Legacy of the Clockwork Key (31 page)

He screamed as a shot snapped against the stone just above my head. Rathford let go.

I ran.

Throwing myself at the machine, I just made it to the steps. Rathford was on my heels, but Alastair leaped on him, smashing them both into the floor.

“Go!” he shouted at me. I stumbled up the steps and under the arch formed by the rings around the time machine. I hated that our purposes were united, but someone had to destroy the machine.

Crawling inside, I shut the door.

The entire upper half of the machine was made up of open windows, so I could still see the chamber.

Rathford crashed his fist into Alastair’s face. My heart cheered for a second. I wanted to see the bastard suffer.

Alastair threw a fist of his own, snapping Rathford’s head back, just before the cavern filled with the roar of the clockwork lions.

Dear God. Chaos reigned around me.

The lions snapped and lunged at Alastair. One grabbed the tails of his coat and pulled him off of Rathford.

Rathford rose. With blood streaming through his mustache, he grabbed the pistol then aimed it right at me.

“
MEG
!”
I TURNED AT THE SOUND OF WILL’S VOICE
.

A shot rang out and I dropped to the floor as the round hit one of the metal rings surrounding the time machine.

A second shot filled the chamber with a bright flash of white light.

Thank you, Lord.

Will charged down the ramp, crashing into Rathford as Lucinda and Oliver took on the lions.

I had to stop this, before they got killed.

Within the inner chamber of the machine, I looked for a means to unlock it. It reminded me of the interior of the coach, except much more compact. Panels all along the lower
edges of the windows were crowded with levers and knobs.

I found the flower medallion in the center of one of the panels to my left and quickly fitted the key.

The soft song was barely audible over the roaring lions and clashing metal. I closed my eyes and tried to block out everything else but the song. I had to get this right. Every second we remained in the chamber was another second in peril.

Alastair shouted Lucinda’s name in panic. I looked up. Lucinda screamed as one of the lions leapt for her. Oliver fired, hitting the lion in the face. The lion stumbled, its momentum throwing it toward the column. Alastair pushed Lucinda. The lion crashed into the column, shaking the chamber and crushing Alastair beneath it. The time machine shuttered with the force of the impact. I lost my breath, horrified.

The song stopped.

No. I’d only heard some of the notes. Putting them together in my mind, I panicked as I realized the notes I’d heard could fit three different places in the song. Which was the right one?

Closing my eyes, I guessed, praying I had chosen correctly. If I didn’t, it would give Rathford and his lions that much more time to kill us all. Or something horrible would happen, and my mistake would end this, for everyone.

I waited.

Nothing. Had I guessed wrong? What other phrase could it be?

The time machine hummed to life.

Thank you, mighty Lord!

Blue light glowed from the edges of the levers and gears as the floor shuddered. Like the key, a three-petal flower opened up at the apex of the conveyance. It was so beautiful. The light, I had never seen anything like it.

A crystal descended, much like the one at Gearhenge, only this one was smaller, about the size of a man’s fist. It was covered in tiny metalwork, far finer than any of the smallest pieces my father had ever made.

He would have marveled at this. I could almost see his face smiling at such a thing.

The gears glittered as they spun.

Another shot rang out and I flinched as I heard this one whistle through the machine and smash into the stone wall on the other side.

Someone cried out in pain.

I had to hurry. Where was the lens?

I flipped the lever to my left. It looked identical to the one that started the wheels turning in the coach. The
machine hummed, the vibration traveling up through the floor.

I heard a loud snap, then a web of light cascaded around the outer rings, as if someone had caught lightning and trapped it on the surface of a sphere. Tendrils of whip-like blue light reached out from the heart, writhing like captured lightning as they reached through the windows toward each of the people in the room. One then curled toward me.

“Meg!” Will shouted.

The heart, it was the crystal. That was the lens. I had to destroy it.

Clenching my fist around the heavy handle of the wrench, I started to swing at the crystal, but the tendril of light shocked me as it connected with my shoulder. Stunned, I watched as wide beams of white light projected from the heart out into the windows. Everything beyond the windows slowed, as if time itself were winding to a stop.

