There was no time for this. Graham punched at the Kreak’s clockwork face. The small beast gurgled a shriek and rocketed back against the rocks. Graham cradled an arm around Oscar’s chest, lugging him to the surface.
It wasn’t a smooth ascent. Oscar fought him, smashing a palm over Graham’s face and forcing him back down. Graham fought back, managing to get him to the surface where Starkey and Rosalind waited at the lake’s muddy bank.
Graham gasped for breath, shoving Oscar’s bulk forward. Starkey splashed into the shallow end and gripped Oscar’s good arm, yanking as Graham pushed. Oscar’s right arm was an anchor, keeping him in the water. It was like pushing a concrete block through mud, but together they eventually got Oscar to the grass.
Rosalind rushed to his side, a line of wet darkening the bottom of her skirts where she’d been wading. Graham ran a hand through his hair to shake off the water. Goosebumps rode along his arms, and he coughed a few times, but it couldn’t be anything compared to the chill and hacking Oscar was experiencing.
“What in tarnation were the two of you doing in there?” Starkey demanded, bending at the waist and panting from the exertion. Oscar’s bare chest, chin, and hair dripped with water, and he hacked a few more times, cradling his mechanical arm.
“Dude, Starkey, do you want to tell me why he’s a transformer?” Graham demanded. Starkey had to know this would happen.
“Your Gateway needs attention or this plan of ours isn’t going to work. Do you realize it’s already ten thirty? We cannot prolong it, it must be at midnight—that’s what I’ve set it to!”
Oscar coughed again, belching water from his lungs. A wet strand of hair dangled across his face. Rosalind rubbed his back, kneeling at his side. Her face was a mask of concern.
“Have you seen Oscar?” Graham said.
Starkey’s glower deepened, until finally recognition settled across his face and he groaned, closing his eyes. “I didn’t think it would happen again.”
“What does that mean?” Oscar said. His voice was scratchy. He coughed, water dripping from his chin.
Starkey bowed to offer him a hand. “Come with me. We don’t have much time, and you’ll need to get away from this lake.”
Forty-three
Rosalind insisted on helping Graham cart Oscar toward Starkey’s awaiting hovercarriage. The footman waited patiently, as though a half-mechanical man rising from the water was yesterday’s news. Graham helped lug Oscar’s mechanical side, urging them forward. He heaved Oscar into the carriage, then helped Rosalind, then Starkey, before he climbed in and they began puttering away.
“An explanation,” said Graham, staring at Oscar’s exhausted slump against the velvet-lined back of the carriage. “Anytime, Stark.”
Starkey rested his hands on the cane standing between his feet. “It began happening last year. You were stupid and daring, Oscar, rushing out to help someone on the sand the way you did with that small boy. But the fumes got to you. I took you back to Chicago for a short time to reverse the damage, hoping it wouldn’t start up again once I brought you back here.”
Oscar shivered, shirtless and soaked on the seat next to Rosalind. The adoration and worry never left her face. She watched him as he spoke.
“You mean the year I was supposed to have been gone at school?”
“You were in my home,” Starkey confirmed. “In Chicago.”
“How could that be?” Graham asked. “I never saw him there.”
“No, I made sure of that,” Starkey said.
Oscar’s brow furrowed. “But—but I distinctly remember things. I was there, sir. I distinctly remember Wolverton.”
“I implanted your memories,” he said, hitting the roof of the hovercarriage with his cane. “One thing I failed to do was to get your letters to Rosalind. He only thought he’d sent them. I do apologize.”
Rosalind frowned. “Then why isn’t it happening to me? I was exposed as well.”
Starkey stared at her knees as if seeing something none of the others could. “Not to that extent.”
Oscar released several more chopping coughs. “So this transformation only happens with extensive exposure?”
“Yes, just so,” Starkey replied.
Graham was shocked. “So that’s what it is? The Kreak isn’t killing people—it’s turning people into itself?” He remembered seeing the up-close jumble of organs, the multiple hearts all mashed together. “Are the people like, in there?”
