Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (77 page)

“Wait a second!” I
hissed.

“Oi! Scrub!” Eddie
cheered, setting flame to the concealed object. “Catch!”

The Magnate's eyes
dilated in surprise as the burning object, hand-delivered from a mischievous
nun and her young male companion, flew from the brawler's hand and sailed
quickly through the bars. A moment later, it exploded and a blinding cloud of
dark smoke filled the area.

I coughed hard,
recalling unwelcome memories of my time in that burning powder mill. I heard
the Magnate swear and fire his weapon into the sky. I tried desperately to keep
the smoke out of my lungs, when suddenly I felt a sudden jerk. The electric
prison wagon, I realized, was driving off.

“Eddie!” I gagged,
fanning my hand in front of my face.

“Just hold tight!”
he coughed at me.

The wagon zipped
and bucked around, and soon the smoke filtered out through the bars.

“What the hell was
that?!?
” I shouted once I could again breathe.

Eddie, as red-eyed
and flushed as I must've been, laughed openly.

“Smoke bomb,” he
informed me. “Work's pretty good, eh?”

“Sure,” I
glowered. “Works perfectly. Except that the guard just drove us away.”

“No, he didn't,”
Eddie giggled. “Like I said, just hold tight.”

The wagon turned
down an alley and came to a halt. A masked face appeared suddenly on the other
side of the bars as the choir boy hung his head down from the roof of the
vehicle. The nozzle I had noticed under his hood was, as I suspected, connected
to a complete gas mask.

“Young man!” a
familiar womanly voice called out. “You get down from there at once before you
hurt yourself!”

The child whined
but obeyed, slowly lifting his head and climbing carefully down. He soon
reappeared in front of the bars alongside the clever nun, whose own face was
covered by a matching gas mask.

“You boys all
right?” she cheerfully asked.

“Of course,” Eddie
smiled. “I told you it would work.”

The nun produced a
key ring plucked from the Magnate in the confusion and proceeded to set us
free.

“Ahhh...” Eddie
said, stretching his thick legs as he climbed out of the wagon. “That's a hell
of a lot better!”

I just sat there,
stunned. The nun cocked her head to the side and put her hands on her hips.

“What's the
matter, Mister Pocket?” she bubbled. “Aren't you coming out of there?”

“Uh...” I
eloquently began, “...Alexia?”

She laughed and
removed the mask, revealing at last, the wild and familiar face of the tea
lady. “Of course!” she said with a pronounced grin. “Who'd you expect?”

I shrugged dumbly
and pulled myself out of the prison wagon. The choir boy hopped excitedly in
place and tore his gas mask away.

“Hi Iago,” I said
with a great sigh.

“Hiya, hiya!” the
lantern boy sang, grinning as wide as Alexia. “We got the bad guy, didn't we?”

“Seems so.”

“Got him real
good! Got him with our justice!”

He threw
enthusiastic punches into the air.

“All right,” I
said, addressing Eddie and Alexia. “As good as it is to see you both, we really
must move.”

“Yeah, sure,”
Eddie said. “Let's get you someplace safe before—”

“No,” I
interrupted with grave certainty. “I'm not going anywhere until I find the
Doll. She's at a church right now, somewhere downtown.”

“Well, fine,”
Alexia replied. “We can pick her up. But it really would be best to leave you
somewhere first, so that—“

“No,” I said.
“There's no time. I've...I've got to get there
now.
”

Alexia's face
quickly changed from liveliness to fear, and her voice dropped to a hush.

“Mister Pocket,”
she murmured, “is she in some kind of trouble?”

“Not yet. But if
we don't reach her before sunrise, she'll—” I stopped myself as I noticed young
Iago's eyes upon me. “She, um, she could have a pretty rough morning.”

Alexia looked at
me, confused. I frowned and gestured to the boy. I could see the understanding
come to her, and she nodded.

“Eddie,” she said
quietly, “why don't you take Iago for a walk real fast?”

The brawler
scratched his head. “Yeah, sure.” He grabbed onto Iago with one arm and hoisted
the child up to his shoulders. “Come on, kid. Let's go find some dragons for
you to fight.”

“Mistah Pocket!”
Iago called to me. “Wanna come hunt dragons with us?”

