Beauty and the Clockwork Beast

by Nancy Allen Campbell

  She supposed she would have to keep looking for the answers. Proving his innocence might be the most important thing she would ever do. Not only for him but for herself.

  Miles awoke with a start. As his eyes gradually focused on the flash of red beside his bed at the manor, his heart thumped when he saw his dead sister watching him, her eyes hard. “Oh, Marie,” he murmured, his voice thick with sleep. “What do you need from me?”

  Her gaze softened, and his eyes pricked with a surprising sting of tears.

  She moved slowly toward the door and turned to look over shoulder at him—pausing, waiting. He climbed out of the warm cocoon of his bed and dressed quickly, adding his overcoat when Marie looked at it pointedly.

  Miles glanced at Lucy’s closed bedroom door before following Marie out of the south wing. Lucy was fully invested in his family drama, and the thought crossed his mind to awaken her, but she was exhausted. He’d seen it in her face at dinner that evening.

  Marie moved swiftly down the hallway, turning corners and descending staircases so quickly Miles had to move nearly at a trot. It was no wonder Lucy had been chasing Marie at a dead run that second night when he’d caught her and hauled her into the library.

  There had been no further vampire attacks in his absence, either at the manor or in town, and Oliver had sent word that more investigators were on their way to Coleshire to look for new leads. Miles was relieved at the temporary respite, but he still needed to find the person responsible for the deaths of his sister and his wife, and the fact that the murderer was still at large gave him added incentive to keep Lucy at bay. If she were added to the list of growing tragedies . . .

  His heartclock tripped at the thought, as though a fist had reached into his chest and clenched it.

  Marie glanced back occasionally, eventually leading him out of the house and into the back gardens. She kept moving, past the greenhouse, through the paths of tangled, dead rosebushes, and into the thicket of trees beyond. He thought she might stop at her garden and felt a fair amount of surprise when she glided past it.

  He grew increasingly uneasy once he realized where she was going. The pathway beyond her walled sanctuary led through the trees and to a plot of land encircled by a wrought-iron fence with a gate that, he knew all too well, screeched on hinges as though protesting an unwelcome invasion by the living.

  The family cemetery was a fairly large affair, as through the years tenants had also been buried there. It was shrouded in trees whose thick, gnarled branches acted as protectors of the dead and a warning to those who might come to disturb.

  Marie passed directly through the gate, and as Miles opened it, true to form, the sound tore through the night. He would always hate that sound. It symbolized sadness and grief. He had heard it enough as a child, burying tenants who had been old or ill, but it now reminded him of laying his mother to rest. And his wife and sister.

  He hadn’t lost any sleep over the death of his father, and he flicked a dismissive and disgusted glance at the man’s ridiculously ostentatious headstone as Marie led him past it. That he could walk past the man’s grave without a flicker of emotion was a feat that had taken years to master.

  Images flashed through his mind. He had been a young man, out late at night, cavorting with friends, attempting to sneak back into the house unnoticed, when he’d come upon his father.

  His father, just outside these very gates, naked. That much had stopped Miles cold. And then the horror of watching the man shift—his limbs contorting, his muscles, bones, and tendons snapping and rearranging to accommodate a new form.

  Although he didn’t remember doing it, Miles must have made a sound that alerted the wolf to his presence—or perhaps it was his scent, carried on the breeze—because once his father had fully shifted, the wolf turned and ran at him. Before Miles had had the presence of mind to flee, the animal had been upon him, knocking him to the ground and taking a swipe at his head. He had turned his face, his scream trapped by the enormous paw pressing down on his chest.

  The wolf had paused, snarling and sides heaving, and then darted around the cemetery gates and into the trees, leaving Miles bruised and bleeding profusely from the ragged gash across his face.

