Chapter 12
Overhead the noon sun gleamed a brilliant white in a cloudless field of blue. The air above the rocks and parched earth shimmered in the heat, making the cactus in Marley’s front forty acres appear to wriggle.
As they approached Marley’s door, Colt stiffened. In a short time he’d grown so accustomed to Lilly’s presence he hadn’t considered what Marley’s reaction might be to her in his home. Lilly had been in step behind him right up to the front door. He glanced at her over his shoulder. “You’d better wait here.”
“Why?”
“Marley Turlock is many things, but tolerant of supernaturals is not one of them.”
Lilly crossed her arms and speared him with an incredulous look. The lace framing her neckline was wilted and dirty from their trip to the mine, and her hemline ragged and torn, but that didn’t dampen her appeal one whit. Her skin was still flawless cream, her curls shiny, as if the dirt and grime had never touched her. She was still just as enticing, still every inch a succubus. “Surely he can make an exception.”
“Trust me. I know Marley. This’ll all go a lot faster if I don’t get him all riled up.”
She blew at an errant red curl that had dipped down over her forehead, making her lips pucker for an instant. Lust hit him in a fevered rush. Colt wanted to do much more than merely kiss her. Her red curls, a cascade of silken fire, begged for his touch. A waft of sweet roses, delicate yet at the same time seductive tickled his nose, enticing him to nuzzle along her neck. She was seduction, plain and simple, and Marley would shoot her on sight.
“Fine. But don’t expect me to wait all afternoon,” she muttered.
“You’ve got a better place to go?”
Lilly squinted up at the unbearable midday sun beating relentlessly down on them. Her skin seemed to glitter in the sunlight, but Colt knew from his own state it was perspiration. “No, but it’s hot as hell out here.”
“You would know.”
“So just how long should this take?”
Colt shrugged. “I don’t even know what this Balmora thing is, so it’ll take as long as it takes. Just sit down on the other side of that wall in the shade and I’ll be back out as soon as possible.”
She didn’t look happy, but she did as she was told. Colt waited until she was around the corner and out of sight before he rapped on Marley’s door.
No one answered. He tried again. This time he heard shuffling, a thump, and a muffled curse from inside. Marley opened the door, still rubbing his shin, his goggles firmly snapped into place over his face, making him look like a white cotton-tufted bug with large brown eyes.
“Colt!” He broke into a delighted smile and gestured Colt inside. “Come in. Come in, old chap. Good to see you. I was a bit worried if you’d return the last time I saw you. Obviously you survived the run-in with Winchester.”
“Yeah. Not the touching family moment one hoped for, but at least we didn’t exchange lead,” Colt said as he stepped inside the shaded, cool interior of Marley’s home.
Marley shut the door behind them. “And the item you were seeking?” He blinked expectantly, rubbing his hands together with anticipation.
Colt scowled. “That’s why I’m here. Winn says you got some special decoder machine you’ve been designing for the Queen.”
Marley’s eyes glittered. “Yes. Balmora. She’s even better than Tempus, if I do say so myself. The gear ratios necessary for a true analytical engine required extensive redevelopment of the—”
Colt put his hand up, stopping Marley’s inevitable long-winded lecture on things he didn’t comprehend, nor had any wish to. As long as it worked, that was all that mattered. He pulled the small scrap of paper from his leather vest pocket and held it out. “Can Balmora decode this?”
Marley took the scrap of paper and peered with hugely magnified eyes at it. “Far trickier than anything I’ve tested her with so far.”
“Her?”
Marley grinned widely, making his eyes seem even larger, if that were indeed possible. “If you’re going to build something, why not do it with style?”
“Her?” Colt repeated. “Marley, you been working alone too long.”
Marley pulled his goggles to the top of his head and waved his hand as if to displace Colt’s suggestion as he turned and started navigating the teetering piles of stuff piled up around his home. Dust mites danced in a beam of sunlight coming in through the gap between a pair of heavily tasseled, forest green brocade curtains. An entire wall of all different sorts of clocks all shifted to noon and began to chime. The resulting tumult was so loud and discordant that Colt covered his ears.