I half-smiled at
the boy. “Sorry, Ig. I'm afraid I'm in the middle of my own quest right now.”

“Oh...well, hurry
and win it and come play with us!”

“I'll try,” I
sadly said.

Eddie gave me a
silent nod of support, and the two galloped off down the alley.

“All right, what's
going on?” Alexia asked as soon as we were alone.

I hung my head low
in the night and told her everything. The tea lady gasped and covered her mouth
with her hand.

“No,” she wavered.
“No, that's not true. She wouldn't ever.”

I didn't say a
thing. I just stood and watched her with dead eyes. My silence hit her hard,
and she collapsed on my shoulder, weeping terribly.

“No...” she
whispered to me. “No, please don't tell me that she will.”

“I can't,” I said,
empty of tone.

“You...you're
going to stop her, right?”

“I'm going to try.”

“You’d better!”

We stood for a
moment.

“Alexia?” I
finally said.

“Yes?”

“You're getting my
shoulder wet.”

She lifted a hand
to her face and wiped her eyes. “Shut up, Pocket.”

When the boys
returned, Alexia quickly took Eddie aside and informed him of the situation.
Iago started yawning and rubbing his eyes.

“You're getting
sleepy, aren't you?” Alexia asked the child, petting his head.

Iago nodded.

“I never should've
brought him along,” the lady sadly said to me, “but there was no one to stay
with him, and he was insisting—“

“It's okay,” I
reassured. “Eddie, is your bike nearby?”

“Right down this
way,” he said.

“Good. Take them
home.”

“Not without you,
pal.”

“I'm taking this
wagon downtown. Hopefully no one will notice that it's stolen just yet. But I'm
not risking them getting captured alongside me.”

“Alexia can handle
herself on the motorbike. I'm coming with you. I don't care about the risks.”

“I don't know.”

“You want to
narrow your chances of getting there alive?”

I took a deep
breath. “All right, Eddie,” I said, looking at my feet, “all right.”

The brawler
recovered his motorbike, and I was soon saying goodbyes.

“Be safe, tea
lady,” I said. “You too, Ig.”

The boy scoffed
and puffed up his chest. “I'll kill all of the monsters.”

“Yeah. I'm sure
you will, kid.”

The mystic Lady
Alexia gave me one final word of advice before they left.

“Goodbye once
again, Mister Pocket, and good luck,” she said, hugging me. “Oh, and please
remember, if all else fails and defeat seems inevitable, never be too proud to
cast aside logic.”

“What?”

“Reality is a
compromise for those who toss away the rules,” she winked, her ever-cryptic
self.

“Um, thanks.”

The would-be nun
and her young accomplice sped away in a cloud of dust on Eddie's motorbike.

Night seemed
suddenly all the darker. I balled a fist and felt the blood squeeze through my
hand. Now is the time, I told myself. No women, no children, no softness around
the edges. I had been stripped of my revolver, I remembered, in the struggle
that led to my arrest. But the loss mattered little to me. In that moment, my
words could stand for bullets, my fingers for knives.

“Let's go,” I said
to Eddie.

We got in the
patrol wagon and traveled along until we were forced to stop at an unusual
obstruction in our path.

“The...the hell is
this?” Eddie grumbled behind the wheel.

A city worker in a
round helmet was tugging at a thick black cable that was stretched across,
well, pretty much everywhere.

“It's like a
spiderweb,” I commented.

It truly was.
Round, man-made strands of webbing made a sloppy latticework as ends of the
cable ran up and down the buildings that lined the backstreet. I quickly
recognized the cable as the same that had pulled me by the ankle through the
streets.

The man paid
little mind to our approach, keeping his hunched back to us.

Eddie opened his
door.

“Don't,” I said.
“Just turn around and let's...”

But he was gone,
out and marching to the worker. I slid down in my seat and tried to remain
calm. A minute went by and Eddie didn't return so I looked up through the windshield.
The two were grappling and exchanging punches.

“No...” I mumbled,
feeling a cool panic wrap around me. “No, no, no. Not again. I'm not getting
captured again.”

In a moment of too
much cowardice and too little thought, I leapt over and seized the controls. I
quickly spun the wagon around and sped away from the scene, leaving Eddie on
his own with the stranger.

