Just a Tease

I thought it might be fun to give you a teaser for Esprit de Corpse:

Jacqueline wiped the glass faceplate and tried to peer into the suit to find the secret of its workings. White vapors swirled about inside the casque, but just as the train’s billowing smoke had obscured the countryside on her ride, the vapors confounded her view. 

“There’s nothing here I can find. Perhaps lower? Behind the breastplate?  If I could open…”

Her voice trailed off as she realized the vapors had coalesced to a face, deathly white flesh sunken over a skull, like one recently dead. She couldn’t tell if the person was male or female, but the eyes, wild and terrified, pleaded in an awful expression of agony and anguish. Jacqueline’s heart pounded in rhythm with the erratic clanking of the bronze suit, and she caressed the glass, half in fear, half in consolation. The figure’s taut lips moved, but Jacqueline couldn’t make out what was said.

“A pry bar,” she cried. “Please, we must open this casque at once.”

At the urgency in her voice, the crowd backed even further, fearing the machinery would indeed explode as she had said. The engineer folded his arms and shook his head.

De Guise came forward to stand behind Jacqueline. “A pry bar, please, René.”

The engineer glared, but he stomped back to the cab of the locomotive and returned with the large tool, which he grudgingly handed to de Guise. 

“Will this do?” de Guise asked, offering it to her. “Shall I?”

Jacqueline grabbed the bar from him and placed its claws at the seam of the faceplate, catching a rivet. The figure within began to beat its head against the glass, signaling its desperation to be freed from the confining helmet. The entire form rattled all the more. Behind her, Angélique whined and gave a low moan. Jacqueline ignored her sister’s warning, intent on the eyes behind the glass. She leaned to the pry bar with all her weight...

The rivet popped and the faceplate flew open...

A high-pitched scream more ghastly than the locomotive’s whistle burst from the bronze mechanical man.