“I’m here,” I whispered back.
He held me at arm’s length so he could look at me. “Are you all right? Have you suffered any injuries? What news of the clock face?”
I took a deep breath against his barrage of questions. “Oh, Sebastian, I thought I’d never see you again!” I clung to his chest.
“You’re here now, mistress.” Dinga hopped up on the chair next to us, making him nearly eye level.
I nodded at him and looked back at Sebastian, unable to cope with the flood of emotions that swirled between us.
“Did you do it? Did you destroy the clock face?” Sebastian asked.
“Aye,” I ignored the tears rolling down my cheeks. “It is done.” I choked on a sob. “And with it, my mother as well.”
“I’m sorry,” said Sebastian, his eyes as glossy as mine. “But we managed to destroy the Keeper,” he boasted, his hand running through my hair. “We’re safe now. It’s over.”
“No, oh no,” I pushed away from him. “The Keeper looked fine to me when he tried to destroy me under the staircase!”
He pulled me back at arm’s length again. “What did you say?”
Dinga squealed. “That cannot be!”
“I said he attacked me, as I was trying to escape,” I repeated.
“How did he... how did you...”
“Victor,” I breathed, “Victor saved me.”
“But Victor was...”
“Dead, I know. I don’t know how, but he survived. And he jammed the Keeper’s gears in time for me to get away.”
“His what?” Sebastian’s face scrunched in confusion.
“Gears. Like the inside of a clock. The Keeper is a machine.”
Sebastian’s face grew dark, his eyes narrowed, and lips pursed tightly. “So that’s what it was, when I blasted him in the throne room, it knocked him across the room. He charged after us, but we narrowly escaped. Dinga said that he saw, well, how did you see it, Dinga?” Sebastian turned to the little demon.
“Mistress, he had the insides of a clock inside his face.”
I nodded. “I know.”
A look of astonishment passed over Sebastian’s pale features. “I thought he was just seeing things, so I dismissed it at the time.”
“Dinga wouldn’t lie, mistress.”
“I know, Dinga,” I told him.
Dinga shook his head, “Excuse Dinga, he must go check on Anual Elinar.” He jumped off the chair and scurried behind one of the tapestries.
I had forgotten Dinga and Sebastian had been getting Elinar to safety. I turned to call after Dinga, but he was already out of sight.
“Where is he now?” Sebastian asked, and I turned back to him.
“The Keeper?” I asked my head swimming from this rapid flood of information.
Sebastian nodded.
“The last I saw he was face down on the tile at the foot of the grand staircase.”
“Was Victor successful?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted sadly. “He didn’t look strong enough to get down those stairs, let alone take on the Keeper by himself. I fear he has failed as we did.”
Dinga poked his head out of one of the red and green tapestries on the right side of the room. “Anual Elinar is resting now, master.”
Sebastian nodded. “So, you were right, little friend, the Keeper is somehow a walking, talking, evil mechanism, of some kind.”
“Dinga thinks this will take more than weapons at our disposal.”
I looked at Dinga then back at Sebastian. “How do you kill a robot?” I remembered those old films my father used to watch, late into the night, after his bottle was gone and he’d tired of using me as a punching bag, where the lumbering metal robots had stomped through the city, bent on destruction.
I often wanted to be one of those people in the city, the pain ending swiftly as the metal foot came crushing down on me. Now I knew they were the tyrants, like my father, who destroyed the lives of others. They had no emotions, no thoughts, no feelings, just bent on controlling the world. The Keeper had to be stopped. I gripped the dagger at my side. What if he traveled to my world and inflicted his power there, too? Earth would be powerless against his magic and his fire breathing metal dragons.
“Robot? What is this, robot?” Sebastian looked at me, his head tilted slightly to the left.
I shook my head, coming back to the present. “Forget it. I mean, he’s certainly some kind of mechanism. What was it you called them in your work shop, the human things that ran on clocks?”
“Automatons,” He rubbed his chin and stared past me. “Lightning destroys clock works. Why didn’t it work? Why didn’t my power work?” he mused, mostly to himself.
