A Clockwork Christmas

by JK Coi, PG Forte, Stacy Gail; Jenny Schwartz

  She straightened her legs before her. “Look at these and tell me how that would be possible.”

  He didn’t look down. He looked straight into her eyes, seeing the steel that hadn’t been given to her by any doctor, but came from deep inside. Thankfully, it couldn’t be broken by anyone or anything. “I’m looking at the only part of you that really matters, Callie, and I know you can make anything possible.”

  She closed her eyes, but he wasn’t going to let her shut him out ever again and coiled his fingers through the short curls of her hair. He pulled her to him, sealing his promises and demands with a hard kiss that quickly turned into a sultry promise of another kind.

  Callie awoke with a strong feeling of unease. She’d tumbled into an exhausted slumber after Jasper had made her scream with pleasure yet again, but now she was awake already. They hadn’t made it to dinner, too engrossed in their rediscovery of each other to bear leaving the warm shelter of the bed. Night had fallen and the room was dark and cold without a fire in the hearth.

  So why do I smell smoke?

  She shifted in an attempt to move out of the shelter of Jasper’s arms.

  “What is it, Callie?” he mumbled in a thick voice, blinking.

  “I don’t know, but I think something’s wrong.”

  She stood and had just pulled on a wrap when something crashed through the window and glass exploded on the floor at her feet, spraying up to lacerate her arms and torso. The flames spread immediately, crawling up the delicate silk wrapped around her and blackening the metal of her legs. She quickly threw off the wrap. The fire hadn’t touched her skin, but it was already everywhere else, consuming the heavy drapes on each side of the window, and spreading across the floor and up the bed.

  “Jasper!” she cried. There was very little smoke in the room, but that’s because it was being sucked out by the open window, and the fresh air fanned the hot flames so they spread quickly, already too out of control to beat out.

  “Callie, get away from the window!” He’d jumped out of bed and was already pulling on his breeches.

  He reached for her hand and pulled her away from the open window, dragging a shirt over her head and thrusting her own breeches at her. She shook herself and pulled them on while Jasper went to the door. He grasped the door handle, then jerked away with a hiss and turned back to her.

  “The fire isn’t limited to this room, but this is our only way out. We’re going to have to give it a shot.” He pulled a hand through his hair before he spotted the pitcher of washing water on the night stand. He poured some out onto a hand towel and forced her to put it to her nose, while he dumped the rest over her head.

  “What about you?” she asked.

  “I’ll be fine. Right here with you.” Again, he reached for the door handle, but she stopped him and closed her iron hand over it instead. This was something, at least, that she could do better than anyone else.

  The door whooshed out of her grasp when she opened it and she jerked her arm up as a rush of hot air hit her in the face. But while the hallway was consumed by heat and smoke, she didn’t see any flames. Not yet.

  She shoved the bedroom door closed behind them, hoping to contain the fire that raged within for a little while longer. Both of them coughed. Callie could see, but only because of her heightened senses.

  “Come this way.” He grasped her arm and started pulling her down the hall to the stairwell, but she suddenly stopped and turned back.

  Patrick.

  “No, Jasper, wait!” she yelled, the smoke searing her already damaged throat. “I have to get Patrick.”

  “The boy? Ah, shit.” Suddenly the floor rumbled beneath them. “The fire’s already ablaze downstairs. The whole place could come down any minute now. You go and I’ll find him.”

  “No. I promised I would stay with him, and I won’t leave you either. Team. Remember?” She coughed again and started down the hall. Behind her he swore a blue streak, but followed. There was no time for arguing. They were a team, as promised. Which meant they had better well live through this, because she didn’t want to get Jasper killed trying to save a boy who might already be dead.

  She hadn’t taken two steps toward Patrick’s room when the first shot rang out. It missed her heart only because Jasper threw himself into her side and shoved her out of the way. The cloth she’d been holding to her mouth fell and was immediately forgotten.

