 
### Gears of a Mad God:

### A Steampunk Lovecraft Adventure

By Brent Nichols

Copyright 2012 Brent Nichols

Smashwords Edition

This is a work of fiction. Not real. Totally made up. Any resemblance to real people, situations, murderous cults or eldritch deities is purely coincidental.
Table of Contents

Chapter 1 – Grim Tidings

Chapter 2 – Dragon Alley

Chapter 3 – A Disappearance

Chapter 4 – Striking Back

Chapter 5 – Flight

Chapter 6 – A Midnight Caller

Chapter 7 – The Decision

Chapter 8 – Tick Tock

Chapter 9 – Daylight

###  Chapter 1 – Grim Tidings

It was ironic, Colleen Garman reflected, how often a clockmaker could lose track of the time.

She was up to her elbows in brass gears and grease, thoroughly enjoying herself, when the grandfather clock in the corner began to chime. In moments half a dozen more clocks joined in, and she straightened, suppressing an unladylike curse. Six o'clock! Roland would be picking her up at seven, it would take half an hour to get home, she needed half an hour to scrub the smell of grease from her skin, and then there was her hair-!

She left her tools sticking out of the clock cabinet, not the way her father had taught her at all, but this was an emergency. Then she raced around the workshop, turning down gas lights and making sure the windows were shut. She pulled a jacket on over her coveralls and paused in the doorway, looking over her domain.

Everything was squared away, aside from a few wrenches. Dad would be proud.

If she'd known how long it would be before she saw her workshop again, she would have stayed longer. Instead she turned away and locked the door.

The evening shadows were long, and at first she didn't notice the tall man in the long, dark coat striding across the lawn. Her workshop was one bay in a long block of warehouses, so she didn't pay any attention to him. He was undoubtedly on his way to see one of her neighbors.

She jogged across the grass, and he saw her, and veered toward her. Something in his face disturbed her, a look of dark intensity, and she jogged faster, heading for the lights of Spadina Street a block away. The warehouse district got short shrift when it came to streetlights, a fact that usually didn't bother her, but tonight she was nervous.

Feet thudded on the grass and she looked over her shoulder. The man was running after her, and Colleen broke into a run as well. She dashed up Treadwell Street, a growing anger fighting with her fear. What right did some clown have to chase her, to make her run? Of course, she was late, after all. She decided that was reason enough to keep going. If she turned and taught this man a lesson, she'd miss her date with Roland completely.

He was gaining on her as she reached the intersection with Spadina. It was a much busier street, with shoppers strolling between stores and businessmen leaving their offices. She was thinking about stopping, turning to face the guy, when she saw a streetcar just ahead of her. She decided to run for it instead, and picked up the pace.

The man behind her sped up as well. He was no more than a dozen feet behind her when her stretching hand caught the rail on the back of the streetcar and she pulled herself on board.

She stood panting, staring back at him, ready to hammer on his fingers if he grabbed the railing. But he was too far back. He was quite determined, the long black coat flapping around his legs as he sprinted, but he quickly fell behind.

Colleen stared into his face. It was an ordinary face at first glance, long and thin, a clean-shaven man somewhere between youth and middle age. But there was a disturbing intensity to his features. As the streetcar pulled away from him there was no frustration in his face, no disappointment. Just a grim focus as he stared after her.

Colleen shivered and hoped she'd seen the last of him. The next time she worked late, she decided, she'd tuck one of her larger wrenches into her pocket. If he came after her again he'd get the surprise of his life.

Home for Colleen was a rattletrap row house on a steep hill with a view of Lake Ontario. With her parents gone the dark house often depressed her, but tonight she was too distracted to be troubled. She trotted up the front steps, then paused to pluck an envelope from the mailbox at her front door.

Inside, she turned on the lights and tore the envelope open. She was distracted, thinking of Roland, thinking of how she could be ready in time, but the words on the page hit her like a blow. It was a telegraph form, the message succinct, blunt, and brutal.

Very sorry your uncle Roderick passed this AM in Victoria.

Colleen stared at the rectangle of paper for a long minute, then walked to the nearest chair and flopped herself down. She kept staring at the sheet in her hand, but she was no longer seeing it. Uncle Rod was dead?

By the time Roland arrived she was packing. She told him about Roderick in distracted bursts as she darted back and forth across her bedroom, gathering her possessions. She took no more than she could fit in a suitcase. A steamer trunk was more traditional, but it would be a nightmare to move, and Colleen liked to be mobile.

Roland listened silently, only sympathy on his face. He was dressed for the night of dancing he had promised her, and he looked devastatingly handsome in a brown suit that showed off his height and his broad shoulders. Colleen looked at him and felt a pang of regret for their missed evening, and a rush of affection for him. She had ruined his evening completely, and his only thought was how he could help.

He carried her suitcase down to the front door, went to the corner drugstore to phone for a taxi, then came back and looked her up and down. "I hope you're not travelling in that," he said.

Colleen looked down at herself. She was still in her coveralls, hardly suitable attire for a young lady in public. She frowned in irritation. Skirts were frankly a pain, and she would be travelling for at least a week. Well, there was nothing to be done. She thought about packing her dirty coveralls just in case, but it hardly seemed likely she'd wear them.

