Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time (9781941240076) (13 page)

All the while, Pega was fretting with frustration. “You naughty little boy! Stop that right this instant!”

Old Queen Crinkle heard Pega and knew it was a castle servant letting her voice be heard. It was clear that she meant to exact punishment befitting a criminal ghost who had broken the castle rules in the presence of the Queen. But right at that moment, Tudwal’s surprising transmogrification was a much more urgent matter to deal with, as the puppy was growing and growing and growing into a twelve foot tall wolf monster, with fiercely glowing eyes and claws that could easily crush the Old Queen’s bony body. So, taking the Eye of DIOS from her sleeve and placing it on Tudwal moments before he became fully wolf, Old Queen Crinkle incanted words she’d never uttered before, but words she knew would have a powerful affect on any Mystical Creature – even herself, if she wasn’t careful.

“
Convertat ad DIOS
,” was all she said, and she said it quietly, too, as if she only half-believed the words.

Magic flowed from the Eye, beginning with a burst of bright radiance, like the light that shines forth from a Crinomatic. The light completely enshrouded Tudwal. None could see him, not even the Queen who stood before him. There could only be heard the howl of a great wolf that, in the same pitiful note, reduced to the tiny trumpeting of a lost puppy. When the light receded an instant later, Tudwal the wolf was gone. All that remained was Tudwal the puppy, and a frightened puppy at that, trembling in fear and confusion, the poor thing.

In the meantime, as Penelope the Hobbeetle lay knocked upon her back with her legs flailing helplessly, a compartment on her shell opened and out came the Terrific Tarantula’s Turner-Over Jack. In another minute it rolled her back over on to her claws. The Hobbeetle then scurried over to the ruin of the pet shop and pulled Key out from the rubble with another device extending from another compartment on her shell – Ulrick Candlewart’s All-Purpose Crane.

The crane set Key back upon the driver’s throne. Key’s head was swimming with dizziness. The controls around her seemed even more confusing than before. She did not know which button to push for defense, or which switch to flip for attack, which lever to pull to make the Hobbeetle move forward, or which was reverse. However, the more her disorientation dissipated, the more her confidence grew. And the more her confidence grew, the more she knew she had to trust herself more than ever.

Now, feeling her way around the controls, she drove the Hobbeetle straight towards Old Queen Crinkle and backed her into a corner. Pega and Tudwal hurried after them just as Key pressed a button that drew out all the Hobbeetle’s most impressive weapons – Piers Prowler’s Pensive Rifle, Ferdinand Fook’s Funnybone Smacker, Norbert Bumbleson’s One-Hour Snicker-maker, and more.

But much to Key’s surprise, Old Queen Crinkle cackled fiendishly, sneering with a fearless expression.

“You think you can stop me, Troll? You think I’ve survived seven hundred and seventy-seven years, one thousand four hundred and ninety two death threats, two hundred and thirty-eight uprisings, and an argument – a misunderstanding, really – with Warhag, so that I could be stopped by someone like —”

Key pressed the Ferdinand Fook button and a mechanical mitt reached out and flicked Old Queen Crinkle on her funny bone.

“Ow!” she yipped, rubbing her elbow in pain.

Grimacing as heartlessly as she could, the Old Queen then spoke to her scepter the way Miss Broomble had spoken to her spyglass.

“Umbracopter.”

The Queen’s scepter then unfolded into something like an umbrella. Metal ribs stretched out in all directions above her head. The scepter lengthened down to her feet and a small platform unfolded on the ground. She set her foot upon the platform as the ribs above her head began swirling around like the blades of a helicopter.

“Compliments of the GadgetTronic Brothers,” she added as the umbracopter then lifted her up off the ground, high into the air.

Key was not about to let Old Queen Crinkle get away that easily. As the umbracopter carried the Queen farther and farther off, she drove her Hobbeetle onwards, stopping only momentarily for Pega to lift up a whimpering Tudwal and place him by Key’s side. Together the four companions traversed the winding, twisting, looping, drooping streets of the City of the Dead. They crawled around a sepulcher florist, The Black Rose. They crawled over a rather popular catacomb computer company called Pumpkin. They crawled through a churchyard for Mostly Dead Landscaping. They clambered across the roof of a mausoleum apartment complex for yuppie Zombies who worked at the nearby law firm, DeComposé.

But no matter how fast the Hobbeetle crawled, it seemed as if the umbracopter moved much faster, as if something more than mere mechanical was moving it – something like dark magic.

