Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time (9781941240076) (7 page)

Key was terribly worried for her puppy, but Miss Broomble took her by the hand and guided her back inside the turret with the Doorackle Alleyway, assuring her that Tudwal would be fine, though the witch did look a little doubtful.

Yet when Key entered the turret, she was very surprised to see that the Doorackle Alleyway was now missing. She turned questioningly to Miss Broomble and searched her eyes for an explanation, but the witch only replied, “That happens from time to time. The Doorackle Alleyway probably went to a less noisy spot. They’re all a bunch of sleepyheads.”

In its place now was a mangy-looking cat, with black curlicues for stripes. It was Warhag. The castle cat had often made surprise visits down to the Dungeon of Despair, padding softly in and out, like a stealthy predator. Now, the cat briefly paused from her grooming to glare at Key. Her glowing violet eyes narrowed menacingly as she considered whether she should unleash the full storm of her feline fury upon this steampunk vampire girl for catching her at a bath. But as her grooming was far more important than slaying helpless creatures, the castle cat decided to return her attention to a particularly matted clump of orange fur.

Miss Broomble started taking off her armor shirt, removing each copper plate one by one, as well as her half-mask, laying them all out very neatly along the floor.

Underneath her armor she had been wearing a plain, formfitting, black outfit, with just enough room in one pocket for her Crinomatic, which she took out now. Before speaking into it, however, she turned a small dial on one of the copper plates, flipped some switches on another, and pressed a few buttons on a third.

Then she stepped back and opened her Crinomatic like a compact mirror. “The Nobbler Threads,” she spoke into it.

The bright light of DIOS burst forth from its small opening, blinding all eyes around, but then in a flash the light disappeared, leaving Miss Broomble in entirely new attire.

The Crinomatic had outfitted her in her usual top hat with goggles around the rim. But now she was also wearing a clockwork choker, a deep blue jacket with several brass buttons from her neck to her waist, where her coat divided into a long skirt, revealing dark brown pants and tall black boots. Over her chest and arms and legs were all kinds of gears and gadgets and gauges. Slung over one shoulder like a baldric was a mechanical snake with its tail in its mouth; its sapphire eyes sparkled with intelligence; and along its body were small pouches.

The transformation of her armor shirt would take a few more minutes, as electric currents zapped between the copper plates on the floor, crackling up and down, rattling them, and drawing them nearer towards one another. They came together with such sudden force that they clanged like a church bell. Instantly folding over themselves, they formed next into a small copper sphere. And in the brief second before it started transforming again, as it sat perfectly still, Key could just make out words stamped across its surface.

The GadgetTronic Brothers, Est ∞

The sphere then began to unfold. Steam gushed out as it expanded into the shape of a steamer trunk, except it also had a seat long enough for two people to straddle, as if it were a motorcycle without wheels. One end then shaped into a steering column set with two wide-gripped handlebars while at the other end were the two smokestacks that had ornamented Miss Broomble’s back. Before they had spewed out steam; now they were actually belching out black smoke. A fire had begun roaring from within this transforming machine. It sounded alive, growling or snarling, as its engine revved.

Key had never seen anything like it. “What is this?” she asked, staring at it in wonder.

“The GadgetTronic Brothers call it,” Miss Broomble said, “the Veloci-Trixicle 2020.” She grinned, unable to hide her delight, or her pride, as it continued unfolding. “But I just call her my MotorHog.”

Right at that moment, Key heard a voice shouting from the other end of the castle wall. “There she is! There’s the Dungeon Troll.”

Emerging from the other turret was Raithe. She was pointing at Key and glaring at her with utter loathing. Following behind her were Crudgel and their gang of vampires, all as angry as Raithe, some perhaps mildly nastier.

“Throw the Troll into Melancholy Moat,” Raithe shouted with all her hate. “Throw her to the belly of Killjoy the Kraken!”

The MotorHog was still unfolding. Key knew she had to somehow slow down Raithe and her gang, so she looked around for something that might do just that, but the turret was practically empty. Then she happened to notice that Miss Broomble had hooked her dynabow onto her belt. Key quickly snatched it and gave it a new command: “Electronet.” Key had no idea what an electronet was, and she had no idea if the dynabow would know either, but her instinct had told her to say that, and she was beginning to trust herself again, the way she once did, before her tragic ninth birthday.