  Once Miles had begun shifting, he’d assumed he would also be a danger to others because wasn’t that the case when he’d come upon his father? Lucy’s information that the animal wouldn’t do anything that the human wouldn’t do suddenly made sense. His father had not been a good man. He had been cold, distant, and cruelly dismissive. It was no wonder such a man had become a wolf and disfigured Miles in a way that changed his future completely.

  The images and memories heightened his agitation, despite his best intentions to remain impassive, so that by the time Marie reached Clara’s grave, he was on edge, strung taut.

  “What is it you wish for me to know?” he said aloud to Marie, who stood, looking at the ground that covered the body of his dead wife. His voice was harsh—he heard it himself—and Marie regarded him with a raised brow, looking so much as she had in life that he caught his breath. She had always disarmed him, pulled him from a sour mood with a sardonic comment, a playful, sisterly slap upside the head. He almost expected it of her now, and he felt his throat clog with unshed tears.

  “What is it?” he whispered, aching.

  Marie knelt on the ground and placed her hands flat. It was with no small amount of shock that Miles watched her curl her fingers into the frozen earth and begin to pull. Even more profoundly disturbing was the fact that she was actually moving the dirt.

  He dropped next to her and placed his hand over hers, only to be caught in a surreal flood of emotion and befuddled logic as his hand passed through hers and onto the ground. Her face was so close to his, so familiar and there that he found it impossible to believe she wasn’t real.

  Marie turned back to the ground and clawed at it violently, dirt and rock pulling up from the grave in small mounds that brushed against his hands and fell to the side.

  He looked at her face, a twisted mix of fury and desperation, and he instinctively reached for her shoulders, trying to turn her toward him, to stop her frantic movements.

  “Marie, stop,” he said as his hands passed through her ghostly form. “Stop.”

  She finally ceased, looking at him with wide eyes, sparked with equal parts anger and sorrow. Her face took on an expression of protest as she suddenly was sucked away from him, as though pulled from behind by an enormous hand. In the flash of an instant, she was gone.

  No! Miles hung his head, weary to the bone, and reached for the dirt his sister had overturned with such frantic desperation. With a sense of resolve, he regarded the shack in the corner of the graveyard, covered by ivy and branches. He knew it hadn’t been accessed in at least six months—maybe longer if Mr. Clancy had brought tools with him from outside for the recent burials.

  He broke the rusty lock on the shed and entered, his eyes falling upon a cluster of shovels in the corner. Grabbing one, he returned to the ground that covered his wife’s grave and dug the blade in deep.

  Lucy turned over in bed as the insistent noise of her telescriber on the nightstand pulled her from the deepest sleep she’d experienced in a long time. She grabbed the machine more to silence the racket than to see who wanted her attention so late at night.

  She finally, reluctantly, switched on the bedside lamp and squinted at the message.

  Balcony

  Lucy frowned. The sender screen showed the message had come from the grounds’ outbuilding, but there was no name attached. Balcony?

  She glanced at the double French doors that graced the far side of the room and led out onto the countess’s private balcony. Was it Miles? If he needed her, why hadn’t he just come to the door?

  She climbed out of bed, finding her slippers and padding across the room, shivering. When she reached the doors, she raised her hand to t
he curtain covering the glass and slowly inched it aside. She couldn’t see anything and lifting the fabric higher proved fruitless. There was nothing to see.

  Was she foolish enough to actually go out onto the balcony? She shook her head and turned away from the doors, making her way instead to the sitting room. Miles’s bedroom door was closed, but without giving it a second thought, she crossed to it and knocked.

  She waited for what seemed like a long time, and when he didn’t answer, she felt her muscles tense. Turning the knob proved fruitless; the blasted man had locked his door. Well, of course he had. Someone seemed bent on killing him. Her heart thumping at the thought, she wondered if she dared shoot the lock with her ray gun.

  Deciding desperate times called for desperate measures, she returned to her room, pawed through her portmanteau, and found the weapon. Within a matter of minutes, she’d blown a hole through both Miles’s doorknob and the locking mechanism. Nudging the door open with her foot, she looked into his bedroom only to find it empty.