Key was not about to give up hope, but she did not know what else she could do. Penelope the Hobbeetle did, however. Her operating system was the same as the MotorHog’s – DIOS. And like before, DIOS knew exactly what Key needed right then, thus the Hobbeetle did, too. Rising up from a small compartment in her shell was an even smaller panel; and atop the small panel was an even smaller button, below which was just one word.

EJECT.

Key did not know quite what would happen by pressing that button, although she had a good idea, but she felt she had little choice. She did not know where Miss Broomble was; she did not know if Mr. Fuddlebee could stop the Queen alone. She knew only that it was up to her now: She must stop the Queen.

So, picking up Tudwal, she looked into his large brown puppy eyes.

“Coming with me?” she asked him.

His whimpering now ended – the way most boys similarly stop mewling when easily distracted with candy or toys or being launched from the back of a moving beetle – Tudwal panted his pink puppy tongue and wagged his tail happily.

“Mistress,” said the grandmotherly voice of Pega closer to Key’s ear. “What are you going to do? What sort of plan do you have?”

Key hugged Tudwal closer to her chest with one arm, and with her other she held her hand over the eject button. “The same plan I had in Despair,” she answered. And right before pressing the eject button, she added, “I’m going to break my chains.”

The thrust of her throne launched her and Tudwal high in the air. Together they soared like a missile over the Necropolis, over the Bloodmen & Curdle’s Golf Course, over the Pundicle arena, over the Lantern Tree Grove and over the Labyrinth Garden, all the way towards Old Queen Crinkle on her umbracopter, where Key managed to grab hold of the hem of the Queen’s patchwork dress.

The umbracopter dipped a little with the added weight. But its whirling blades thumped a little harder and thrust them all onwards. Key clung to the hem with one hand and to Tudwal with the other, refusing to let go of either, completely ignoring the Old Queen’s protestations, “Release me, you Troll!” She held on even tighter when she saw in the distance a tall black tower, rising quickly up over the horizon. The umbracopter was flying them straight there with great speed.

The nearer they approached, the more Key realized that she had seen this tower before in
Wanda Wickery’s History of the Necropolis
. It was not smoothly narrow, but rickety, having been hewn out of black rock by several generations of Morrow Dwarves who had had a different opinion on the meaning of a straight line. It was also the tallest structure around for miles and miles, taller than the Morbid Monument nearby, taller than the Insidious Skyscraper just down the block, and almost as tall as the tallest tower in the Necropolis Castle.

“It’s the Time Tomb of Thomas à Tempus,” said Key.

— CHAPTER SIXTEEN —

The Tower Tomb of Time

The umbracopter carried Old Queen Crinkle, Key, and Tudwal nearer to the Tower Tomb of Thomas à Tempus.

Key could now see that the top of the Tower was crowned in five tall pinnacles. And each pinnacle seemed to sparkle, as if it were tipped with a large jewel.

Unfortunately, she could not think much more about this as the Old Queen made several violent attempts to shake her off, but Key was determined not to let the Queen escape again. She would do whatever she could to help Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble turn the Old Queen back into a mortal before the night’s end, even if it was the last thing she ever did.

Finally in desperation, however, the Queen held her hand over Key and spewed out another curse. “Woeful Crow of Glowing Snow, force this thing to let me go.”

At this utterance, a hidden force – like the talons of some ghostly monster – grasped Key’s hands. She tried to keep hold of the Queen and Tudwal with all her vampire strength, but this hidden force was stronger. Slowly and surely it pried one finger after another off the dress and off Tudwal, too. Feeling her grip weakening, she thought she and her immortal puppy would surely fall, most likely to their doom.

But neither did – not until the Old Queen held her hand out away from the umbracopter, and Key dangled beneath her wizened grip, as if she were a puppet dangling from the hidden strings of a marionette. Tudwal was dangling right beside her, just out of arm’s reach, wiggling in the air, trying to get free. But neither he nor Key could; the magical grasp of this hidden force was too powerful for them. The Queen cackled with triumph, relishing for a moment this small victory. Then she flicked her fingers. And it was as though the secret strings holding Key in the air were suddenly cut. She and her puppy fell.

Fortunately, the umbracopter had by now flown them all the way to the Tower Tomb, so Key did not fall far. She landed on the edge of the Tower, right beside the hovering wingtip shoes of a ghost glowing bottle green.

