Clock City Read online

  “Alayna,” I started.

  She pulled at the lace on her wrist and smoothed her skirt down in front of her. “I bought this when I came back, with my first paycheck. I had a seamstress craft it for me. It’s awful itchy.”

  I stood and approached her. “Why would you buy such a thing, when you are comfortable in men’s trousers?”

  She stepped closer to me.

  “You’re right,” she said, “you’re always right, Sebastian even though I haven’t known you very long. I love school, and I like my job. But I’m not happy. I miss feeling like—”

  “You are part of something.” I reached out for her hand and this time she let me take it.

  “Yes,” she breathed.

  I expected her to protest, but instead she threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. Surprised but elated at her spontaneity, I slipped my arm around her waist and returned her affections.

  “We have a quest!” Dinga shouted behind me. “No time for babies!”

  Alayna ignored him as much I did. Instead, she laid her head on my shoulder. “I missed you all.”

  “Does this mean you will come, mistress?” Dinga pleaded.

  She looked at me, biting her bottom lip, and then looked at Dinga. “I will.”

  “Well, let’s go get Master’s contraption!” Dinga shouted, jumping down from his seat.

  Alayna frowned. “I’m afraid there’s a problem with that,” she said. “We will have to pay the impound fee, and I used all my money to bail Sebastian out.”

  “Can’t we just steal it?” Dinga squeaked. “Master is expert at it!”

  “Master got caught, Dinga, do you remember?”

  “We certainly cannot,” Alayna replied, “but lucky for you I am a little thief.”

  “What say you?” I asked, peering at her.

  “I’m a thief. That is, according to someone who can help us.” Her face was twisted in agony, and I was afraid of her next statement. “My father.”

  Chapter Fifteen: Delilah

  “I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU father is a constable,” I told Alayna. It was still early morning as we stepped off the rumbling bus-contraption. In front of us, a small blue house, surely no bigger than Alayna’s apartment, stood behind a dilapidated steel fence.

  Faded metal cans littered the porch, which had a sloping roof that looked ready to crumble at any minute. A faded swing, one chain broken on the right, hung crookedly to the left of the black metal grated door.

  A young boy on a two-wheeled pedal-pusher flew by it, flinging stacks of papers at front porches. I was glad we had left Dinga at Alayna’s. This neighborhood was questionable at best.

  “That’s how my parents met,” she said quietly. “My mother was hit by a car when she was younger, now I think it was when she first came over to this world, and he was the officer that took her statement in the hospital. They fell in love, and well, the rest is history.”

  “Yet your father is not a nice man?”

  “No. He’s a drunken asshole.”

  “How does one cater to drink and still keep employment?”

  “I have wondered that for years, Sebastian.” She looked at up me. “Although a few years ago, he did get demoted because of his drinking, and now he works graveyard at the impound lot.”

  “How do you know he’s home?”

  “That.” She pointed to a blue car parked inside the broken fence. It wasn’t as shiny or new as the ones I’d seen on the road; in fact, the rear side and mirrors were lined with rust. “If he was at work that would be gone.” Without waiting she approached the front of the house.

  “I see.” I strode forward to follow her, glad to be dressed in my vest, coat, and boots again. I felt my power tingling under my fingertips and remembered the plan we’d hashed out back in Alayna’s kitchen.

  “Sebastian, be careful.”

  She knocked hard on the front door.

  The wooden door inside the metal grate flew open. “Who’s there, now?” Slurred a gruff voice. A large man appeared at the door, his belly hardly covered by a dirty white shirt, but a blue uniform, much like the ones who arrested me, was thrown over his shoulders. He was wearing short pants that ended high above his knee, and it was clear we had interrupted him dressing for work. A can that matched the ones in the yard was held firmly in his left hand. He peered out at us.

  “Alayna, you worthless brat. I hope you’ve brought food with you.” He looked us over. “And why are you dressed like that?”

  “Let us in, Daddy,” she said, “we have to talk to you.”

  He looked at me. “And who’s this? A new boyfriend? If you’re pregnant, you’ll get—”

  I reached my hand through to the grate and shot a string of electricity at him. It channeled through the can and up his arm. With a cry, he fell to the ground in a heap.

  “Sebastian!” Alayna cried, trying to keep her voice low. “That wasn’t part of the plan!”

  “I know, but we are running out of time, and I have no patience for drunken fools.” I tugged at the chipped, black handle on the grate door. “It’s locked.”

  “Got it covered,” Alayna produced a key from the pocket of her skirt. It turned easily in the lock.

  I felt around the waist of her passed out father. “His keys aren’t here.”

  “Bathroom sink.” She stepped in behind me, looked around, and shut the grate firmly behind us.

  The stench of the house was unbelievable. Cans of alcohol stacked up every surface; tables, the black box Alayna called a TV, and they even littered around the floor. Here and there, green glass bottles were scattered throughout the room. The counter in the kitchen was piled with dishes of rotting food, where tiny insects buzzed around them. I resisted pulling my arm over my nose like a frail woman, but I could hear Alayna gagging behind me.

