Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time (9781941240076)

by Becket

  The dynabow produced another canister that rolled onto the firing groove and crackled with a bolt of electricity. The canister broke open and the electrical bolt fizzled along the shaft. Key aimed the dynabow at Raithe and her gang. Then, just before they reached the turret, she pulled the trigger. But instead of firing a single bolt of electricity, a burst of electric current spread out like a net. The nearer it flew towards Raithe, the wider it grew; and the wider it grew, the more electrical bolts wove together, fizzling and crackling as it flew. Yes, indeed, it had become the very thing Key had envisioned – an electronet.

  It struck Raithe first, then wrapped around Crudgel and the other vampires. It bound them together and entangled them in a shocking net of electricity. They tumbled over one another and they fell to the floor in a stunned stupor. The electronet had slowed them down enough for the MotorHog to finish unfolding.

  Miss Broomble hopped onto the seat, taking the dynabow from Key and hooking it back on to her belt. Then she took Key by the hand and helped her onto the MotorHog, too, saying as she did so, “Time flies and so do we.”

  Key did not understand what the witch had meant, but she trusted her, so she straddled the seat behind her. The witch gunned the engine. Fire and thick black smoke spewed out from the smokestacks, although now they looked more like tailpipes. A few more pieces on the dashboard were still taking shape. They would be ready to go at any moment.

  Miss Broomble glanced towards Raithe tangled with her gang on the ground. The electronet was losing power, flickering away, and leaving them panting in pain. Then she looked back over her shoulder at Key with an impressed grin.

  “An electronet?” she asked. “How did you know it would do that?”

  “I didn’t,” Key admitted a little timidly.

  “You made an electronet intuitively.”

  Key liked the word intuitively; she felt she understood it better now. Yes, she thought, I did make that more by feeling than by knowing. “You said that DIOS gives you things that you know how to work with,” she told the witch. “So I figured that DIOS made the dynabow for anyone to use at a moment’s notice.”

  Miss Broomble turned around on her seat to look proudly at Key. “Well done!” she praised. “Now hold on to me tightly.”

  The witch then faced front and gripped the handlebars. Key wrapped her arms around her middle just when Raithe got up and started kicking Crudgel to stop whining and get up, too. Miss Broomble revved the MotorHog. It sounded like a snarling beast. Shoots of fire streamed out from the smokestacks. Billows of black smoke spewed out, too. A whirring began beneath the seat.

  Raithe glared at Key. “The Troll’s getting away!” she screamed at her gang. “Get her!”

  Realizing then what Miss Broomble meant by Time flies and so do we, she now also grasped what the MotorHog would do. So she held on tighter to Miss Broomble’s middle, as the MotorHog began pushing itself off the floor.

  Raithe, Crudgel, and their vampire gang got up, charged towards the turret angrily, and ducked inside right as Miss Broomble pressed a large green button on the dashboard. The MotorHog lifted off the ground and began hovering. The bottom of Key’s stomach tingled and felt ten times heavier, for the motion of the MotorHog was swift, and she had never ridden on anything that flew before.

  She felt Raithe’s hand on the back of her neck and she feared she was done for. But right at that moment Miss Broomble yanked the handlebars towards the other direction. The MotorHog suddenly swerved around. Its weight knocked a few vampires over. Raithe’s grip faltered as she was knocked over, too. Miss Broomble then accelerated and the MotorHog shot out from the castle turret like a copper bullet.

  As Key and Miss Broomble rocketed through the air across the Necropolis, Key looked over her shoulder and watched the castle get farther and farther behind them. The smokestacks were streaming out lines of black smoke, which enshrouded the castle turret in a thick black cloud. Just before Key faced front again, she happened to glimpse Raithe one last time, staggering out of the black smoke, coughing wildly, trying to wave it away from her blackened face.

  Warhag came out of the black cloud next, padding her way very slowly, taking her time with the steady wrath of a volcano about to erupt. Her orange coat was completely blackened, all her grooming ruined. The slits of her glowing feline eyes narrowed as she watched Key and Miss Broomble soar off on the MotorHog. The message in her fiery glare was quite clear: “Vengeance shall be mine.”

