Key the Steampunk Vampire Girl and the Tower Tomb of Time (9781941240076) (11 page)

“Penelope? Is that you?”

The Bewitched Hobbeetle began dancing back and forth delightedly.

“Old Queen Crinkle told me you’d been squashed under a really big boot,” Silas said and then quickly added, “although whose boot could squash you, I’d never been able to puzzle out.”

Quickly the Bewitched Hobbeetle began making signs with her mandibles, signs that Key could not understand, but signs that Silas could clearly read because he responded to the Hobbeetle (whose name Key now understood to be Penelope) as though they were having a completely casual conversation.

“You mean the Old Queen didn’t crush you at all,” Silas said in an incredulous tone. “She lied to me! Well, I guess that’s no surprise.”

The Hobbeetle made more signs with her mandibles.

“She locked you up,” Silas continued to read, “locked you in a…in a bell?”

Penelope’s mandibles made more signs.

“Oh, sorry, she locked you in a well,” Silas corrected himself. “My beetle-speak isn’t what it used to be. Go slower with me, my love. I’ll try to keep up.”

Penelope the Hobbeetle made more signs with her mandibles.

Silas narrowed his eye, really concentrating to read: “The Queen gave you only meat to eat?”

Penelope made more signs.

“Sorry – Treats to eat? – Beets to eat? – Feet to eat? – Sorry, what’s that word you’re making, my love? – Ah, I see – Apple Fritters. Well, that doesn’t sound too bad.”

Penelope the Hobbeetle then hurriedly crawled past Key, up Silas’s leg, around his body, and began nuzzling affectionately into his large neck.

The Cybernetic Cyclops cooed with delight. “Aw,” he growled happily. “I missed you too, my love.”

While he and the Hobbeetle continued their conversation, she with her mandibles, he trying to blow the dust off his beetle-speak, Key quietly hugged Tudwal to her chest and started to sneak away from the very happy reunion of this very dreadful pair. But although Key had the commonsense to let sleeping dogs lie, as the old saw goes, Tudwal was not asleep, and whenever he was not, he was always in the mood for a good free-for-all; so he began barking at the top of his puppy voice to continue his scrap with the giant and his big black beetle.

Key tried to shush him, but it was much too late. Silas and the Hobbeetle shook themselves from their happy reunion to look at Key with something like glum expressions, which surprised her, as she half expected them to come charging at her with a vengeance. But that was never the case. Moreover, to her great surprise, Silas set his Hobbeetle down and wiped a tear from his eye, not the glad tear that he had wept a moment earlier, but a sorrowful tear, as though he had lost Penelope all over again.

Once the Hobbeetle had all its claws on the ground, she crawled closer to Key, not with the speed of attack, but with the steady trot of a rather round horse. Meanwhile, Silas pressed a button on his cybernetic chest. Electricity fizzled alongside his metallic rib cage and steam gushed from his ears. Then a little compartment opened in the center of his chest. Within it were several objects made of various kinds of metal, along with a throne of leather and brass. Key had no idea what all that was for, or what was going on, and she didn’t have much time to consider. She was doing her best to hold back Tudwal’s ferocity, as he was squirming to get away from her to mount a rather savage attack of biting.

“I’ll hold him for you, Mistress,” whispered Pega, taking the immortal puppy from Key’s arms and holding him, making him seem as though he were squirming in midair; for, although Pega had become brave enough to speak with her Mistress, the ghost maid still refused to make herself visible.

— CHAPTER THIRTEEN —

Penelope

Yet for all that, no attack happened. When the Hobbeetle stood before Key, she bowed low, as though Key were someone of great importance. Even Tudwal was confused, cocking his head to one side. Silas also approached, limping all the while, yet keeping his tearful eye on his Penelope. Despite his bad knee, he did his best to genuflect, which was nothing short of his falling down and crushing another Necropolis business in the process – Mab’s House of Fairy Dust, which sent green and violet fairy dust pluming in thick clouds all around him.

