but....”
“Might be faster to e-” Winchester caught himself and corrected, “I mean, send Agatha a message and ask her to come in person, or send a recording.”
“Recording,” Wulfenbach agreed. “We shouldn’t take her away from rebuilding Mechanicsburg just for that.”
Tarvek nodded thoughtfully. “That ought to be enough for the average revenant. But if the formula works, the next problem will be delivery.”
“Gas.”
“Or aerosol,” suggested Winchester, “if it has to remain in liquid form. Hell, you could even rig up some kind of crop duster spray if you had to-uh, a heavy mist sprayed from the back of a low-flying airplane.”
Wulfenbach tapped the notebook against his chin as he considered. “Wish I knew where Wooster left my flyer. I suppose I can get Dean to help me build a new one while you two sort out the spray.”
Breakfast arrived just then, and Tarvek sent the Lackya who brought it to the tailor with his sketches. As they ate, Wulfenbach got Winchester telling stories that were both amusing and sad, revealing as they did that the brothers were even worse off than Tarvek had imagined and had actually lived in their car for most of their lives. And then there was the horrifying tale of the aforementioned Trickster incident, wherein Winchester had permanently lost his taste for breakfast sausage while trapped in a time loop and reliving variations on the same tragic Tuesday until finally cornering the offending spirit and forcing it to release them. As he finished the story, the wasp eater climbed up on his shoulder and chirruped sadly.
“Dean doesn’t remember it,” Winchester concluded matter-of-factly. “Hell, I barely even think of it anymore. Not like it’s the worst thing to happen to either of us.” He tossed back the last of his tea, then looked at Wulfenbach. “Uh, where’s the restroom?”
Wulfenbach gave him directions, and Winchester excused himself, taking time to put on his socks and boots, settling his gun in the back of his waistband before shrugging his shirt back on to conceal it, and putting the wasp eater on the bed before he left. But once the door was closed, Tarvek and Wulfenbach sat staring at each other in silence for a moment.
Then Wulfenbach shook his head. “We can’t let them go back. Not to that.”
“I ordered clothes for them, along with mine,” Tarvek stated by way of agreement. “I don’t mind paying-”
“No, no, they’re my guests. And they’ve earned that and more. I’ve found quarters for them near Dean’s lab; we can tell them when we deliver Dean’s breakfast. He’ll most likely want the car stored there as long as they’re with us, unless we need ground transport.”
“Not sending them straight back to Mechanicsburg, then?”
“Even with Agatha no longer being possessed, The Other is the biggest threat to her. The castle can hold off any rogue sparks that come calling. Von Blitzengaard’s dead, and Father publicly acknowledged you as the future Storm King, so the conspirators should be on the back foot for at least a few days. And Punch and Judy should be ready to decant today or tomorrow, so we can send them to Agatha as soon as they’ve recovered enough to travel. The Winchesters will be the most help to her here, working with us. Take that conversation just now about the Geisters’ religion-had that ever occurred to you or your father?”
Tarvek grimaced. “No. Of course, my father had been besotted with Lucrezia for years before she even met Bill Heterodyne. He was obsessed with bringing her back. If he had known the Geisters’ beliefs could have such an effect, it wouldn’t have bothered him-for all I know, his adoration of her was as literal as theirs.”
“You see? Quite apart from their Spark, we need the fresh perspective. They’ve got experience with large-scale monster outbreaks and supernatural wars, too, which we don’t, however much we’ve learned from our fathers. And even if we tried to send them back to Agatha now,” Wulfenbach added wryly, “I’m not sure they’d go.”
“Rather like Jägers, aren’t they? No, I expect not.”
Winchester returned, looking a bit damp-faced but otherwise still fairly sleep-rumpled, and the three men gathered up the still-warm remains of breakfast and headed toward Winchester Major’s lab. They were still a few meters away when:
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
“DEAN!” Winchester Minor yelled, shoved the tray into the hands of a passing airman at the same time he drew his gun, and charged toward the lab, where whatever was making the noise was still blaring a single steady note. Tarvek and Wulfenbach chased after him. He flung open the door-
-and found the car, with a dazed Winchester Major sitting in the middle of the front seat, beeping and revving its engine angrily at the tall, burly, white-haired man it had pinned against the wall.
“What abomination of science is this?” demanded Othar Tryggvassen.
The beep stopped in favor of a chorus of female voices singing, “Don’t say nothin’ bad about my baby!”
Winchester Major’s eyebrows rose even higher as he stared at the car’s controls.
“Baby!” Wulfenbach called. “Stand down!”
“Don’t tell me what to say!” sang a different female voice. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
“BABY!” Winchester Minor thundered.
With a sulky honk, the car shut down, keeping Tryggvassen pinned but no longer causing a scene.
“What the...” Winchester Major began.
“One thing at a time,” Wulfenbach stated, shouldering past Winchester Minor and walking toward the car. “I want to know why she pounced on him.”
“She?” Tarvek echoed.
“No muscle-bound man can take my hand from my guy,” sang yet another female voice.
Wulfenbach shot the car a knowing look. “I see.”
“Wulfenbach!” boomed Tryggvassen. “We meet again! But do not think you can elude me this time, for I, Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer, shall drag you back to the baron if it is the last thing I do!”
Wulfenbach crossed his arms with a smirk. “You’re too late. I am the baron.”
That rattled Tryggvassen. “Wh-what?”
“You heard me. My father’s dead. And if you were thinking of using anyone or anything in this lab to get to me, I believe the Black Lady has put paid to that idea.”
“Yakkety yak, don’t talk back!” agreed the car.
Tryggvassen opened and closed his mouth a couple of times without managing to say anything.
“Somebody wake me up!” Winchester Major demanded sleepily.
