Turnkey (The Gaslight Volumes of Will Pocket Book 1) (90 page)

I clutched onto my
girl more tightly.

“A bluff,” I
mumbled. “Dolly, be on guard.”

A royal ship slid
next to the airborne platform and prepared to dock with the odd cluster of
balloons.

“Flock of ‘loons,”
Dolly whispered in an odd mix of amused awe and great terror.

“Get behind me,” I
softly instructed, stepping out in front of her and shielding her with my right
shoulder.

The Red Priest
moved away from the electric amplification device and seemed to acknowledge his
approaching captors. He made no attempt at preparing an attack, or if he was, I
couldn’t discern it from where I watched.

Predator and prey
prepared to meet. All was quiet. And then…

Fire in the sky.

Whether or not the
Red Priest truly planned to give himself over to the monarchy, I will never
know, because fate stepped in and made the decision for him.

CA-CRACK!

A bolt of
lightning cut through the rain and severed a clump of the craft’s tethered
tentacles, causing a sickly, deafening burst of electrical pomp from its wound.
Light and sound battered our senses, and the balloon-lifted platform rocked
violently throughout the sky, snapping off more of its earthbound cables and
vomiting more voltage.

“Ruse!” I heard
some soldier shout, and the barrage began.

Dolly clutched
onto my back. I stiffened my arms outward in hopes of providing more cover. We
could only watch as Hell itself came into form and motion in the clouds. The
explosions, I realize now, were instantly mistaken by the King’s battle-ready
troops as a direct attack. Every man aboard every warship began firing
ammunition at the Priest’s perch as it bucked and flittered without control or
direction through the sky. I could not tell if the pirate was still at helm or
thrown over the edge.

Gunfire smacked
what few cables still clung to the craft, creating more electrical bursts. As
the last one fell free, the craft spun madly toward the abbey, propelled in a
shot by the final rain of sparks.

The gunmen turned
their weapons to the roof.

I grabbed Dolly’s
hand and hurried with her across the slick roof as bullets flew toward us. It
wasn’t long before the girl behind me slipped, her heel twisting. Dolly fumbled
onto her belly and nearly tumbled off of the roof. I reached out to clutch her,
but was too slow, and gasped as she scraped that beautiful artificial skin
against the coarse rooftop. She caught herself, and began slowly crawling back
up to the peak where I stood.

And then, just as
she curled her arms around my right leg, I looked up into the sights of a
rifle.

“Doll!” I
screamed, twisting my weight to the side and, as result, swinging my hung
bottle up and around me. “Stay dow—“

Pop.

Crack.

Shatter.

Cry.

The falling rain
started falling at one-tenth the speed. The clouds and the ships and everything
else I could see also slowed down until the entire world was one lazy crawl.
All sound became both deafening and deafened, the loudest quiet you can
imagine, if you can. The rain was a sickly mumble of lament, like a row of
grievers who showed up to the wrong man’s funeral and were thus at a loss for
proper conversation. I had in that moment, for whatever reason, imagined Kitt
and Gren amongst that group, arguing with each other over whose mourning coat
wore the shade of black most striking and appropriate for the situation.

Amidst the
blaring, earsplitting silence, I began to feel a series of painful sensations
erupting at different points of my body. Most were small, direct, and sharp,
spread about arms and neck, but the strongest was a furious and overzealous
burn just under my ribs, where I had just been shot.

Did I need to
mention that I’d been shot? It just struck me, no pun meant, that I hadn’t
outright stated it, and I’m too tired at this hour to start wondering if my
talents as a storyteller are strong enough to simply imply such bloodshed.

But yes, shed
blood there was, and enough visible evidence this time around to keep me from
arguing elsewise. No tucking my coat tightly shut and laying ownership of my
stains on another.

My ruddy mess spit
upward in the rain.

But there was
something off about the mess, and despite my wounded haze, I quickly deduced
that the something was the color. There was too much green in it. My attention
moved back to the smaller pains in my arms, and I realized they that been
punctured by pieces of glass. Similar shards fell with the water.

The bullet that
struck me had first broken through the weight I wore on a strap, and, in doing
so, had pushed those broken pieces into me.

The glass was with
my skin. The green was with my blood.