“That’s where Dahlia Covington went as well, isn’t it, Mayor Goshawk?” Rosalind asked. “She’d been attacked, physically wounded by it. And then the night Harry died, Dahlia disappeared just after the Kreak attacked me.”
Starkey’s eyes were downturned and sad. “I’m afraid so.”
“We’ve got to stop this!” Oscar cried after another sequence of coughs.
The carriage slowed to a stop. “I intend to do just that, Mr. Radley,” said Starkey.
“How?” Graham asked.
“Inside, inside,” Starkey grumbled, thrusting the carriage door open.
Oscar fell heavily out of the hovney, landing hard against Graham’s shoulder. Graham winced, and Oscar’s coat slipped, revealing the metal piecework of his arm.
“Quickly now,” Starkey said, ambling up the front steps of his house and glancing around to ensure no one saw them.
Graham wasn’t surprised when Starkey showed them through to his study, through the hallway, and to that last door on the left where the drawers and the water feature were. But this time he stopped in his tracks.
The cable hanging before the cabinets had been extended, stretched across the length of each wall, and hundreds of photographs were clipped to it.
“Rosalind,” Oscar mumbled incoherently as she helped him toward one of the few chairs in the room. Wet hair clung to his temples. Graham ran a hand through his own wet locks and then hustled over, gripping Oscar’s deranged shoulder and offering his aid, his mind working.
He recognized several townspeople in the pictures, though he didn’t know many of them by name. Words were scribbled onto the back of each picture, and something small was taped to each corner. Was that hair?
“Ten years,” Starkey grumbled. “And it’s all about to go up in smoke.” He dug through a few more drawers and retrieved the lockbox.
“What are you doing?” Graham asked.
Starkey opened the lockbox and removed the purple, speckled rock within. “If you want to save Oscar, you’ve got to get him through the Gateway now.”
“Now? I told Victoria midnight.”
“It has to be now. If he becomes a part of the Kreak, there will be no saving him. We can’t possibly fit something as large as the Kreak through my Gateway.”
Starkey dipped a pitcher into the water feature in the corner and dumped it into what Graham had thought was a fire pit in the room’s center. Twice, three times, Starkey added water.
“What are you doing?” Graham asked again.
“And what is that rock?” Oscar asked, adjusting himself on the chair. Rosalind chewed her lip, not taking her hand from Oscar’s good one.
Starkey slipped a pair of thick gloves on and cradled the rock like an egg, placing it in the fire pit’s center, directly in the water he’d just poured. “This is a meteorite. And it’s chock full of the energy in the air here. Potential energy, just waiting to be harnessed.”
“Harnessed?” Oscar said, confused.
Starkey nodded at him, turning his attention back to Graham. “I know you and Miss Digby mean well, but this right here is energy. It can’t be created—”
“Or destroyed,” said Graham, remembering his physics class.
“It can only be converted,” said Starkey. “And this is me converting it.” He placed the rock on the center of the stone ring, the portion elevated higher than everywhere else within, and
poured water from the pitcher into the basin below. “Every time I do it, it opens my Gateway.”
The water began burbling, shifting the energy in the air and pricking the hair on Graham’s arms. It inked purple slowly, like an oil spill. A vortex began swirling above the rock, a smaller version of the eddying light above the Gateway machine Graham saw back in Starkey’s office.
A sense of wrongness soured Graham’s stomach. These pictures weren’t up the last time he was in here. And what was the rush? Why couldn’t they wait for Victoria to come? As long as they kept Oscar in here, it wasn’t like he would bust out and make for the lake again.
Oscar huddled in his chair against the wall, eyeing the water feature hungrily. Rosalind left him, a curious look on her face.
“Who is that?” she asked, her attention on the beautiful, sad girl with caramel skin and a haunted smile. “She—she looks like me.”
Graham’s brows knitted together.
Rosalind continued her search, ignoring the growing purple light. “And this is Eartha. And Lady Enid Digby. Oh, here is Victoria—what is she wearing?”