I lost my grip on the wrench and struggled not to drop it.

In each of the windows, I could see a scene playing out as if I were looking through a foggy glass, spying on a ghostlike world beyond. Alastair, in a back alley of London, raised a pistol and fired. Lucinda, in her black veil, clutched her stomach
and cried by a fire. Oliver tended a gash in his arm near a stream in a vast wilderness. A young boy, broken with sadness and so skinny he looked on the verge of death, stared down at a bloody body.

My breath hitched. In another window, Rathford ran down the stairs. He cried out in agony as he gently lifted the lifeless head of the pregnant baroness from the shards of the vase that had tumbled down the stairs with her. My eyes filled with tears as I dared to look at the final window.

I saw myself asleep in my father’s favorite chair as flames licked along the walls. I dropped my book.

Grabbing the wheel in front of the window that showed me in the fire, I spun it to the left. The images in the window changed, the flames moving backward, condensing together in a surreal ballet as the house around the image of me repaired itself.

I kept spinning the wheel. Time retreated faster. I walked backward up the stair, laid peacefully in my bed. My mother walked backward through the room then kissed me on the forehead as my father watched from the doorway.

I stopped the wheel.

It was the last moment I’d seen my parents alive.

I looked down on the controls. A simple lever stood
next to the wheel. My hand hovered over it as the humming around me reached a frenzied pitch.

I could go back.

I could save them.

My mother smiled at me, smoothing my hair. I loved her so much. My heart ripped open in that moment. I missed them. They were taken from me. I wanted them back.

My fingers slid around the lever.

If the fire had never happened, my life could be the way it was again. I could sit and embroider with my mother as my father read a book by the hearth. Mother could finally teach me her recipe for lemon biscuits. I could hear my father say he was proud of me.

“Meg!” Will’s voice reached to me through the eerie silence. It sounded low, and muddled, as if I were hearing it through water.

I let out a breath, unable to take my hand from the lever.

If I pulled it, Will would never be in my life. I would never find Lucinda. She would still be in mourning.

Rathford would still have the machine, and Alastair would still kill to stop it.

My heart pounded with a slow, steady beat.

I looked over at the starving little boy in the other window. His eyes, they broke my heart.

Tears streamed down my face.

If Rathford ever went back to save his wife and baby, Will would die, because no one would have been there to save him.

I gripped the wrench.

Turning back to my parents, I let the tears stream down my face. My mother took my father’s hands in hers. They looked so happy and at peace.

How could I do this?

They were alive, right there. I could bring them back.

I could have their love again.

Gasping, unable to breathe, I couldn’t. No. I couldn’t.

I had to.

“I’m sorry,” I sobbed. “I love you so much, I’m so sorry.”

I swung the wrench straight into the heart of the machine.

It shattered. The tendril of blue light snapped against my shoulder. Blue sparks and glass rained down on me as I covered my head and collapsed on the floor. My sobs racked me, even as another
boom
crashed through the machine.

The images within the window spun out of control, flashing bits and pieces of time. I watched the baroness turn at the top of the stair and fall.

Alastair kicked over the body of his son-in-law and watched him die.

The fire consumed the gallery of our store as a man’s image reflected in the mirrored face of a large clock.

Wait!

I grabbed at the controls, trying to stop the spinning, but a sharp snap of electricity forced me back. The imaged faltered.

No.

“Meg! Get out of there!” Will shouted.

I pulled myself closer to the window. I just needed one more moment.

In a flash of light, I saw the man amidst the flames. He lifted his face and I gasped in horror. Half of his face was covered in a steel mask of ominously turning gears. A gold eye met mine, and I knew I stared into the face of the stranger who had destroyed my life, the man in black.

An explosion knocked me down, my head slamming against the controls of the machine.

The tendrils of blue light writhed through the interior as the images in the windows faded to darkness.

A high-pitched whine sliced through the air.

The door to the time machine crashed open.