And the faeries?
Swatted down and crushed beneath the King’s heel.

I was limp on my
feet, and I could hear the Doll wailing. My weight began to fall forward and
the girl reached up and pushed against me. I felt…lighter…the way as a child I
always imagined the dead felt when they were lifted skyward on the shoulders of
angels. It was only the protesting voice of the Doll that made me fight away
that feeling of lightness and keep my focus on London.

“I’m sorry!” I
remember she cried. “I’m so sorry!”

“It’s…okay, Doll,”
I mumbled, forcing balance long enough to help her up into my arms. Then,
wobbly as I was, I plucked a larger piece of glass from my arm, wiped off the
blood with rainwater, brushed some hair out her eyes and tried to smile.

My eyes drifted
from her face to the scene of war behind her. The Priest’s craft was tumbling
toward us, and the others were aiming cannons. I closed my eyes and inhaled.

“Is this the end,
Mister Pocket?” Dolly whispered.

“I couldn’t tell
you, love,” I replied. “I’m terrible with endings.”

Fire.

Bang.

Boom.

Crumble.

The first round of
cannon fire had launched, and one blow hit the abbey just below the overhanging
lip of the roof where we stood. The impact threw Dolly and I, arms and hearts
locked together, up from our feet and into the sky. Pieces of mortar and brick
erupted in little bursts around us. There was a metallic, crunching sound
accompanied by the Doll shrieking, and then a fresh set of pains were carved
into my skin. The last thing I remember seeing was the swollen fabric of the
Red Priest’s balloons as we plummeted down over the runaway vessel.

There was a great
length of darkness that I cannot, despite my best efforts, forget. It dribbled.
It dropped. And mucking around in the thick of it, I think there was that old
Frenchman, laughing and hooting and splashing his legs. He was muttering
something prolific about purpling one’s skin, but I was too busy running from
the black to care. Suddenly I felt someone’s hand on mine, and I opened my
eyes.

I was on my back.
And all I could see was sky. Vast, cloudy, rainy, scrolling sky. I was
floating, and with a deep breath, I realized that it wasn’t away to Heaven.
Despite all dreamy appearances, Will Pocket was still rattling around in the
same, old, rundown body. And he was clutching a pretty girl’s hand.

I was floating,
and with my left palm down, I felt the same fabric I had noticed just before
the darkness came. Yes, unbelievably, it seemed that my life had been spared by
complete, ridiculous luck. Dolly and I had landed directly upon the center of
one of those large, floating balloons and instead of bouncing off of the soft
globe, we had miraculously stayed atop, our bodies dipping and sinking down
until we found ourselves supported and cradled into the thick, air-cushioned
cloth. I could see no more ships in the sky, and wondered if that sorcerer of a
pirate achieved the impossible while my eyes were sealed. Had he regained
control of his vessel? Alluded everyone, every gun and gunner, and hurried us away
without the slightest trace? Impossible. Things like that, they simply do not
happen.

And yet the
heavens were empty. The rain was thinning out, and a cool breeze touched my
face.

It felt good.

But everything
else hurt.
Everything.
I was quickly bleeding out, and my punctured skin
was now fully lacerated with a slew of metal gears and bits that stuck into me.
I felt faint. I felt sore. I felt nauseous. I felt so many things that I
couldn’t concentrate on just one.

“Mister…Mister
Pocket…” came a whisper to my right.

Tilting my stiff
neck to the side, I saw something that made me openly weep.

“Please…” the girl
whispered. “Please don’t cry right now.”

“Dolly,” I
wavered, full of great, great sickness, “I…”

“Please. Just hold
this hand.”

I closed my mouth
and simply nodded, unable to keep from crying.

She was as
beautiful as ever. Only…she was…

She...she was…dear
God…

“Hey, settle down,
Pocket. You’re shaking.”

“Alan…I…I
don’t…I’m not sure that I can keep going…”

“Calm down. No
one’s forcing you to talk.”

“No. No, I’ll try.
This is important.”

“Don’t force it.
You’ll make yourself sick. Besides, not talking about something won’t make it
any less true.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.
But if I ignore this now, even in this empty hole of a bar, I’ll probably end
up ignoring it for the rest of my life. And I just can’t do that. I won’t. So
let me carry on.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah. It may kill
me, but yeah.”

