Gears of a Mad God: A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure (9 page)

Another police
officer was on guard a little way down the hall. He nodded as she
stepped past him into Jane's room.

Jane had
sticking plaster on four different places on her face. Her bruises
had darkened, and her lips and cheek had puffed up. Overall she
looked much worse, but she smiled when she saw Colleen.

Colleen looked
around the room. "Where's Maggie?"

"She left when
the policeman outside made it clear he wasn't going anywhere. It's
all right. There's police all over the place. I'm perfectly safe
for now." Her face went somber. "After that, well, I'm going to be
leaving Victoria. Leaving Canada completely, in fact."

"I heard," said
Colleen.

Jane shrugged.
"The only thing really keeping me here was Rod. And he's gone now.
Even without everything else that's happened, I might have left,
just to escape the memories." She shook her head. "Poor Rod. I miss
him so much."

Colleen nodded.
Her uncle had left a bigger gap in her life than she ever would
have expected.

"It's over, I
guess," said Jane. "This whole nightmare."

"I guess it
is," said Colleen.

"Thank you for
coming to get me. The others said you were the one who made them
come. You made them save me."

Colleen blushed
and looked at the floor. "Well, you kept helping me."

"Oh, posh. You
got me off of that horrible ship, and I'll never forget it. I don't
know where I'll end up, but wherever it is, you'll always be
welcome. You're my family now. I mean it."

Colleen stared
at the other woman, speechless, and Jane grinned. "Now, don't get
all teary on me. You'll spoil your macho hero image."

Colleen left
the hospital room feeling better than she had in quite some time.
The nightmare really was over. She was going to catch the next
ferry to the mainland and head immediately for Toronto. There, she
would be spending time with Roland. It was time she thought about
building a family of her own, a real family. A life with Roland,
far away from mad cults and murderous plots.

She said her
goodbyes to Carter and left the hospital, feeling optimistic. Uncle
Rod's house wouldn't be worth much, but it would be enough to hire
a lawyer to handle his estate for her. Lawyers did that, didn’t
they? She doubted he owned the warehouse that contained his
workshop. Well, the lawyer could figure that out, and take care of
whatever needed doing.

The streets of
Victoria, sunlit and bustling, made the dark machinations of the
cult seem distant. With police swarming all over the
Arcadia
, the cult's members dead or scattered, and witnesses
all around, the danger was clearly over. Colleen walked through
downtown, unescorted and unafraid. She would feel even safer once
she got back to Toronto. First, there was business to take care
of.

She spoke to a
glib lawyer at a firm called Thorpe and Thorpe, pored over a fat
contract, and signed it. Everything would be left in the firm's
capable hands. She would go home and wait for a cheque.

She went back
to her hotel room and sat on the bed. The next ferry left Victoria
the following day, at nine in the morning. She would have dinner,
get a good night's sleep, and leave early for the ferry port. She
glanced at her pillow. It looked marvellously soft, and she was so
exhausted she could barely sit up. Perhaps lying down wouldn't be a
bad idea, she decided. Just for a minute or two, until the worst of
this weariness passed. It wouldn't do to fall asleep.

Sleep, of
course, took her almost immediately. She dreamed of Toronto, of
Jane, of the woman on the running board. Once again Colleen
stretched out her arm, pointing the gun, her finger tightened on
the trigger. The woman looked up, and it was Smith's face she saw
in the last split second before the gun went off.

Her eyes flew
open. The room was dark, and her stomach rumbled loudly. She
wondered if she would still be able to find something to eat. In
the hotel, ideally. The idea of walking the streets of Victoria
after dark didn't hold much appeal.

Her stomach
felt heavy, so much so that she was having trouble breathing. She
tried to touch her stomach with her hands and found that her arms
wouldn't move. She looked down at her body. It was obscured by a
dark shape. In the blackness of the room she couldn't figure out
what she was seeing. Then the mattress creaked and teeth gleamed
above her in a smile.

She screamed,
and a hand closed over her mouth, silencing her in an instant. A
smell filled her nose, sweat and sawdust and grease, and she knew
it was Jimbo before he spoke. His voice was a coarse whisper.

