Beauty and the Clockwork Beast

by Nancy Allen Campbell

  “That’s where you keep it. I wondered.” The length of his thigh touched hers, and it struck her as the ultimate irony that such a strong, vital man was at the mercy of a clockwork mechanism no bigger than his fist.

  They looked on in silence at the tableau before them. The ’tons dug down into the earth with far more strength than most humans would have been able to manage. It wasn’t long before the shovels scraped against something solid, and, with one hard thump of her heart, Lucy realized they’d reached Clara’s coffin.

  Under Mr. Clancy’s direction, the ’tons dug around the large box. Threading ropes beneath it, they maneuvered the coffin to the surface, revealing the locking mechanisms on the side. Lucy watched in trepidation as they set the coffin next to the gaping hole in the ground. Mr. Clancy looked over at Miles.

  Lucy felt him tense beside her. She wanted to tell him it was unnecessary, that they didn’t need to open the box. It didn’t matter anyway, did it? Whether she’d been murdered or had died of an illness, either way she was gone.

  Except it did matter. Someone was poisoning Kate, and someone had already murdered at least one person, possibly two. They needed to know the truth.

  “Stay here,” Miles finally said, looking at the coffin. “You don’t need to see this.”

  “Yes, I do. You don’t know what you’re looking for.”

  He studied her face, his expression blank. She would have given anything to know what he was thinking. He didn’t say anything but stood and grabbed her hand, leading her to the grave.

  Mr. Clancy motioned to the ’tons, and they all stepped back as Lucy and Miles approached. The coffin’s locking mechanisms were a complex configuration of dials and knobs that required a series of passwords to disengage. Resurrectionists were notorious for digging up bodies for necromancers to use to create zombies—and never for purposes other than the most nefarious—and so coffins in the modern age were locked, sealed and buried for eternity.

  “Who else set the locks with you?” Lucy asked Miles. By law, both a relation and a certified Gravelocker were required to input a secret code.

  “Marie.”

  Lucy nodded. She didn’t have to ask him if he knew her passwords, nor was she about to question whether or not Marie had been a certified Gravelocker.

  He knelt next to the coffin, and using one of Mr. Clancy’s large clippers, he cut the chains that held the outer casing over the locks.

  Tendrils of fog swept along the ground and drifted into the air. Lucy moved closer to him, less afraid of cracking open a coffin than of the encroaching eeriness of the night.

  Miles spun the dial on the left, clicking in the numbers and letters of his password. He paused and glanced up to his right, visibly tensing. The air around them had changed, crackling with a dark intensity that had Lucy’s stomach churning.

  She looked into the fog-enshrouded night, squinting but seeing nothing, hearing nothing.

  Mr. Clancy inched to Miles’s side. “We’d best be about finishin’ this, then,” the old man whispered.

  Miles nodded, his eyes still canvassing the area just beyond their vision. His attention still focused on the fog, he extended his hand toward Lucy, and when she took it, he pulled her down close to his side. “Stay right here,” he murmured. He took her ray gun from his waistband, and, putting a hand on her thigh, placed the gun back in the holster. “If I have to leave, use one of the ’tons as a shield. Do not hesitate to fire this,” he finished with a slight shake of the holster.

  Cursing under his breath, he returned his focus to the locks on the coffin while occasionally glancing into the night. He made quick work of the first lock, multiple dead bolts sliding back with a click and whir of gears. He spun the dial of the second lock and clicked the correct digits into place. The locking mechanism released as the first had, and Miles stood, bringing Lucy with him.

  They backed up a few steps, and Mr. Clancy gestured to two of the ’tons, who approached either end of the coffin with crowbars and began to pry it up. Lucy glanced at Miles, and her breath caught in her throat at the look on his face—a combination of anger and distress—paired with a ghostly pallor. She closed her eyes briefly as she heard the lid lift before turning her attention to the ghoulish task at hand.