“Has nothing to do with it, old chap. Follow me,” Marley called out over the cacophony of chiming clocks.
“Sure it don’t,” Colt said under his breath. He followed Marley through the narrow hallway past stacks of books and canning jars full of gears and springs toward a back room he’d never been to before.
The door itself was black wrought iron, complete with a spinning combination lock on the front, like a bank vault. Marley muttered a series of numbers and directions to himself as he turned the tumblers.
Thunk. Thip. Thunk, thunk.
The bolts in the door shifted, allowing Marley to heft the heavy door open. He used both hands and had to put his weight into it. Colt knew he wouldn’t accept his help, and leaned a shoulder against a nearby wall as the heavy door opened in one-inch increments.
Unlike the rest of Marley’s home turned giant laboratory, this room was conspicuously bare. The jumble of materials had been shoved against bookcases and glass cabinets lining the walls. In the middle of the room was a large shape hidden beneath a pristine white sheet.
“Here she is,” Marley said with great pride. He whipped off the sheet. There at an elegant polished cherrywood table sat a mechanical woman.
She was quite astonishing, a miraculous work of art. Her fine, aristocratic features were sculpted out of flawlessly smooth silver skin, with wide expressive blue glass eyes and fat copper curls caught up in an elaborate cog and jewel-work clasp. Brass lace edged a very refined brass dress, and inset on her chest sat a large red heart-shaped jewel. Every inch of her had clearly been lovingly polished until it gleamed. Marley took a large brass turnkey in hand and reached behind the elaborately carved cherrywood chair she sat in.
Colt heard the clicking of the key as Marley turned it. Inside Balmora the cogs and mechanics sprang to life, awakening the automaton, and the garnet jewel heart on her metal gown began to glow.
“Good afternoon, Miss Balmora,” Marley said.
Colt was astonished when she blinked, turned her head toward Marley with recognition, and smiled. “Good afternoon, sir.” Her voice was light and musical, but still had a mechanical tinny edge to it.
Colt whistled long and low. “I’ve seen a lot of your inventions, Marley, but you have outdone yourself. Whatever they’re paying you, I’d ask for double.”
Marley’s dark eyes danced with excitement. “Just wait until you see what she can do, old chap.” He turned back to address the decoding automaton. “Miss Balmora, we have a puzzle for you. It is in code. Can you identify the code and then translate it for us? American English, please,” Marley specified. He fed the paper into a slot in the tabletop in front of the automaton. Gears and clockwork hummed as the paper disappeared from view.
Marley turned to Colt and grinned like a giddy schoolboy. “I’ve been giving her increasingly complex codes to prepare her for anything the Queen’s ministers might throw at her. She’s developed quite nicely.”
For a second Colt thought he might have heard more than just pride in Marley’s voice. Perhaps even a touch of adoration.
Balmora blinked, tilting her head to one side slightly as if she were listening to something. “It is in notation and riddle form. Language: Navaho. Processing translation for you, sir.”
There was the clacking sound of typing immediately followed by a paper being fed up through a slot in the table into Balmora’s metallic hands. “Shall I read it, sir?”
Marley nodded. “Yes. Proceed.”
“Have tried to seal the Gates. It is no use. This piece alone will not do it. It will require the complete Book. At the height of the mountains, where legends are born and reborn from the ashes, is the eye through which we must pass to sew the tapestry of our Chosen destiny.”
Marley took the page from her hands. “Thank you, Miss Balmora. That’ll be all.”
“My pleasure, sir.” She blinked, straightened herself to sit up straight, then closed her eyes as if going to sleep. The clockwork inside her kept moving and clicking, and instead of a steady glow the red jewel heart throbbed off and on, like a slow, measured heartbeat.
Marley turned toward Colt, ushering him out into the hallway. “I’ll wait until she runs down before I cover her up. Did what she decode make any sense, old chap?”
“The first part is a message from Pa. The second might take some time to figure out. I’d have to see if Remy or Winn can make sense of it.”