"Where is
Tanathos?"

She flailed,
kicked her feet, sucked in desperate breaths through her nose and
tried to scream. Nothing came out but a muted whimper. He was
straddling her, his knees on either side of her rib cage, pinning
her arms. She drummed her knees against his back, thrashed from
side to side, and he pinched her nostrils shut.

She panicked,
thrashing frantically, and he leaned in close and hissed, "Stop
it!" He released her nose long enough for her to take in a single
breath, and pinched off her air again. "Stop it," he repeated, and
Colleen forced herself to lie still. He let go of her nostrils and
she concentrated on drawing one desperate breath after another.

"I just need
the map," he said. "Tell me where it is and I'll leave you alone.
I'm going to uncover your mouth. If you scream, I'll kill you. Do
you understand?"

She nodded.

"Will you tell
me where Tanathos is?"

She nodded
again.

"Will you
scream?"

She shook her
head.

"Good girl." He
lifted his hand and Colleen let out a piercing shriek. His hand
slammed down, cutting her off in mid-cry, and he pinched her
nostrils shut again. She kicked and thrashed, knowing it was
hopeless, staring at the dark outline of his head as swirling spots
of light began to dance across her vision.

The door
crashed open. The gleam of Jimbo's teeth disappeared as he turned
his head. Then the weight came off of her, she could move her arms,
she could breathe!

She sprang from
the bed, stumbled to the door, and flicked on the lights. Two men
were rolling on the floor beside her bed. She could see Jimbo's
greasy hair and familiar red coat, and she scanned the room for a
weapon. Her eyes fell on a bedside lamp, but it seemed too
flimsy.

She picked up
the entire bedside table instead. It was a sturdy piece of
furniture, and she grunted at the weight as she hoisted it over her
head. The two men rolled back and forth, hammering each other with
their fists. Then Jimbo slammed down his elbow, the other man cried
out, and Jimbo rolled on top of him.

Colleen swung
the table with all of her strength, slamming it down on Jimbo's
skull. He flopped forward. She hoisted the table high again and
stood trembling, but Jimbo didn't move.

The man
underneath put a hand on Jimbo's shoulder and shoved him aside, and
Colleen, afraid she was dreaming, tossed the table onto the bed and
dropped to her knees. "Roland!" she cried, and threw her arms
around him. "Oh, my God, Roland! Is it really you?"

It was hours
later before the last policeman left. Jimbo was taken away in an
ambulance, his skull fractured, his survival in question. Colleen
was surprised to find herself fervently hoping that he died. He had
chosen his path, and the world would undoubtedly be better off
without him.

Roland's nose
bled for more than an hour, but didn't seem to be broken. The
police finally accepted their story that she had been attacked by a
prowler for reasons unknown, and left. Roland wedged a chair under
the doorknob and they lay down on the bed, fully dressed. She put
her head on his shoulder. His arms went around her, and she clung
to him, wanting never to let go.

"I want you to
come back to Toronto with me tomorrow."

"Yes,
Roland."

"Having you so
far away, worrying about you, and now nearly losing you... I don't
ever want to lose you, Colleen."

She smiled and
squeezed him tighter.

"I think we
should get married," he said, and she answered with another
squeeze.

"There will
have to be some changes," he told her, and she nodded against his
shoulder.

"Whatever you
want."

"No more
workshop," he said sternly. "No more tools. I want you to stay at
home and raise our children. I think we should have lots of
children, don't you?"

"I think that
sounds wonderful," she told him, and drifted off to sleep.

The story came
out in fits and starts on the ferry ride to Vancouver. There were
parts she didn't want to remember, but she told him the highlights.
When she got to Jane's rescue, his face clouded over.

"That was
irresponsible," he declared. "They never should have done that.
They certainly shouldn't have let you participate."

She stared at
him, startled. "But we had to help Jane!"

"At what cost?"
He shook his head. "No, you don't make progress by turning a
disaster into a catastrophe. Sometimes you have to accept your
losses and move on."