Wulfenbach ignored him. “As it happens, however, I have a job for you myself, Herr Tryggvassen.”
“Oh, dear,” said Tryggvassen.
“The empire will, of course, be sending emissaries to all the rulers of Europa and beyond to announce my accession. I expect that some of them will decide to test my will as soon as possible. Unfortunately, as you may or may not be aware, a neural clone of The Other has appeared and is causing trouble that must be dealt with immediately. There had been three, to our knowledge, but the one afflicting the Lady Heterodyne and the one that had been installed in Anevka Sturmvoraus have already been eliminated.”
Tryggvassen’s eyebrows shot up. “You killed-”
“The Lady Heterodyne lives. She has merely been exorcised. But that leaves us the problem of the third clone.”
“Ah, and you wish for Me to dispatch her!”
“Well, I don’t know how much you’d enjoy that, seeing as it’s taken over Zola La Sirène Dorée.”
The odd visor-like dark spectacles Tryggvassen wore couldn’t hide his rapid blinking in shock. “Little Zola?”
“Her real name,” Tarvek chimed in, “is Zola Malfeazium. Her mother was Demonica Mongfish.”
“That explains a lot,” Wulfenbach muttered. “But no,” he went on, “that’s not the job I have for you, Herr Tryggvassen. I need you to take a message to the Polar Ice Lords, stating that if they even consider assaulting the empire-and especially if they make any move against Mechanicsburg....” He paused for emphasis.
“You got blood on your face, you big disgrace,” the car sang over what sounded like stomps and claps, “Wavin’ your banner all over the place.”
“We will, we will rock you!” both Winchesters joined in.
Tryggvassen swallowed hard. “And what’s to prevent me from simply escaping? Your father’s explosive collars no longer work, now that Castle Heterodyne has been repaired.” He pulled down the collar of his mustard-yellow turtleneck sweater to show that his neck was otherwise bare.
Wulfenbach smirked again. “Your sister was a prisoner in Castle Heterodyne, was she not?”
Tryggvassen’s eyebrows climbed even higher. “You plan to use Sanaa as a hostage?!”
“Oh, no. I’m sending her with you.”
Tryggvassen quailed.
Wulfenbach grinned. “GRANTZ!”
Amazingly, Grantz was within earshot and came running. “You called, Herr Baron?”
“See Herr Tryggvassen to Mechanicsburg to pick up his sister. Then deliver them to the palace of the Polar Ice Lords and leave them there.”
“Very good, Herr Baron. Er-”
The car started its engine and backed up enough for Grantz to get close but made sure Tryggvassen couldn’t run before Grantz had firm hold of him. Then it backed a couple of meters further to let Grantz pull Tryggvassen away, bidding him a taunting farewell with a male chorus singing over drums, guitars, and saxophone, “See you later, alligator! / After ’while, crocodile!”
As Grantz escorted Tryggvassen down the hall, the airman with the tray came to the door nervously. “Er, Herr Baron?”
“I’ll take that,” said Tarvek and did so. “Thank you.”
The airman understood the dismissal and beat a hasty retreat.
Winchester Major scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sam, please tell me I’m trippin’ on paint fumes.”
“Sorry, man,” replied his brother. “That really happened. The car’s alive.”
“How the hell even....”
“I saw the sign,” sang the car, “and it opened up my eyes!”
“... what... did... did I do that?”
“You make me feel, / You make me feel, / You make me feel like a natural woman.”
Winchester Major shook his head. “I thought I just repaired you.”
There was a burst of static that sounded a bit like someone trying to find a particular radio frequency before a male voice sang, “Don’t know much about a science book, / Don’t know much about the French I took....”
“I’m curious just how self-aware and autonomous she is,” Wulfenbach admitted. “Are there voice controls per se, or-”
The overhead light inside the car came on, directly over Winchester Major. “I’m just a love machine, / And I don’t work for nobody but you!”
Winchester Minor raised an eyebrow. “What am I, chopped liver?”
“I’m your vehicle, baby, / I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go!”
Winchester Major groaned in disgust. “I hate that song.”
“I’m sorry,” sang a nasal female voice accompanied by violins, “so sorry....”
Winchester Major patted the top of the control panel with a sigh. “I need coffee.”
The driver’s door swung open.
“Thanks, Baby.”
“You can’t seriously believe that’s her name, can you?” Tarvek objected. “That’s... that’s....”
“Undignified?” Wulfenbach offered, amused.
“Yes!” All right, a horseless carriage, however self-aware, was hardly on the same level as the Muses, but honestly....
“Impala,” Winchester Major said with a groan as he got out stiffly. “She’s a ’67 Chevy Impala.”
Wulfenbach nodded thoughtfully. “Swift as a gazelle. She does run like the wind at need.”
“My buddies and me are gettin’ real well known,” Impala preened. “Yeah, the bad guys know us, and they leave us alone.”
Winchester Minor snorted. “I wish.”
Winchester Major, however, had poured himself a cup of black coffee and was guzzling it. He finished the first cup with a groan of relief and poured a second. “Baby, that was a hell of a way to wake a man up.”
Impala demurely played the opening measures of the second movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. Winchester Minor and Wulfenbach laughed; Winchester Major grumbled and cut open a croissant to start piling it with ham, cheese, and slices of hard-boiled egg.
“It was rather rougher than a wasp eater nose to the ear,” Tarvek stated.
Winchester Minor snorted. “I swear that thing has me looking for candy wrappers.”
Winchester Major looked at him oddly. “Dude, Gabriel’s dead.”
“We’ve thought that before and been wrong.”
Winchester Major grumbled again and stuffed a slice of orange in his mouth to eat while he decided on condiments for his croissant. Finding only jam and butter, he grabbed a bun to put them on.
