Pistons and Pistols Read online

  She turned to him, lowering her eyes in a demure gesture. “Yes, I do desire a word with you. You see, I feel I owe you an apo—”

  Over her apology came the captain’s piercing screams. Atom left her talking to herself as he sprinted back to the mine entrance. Gabriella was soon on his heels, wanting nothing more than to rush to her captain’s rescue. Everyone stood at the edge of the blackness, staring into the mine as shrieks filled the air. Clipped questions and worried shouts joined the captain’s screams, until the noise came to an abrupt stop.

  A heartbeat of silence passed among them.

  “We gotta go get her,” Dot said.

  “We don’t know what’s down there,” Jayne said.

  Another heartbeat of silence passed.

  “I’ll go,” Atom said.

  Gabriella turned to find him removing his glove.

  “Don’t be stupid, Atom,” Jayne said. “There’s no telling what’s down there.”

  “Where’s Jax?”

  “She went to use the facilities.”

  Atom eyed the buildings and surrounding hills. “Then she could be anywhere.”

  “Actually,” the professor said. “I offered her use of my private water closet. She might still be there.”

  “Dot, hurry and fetch Jax,” Atom said, his voice a calm command. “If there is any real trouble, she’s best to handle it.”

  “Will do,” the woman said, and was off for the house in a flash.

  “Wait for Jax,” Jayne begged.

  “One of us needs to go now,” Atom said. “If we wait, it could be too late. Professor, please ready a lantern for me.”

  “You heard the lad, Thaddeus,” the professor said. “Get to cranking.”

  As the manservant did as asked, Atom removed his coat, tie, then rolled his sleeves to his elbows.

  “Oh, my word!” the professor squealed with glee as Atom’s clockwork arm came into view. The man then clapped in excitement. “So it is true. You’re everything Grant said you would be.”

  “Grant?” Atom asked. “You know my father?”

  “Of course. Doctor Loquacious and I have been friends for years.”

  The news should have been earth-shattering, life-changing and time-stopping. But considering time wasn’t on their side at the moment, Gabriella supposed everyone did what she had done. Catalogued the importance of it and moved on.

  Before the man could get his hands on the clockwork arm, Atom held up his flesh hand to stop the professor. “Please, sir, we can do this later. I promise you all the time you wish to inspect it.”

  “Don’t be stupid,” Jayne said again. “Let one of us go. You’re far too important to go and get yourself killed.”

  Gabriella’s heart stuttered. Jayne’s words were the closest to a declaration to affection Gabriella had ever heard the girl speak. Perhaps her first assumption was the right one. Perhaps he did love Jayne.

  “If I don’t, who will?” Atom asked. He eyed the group, from Jayne to Gabriella, to the professor and his manservant.

  No one volunteered.

  “Don’t go,” Jayne begged again.

  Atom held Jayne by the shoulder as he smiled down on her, a friendly move that seemed natural to Gabriella. Then he cupped the girl’s face in his hands, caressing her damp eyes with his thumbs, both flesh and fake. It was a move that was anything but friendly. Gabriella bristled, jealousy overpowering her concern.

  “Be careful, stupid,” Jayne said, her voice hitching with distress.

  With a nod, Atom let her go, snatched the prepared lantern from Thaddeus and ran into the mine entrance.

  A few steps in, Atom came to a stop, halting dead in his tracks. He tipped his head, seeming to consider something for a moment, then turned and ran back to the group. Or rather, back to Gabriella. To her surprise, he snatched her by the shoulders, pulling her to him, where he proceeded to give her the most passionate, soul-searing kiss Gabriella had ever experienced. Under normal circumstances, she would have chastised him for such a public display of wild affection and for helping himself to a kiss without even so much as hinting that he wanted one. But in this case, it was all she could do to keep from swooning in his arms.

  Atom released her mouth, but continued to cradle her to him for a moment. He stared into her eyes and whispered, “I may not be a true man at heart, but I will always care for you more than any real man ever could.”

  Then he was gone.