  “It was never this bad when I lived here. Come on, this way.” She pointed to a hallway to the right of the front door. “Bathroom’s the first door on the left.”

  The bathroom was a far cry from Alayna’s pristine white porcelain. The toilet was stained, almost blackened, and the shower was missing a curtain entirely, which must have produced the green mildewed water stains on the floor. The sink was covered with an array of trimmed hair, what looked like melted wax, and remnants of shaving foam. The room smelled a foul odor indeed, enough to tuck my nose into my shirt.

  “There they are,” Alayna grabbed a set of keys from the metal stand next to the toilet.

  “Gods, let’s get out of here.” I nearly choked as I said it.

  “Before he wakes up,” she agreed.

  “Or before I die of this rottenness.” I was holding back a gag. I really should not breathe through my nose, I reminded myself.

  “I’m sorry. He’s, well, when I lived here I cleaned and cooked. After my mother, he never really had any skills.”

  “That’s no excuse to be a horrible human.” I grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”

  We turned to exit the bathroom. I breathed a sigh of relief her father was still motionless in front of the door. The last thing I wanted was to get into another altercation that would delay getting Delilah back. I stepped over him and threw the grated door open.

  “Ow! Let go of me!” Alayna cried out behind me.

  I swung around. Alayna reached toward me, and I saw her father had stirred enough to grab her ankle. She tried to shake him off without losing her balance. I gripped her under the arms and pulled her as hard as I could. We both tumbled backward onto the porch, the rotted boards crunching beneath us.

  I was on my feet before her father was. In his inebriation, he was still struggling to sit up. “Alayna, don’t you leave! Where have you been, girl?”

  She scooted across the porch on her backside, anything to get away from him. Her eyes were wild and terrified.

  “I’m eighteen now, Dad. You don’t get to boss me around anymore!” She shouted back at him.

  I brought my foot down on his ankle and he screamed.

  “
Watch it, asshole! I’m a police officer!”

  I leaned over him, spinning a ball of light between my hands. The energy crackled around the room. “If you ever touch her, or talk to her, again, I’ll find out. And I’ll kill you.” I touched the ball to his leg, briefly, just enough to shock him.

  He crouched into a ball, hugging his leg and whimpering. “Okay, okay!” He yelled at me. “Just take that little whore and get out of here. She’s just like her mother!”

  Out of the corner of my eye I saw Alayna wince. She got to her feet, throwing her dress out of the way. Her fists were balled at her side as she stomped up to him.

  I grabbed her at the waist as she swung and missed. “Don’t ever call my mother that! You didn’t even know my mother!”

  “Alayna, come on, we’ve got to go,” I whispered in her ear.

  Her father was sitting upright now, holding his leg. He laughed, a cruel, high-pitched sound. “I didn’t know her? Oh, girl, you were too young to remember! Your mother came home pregnant with another man’s child, for God’s sake. Oh, she cried and begged me for forgiveness, but I wouldn’t raise another man’s child!” He hiccupped and pushed a hand to his head. “She made up a story about another place, another time, but she was just crazy! She was just as crazy as you are!”

  “I know, she was meeting with Dr. Lyndell,” Alayna’s voice was so cold, it was foreign to my ears. I started at that. What was going on? The queen had another child? In my world? “What happened to the child?” She asked him.

  Her father shrugged. “I suppose she destroyed it.”

  Alayna gasped. I stared between them. What did he just say?

  “She went away for a while,” her father continued, “when you were two years old. You wouldn’t remember. She came back and told me it was taken care of, and I let her live here, but now I know she was always a little slut, just like you.”

  Alayna swung again, and this time it connected with his jaw. He fell backwards, holding his face. He was still laughing. “I can’t wait until I call the station,” he said in that insane, slurred tone. “They’ll lock both of you up for this.”

  “Enough,” I stepped in, channeling my energy into the injured ankle. It was just enough to send him into a seizure and pass out.

  Alayna gaped at me. “You didn’t—you didn’t kill him, did you?”

  “No.” I watched his chest slowly rise and fall. “But we have to get out of here, now.”

  She flung the keys up into her hand and raced down the porch steps, without another look at her father. “Let’s take the car.”

  “Do you know how to drive?” I asked her over the hood of the car.

  “Of course, I got my license a few weeks ago. But someone made me bail them out of jail with my car money.” She grinned at me, much to my surprise.

  “Get in the car, Alayna.” I tried to sound gruff, but I couldn’t help smiling at her.

  She did.

  The police station, Alayna had called it, was nowhere near the Quod where I spent a short time. She drove around the back, where a fence as tall as the Clock City walls greeted us. Mounted on the roof of the shed next to the grate, a small black box with a lens on the end slowly tracked our motions.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “We will get caught on camera,” she whispered to me, opening her door, and stepping out, “but besides my dad there will be only one other officer this time of night monitoring the feed. And Officer Cook usually sleeps on his shift.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “About five minutes before the alarm sounds.” She slammed the door and set to work opening the gate.

  Delilah, of course, wasn’t hard to spot. She stood three hands higher than any other vehicle here, and the random assortment of discarded bronze, steel, and sheet metal I’d used to piece her together made her a strange oddity indeed. I started to realize why everyone had given us the looks when we first arrived in town.