“Didn’t you say you blasted him before?”
“Yes, but I hit the flesh, apparently. Surely if I was able to get inside him, well, maybe my power would work.”
Dinga appeared, crawling into the chair again and sitting, his short legs inches above the floor. “Master, surely you can’t walk up to him, shake his hand, and blast him?”
I shook my head. “It won’t work. We need a plan.”
“We need a distraction,” Sebastian said.
“The children, mistress,” Dinga added.
“Oh, shit,” I blurted.
Sebastian and Dinga looked at me.
I clamped my hand over my mouth. “Sorry. It’s a curse from my world. I couldn’t help it. We are in some deep trouble here.”
Sebastian frowned, but shook his head. “Either way, we have to get the children out of the mine before the Keeper uses them for his revenge. I’m sure he is not pleased at this moment.”
I thought about our time in the mine, when my brother Edwin had betrayed us and locked us down there. The thousands of children forced to work, while the city went about forgetting they ever existed, thanks to the Keeper’s magic.
“We need a plan to free the children and use them as a distraction. In the chaos we can move in and finish this.”
Sebastian nodded. “I have a couple of ideas.”
The three of us worked late into the night, sketching out plans. Our time was running out. I had no idea if, or rather when, the Keeper would start looking for us. His spies were everywhere; his eye was always on us. He would find us, and soon.
I rubbed my eyes. The clock hands on the cracked plaster ceiling above the door to the secret lair were pointing in opposite directions. Since time passed differently here than back in my world, I almost never knew what the little cogs that represented numbers actually stood for.
Dinga was spread out on one of the large oak chairs next to me, a scrawny leg dangled over the armrest, and one thin arm thrown behind his head.
I rubbed my eyes and stifled a yawn, stretching my arms over my head.
Sebastian glanced up at me. “I guess we should sleep at some point.”
“It seems so ridiculous to sleep when so many need our help.”
“Aye, but milady,” he rubbed at the bandage wrapped loosely around his brown curls, “it will do them no good if we aren’t at our best.”
A shiver shot down my spine as the memories of what passed for sleep in the torture chamber rolled into my brain. I sighed, relaxing a little remembering the soft four poster bed back in the workshop. It seemed forever ago we were curled up in Sebastian’s secret rooms near the palace, when it had only been yesterday. There would be no bed here to rest on, only a dais, a wide armchair, or thin padded mats were our comfort. I shook off the feeling of being strapped to that wooden table – a padded mat was better than the dungeon any day.
I nodded and pushed back from the table. “This time, you’d better not sneak in on me.”
Sebastian smiled. “No sneaking, Alayna, I promised.”
I was in the middle of pushing the chair back in when I froze. “That’s the second time today you’ve called me anything but mistress or lady, or even ma’am.”
Sebastian stood then and rounded the end of the table, taking my hands in his.
He planted a little kiss on my lips and hugged me to him. I didn’t resist. “For what it’s worth, Alayna, I am glad you survived today.”
“I am glad you survived, too,” I murmured into his shoulder.
“Aye, but will we survive tomorrow?” Sebastian pulled me to arm’s length, and I looked up into his face. His eyes were narrowed, his eyebrows creased.
“Will this all be for naught? What if we perish?”
A smile danced at the corner of his eyes, then. “It would seem not only has my language has changed in this ordeal, milady.”
“We have both changed, I think,” I smiled. Springing to my tip toes, I returned his kiss. “Now, let me go rest. We have dastardly villains to fight and a kingdom to rescue on the morrow, m’lord.” I grinned, accentuating the title at the end.
Sebastian finally smiled and released me. I took a step back and curtsied, even in my ripped slacks, fully aware one of my shirt sleeves was torn at the shoulder and my loose blonde braid was filled with dirt, debris, and who knew what else from this world.
“‘Parting is such sweet sorrow,’” I said over my shoulder, turning to find somewhere to lay my weary head. “‘That I shall say good night till it be morrow.’”
