Mechanical Rose

by Nathalie Gray

  “You should not have come!” He tried to push her away. “Run! Far! Hurry!”

  “Not without you!” She kissed his mouth then retreated. “Come! I have a way out!”

  “I cannot,” he snarled, pointing at his foot.

  Chain had been wrapped around his ankle with a rusty lock that had made a mess of the skin on top of his foot.

  “Here,” she gave him a pistol. “This will not take long.”

  One of the slim steel picks from her corset’s busk proved perfect. She wiggled it about in the rusty hole, easily triggered the mechanism. The bolt slid with a grating sound. Freed, Leeford joined her by the door.

  Voices drowned what he said next. They had no choice! Eleanor slammed the door, let Leeford, who had understood their predicament, bolt it while she rushed back inside, started poking around the place for something she could use.

  “The trapdoor!” he growled. “There! It is some sort of chute by my guess.”

  “I will follow, give me a moment here.” She squeezed a button under the door. When it would open, the tiny clip would trigger the charge and a loud and painful surprise would greet them. Hopefully Spark would lead them but she doubted it. Coward.

  “No,” he said. The finality of his tone made her turn to him.

  “We cannot leave this place the way it is…look at it!” Red rimmed his eyes. His frustrated gesture encompassed the whole room. “Look at what he has done!”

  Eleanor shrugged, even if the sight of that upright machine in a corner—half human, half something else—bumping mindlessly as it tried to walk made her stomach turn. “We have no time for this! The Society will come at dawn and take care of it.”

  “And you trust them?”

  “For this one time, yes.”

  “Well, not me. We will make time.”

  “Ah, for fortune’s sake! They are much better equipped than us to deal—”

  “Eleanor,” Leeford said, coming to her and ready to touch her. But he looked at his hand, snarled a curse and let it drop by his side. “I will not leave without making sure Spark can never build more of these—these aberrations. Children, Eleanor—little hands.” He raked his hair back. “This madness must stop.”

  Eleanor thought fast. The refinery. It would speed things up until the Society finished the rest. “Fine. I think I know a place where you can achieve what you want. But you must be quick. Please, Leeford, for both our sakes.”

  Relief smoothed the wrinkles on his high brow. He nodded. “I will.”

  She hoped retracing her steps would not cost them but understood how Leeford would want to annihilate Spark’s “work” himself. It simply could not exist. It had to be destroyed, and the madman with it.

  After retrieving her little surprise from under the door, Eleanor fished around for more, found only three left.

  “Are you ready?”

  He nodded. The pistol gleamed in his hand. He looked so intense, determined and grave. But no anger shone in the dazzling blue eyes. She doubted the man had a mean bone in his body. Unlike her.

  Without sound, she cracked the door open, received bits of rock in the face for her trouble when someone shot. She armed the first explosive button, lobbed it out of the tiny opening. Then another.

  A split second after the first explosion, she opened the door, took aim and shot at a clump of men standing perhaps twenty feet from the door. The first button had worked well as a few of them lay still on the ground, stunned. She fired until the second button exploded.

  “Now!” she snarled.

  Running. Running as fast as her legs could carry her. Thankfully, not only could Leeford follow, he outran her to check the corners while she navigated the turns, took him back to the refinery into which she had emerged on her way in. Mumbling incoherently—to her—he set about gathering piles of things, which he dumped in the vats of green jelly substance with the electrodes. They overflowed, spilled some of their content on the floor. He emptied several large bottles of clear liquid that had been lined on a table by the wall.

  “Do not let it touch you!” he said, working fast at disassembling a machine that resembled a furnace but could have been something else. He took the inner mechanisms, pulled out copper pipes, reassembled them to lead to the vats.

  While she stood guard by the door, she spotted Leeford pulling his watch from his trousers pocket then patting around the other, cursing.

  “The little gold watch?” she called.

  “Yes! I have lost it! I need more coil!”

  “I have it. Here.” She tossed the thing at Leeford, who caught it in a nimble hand and set to work, kneeling by the pipe’s mouth, muttering still and shaking his head as though he were in deep argument with someone.

