My profession comes with a certain measure of tranquility that I will never admit that I enjoy… then again I refuse to admit that I enjoy anything.  As can be expected of such things, I become somewhat irate when my serenity is interrupted.  The event I’m speaking of presently was an instance when an inebriated Cameron (more so than usual) burst into my office, claimed that I had made himself and Kale into “magical muscle”, and then proceeded to bawl like a toddler until the aforementioned half-demon dragged him out.  I would later find out from Simon that Cameron had been forced to kill a Seelie girl, and doing so had got him comparing himself to a common assassin.  I would hardly think them assassins; I thought it due to their own incompetence that they so rarely found a peaceful solution to the tasks they were assigned.
As I re-arranged a stack of books that the Irishman had knocked over, a loud chime sounded.  It came from an antique clock that I had found some years prior, the noise alerting me to the hour.  Now that the device had my attention, I noticed the rhythmic ticking left in the wake of the chime.
I didn’t notice the shiver running up my spine until it reached the base of my neck.  I rubbed my neck absentmindedly, discovering that my hair was standing up on end.  Strange.  Why would… oh.  That.  All this talk of assassination and the sound of the gears had pulled a rather… unpleasant memory to the surface of my mind.
I have said before that I have a price.  Once upon a time it was a bag of silver.  The payment here is largely unimportant, as I would not receive it.  It’s only purpose here was to give me the initiative to take up the task lain before me.  The year was 1936.  My task’s name was Irvine Forsythe.  A great many people wanted him dead.
I had garnered that he was (apparently) a man of some infamy.  My clients went slightly pale when I asked them his name, that followed by a look of shock when I replied that I’d never heard of him.  Wondering if I was falling out of place with the rest of the world, I asked several associates and Nimue about this Forsythe character; they’d never heard of him either.  I then supposed it was his deeds rather than himself that stimulated such a reaction in my clientele.  They’d called him a “Necromechanist”, that being another word whose meaning was lost upon me.  In any case, I doubted he would be so fearsome with a knife in his back.
I tracked him for a week before finally catching him in London.  It was snowing when I found him, and I frowned somewhat when I noticed his lack of layers.  Besides the suit of the modern day gentleman, all he had on was this long, inky black jacket that had an odd blue design inset into it.  The pattern reminded me of veins.  I was further disconcerted when I noticed how pallid this man was.  The cold air had brought out a measure of color to my own pale skin, but he looked as white a sheet.  Finally, I noticed that he carried with him a metal case that twitched and rocked slightly from time to time.  I theorized that that might be one of the reasons his followers were so terrified by him.  I was largely unimpressed.
I followed him for a few minutes, wondering if I should take the initiative here, when he turned into an alleyway.  I darted after him, wondering if it could be a trap.  It was not.  Forsythe had slowed to examine his watch, oblivious to the world around him.  I crept up behind him silently, freezing when he stopped… and frowned when he set down his case to fiddle with the device more intimately. For a man that inspired such fear, he wasn’t very observant.  At this point, I decided I’d wasted enough time and set about finishing the deed.  My knife wound around Forsythe’s throat and opened a channel from which a great deal of blood flowed, the scarlet river staining his the face of his watch.
I stood back to watch as he stumbled a bit, choking on his own blood.  I hmed contentedly when he finally fell to his knees, the red stream slowing to a trickle… and then I went rigid with surprise when he got back up.  He clasped his hands to his throat, something glittering between his fingers, and the blood stopped flowing entirely.  The veins on his jacket then pulsed, changing from blue to red, and Forsythe turned to face me.  I was somewhat horrified to see what looked like a small spider sewing his throat back together.  When it was wholly sealed, the small creature vanished.  Forsythe addressed me.
“The fact that you were able to catch me unawares is quite a feat, sir,” he said, he voice dreadfully complacent, “I could use a man of your talent.”
I said nothing, but took hold of my daggers once more.
“If that was meant to be a refusal,” continued my target, “Then let me clarify: your mind is of no use to me.  A corpse will do fine.”
Any retort I could have come up with would have been ultimately pointless.  Instead I lunged forward, my daggers aimed at his throat.  Forsythe twisted out of my way, into my periphery, and I heard the sound of metal being unclothed.  A thin blade had emerged from underneath Forsythe’s wrist.  His own counterattack was somewhat clumsy (he obviously not being much of a warrior), but as the blade passed by my head I felt a wave of heat wash over my cheek.  The blade was made of steel, a metal toxic to my ilk.
My caution now riled, I began to dart around Forsythe, easily dodging his lunges.  An opportunity quickly presented itself, and I plunged one of my blades into his back.  It only slowed him for a moment, but it was a moment I took to viciously assault his front, repeatedly stabbing him in the ribs.  On the fifth strike, my blade caught on something.  It was hard and pushing back against my knife.  This development caught me off guard, Forsythe seizing my distraction as an advantage.  I barely managed to avoid being stabbed myself, the steel edge nicking my side.  A cry escaped my lips as I felt the skin around the wound burn.  It left me undefended for a second time, and it was only fortune that Irvine decided his chest of my knives rather than kill me.  His shoe, as fine as it was, had a metal toe, and performed quite well as he kicked me off of him.  It also served to bring me out of my pain-induced trance and returned my focus to Forsythe.  Needless to say, I was not prepared for what I saw.
My assault had left a rather large whole in Forsythe’s chest, it being practically a window.  I saw not only bone and organ, but also metal.  Irvine’s insides were riddled with gears and pipes, the largest of the latter having been punctured.  From it I could see a great deal of blood leaking, intermixed with what looked to be oil.  Forsythe saw my staring, and the veins on his jacket darkened back to blue.  His face remained complacent.