  Rather than feel relief that he wasn’t dead, she grew short of breath. Her hand that still clutched the gun felt clammy. Where was he? Was he hurt? Abducted? She rubbed her arm across her forehead and, biting her lip in growing consternation, returned to her bedchamber, barely registering the pain of her sore ankle.

  She glanced at the telescriber, which had received another message. It was a repeat of the first. It had to be Miles. Who else would dare telescribe her in the middle of the night? She tightened her grip on her weapon and approached the double doors. Cracking one open, she braced against the bone-deep cold that immediately swept into the room from outside. Fog had gathered, thick and eerie, and she was unable to see more than a few feet beyond the edge of the balcony.

  She stood, her gun arm bent at the elbow, and tried to still her breathing, which sounded loud in the dense night. A sound to her left, quiet yet mechanical in nature, heralded the arrival of one of Mr. Clancy’s ’tons. The green uniform was visible through the balcony’s stone railings, and she tensed, frowning, and straightened her gun until it was level with the ’ton’s head.

  “A message from Mr. Clancy,” the boy told her as he cleared the railing. His black eyes were unblinking. “You needn’t shoot,” he added. Extending his hand, he presented a folded piece of paper.

  She finally took it, her eyes never leaving his face. “Why didn’t he telescribe me the message?” she asked him, wary.

  “He says it is a sensitive matter that oughtn’t to go on the official record.”

  The young man turned and climbed back over the balcony railing. He was quiet until he must have reached a height that made for a comfortable drop. She heard him hit the ground and then run toward the grounds’ shed. He was quickly swallowed by the thickening fog that steadily crept toward the house.

  Senses on alert and more than a little afraid, she backed into her room and closed the French doors firmly behind her. Opening the folded letter, she read the few words scrawled on the paper.

  His lordship is at the graveyard.

  She frowned. Why would Miles be at the graveyard at two o’clock in the morning, and why would Mr. Clancy want her to know? She quickly changed clothing, donning a riding outfit with minimal buttons and ribbons, and checked her pocket watch before putting it in her pants pocket.

  She’d only seen the graveyard from afar, and as she placed her thigh holster around her leg and secured the ray gun in place, she wondered how she was going to find it in the dark fog. Grabbing a Tesla torch, she tested it before leaving her room and making her way out of the south wing, exiting the house through the back kitchen door.

  The light she shone on the path through the woods didn’t penetrate the thick fog beyond a few feet, and the effect was disconcerting. It was as though she were walking into an abyss with no notion of what lay on the other side, and each snap of a twig, each sound of a night creature, was magnified all the more because nothing was visible.

  She couldn’t run. The lack of visibility hindered her, but so did the pain in her tender ribs and ankle. The combination of exertion and fear had her breathing rapidly, and the stabbing sensation in her side slowed her down despite her determination to reach the graveyard quickly.

  What seemed like an eternity was in reality a mere ten minutes, but by the time Lucy reached the looming graveyard gate, she felt as though she’d run all day. She stood for several long moments, catching her breath and wondering what she would say to Miles, wondering what he could possibly be doing.

  Shifting the torch to her injured hand and bracing it against her body, she reached for the handle on the gate and clasped it with fingers that were painfully cold. She slipped the latch and tugged on the heavy monstrosity, gasping in dismay at the horrid screeching sound that split the night.

  She stood rooted in fear. The thick fog swirled around her, she couldn’t see more than a few feet in front of her face, and she had no idea where to go. She wasn’t familiar with the landscape. She didn’t know where Miles was or if he was even really out there.

  Fighting back a whimper, she moved forward, shining the torch ahead of her and knowing full well that if someone meant her harm she was little more than a sitting duck. She was reluctant to pull out her ray gun for fear of accidentally blasting a hole through Miles’s chest. She doubted very much that Sam, talented though he was, would be able to repair the damage.