He had just finished and taken a large bite of the jam bun when Dolokhov burst in. “There you are, Your Highnesses! Mulverschtag’s about to be hit from two directions. The revenant army continues to lose ground slowly, but the fighting is likely to intensify as they get pushed into the town and find cover. Best estimate is that they’ll reach Mulverschtag within the next hour or two. And from the other direction... well... whatever those monsters were that came out of Sturmhalten’s sewers, they’re almost to Mulverschtag. Dr. Sun managed to examine the samples brought in by the ground troops before the hospital was attacked, but we don’t yet have a good way of killing them.” Dolokhov ran one hand through his hair while another held a report out to Wulfenbach.
Winchester Minor grabbed it instead and held it where his brother could read it with him without getting jam on the paper.
“Got a bit more information than that for you, Herr Baron,” added an unexpected British voice. Tarvek and Wulfenbach turned to see the owner of the voice saluting. “Airman Higgs reporting, sir.”
Wulfenbach returned the salute. “Ah, Higgs, good. Boris, put this man on detached service, reporting directly to me.”
So he had figured out that the mild-mannered blond wasn’t simply a Wulfenbach airman, nor even English. Tarvek approved.
Bewildered, Dolokhov made a note of the order in his notebook. “Very good, Your Highness.”
“You were saying, Higgs?”
“Talked with Her Ladyship’s Jägers last night, sir,” Higgs replied. “Seems there’s monsters and monsters, if you take my meaning. The usual lot from the sewers, we can take those down with conventional weapons. But there’s another batch what was barricaded in a lab below the Deepdown-them glowin’ slime monsters, what I had to fight off to save your father. Those are the ones what could be trouble. All I could do was to knock ’em off the ship.”
Tarvek frowned in genuine confusion. “What lab below the Deepdown?”
“’Twas just off the main room o’ the Geisters’ base, sir, and that door was blocked off with a rubbish heap-bricks and boulders and the like. They’d got lost tryin’ to find their way to Her Ladyship, saw the Geisters leavin’ with their equipment and a whole convoy o’ slaver engines. But the tunnels to the surface were blocked; the only way out they could find quick was through that lab. Dimo said the rubbish heap looked like it had been there some time. Maxim saw a fair bit o’ acid damage in the lab, and Oggie said the place smelled like a bog.”
“Methane,” Dean murmured, eyes narrowed. “Methane and hydrogen sulfide.” He absently finished off his jam bun.
“They don’t cause much acid damage when they move,” Higgs continued, “but they do spit some kind of acidic poison. One of ’em got Dimo’s left hand, and it was in his blood and moving up his arm in seconds. Turned the blood to glowin’ green. Oggie amputated just before the arm melted.”
The Winchesters frowned and went back to studying Dr. Sun’s report.
Wulfenbach turned to Tarvek. “What do you know about these things?”
Tarvek shook his head. “Nothing, I swear. I knew my father had filled the Deepdown sewers with dangerous experiments to keep anyone from finding the Geisters, but there were no indications in his notes of any that match that description, even in the notes he thought I couldn’t find in the safe he thought I couldn’t open. Either he didn’t know about them himself, or he destroyed all mention of them so long ago and so thoroughly that we have no hope of finding anything now.” He paused. “I suppose they might have been an early attempt at the mucosapedalian guard slimes in the hangars at the Refuge of Storms, but that was always held by the von Blitzengaard side of the family. Of course, it could also explain where Tweedle got the idea for the Nullabist potion....”
The Winchesters blinked and looked at each other at the same time.
Then Winchester Minor cleared his throat. “So what do you think?”
“Salt ’em first,” replied Winchester Major. “If that doesn’t dehydrate ’em enough to kill ’em, try hittin’ ’em with sodium bicarbonate.”
“Why not lye? That’s a stronger base.”
“Yeah, but to disrupt their anaerobic metabolism, we’ve got to introduce more oxygen fast, so....”
“Vinegar and baking soda. Got it.”
Wulfenbach raised an eyebrow. “And if that’s not enough?”
Winchester Major shrugged. “Shoot ’em. If the ventilation doesn’t get ’em, the reaction to the lead should-most lead salts are insoluble anyway.”
Tarvek frowned. “That explanation was surprisingly non-mystical.”
Winchester Major shrugged again. “Hell, things were made in a lab. Makes this a problem for science, not magic.”
Higgs started puffing on his pipe to hide his smile.
“Right,” said Wulfenbach. “Did you get all that, Boris?”
Dolokhov nodded, jotting notes with both sets of hands. “I believe there’s a support gig that should have the speed necessary to make the salt drop. But how much-”
“Get one of the Deep Thinkers to work it out. Or put Higgs in charge of it. We’ve got to get cracking on a solution for the revenant problem. Dean, you’re with me. Sam, you assist Sturmvoraus.” Wulfenbach tossed Tarvek his notebook.
“Got it,” the brothers chorused.
Dolokhov, still making notes, walked off with Higgs.
Winchester Major grabbed his croissant sandwich to eat as he walked. “Catch you later, Baby,” he said.
Impala responded with a fanfare that made both brothers laugh.
Tarvek blinked. “Er, what....”
“Theme from Rocky,” Winchester Minor explained. “Also entitled ‘Gonna Fly Now.’”
“Not that I have any intention of flying any faster than we already are,” Winchester Major added.
Wulfenbach grinned. “Oh, don’t worry. Leave that part to me.”
Tarvek suddenly felt uneasy. “You’re not going to go off and get yourself killed, are you?”
“Good heavens, no. This flyer definitely works. Agatha redesigned the engine.”
“... Oh. Well, then.”
Wulfenbach and Winchester Major left, and Winchester Minor also started for the door. But when Tarvek started to follow, Impala beeped at him quietly.
Tarvek paused and looked at it. “What?”