  Sounds alerted her. “Hurry.”

  “I am.”

  Shadows preceded Spark’s men as they crept toward the refinery. Eleanor was there to greet them.

  “Hurry, Leeford.”

  “I am. Do you have one more of those things? The little bombs?”

  “Only one.” Which she would have preferred keeping in case of further trouble.

  “I need it!”

  She put it on the floor and sent it his way. It skittered across the tiles like a silver cockroach on ice. Leeford stopped it then added it to the clump of tubes and pipes and watch and switchboard. Where had he gotten that?

  “Good,” she heard him murmur.

  She fired, cursed when the steam pistol only hissed impotently. “Pistol! Is it ready?”

  Leeford sent the other pistol her way. “Yes! We need to be far from here in about…forty seconds.”

  “What?”

  “Run!”

  They hightailed it out of the refinery proper, toward the massive gears poking in from the outside, squeezed into the mechanism, hurt their hands and elbows against the unforgiving metal, slipped on the grease coating everything but managed to stumble out into the night. Cool air replaced the fetid stench permeating Spark’s place.

  “Hurry,” Leeford murmured through his teeth “Hurry!”

  The way back proved more hazardous than her stealthy entry had as they ran flatfooted around boulders and over smaller rocks, stumbled and floundered and fell too many times to count. Poor Leeford barefoot. Her knuckles hurt from holding the pistol, from scraping her hands everywhere, her skull too, and her ankles and knees. She had twisted an ankle but would not slow to check.

  A sudden roar from above would have made her turn her head—they were in a tunnel and could see nothing anyway, but what if bits rolled down at them? The ground shook under their feet. Portions of ceiling detached and fell in front, behind and on them. Dust choked her. Leeford coughed.

  “What was in those vats?”

  “Nitrated resin and picric acid.”

  “How did you know?”

  “Simple! There was a clipboard with composition and time of mixtures.”

  She missed a step. Simple?

  “I just added alcohol. And ran a gas line close enough to the first vat. Your device did the rest.”

  She could just imagine the cloud of smoke mushrooming behind and above them. With the amount of chemicals and who knew what else, the place would still be smoking the next day when the Society would come. Debris was still raining into the sea when they reached the skiff. Leeford looked in his element as he expertly pulled it to the water while she stood guard, facing away from the sea.

  “Come, quick.”

  He had already dragged the thing into the water and stood with one leg in the boat, the other on shore, waiting for her like a pirate of the high seas. She grinned as she ran past, could not help the élan of affection and thrill. He rowed them away from the bank in record time. He truly was a master at this.

  Leeford grinned as he rowed hard and fast. “I told you,” he growled between pulls. “Unbeaten. In. Several. Divisions.”

  His grin turned to pure horror. She followed his gaze upward just in time to see Spark’s monstrous airship rising within the
smoke still roiling around his ruined mansion, and, like a vengeful fist, came at them with horrifying speed.

  Mr. Clarence would be too late! Eleanor stood in the skiff, legs wide, feet on either side of the bench. “Pull!”

  “Sit!”

  She did but with reluctance. Firing from a sitting position, especially a steam pistol, would make her miss her mark half the time! But she waited, not wanting to waste precious bullets and hoping against the odds a flock of the Society’s dragons would come finish the job. Waited until the monster roared closer, engines blazing, articulated wings and nacelle gleaming in the gloom like giant, murderous blades. No dragons in sight. So Mr. Clarence would leave her until dawn, as he had promised. How ironic.

  Bullets began to thud against the bottom. Despite the iron plates overlapping the wood, the bullets pierced the hull. Water oozed in. Still Leeford rowed with all his might, made the boat lurch forward with each powerful pull. She returned fire. Suddenly lines dangled from the nacelle. Not again!