“What?” Graham stormed over. Sure enough, there was the picture that’d been in her file. And right beside it was Graham’s senior picture, the one he’d given to Starkey at the beginning of the school year.
He tore it from its clip. “What is this doing here?”
The purple glow lit Starkey’s face, giving him a haggard expression. “Hmm,” he said, thinking it over. “You may as well take Oscar and Rosalind’s down too. As the three of you won’t be returning.”
Graham fought the urge to crumple the photograph in his fist. “You’re erasing them, aren’t you? Once we leave?”
“Have to, my boy. I have to.”
“You’re going to rewrite them.” Graham’s blood boiled. “Wiping their memories won’t solve anything, Starkey. Don’t you get that?”
Starkey’s eye twitched. “Stop telling me what to do, Graham. This is my world. Mine!”
“These are people!” Graham shouted. “They’re not your puppets!”
“They’re mine!” The vortex swirled higher above the rock, growing in size. It was now wide enough for a person—or three—to leap through.
“Don’t do this,” Graham pleaded, his blood pulsing.
“Go back to Chicago, Graham, or I’ll include you. Rosalind!” he shouted, peering behind him.
She’d lurked back to Oscar, frozen in fear and confusion.
“Get him over here. You’ve got to leave now, before it closes.”
Rosalind darted a worried gaze to Graham. She was still coherent, which meant whatever mind-erase Starkey intended hadn’t worked yet. Starkey was right—if they were leaving, it had to be now.
The vortex swirled Graham’s hair and tossed the pictures on their cable. Graham stared down at his senior picture, knowing he couldn’t go back. He couldn’t leave knowing nothing would change. People would still die. The Kreak would only grow.
But he had to get Oscar as far from here as he could before he did anything else. With Starkey’s attention on Oscar, Graham stepped around the fire pit, picked up Starkey’s extra glove, and slide his hand into it.
“It’s got to be now, guys,” Graham told Rosalind, tucking that arm behind his back. She gave Oscar a resolved look and offered him her hand.
Oscar shuffled forward, limping heavily. Rosalind gritted her teeth but stayed right by his side, moving to support his weight with her shoulder.
The air continued undulating. The purple vortex was spreading, threatening to engulf the whole room. It wouldn’t be long before it touched the dangling pictures, and something told Graham they didn’t want that to happen.
“Now, guys,” he said gruffly, working to hide his gloved hand behind his back. If they took much longer, this wouldn’t work. He needed them to go now.
“You first, Roz,” Graham said, hurrying over to help support Oscar’s weight. He remembered facing a similar light, watching Starkey jump into it, and following on impulse. “All you have to do is jump, right through its center.”
“I can’t,” she cried, terror taking over her face.
“You can,” said Starkey. “You’ll arrive, safe and sound, back in my studio. I’ve done it a hundred times.”
“It’s the only way for him to heal,” Graham said. “Just jump.”
“Not without Oscar!”
“I’ll be right behind you,” Oscar said through gritted teeth. The pain of his arm must have been overwhelming. Rosalind’s hair swirled harder around her face, the skirt of her dress flurried. She pressed her lips shut, working to keep it from billowing.
“Go,” Graham ordered, growing tenser as the purple light expanded and nearly reached his shoes. Come on, get moving. “He’ll follow!”
Starkey offered her a hand. She took it, and with a final look at Oscar, released a squeal and leapt forward, disappearing into the vortex.
“Your turn,” Graham told Oscar. Oscar stumbled, nearly toppling to the floor. Graham shot out both hands to steady him, inadvertently displaying the glove he’d tried to hide on his left hand.
“Graham,” Starkey warned, eyeing the glove with suspicion. “What are you doing?”
“Now!” Graham said, shoving Oscar. Arm hanging heavily to one side, Oscar lumbered forward and half leapt, half fell into the vortex, disappearing into the light.
The purple, swirling vortex kissed the edges of the pictures. Graham didn’t hesitate for another second.