“Take it easy, take it easy, / Don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy.”
“May be too late for that,” he murmured-and started. “Wait, what do you care?”
“Lucretia MacEvil, little girl, what’s your game?”
Tarvek’s skin crawled. “You think Zola’s out there?”
“Don’t sleep in the subway, darling....”
“Prince Tarvek?” Winchester Minor called from the door.
“Bye-bye, baby, baby, goodbye,” Impala sang cheerfully.
Rattled, Tarvek turned to go. But at the door, he glanced back-and got the briefest glimpse of a man with golden brown hair and golden hazel eyes smirking at him from behind Impala’s steering wheel.
Next
[1] Incident inspired by researchgrrl’s sidesplitting true tales of her ferrets’ antics.
Previous | Master Post
Chapter 7
MacArthur Park Is Melting in the Dark
Tarvek found himself being tickled awake by whiskers. He peeled open his eyes to find his vision filled with a grey, furry face as a cold, rubbery nose mashed against his.
“Dook,” said the wasp eater.
“Thank you,” Tarvek rasped groggily. “I don’t suppose you could go for coffee?”
“Snurf.”
“Didn’t think so.” He closed his eyes.
“Snee?”
“No.” He rolled onto his side.
It stuck its nose in his ear and huffed.
“Oh, all right.” He sat up with a groan. “I suppose Wulfenbach put you up to this.”
The wasp eater chuckled and scampered down to pounce on what looked at first like a lump of blankets on the floor between the bed and the door but turned out, once Tarvek had his specs on, to be Winchester Minor, sound asleep on his stomach and completely oblivious to the weasel dancing around on his broad back with a noise that sounded almost like botherbotherbotherbother. What on earth was he doing down there? He hadn’t even dressed for bed-of course, no more had Tarvek, but he at least had the excuse of not having brought any luggage. He was reasonably sure there had been a bag or two in the back of the horseless carriage Winchester Major was repairing. Yet here was Winchester Minor still in his denim trousers and undershirt.
Tarvek’s head still felt like it was stuffed with cotton wool, and he realized it had been a week or more since he’d actually gotten a decent night’s sleep-a good two days since the Si Vales Valeo, before which he’d been (in reverse order) deathly ill, badly wounded, and running ragged trying to keep up with Lucrezia, Agatha, and Anevka. One night’s rest wasn’t enough to undo that. But since the wasp eater clearly thought that stupid o’clock was time to get up, he had no hope of being allowed to get back to sleep. Groaning again, he got up and investigated the room. He wouldn’t be able to get past Winchester to get out, but there was a gas ring in one corner with a kettle and other tea-making supplies, all apparently imported from England. This must have been Wooster’s room, then-yes, there were two doors, one of which must communicate with Wulfenbach’s quarters. He’d been too far gone last night to notice. Ah, well, caffeine was caffeine. Tarvek filled the kettle, fired up the gas ring, and started tea.
Unfortunately, that drew the attention of the wasp eater, which scurried up his leg to look over his shoulder, then leapt onto the shelves to investigate every box and tin in search of a treat. He tried without success to get it down, but it did catch a rust spider and crunched its prey happily. Not finding much in the way of people food, Tarvek decided to settle for some dry biscuits to go with his tea. He also located a notepad (new, or at least any pages with indentations had been removed-good spy, Wooster) and pencil, and a few minutes later, he was settled with tea and biscuits and was attempting to write a to-do list. The wasp eater, meanwhile, had returned to the project of waking Winchester and was snuffling its way up his neck, nose buried in the curling ends of his collar-length brown hair. Eventually it tickled its nose too much and sneezed violently directly into Winchester’s hair, then wiped its nose on his scalp. [1]
“Cuddidou’, D’n,” Winchester mumbled into his pillow without actually waking up.
What was Winchester doing on the floor, anyway, and dressed so shabbily when a spark of his caliber should be well settled with either ancestral lands or a high position in the household of a lord? Granted, things were probably different in America, but even Wulfenbach dressed his lackeys better than that. Tarvek himself was going to need new clothes to get by until they could retake Sturmhalten-he quickly sketched a couple of suits to order from the on-board tailor; he was not about to borrow from Wulfenbach, for all they were the same size. But there wouldn’t be many humans aboard from whom Winchester could borrow even if he were willing, and having any of the late baron’s clothes cut down... oh, no, that would never do. Those styles were almost as old as the baron himself. Still, a spark in Agatha’s service couldn’t be allowed to dress so poorly or so strangely, never mind the risk that the rest of Winchester’s shirts would be as eye-watering as that horrid brown-and-blue plaid he’d worn the day before. The lines of the shirt hadn’t been bad, as the way the yoke curved to points looked very American, but since that would be obscured by the waistcoat, perhaps the frock coat ought... hm.... Tarvek sent the pencil lead sweeping across a fresh page, settling what the overall look should be before producing separate sketches of the various pieces and a list of colors and fabrics. He’d need to call the cordwainer, too, as the boots both brothers wore might be practical only for a mechanic or farm laborer, and Winchester Minor needed a proper gun belt. Yet what Winchester Major had been wearing the previous night had suited him well enough, with the notched-collar waistcoat and band-collared shirt, though perhaps a frock coat like Winchester Minor’s might not go amiss, and brighter colors than the sepia palette... maybe a good forest green shirt with a cream trilobite-jacquard waistcoat....
He was still sketching when there was a quiet knock and the side door opened-and Winchester Minor was instantly awake, sitting up, and aiming his gun at Wulfenbach’s nose.
“Whoa!” yelped Wulfenbach, falling back a step. “Sam, it’s me!”
Winchester sighed wearily, relaxed, and lowered his gun. “Sorry, dude.”