“Hello, my dear,” remarked Mr. Fuddlebee in a good-natured tone. “How wonderful that you could make it.”

Tudwal, unfortunately, was too far away. Key reached for him over the edge but he fell past the Tower and went tumbling down, down, down to the Necropolis streets.

“Tudwal!” she cried out to him as he was panting and yipping happily, acting as though this was the best game he’d ever played.

“He’ll be all right, my dear,” Mr. Fuddlebee assured her. “Besides, we have other matters to attend to at the moment.”

Old Queen Crinkle’s umbracopter set her down gently on the top of the Tower, right in the middle of the five crowning points, on top of a stone casket, wherein lay the remains of Thomas à Tempus.

“Scepter,” she commanded her umbracopter. And it folded back into its usual wiry shape.

Worriedly turning away from Tudwal, and standing beside Mr. Fuddlebee, Key noticed now that the five points were not tipped with large jewels, but with sparks of fire, sparks that would not kindle, sparks that would dawdle eternally on the edge of bursting into flames.

One spark burned a blue color, another was green, another violet, another gold, and the fifth and final spark burned the color of black ink.

Old Queen Crinkle took the Eye of DIOS from her sleeve, fixed it to the tip of her scepter, and then aimed it towards the blue spark. The Eye shifted colors, from silvery starlight to blood red.

A vine of light slithered out from it next, snaked through the air, and wrapped around the blue spark. Then it slithered towards the green spark and wrapped around it, too. It did the same with the violet and the gold and the ink black sparks. The Eye’s blood red glow intensified as it began drawing all five sparks away from their points, nearer to the middle, right over the place where the Old Queen stood atop Thomas à Tempus’s stone casket.

“What is she doing?” Key asked Mr. Fuddlebee.

The elderly ghost sighed. “Well,” he began to explain professorially, “it would appear that she is attempting to use the Eye of DIOS to draw the five sparks together.”

“What are those sparks?”

“It is said that they were born simultaneously with the birth of the cosmos. They are the Sparks of Timefire.”

“Why is she drawing them together?”

“She’d like them to touch.”

“What will happen if they do?”

“I’m a bit curious about that myself,” Mr. Fuddlebee confessed. “No one’s ever tried it before. One theory is that they’ll open a Doorackle Alleyway. Another is that they’ll commence the zombie apocalypse. Either way it’ll make quite an entertaining evening.”

Old Queen Crinkle, not too far from them, easily overheard Mr. Fuddlebee’s last remark. Cackling evilly, she answered him: “You know nothing, you old fool! I have searched long and hard for a way to escape the Hand of DIOS. And now I have it! The Eye will open Thomas’s Tomb, and the Doorackle Alleyway will —”

Mr. Fuddlebee pointed the end of his umbrella at her and pressed a button just above the handle. Key waited for something magical to happen. But nothing appeared to, not at first, not until she noticed that Old Queen Crinkle’s mouth was moving, as if talking wildly, yet no sound came from her.

“That’s better,” Mr. Fuddlebee said, smiling contentedly and leaning once again on his umbrella, with a rather proud look. “As I was saying, her success is highly unlikely —”

“What did you just do?” interrupted Key, looking curiously from his umbrella to Old Queen Crinkle, who was now pointing at them and mouthing what might have been venomous death threats.

Mr. Fuddlebee held his umbrella up. Though transparent like him, it had been outfitted with many interesting buttons and switches. “Compliments of the GadgetTronic Brothers,” he said with a playful smirk. “Why, this umbrella can do much more than keep off the rain – although it doesn’t do much of that these days either, being rather ghostly like me. One of the marvelous features that the GadgetTronic Brothers outfitted it with was what you just saw, or rather didn’t see – a Sonicorb.”

Key wondered with great curiosity just what a Sonicorb might be exactly.

With the end of his umbrella, the elderly ghost gestured towards the Queen, who appeared to be mouthing something about courting pigs. Or was it snorting wigs? Key couldn’t tell. “As you can see,” explained Mr. Fuddlebee, “we can see her, but no longer hear her. The Sonicorb diminishes the sound in a particular area. Anyone inside the transparent orb can speak without being heard, and the same goes for anyone outside the orb. Unfortunately, this effect only lasts for a minute or two, so let’s use this time wisely. Did you catch who won the last Pundicle match? I had my coin on Agatha Toagslayer.”