  Stiffening her resolve, Lucy stepped forward to examine the dead woman’s remains. She caught a glimpse of a body dressed in white lace and a beautiful veil, hands crossed atop her midsection, an embroidered handkerchief placed lightly in her fingers. She was going to have to get much closer to examine Clara’s fingernails, and she welcomed the comfort of Miles’s hand at the small of her back.

  Miles took the Tesla torch from her trembling hand and shined the light on Clara’s still form. The air around them was quiet. Not a breeze wafted, no natural sounds of small creatures at night.

  The violent shove that came at them from behind sent Lucy sprawling headlong atop the body and Miles flying to the side.

  Lucy fought the screaming pain in her side as she shoved herself upward, bracing herself against the sickeningly rotted shoulder of the dead woman. The decaying bones beneath her splinted hand cracked in protest.

  The air left her lungs in a great whoosh, and she struggled to draw a decent breath. The coffin teetered on the edge of the gaping hole next to it, and for a horrified moment, Lucy was certain she was going to plunge into pit along with the coffin and Clara’s remains.

  Lucy registered the ’tons at either end of the coffin as they righted it. She couldn’t see Miles, but she heard his roar and saw a blur of activity as she lifted her head. There was a loud hiss and a snarl, and then he was pursuing their attacker into the fog.

  “No!” she tried to call out, but it emerged as little more than a whisper.

  Hands pulled her from behind, lifting her roughly up and away from the body. In a last fit of desperation and coherent thought, she grabbed the torch, which had landed next to Clara’s head. Knowing she would likely see the gruesome image of the dead woman’s face for the rest of her life, she fought a dry heave as she moved the torch to illuminate Clara’s hands.

  “Wait,” she managed as the hands that lifted her squeezed her midsection. “Wait!” She threw a glance over her shoulder to see Mr. Clancy’s grim face. “Let me look!”

  Without stopping to gauge his reaction, she turned back and grabbed at one of Clara’s hands. Positioning the torch directly above the stiff fingers, she took a good, long look at the fingernails.

  The process of decay had taken its toll, but the telltale striping was unmistakable. Her heart lodged in her throat, and she again felt herself on the verge of vomiting. Her horrified cough quickly turned to miserable retching sounds. The image before her might well be Kate in another six months if they couldn’t find the person responsible for killing the family.

  Mr. Clancy pulled her fully out of the coffin and released her as she collapsed to the ground. She lost whatever dinner remained in her stomach, nearly choking on the pain the stress caused her broken ribs. She heard the old man release a litany of curses and growled epithets as the loud sound of the coffin lid slamming shut rang through the night.

  Lucy wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. She looked at Mr. Clancy, who sat next to the coffin, his arm atop the lid, examining the remains of two of his ’tons who lay scattered on the ground. The other two ’tons stared at him in shock, their programming clearly lacking in commands for counteracting any sort of physical attack. At least they’d had the wherewithal to keep the coffin from falling back into the hole.

  There was only one creature with enough speed and strength to wreak such havoc in a matter of moments. Lucy pictured Miles chasing after a vampire in the dense fog as a man and not a wolf. He would be killed—she knew it. They would walk the grounds the next day, and they would find his body, his throat torn out, his eyes staring, unseeing, into the sky.

  Lucy wrapped her arm aro
und her waist as the sobs came, unbidden, her ribs on fire with each violently drawn breath.

  “We must find him,” she cried out to Mr. Clancy, who looked at her with a sense of resolve.

  Using the coffin to give himself leverage, he pushed to his feet and made his way to her side, where he unceremoniously hauled her up and threw an arm awkwardly about her shoulders. He propelled her away from the coffin toward a small shack, where he stopped and pulled a telescriber from his pocket.

  The old man opened a control panel positioned on the side of a tall pole at the back of the shack and withdrew a long cord, which he plugged into his machine.

  Lucy tried to still her churning emotions, but her heart pounded and her teeth began to chatter. The violent beating of her heart only served to remind her that Miles had already been walking a thin line before the attack—he needed to plug in to his recharger immediately.