“How did you...” Tarvek began but backtracked. “I barely saw you move!”
Winchester snorted. “Old habit. In our line of work, you get used to things tryin’ to break in and kill you. ’Course, it’s not much defense if another hunter comes after you and manages to steal your gun before making any sort of noise that could wake you.”
“I... don’t suppose you survived that one?” Wulfenbach asked.
Winchester chuckled. “Nope. That’s the time we remember having gone to Heaven. Angels made sure of it. But hell, you’re not a hunter until you’ve died once.”
Tarvek’s mouth fell open. He covered by asking, “This is probably a ridiculous question, but how many times have you died?”
“Me?” Winchester thought a moment. “Five, I think? Dean’s died over a hundred times, if you count the run-in with the Trickster. Even Cas has died three times. And that’s not counting the last-second healings.”
“Sweet lightning.”
“Yeah. Like I told Gil last night, Death’s probably glad to be rid of us.”
Wulfenbach took a deep breath and said, “Right. I don’t know what you and Dean are used to having for breakfast....”
“Cereal or grapefruit for me, usually,” Winchester replied. “Eggs or pancakes sometimes-depends on where we’re eating. Dean will eat anything that’s not a salad, but he usually wants some kind of meat, like bacon or sausage.”
“Ah, good. I’ve ordered a full breakfast sent up for us; there should be enough variety for you, and we can take Dean a tray from what’s left when we’ve finished. I found him asleep in the lab.”
“Guess he’ll still be working on the car today.”
“Oh, no. He’s finished.”
Winchester’s eyebrows shot up. “Seriously? Huh.”
Tarvek frowned. “I thought you knew he was a spark.”
Winchester turned to stare at Tarvek with nearly neck-breaking speed. “He’s what?!”
Wulfenbach rubbed the back of his neck. “Oh, yeah, you were asleep when Theo explained. The Spark is a particular kind of combination of intellectual gifts and abilities, and people who have the Spark are generally called sparks. You’ve already met several-me, Agatha, Sturmvoraus, Theo. And we all have our specialties. Dean’s is clearly mechanical engineering. I’m guessing yours is something to do with the science of information.”
“My-”
“I concur,” interrupted Tarvek before Winchester could object that he wasn’t a spark. “When we arrived last night, you hadn’t even seen Anevka to know anything about her design, yet you sounded like you knew exactly how to retrieve data from both her and the beacon eng-oh. Red fire, I forgot. The beacon engine’s not in Sturmhalten Castle anymore. The Geisterdamen took all the equipment with them when they left, burned all their papers, and collapsed the tunnels behind them.”
“WHAT?!” Wulfenbach exploded. “Where were they going?”
“I’m not sure. Lucrezia didn’t trust me that much, and neither did the Geisters. I wouldn’t have found out that they planned to burn down the chapel dedicated to Lucrezia if I hadn’t been talking to Vrin when she gave the order to set the fire.”
“A chapel?!” Wulfenbach and Winchester chorused.
“Er, yes. The Geisters consider Lucrezia their mother goddess and Agatha her holy child.”
Winchester frowned. “These Geisterdamen. How many of them are there?”
“I... I’m not sure. The White Elite alone number three thousand. Why?”
“Because belief can have incredible power-and give incredible power. In our world, the strength of the pagan gods depended on the number of worshippers they had. And we once had a case where enough people believed a house was haunted that they made it haunted by a Tibetan thought form called a tulpa. If Lucrezia found some way for her soul to absorb the power offered by the Geisters’ faith, that could be what made her The Other... and it could make defeating her more difficult than we thought.”
“B-but Geisters are revenants! Lucrezia probably ordered them to believe in her!”
“And that changes anything how? Look, I know I don’t know much about the situation, but it sounds like Lucrezia was able to upload herself into the beacon engine, mind and soul. That’s not a typical haunting. She shouldn’t have been able to choose the object to which her ghost was tied. That alone suggests that the Geisters’ faith has some effect.”
“And the same could be true of the other revenants,” Wulfenbach added, “the humans with no symptoms. If Lucrezia ordered them to worship her, could they resist?”
Tarvek’s heart sank. “No. I mean, it is possible for a revenant to shake off Lucrezia’s control of his own accord-Von Pinn did it, and from what Zola said, a few of the Geisters were able to-but it would take an incredibly strong mind. Vrin, the high priestess, could resist Anevka but had trouble resisting Agatha. Your father might have managed it eventually.”
Wulfenbach held up Tarvek’s notebook. “You’ve got a formula in here that should break the mental control without causing the wasp to release the neurotoxin that killed my father.”
“Should, yes, not that I knew about the neurotoxin, but I’ve had no way to test that formula. If Winchester hadn’t shot out Anevka’s voice box, we could use that, but... huh. I might be able to rebuild it. Of course, my oscilloscope readings of Agatha’s voice are still in Sturmhalten, but....”
“Might be faster to e-” Winchester caught himself and corrected, “I mean, send Agatha a message and ask her to come in person, or send a recording.”
“Recording,” Wulfenbach agreed. “We shouldn’t take her away from rebuilding Mechanicsburg just for that.”
Tarvek nodded thoughtfully. “That ought to be enough for the average revenant. But if the formula works, the next problem will be delivery.”
“Gas.”
“Or aerosol,” suggested Winchester, “if it has to remain in liquid form. Hell, you could even rig up some kind of crop duster spray if you had to-uh, a heavy mist sprayed from the back of a low-flying airplane.”
Wulfenbach tapped the notebook against his chin as he considered. “Wish I knew where Wooster left my flyer. I suppose I can get Dean to help me build a new one while you two sort out the spray.”