  * * * *

  “Keep struggling, wench,” Bill sneered. “You know I like it when you put up a fight.”

  Rose did as he wanted, belting him in the lower jaw. Bill dropped his hold on her, rubbing the place she struck as he eyed her.

  “You always did have thorns, didn’t you, Rose?” he asked, then laughed again.

  She knew she wouldn’t get a second chance to hit him or to run. Pushing with every ounce of strength she possessed, Rose turned to flee. She didn’t get three steps before he had her by her red mane again.

  Yanking hard, he pulled her down to the dirt floor. Bill fell atop her, striking double-fisted blows across her face, neck and breasts, until she went still. Their routine returned to her with a calming clarity. It was best to let him have his fun, rough as it was bound to be. Bruises would heal, but broken bones could turn into a nightmare. If she kept quiet and calm, it would be over sooner, with minimal damage to her person.

  “Oh no,” he said as if he knew what she was up to. “Not this time. This time you’re going to scream and scream and scream.” He struck her hard again across the face, leaving a sting of shame and a blur in her left eye, before he snarled, “This time you will sing for me, bitch.” He pawed at her breeches, popping off the buttons with his big fingers as if they were pasted on instead of sewn.

  As he worked his way to the last button, something welled up inside of her. A fire in her belly exploded, coursing through her body until it set her mind ablaze with courage. It was just like the day it happened. The day she decided she’d had enough.

  Rose squirmed under him, trying to free herself from his grip. Bill laughed, amused by her struggle. He worked her pants open, thrusting his hand inside. As he found his prize, she found hers—a two-inch knife she kept in the side of her boot.

  “Why, my blossom,” he gasped as his fingers invaded her. “You’re already wet for me?”

  “No,” she sneered. “I’m wet because a real man made love to me not an hour ago on the deck of my ship!”

  Rose snatched the knife from its hiding place, whipping it from her boot to his face in a quick arc of blinding silver. Bill cried aloud in pain. He pushed away from her, landing flat on his ass as he gripped his face in shock. It took everything she had not to just stop and laugh at how ridiculous he looked at that moment. Instead she focused on her escape, getting to her feet to run.

  Before she could sprint away, Bill snatched her by the ankle, dragging her down again. Rose kicked and fought, writhing across the ground until she was butted against the tunnel wall. She turned on him, weapon at the ready, watching as he crawled to her with a feral grin on his lips.

  “Bloody Rose Madigan,” he said. “Isn’t that what they call you now? I bet you like that name, don’t you?”

  “I won’t let you hurt me again!” she screamed.

  “And how are you going to stop me? How’s a woman ever going to stop me?”

  Rose waved the blade at him, trying her best to look as if she weren’t scared to death of the man. “I killed you once, William Madigan. I’ll do it again!”

  “You killed me.”

  It wasn’t a question. It was a statement. An accusation. Rose eyed him, entranced by the proclamation, when her gaze fell on his wound.

  “You aren’t bleeding,” she whispered.

  The slash across his cheek, while gaping and impressive, failed to weep a single drop of red. It was as though the man were made of wax, not flesh. As Rose got to her feet, she realized the obvious.

  “You killed me!” he shouted
, trembling with rage

  “You aren’t real,” she said. “You’re just in my mind.”

  He ignored her accusations, crouching on all fours like some animal. “You pushed me to my death, Rose. Off of my own blasted ship! How could you? I was your husband.”

  “You were a monster!”

  No sooner had she said it than the monster attacked. He pounced from his crouch, pinning her to the wall with his full weight as he gripped her knife hand. Bill twisted her wrist to a painful angle until she released the weapon. It fell with a dull thump in the dirt.

  “You’re not real!” she shouted again. “I killed you, William Madigan. I watched you fall a thousand feet to your death. You’re dead!”

  “Oh, I suppose I’m real enough.” He paused, narrowing his eyes before he added, “’Til death do we part, my blossom.” He closed his hands around her throat.

  As he bore down on her, jamming her windpipe closed with his thick thumbs, Rose clawed at his hands. It was no good, no good. He was going to win.