He dropped to the ground, staying low, careful to avoid the purple light. Weight on his forearms, he army-crawled the few feet left to the fire pit.
“No!” Starkey shrieked. “Graham, stop!”
Graham reached over the side of the small basin. His fingers closed around the rock, burning through the glove in the process. The vortex dissipated almost at once, trickling down and leaving drops of condensation on Graham’s skin like rain.
“What are you thinking, boy?” Starkey shouted, his face wide with shock.
Graham pushed himself to his feet. “I won’t let you do this,” he said, clutching the rock in his gloved hand.
With a snarl, Starkey rushed at Graham, tripping over the circle of stones. Graham dove back, pushing the old man to the ground, not wanting to hurt him but not having much other choice, either.
“Sorry, Stark,” he said. “But I’ve got to.” He shoved the old man back down again and then made for the door. He yanked the door open, ran through, and slammed it behind him.
Though Starkey tugged and twisted from within the room, Graham held the knob fast.
“Miller!” Graham cried. He’d pay for this, and he knew it. Once Starkey got out, they both would. But it had to be done. “Miller!”
“Sir?” the butler said, appearing from a door down the hall.
Starkey pounded on the door from within and jerked the knob, but Graham didn’t relent. “Guard this door and don’t let your master out. We’re doing it, Miller. We’re stopping the creature.”
“Very good, sir,” said the servant, removing a ring of keys from his pocket.
“Miller?” Starkey shouted inside the door. “Miller, release me at once!”
“You’ll lose your job,” Graham said.
The other man shrugged more casually than Graham had ever seen from him and secured the key in the lock. “It is the right thing to do, sir.”
Rock in one hand, Graham released the knob in the other after receiving the signal from Miller. “Thanks,” he said. “Keep him in there as long as you can.”
Forty-four
Victoria stood in the runway before their hangars, feet apart, arms crossed, and dressed to kill in her battle corset, leathers, and boots climbing to her knees. And she wasn’t alone. Bronwyn, Emma, Orpha, and Aline filed behind her. The collection of girls in dark leather, comba
t boots, and death in their eyes, the fact that they were willing to follow her to the edge of the ocean, caused her lungs to pump.
Never in all the times the siren sounded had Victoria hesitated. She was always the first to respond, the first to charge, to gear up, implement her headgear, and soar. But she hesitated now.
The whiteness, the pain of who she used to be had nearly made her crash the last time she’d flown. If it hadn’t been for Graham, she would have.
How could she fly now? She’d only endanger her squad.
“What’s the hold up?” Orpha asked.
Victoria closed her eyes. “I can’t.”
Bronwyn stepped forward. “You’re kidding, right?”
Victoria inhaled, opening her eyes to the astonishment on their faces. “I’m sorry. I’m not myself anymore. I should have told you before—I have these flashbacks, these episodes, and they’re becoming too severe. It would be better if you went without me.”
“Victoria,” said Emma sadly, as if she didn’t know what else to say. Orpha chewed her lip.
“Please, listen to me,” Victoria said. “You must—”
“You listen,” said Bronwyn, face rigid. “I can’t tell you how many times I wished I’d hear you admit defeat.”
Victoria chuckled in spite of herself. Emma smiled. She’d been with the Dauntless squad from the beginning as well.
“But it’s not right to fly without you,” Bronwyn finished.
“We fly with you,” Emma echoed. Orpha and Aline nodded, stepping forward as well.
“That’s just what I’m saying,” Victoria said, the words coming up her throat like knives. “I can’t. Bronwyn, Emma, you know I can’t.”
Both girls were there during their training session when they’d been practicing the Burst. She’d seen how Victoria nearly lost control. She’d seen it the previous evening when Victoria had been flying with Graham and nearly became part of the rubble around her house.
Bronwyn’s stocky shoulders fell. Emma chewed her lip, clearly agreeing but not wanting to voice it aloud.
The Perilous In-Between (The Chuzzlewit Chronicles Book 1) Page 27