Chapter Thirty-Four

Devin, startled and winded as he was, managed an instinctive kick as Angela hurtled toward him and Gadget. It wasn’t a well-aimed kick, but it sent Angela tipping over at just enough of an angle that when she slammed the twisted bit of metal into his flesh, she pierced his wrist instead of his chest. It bit straight through fabric, fur, skin, between two bones Devin could have told you the exact names of, and into a crack in the heavy stone blocks that made up the workroom floor. It sank home with a grating crunch.

Wasting no time, Angela left him pinned like an insect on a piece of Styrofoam and stalked after Gadget. Devin screamed in pain (who could blame him?) and tried to pull himself off the spike, but felt tendons and muscles catch and tear. It took every bit of willpower he possessed to not flail about in panic.

Gadget had not been standing idly by as Angela made her leap. For an instant she had considered throwing herself over Devin, but without thinking had instead slapped her paw on the nearest potential weapon. It was a can opener, the old kind that people used to call a church-key. It looked pitifully small in comparison as Angela approached with the sooty but still formidable piece of metal, which Gadget’s mind insisted on identifying as an air-hammer chisel. It was nearly a small spear, and she lashed out with it, the cruel tip raking Gadget’s arm as she twisted away.

His eyes running, Devin watched as Angela toyed with Gadget, just out of reach. Gadget stumbled and nearly fell, her sense of balance off-kilter from the extra weight she carried. God help me, she’s going to kill Gadget and the baby! A red mist of helpless anger washed over him, alternating with waves of blackness that rose and fell with the throbbing pain in his arm.

"What do you want?!" Gadget cried.

"Not what you think," Angela hissed. "Not yet. You’ve caught his interest." Angela twirled the chisel around in one paw like a baton, gripping it with the blunt end facing out.

"Who?!"

"You’ll find out. He’s waiting for you now, Gadget. The last time you met, he was in a bit of a rush…" She raised the chisel overhead and swung at empty air as Gadget made her move, stepped in close, and drove the churchkey into Angela’s shoulder. Angela snarled, ripped the piece of metal out like an offending splinter, and whipped the chisel around in a sudden arc. She caught Gadget just above her left temple and spun her head around—Gadget thudded into the cinders and ash at her feet.

Devin screamed with a deeper pain than the one in his arm as Gadget slammed into the stone floor and lay still. Between agonizing stabs of pain, Devin saw, and cursed himself for not seeing before-- Angela was not out of reach after all, but reaching her would cost him dearly. Taking a deep breath and swinging his legs violently, Devin wrenched himself around on the floor in a desperate arc, pivoting his wrist on the spike and screaming in pain and fury.

He caught Angela straight across the back of her legs with his own, knocking her feet out from under her and sending her sprawling into a heap. The chisel clattered away as Angela growled, more in irritation than in pain. She stood and dusted herself off, Devin stretching toward her with every muscle, wanting to feel his paws close on something vital and squeeze. But in his last effort to stop her, Devin had done himself grievous harm—he felt a warm puddle of blood spreading beneath his abused body.

"Leave her alone! Just let me get a paw on you—"

Angela slid away warily, shaking her head. "You’ve only got one left. Points for style, but you lose. I don’t think you’ll be doing any more heart surgery any time soon." Angela turned to retrieve her chisel, but someone stamped a footpaw down on her arm.

Angela didn’t even try to get away. She looked up in puzzlement. "Hey! You were supposed to be backup!" She tried to stand, but was instead snatched off her feet by the second-largest rat Devin had ever seen in his life. He was not a huge hulk of a creature like Brutus—but he was tall enough to lift Angela completely off her feet and take her in a vicelike grip, squeezing most of the air out of her.

Devin cast a glance at Gadget. She lay there so still and so quiet, blood and ashes streaking her fur. Devin felt his heart in his throat, and could make no sound to call to her, if she could have heard.

Angela was not going quietly. She squirmed and writhed in the newcomer’s deadly embrace, raking at the bigger rat’s face with her claws and kicking against his sides. Devin saw something come sliding along the floor toward him—it bit into his pinned arm and brought fresh pain. It was the chisel, and the big rat had kicked it toward Devin.

"Hold it—hold it up! Brace against—floor!" managed Devin’s would-be savior, through mouthfuls of flailing fur.

"Are you insane?" Devin howled back. "I can hardly move!"

"Do it!" the other rat commanded.

Shakily, Devin managed to get the chisel on end and look away as the big rat hefted Angela and slammed her against the floor. Devin felt a rush of blood drench his paw—Oh my God, we impaled her!—and let the chisel go.

Angela curled up around the chisel that had run her through, looked as if she might pull it out, but made one terrible arching movement with her whole body, screamed like something out of Hell itself, and lay still.

The big rat bent down and looked Devin in the face. His head was a tangle of half-healed cuts and the new ones Angela had given him. His teeth were sharp needle points in massive jaws, but the eyes were kind.

"Turner?" Devin managed weakly.

"Yes. No time for formal introductions." Turner spun about and saw to Gadget—she was breathing all right, and the cut wasn’t deep—she did have a nasty bump on her head.

Just once, I’d like to show up before she’s knocked around…

"Gadget! What did Angela do—"

"She’ll be all right, I think—we have to get you both out of here."

"I can’t—going out," Devin explained, seeing only a vague outline of Turner now, going down into the depths of unconsciousness and only holding on out of sheer willpower.