Breakfast arrived just then, and Tarvek sent the Lackya who brought it to the tailor with his sketches. As they ate, Wulfenbach got Winchester telling stories that were both amusing and sad, revealing as they did that the brothers were even worse off than Tarvek had imagined and had actually lived in their car for most of their lives. And then there was the horrifying tale of the aforementioned Trickster incident, wherein Winchester had permanently lost his taste for breakfast sausage while trapped in a time loop and reliving variations on the same tragic Tuesday until finally cornering the offending spirit and forcing it to release them. As he finished the story, the wasp eater climbed up on his shoulder and chirruped sadly.
“Dean doesn’t remember it,” Winchester concluded matter-of-factly. “Hell, I barely even think of it anymore. Not like it’s the worst thing to happen to either of us.” He tossed back the last of his tea, then looked at Wulfenbach. “Uh, where’s the restroom?”
Wulfenbach gave him directions, and Winchester excused himself, taking time to put on his socks and boots, settling his gun in the back of his waistband before shrugging his shirt back on to conceal it, and putting the wasp eater on the bed before he left. But once the door was closed, Tarvek and Wulfenbach sat staring at each other in silence for a moment.
Then Wulfenbach shook his head. “We can’t let them go back. Not to that.”
“I ordered clothes for them, along with mine,” Tarvek stated by way of agreement. “I don’t mind paying-”
“No, no, they’re my guests. And they’ve earned that and more. I’ve found quarters for them near Dean’s lab; we can tell them when we deliver Dean’s breakfast. He’ll most likely want the car stored there as long as they’re with us, unless we need ground transport.”
“Not sending them straight back to Mechanicsburg, then?”
“Even with Agatha no longer being possessed, The Other is the biggest threat to her. The castle can hold off any rogue sparks that come calling. Von Blitzengaard’s dead, and Father publicly acknowledged you as the future Storm King, so the conspirators should be on the back foot for at least a few days. And Punch and Judy should be ready to decant today or tomorrow, so we can send them to Agatha as soon as they’ve recovered enough to travel. The Winchesters will be the most help to her here, working with us. Take that conversation just now about the Geisters’ religion-had that ever occurred to you or your father?”
Tarvek grimaced. “No. Of course, my father had been besotted with Lucrezia for years before she even met Bill Heterodyne. He was obsessed with bringing her back. If he had known the Geisters’ beliefs could have such an effect, it wouldn’t have bothered him-for all I know, his adoration of her was as literal as theirs.”
“You see? Quite apart from their Spark, we need the fresh perspective. They’ve got experience with large-scale monster outbreaks and supernatural wars, too, which we don’t, however much we’ve learned from our fathers. And even if we tried to send them back to Agatha now,” Wulfenbach added wryly, “I’m not sure they’d go.”
“Rather like Jägers, aren’t they? No, I expect not.”
Winchester returned, looking a bit damp-faced but otherwise still fairly sleep-rumpled, and the three men gathered up the still-warm remains of breakfast and headed toward Winchester Major’s lab. They were still a few meters away when:
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP!
“DEAN!” Winchester Minor yelled, shoved the tray into the hands of a passing airman at the same time he drew his gun, and charged toward the lab, where whatever was making the noise was still blaring a single steady note. Tarvek and Wulfenbach chased after him. He flung open the door-
-and found the car, with a dazed Winchester Major sitting in the middle of the front seat, beeping and revving its engine angrily at the tall, burly, white-haired man it had pinned against the wall.
“What abomination of science is this?” demanded Othar Tryggvassen.
The beep stopped in favor of a chorus of female voices singing, “Don’t say nothin’ bad about my baby!”
Winchester Major’s eyebrows rose even higher as he stared at the car’s controls.
“Baby!” Wulfenbach called. “Stand down!”
“Don’t tell me what to say!” sang a different female voice. “Don’t tell me what to do!”
“BABY!” Winchester Minor thundered.
With a sulky honk, the car shut down, keeping Tryggvassen pinned but no longer causing a scene.
“What the...” Winchester Major began.
“One thing at a time,” Wulfenbach stated, shouldering past Winchester Minor and walking toward the car. “I want to know why she pounced on him.”
“She?” Tarvek echoed.
“No muscle-bound man can take my hand from my guy,” sang yet another female voice.
Wulfenbach shot the car a knowing look. “I see.”
“Wulfenbach!” boomed Tryggvassen. “We meet again! But do not think you can elude me this time, for I, Othar Tryggvassen, Gentleman Adventurer, shall drag you back to the baron if it is the last thing I do!”
Wulfenbach crossed his arms with a smirk. “You’re too late. I am the baron.”
That rattled Tryggvassen. “Wh-what?”
“You heard me. My father’s dead. And if you were thinking of using anyone or anything in this lab to get to me, I believe the Black Lady has put paid to that idea.”
“Yakkety yak, don’t talk back!” agreed the car.
Tryggvassen opened and closed his mouth a couple of times without managing to say anything.
“Somebody wake me up!” Winchester Major demanded sleepily.
Wulfenbach ignored him. “As it happens, however, I have a job for you myself, Herr Tryggvassen.”
“Oh, dear,” said Tryggvassen.
“The empire will, of course, be sending emissaries to all the rulers of Europa and beyond to announce my accession. I expect that some of them will decide to test my will as soon as possible. Unfortunately, as you may or may not be aware, a neural clone of The Other has appeared and is causing trouble that must be dealt with immediately. There had been three, to our knowledge, but the one afflicting the Lady Heterodyne and the one that had been installed in Anevka Sturmvoraus have already been eliminated.”
Tryggvassen’s eyebrows shot up. “You killed-”
“The Lady Heterodyne lives. She has merely been exorcised. But that leaves us the problem of the third clone.”
“Ah, and you wish for Me to dispatch her!”
“Well, I don’t know how much you’d enjoy that, seeing as it’s taken over Zola La Sirène Dorée.”