  Bill then said an odd thing. “Captain.” He shook her, throttling her against the wall of the tunnel as he shouted her title over and over in some mockery of respect. The world grew thin around her, the weak light tunneling to a pinpoint on Bill’s rabid face. Rose closed her eyes, ready to die at the hands of a memory.

  “Captain! It’s me, Atom.”

  Rose opened her eyes to a hazy form that was not her dead husband.

  “Captain?” Atom asked again. He was inches from her, a look of dire concern on his pale face.

  She stood against the tunnel wall, hands around her own throat, strangling the life from her tired body.

  “I have you,” he said as she fell into his arms.

  * * * *

  For ten heart-wrenching minutes Gabriella stared into the mines, her eyes teeming with unspent tears. She wanted to cry, but she didn’t know for what. It was clear how he felt about Jayne, after such a tender parting between the pair. But what of his return to kiss Gabriella? She had never been so confused in her whole life. Gabriella pushed the tears away, swearing she wouldn’t shed a single one until she knew exactly what was going on.

  “Guppy,” Jayne said.

  Gabriella nodded at Jayne, then returned to her worried watching of the mine.

  “Atom spoke to me this afternoon,” Jayne said.

  “What about?” Gabriella asked.

  “About the talk you two had this morning.”

  Great God almighty! Did everyone know? “I see.”

  “You shouldn’t be so hard on him. He is what he is. He can’t help it.”

  Everyone aboard the Widow knew that Jayne had some mysterious upbringing that stunted her socially, but this was too much. She was just as amoral as Atom was about the whole affair. Gabriella was willing to loosen her morals enough to rough it on an airship, yet she would not sink so low as to engage in this threesome everyone else thought was so natural. “He can’t help it? He most certainly can. And he should.”

  Jayne narrowed her eyes at Gabriella. “No. He can’t. And I would have thought better of you. He’s no less human just because he’s put together differently.”

  “That’s an odd way of wording it, but I suppose I see where you are coming from. Nonetheless, I won’t be pulled into your strange triangle just because neither of you was raised properly.”

  Before Jayne could argue further, Jax’s shouts reached them.

  “If she doesn’t get herself killed,” the woman declared, “then Jax will do it for her!” Jax stormed down the narrow path from the house, followed by Dot. The blonde stopped to stare hard at the professor, cursing him in her low country language. “Yebat! Your house is too complicated. I almost didn’t find my way out. Now look what you’ve made me miss.”

  The man in question squeaked.

  “It’s like a maze up there,” Dot said. “I found her wandering in your lab.”

  “You didn’t touch anything, did you?” the professor asked.

  Jax snatched the man by his lapels, perhaps with the intention of dragging him below with her, when Atom’s cry rose from the blackness.

  “I have her!” he shouted.

  Everyone crowded to the edge of the mine, eager to see what had become of their captain, their leader, their friend. Atom stumbled into view, lit by twin lamps hanging from either side of his waist, with the captain cradled in his arms. Jax rushed forward to relieve him of his burden. Gabriella wanted to weep at the sight of her captain. The woman was black and blue from forehead to neck, with her clothes in tatters and one hand bent at an awkward angle to her wrist.

  “Lay her over here,” Dot said, motioning to a flat patch in the soil.

  Jax did as asked, lowering the woman to the ground.

  “What happened to her?” Dot asked.

  Atom leaned over to grasp his knees as he gasped for breath. “She was choking herself when I found her.”

  Dot nodded, then turned to inspect the captain’s throat.

  “She was shouting something about seeing her husband,” Atom said, his breath evening out.

  “She is seeing ghosts then,” Jax said.

  Atom shook his head. “No, just a vision of one. A deadly hallucination. The tunnels are full of some kind of gas.”

  “Gas?” the professor asked.

  “Yes,” Atom said. “It’s nearly undetectable by human senses, but I was able to see it within the infrared spectrum. It’s warmer than the air. Denser too. Definitely some kind of gas.”

