“It’s still going!” he marveled.
Agatha yanked him out of the way of a falling bit of metal. “I hit the main engine.” She could hear the increasing distress of the mechanism. “It’s finished, it just doesn’t know it yet.”
Olga was still crumpled where the wreck of the wagon had thrown her. Agatha ran toward her with the man close behind. “You!” Agatha shouted as she ran. “Olga! Get up!” The crab clank, smoke pouring from its carapace, was slowly swiveling towards them. “Get up! Get—Ah!” The two runners jerked to a halt. As they came close they could see that Olga had landed head-first on a jagged patch of exposed rock. She was quite obviously dead. The man dropped to his knees. “Olga!” he moaned, “oh no!”
Suddenly a sound behind them made them turn. There was the clank, smoke and sparks now pouring from its joints, its gigantic metal claw descending towards them.
“LOOK OUT!” Agatha shouted. At the last second, she shoved the distraught man aside.
Agatha screamed as the claw closed, and the great lens flared. A green flash of energy lanced from the eye of the clank, igniting its captive’s skirt, hair and flesh in a ball of greasy flame. It dropped its victim and began to turn—
But the repeated firing of the clank’s heat weapon had been too much. The resilient, Spark-created energy source that had powered the damaged machine through its final rampage finally gave way, and the crab clank exploded. Flaming machine parts flew through the air, as the great metal legs slowly crashed to the ground like falling trees.
Krosp raced toward the wreckage, shouting for Agatha. At the same moment, a group from the circus wagons appeared, running up the road toward the man who was staring, horrified, at the charred figure at his feet.
CHAPTER 2
Hark to the laughter of a Spark—
All Good Folk be home by dark.
His memories of that day were, for the most part, blurred. So much time had passed since then—and so many, many things had happened in that time. Still, that day’s final scene would remain sharply etched in Klaus’ memory forever. It was a scene he had replayed a thousand times in his head—the last time he had ever seen her.
Where had he made his mistake?
The room itself was an intimate chamber set high in a corner tower of a castle in the mountains—somewhere in the tangle of little kingdoms that sprawled north of Mechanicsburg. The view over the surrounding town was breathtaking, a panoramic sweep that carried the eye out across the wide valley and all the way to the encircling, snow capped mountains. Although it was late, countless lights twinkled below, echoes of music and laughter floating through the tower’s leaded-glass windows.
The celebration had been going on all day. It would still, he was sure, be going strong when dawn came. The day before, the people of this town had been the terrified slaves of the Chatelaine of Red Glass, but that had all ended when Bill and Barry, the legendary Heterodyne Boys, accompanied by Klaus, Lucrezia Mongfish, and Zzxzm, the sentient magnet[9] accidentally crashed their airship into the ornamental fountain of Ruby Glass Castle. There, they discovered the hidden caverns beneath the town, and the terrible secrets they contained.
It was now forty-eight hours later. The Chatelaine’s army of luminescent fungus men had been destroyed, every hapless captive freed.
The Chatelaine’s death had been cause for rejoicing and celebration throughout the town, but it had cast a pall among the Heterodyne party. Bill and Barry always wanted to reform their enemies, not kill them. They would happily battle rampaging monsters with electrical grenade throwers or earthquake machines, but they were convinced that anyone, given a chance, could change their ways and work together to make Europa a better place. Whenever they failed, whenever a Spark was killed, they saw it as a personal failure. When the townspeople first realized they were free, the Heterodynes had silently tolerated the inevitable cheers and back-slapping; but when the music and beer had begun to flow, they had quietly slipped away. Klaus had tried to talk to them as they left, but Barry had pushed past him, growling: “I will accept that sometimes a villain has to die, but I’ll be damned if I’ll take free drinks for doing it.”
It had taken hours for the rest of the Heterodynes’ friends to escape the parties, and when they finally returned to the Castle, they had not been terribly surprised to find only a note waiting for them. Bill and Barry had gone on ahead, off to deal with a runaway knitting automaton in a neighboring town.
Klaus understood the Heterodynes’ feelings, but he had seen the spore-chambers. And smelled them. Lucrezia had lured the Chatelaine inside with her shadow puppets, and he had unhesitatingly thrown the lever on the great glass furnace. Some things were best cleansed by fire.
It had all been followed by a long day of listening to boring speeches, and aiding in the selection of a new town council. Finally, Klaus and Lucrezia were alone with each other. It was the first time in over a week, but Klaus felt like it had been months.
The room itself was only small by the rather grand standards of the rest of the castle. It was entirely dominated by a colossal curtained bed. Layer upon layer of sumptuous hangings in a riot of velvet, satin and brocade were drawn back by ropes of gleaming tasseled silk, showing off yet more layers of gorgeousness. Exquisitely inlaid rosewood cabinets lined the walls. These were oiled and polished to a luxurious glow, which reflected the warm light from the lamps, and made it seem to hang in the air like a luxuriant golden mist.
When Klaus had first entered the room, he had wandered around a bit, opening cabinets. Idly, at first, but with more and more astonishment at each reveal, until he had finally given up and poured himself a calming drink from the magnificently stocked liquor cabinet. Apparently, the Chatelaine had truly been a connoisseur of decadent excess.
Lucrezia, of course, loved the place. She had watched his explorations with open amusement as she stood in front of one of the room’s many ornate mirrors, slowly letting down her hair. When he had retreated to the bed, she had laughed and turned to face him.
Ah, that was a memory he knew would remain forever. Lucrezia standing, looking at him, slowly stalking him, her face taking on that hungry look she only showed when they were alone. She was dressed in a velvet bustier and a sheer pair of harem trousers—the ones he had purchased for her as a joke last time he was in Morocco. The joke was on him now. The trousers provided a tantalizing glimpse of her legs and clung to the lovely swell of her hips. She raised one arm above her head and posed, leaning on one of the bed posts. Then, still holding the post, slowly bent forward, deliberately straining her overstuffed top. He knew how much she loved to tease him, but he didn’t mind. It was a game they had played together for a long time now, and the outcome was always a win for both.
He allowed himself to run his eyes over her appreciatively, and was so caught up in what he saw that what she was saying didn’t register for almost half a minute. When it did, it jolted Klaus out of his reverie cold.
“You what?”
Lucrezia smiled and exaggeratedly rolled her eyes before turning away. She gently swayed her hips as she selected a dusty cut glass ewer and slowly poured something cherry red into a small crystal goblet.
“There’s no need to shout, darling,” she sighed in that breathy tone of hers that always sent shivers down his spine. She turned about and posed again, with the drink in her hand. “I’m going to marry Bill Heterodyne. He asked me yesterday... finally.”
9
Zzxzm was easily one of the Heterodyne Boys’ odder companions. The result of a laboratory accident involving an experimental compass and an unattended lightning generator, he eventually retired to the North Pole.