"If Cynthia and the Guard catch up with me, they’ll probably kill me on sight. Angela’s friends are closer than that—if they find me, they’ll kill you and I both—and I don’t think you’d like where they’d take Gadget. We have to go." Turner wrapped a massive paw around the spike holding Devin’s wrist in place.

Devin made small sounds of negation but Turner pulled. Devin was far away from the pain now, as if someone else were hurting. Best not to ask. His sight skewed to one side as Turner folded Devin’s mangled arm against his body. "Tourniquet," Devin croaked.

Turner nodded and tore a strip off his own huge but ragged shirt. "Do you know a good tailor? Everything I’ve got is out of fashion," rumbled Turner absent-mindedly as he cinched the tourniquet tight around Devin’s arm.

Devin nearly smiled for a second—Maybe you can pick up something Brutus grew out of—but caught sight of Gadget again, inspiring a fresh flood of tears, though his whole body was beginning to feel numb.

Turner glanced over at Gadget. "She’ll be all right. She’s been through worse before, some of it my fault."

Without another word, Turner wrapped a strong and sinewy arm around Devin’s pain-wracked body and lifted him off the bloodied floor. Devin registered a faint sense of disbelief as Turner bent again and repeated the trick, this time retrieving Gadget’s limp form and somehow managing to stay upright.

"Where—" whispered Devin.

"The deep tunnels," Turner huffed, shuffling forward at a good clip. "There are secret ways in and out. Too many." Turner looked down at his burden and saw that he now carried two unconscious and bleeding creatures. He shook his head, hoped that Angela’s cohorts would be too busy sorting out the mess behind him to pursue him into the depths, and plunged headlong into the dark yawning cavern. His well-trained whiskers set him on a trail that Timothy and the others had always assumed was lost in the heart of the cliffs. I’m deep in this, and getting deeper. I can take the pain when I’m finally found out, God…I’m prepared for that. But this body you’ve given me, they will do terrible things with. All I want, all I pray, is that you let me save these two, even if it costs me what little time I have left. They are so good, and I’ve already hurt them more than they know.

****

Justin’s claws were half-buried in Elizabeth’s desk as he leaned on it, all the wind knocked out of him. The haunted look that Elizabeth saw so seldom, and that frightened her so badly when she did see it, was stamped on Justin something fierce.

"Kidnapped," he said, tasting the word and finding it bitter. "What sort of five-and-dime operation are we running here? Persons unknown come and go without a sound and kidnap our guests? Damn it all!" Justin swept a paw through stacks of papers that Elizabeth should have dealt with a week ago—expansion plans and petty memos that meant nothing unless some sort of basic safety could be maintained.

"You’re going to blame my daughter soon. I hear it coming." Elizabeth leaned back in her chair, making it creak. She tapped a paw against the armrest, waiting for it.

Justin bunched up a sheet of parchment, but let it go and absentmindedly smoothed it flat against the desk, feeling his own claw-marks through the page. Arthur made this desk, spent a month on it just to see a friend smile. You can scar a beautiful thing with anger, so try to go gentle, even when you feel like a fool. "No," Justin said glumly. "It’s not Cynthia’s fault. She has a small, well-trained force, the heart of the old Guard--it’s all we’ve needed for years."

Elizabeth was a little surprised. "I thought you’d take it worse. Devin and Gadget were under our protection—they were on loan to us from Rescue Aid, and even the loan was a precious gift. I don’t know how much you’ve talked with Arthur about Gadget’s notes--"

"I haven’t wanted to tire him out," Justin offered, tapping his pawpads together. "Though he seems determined to get to work. Gadget lit a fire under him."

Elizabeth nodded. "She found our blind spots. Some of them, at least. She was right—we have to bring in reinforcements and then lock this place down. "

"We never wanted this to be an armed camp!" Justin snapped. "We didn’t plan on anyone drumming up a vendetta against us and not telling us why! And don’t look so wounded, you know I’m only angry with myself."

"Devin and Gadget might not be dead, Justin. We have to hold onto that hope."

"If they aren’t dead, they’re hurt, and in the paws of the enemy."

"An enemy that pins someone to the floor and then carries them off? At the very least, it’s an enemy that sounds confused. We don’t know the whole story," Elizabeth soothed, taking a stack of random parchment from Justin’s paws and putting her own over them.

"No," Justin agreed. "We don’t know everything. But we have to tell Rescue Aid what little we do know." He surveyed the damage he’d done to Elizabeth’s filing system, such as it was. "What did they offer us, again?"

"Weapons, training, military personnel and medical too if we need it—"

"We have enough doctors."

"Not enough for a war. Besides, we’re missing an important one, one that didn’t belong to us in the first place."

Justin winced. "I suppose I deserved that. So, we need outside help. Are we ready to pay the price for it?"

Elizabeth held up her right paw and began to sing in a clear, calm voice. "R-E-S, C-U-E, Rescue Aid So-ci-et-y…" She broke off and chuckled. "We had better start teaching that in the schools, if we’re accepting membership."

"They’ll give us new rules and pry into all our business," grumbled Justin.

"That’s assuming we all survive and have business to pry into," Elizabeth pointed out.

Justin groaned. "You’re determined to talk me into this, aren’t you?"

"If it means one more pair of paws to fight our enemies, or one more set of eyes to search for Gadget and Devin, I say Rescue Aid can pry all it wants," Elizabeth cautioned.

Justin put his paws up. "Okay, okay. Just one problem. Who do we send to tell Rescue Aid we’ve lost two of their operatives, but that we want to join forces? Who on earth could keep a straight face doing both at once?"

Elizabeth grinned. "You want a straight face? I have a likely candidate."

Button images by Keith Elder