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However, I hadn’t found any references to brothel women going missing. Had the mercury dragon gone hunting somewhere else, bringing her pilfer back to the lab? Had the organs been stolen from a morgue during autopsy? If so, how had she gained access to the corpses?
Considering there were two tables in the room suitable for operating on someone, I worried there were unreported missing women. The woman’s questions, and dismay that my disappearance would be noticed, added to my concerns.
Across the lab, another open door waited, and it led into a long, sterile hallway with several more open doors. With zero idea how to get out of the place, I decided any direction was better than sticking around, so I headed to the right, stopping at every door to peek inside.
A hellish variety of labs awaited me, and not all the rooms were empty. Someone had been in the process of dissecting a woman, her body at least a week and a half into the decomposition process. I shuddered, especially as several of her organs had been left on a counter to rot.
With the confirmation there were bodies, likely kidnapping and murder victims, I eased my derringer from its specialized holster, held it at the ready and pointed safely away from me, and continued creeping down the hallway. Several more labs with partially dissected bodies waited, and a few of them were far enough through putrefaction I could no longer tell their gender at a glance.
Maybe I wasn’t a cop any longer, but I would make certain the mercury dragons paid for their crimes, securing justice for those who’d been left to decay, part of some demented and forgotten science experiment.
The hallway ended at a turn, which lasted only a few feet before a flight of steps led upwards. Like every other door in the place, the one at the top was open. Not one to ignore an opportunity, I headed up, my calf protesting every step. The landing above opened to stone walls decorated with tapestries depicting mercury dragons in combat. They breathed silvery-white fumes onto their opponents, which were dragons of every other color. The corridor extended in both directions, coming to an end at another tapestry. I assumed hallways branched out from either side.
I headed to the right and crept down the hall, stopping to peek through each open door.
How could anyone sleep knowing there were people rotting beneath them? However, as bedrooms typically had windows, I crept into the second one I came across upon determining nobody occupied it.
Any other day, I would have appreciated the rustic charm of the place, as though the room had been transported out of some cozy log cabin. A fireplace waited with fresh wood, but cobwebs and dust clung to the poker, ash shovel, and bucket.
The scent of age beat decay any day of the week, but I decided my opinion remained unchanged. Knowing what lurked in the basement turned my stomach and left me grateful I hadn’t become the next victim. Well, yet.
Like the doors, the windows were open. I couldn’t tell if I faced dawn or dusk, but the gloom made for a perfect cover for escape. Judging from the trees, the boulders scattered across a parched lawn, and the lack of taller buildings anywhere to be seen, I’d been taken somewhere outside of Dragon Heights.
That would complicate matters for me. While I’d made my way to Dragon Heights, I’d travelled by bus, and I’d arrived in the middle of the night. Once I’d arrived, I’d mostly stayed in the Gray Ward, doing my best to dodge notice outside of my bounty work.
All I could do was hope to find a road, follow it at a distance, and locate a sign pointing me in the right direction. Once far enough away from the property, I’d worry about flagging somebody down and hitching a lift to the nearest hospital or police station.
Either would serve my purposes.
In good news for me, the window opened a few feet over the ground, and while there was a security system in place, it was set to the frame of the window rather than the screen. The height of the screen’s clasp would pose a problem, but I could break it free with a little brute force or with the help of a chair. Had the woman wanted her screens left intact, she would have refrained from kidnapping me in the first place.
Returning my derringer to its hidden holster, I went to the fireplace, grabbed the poker by its handle, and made use of the business end to manipulate the screen open. It put up a fight, and rather than struggle with it, I shoved the pointy end through the mesh, angled the metal shaft, and pulled the entire damned thing out, ready to catch it with my left hand.
I earned a face full of dust for my effort. After freeing my impromptu tool, I tossed the screen onto the bed to limit the noise. As the poker made an excellent weapon in a pinch, I tossed it outside before dragging a chair over, sitting on the sill, and dropping to the ground a few feet below, careful to land on my uninjured leg.
All remained quiet and still. I retrieved my poker, checked around for anyone, and hurried to the nearest source of cover, an old oak tree gobbling up space in the yard. Once in the shelter of its broad trunk, I took my time examining my surroundings.
The mansion, a three storied monstrosity reminiscent of some squat castle lacking towers, devoured space and marred the natural beauty of the landscape around it. Glass orbs filled with a silvery substance hung from beneath the second and third story windows. I could only assume liquid mercury resided within the spheres. A single broken sphere would lead to madness or worse—and it explained a lot about the woman’s behavior. If the horns contained mercury as well, I expected she drew closer to madness and death with her every breath.
Exposure to the treacherous element would make a mess of my day—and life. I bowed my head, sighed, and listened for any signs of trouble. Distant roars and sirens offered a clue, and I could guess at the sirens and at least two sources of the roars.
The source of the sirens would provide a method of getting to a hospital, and once there, I’d request every single vaccination I could imagine, including treatment for rabies, just to make certain I emerged mostly unscathed from my adventure to the mercury madhouse. I would do my best to be wise and sensible, scouting out the source of the sounds before requesting assistance.
I might even stoop to confessing I wanted my parents.
I wouldn’t have much to worry about when armed with a pair of angry dragons, and I wasn’t above hiding behind them. Anyone with any sense would hide behind the angry dragons after taking a claw to the side and being shoved in the basement of a demented woman with a fixation on mercury.
Hoping I wasn’t going to regret my decision, I headed in the direction of the roars and sirens.
TWENTY-FOUR
“Spoken like a true dragon.”
Tuesday, April 28, 2167
The Fringe
Dragon Heights, Wyoming