I could hear the
brawler's surprised shouts as I took off.

“Hey!” his voice
called out. “Pocket, wait! Come back!”

“I'm sorry,
Eddie,” I kept repeating out loud as I drove. “I'm very sorry.”

He was soon just
another shade of black in the dark, and I hated myself for it. Should something
happen to him, it would be on my hands. No, I tried to convince myself. Eddie's
a large bloke. He can handle himself. Still...if something did...what would I
say to Alexia? To Iago?

I put it out of my
head. Unfortunate, I thought, steadying my nerves. Unfortunate, but necessary.
All that mattered was the Doll. All that ever mattered.

The death of Will
Pocket was quickly hastening with that desperate and selfish attitude, but I
didn't care. I've always said that a true lover will fall on any sword, take
any death in place of his beloved.

But death takes
many forms.

And so do swords.

Time ticked
forward as I raced around London, each moment a second closer to dawn. I had no
true direction other than forward. I began to notice more of that strange
cabling hanging and looping over roofs. It almost appeared to be growing like
moss and spreading like vines.

Was it all connected?
It appeared to stretch for miles. What possible purpose could this all have?

For a moment, I
actually lost focus of my mission and brought the wagon to a halt so I could
trace my eyes along the cable work.

This was both an
incredibly stupid and coincidentally fortuitous decision.

A hand swung the
door of the prison wagon open and pulled me straight to the ground. My hat spun
and flew away. Before I could say a word of protest, a boot was shot into my
side and a cold blade was pressed against my throat.

“Move and you're
cat food,” a woman spoke.

“Cat...food?”

A chorus of meows
came a-singing from behind my assailant.

“That's right,”
the stranger said. “Now, tell me what you know about Will Pocket!”

“Wh-what?”

“Where's Pocket?
What has become of him?”

I coughed. “Each
day I have less of a clue.”

The woman paused
and quickly removed the blade.

“Pocket?!?” she
exclaimed. “Is that you?”

“If I say yes,
will you take your foot off of me?”

“It
is
you!”
The young lady quickly hopped aside and helped me to my feet. “Sorry, can't see
a damned thing in this darkness!”

The girl stepped
into a sliver of moonlight.

The great Madame
B, Queen of the Pirates.

And a surrounding
posse of what had to be half of the Red Priest's collection of stray cats.

I wheezed and spat
on the ground. It was becoming quite a night for reunions.

“B, where did
you—”

“I'll ask the
questions now, thank you!” she growled, retrieving my hat. “Here, you dropped
this.”

“Thanks, I—”

“You want to tell
me where the bloody hell you've been the last week?!?”

“Well—“

“We've been
searching the whole damn city, trying to find your lanky self!”

“I—“

“What were you
thinking,
leaving Gren like that, without word or warning?!? Do you know how worried
he was when we found him?!?”

“B—“

“And you're damn
lucky we found him! Finally, Pocket,
finally,
the crew and I get a lift
off of our own sinking ship, and the first the thing we find when get back to
land is Spader scratching at the walls about you!”

“I'll explain.”

“You're damn
right, you will! We feed you, supply you with money and the steam car—which
Gren told us is destroyed, thanks—and you just up and disappear?!? We had just
landed our borrowed shuttle down in that dirt stain village to refuel, and I
hear Jack at the window saying, 'Hey, isn't that Gren marching around and
shouting?' I told Spader, I did. I said that surely,
surely,
Pocket
isn't stupid enough to just
go off
in the night by himself. No, I
figured you'd wandered away to go stare at the moon and recite poetry or
whatever the hell you do when you go away, but to just leave him there—“

“I don't have time
for this!” I shouted. “I'm about to be in serious trouble!”

“Oh, you're in
serious trouble right here!”

“Dolly's going to
die, B!”

That shut her up.
With big, stunned eyes, she looked at me.

“What…how do you
know?”

“I'll explain on
the way. If you want to help, get in. If not—”

This time she
interrupted with a hug, her small stature barely reaching my chest.

“I'll help,” she
mumbled quietly.

“Okay,” I
awkwardly replied. “Thanks. And sorry.”