  — CHAPTER NINE —

  The Time Paradox

  The MotorHog flew fast and high into the air, faster than Key had ever traveled in her life, soaring at a tremendous speed towards Old Queen Crinkle and Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops.

  Overhead, the Un-snuff-outable Torchlights of the Dwarves glistered like countless twinkling stars. All around was a seemingly endless expanse of graves and tombs and countless other burial places for the Mostly Dead. Below them the City of the Dead looked like a blur, but Key could just barely glimpse the Grave of the Crow Prince, the Vault of Lamia the Vampire, the Churchyard of the Apparition Army, the Charnel House for the Criminally Insane Imps of Cheltenham, and not least of all she could also glimpse the Royal Crypt of the Goblin Queen, who would rise from her coffin every quarter-century to vie for the throne of Old Queen Crinkle.

  Along the twisted roads of the Necropolis many of the Mostly Dead Mystical Creatures were going about their night as though nothing was out of the ordinary, as though giants passed by them every day. The Badly Dismembered Bedgoblins of Barbados were on their way to work at the Nightmare Factory. The Sort of Skinned-alive Specters of San Antonio were playing bingo at the local café. A family of ogres (with six kids and a dead dog) was having an argument about whose turn it was to wash the broken dishes. Leprechaun leechcrafters were offering one-hour blood letting, if you could survive that long. A barbershop quartet of Irish vampires was singing My Little Bloody-Cup to earn a few coins for the night. The City of the Dead was teeming with life.

  As the MotorHog continued flying them onwards, Key thought about all that Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble had told her. The Eye of DIOS was hidden at the Grave of the Grim Goblin. It would unlock the Tower Tomb of Thomas à Tempus.

  “Who is Thomas à Tempus?” Key asked Miss Broomble.

  “He was —” the witch began to say, but reconsidered before correcting herself, “or I should say, is – or will be a time-traveling paradox.” Miss Broomble spat with annoyance in her voice. “Time tense is such a nuisance. Mr. Fuddlebee teaches a course on it at All Hallows University – most baffling class I ever took – paradoxically semi-imperfect tense – never got it.”

  Key wrinkled her nose in confusion. “What is a paradox?”

  “I don’t understand it much either. The way Mr. Fuddlebee explains it to me is that a paradox deals with origins – the beginnings and ends of things in time.”

  “Beginnings and ends?” repeated Key, not much understanding this either.

  Miss Broomble pointed to the mechanical snake with its tail in its mouth, slung over her shoulder like a baldric. “It shows a circle, with seemingly no beginning or end, although we know it has a beginning and end because it has a mouth and tail. Traveling in time can be like that.”

  Key nodded. She understood the witch so far.

  “Remember when you got your Crinomatic?”

  Key nodded again, recalling how a version of herself from the future – “Future Key,” she had called her – had come to her in the dungeon, on her one-hundredth birth-night, and had given her the Crinomatic as a gift. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with a paradox,” Key said over the MotorHog’s engine.

  Miss Broomble suddenly swerved the MotorHog’s handlebars to avoid a collision with a flock of Living Gargoyles flying in formation. But she didn’t miss a beat as she explained, “You’ll have to become Future Key one day.”

  “You mean,” Key said in alarm and wonder, “I’ll have to go back in time to give myself the Crinomatic in t
he Dungeon of Despair.”

  Miss Broomble nodded affirmatively.

  “When do I do this?” Key wondered aloud.

  Miss Broomble shrugged. “That’s a part of the paradox. When does it begin? When does it end? In the past or in the future?”

  Key felt very nervous now. If she never went back in time to give her past self the Crinomatic, would it ever happen?

  Miss Broomble saw her worry. “Mr. Fuddlebee also teaches another course on time paradoxes,” she remarked, “and even he gets confused by such questions from time to time.”

  But this did not comfort Key.

  So the witch then asked, “Are you going back in time to give yourself the Crinomatic now?”

  Key shook her head. “No,” she said meekly.

