Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure (10 page)

She looked
toward the ocean, the ferry, and Vancouver Island somewhere just
over the horizon. She was safe, but she wasn't the only person
involved.

A taxi pulled
up and the man in line ahead of them got in. Roland and Colleen
were next.

She kept
staring after the ferry, thinking about the cowboys. Six men,
tough-looking, on their way to Victoria with a cultist. They were
reinforcements, she was sure of it. There would be guns in their
luggage. And Carter and Chris and Maggie had no idea they were
coming.

She looked at
Roland, sighing as she realized the dream of safety was going to
slip away. If going with him would mean safety. The cult might
leave her alone, but she could never be sure. She would be looking
over her shoulder for years, scrutinizing every stranger, clinging
to Roland and wondering if proximity to her would eventually get
him killed.

Some stubborn
streak inside of her began to reassert itself. Even if her friends
weren't in deadly danger, she realized she couldn't go with Roland.
She wasn't going to live in fear. If the cult was going to
terrorize her, she was going to take the fight to them. Again and
again, until they were no more threat to her or anyone else.

Another taxi
pulled up, and Roland picked up his valise and her suitcase. He
smiled at her, then froze as he saw the expression on her face.

"Thank you so
much for saving me," she said. "Thank you for coming. But I'm not
going back with you."

His jaw
dropped. "What do you mean?"

Colleen stood
on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "There's something I have
to do," she said. "Goodbye."

She left her suitcase in a locker in the ferry
terminal. Leaving Roland was harder. She ignored him as he pleaded,
demanded, and argued. She walked along the waterfront, talking to
boat crews, and he dogged her footsteps, calling her a fool,
telling her to stop being childish. He delivered an ultimatum,
telling her it was her last chance to be sensible or he'd leave
without her. When she ignored that, more ultimatums followed. After
the third ultimatum he finally followed through, turned away,
flagged a passing taxi, and left.

Part of her
felt devastated to see him go, but she felt more than a little
relief, too. He could be a real pain, she saw, when he didn't get
his way.

Fear for her
friends overrode every other concern, though. Later she could patch
things up with Roland, or try to, or not bother. In the meantime,
innocent lives hung in the balance.

She finally
found a fishing boat that was docked waiting for her nets to be
repaired. She haggled briefly with the captain, hampered by not
knowing what a charter should cost, and by her own sense of
urgency. She wrote him a cheque and came on board.

They set out
immediately. None of the crew was on board. The captain sat at the
wheel, staring placidly at the horizon, showing no interest in
conversation. Colleen took a seat at the prow, stared toward
Victoria, and willed the boat to move faster.

They arrived
after dark, well after the ferry. Colleen dashed ashore, looked in
vain for a taxi, and ran to the Empress Hotel.

No one was in.
She left messages for every member of the team, then took a taxi to
the hospital. Jane had checked out. There were different cops
outside of Parker's room, a pair of stern broad-shouldered men with
cold eyes and hard faces. They refused to let her past, and a nurse
nearly as intimidating told her in no uncertain terms that visiting
hours were over.

Colleen left
the hospital, sick with worry. Parker was safe enough, but where
were the others? She trudged back to the hotel, hoping against hope
that they had returned.

They had not.
Colleen stared around the elegant lobby. It was past midnight.
Where would they go, in the dead of night? If the cult had them,
where would the cult have taken them? They no longer had a ship.
Where else could they be?

She caught
another taxi, wincing at the money she was spending. She directed
the driver to the outskirts of the city and had him stop under a
streetlight a block from her destination.

The driver
peered out his window at the surrounding darkness. "Are you sure,
Miss? I don't like to leave a lady alone in a place like this. Are
you sure I can't take you to your door?"

"I'll be fine,"
she told him. "Right here is good."

She crept up to
the warehouse on foot, keeping to the shadows, placing each foot
carefully so that no rock was sent rolling, no stick broke
underfoot. There was a faint glow through the dirty windows.
Someone had left a light on inside.