  Jayne gasped. “I didn’t know you could see infrared.”

  “Neither did I.” He smiled and shrugged. “I guess it kicked in when I needed it most.”

  “We need to vent the tunnels,” the professor said.

  “How?”

  “There are doors every one hundred feet along the route. If they are opened in sequence from the source outward, it will pull the gas to the surface, where it should dissipate.”

  “I’m on it,” Atom said, turning to run down the mineshaft.

  “No, you’re not!” Gabriella shouted.

  Atom turned on his heel to stare at her.

  “You were lucky the first time,” she said. “Don’t put yourself in danger again.”

  “She’s right,” Jax said. “Don’t risk your life for the likes of him.” She motioned to the professor.

  Furrowing his brow, Atom opened and closed his mouth a few times, as if he wanted to say something he couldn’t.

  “He’s not in danger,” Jayne said.

  “You keep out of this,” Gabriella said. “If, as his lover, you aren’t going to take care of him, then at least let his friends do it.”

  Jayne’s face twisted into a mask of disgust. “Lovers?” She stuck out her tongue, as if the whole idea made her ill. “I’m not his lover. Yuck!”

  Gabriella was more confused than ever. “But I thought…” she let the words trail off as she turned to face Atom. He stared at her with a look of confusion that almost matched hers. It was Gabriella’s turn to jaw the air a moment. “You said Jayne was special to you. You said…you…” She replayed the morning’s conversation. Each word struck her to the core.

  It all made a mad sort of sense. His time spent with the tinker. The strange nature of his hand. His odd copper eyes. The way he kept repeating the words ‘real man’ as if they didn’t apply to him.

  Gabriella shifted her gaze to his clockwork hand.

  He flexed it into a fist.

  Her gaze returned to his copper eyes. “You aren’t a real man.”

  Atom winced at her words, clutching his faux-fist over his heart as if the very sound of her understanding pained him. Before she could speak further on the matter, he turned, fleeing into the blackness once more.

  The noise of those around her faded into a thin rush as her heart leapt to her throat. All this time, Atom had pretended to be just another man, when indeed he wasn’t. He spoke like a man, walked like a man, even kissed her like a real man. Yet he wasn’t huma
n at all.

  Atom Loquacious was a clockwork man.

  Chapter 13

  Family Matters

  In which we learn of certain relations, some weird, some wonderful

  Rose groaned as she awoke. Grabbing her head, she tried to stop the symphony that played with painful exuberance between her temples. Crashing cymbals. Pounding drums. It was no use. She hadn’t felt this worn out since…

  Bill!

  She sat up in a shot with the memory of what happened in the mine. Was it real? Was he back?

  “Calm down, Captain.” Dot pushed against Rose’s shoulder with a gentle hand. “Lie back down. You still need rest.”

  “What happened?” Rose croaked, rubbing at her raw throat. She winced when she realized her hand, which was bandaged from wrist to fingers, hurt even worse.

  “Your wrist was dislocated, but not broken, thankfully. You have a concussion, and I suspect you might have fractured your orbital ridge. You, my friend, are going to be black and blue for quite some time.”

  “How?”

  “According to Atom, you nearly beat yourself to death.”

  “Atom?” Rose furrowed her brow. Then she remembered everything. “He came after me. I told you all to stay put.”

  “He saved your life.”

  “Again. I’m going to have to have a talk with that boy.” Rose sighed as she lay back in the bed. It was big and fluffy and comfortable and wasn’t her bed at all. She sat up again. The room was unfamiliar, but well-decorated and kept. “Where am I?”

  “The professor’s room.” Dot smiled. “He offered his bed for your convalescence after you came out of the mine looking like you’d gone ten rounds with a prize fighter. He supposed it was the least he could do.”

  Rose squinted, shielding her eyes as the first few rays of the rising sun pierced the half-shaded window. “How long was I out?”

  “Most of the night.” Dot yawned. “And a long night it has been too. I thought you might be out a few days, but here you are awake. Your tenacity never ceases to amaze me.”

  “Thanks.”