“Do pray tell, lady, some weird earth phrase?” Sebastian called behind me.
“Romeo and Juliet.” I ducked behind one of the curtained doors off the main hall. “It’s an earth thing, you wouldn’t understand,” I called.
I heard his laugh, one of the best sounds in the world to lull me to sleep. This world was in chaos, and surely the sunrise might even decide our fate. Yet, with Sebastian’s kiss lingering on my lips, I could think of little else.
Chapter Thirty-Three: Light and Fire
NEARLY BEING CRUSHED by the roof was a horrible way to be woken up, that’s for sure.
It wasn’t the roof being ripped away; it wasn’t the fire that rained down like burning brimstone. It was the sound of the ripping plaster that ejected me out of my sleep. It was the sound of the end, the sound of crushed dreams and quelled desires, the announcement of evil, the end of all things good and pure.
From the first day I saw the Rebellion’s underground cavern, carved into the ground, and plastered over for decades, I couldn’t shake the feeling something bad was going to happen. Those cracks in the plaster weren’t just announcing the passage of time but warning of a weakness.
We thought we were so secure under Bailia’s bakery. Hidden from the world, away from the Keeper’s prying eyes.
Victor, our leader, was dead.
His son and my half-brother, Edwin, had betrayed us.
The other members were no doubt either in hiding or dead, because Edwin had given the Keeper so much intel on them. Here we were, the last of the Order of the Dragon Key: just two humans and a demon, trying to save the world. We still had the key, but what good would that do us now? All I had left was Sebastian and Dinga, and this damn magical jeweled dagger.
Was it too much to ask to be safe and secure? Just for once? I rarely knew what it felt like, even in my short life. I didn’t have time to live.
But I didn’t have time to die, either.
It wasn’t the end, but it was the beginning.
“Sebastian!” I yelled, shooting out of bed. I strapped the jeweled dagger in its sheath around my waist and pushed my way from the collapsing door way that guarded where I had previously been fast asleep. “Sebastian, where are you?”
The grand table in the middle of the ballroom, where the Rebellion once sat strong and true but a few months ago, was alive with an orange and red flame. The crimson cushions on chipped oak chairs crackled with fire, curled, and blackened. Above me, the grinding of machines, the ticking of clocks, and the breath of fire echoed in the room. I dared a look up, exposing the purple and pink hues of the dawn, the crimson sun barely making its entrance into this strange world.
The metal wings of two huge dragons flapped with a clank and a grind, their mouths slowly cranking open to rain more fire down on us.
A claw grasped mine and pulled me out of the way. “Mistress!”
“Dinga,” I breathed, holding on and ducking under a large piece of falling plaster. “Where is Elinar and Sebastian?”
“Elinar is lost to us,” Dinga cried, his voice timid and terrified. “And Dinga cannot find Master Sebastian!”
“Gone?” I glanced to the burning table, where the ray gun was still propped, dangerously close to the spreading flames. “Never mind!” I pulled the small demon behind me. “We have to get out of here!” I grabbed the gun under my arm.
I would see the stairway a little ahead of us, and knew it was our only hope.
We dodged a small chunk of the wall, narrowly missing it landing at our feet, and then bent under flaming curtain caught in the breeze from the open roof. Just as we reached the bottom of the stairs, a beam burned to embers crashed in front of us, blocking our escape. I didn’t dare look behind me as I heard the swoosh of fire sweep the room. It was unbearably hot, and my chest heaved to breathe with all the smoke in the room.
“Is there any other way out of here?” I turned to Dinga.
Dinga shrugged, shaking, and moved closer to me. “I only know this place as well as you, mistress.”
“Alayna!”
I glanced around the burning beam, into the stairwell. All I could see was the top of black boots over tan pants. I thought the voice was familiar, but the din of the burning and crackling room nearly drowned out the voice.
“Toss me the ray gun!” I shouted.
“Sebastian!” I heaved the gun up the stairs.