  The next shot didn’t miss. It took Jasper in the arm and he bit out a shout of pain. Behind him a figure stood, half-concealed in the smoke.

  “Colonel,” he shouted from the shadows. “I’m very sorry about this.”

  “Murphy?” Jasper’s voice filled with fury as he faced his friend. “It was you! You were at the park yesterday. Did you set this fire too?”

  “It wasn’t supposed to be this way,” he answered, lifting his arm to aim for another shot. Jasper was pushing Callie steadily backward. The heat was unbearable, and flames were becoming visible all around them now. Obviously, the incendiary thrown through her window hadn’t been the only one. “And I want you to know I never meant for your lady to be hurt. It was supposed to be you. If you hadn’t been so slippery in France…”

  Jasper was moving. Slowly. He kept her at his back, but proceeded steadily along the wall, closer and closer to Murphy.

  “My men went to your home then, but you were still in hiding. I hadn’t expected them to take her, but…” Callie could see the shrug of his shoulders, and the grim line pulling his mouth tight. “Surprisingly, she lived. It seemed a blessing in disguise when the doctor told you she probably wouldn’t remember. But after seeing how well they put her back together, I knew I couldn’t take the chance.”

  In the back of her mind, something clicked. It felt like the last piece of a puzzle falling into place.

  “Unfortunately, it means you both have to die today.”

  “It was him,” she whispered, clutching his arm tight. “He was there that night. Murphy was waiting at the cottage for the other men. He stood in the shadows and kept asking me questions while they hurt me. I never saw his face, but hearing his voice, I remember. It was him.”

  “Traitor.” Jasper’s entire body stiffened. She felt his roar of rage and fury in her soul.

  Murphy fired again, but Jasper had already lunged forward and the shot went wild as the two men crashed backward into the wall. She took a step forward, but a cascade of burning debris collapsed through the ceiling above them, barely missing her as it hit the ground. The sounds of fighting reached her, but she could no longer see Jasper or Murphy on the other side of the fire. “Jasper!”

  “Callie, go! Get out of here.”

  “What about you?” she yelled, her voice breaking off in a violent fit of coughing.

  “Save the boy!”

  Another shot fired, followed by the sound of crashing plaster and wood. The floor in front of her gave way, sending the pile of burning rubble crashing down to the level below. She scrambled back a few steps, but there was almost nowhere left for her to go. The fire surrounded her on all sides.

  She screamed Jasper’s name, but there was no answer. She couldn’t see anything across the void in the floor. The fire in the hallway was too high and hot, spreading too quickly. There was no way to get through it to him.

  Chapter Nine

  Callie fought her way to Patrick’s room. The far side of this wing hadn’t yet been consumed by the fire, but it was filled with thick smoke and she was coughing constantly now.

  Someone had pushed a wadded length of fabric in the crack beneath the door. Thank God for small favors. As she pushed it open and stepped inside, she blinked. Her good eye was too irritated by smoke to see anything, but her other eye was able to pick out every detail, and she noticed quickly that the boy was not in his bed.

  “Patrick!” She shut the door behind her to keep out as much of the heat and smoke as possible.

  A weak cough from her right. When she turned, she saw him collapsed on the floor, d
ressed in a nightshirt. “Are you all right?”

  “I made it to the door, but I didn’t…didn’t have the strength to do anything else.” He sounded embarrassed.

  “That’s more than I would have been able to accomplish in your condition, Patrick. But we must hurry now and find a way out of here.”

  He frowned and looked away. “You have to leave without me. There’s no way you can get us both out of here. I’ll only hold you up and then we’ll both die.”

  She hunkered down beside him and looked him in the eyes. “We’re going together. If you don’t like it, I can arrange it so that you sleep through the process.”

  His gaze widened as he glanced down at her iron fist, but when he turned back to her, the look in his eyes was grateful. “I, ah, don’t think that will be necessary.”