  “Then don’t worry about it now,” Miss Broomble said with her usual confident tone as she turned back around in just enough time to swerve and narrowly avoid the Steeple Sepulcher of the Screeching Sorcerer of Sydney. “When the time comes,” she continued speaking from over her shoulder, “you’ll know when to end and begin the paradox of your self.”

  Key decided that this was indeed the best advice. She could do nothing about that problem at the moment. Her only responsibility at present was helping Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble stop Old Queen Crinkle. “What will Thomas à Tempus do to help the Queen escape?” she asked loudly as the witch revved the engine, trying to catch up with the Cybernetic Cyclops.

  “We do not know much about Thomas,” replied Miss Broomble. “We know that he has a beginning and an end, because all things have one of each – sometimes two. But no one really knows whether Thomas à Tempus was born in the past or in the present or in the future. We know only that, at this time and place, he is Mostly Dead.”

  “How does Thomas à Tempus time-travel?” Key asked. “With the Eye of DIOS?”

  “It’s more like time-cavorting —” Miss Broomble had begun to respond when she suddenly banked the MotorHog hard. A group of unruly, teenage gremlins had come speeding by on Mechacopters – which looked like helicopters, except made from any junk a gremlin might happen to find. As these teenage gremlins sped by, they called out cruel names to Key and Miss Broomble, laughing and making rude gestures, too. Next the gremlins started throwing all sorts of things at the MotorHog, like fireworks and food and lady fingers (and not the biscuit either). In response, Miss Broomble pressed a button on the steering column. A burst of purple light shot out from the front of the MotorHog. The light hit the teenage gremlins and formed into a cloud. The cloud then solidified into a mass of ice, which now hurtled through the Necropolis like a meteor. Inside, the frozen gremlins looked confused and concerned as they began plummeting down to Nethermare Street, where there were several shops for Mostly Dead Mystical Creatures, one being Faridoon’s Fright Night Firewood, which would chop up anything, including teenage gremlins.

  Looking ahead, Key observed now that Silas was much farther along. She had no idea how they would catch up with him. Miss Broomble saw this, too, and she called back to Key, “Hold on,” as she pulled a lever on the dashboard and pressed another button on the steering column. Streams of fire shot out through the smokestacks behind them. The MotorHog was suddenly flung through the air like a missile speeding towards the Cybernetic Cyclops.

  “To answer your question,” Miss Broomble shouted, as if this were all perfectly normal while Key was hanging on for dear life, “yes,” the witch went on, “Thomas à Tempus travels through time by the Eye of DIOS. That’s why the Eye is kept at the Grave of the Grim Goblin, far from Thomas’s Tomb. We do not want him to escape again, nor for anyone else to turn into a time-traveling paradox like him.”

  “Except me,” said Key.

  “Yes,” said Miss Broomble, concern in her voice. “How you became a paradox is still a paradox.”

  Key had only begun to ask, “How will the Queen escape using the Eye at the Tower Tomb —” when suddenly the MotorHog’s thrust gave out with a sputter.

  The engine stopped working. A dreadful silence surrounded them, and then Key could only hear the rush of air fill her ears as she and Miss Broomble plummeted straight down to the Necropolis streets. She held on tighter to Miss Broomble while the witch pressed a few buttons and rewired circuitry. With every second they plunged nearer and nearer to the streets below. A tourist ghoul from the Darkling District with a cadaver camera slung around his neck snapped a photograph of them for the Welkin City News. Zombie students from Cobweb Academy led by a distinguished-looking sorceress in a tall hat looked up together, saw the MotorHog nose-diving straight towards them, screamed wildly, then scattered, their hands flailing in the air. Mostly Dead bystanders wearing sunglasses and flip-flops saw them and panicked, too. Others started carrying placards that read: THE END IS NEAR – AGAIN. Soon complete pandemonium began breaking out all over the place.

  Key feared that she and Miss Broomble were certainly done for this time. But right at the last second, when the witch had done all she could to rewire the MotorHog, she held her hand over the damaged circuitry and incanted mysterious words, “Nolite timere pusillus grex —” There was more, but that was all Key heard right before the engine suddenly exploded back to life. Miss Broomble pulled the handlebars back and the MotorHog swerved up from the ground and soared back into the air.

