Technically speaking, if I could do magic and had the Sparetime to fuel it, I should be able to do this because I knew exactly what the gear-pin looked like, and where it needed to be to fix this clock.
In practice…
I closed my eyes, felt the warmth of the energy in my chest. It was there, right there, and it…responded.Easily.
My heartbeat sped again, this time with excitement. I squeezed my eyes shut and held onto it with all my focus,pulled it toward my arms, imagined it releasing from my fingers. In my mind’s eyes I saw it—a deep purple, not smoke but not liquid either. Not flashy like the red of Hearts or the silvery white of Diamonds, but a rich, deep purple that faded away with the next beat of my heart.
I wasn’t breathing when my eyes opened, when I saw the last of the magic fade into nothing. When I saw the pin exactly where it should be. A tiny thing, but I saw it through the loupe. Brand new.Real.
It worked. My magic worked, too.
No time to dwell on it—and maybe that was for the best. Change was scary even when it was exciting, and right now what mattered was that the clock of this beast was complete. If the gears were aligned and nothing else was missing, and the mainspring had tension, the clock would come back to life as soon as I pushed the crown in place. Everything else would have to wait for later.
Four minutes.That’s how much time I’d paid with my Life Clock, if I was reading the hand correctly. Four minutes for that tiny pin.
My hands didn’t shake. I’d focused, and when I focused on one thing, I forgot others—even blood and teeth and terror, apparently. I put the case back on, cleaned the pieces of glass still sticking to it, and I wound the crown slowly until the hands aligned with the ones on myclock. The time was seven, thirty-nine.
Then I pushed the crown in place with my breath held—and at the same second heard the first gut-turning scream.
7
It worked.
A heart beat in the clockbeast in front of me. The cuts on the side of its body were closing before my eyes as I put all the tools in the pouch as fast as I could, while also trying to see into the clearing, to see who had screamed.
Who was still screaming.
The only thing Icouldsee, though, was the running.
The other Hands were running away from the clearing into the forest, and at least two clockbeasts were chasing them.
“Fuck-fuck-fuck.”
That was not supposed to happen.
And I was standing there like a fool with nothing but a pouch in my hands—right nextto the clockbeast I’d brought back to life, that was also standing now, growling as it licked its leg where a wound had been, before it raised its head and locked its empty eyes on me.
Tick-tock, tick-tock, tick-tock…
Sharp teeth. A body that—as I’d accurately guessed before—reached up to my arm at the shoulders. Thin limbs and short, patchy fur, and those eyes…
Another scream sounded in the distance that felt like it had ripped right out of my throat.
I turned around and ran.
The forest somehow looked darker when you had a rabid clockbeast with the growl of a monster chasing you, it seemed, but I didn’t run for long. Just as long as I needed to put the pouch in my pocket and grab the knives strapped to my waist.
I expected bad. I expectedvery badwhen I made a sharp U-turn around a large tree to confuse the clockbeast and give myself a moment to assess, but it worked. The beast continued forward another couple of feet before it realized I’d disappeared, and by then I was behind it, and I could see.
The uncoordinated movements. The way it swung to the sides when it stopped—like it was still gaining footing. Like it still hadn’t gathered its strength. Like it had been dead too long.
But it heard me. It turned a heartbeat later, and it saw the glint of the blades in my hands from the lanterns on the trees around us.
It didn’t waste another second before charging.
I said it before—I’d never actually been in a real fight. I’d sparred more times than I could count with my father, but that wasn’t the same thing, even though we used real weapons. It wasn’t the same as an actual clockbeast with teeth as big as my fingers coming to rip me apart with that awful growl, but my body knew how to move. My heart was galloping and my blood was rushing and my arms were moving and slicing into skin—and the clockbeast was coming for me.
Blood.It sprayed on the arm of my suit, coating it black. The beast howled and tried to wrap those nasty jaws aroundmy thigh in turn, but I moved like I knew it would do that very thing. Correction—likemy bodyknew it would do that very thing, even if the thought didn’t exist in my mind at all.