  She nodded. “Good.”

  “But how are we going to get out of the house? We can’t go back out there.”

  Callie shuddered. “I know.” She coughed and looked around the room. “We’re going to have to use the only other exit available.”

  He followed her gaze to the window. “You’re daft,” he snapped. “Do you know how high up we are?”

  “We’re only on the second story. It can’t be that high.” She kept her voice as light as possible. It wouldn’t do either of them any good for Patrick to see just how petrified she really was. She quickly walked to the bed and started stripping it of the blankets and sheets. “Do you have a better idea?”

  He muttered under his breath before finally holding out his hands. “Give me those sheets then,” he said. “My da was a sailor.”

  She tossed them his way, gladly. “Make sure the knots won’t slip apart.”

  “They’ll hold. But can you?”

  Callie didn’t know. Her new limbs had made her stronger, but could she dangle at least forty feet above the ground, holding his weight on her shoulders while the building burned down around her?

  She couldn’t think of that now or doubt might stop her before she even tried. Looking behind her, she watched as more and more smoke poured into the room. The small bit of hand towel stuffed under the door had charred and blackened, its usefulness over. The door itself had buckled and warped from the heat.

  There wasn’t any time for doubt.

  Callie refrained from prodding Patrick to go faster, knowing that the knots had to be right if they were going to work. Once he had tied every available piece of fabric together, including the drapes she’d yanked down from the window, into a long rope and fastened one end to the sturdy leg of the bed, Callie tried to open the window, but it had been nailed shut.

  Patrick groaned. “Now what are we going to—?”

  She smashed it with her fist and ran her hand over the frame to knock out all of the glass. The cool air was a welcome respite to her burning throat and she took a few big gulps of it into her lungs before turning around.

  Hunkering down in front of Patrick, she helped him climb onto her back. “Are you sure you can hold on, or do you want me to tie your hands together around my neck?” She was worried about him. He wasn’t in any condition to be out of bed, much less attempting what she was asking of him now.

  “I’ll be fine, but let’s do this before the roof caves in.”

  She took another deep breath, this time for strength. Grasping the rope in both hands, she swung out the window…and immediately realized that this was going to be a lot harder than she’d thought.

  Her feet slipped against the outside wall of the building, as the smooth metal failed to find purchase. Her hands slid down the rope at least three feet until the next knot stopped her. There, she simply let herself hang by her arms. But the wind was strong, and she and Patrick were blown aside, twisting until his back slammed against the brick. The breath was knocked out of him. She felt it across the side of her neck the same time the arms around her neck slackened.

  “Damn it, Patrick,” she yelled. “Hold on to me!”

  Letting go of the rope with her weaker hand, she clasped his forearms and held onto him tight, trying her damndest to right herself. She braced her knees against the wall for balance.

  Above them something crashed and flames burst out the window, fueled by the sudden rush of oxygen. She had to get moving. If the room was on fire, it meant their rope would be on fire too.

  Patrick’s arms tightened around her neck once more, but he eased up when she choked and coughed. “Sorry,” he said into her ear.

  She shook her head and started her descent. She tried putting one arm below the other and making her way down slowly, but it became immediately apparent that she wasn’t strong enough for that. She purposely let go, holding onto the rope with only her mechanical hand, and let herself slide from knot to knot, keeping her knees and her other hand on the wall for extra balance. Her shoulder screamed against the strain.

  “My lady, stop!” Patrick tightened his arms around her again. “Stop. There’s no more room. We’re out of rope.”

  Callie looked up, at the wildly flickering orange and thick black smoke coming from the room above them. Above that, she noticed an airship hovering a distance beyond the rooftop and wondered if they were enjoying the show.

  Suddenly, a voice was shouting at them.

  She tried looking down and realized they were still too high off the ground. Malcolm stood in the snow on the ground. “Callie, let the boy go.”

  “I can’t!” she cried.