  She shot once at the top of one line, yelped when a man crashed into the water not far from them. Then again at the closest line. An impotent hiss alerted her she had used the last of the steam pistol’s bullets. She threw it into the boat, retrieved her own. Despite her valiant effort, a pair of Spark’s men succeeded in reaching their skiff. One shot at her, missed for a reason she could not fathom. He was barely ten feet away! To her horror, he pulled a sling from behind his back and flung it toward Leeford.

  Oh no, they would not get him back!

  Despite Leeford’s orders—which he was roaring now—she stood, and, after a shot at the man closest to her—who slid off the rope and into the frigid water—slipped her pistol in its sheath in the backing of her corset and leaped at the next line.

  The rope burned her hand as she swung under Spark’s man, managed to slip her dagger out with the other and blindly slash upward. She must have caught something because he screamed in pain. The line began to rise. She was not climbing, but still rose higher—quickly—still fighting for her life. She meant to let go but the man grabbed her by the arm, kicked her in the belly and slipped the sling around her shoulders before she could stop him. Something tightened around her waist. She humphed when more kicks landed on her, writhed, stabbed and twisted. To no avail. She was caught like a fish on a hook. Everything happened so fast.

  In the skiff, a valiant Leeford tried to follow the airship but had no chance. His yells diminished the more she neared the nacelle, which gaped with half a dozen men pointing pistols at her.

  “Hello!” Spark yelled above the din. His smile gleamed maniacally when he gestured for his men to reel her in and onto the gangway inside the nacelle proper. She used the commotion to switch dagger for pistol.

  His clothes a burned, tattered mess, he rushed from his post so he could welcome her onto another of his mad machines.

  “Drop the pistol, my dear Eleanor. And perhaps I will not eviscerate Gunn after I catch him. Although he would make a fine automaton, do you not think? A very handsome one.”

  Bile rose in her throat. She surreptitiously checked the gauge to her pistol. She had three shots left. Above her, the vulnerable dirigible under which the nacelle had been bolted filled with more air. They were about to climb.

  A life with Leeford would have made her the happiest of women. But knowing she would ensure his safety, despite the cost to herself, worked just as well.

  Three bullets. No time for parsimony.

  “Goodbye, Aloysius.” Eleanor smiled then pointed her pistol upward.

  Chapter Eleven

  Leeford’s heart stopped. He could swear it had.

  Horror, fear of the most abject nature, filled him as he watched the airship speed away, carried the woman he loved far and high. He rowed with vengeance. Muscles burned. His chest ached. His throat was raw from screaming her name. But he could not stop himself. She had come for him. And in his arrogance, in his petty little dispute with Spark, the old grudge, he had cost her her life. Instead of escaping while they could, he had slowed things so he could deal with Spark’s madness. As if it mattered!

  A shot was heard. Then another. To his utter shock, the airship pitched forward. Blazing white, the engines tipped up, up. Much too far. With a loud sound like a giant yawning, the airship began to dive, a third of its hull in flames before it spread in a wave of fire that seared an image of itself behind his eyelids. He heard voices raised in alarm. Then Spark’s airship sank even lower, strangely slow, as though time had stopped and resumed, but on a different rhythm. By the light of the fire, Leeford watched the flaming husk sink toward the sea, but not in it. It scraped the mainland, dragged along the shore in a shower of burning bits and raining debris. Frantic calls turned into cries of pain.

  Leeford had never pulled so hard or so fast on a pair of oars. He must have broken even his record as he aimed for the shore, despite the choppy water he cut through the tops of waves like a blade. If he was fast enough…perhaps he would…he had to make it. He had to.

  Then he saw them.

  How could it be?

  But Eleanor’s unmistakable form, silhouetted by orange and white flames detached itself from the blaze, stumbled and floundered to fall on her knees. Not a second later another form followed her out of the inferno. Much taller.

  No.

  Leeford more or less crashed onto the rocky beach. No time to waste. He ran. Ran as hard as he could.

  The pair of shadows struggled. Her voice rose in pain. Then Spark’s.

  Leeford leaped over a cluster of low boulders. Seconds away from her. Details of the scene blazed a path straight to his brain.