The dynabow produced another canister that rolled onto the firing groove and crackled with a bolt of electricity. The canister broke open and the electrical bolt fizzled along the shaft. Key aimed the dynabow at Raithe and her gang. Then, just before they reached the turret, she pulled the trigger. But instead of firing a single bolt of electricity, a burst of electric current spread out like a net. The nearer it flew towards Raithe, the wider it grew; and the wider it grew, the more electrical bolts wove together, fizzling and crackling as it flew. Yes, indeed, it had become the very thing Key had envisioned – an electronet.

It struck Raithe first, then wrapped around Crudgel and the other vampires. It bound them together and entangled them in a shocking net of electricity. They tumbled over one another and they fell to the floor in a stunned stupor. The electronet had slowed them down enough for the MotorHog to finish unfolding.

Miss Broomble hopped onto the seat, taking the dynabow from Key and hooking it back on to her belt. Then she took Key by the hand and helped her onto the MotorHog, too, saying as she did so, “Time flies and so do we.”

Key did not understand what the witch had meant, but she trusted her, so she straddled the seat behind her. The witch gunned the engine. Fire and thick black smoke spewed out from the smokestacks, although now they looked more like tailpipes. A few more pieces on the dashboard were still taking shape. They would be ready to go at any moment.

Miss Broomble glanced towards Raithe tangled with her gang on the ground. The electronet was losing power, flickering away, and leaving them panting in pain. Then she looked back over her shoulder at Key with an impressed grin.

“An electronet?” she asked. “How did you know it would do that?”

“I didn’t,” Key admitted a little timidly.

“You made an electronet intuitively.”

Key liked the word intuitively; she felt she understood it better now.
Yes
, she thought,
I did make that more by feeling than by knowing
. “You said that DIOS gives you things that you know how to work with,” she told the witch. “So I figured that DIOS made the dynabow for anyone to use at a moment’s notice.”

Miss Broomble turned around on her seat to look proudly at Key. “Well done!” she praised. “Now hold on to me tightly.”

The witch then faced front and gripped the handlebars. Key wrapped her arms around her middle just when Raithe got up and started kicking Crudgel to stop whining and get up, too. Miss Broomble revved the MotorHog. It sounded like a snarling beast. Shoots of fire streamed out from the smokestacks. Billows of black smoke spewed out, too. A whirring began beneath the seat.

Raithe glared at Key. “The Troll’s getting away!” she screamed at her gang. “Get her!”

Realizing then what Miss Broomble meant by Time flies and so do we, she now also grasped what the MotorHog would do. So she held on tighter to Miss Broomble’s middle, as the MotorHog began pushing itself off the floor.

Raithe, Crudgel, and their vampire gang got up, charged towards the turret angrily, and ducked inside right as Miss Broomble pressed a large green button on the dashboard. The MotorHog lifted off the ground and began hovering. The bottom of Key’s stomach tingled and felt ten times heavier, for the motion of the MotorHog was swift, and she had never ridden on anything that flew before.

She felt Raithe’s hand on the back of her neck and she feared she was done for. But right at that moment Miss Broomble yanked the handlebars towards the other direction. The MotorHog suddenly swerved around. Its weight knocked a few vampires over. Raithe’s grip faltered as she was knocked over, too. Miss Broomble then accelerated and the MotorHog shot out from the castle turret like a copper bullet.

As Key and Miss Broomble rocketed through the air across the Necropolis, Key looked over her shoulder and watched the castle get farther and farther behind them. The smokestacks were streaming out lines of black smoke, which enshrouded the castle turret in a thick black cloud. Just before Key faced front again, she happened to glimpse Raithe one last time, staggering out of the black smoke, coughing wildly, trying to wave it away from her blackened face.

Warhag came out of the black cloud next, padding her way very slowly, taking her time with the steady wrath of a volcano about to erupt. Her orange coat was completely blackened, all her grooming ruined. The slits of her glowing feline eyes narrowed as she watched Key and Miss Broomble soar off on the MotorHog. The message in her fiery glare was quite clear: “
Vengeance shall be mine
.”