  But Patrick didn’t hesitate. He knew they had no choice but to get down from this rope one way or another and he started to relax his grip, but she reached up and held on. “No. Patrick, wait,” she gasped. “Climb down my body. Get closer to the ground before you let yourself drop.”

  She extended her arm and helped him ease down, until he hung from her hand. With her other one, she clutched the rope, stopped by the last knot.

  “It’s okay, my lady,” he called. “You can let me go.” But Callie was so afraid she was throwing him to his death, she couldn’t loosen her grip.

  Finally, he had to reach up and pry her fingers open.

  And then he was falling.

  She didn’t hear screaming, but couldn’t look down. Not until Malcolm called up to her, “I’ve got him. It’s your turn to let go. I’ll catch you.”

  He couldn’t possibly catch her, she knew it. With all the iron fused to her body, she was going to fall like a sack full of stones. But looking back up, she knew she didn’t have any other choice. The flames were already burning three or four feet down the length of rope hanging out the window and it was going to snap at any moment.

  “Come on, Callie. Don’t you give up now or Jasper’s going to kill the both of us!”

  She found herself smiling at that before her last image of him flashed through her head and turned her smile to a cry. She let go of the rope, trying to brace herself for the impact, but when she hit, it was a much softer landing than she’d expected. Malcolm had actually caught her. He also grunted and pitched backward into the snow, but his arms held her close to him and when she opened her eyes he was smiling. “See,” he wheezed. “Piece of cake.”

  She quickly scrambled up, and he rose to his feet with a wince. “That was a marvelous lift.” She smiled. “You would have made a passable dancer, Malcolm. Thank you.”

  The doctor and Mrs. Campbell were standing a few feet away and several servants bustled to and fro. In the distance, she heard the sound of sirens and assumed the fire fighters would arrive shortly. Turning her attention to Patrick, she was glad to see that he had already been bundled up in someone’s heavy coat. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  He nodded, and although he looked pale and tired and his legs would need to be looked at, she thought he would be fine after they got him a hot bath and a warm bed.

  She turned back to Malcolm. “Where is Jasper?”

  His expression darkened and he shook his head. “He hasn’t come out of the clinic.”

  Callie raced to the front door, fear st
rangling her like the thick smoke had been unable to do. She would have continued right back into the heart of the blaze without thinking, but Malcolm held her just as a set of large picture windows exploded above them.

  She ducked her head as shards of glass rained down, but felt none of the tiny cuts to her cheeks and hands. She felt nothing at all. Not the cold, not the wind. Not the burning in her lungs or the torn muscles in her shoulder. She was only aware of the gaping hole in her heart, damage that would never be fixed by any doctor with needle and thread or iron balls and gears.

  At her side, Malcolm suddenly shouted. She looked up and saw a figure lurch through the fiery doorway. Something was draped over his shoulders.

  “Jasper!”

  He fell to his knees, letting the body he carried drop to the ground beside him. Malcolm sprinted forward and Callie followed. Malcolm reached him first, and quickly forced Jasper to roll in the snow.

  When she knelt beside him, she gasped at the sight of him. The left side of his face was angry with a deep burn, and a nasty gash crossed the front of his chest. He had probably lost a lot of blood from the bullet wound in his arm, and his breathing was ragged and weak.

  “Doctor!” she called.

  He tried to open his eyes, but his lids were stuck together. Finally, he managed to peer at her through one swollen eye. “Callie,” he whispered.

  “I’m here. Don’t try to talk.”

  “Love you.”

  She choked out a cry. Her tears fell onto his face and she swiped at her cheeks with her dirty hand. “You idiot,” she snapped. “You can’t love me if you’re dead.”

  “Always.”

  The body he had carried out from the fire coughed. She glanced over and groaned before looking back down at Jasper. She was glad he hadn’t risked his life carrying Murphy out of that burning building, but…

  “Did you have to save General Black?”