  That image…he had seen it before but could not remember how or where. He had never been here, had he? Perhaps as a child? Everything felt strangely familiar, as if in a recurring dream. How Spark stood over Eleanor’s kneeling form. How she turned her face toward Leeford, tried for a valiant smile that dripped blood. How Leeford would arrive too late.

  Spark did the unthinkable then. He raised a hand.

  “No!”

  Leeford’s yell drowned the pistol shot.

  Spark took a vacillating step back. Wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his jacket. His eyes glistened in triumph when Eleanor, in a slow, graceful dip slumped onto her back to lay utterly, heartrendingly still.

  As he knew he would, Leeford reached her too late. He had lived this before. It all felt so familiar. The terrible ache. The fire in the background. She felt so light and fragile in his arms.

  “What have you done…?” Leeford murmured. He could no longer scream. The will to just live had bled out of him.

  Eleanor’s face so pale, dark eyelashes like fans against her cheeks while he gathered her in his arms, slipped his hand on her lower back to support her limp form. His curvy little spy, the woman he loved.

  The feel of cool metal against his palm crystallized something in him. A resolve. An awakening. Cool metal, and lethal. The slim item, no bigger than a good-sized skipping stone, a perfect match to his numb hand.

  “Such a waste,” Spark said, spat blood. “Such a waste.”

  Still smiling, he adjusted his long coat then turned. Rocks crunched under his heels. “I could kill you, Gunn,” he threw over his shoulder, not even deigning to look back at what he had done, the tragedy he had precipitated, the precious light he had extinguished forever. “But I would much prefer that you did it yourself after a few years of racking guilt and whisky-induced lunacy. Imagine what people will say, Gunn. ‘Oh, he was never the same after he lost the great love of his life. The poor, poor man. First, his heart then his mind. Such a waste.’ And it is a waste.”

  “You should not have hurt her.”

  “What will you do, huh, Gunn? Slink back into your hole and drink your loss away? You were always a fool. A pathetic, bleeding-heart fool.”

  “You should not have hurt Eleanor.”

  Had that been his voice, that low snarl? Even Spark must have heard the difference for he froz
e in mid-step, turned back only partly. “You do not have it in you, Gunn. You are weak. Always were.”

  Leeford knelt up. His arm did not tremble when he raised it in front of him. His hand was steady, his fingers still. Would he sink so low, take a life for another? Could he do this, shoot a man in the back?

  “I have changed.”

  Leeford aimed and fired. The first shot sounded like thunder, the second, third, fourth, he lost count, were impotent clicks.

  Like a puppet with its strings cut off, Spark crumbled.

  How long did he stay this way? Leeford did not know. Dawn had risen. Pale and forlorn. Sky striped in browns and purples. His world had stopped. All light left. All warmth and all life. He wanted to die but could not summon the energy to turn the pistol on himself. Plus, he had no bullets left. The last one had killed Spark. Fitting end. All he wanted was hold her still form, cradle her against his breast. His broken little porcelain doll.

  At least there had been no blood. She did not seem to have suffered too much. A single shot. A fated, single shot. Leeford held her limp body to his, drowned his tears in her purple-black hair loose about her face, kissed her warm hand.

  Warm? After so long?

  Trembling in hope and sheer panic, he put his ear to her mouth. The sea drowned what he thought he heard. Did he hear anything? Could it be? But she was so pale!

  With shaking fingers he patted her down, found no blood but a little hole in the front of her corset. This was where the foul man had shot her. At point blank. The monstrous, aberrant, deviant piece of filth.

  “I hate you,” he growled, eyes closed. Opened his eyes, repeated the words. They felt good. They tasted bitter, like despair and the foulest curse.

  The Graces had abandoned him, had let Spark do this dark deed without lifting a divine little finger. How he hated all of them. Despair threatened to swallow him whole. What now? Where to go? He could not just leave her there.

  The sea.

  He would let the sea take them both, hold onto her and sink into thankful oblivion.

  Leeford looked down, rubbed his tears from her cheeks. “My little violet.”