Time.
Alun Madder had given her a pocket watch. She knew it carried a speck of glim. Could she use it as a weapon?
As Mr. Shunt turned his back to stuff Elbert inside the gory clockwork of the Strange, Mae worked to get the pocket watch out of her coat. They had bound her hands together in front of her, but she could still move them.
The Strange that held the chain around her throat was hypnotized by Mr. Shunt’s work. If it noticed what she was doing, one hard tug on her chain would crush her neck.
Mae fingered the watch into her hand, then slowly pulled it up to her mouth. She tugged at the leather gag, but it wouldn’t move. Over the top of the pocket watch she whispered, more song than word, more breath than voice, calling on magic, begging magic to come to her, hoping the glim would work as an amplifier, a cupped hand, a bullhorn, to call the magic and make it stronger. She begged magic to not so much break a curse but interrupt it and hold it away for one single minute, for one single man: Cedar Hunt. And then she pressed down the watch stem, stopping the watch, and stopping Cedar Hunt’s curse, for just one minute.
Cedar Hunt gasped for air and pushed himself up onto his knees. He didn’t know how, but he was a man, even though moonlight filled the sky. He saw the gun on the platform beside him. The gun Mr. Shunt had shot him with. He picked it up and pushed onto his feet, nearly blacking out from the pain. He staggered through the train car toward the child, toward his brother, toward Mae.
Rose Small looked for Alun Madder. He was sprinting over the matic Jeb Lindson had reduced to a pile of rubble, and headed straight at the Goliath, an ax in each hand, his pipe cherry bright in his mouth. The battlewagon trundled over the terrain, headed right for him, reloading a cartridge as it picked up speed.
It was suicide. There was no cover, no way Alun would survive a rapid-fire round from the matic.
“This way!” Alun Madder yelled. “Quickly! The boys will take care of the men.”
Boys? Rose heard Cadoc and Bryn let out a hoot from down the rail. The two younger Madder brothers had clambered up inside the big rail-matic scraper with bulletlike wheels that leveled the land. Somehow they’d powered the thing and were now riding it down over the bank of men, Bryn looking like some kind of bug as he worked the levers in the cab—his goggles reflecting moonlight and gunfire. Cadoc, wild-haired and laughing as he hung by one hand and one foot off the side of the beast, unloaded shot after shot into the rail workers’ rank.
The railmen returned fire on the big ticker, but bullets pinged off the huge metal scraper. The rail matic powered forward relentlessly, smashing flat roots and stumps and anything else that got in its way, big screw wheels covering the ground with ease.
The rail workers were outgunned. Those that could turned tail and ran from the nightmare scene. The rest were crushed where they stood.
Alun was at the foot of the Goliath. Far too nimble for a man his size, Alun Madder ducked low and jammed both axes into the bottom links of the matic’s wheel track, then followed that up with another lit bomb that he lobbed up into the beast’s chassis.
“Run, Rose,” Alun Madder yelled. “Run!”
The matic hammered down with a mighty
She couldn’t see Alun, didn’t know if he had been injured or killed by the hammer. The other two Madder brothers were driving the rail matic up behind the battlewagon, on a clear collision course that would crush the mobile gun.
They were crazy, all of them. Plainly suicidally brained. But she didn’t take the time to ponder further. She ran. Toward LeFel’s train cars, toward Cedar Hunt and Mae Lindson. To save them if she could. Before it was too late.
Mae Lindson threw her hands up to ward off Mr. Shunt, but he slapped the watch out of her hands and then, for good measure, struck her hard across the face. Stars filled Mae’s vision as the barbed-wire chain around her throat tightened and bit.
She couldn’t breathe.
The hot, wet heat of the Strange surrounded her as Mr. Shunt shoved her into the clockwork monster behind her. Spikes scratched, slashed, clamped. The heat and oil inside the Strange caused every open wound on her body to sting as if salt had been rubbed in it. She tried to scream, but had no air.
“Now, Mr. Shunt,” Shard LeFel said. “The blood. Turn the key and open our door so that I may see to my brother’s end.”
Mr. Shunt spun so quickly, his coat billowed around him like dark wings. Then he was at the Strange door where Shard LeFel stood waiting, hunger twisting his hauntingly beautiful features.
Mr. Shunt triggered a switch. And the Strange that held the boy, Wil, and Mae began to close. Mae pushed at the creature swallowing her whole, but it was like pushing against a bear trap. Spikes pressed into her back, her legs, her shoulders, her arms. Sharp agony drew a ragged scream out of her throat as her blood was sucked up and pumped down into the tubes that ran to the door, mixing with the blood of the howling wolf and the screaming child.
The door began to open, hot white light pouring through the cracks and shattering the shadows of the room. And in that light, Mae saw her death.
Cedar Hunt lurched through the empty train car, blinking blood and sweat out of his eyes. His lungs felt heavy and full of blood. He cocked the trigger back on the gun and stumbled into the next car, parceling his breath so as not to pass out.
He lifted the gun and shot the first person he saw—Mr. Shard LeFel, who stood bathing in an unholy light coming up from the floor of the car. The shot caught Shard LeFel in the shoulder and knocked him flat on his back.
Cedar cocked the gun, fired again, this time aiming for the tall, skeletal figure of Mr. Shunt. He missed.
And then, just as sure as a watch running down, Cedar was no longer a man. He was a wolf again. He lunged for Mr. Shunt, jaws, claws, and rage. Mr. Shunt was made of blades and hooks, razors and pain—too fast to catch his throat, too slick to snap his bones. Cedar tore at flesh that tasted of rotted blood, but could do no true damage to the Strange.
“Mr. Shunt,” Shard LeFel yelled as he regained his feet and strode back up to the doorway. “Kill them. Spill their blood now!” Shard LeFel used the bladed cane to help him stand on the edge of the opening doorway beneath him, one boot at the threshold.
Mr. Shunt skittered away from Cedar’s hold and flicked a lever on the device at the top of the doorway. The device lit up.
Screams of agony filled the room.
Cedar could not kill the three Strange creatures in time to save Mae, Elbert, and Wil, and he had no time to choose between them. Little of a man’s reasoning filtered through the pain now. His mind was all wolf, and the wolf would kill the one Strange in front of him.
Cedar jumped over the door, past Shard LeFel, crashing down on Mr. Shunt before he could trigger another lever in the device.
Cedar snapped at Shunt’s face, caught scarf and a hank of hair. Mr. Shunt unhinged and slipped free, then pulled up the gun that had fallen from Cedar’s hand. Mr. Shunt aimed that gun at Cedar’s head.
Then the train car exploded—walls bashed apart as if a boulder had torn through them.
“LeFel!” A great, hoarse bellow shook through the night.
Jeb Lindson had come calling.
Another wall shuddered from the impact of the huge matics Jeb swung like a child swings a stick.
Mr. Shunt turned the gun on Jeb Lindson. And squeezed the trigger.
The shot took Jeb straight through the middle of his head, leaving a trail of smoke spiraling up out of the hole.
Jeb smiled, bloody, charred, torn apart, and shredded so that he barely resembled the man he once was. He