The odd visor-like dark spectacles Tryggvassen wore couldn’t hide his rapid blinking in shock. “Little Zola?”
“Her real name,” Tarvek chimed in, “is Zola Malfeazium. Her mother was Demonica Mongfish.”
“That explains a lot,” Wulfenbach muttered. “But no,” he went on, “that’s not the job I have for you, Herr Tryggvassen. I need you to take a message to the Polar Ice Lords, stating that if they even consider assaulting the empire-and especially if they make any move against Mechanicsburg....” He paused for emphasis.
“You got blood on your face, you big disgrace,” the car sang over what sounded like stomps and claps, “Wavin’ your banner all over the place.”
“We will, we will rock you!” both Winchesters joined in.
Tryggvassen swallowed hard. “And what’s to prevent me from simply escaping? Your father’s explosive collars no longer work, now that Castle Heterodyne has been repaired.” He pulled down the collar of his mustard-yellow turtleneck sweater to show that his neck was otherwise bare.
Wulfenbach smirked again. “Your sister was a prisoner in Castle Heterodyne, was she not?”
Tryggvassen’s eyebrows climbed even higher. “You plan to use Sanaa as a hostage?!”
“Oh, no. I’m sending her with you.”
Tryggvassen quailed.
Wulfenbach grinned. “GRANTZ!”
Amazingly, Grantz was within earshot and came running. “You called, Herr Baron?”
“See Herr Tryggvassen to Mechanicsburg to pick up his sister. Then deliver them to the palace of the Polar Ice Lords and leave them there.”
“Very good, Herr Baron. Er-”
The car started its engine and backed up enough for Grantz to get close but made sure Tryggvassen couldn’t run before Grantz had firm hold of him. Then it backed a couple of meters further to let Grantz pull Tryggvassen away, bidding him a taunting farewell with a male chorus singing over drums, guitars, and saxophone, “See you later, alligator! / After ’while, crocodile!”
As Grantz escorted Tryggvassen down the hall, the airman with the tray came to the door nervously. “Er, Herr Baron?”
“I’ll take that,” said Tarvek and did so. “Thank you.”
The airman understood the dismissal and beat a hasty retreat.
Winchester Major scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sam, please tell me I’m trippin’ on paint fumes.”
“Sorry, man,” replied his brother. “That really happened. The car’s alive.”
“How the hell even....”
“I saw the sign,” sang the car, “and it opened up my eyes!”
“... what... did... did I do that?”
“You make me feel, / You make me feel, / You make me feel like a natural woman.”
Winchester Major shook his head. “I thought I just repaired you.”
There was a burst of static that sounded a bit like someone trying to find a particular radio frequency before a male voice sang, “Don’t know much about a science book, / Don’t know much about the French I took....”
“I’m curious just how self-aware and autonomous she is,” Wulfenbach admitted. “Are there voice controls per se, or-”
The overhead light inside the car came on, directly over Winchester Major. “I’m just a love machine, / And I don’t work for nobody but you!”
Winchester Minor raised an eyebrow. “What am I, chopped liver?”
“I’m your vehicle, baby, / I’ll take you anywhere you wanna go!”
Winchester Major groaned in disgust. “I hate that song.”
“I’m sorry,” sang a nasal female voice accompanied by violins, “so sorry....”
Winchester Major patted the top of the control panel with a sigh. “I need coffee.”
The driver’s door swung open.
“Thanks, Baby.”
“You can’t seriously believe that’s her name, can you?” Tarvek objected. “That’s... that’s....”
“Undignified?” Wulfenbach offered, amused.
“Yes!” All right, a horseless carriage, however self-aware, was hardly on the same level as the Muses, but honestly....
“Impala,” Winchester Major said with a groan as he got out stiffly. “She’s a ’67 Chevy Impala.”
Wulfenbach nodded thoughtfully. “Swift as a gazelle. She does run like the wind at need.”
“My buddies and me are gettin’ real well known,” Impala preened. “Yeah, the bad guys know us, and they leave us alone.”
Winchester Minor snorted. “I wish.”
Winchester Major, however, had poured himself a cup of black coffee and was guzzling it. He finished the first cup with a groan of relief and poured a second. “Baby, that was a hell of a way to wake a man up.”
Impala demurely played the opening measures of the second movement of Haydn’s Surprise Symphony. Winchester Minor and Wulfenbach laughed; Winchester Major grumbled and cut open a croissant to start piling it with ham, cheese, and slices of hard-boiled egg.
“It was rather rougher than a wasp eater nose to the ear,” Tarvek stated.
Winchester Minor snorted. “I swear that thing has me looking for candy wrappers.”
Winchester Major looked at him oddly. “Dude, Gabriel’s dead.”
“We’ve thought that before and been wrong.”
Winchester Major grumbled again and stuffed a slice of orange in his mouth to eat while he decided on condiments for his croissant. Finding only jam and butter, he grabbed a bun to put them on.
He had just finished and taken a large bite of the jam bun when Dolokhov burst in. “There you are, Your Highnesses! Mulverschtag’s about to be hit from two directions. The revenant army continues to lose ground slowly, but the fighting is likely to intensify as they get pushed into the town and find cover. Best estimate is that they’ll reach Mulverschtag within the next hour or two. And from the other direction... well... whatever those monsters were that came out of Sturmhalten’s sewers, they’re almost to Mulverschtag. Dr. Sun managed to examine the samples brought in by the ground troops before the hospital was attacked, but we don’t yet have a good way of killing them.” Dolokhov ran one hand through his hair while another held a report out to Wulfenbach.
Winchester Minor grabbed it instead and held it where his brother could read it with him without getting jam on the paper.