  They had returned to a speed just barely able to keep pace with Silas’s great strides, but they were still too far to stop him, close enough only to hear his footfall booming thunderously, nearly drowning out all other noises. He left massive footprints in old graveyards, crushing charnel houses, flattening vaults, leaving a wake of ruin in the City of the Dead.

  Sometimes the giant swatted something away from his face, as though a gigantic bug was biting him. When Key took a closer look, she saw that it wasn’t a bug at all, but Tudwal. Her immortal puppy was scampering around Silas’s shoulders and neck, biting him anywhere there was flesh, sinking his teeth into the giant’s ear and chin and cheek and hairy moles. Silas would howl in pain and then swat Tudwal away. Sometimes the puppy could scamper away quick enough, but other times he got swatted off. Key shrieked in fear for a moment. But when she saw him gingerly float back up to the giant’s neck, she knew with relief that he could only have been saved by Pega the ghost maid.

  Miss Broomble spoke into the Scuttlecom on her wrist. “Mr. Fuddlebee, we’ve almost reached Silas, but we’re still not close enough to stop him or the Queen.”

  The voice of the elderly ghost came crackling through. “You’ll probably only catch him if you go by William’s Doorackle Alleyway.”

  Miss Broomble cringed. “I’d rather not.”

  “And I’d rather glow mauve instead of green, but there you have it.”

  Miss Broomble sighed after a moment, then nodded and said reluctantly, “All right. Making a course correction now.” She turned the MotorHog away from Silas and sped towards what appeared to be brown fields.

  Miss Broomble was about to sign off from her Scuttlecom communication with Mr. Fuddlebee, when someone else spoke through it. “Wingtips! Wingtips half off! Get ‘em before they’re gone!”

  “Mr. Fuddlebee?” the witch asked doubtfully, though she hid a secret smile, for she knew her friend’s charming weaknesses. “Aren’t you on your way to the Tower Tomb?”

  “Of course,” replied the elderly ghost matter-of-factly.

  “You sound like you’re at Saul’s.”

  “I just had to make a small stop.”

  “For shoes?”

  “Well,” said Mr. Fuddlebee, “as I was floating by I happened to notice that our dear Centaur Shoemaker is selling wingtips at half off – making quite the killing on the sale, too – literally – it’s almost manslaughter down here – thankfully without the men.”

  Miss Broomble looked a little bothered by this news, and Key thought she was about to yell at Mr. Fuddlebee, so she was pleasantly surprised when she heard the witch say into her Scuttlecom, “Are there any platforms?”

&n
bsp; “Just your size,” sang the elderly ghost.

  “Grab ‘em.”

  “Righto! See you at the Tower Tomb.”

  The Scuttlecom fizzled off.

  As Silas and Old Queen Crinkle were heading towards one direction while Key and Miss Broomble were flying towards another, Key thought about the interchange she’d just overheard. She understood some of it. But she had a question concerning something Mr. Fuddlebee had said about the direction they were now heading.

  “We have to go through another Doorackle Alleyway?”

  Miss Broomble nodded towards the direction before them. “Do you see that patch of brown land?”

  Key could just barely see fields covered in what looked like dead things – grass and trees and leaves. “Is there another Doorackle Alleyway?”

  Miss Broomble, grimacing, looking miserable, nodded. “It’s a shortcut to the Grim Goblin’s Grave.”

  “You don’t seem too happy about it.”

  “It’s my least favorite Doorackle Alleyway.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s on the Fields of the Worm King.”

  — CHAPTER TEN —

  The Fields of the Worm King

  Key and Miss Broomble rode on for a few minutes before they reached the Fields of the Worm King. At a distance, the Fields looked almost ordinary, like a farm browned-over by harsh winter weather. As the two flew over more graves and cemetery plots, Key wondered if this Doorackle Alleyway would be like the last.

  But before she could inquire about this, Mr. Fuddlebee’s voice came crackling through the Scuttlecom. “I thought you should know, my dear Miss Broomble, that I just finished having a delightful conversation with Madam Frombone, and one of the many things she happened to mention was that she’d just come from William’s Fields —”