  Placing a hand to her forehead, tears streaming down her face, she met Mr. Clancy’s grim gaze as he punched the buttons on his telescriber. “I am sending for Martha Watts,” he said. “She will bring stable boys to help clean up and look for the master.”

  “And she can be trusted to be discreet?” Lucy managed to ask through her tears.

  “Aye.” He nodded once, curtly, and finished his message. They waited for a moment, and his telescriber, still plugged into the Tesla pole, chimed a response. “She will be right here,” he told Lucy. He looked at her as he disconnected his telescriber, the softening in his old eyes unmistakable.

  “How did you speak with Marie?” Lucy whispered.

  Mr. Clancy shrugged as he shuffled toward her and took her arm, leading her back to the bench next to the grave. “I just knew.”

  “Has she visited you before?”

  “Nay.”

  “Have you communicated with ghosts before?” Lucy asked, still crying, unable to stop.

  “A bit. When I was younger.”

  Lucy laughed, hearing the half-crazed note in her own voice. “All this time, and you could have told us what she wanted.”

  “She didna come to me, lassie. Not until tonight.”

  “Silly woman,” Lucy said, trying for levity and failing miserably. “She wasted her time with me.” She hugged Mr. Clancy’s arm and choked on a sob.

  “Nay,” the old man answered in his gravelly voice. “That girl never made a move she didna mean.”

  Martha Watts arrived at the graveyard with a speed that eased Lucy’s worry immensely. She’d brought with her a large horseless carriage and several ’ton stable boys, who, following Mr. Clancy’s instructions, gathered the pieces of the destroyed ’tons. Under Miss Watts’s direction, two of the ’tons went about the business of reburying the former countess. They straightened the body, adjusted the veil, and placed her hands carefully over the midsection again.

  Miss Watts motioned toward Lucy, summoning her to the side of the coffin. “We’ll have to lock it ourselves,” she said. “I’m a certified Gravelocker, and, as you’re Kate’s cousin, you’re the closest we have to a family member.” Bending down, she spun the dial on the left, inputting a code and setting the locking mechanism. She touched her thumb to a small square to the right of it, a procedure introduced in recent years to prevent only one person from securing both locks. She pointed for Lucy to do the same thing on the right.

  Lucy knelt slowly next to the box and spun the dials, inputting her mother’s initials and Daniel’s birth date, then placed her thumb on the identifier. The password was easily enough deciphered, she supposed, but she was too weary to care. When she finished, she placed her palm against the side of the coffin and leaned her forehead on it.

  “That was horrid,” she whispered into the night, hoping Clara might somehow hear. “I am so incredibly, absolutely sorry.” She finally stood, and Miss Watts looked at her with something akin to sympathy.

  “You should sit,” she said and took Lucy by the arm to the carriage. She opened the passenger door and all but shoved Lucy inside, holding up a hand when Lucy meant to protest.

  “Clancy has sent three of the boys to find the master,” Martha told her. “They will bring him back.”

  Lucy leaned her head against the seat as Martha fired up the carriage motor and cranked the heat mechanism. It wasn’t long before the seats were wonderfully warm, and Lucy began to feel some of the chill dissipate.

  “Good?” Martha asked her with a nod.

  “Thank you.” Lucy closed her eyes. She must have dozed, because when the carriage door suddenly opened, she was startled and disoriented.

  “Found him a mile up the road near the river,” Mr. Clancy grunted as he helped one ’ton shove a half-conscious Miles into the carriage next to Lucy.

  She moved aside to make more room and helped position the big man against the seat back and grasped his face in her hand.

  “Miles,” she breathed, horrified. “Wake up. Please wake up.”

  His head rolled listlessly to the side, and she placed her ear against his chest. The tick of his heartclock was slow and barely discernible. He breathed shallowly in and out, and his skin was frighteningly cold.

  “We must get him to the observatory,” she told Mr. Clancy and Martha. “Hurry!”