The front door
would be her entry of last resort. Instead, she slipped around to
the back, hoping to find an unlatched window. Instead she found
broken windows and a back door that had been smashed open.

She crept to a
window and peeked over the sill, seeing nothing but darkness and
shadow. A sound came to her, though, a drawn-out groan, like a man
in great pain trying hard not to cry out, and failing.

Colleen moved
to the back door, which hung swaying from one hinge. The door frame
was a splintered mess. She stared into the darkness beyond, her
thoughts racing, fear and prudence warring with concern for her
friends. She told herself that the sensible thing to do was flee,
run back to town, summon a squad of police. But that would take
hours, and what would the team members go through in the
meantime?

Another
pain-filled groan came echoing through the window, and Colleen
abandoned her inner debate, took a deep breath, and stepped through
the shattered doorway.

She found
herself in a shadowed space behind a mass of rusted, filthy
machinery. Nothing moved. No one was watching the doorway.

She crept
forward, watching where she put her feet, careful not to let
detritus or broken glass crunch under her shoes. She inched her way
to where the mass of machinery ended and peeked around the
corner.

The boiler
loomed before her, several tool cabinets beside it. Beyond that
would be the main workshop area. Colleen crept forward, keeping the
cabinets between her and the open area beyond.

She paused to
examine a set of wrenches hanging from hooks on a cabinet door. The
biggest wrench caught her eye, a massive steel tool longer than her
arm. She lifted it down, holding it two-handed, feeling its
comforting weight.

She crept up to
the last cabinet, knelt, leaned down so her head was just above the
floor, and peeked around the corner.

A cowboy
loitered near the front door, thumbs hooked in a wide leather
gunbelt, right hand close to a holstered pistol. Three more
cowboys, similarly armed, sat on crates and smoked cigarettes. The
round-faced Englishman in the business suit paced back and forth in
the middle of the room, one fingertip absently rubbing at his
absurd little mustache.

Beyond him,
four people stood with their backs to the rusted machinery that ran
the length of the room. Chris was nearest to her. His face was
swollen and bruised. Blood from his nose was caked around his mouth
and chin. His shirt was in tatters, revealing a blood-stained white
undershirt. Fury shone from his features. The muscles of his arms
and chest were taut with rage.

His hands were
behind his back, and Colleen saw ropes at his ankles. He was tied
to the machinery behind him.

Next to Chris
was Maggie. Her eyes were black, and swollen so badly she might not
have been able to see. She was pressing herself against the
machinery behind her, cringing back from the Englishman.

The shadows
grew deeper past Maggie, but Colleen could make out Carter's
familiar outline. He was sagging against the metal behind him, his
head hanging, his shoulders slumped. Beyond Carter was another
shape, shrouded in darkness. Colleen couldn't see who it was.

The Englishman
stopped pacing and stepped close to Carter. His dapper suit and
refined accent stood in sharp contrast to the sordid scene. "Your
courage is commendable, but pointless," he snapped. "You will tell
me everything. That is a certainty. The only question is, how much
of you will remain when I am done?"

Colleen shrank
back, thinking furiously. She was badly outnumbered, and there
might be two more cowboys, along with God only knew what other
cultists, close by. She had to do something, but what?

Her eyes kept
straying to the boiler. Steam had always been her friend. It had
saved her on the
Arcadia
, given her a weapon. Could she use
it now? She couldn't see how.

She stepped
back, and her foot came down on a loose bit of metal. It grated
under her shoe, and she froze.

The
Englishman's voice continued without pause, a string of threats and
invective. There was no other sound. She hadn't been heard.

There was no
other sound. That was the problem. She couldn't act without drawing
attention to herself. Every footstep might draw the gunmen to her.
She eyed the boiler and the gears and pulleys attached to it, and
made her decision. She would fill the workshop with noise and
movement and smoke, and send the cowboys rushing in every direction
trying to find her. Then she would find a way to reach her
friends.

Lighting a
boiler in dead silence with hands that shook with tension proved to
be quite a challenge. There was a stack of newspapers beside the
firebox, along with kindling and a hopper full of coal. Colleen
eased her wrench to the floor and set to work.