“Will,” I breathed.

He stood in the doorway. The whipping blue light glowed behind him. He reached out, and I took his hand.

He pulled me into his arms, and I clung tightly to him as we passed under the blue fire licking over the arch in the rings.

I felt the power of it snap over my skin as my hair clung to Will’s cheek. Stones crashed around us. Lucinda huddled over her father, his body crushed beneath the broken lion. She stroked his hair as a trail of blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. He said something to her and she nodded even as she shook with tears. Oliver pulled her away. Alastair reached for her before his hand fell lifeless on the stone.

A chunk of stone smashed to the ground beside us.

The ceiling could collapse at any minute.

Peering over Will’s shoulder, I watched in horror as stray whips of lightning snapped out from the rings of the machine. Oliver took Lucinda’s hand and they ran up the ramp together. Rathford pulled himself up the steps with his arms. He fought his way into the center of the machine and closed the door.

Will placed my feet on the ground. “Run!”

We raced up the ramp, through the iron gate, past the storerooms, and up the final ramp. The portcullis loomed overhead, backlit by the new light of dawn.

My lungs burned. I could taste blood in my mouth as I clung to Will’s hand and ran with all my strength. A high-pitched whistle, like steam being let from a vent, split the air.

Will pulled us behind a section of thick stone wall then covered me, wrapping his arms over his head as he sheltered me with his body.

An explosion rocked the earth beneath us, far more powerful than thunder or cannon fire.

I gripped Will’s shirt, tearing the seam.

Fragments of stone showered the empty moor. Then all was quiet.

My body began to shake. I couldn’t control it.

“I’ve got you.” Will kissed the top of my head. He stroked my hair and pressed my cheek to his heart. “I’ve got you.”

I lifted my face to his. Reaching up, I ran my palm over the rough skin of his cheek. Drawing his face to mine, I kissed him.

He crushed me in his embrace as he kissed me back. We were lost in a moment that was only ours; the rest of the world simply didn’t matter. We lingered in the kiss, savoring the bitter victory for only a moment, a moment with the power to mark my heart forever.

When we finally broke the kiss, Will held me as I cried.

I CRIED UNTIL I SIMPLY COULDN’T MOVE, COULDN’T
think anymore. I felt sick with guilt even as I tried to reason with myself. The past was still the past, and our future was unknown once more.

It felt as if the world had changed. Will held me. Softly, so softly at first I barely heard it, he began to sing.

The music reached into me and wound itself around my heart. I remembered it from that day in Rathford’s carriage house when he had tended Old Nick and I’d brought him the tart. It felt as if a hundred years had passed since then. As I listened to the sweet flowing melody rumble through his chest, the pain of what I’d just witnessed eased. Will stroked
my hair and offered me the simplest comfort he could.

What love I felt for him must have swelled like an unstoppable tide in that moment. I let him hold me, let him sing, until the heavy burden of our situation settled on my shoulders once more. I blinked my burning eyes and looked out at the ruins. “Where are the others?” My voice cracked as I said it.

Will pulled me to my feet. That’s when I noticed the bleeding cut at his hairline. None of us remained unscathed. “Let’s find them.”

We discovered Lucinda tending to Oliver, setting his arm in a sling she had fashioned from the red sash. She looked as stricken as I felt.

“He saved your life,” Oliver was saying, brushing a tear from her cheek. “Whatever loyalty you have for him as your father, don’t feel guilty for it.” Oliver lifted her chin with the side of his finger.

“He asked me to forgive him, but . . . how can I?” She swallowed. “How can I?” She wiped her tears then noticed us. “Meg! Thank the dear Lord you are unharmed.” She rushed to us, pulling me into a hug, then embracing Will as well.

“Lucinda,” I began. I didn’t know what to say.

A tear slid down her cheek. “It’s over. Let’s go home.”

I didn’t feel like speaking on the way back. For a long time, it seemed as if none of us did. We rode the coach in silence, Lucinda driving, Oliver nursing his broken arm, and Will holding me as if I were precious.