  The ride back to the manor was rough as Martha took corners and bumps at breakneck speed. The black of night was beginning to shift to light, though fog still clung thickly to the ground. Lucy clenched her jaw so tightly it hurt as she braced Miles against the ruts in the road that nearly sent him flying from the seat. She doubted anyone in the house knew about Miles’s condition, much less the fact that he regularly charged his heartclock in the third-floor observatory. She had to get him into the manor unseen.

  “Stay with me,” she murmured to Miles as he bounced violently against the side of the carriage and emitted a low groan. Lucy made a careful examination of his neck, relieved to find a notable absence of bite marks. She wrapped her arms around his body and clung tightly to him, bracing her foot against the opposite seat for leverage against the vehicle’s erratic movements.

  The carriage eventually slowed and geared down as the pathway smoothed and turned a corner. Martha had taken them directly up the front drive. Lucy closed her eyes and threw a prayer heavenward that the staff were still sleeping. She looked out the window and saw Martha at the front door with a large key, which she inserted into the lock. As she opened the door, two ’tons jumped down from the carriage top and opened the passenger doors.

  “The third floor,” Lucy told the boys.

  They nodded as they pulled Miles from the carriage and braced him, one under each arm. They managed him as easily as an adult would a child, except for the fact that the earl was significantly taller than they were and his feet dragged on the ground.

  “Why upstairs?” Martha asked Lucy as she quickly closed the front door and locked it, glancing around the empty front hall.

  Lucy paused. “He is ill. His treatment is up there.”

  The older woman looked at her with narrowed eyes. “I’ve known his lordship since he was just a boy. He’s a good man, that one is, and there’s naught I wouldn’t do for him.”

  Lucy nodded, feeling oddly guilty at being privy to a secret that Miles had shared with very few people. She tried to tell herself that the lord of the manor hardly need share his personal information with his staff, but as she looked into Martha’s eyes, she knew the affection was real, that the woman’s worry transcended class.

  “Dr. MacInnes has been helping him,” Lucy said, winded as they continued to the third floor. “He seems very hopeful.” As consolation went, it wasn’t much, but it was the best she could offer.

  They reached the observatory, and Lucy moved ahead to open the door, but it was, of course, locked tight. She rattled the knob in frustration and looked at Miles, who hung limply between the two ’tons.

  “Blast it, Miles!�
�� She turned back to the door and smacked it in frustration.

  Martha edged her out of the way with one brow cocked, whether shocked by Lucy’s unladylike language or by her use of the master’s Christian name, she didn’t know. The older woman tried a series of keys, none of which worked on the lock.

  Miles’s breath was light and shallow, his face gray.

  She drew her ray gun from the holster and shot away a locking mechanism for the second time that day. The door inched open, and Lucy shoved her way into the room, holding the door wide for the ’tons, who dragged Miles in.

  Lucy examined the space, crossing to a mechanism on the table next to the bed. A heartclock charger. She’d seen one before but had never tried to work it herself. Motioning for the boys to place Miles on the bed, she ran her fingers over the machine, familiarizing herself with its components.

  She glanced at Martha. “They should probably leave,” she murmured.

  Martha nodded at Lucy and left the room, taking the stable boys with her. That the door wouldn’t lock now was unfortunate, but Lucy dismissed it as she located the machine’s wiring and power crank. Confident she could at least get him hooked up properly, Lucy turned to Miles with a deep breath.

  He lay so still. She bit her lip as she placed her hands at the top of his shirt and ripped it clean to his waist, sending expensive buttons flying. She caught her breath at the sight of his chest. The skin around the panel that hid the outer components connected to the heartclock was bruised and black. She hadn’t seen the mechanism up close before, but she was fairly certain that the bruising was fresh and not necessarily normal.

  She grasped the cords hanging from the charging machine and gently touched the skin around the panel with her fingertip, seeking for the opening. She caught her breath as her probing caused blood to pool onto her finger and soak into the splinted bandage on her hand. As she examined closer, she saw what appeared to be claw marks, as though something or someone had tried to rip the heartclock from his chest.

  When she opened the small panel, she noted that the area around the charging mechanism was pooled in blood, and even as she watched, the claw marks began taking on a gray-green hue.