The loudest
sound she made was when she finally struck a match. She timed it
poorly, dragging the match head across the side of the box just as
the Englishman paused in his diatribe. The match flared to life in
her hand, and she cupped it, listening, hoping desperately to hear
the man resume his rant.

Silence, except
for the hiss of the match in her fingers. She pushed the match
under the twists of newspaper she'd prepared, picked up her wrench,
and darted into a gap between the boiler and a cabinet. She swung
the cabinet door wide, hiding herself, and waited.

The soft scuff
of boot heels came to her straining ears. She held her breath and
tightened her grip on the wrench. It was maddeningly difficult to
judge distance or direction when all you heard was the occasional
brush of leather on concrete. She stared at the cabinet door inches
in front of her face, wondering if her feet showed underneath,
wondering how many men were just on the other side of it.

Fingers
appeared on the top edge of the door, she lifted the wrench, the
door swayed away, and she found herself staring into the astonished
face of a man in a brown Stetson. She swung the wrench like her
life depended on it, and connected with the side of his head. He
flew backward, a pistol dropped from his hand and clattered across
the floor, and he landed on his back, his arms and legs splayed
wide.

Colleen scanned
the room. No one else was in sight. That wouldn't last long,
though, not with the noise she was making. She put down her wrench,
scooped up the fallen pistol, and knelt to grab a huge knife the
cowboy had sheathed at his waist.

He was
unconscious, his face peaceful despite a welt rising on the side of
his head. Colleen thought of Maggie's black eyes and drove a kick
into his ribs.

"Jed?" The
Englishman's voice was sharp with impatience. "What's going
on?"

They would be
coming in moments. Colleen looked in the firebox, saw the kindling
burning fairly well, and yanked open the chute from the coal
hopper. Her little fire was quickly buried in coal. It would catch
or it would go out; there was nothing she could do about it now.
She fled deeper into the building.

Sounds of
pursuit came quickly. She heard men blundering in the shadows and
calling to each other. Colleen crept through narrow gaps in the
machinery or dropped to her hands and knees, crawling awkwardly
with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, keeping out of
sight.

She worked her
way back toward the prisoners. From her hands and knees she had a
whole new perspective on the former factory's mechanical setup. A
gearbox near the boiler turned a spindle as thick as her leg, which
ran down the center of the factory floor. Production machinery had
been connected to the spindle. It was that line of machines that
the prisoners were now tied to.

The spindle
itself was mounted about two feet above the floor, with a filthy
crawl space underneath. Colleen, aware that she was ruining her
second dress in two days, wormed her way into the crawl space and
inched her way along.

Mostly she was
in near-darkness. To her left she could see a stretch of floor and
the back wall of the warehouse. To her right were the machines the
spindle had once powered. Each time legs appeared to her left she
froze, counting on the dirt on her arms and legs to help her blend
into the dirty crawl space. When the legs disappeared she resumed
crawling.

Small gaps
opened up to her right from time to time, giving her brief glimpses
into the main workshop area. She usually saw the Englishman pacing
back and forth with a pistol in his hand. Then she came to a gap,
peered through, and saw a trouser-covered leg with rope wrapped
around the ankles.

She scanned the
open floor to her left. No one was in sight. She worked her way out
of the crawl space, straightened up, cracked her neck, and tried to
peer through the mass of machinery before her.

She could see
the back and side of a man's head. It was the shadowy fourth
prisoner. She stared at him, and his head turned, putting the side
of his face in the light. Colleen gasped. It was Smith, battered
but alive.

She tucked the
pistol into her pocket. It was a very large pistol, with a long
barrel, so she rammed the gun deeper into the pocket until the
barrel tore through the lining. She could feel cold steel against
her leg, but the pistol felt fairly secure. She climbed onto a
rusted safety guard and wriggled forward, toward Smith. She worked
her head and shoulder past a pipe and found that she could see his
hands, bound behind his back, his arms around a metal clamp. She
stretched out her right hand, the cowboy's knife stretching toward
the ropes on Smith's wrists.