“Sense of what?” Lilly’s voice drifted up from where she stood among the teetering piles of books, papers, and machinery bits that lined the narrow hallway and cluttered nearly every inch of Marley’s home, worrying a bit of copper wire between her nimble fingers. Colt’s heart stuttered for a beat, knowing she was in danger.
A red light began flashing on the leather utility belt Marley kept strapped about his waist beneath his lab coat. And he whirled about. “Demon! Get down!” he shouted as he shoved Colt sideways into the front parlor room behind a table stacked tall with glass beakers, tubes, and wires.
“This’ll take care of her.”
Colt didn’t know precisely how Marley had found the sting shooter in his mess of a lab, but he had it aimed straight at Lilly. A high-pitched whizzing sound issued from the gun.
Zzzot
.
An arc of blue electricity went spinning across the room. A crowded bookcase directly beside Lilly erupted into flames. Marley’s sting shooter seemed to be more powerful than accurate, but Colt wasn’t taking any chances.
“Marley! Marley, for the love of science, stop!”
Lilly had the good sense to duck as Colt grabbed hold of the sting shooter and placed himself between her and Marley as he attempted to wrestle the device out of Marley’s hands, but Marley was having none of it.
“My God, what are you doing, man! There’s a demon!” He squeezed the trigger, and the high-pitched whine of the shooter preceded another blue stream of electricity arcing out randomly, bouncing off a mirror in the hallway, through the open vault door, hitting Balmora in the process.
“Balmora!” Marley jumped up from their place behind the cluttered desk, rushing to his automaton, the demon clearly forgotten in the heat of the moment. Colt and Lilly were right on his heels.
Balmora’s silver skin and brass accents glistened for a second as the electricity danced in delicate sparks along her body. Marley’s cottony fuzz of hair stood out straight as he touched her and got zapped for his trouble. He shook his hand, sticking his finger in his mouth, and glared at Colt. “What are you waiting for? You’re the damn Hunter, go hunt down that demon!”
Lilly peeped out from behind Colt’s broad back.
“No.” Colt stepped back between the frazzled inventor and Lilly.
“No? No! Are you bloody well out of your mind?”
“I brought her.” His tone was low and lethal, giving a clear don’t-cross-me message Marley couldn’t ignore.
Marley’s grasp went somewhat limp with surprise. “You brought a demon? Here! To my lab? What in the bloody hell is wrong with you? Whose side are you on? Get her out of here!”
But there was little point to Marley’s rant. Colt turned to find Lilly had vanished.
The quick shift from the cluttered laboratory of Marley’s home to the cold pristine black marble floor of Rathe’s throne room momentarily stunned Lilly. Her hairs had lifted with apprehension and her stomach swished uncomfortably at Marley’s, but now a cold, clammy sensation bathed her skin and her stomach shriveled to the size of a pearl shoe button. An arc of an electric spark singeing her was nothing compared to what Rathe could do if he was displeased, and there could be no doubt he’d materialized her to his throne room for a reason.
The heat in the room made the very air shimmer, and a reddish glow lit the rugged stone walls from below as if the entire floor floated on a pool of red-hot magma. Rathe, bracketed by a Scoria soldier on one side and a chimera on the other, sat ensconced on a throne of obsidian that glittered malevolently.
Despite his dapper British-tailored coat, suit, and intricately tied white cravat, Rathe wouldn’t have summoned her for afternoon tea and a bit of a chat. He wasn’t the type.
“Lillith Marie Arliss, you are deliberately saving that Hunter’s life. Did you think I wouldn’t notice?” His long, pale finger caressed the assortment of golden shrunken head fobs that shivered on the watch chain at his waist. The deep ruby stickpin in his snowy cravat glittered like a shining droplet of blood.
Lilly suppressed a shudder. Her brain spun so fast she was certain Rathe could hear it whirring.
Think, Lilly. Think. You are smarter than this demon.
“Actually, I was hoping you’d notice,” she said, rising up slowly from the floor.