The plague doctor's beak mask got stuck in the doorjamb just as Leo pried open the pocket watch.
"How many times?" The bartender smirked. "Steal from a cardinal, then drink in his parish?"
Leo didn't look up. The dried blood on his leather armor flaked as he moved, revealing glimpses of blue circuitry beneath his skin—or were they runes?
Click.
The watch sprang open. The tavern froze. Inside the lid, the Pope's mistress lounged nude, toying with a device unmistakably…
"A steam core?" The blacksmith's son gasped. "But the Church said these are blasphemous—"
Leo snapped the watch shut. The sound echoed like a gunshot.
Gregor and his mercenaries kicked in the door as Leo was teaching the tavern dog to play blackjack.
"Well well!" The giant overturned the table. "If it isn't the 'holy knight' who got kicked out of the monastery!"
Coins rolled across the floor. Leo's rusted sword pressed against Gregor's Adam's apple, its pitted surface resembling old bloodstains.
"Two corrections." His voice was soft. "First, they begged me to leave." The blade dipped. "Second, I don't gamble with dead men."
The back door exploded.
Three humanoid shapes crawled through the wreckage, their skin stitched with black thread, smoking brass devices embedded in their chests.
"H-Holy Corpse Soldiers?!" someone shrieked. "The Inquisition's elite!"
Leo grinned. He recognized those devices—identical to the "bio-boilers" he'd dismantled in Venice's catacombs three years ago. The Church was still testing alien tech on live subjects.
When the first Corpse Soldier lunged, Leo stabbed it with a red-hot meat fork. As metal screamed, he whispered to the creature:
"Didn't your bishop warn you?"
Sparks erupted.
"Orichalcum overheats…" The engine in the soldier's chest detonated, bursting its glass eye sockets, "…into fireworks."
The hooded woman appeared behind Leo as he dipped a severed finger in ale to write on the table.
"'I came to this world…'" Her mechanical voice recited the half-finished line, "'not to breed, but to witness how civilizations lie'—21st century poetry?"
Leo's sword met her throat—and clanged against metal. She pulled back her hood, revealing a prismatic left eye projecting images from Leo's deepest memories:
A burning city of steel falling through clouds.
"When the Black Moon rises." She tore open her clavicle skin—exposing a glowing blue port—"Come fix our ship."
Moonlight turned crimson. Leo looked down to see his shadow grow fangs.
(End of Chapter 1)