Hollowed Husks and Juniper Steam

The heavy iron plates sealed the arched windows with the dull, final thud of a guillotine.

Behind me, crystal flutes shattered on marble as twenty aristocrats backed into the center of the hall, clutching velvet lapels and jeweled collars. The pneumatic locks hissed, settling into their basalt frames with three hundred pounds of compressed pressure. At the entrance, the four liveried footmen stepped forward in unison, their dragging right hips swinging with the identical, grotesque tilt I had measured on my dissection table twenty-four hours earlier.

"Count Csáky," Baroness Margit said from the top of the malachite dais. Her voice lacked the natural resonance of human vocal cords; it sounded like dry paper scraped across tin. "You always had an unrefined habit of meddling in domestic affairs."

Zsigmond shifted his stance, his polished leather boot sliding half an inch forward on the parquetry. His cane remained in his right hand, but the silver hound's-head pommel twisted loose with a soft click.

"I merely appreciate fine taxidermy, Baroness," Zsigmond replied, his tone smooth as polished basalt. "Though my companion tells me your current mounting job is amateur work at best."

Margit did not blink. A real vampire would have displayed the subtle pulse of supernatural ichor behind the temples. Beneath Margit's powdered jawline, the skin remained as flat and motionless as cured sheepskin.

"You missed the sternocleidomastoid anchoring," I said, raising my voice enough to cut through the whimpering nobles. "A human neck carries eleven separate muscle bundles across the cervical junction. Your borrowed tendons are dragging two tenths of a second behind the bone. Whoever stitched you together forgot that dead meat doesn't pump blood."

Lord Hary let out a choked gasp, dropping his snuffbox. "Margit, what is this common girl babbling about?"

The Baroness turned her head toward him, forty degrees too fast.

The skin behind her left ear split.

It did not bleed. A dry, fibrous white seam tore down the side of her neck, unzipping the silk collar of her gown. Through the opening, gray tendrils coiled like braided horsehair, pulsing in the gaslight. The hollow interior of the thoracic cavity showed through the widening rift, empty of lungs, heart, or ribcage. The creature wore the Baroness the way an apprentice taxidermist wore heavy oilcloth aprons over street clothes.

"Insolent carrion," the thing hissed through two mouths at once—the Baroness's slack lips and the clicking mandibles inside her throat.

The four infested footmen drew pressurized steam cutters from beneath their coats, igniting the pilot valves with sharp metallic clacks.

"Move," Zsigmond said.

He did not grab me. He knew better than to spoil my balance.

Zsigmond blurred into motion, kinetic force snapping across the parquetry like a whip. His rapier cleared its scabbard in a flash of polished steel, catching the nearest footman under the jaw before the man could bring his steam cutter to bear. The blade drove straight through the neck, finding no resistance from blood vessels, only a spray of gray fibrous dust.

The remaining three footmen charged, firing high-pressure cutting jets into the crowd. Nobles screamed, scrambling over fallen chairs as blue-hot steam sliced through tapestries and plaster molding.

The creature on the dais shed the rest of the Baroness. The hollow skin slid to the floor in a heap of burgundy velvet and limp flesh. What stepped out of the husk stood eight feet tall, an segmented horror of pale, chitinous muscle and twitching whip-tendrils that whipped the air with wet, rhythmic snaps.

It lunged straight for my throat.

I did not run toward the barred main doors. I ran toward the malachite dais.

Behind the carved stone platform, the estate's copper heating conduits ran vertically into the ceiling flues. The pipes hummed with immense pressure, carrying superheated juniper steam from the basement boilers to warm the drafty stone manor. To an undead predator, high-pressure juniper vapor was absolute poison.

I dropped to one knee behind the ornamental brass register, sliding the surgical lancet from my sleeve into my right palm. With my left, I unstoppered the glass vial of concentrated ammonium brine I had mixed at dawn.

The mimic's tendrils lashed out, shattering the malachite urn above my head into a rain of green gravel.

"Csáky!" I shouted.

A wall of shadow slammed into the mimic's flank. Zsigmond materialized out of thin air, his rapier driving deep into the creature's lateral nerve cluster. The monster screeched, four barbed limbs snapping around Zsigmond's shoulders, locking his arms against his torso. His pale skin tightened under the pressure; the creature was crushing his ribs with enough force to splinter oak.

I did not waste time watching him suffer.

I jammed the tip of my hardened steel lancet into the brass expansion valve of the main copper riser. The metal resisted for a heartbeat, then the blade bit deep. I poured the entire vial of ice-cold ammonium brine directly over the boiling hot brass joint.

Thermal shock did the rest.

The brass collar fractured with the sharp crack of a pistol shot.

"Cover your lungs!" I yelled.

I jammed my sleeve over my mouth and threw my weight against the severed valve stem.

A deafening roar erupted from the copper riser. A solid wall of white, scalding steam blasted across the dais, thick with the pungent, oily stench of vaporized juniper berries.

The effect on the room was immediate and catastrophic.

The three infested footmen collapsed to their knees as the juniper distillate dissolved the fibrous anchors holding their borrowed limbs together. Their limbs detached from the joint sockets, rolling across the marble floor like discarded mannequins.

The mimic shrieked, a sound of tearing iron and wet parchment. Where the juniper vapor touched its pale chitin, the fibrous flesh turned black and liquified, sizzling against the marble like burning grease. It released Zsigmond, thrashing wildly in the blinding fog as its whip-tendrils melted into sticky tar.

Zsigmond dropped to one knee, coughing harshly. The ambient juniper in the air sapped his supernatural reflexes, but he remained on his feet, dragging himself toward the edge of the dais.

"The exhaust register," he rasped, his voice tight from the vapor. "The main flue is buckling."

Above us, the massive bronze exhaust grate in the ceiling was warping under the heat. The mimic, half its mass dissolved into steaming slop, scrambled up the decorative stonework with its remaining claws.

It shoved its deformed head into the buckling flue. Before it pulled its ruined body through the opening, its split mandibles clicked toward the choked ballroom below.

"You kill one skin," the creature shrieked, the sound echoing through the copper ducts. "The Grand Chancellor's throat was hollowed out three weeks ago! The coronation belongs to us!"

The bronze grate tore free, clattering down onto the marble floor. The creature vanished into the dark ventilation shafts leading to the Onyx Quarter rooftops.

The blast of steam had done its work on the perimeter walls as well. The thermal surge had blown the pneumatic gaskets on the rear service doors behind the dais, popping the deadbolts from the scorched jambs.

The surviving nobles were already pouring through the breach into the rainy courtyard, their screams waking the entire district.

I stood up, wiping soot and stinging juniper condensation from my cheek with the back of my hand. My lancet was ruined, its tempered tip melted and bent at a ninety-degree angle, but my fingers were steady.

Zsigmond reached my side, sheathing his rapier with a sharp click. His face was pale from the juniper exposure, but his dark eyes fixed on the empty exhaust hole in the ceiling with cold, lethal clarity.

"Three weeks," I said, looking down at the puddle of melted gray fiber on the dais. "The man running the entire imperial army isn't a man at all."

"Then we have six days until the coronation to carve him open," Zsigmond said.

He extended his arm. I did not take his hand to be led, but I matched his stride as we stepped through the broken service door into the cold, wet night.