In Too Deep (Looking Glass Trilogy #1)(25)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

Together they swept the concrete chamber with their flashlights. Broken lab equipment, overturned metal benches and scraps of paper gave mute testimony to the violence of whatever had occurred in the shelter twenty-two years earlier.

"This place is larger than I would have expected," Isabella said. "It’s as big as a double-wide. There’s even a second room off this one. I was expecting a tiny, cramped space."

"The folks who built bomb shelters planned to live in them for several months or even a year while they waited for the radiation levels to go down on the surface," Fallon said. "They wanted all the comforts of home."

She shuddered. "I can’t imagine camping out down here while all of my friends and neighbors were dying of radiation poisoning on the surface."

"Guess you had to be there to get into the mind-set."

"Guess so. Well, safe to say that something chaotic certainly happened in here. But aside from the broken glass, there are no signs of a normal explosion. No fire damage. The papers and notebooks aren’t even charred."

"There was a violent release of energy, but it all came from the paranormal end of the spectrum." Fallon broke off abruptly. "Huh."

Isabella glanced at him and saw that he was aiming his flashlight at the doorway that opened into the other chamber.

"What?" she asked.

But he was already heading toward the second room.

She started to hurry after him, but a faint scratching sound in one dark corner distracted her. She jumped and flicked the light beam in the direction of the noise. Something moved in the shadows.

"Crap," she whispered. "Rats."

"That’s not a surprise," Fallon said. He did not look back. "We’re underground and this space has been abandoned for years."

"I’m not interested in logical explanations, boss. We’re talking about rats."

"They’ll run from the light."

"Oh, yeah? I don’t see any signs of this sucker running away."

"Wonder how he got in here," Fallon mused. "The place is supposed to be sealed."

"Rats can get into anything."

The scratchy noise got louder. An old-fashioned clockwork doll waddled stiffly out of the darkness. Isabella watched it with a sinking feeling. The doll stood almost three feet tall. It was dressed in what had once been an elaborately worked gown in the late-Victorian style of fashionable mourning. The dress was tattered and frayed, but it had obviously been made of expensive materials and trim.

The doll was mostly bald, but what was left of its hair was parted in the middle and pulled back into a tight chignon. A miniature crown, studied with small, ominous crystals, was perched on top of the porcelain skull.

"I think the Queen has arrived," Isabella whispered. "It’s Victoria. She’s dressed in black from head to foot. They say that after Prince Albert’s death she wore mourning for the rest of her reign."

"It’s motion-sensitive, like the clock," Fallon said. "That’s a hallmark of Bridewell’s work."

"How can it function after all these years?"

"We’ll worry about that later."

Energy heightened abruptly in the atmosphere. The doll trundled toward Isabella with unnerving accuracy.

"Looks like she’s got a fix on you," Fallon said.

"I can sense it. She’s starting to generate some kind of energy. Reminds me of the psi that emanated from the clock just before everything went dark."

"Move," Fallon ordered. "Fast. Force her to get another fix."

Isabella tried to step out of the Queen’s path, but her muscles refused to obey. She opened her mouth to tell Fallon that she could not move only to discover that she could not speak. Her mind began to grow cloudy. A terrifying numbness crept through her blood.

She concentrated fiercely on focusing her own talent. She knew how to disorient human psi but this was a doll, a clockwork robot. Nevertheless, the energy that had been infused into the thing originally was human in origin, she reminded herself.

She caught the telltale wavelengths of the paranormal energy emanating from the doll’s cold glass eyes and sent out the counteracting currents. The sense of numbness eased. She took a deep breath and managed to step to the side.

There was an eerie clicking in the shadows. The eyes of the doll rattled in their sockets as the machine sought a new fix.

Fallon moved swiftly, coming up behind the Queen.

Sensing his movements, the doll turned, creaking in her high-button shoes, searching for the new target.

Fallon brought the heavy flashlight down on the robot’s head in a sharp, savage blow. Porcelain cracked. The queen toppled backward and crashed to the floor, face turned toward the concrete ceiling. The glass eyes continued to skitter wildly in their sockets, seeking a target. The wooden limbs jerked and twitched, but the device could not right itself.

The light shifted at the entrance to the shelter.

"Everything okay down there?" Henry called. "We heard some loud noises."

"Just ran into the Queen," Fallon called back. "But things are under control."

Careful to keep out of range of the robot’s eyes, Fallon flipped the clockwork figure facedown on the concrete. The energy pulsing through the eyes was spent harmlessly on the floor. The doll’s head and limbs continued to twist and clatter and shiver.

Isabella watched Fallon open up the entire back of the doll, gown, miniature corset and wooden frame. In the beam of the flashlights the elaborate gears of the clockwork mechanism continued to move.

"There should be a lot more corrosion," Fallon said. "I can understand the paranormal energy in the glass eyes surviving all these years. Once infused into an object, a heavy dose of psi will emit radiation for centuries. But like Henry said, sooner or later, metal always corrodes, especially in a climate like this."

"Same story with the clock," Isabella said. "The killer told us that all he had to do was give it some oil and wind it up."

Fallon reached into the body of the doll and did something to one of the gears. The Queen went limp and still.

Isabella looked down at the lifeless robot. "We are not amused."

Fallon smiled briefly. "Couldn’t resist, could you?"

"Sorry, no. How often do you get to use a line like that?"

"Rarely." He took a closer look at the guts of the device. "Most of the mechanism is late-nineteenth-century, but someone repaired it and installed some modern parts and fittings."

"Recently?"

"No. I’m thinking the repair work was done twenty-two years ago."