The green dust was for sleeping while the violet dust was for floating. So Silas started to get very sleepy and his giant body started to lift up off Autumn Alley. Yet regardless of his eyelid drooping quite sleepily, he worked as quickly as he could to fasten the various metal objects that he had removed from the compartment in his chest to Penelope, his Hobbeetle. To her front claws he fastened Eerie Edward’s Enchanted Elephant Guns. Through her mandibles and over her mouth, fitting to her face like a mask, he fastened Fred Foulweather’s Famous Flamethrower. To her sides he fastened Marvelous Rafu’s Magic Missiles. And over the rest of her he fastened several other devices that Key had never seen before, though all of which looked quite interesting. Some had switches, some had buttons, some had blinking lights while others had knobs and gauges and cogwheels. All the while Silas’s one eye grew heavy with sleep because of the green fairy dust, and his body was almost floating upside down because of the violet fairy dust. He looked as though he might fall fast asleep and float away at any second.

Finally, with a last great effort before the fairy dust took its full effect on him, he fastened the leathery brass throne to the top of the Hobbeetle’s shell. Then he said to Key in a sleepy albeit respectful tone, “I beg your acceptance of this elegant beetle.”

Key had no idea what Silas meant. The Hobbeetle looked at Key with her large black eyes and made more gestures with her mandibles, around her mask. But this seemed even more confusing to Key, until Silas explained in a half awake, half asleep voice. “She has been trying to thank you for breaking her headstone and releasing her from her prison. Old Queen Crinkle had her stuffed inside, probably to make me think she was truly dead so I’d work for her. And I fell for her trickery, too – silly Cyclops. Now my Penelope here owes you fifty-two and two-thirds years of service, according to Hobbeetle custom. I’d be going with you but I just got a little too sleeeeepyyyyy...”

The booming voice of Silas the Cybernetic Cyclops became a thunderous snore, as the green fairy dust took its full effect. And as the violet fairy dust worked its magic, too, the giant slowly tumbled up, up, up into the air, like a parade balloon floating off, up to the Un-snuff-outable Torchlights of the Morrow Dwarves that sprinkled across the Necropolis ceiling like stars.

Once the gloom above had swallowed him whole, Key turned to the Hobbeetle, Penelope. She studied the throne on her back. It looked like just the right size for a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old vampire in the body of a nine-year-old girl. The Hobbeetle watched her. As if knowing what had to happen next, a rope ladder unrolled down along the Hobbeetle’s side, from throne to floor. Key reckoned it was meant for her to climb.

“Don’t you climb one step up that, Mistress,” whispered Pega. “You don’t know where this Hobbeetle has been. They get into the strangest places you’ve ever seen.”

Penelope the Hobbeetle, overhearing this, made one very clear gesture with her mandibles in the direction of Pega’s voice, which Key could not help but guess was not usually seen in polite conversations with beetles.

“How rude!” the ghost maid suddenly shrieked.

“Pega,” said Key, “you speak beetle?”

“Only a little, Mistress,” the ghost maid timidly admitted. Then her voice lowered to an even softer whisper as she added, “One of the unemployed Optomechs in the castle is a friend of mine and it helped me secretly take a correspondence course at All Hallows University. But I’m not sure about this Hobbeetle. Wasn’t she trying to kill you a moment ago?”

The Hobbeetle made more gestures with her mandible, which did not seem as emphatic as the one before.

“Oh, I see,” the voice of Pega responded, sounding surprised and mildly apologetic. “It seems that Penelope here wasn’t trying to kill you at all – except perhaps with kindness. She was so glad that you released her from her Prison Grave that she was a bit over-excited in the expression of her gratitude.”

“You’re welcome,” said Key as she approached the side of the Hobbeetle.

Penelope was so large that Key had no idea if she could ever do what seemed to be expected of her, which was to climb to the throne and ride the Hobbeetle, the way a warrior might ride an Oliphaunt into battle. Nevertheless, she was going to try. She began to put one foot into the rope ladder, when she noticed that she was still dressed in her nightgown.

“The Wicked Watchman was right. This won’t do at all,” she remarked to herself, recalling that Miss Broomble had given her an old Crinomatic.

Taking it from her pocket now, she opened it like a compact mirror. Out shone a bright white light that did not hurt her eyes. The light shone so brightly around her that no one else could see how her nightgown scattered in a swirl of ash. Along with the light, out from the Crinomatic came the tiny mechanical black widow spiders, the Gossamingles, as small as droplets of mist and stamped with the trademark,
The GadgetTronic Brothers, Est. ∞
. The Gossamingles wrapped all around Key’s body, from head to foot. Their little mechanical spidery legs linked together as they weaved themselves into new clothes and gizmos all over Key.