— CHAPTER NINE —

The Time Paradox

The MotorHog flew fast and high into the air, faster than Key had ever traveled in her life, soaring at a tremendous speed towards Old Queen Crinkle and Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops.

Overhead, the Un-snuff-outable Torchlights of the Dwarves glistered like countless twinkling stars. All around was a seemingly endless expanse of graves and tombs and countless other burial places for the Mostly Dead. Below them the City of the Dead looked like a blur, but Key could just barely glimpse the Grave of the Crow Prince, the Vault of Lamia the Vampire, the Churchyard of the Apparition Army, the Charnel House for the Criminally Insane Imps of Cheltenham, and not least of all she could also glimpse the Royal Crypt of the Goblin Queen, who would rise from her coffin every quarter-century to vie for the throne of Old Queen Crinkle.

Along the twisted roads of the Necropolis many of the Mostly Dead Mystical Creatures were going about their night as though nothing was out of the ordinary, as though giants passed by them every day. The Badly Dismembered Bedgoblins of Barbados were on their way to work at the Nightmare Factory. The Sort of Skinned-alive Specters of San Antonio were playing bingo at the local café. A family of ogres (with six kids and a dead dog) was having an argument about whose turn it was to wash the broken dishes. Leprechaun leechcrafters were offering one-hour blood letting, if you could survive that long. A barbershop quartet of Irish vampires was singing
My Little Bloody-Cup
to earn a few coins for the night. The City of the Dead was teeming with life.

As the MotorHog continued flying them onwards, Key thought about all that Mr. Fuddlebee and Miss Broomble had told her. The Eye of DIOS was hidden at the Grave of the Grim Goblin. It would unlock the Tower Tomb of Thomas à Tempus.

“Who is Thomas à Tempus?” Key asked Miss Broomble.

“He was —” the witch began to say, but reconsidered before correcting herself, “or I should say,
is
– or
will be
a time-traveling paradox.” Miss Broomble spat with annoyance in her voice. “Time tense is such a nuisance. Mr. Fuddlebee teaches a course on it at All Hallows University – most baffling class I ever took – paradoxically semi-imperfect tense – never got it.”

Key wrinkled her nose in confusion. “What is a
paradox
?”

“I don’t understand it much either. The way Mr. Fuddlebee explains it to me is that a paradox deals with origins – the beginnings and ends of things in time.”

“Beginnings and ends?” repeated Key, not much understanding this either.

Miss Broomble pointed to the mechanical snake with its tail in its mouth, slung over her shoulder like a baldric. “It shows a circle, with seemingly no beginning or end, although we know it has a beginning and end because it has a mouth and tail. Traveling in time can be like that.”

Key nodded. She understood the witch so far.

“Remember when you got your Crinomatic?”

Key nodded again, recalling how a version of herself from the future – “Future Key,” she had called her – had come to her in the dungeon, on her one-hundredth birth-night, and had given her the Crinomatic as a gift. “But I don’t understand what that has to do with a paradox,” Key said over the MotorHog’s engine.

Miss Broomble suddenly swerved the MotorHog’s handlebars to avoid a collision with a flock of Living Gargoyles flying in formation. But she didn’t miss a beat as she explained, “You’ll have to become Future Key one day.”

“You mean,” Key said in alarm and wonder, “I’ll have to go back in time to give myself the Crinomatic in the Dungeon of Despair.”

Miss Broomble nodded affirmatively.

“When do I do this?” Key wondered aloud.

Miss Broomble shrugged. “That’s a part of the paradox. When does it begin? When does it end? In the past or in the future?”

Key felt very nervous now. If she never went back in time to give her past self the Crinomatic, would it ever happen?

Miss Broomble saw her worry. “Mr. Fuddlebee also teaches another course on time paradoxes,” she remarked, “and even
he
gets confused by such questions from time to time.”

But this did not comfort Key.

So the witch then asked, “Are you going back in time to give yourself the Crinomatic now?”

Key shook her head. “No,” she said meekly.

“Then don’t worry about it now,” Miss Broomble said with her usual confident tone as she turned back around in just enough time to swerve and narrowly avoid the Steeple Sepulcher of the Screeching Sorcerer of Sydney. “When the time comes,” she continued speaking from over her shoulder, “you’ll know when to end and begin the paradox of your
self
.”