“Got a bit more information than that for you, Herr Baron,” added an unexpected British voice. Tarvek and Wulfenbach turned to see the owner of the voice saluting. “Airman Higgs reporting, sir.”
Wulfenbach returned the salute. “Ah, Higgs, good. Boris, put this man on detached service, reporting directly to me.”
So he had figured out that the mild-mannered blond wasn’t simply a Wulfenbach airman, nor even English. Tarvek approved.
Bewildered, Dolokhov made a note of the order in his notebook. “Very good, Your Highness.”
“You were saying, Higgs?”
“Talked with Her Ladyship’s Jägers last night, sir,” Higgs replied. “Seems there’s monsters and monsters, if you take my meaning. The usual lot from the sewers, we can take those down with conventional weapons. But there’s another batch what was barricaded in a lab below the Deepdown-them glowin’ slime monsters, what I had to fight off to save your father. Those are the ones what could be trouble. All I could do was to knock ’em off the ship.”
Tarvek frowned in genuine confusion. “What lab below the Deepdown?”
“’Twas just off the main room o’ the Geisters’ base, sir, and that door was blocked off with a rubbish heap-bricks and boulders and the like. They’d got lost tryin’ to find their way to Her Ladyship, saw the Geisters leavin’ with their equipment and a whole convoy o’ slaver engines. But the tunnels to the surface were blocked; the only way out they could find quick was through that lab. Dimo said the rubbish heap looked like it had been there some time. Maxim saw a fair bit o’ acid damage in the lab, and Oggie said the place smelled like a bog.”
“Methane,” Dean murmured, eyes narrowed. “Methane and hydrogen sulfide.” He absently finished off his jam bun.
“They don’t cause much acid damage when they move,” Higgs continued, “but they do spit some kind of acidic poison. One of ’em got Dimo’s left hand, and it was in his blood and moving up his arm in seconds. Turned the blood to glowin’ green. Oggie amputated just before the arm melted.”
The Winchesters frowned and went back to studying Dr. Sun’s report.
Wulfenbach turned to Tarvek. “What do you know about these things?”
Tarvek shook his head. “Nothing, I swear. I knew my father had filled the Deepdown sewers with dangerous experiments to keep anyone from finding the Geisters, but there were no indications in his notes of any that match that description, even in the notes he thought I couldn’t find in the safe he thought I couldn’t open. Either he didn’t know about them himself, or he destroyed all mention of them so long ago and so thoroughly that we have no hope of finding anything now.” He paused. “I suppose they might have been an early attempt at the mucosapedalian guard slimes in the hangars at the Refuge of Storms, but that was always held by the von Blitzengaard side of the family. Of course, it could also explain where Tweedle got the idea for the Nullabist potion....”
The Winchesters blinked and looked at each other at the same time.
Then Winchester Minor cleared his throat. “So what do you think?”
“Salt ’em first,” replied Winchester Major. “If that doesn’t dehydrate ’em enough to kill ’em, try hittin’ ’em with sodium bicarbonate.”
“Why not lye? That’s a stronger base.”
“Yeah, but to disrupt their anaerobic metabolism, we’ve got to introduce more oxygen fast, so....”
“Vinegar and baking soda. Got it.”
Wulfenbach raised an eyebrow. “And if that’s not enough?”
Winchester Major shrugged. “Shoot ’em. If the ventilation doesn’t get ’em, the reaction to the lead should-most lead salts are insoluble anyway.”
Tarvek frowned. “That explanation was surprisingly non-mystical.”
Winchester Major shrugged again. “Hell, things were made in a lab. Makes this a problem for science, not magic.”
Higgs started puffing on his pipe to hide his smile.
“Right,” said Wulfenbach. “Did you get all that, Boris?”
Dolokhov nodded, jotting notes with both sets of hands. “I believe there’s a support gig that should have the speed necessary to make the salt drop. But how much-”
“Get one of the Deep Thinkers to work it out. Or put Higgs in charge of it. We’ve got to get cracking on a solution for the revenant problem. Dean, you’re with me. Sam, you assist Sturmvoraus.” Wulfenbach tossed Tarvek his notebook.
“Got it,” the brothers chorused.
Dolokhov, still making notes, walked off with Higgs.
Winchester Major grabbed his croissant sandwich to eat as he walked. “Catch you later, Baby,” he said.
Impala responded with a fanfare that made both brothers laugh.
Tarvek blinked. “Er, what....”
“Theme from Rocky,” Winchester Minor explained. “Also entitled ‘Gonna Fly Now.’”
“Not that I have any intention of flying any faster than we already are,” Winchester Major added.
Wulfenbach grinned. “Oh, don’t worry. Leave that part to me.”
Tarvek suddenly felt uneasy. “You’re not going to go off and get yourself killed, are you?”
“Good heavens, no. This flyer definitely works. Agatha redesigned the engine.”
“... Oh. Well, then.”
Wulfenbach and Winchester Major left, and Winchester Minor also started for the door. But when Tarvek started to follow, Impala beeped at him quietly.
Tarvek paused and looked at it. “What?”
“Take it easy, take it easy, / Don’t let the sound of your own wheels make you crazy.”
“May be too late for that,” he murmured-and started. “Wait, what do you care?”
“Lucretia MacEvil, little girl, what’s your game?”
Tarvek’s skin crawled. “You think Zola’s out there?”
“Don’t sleep in the subway, darling....”
“Prince Tarvek?” Winchester Minor called from the door.
“Bye-bye, baby, baby, goodbye,” Impala sang cheerfully.
Rattled, Tarvek turned to go. But at the door, he glanced back-and got the briefest glimpse of a man with golden brown hair and golden hazel eyes smirking at him from behind Impala’s steering wheel.
Next
[1] Incident inspired by researchgrrl’s sidesplitting true tales of her ferrets’ antics.