While changing clothes can sometimes take most mortals all morning, the marvelous work of the Crinomatic took only a second. The Gossamingles finished, the light retreated back into the Crinomatic, and Key closed its lid.

Her nightgown was now completely gone; she was no longer in her bare feet; and her bedhead was no longer mussed. Now she was wearing a long dark green jacket over a white blouse. Around her middle was a copper bodice covered with gauges and cogwheels. She wore black fingerless gloves, violet shorts, and a pair of tall mechanical boots with lights and gauges and wires. Above her eyes were metal goggles with several swiveling lenses of various sizes. Holstered to her side was a brass-plated pistol. Clutched in one hand was a bronze rifle, much taller than her, and loaded with copper canisters and wrapped in glass tubes filled with blue and red ink.

And as she looked at her clothes and gadgets, she had the strangest feeling that she had seen them before. Over the years, her old Crinomatic had fashioned for her thousands of outfits, yet this outfit was different. She had not worn it before, but she thought she had seen herself in it once already, as if she had worn it in a dream, or in some far distant memory that she could not quite recall with clarity. It was the same feeling that she had had when she first met Miss Broomble – the feeling that she had seen the witch before – and she had, too, on the night Margrave Snick turned Key into a vampire, when Miss Broomble and Mr. Fuddlebee came to her house and ushered her to the City of the Dead.

Now that Key thought about it many years later, she had the distinct impression that she had seen someone else there in her house that night, too, not just the elderly ghost and the witch, not just her mom and dad, not just Margrave Snick and his two zombie henchmen. But someone who looked just like her.

Was that Future Key?
Key now wondered.

“Mistress,” whispered Pega. “Old Queen Crinkle is getting away. We must hurry.”

Recollecting herself, Key nodded and clambered up the rope ladder to the leather-brass throne at the top of the Hobbeetle’s shell. Pega carried Tudwal up and placed him beside the throne, which he sniffed with some suspicion. The arms of the throne were decorated in important-looking buttons and switches and blinking lights. Key was a little intimidated to sit down, for she didn’t know if perhaps pressing one button might transform the Hobbeetle into a Hobbat or a Hobbadger or some other peculiar creature that could be found in no other place than the City of the Dead.

Seeing that the giant had floated off, and that the Hobbeetle was now obeying Key’s command, Mostly Dead Bystanders gathered around Penelope and started taking photographs of themselves beside her great claws, to show their friends and relatives.

Once Key mustered up the courage to sit in the driver’s seat, she soon discovered that it was a perfect fit. The throne felt as though it had been made exactly to her shape and size. Never before had a seat felt so comfortable, or the view look so grand; for as she peered out from over the top of the Hobbeetle’s giant back, she could see not only the winding, twisting streets of the Necropolis, but also all the colors of life that could be found among the dead. She could see more graves that looked like shops and more graveyards that looked like popular shopping malls. She could also see, far in the distance, the small figure of Old Queen Crinkle, escaping down one of the Necropolis streets.

The Hobbeetle’s controls looked very similar to the controls on the MotorHog, and Key got the impression that she had to steer both the same way – intuitively. Yes, she would have to trust herself as she drove Penelope the Hobbeetle through the Necropolis streets. So after studying her control panels for a moment, she could not miss the big red button. It looked a little more inviting than the others and it could very well be a button that got the Hobbeetle moving forward. So, making a decision to be brave and to trust herself, Key pressed the big red button.

A missile suddenly launched.

It shot straight towards a business, Reaper & Scythe Savings and Loans, which, in the next moment, was utterly destroyed. Key was relieved to see loan agents being pulled from the rubble, all safe, all whole (for the most part). But the building was a pile of rocks and ash and annihilated loan records. Fortunately, the business had a policy with Imp Insurance Agency; unfortunately, the policy didn’t include protection against Hobbeetle missiles. It would never again be rebuilt. Many indebted Mystical Creatures danced for joy in the streets.

Key’s white cheeks flushed with embarrassment. She leaned forward and whispered to the Hobbeetle, “Let’s just get out of here, alright?”

Upon hearing Key’s command, Penelope reared up like an excited horse and then dashed out of Autumn Alley like a bolt of lightning, with Pega, Tudwal, and Key on her back, clutching to the throne for dear life.