  A figure emerged from the fog and bore down upon her like a freight train. She stumbled backward in fear as the shape grasped her by the shoulders before she could draw her weapon.

  “Lucy!”

  Her breath left her in a rush, and to her horror, she felt her knees buckle. “Miles, I might have killed you!”

  He hauled her up against him, and she nearly sobbed with relief—both that he wasn’t dead and neither was she.

  “Woman, are you insane?”

  She nodded and bumped her head against his chin. “Yes. Yes, I do believe so.”

  He held her away from him, and she realized he was soaking wet with a combination of fog-induced dampness and sweat, and he was incredibly pale.

  “What are you doing?” She put her hand alongside his clammy cheek. “Miles, you do not look well. What is happening? I received a message from Mr. Clancy that you were here. He went to great trouble to secretly inform me.”

  Miles clenched his jaw. “He’s going to find himself unemployed by morning.”

  “No, no. Really, I’m sure he meant well. Perhaps he was concerned about you.”

  “So he sends out a tiny woman with broken ribs who can barely walk?” His eyes narrowed, and they were frighteningly bloodshot. “Tell me what you’re doing here.” His breathing was labored, though she wasn’t certain if it was from anger or exertion.

  The graveyard gate’s hinges screamed again, and Miles pulled Lucy behind him.

  Lucy unhooked her ray gun from her thigh holster and tapped his hand with it. He glanced down at it and cast an unreadable look at her before taking it from her fingers with a slight shake of his head. Inching slowly to the right, he backed her up against the trunk of a large, gnarled tree, shielding her from whatever was coming.

  Lucy heard the familiar whirring of ’tons moments before Miles let out a string of curses. She moved out from behind him and saw Mr. Clancy and four of his groundsboys approaching with shovels and large clippers.

  Mr. Clancy looked at her somewhat sheepishly before turning to Miles. “Stephen was supposed to tell her to meet me at the greenhouse,” he said gruffly. “I would never have had her walk all this way by herself.”

  Miles looked first at Lucy and then at the gardener before finally managing to speak. “What are you doing here?” he barked at the older man.

  “Miss Marie said you needed help,” Clancy answered as he shuffled closer. His eyes were suspiciously bright, and Lucy’s heart broke to remember how close he’d been to M
arie. “And so I came. With help.”

  Miles looked at him and then the groundsboys for a long moment, a muscle working in his jaw, before he nodded once. The fog combined with the light from the Tesla torch, giving Lucy another good look at the earl’s face, which was nearly gray.

  “What have you been doing, Miles?” she demanded.

  He didn’t respond, but, with a curt nod, he grabbed her hand and turned deeper into the graveyard. He stepped around headstones of varying heights, and she followed carefully, her suspicions confirmed by the time they reached their destination.

  The earth next to Clara Blake’s headstone had been partially dug. A lone shovel sat off to the side as if tossed there in a hurry. Lucy must have interrupted Miles when she opened the gate. “Why didn’t you tell me you were doing this tonight? It was my idea, and I didn’t mean for you to have to do this alone—I would have—”

  “Marie led me here,” he interrupted, his voice low.

  He tucked Lucy’s ray gun into his waistband and retrieved the shovel.

  Mr. Clancy put his hand on Miles’s arm. “Let the boys do the rest,” he muttered. After a significant pause, while the old man stared at Miles’s face, he added, “You’d best sit a spell.”

  Lucy spied a bench nearby, one of several conveniently placed for the bereaved to commune with their dead, and motioned to it with her head. To her relief, Miles followed without argument and sat next to her with a quiet exhalation of air.

  “You need to plug in, don’t you? Is it portable? Can I bring it to you?” She knew he wouldn’t appreciate the fussing, but she was fighting a sense of desperation that clogged her throat. If only Sam were still at the manor.

  “I have time,” he told her. “When we finish here, I’ll go up to the observatory.”