“I see you’ve noticed my ‘inner workings’,” said the clockwork man, “I assure you that what you see can be repaired, and any present damage is superficial at best.  With that in mind – ” another steel blade emerged from under his unarmed wrist “ – shall we continue?”
At this point I hissed a Seelie curse decided that a change of tactics was in order.  I sheathed my daggers and stretched my hands out to Forsythe, covering him in a blanket of fire.  I did not wait to see his reaction, but turned my abilities towards the wind element, quickly bearing myself towards the rooftops.  I touched down on the shingles not a moment too soon; below me, there was an ethereal shriek and the glow from the fire vanished.  I crouched low on the roof, staring down at the clockwork man; though he was smoking somewhat, and drenched by melted snow, he was otherwise unscathed… further.  He was looking around the alleyway, apparently having lost track of me.  The veins on his jacket turned orange.
“I’m sure that you’re still here, sir,” he said, his blades retracting, “Whether it be by magic or cunning you’ve eluded me, I’m sure you’re still here.”  When I did not answer, he crouched down and opened his metal luggage. Inside of the case was a great array of scalpels, gears, wrenches, and other such tools and parts.  I frowned as he pulled out a strange apparatus from the depths of his case.  It was like a glove, but the fingers were tipped with syringes.  “That curse from before,” continued the clockwork man, “It was Avalonian, no?  Arthurian era, if I’m correct.  That makes you a Seelie.  Your species always throws me for a loop; I can never remember if it’s steel or iron that’s poisonous to you.”  Forsythe rummaged for a bit before withdrawing two vials filled with a metallic liquid.  “Fortunately for me,” he finished, plugging the capsules into his gauntlet, “I have both.”  At that point, dread began to push against my ribs, yet Forsythe wasn’t finished.  After pulling the glove onto his hand, he reached back into his case and withdrew a small cage that was thrashing about violently.  It was filled with a group of tiny, snarling creatures with glowing red eyes.
“Find him,” commanded Forsythe before opening the cage.  A metallic whirring pierced the air, and the creatures took to the sky, erratically circling the area.  For a moment, I wondered if they would be able to distinguish me from such a height.  My answer came when the group let out a communal shriek and tore down towards me.  Another curse escaped my lips, and I began to run.  The uneven rooftops did nothing to help my flight, and it was only by the grace of gravity that I managed to avoid the hunters.  I hit the ground hard, a cushion of snow thankfully avoid any broken bones.  I had landed in a new alleyway, this one closed at one end.  I glanced upward in time to see one of the hunters come screaming down the wall.  I reacted instinctively when it grew close, my hand lashing out like a cobra to grab hold of the thing.  What I found disturbed me more than Forsythe himself.
It had been a pixie, once upon a time.  She had been dead for quite some time now, what remaining flesh she had having rotted away to a large degree.  The horrific part was Forsythe’s modifications.  The pixie’s lower body had been torn away, a spider-like thorax having quadrupled the creature’s original leg count.  Her skull had been heavily modified, the upper-half of her head being dominated by a single glowing eye, and her lower jaw now some kind of pincer mechanism.  Worst of all were her wings, they being replaced by a pair of razor-edged propellers that crumpled upon falling into my grasp.  All of this metal was iron, and my hand instantly reddened and blistered.  I snarled in pain, dropping Forsythe’s unholy creation and crushing it under my boot.  The meaning of the term “Necromechanist” was now clear to me, and I understood that it was not fear on my clientele’s face, but instead revulsion.
A screech pierced the air, and I turned my gaze upward to see the pixie’s associates racing towards me.  I whipped my hand out to them.   Disgust crawled through my stomach as the abominations’ gears froze and they plummeted to the ground below.  With their demise, I assumed I was safe once more.
“Found you,” said the clockwork man in my ear, and I felt a white-hot pain in my back as the needles stabbed into me.  I couldn’t move the pain was so great, and it only grew worse as the syringes began to pump their toxic supply into my body.  I realized I would be dead momentarily.  I truly believed that that was the end… and then I remembered what abominations Forsythe made from the dead.  The sheer horror of the notion and unwillingness to be one of his clockwork monstrosities gave me drive to act as I did.  The sky darkened to a tempest within moments, and not one but three bolts of lightning descended from the sky and struck Forsythe full on and destroyed the entire alleyway.  I was knocked clear of the blast zone, the pain of the poison in my blood the only thing keeping me conscious.  The street had caved in under the spot where Irvine had stood, it opening up into the sewers.  What was left of Forsythe wasn’t much, but I was very unsettled to see the gears were still turning.
The rest of the night is a blur from thereon out.  I recall seeing a healer, and I know she did her job well as I’m still alive today.  I also vaguely recall defying her instructions to take my rest, but left the country that very night.  I did not return for a very long time.  The last thing I remember before my memory clears up again is returning the advance payment to my clientele upon my arrival home.  It was prudent of me too, because Irvine Forsythe was seen as an officer in the Third Reich some years later.  There was always an uneasiness at the back of my mind (a small fear that he might come knocking at my door one dark evening) until 1944, when I was informed that he had been incarcerated with special accommodations two years prior.
I frowned somewhat as I stared at the clock.  It was just a simple machine, and I would be ashamed to think that hearing it tick could unnerve me with thoughts of abomination cyborgs… though…
My frown deepened as I thought of the letter I’d received a week prior.  It had informed me that Forsythe had apparently escaped his prison a short while ago, and advised me to be on guard because of his apparently spiteful nature.  I reasoned that if he hadn’t come for me between 1936 and 1942, then he wouldn’t come now… but I nonetheless moved the clock into a closet where I couldn’t hear that abhorrent ticking.