“…yawn…then I’m
listening, friend.”

The Doll, she was
just...lying there. Resting in the clouds to my immediate right.

But, I am sad to
say, not all of her.

She gave me a
brave smile as I stared at her, the girl’s limp body perching softly on the
great balloon.

Her left leg was
missing.

Just below her
hip, where her skirt was sharply ripped, a blunt, metal rod protruded out like
an exposed bone. She wiggled her hips and loose gears tumbled out of her form.
They rolled around like shiny pennies. Her left arm was also gone, ripped away
in the blast, and her right eye was now just a sad, little cavity. Little tears
and cuts marked her skin all over.

Tears singed my
sore and tattered cheeks. She just kept smiling.

“Why do you keep
making such a frowny face, Mister Pocket?” she whispered as we glided through
the sky. “It doesn't do you well.”

“I...I know....” I
choked back.

“Then be happy.
We're still together, right?”

“Sure. Sure, Doll.
Sure, we are.”

My eyes drifted
over to my aching arm. I realized that it was punctured with a handful of the
Watchmaker's Doll lost parts. I blinked, observing how my skin puffed up and
pinkened around the spot where a cold gear was cut into me. My chest and thighs
were similarly lacerated with her lovely shrapnel. These cuts tore openly
through my beaten clothes, and the skin exposed from underneath cracked flush
from blood and bruising.

“Mister Pocket,”
the Doll then said to me, “raise your arm a bit.”

I complied.

“This piece here,
that’s in your arm. That’s from me.”

“Yeah.”

“I am…within you,
then.”

“That’s right.”

“I…could I…ask you
something terribly rude?”

“Go ahead.”

“Could
I…sample…or, that is, could I…taste…some of your…blood?”

I blinked and I
breathed.

“My…my
blood?
”
I asked, pathetic and frail. “Why?”

She closed her
remaining eye in what I suspect was embarrassment. “It’s just that…I’d like
some part of you to be inside of me as well.”

I faintly smiled.
“I see.” I lifted my whitened, bleeding arm to her face and brushed her pretty
bangs over the empty socket. I then slid my long fingers down her cheek and
turned my wrist toward her mouth. Her lips parted and took in a few falling
drops of my blood.

She smiled and
then made a sour face. I had to chuckle.

“How do I taste?”
I smirked.

“It’s a very
bitter jam,” she admitted. “I much prefer strawberry.”

I took her hand
once more.

“Yeah, me too,” I
said to the Watchmaker’s Doll. “Me too.”

I rolled my neck
over to the opposite shoulder and realized that there was a small something
resting in my free hand. It was a thick piece of curved, broken glass and
pooling upon it was, of all the infernal luck, a spit-amount of green.

“Well, I’ll be
damned,” I whispered, clutching the shard. “Absolutely damned.”

“What did you say,
Mister Pocket?” Dolly inquired.

“Nothing, love,” I
responded, lifting the pointy glass to my lips. “Just making a silly toast.”

 I don’t
remember how it tasted.

The sky wet my
face with its unsalty tears, and I squeezed my beloved's hand. We were being
carried away on the cobbled back of a bird so unknown to me, yet the swollen
balloon felt so good beneath my raw and troubled shoulders.

I closed my eyes
and prepared for sleep as we slid into a cloud shaped like a smiling angel.

“Get some rest
with me, Dolly,” I said. “It'll pass the time until we're home.”

And then, all was
peace.

“And with that
peace, I come at long last, dear Alan, to…well…to what I’d like to call the
end, but as I’d just pointed out…I’m rather terrible with them. Endings, I
mean. I suppose I could leave it then and there, with the beaten but reunited
lovers adrift in the sky. That makes a pretty picture, right? But it also
leaves quite a few unanswered questions, doesn’t it? I suppose I could rattle
off a list of after-the-matter facts, but I can’t help but worry that such a
list would chip away at the beauty there. I suppose a compromise could work, a
little dash of facts, the grey and drab, amongst the colors of my ending,
restrained enough to keep from muddying the hues. Yeah, that’s worth a try.
Give me a little room for sloppiness with the paint, though. I’m a little tired
to be eloquent, though I imagine a more accomplished wordsmith could
weave…uh…Alan?”