A head ducked out from the stairwell; the gun pointed straight to the sky. The lightning sizzled from Sebastian’s hand and spun around the web at the end of the gun, concentrating into a powerful bolt of ammunition. With a crack that threatened to split my ear drums, I grabbed Dinga’s arm and shoved him to the ground beside me before it went off.
The lightning hit the dragons with more force than any thunderstorm I’d witnessed back home. I turned to see one metallic creature roar as its mechanisms shorted out with a burst of sparks that arced into the air. It plummeted toward the flaming table, landing with a concussion that sent burning wooden chunks and plaster dust everywhere. I lifted my arm to shield us.
Sebastian lifted the gun again, but before he could get a shot off, the other dragon cranked wide wings and lifted high into the air. One eye zeroed in on us as it rose, a bronze telescopic lens protruding and retracting from its bizarre ruby red sight. It was gone in a moment, leaving behind the hole in the ceiling, a burning table obscured under the weight of a metal dragon that was easily twenty feet long, and a ton of destroyed rubble.
Dinga hopped nimbly over the burning rubble at the bottom of the stairs, joining Sebastian. I took Sebastian’s offered hand and joined them glad I had ditched the flowing skirt for the smooth, tan pants. Between dragons spitting fire and marlita exploding, the less flammable I was, the better.
Balancing carefully on the stairs and watching flaming plaster fly to the ground around us, Dinga hopped slowly on one foot. Sebastian looked at me, then his eyes widened. “Bailia,” we said at the same time. He tucked the gun under his shoulder, and we raced up the stairs, Dinga on our heels.
The shop, a brilliant cover for the rebellion’s long-time hidden cavern, was destroyed, in fact, obliterated was a better word. I felt tears spring to my eyes as a I saw the crushed walls that had been ripped from the foundation, the shattered glass of the windows all around us. Crumbled bricks and other rubble piled everywhere around us. Even the rug that had covered the secret entrance was reduced to a burning heap.
Bailia was nowhere in sight.
“Oh my god,” I blurted. One of my leather-gloved hands flew to my face, and the other curled around the hilt of the dagger. Dinga dodged in front of me, leaping over debris and turning the corner of the last wall standing.
“Shh,” Sebastian urged. He had the gun out in front of him again as he side
stepped a stack of destroyed bricks, next to the gaping hole where the back door used to be.
One brick glowed softly for a moment, then extinguished. It reminded me of the secret entrance, built long before the magic users disappeared, the one only Sebastian’s power could access. It seemed so long ago since we had snuck back into the city and had our first rebellion meeting here.
Now, it was all over.
“The lady, mistress!” Dinga called from the other side of the bakery’s remains.
I grabbed Sebastian’s hand and we picked out way across the rubble.
The only wall in the bakery had been the one that separated the small living quarters from the store front. In the back room was a brass post bed folded in two and a dresser smoldering in flames, next to a small round table that had been flipped upside down. From under the edges of the table there was the lacy edge of a gray cotton nightgown, followed by thick legs that ended in unmoving soft, pink slippers.
Dinga’s head popped up from the table edge. “Mistress, Dinga is not strong enough to move the table!”
Sebastian propped the gun against the remains of the door frame and grabbed the edge of the table, pulling it free. He tossed the table behind him, where it smashed into a chunk of bricks, splinters of wood flying in all directions.
I nodded to Dinga, who grabbed a corner of a sheet from the bed and began flapping out the flaming dresser. The light pink rays of dawn were stretching out over the city, and the three-story building across the street showed signs of life and lanterns in almost every window. In the distance I could hear people screaming and shouting as they rushed in to the streets to see what was going on.
“Mother!” Sebastian sunk to his knees next to her, ignoring the flaming chaos behind him.
I stood next to the nearly lifeless body of the woman who had been Sebastian’s only mother figure for the last half of his life. It looked like the table had badly crushed her. Bailia’s chest was rising slowly but struggled to move at all. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth. Her brown hair, so heavily streaked with gray, spread out in all directions, her gray night cap thrown against the corner in the blast.
Clock City Page 28