He sounded so
certain that she didn't argue. She thought of Jane in the hospital,
though, talking of her plans for the future. Surely that wasn't a
bad thing! Smith and Garson were dead. That was a high price to
pay, a ghastly price, but what was the option? Allow the cult to
flourish, look the other way? Surely that wasn't a realistic
strategy.

She stared
moodily out at the water, trying to recapture her happiness of a
few hours before. If Roland had a blind spot, it stemmed from his
absolute determination to keep her safe. She couldn't fault him for
that.

When they
docked in Vancouver Roland got in line at a news stand and Colleen
walked into the middle of the terminal. It was the first time she'd
been more than a dozen feet from him since he'd burst into her
hotel room, almost the first time she'd stopped touching him since
he saved her life. She wanted a bit of distance, enough room to
think without the intoxicating aura that he seemed to generate.

Not so much
distance that she couldn't see him, of course. She watched him
shuffle forward in the lineup, proud of his height, his broad
shoulders, his casual confidence.

A group of
cowboys blocked her view. There were six of them, lanky, weathered
men in long dusters and Stetsons. You saw every kind of person in a
place like this. A prim little man in a grey business suit came
over to meet them and led them to the ticket counter. Colleen
smiled. What would a group of cowboys do in Victoria? Catch a ship
for somewhere else, she imagined. There weren't many cattle on the
island.

Roland bought a
newspaper and came strolling toward her. He stopped beside her, but
he gazed past her shoulder and said, "Now, what's the matter with
him?"

Colleen turned
and found the short man in the grey suit staring at her from across
the terminal. He had striking features, a face almost perfectly
round with a bristling Chaplin-style mustache under his nose and
round, steel-rimmed spectacles. He held her gaze for a moment, then
turned away, talking to the cowboy beside him.

"Friend of
yours?"

She glanced up
at Roland. "No, I've never seen him before." Well, she had bruises
around her mouth from Jimbo's hands, and dark circles under her
eyes. Small wonder people were staring. "Shall we go?"

She and Roland
left the terminal and joined a queue for taxis. There were over a
dozen people ahead of them, and not a cab in sight. Roland grinned
and opened his newspaper. "I guess I should have waited until we
got to the train station," he said. "I let everyone get ahead of
us."

"I don't mind,"
Colleen told him. "It's nice to be by the ocean." She left him
minding their luggage and holding their place in the line, and
walked to the corner of the terminal building. She watched gulls
wheel and dive. After a while a horn sounded, and soon she saw the
ferry moving away from shore.

She could see
the cowboys in a line at the ferry railing and wondered again what
brought them to Victoria. A man in a suit had come to meet them, so
it had to be something important.

For some
reason, the man in the suit bothered her. She thought she
remembered him vaguely from the morning's crossing. He'd come
across just to meet with the cowboys and bring them back, then.
What troubled her? She was sure she'd never seen him before. His
face was too distinctive to forget.

She chased the
thought in circles, then pushed it from her mind. Her brain would
serve up the answer if she gave it a chance. She walked back to
rejoin Roland.

"Cor," said a
voice behind her, "we'll 'ave a 'ard time makin' our reservation
now."

Colleen went
cold as the memory came rushing back. A hotel lobby, the prick of a
knife, and a voice behind her, a cold, clipped British accent. A
man in a suit. She'd never seen his face.

"Darling?"
Roland's voice was tight with concern. "What is it?"

She stared at
him. "That man. The round-faced man in the train station. I think
he's a member of the cult."

His eyebrows
rose. "Are you sure?"

She wasn't
sure, far from it. She hadn’t even heard his voice this time. The
suit was similar, and the way he'd stared at her was unsettling. It
could be coincidence.

"It doesn't
matter," Roland said, as if she'd spoken aloud. "There's nothing we
can do about it now. He's gone. We're out of it now. Forget him."
And he turned away, calmly scanning the street for a taxi.

Colleen stared
at the back of his head, speechless. He wasn't pretending. He
honestly didn't care. Colleen was safe. They were leaving. In
Roland's mind, nothing else mattered.