  “You left your key in the ignition?” Alayna asked as I pulled her up on the seat beside me.

  “Of course,” I whispered with a smile.

  “But won’t someone steal it?”

  “Watch.” I held the key and sparked the engine to life. “I’m the only light spinner, and thus the only one who can start her.”

  “Wow, it must be great being the only person with a car in Clock City.” I thought she was pulling one on me, but I saw a slight smile at the corner of her lips. “Wait, how did you get this noisy bucket of bolts out of the city?” she inquired.

  “It’s hard to maintain the refraction shield and drive her at the same time, but I had Victor’s help. He drove.”

  “Well, we might need to do both in order to get Dinga and get out of town.”

  An alarm sounded then, pealing so loud it drowned out the rest of her sentence. A red light on top of the shed lit up and swung blinding light in every direction.

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, let me drive!”

  “You don’t know how to drive her!”

  “I’ll figure it out!” Without another word she crawled into my lap and took the wheel. “Concentrate on making us invisible.”

  There was no arguing. Our time was up.

  I motioned to the levels and cranks she had to pull to make us go forward. Delilah jumped under her unsteady hand, and I closed my eyes to focus on the shield around us. We cleared the gate, scraping the side of her father’s car. I winced, hoping Delilah hadn’t been damaged.

  As it turned out, she was an excellent steam driver. She learned Delilah’s tricks quickly and kept a steady hand on the wheel, all from my lap.

  I couldn’t say it wasn’t a pleasant experience. If I didn’t have both hands spread out for the shield on either side, I’d dare say they’d be wrapped around her waist, in a good way this time.

  We rumbled up to her apartment and Dinga jumped from the second story balcony, landing expertly to the floorboard next to me.

  “Whoa,” said Alayna, “you can jump.”

  “And climb!” Dinga lolled up at her. He patted the dagger around his waist. “Let’s go home, mistress!”

  She nodded at him and pointed Delilah toward the highway where we had come.

  Chapter Sixteen: Home

  BY THE TIME DELILAH sputtered through the city gates, I was exhausted. The shield drained my power so fast I doubted I could have lit a candle at that point. The thin place was rells from the city, nearly a sun-cycle of driving. Luckily, the shields weren’t needed in this world, until we were within the lookout sights of the city. As soon as we crossed over, Alayna let me take the wheel. She sat in the seat next to me, Dinga curled up in her lap, sleeping.

  “He sleeps more than a dog,” she nearly whispered.

  “What’s a dog?”

  Alayna looked at me. “A four-legged creature with fur? You pet it? I don’t know how else to explain it.”

  “Ah, like a meow.”

  “That’s a cat.” She stifled a laugh.

  I shrugged. “Has four legs and a tail and fur. It meows. It is called a meow, not a ‘cat.’ They are mostly wild, you don’t want to just pet one, however.”

  “We have those in my world.”

  “Your world is strange.”

  She looked at the red sun, rising in the south. “It’s good to be back,” she said quietly. “It’s simpler here.”

  “How so?”

  “No paychecks, no bosses, no classes. Just ishies, meows, and metal dragons. Is it bad I miss my math class, though?”

  “Math sounds terrible. Is it like arithmetic?”

  “Yes, and I rather liked it.”

  “Ah, well not so bad, then. But did you forget we have a city to save?”

  “No, it’s very much on my mind.” She shielded her eyes. “I can see the city.”

  “That’s our cue,” I told her. We switched places, and I threw the shield over us once more.

  I looked over to see her staring at me. “Are you alright?�
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  “Why do you ask?” I returned.

  “Just cuz.”

  “I haven’t slept much.” I shrugged. My arms were tired and holding them out to the sides was exhausting. They feel like slippery noodles.

  “You look tired.”

  “So do you, but you’re still beautiful.” I forced a smile. She was right, though. I was dead on my feet.

  “Why?”

  I scoffed. “Why what?”

  “Why are you tired?”

  “I told you, I haven’t slept good since, well, you know.”

  “Since I left.” She tilted her head at me. “Hmm.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  I frowned. I didn’t have much experience with girls, not since I left the mines that was, but that was a few years ago. Back then they’d been playmates, nothing more. But Alayna was something entirely different. She sent sparks through me like my power never did and made me heart beat fast. What was this odd feeling I had then I looked at her. And did she have the same sparks, too?

  Luckily, we were approaching the main gate, which had just opened for the day, and Alayna was an expert at navigating around the sparse crowd. I was distracted by looking at the sparse people entering Clock City, and it stumped me why there didn’t seem to be many on this day. It was good weather, and the city was open, but no carriages or bikes and hardly any people milled about. Only a few men and a handful of Gorgons walked the streets this early. They must have given us looks, though they couldn’t see us, they could certainly feel the air displace around them. I didn’t dare open my eyes to look, I was so afraid of losing my concentration.

  I directed Alayna to the tiny house I had shared with my father until his demise. Dinga hopped out and struggled with opening the large wooden doors, but finally managed to push one side wide enough for us to slip Delilah into her garage.