She changed quickly, pulling on a blue dress and grabbing a bonnet, and ran back downstairs. "I'll come with you to the train station," Roland said as the taxi pulled up. "I could even go with you to Victoria."

"Don't be silly," Colleen told him. "You haven't packed. And you don't want to pay for a taxi to come all the way back from the station. I'll be fine."

"I don't know," he said, and she smiled at the concern on his face. She stood on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "Thanks for understanding," she said. "You're very sweet. I'll see you as soon as I get back."

He insisted on carrying her suitcase to the taxi. He opened the back door for her, then took her hand, his face serious. "We need to have a talk when you get back."

Colleen nodded and climbed into the taxi. She watched him through the back window as the car pulled away. She had a feeling he was planning to propose to her, and the thought put a flutter of excitement in her stomach, but they had a few issues to work out first. Roland had some fairly narrow views about how a proper young woman ought to behave, and they didn't involve wearing coveralls and working with hand tools.

But she'd been shaken by the news of Uncle Rod's death. He was her last living relative. She was truly alone now. Marrying Roland, being part of a family again, coming home to a house full of light and life and love, would be hard to resist.

She lugged her suitcase into the station, found a ticket window, and bought a return ticket to Vancouver, wincing at the price. She wouldn't have long to wait. Her train was leaving in less than ten minutes.

She was on the stairs, the suitcase bumping her legs with every step, when some instinct made her turn. A man was sauntering across the lobby behind her, and he lifted a newspaper to hide his face as she turned, but he was a moment too slow. Colleen felt her stomach turn to ice. She knew that thin face, that dark coat, those burning eyes.

It couldn't be a coincidence. He was following her. But why?

Not for any good purpose, she was sure.

She kept moving, down the staircase, her eyes scanning the station. She was safe enough for the moment, but what if he boarded the same train she did? She had a sudden vision of going to sleep at night, wondering what he might do as she slept. Or she might confront him, teach him some manners, and maybe get herself thrown off the train.

A group of sailors stood at the bottom of the stairs, half a dozen rough-looking young men talking and laughing loudly, and Colleen instinctively edged away from them. Then one man's words caught her attention.

"I'm telling you, it's been stolen."

"You lost it," the man beside him said. "Check your pockets again."

"I don't have that many pockets," the first sailor retorted. "I'm telling you, someone nicked my wallet."

Colleen stepped closer and said, "I think it was him."

"Huh? What?" The sailors stared at her, and Colleen, her heart thumping, let go of her suitcase with one hand so she could point up the stairs. "That guy in the black coat, with the newspaper. I think he took your wallet."

The sailors looked where she pointed and Colleen quickly moved away before they could ask any awkward questions. She hurried to her platform, not turning her head when she heard raised voices behind her, followed by the sounds of a scuffle. She allowed herself a small smile as she handed her suitcase to a porter and boarded her train.

### Chapter 2 – Dragon Alley

The trip from Toronto to the coast took three days. At first Colleen distracted herself by examining the hardware of the train, from the straightforward mechanics of the steam locomotive to the complex, cutting-edge pneumatic brake system. She watched the scenery, and chatted with her fellow passengers, but by the second day all of that began to pall.

She brooded over her shattered family. Her mother was a distant memory, just a face in a photograph and faint images of warmth and love and a golden smile, so long ago that she wasn't sure if she was remembering or imagining.

Her father's death, eighteen months earlier, was fresh and devastating in her mind. The two of them had been inseparable, working side by side in the workshop whenever she wasn't in school. She still woke up some mornings not remembering that he was gone, and was crushed anew when memory came flooding in.

She reviewed what she knew of Uncle Rod. He had visited on half a dozen occasions, always on his way to some exotic new location. He was rootless, Dad had said. Born to wander the Earth, seeking his fortune, seeking adventure, never content.

She remembered a broad-shouldered man, his stomach a bit bigger on every visit, his face a thicket of bristling whiskers. He smelled of tobacco smoke and peppermint and something else, a scent she'd never been able to identify. The first time Colleen encountered whiskey she'd been shocked to recognize the smell. She'd meant to tease Uncle Rod about it, but she never saw him again.

Six visits in twenty years. Oh, probably he'd visited when she was an infant, but six visits was all she could remember. They hadn't been especially close. This feeling she had, that she needed to drop everything and dash across the country, had less to do with their relationship than with the fact that he was all the family she had left.

Was this trip ill-advised? She told herself she was going to settle his affairs, take care of anything that needed doing. She told herself she was being responsible, but in truth it had been an impulsive decision.

She was plagued by questions, and it would take three days at least to get any answers. Meanwhile there were probably telegrams and letters stacking up at home with the answers to all of her questions. She sighed and read the one telegram she'd received for the umpteenth time.

The telegram was signed "Jane Favisham." Colleen had never heard of her. Was she a friend of Uncle Rod? A girlfriend? Whoever she was, she knew about Colleen.

On the morning of the third day some of her questions were answered. She switched trains in Calgary, and found a Vancouver newspaper, four days old, discarded in the dining car. She glanced at a lurid headline, dismissed it, and started to turn the page. Then a name caught her eye and she turned back, a chill spreading through her body as she read.

Madman Subdued in Victoria

On Monday afternoon a near-tragedy was averted at a small public school in Victoria. A man with an axe entered Queen Elizabeth Primary School in the mid-afternoon. He apparently tried to enter the first classroom he came to, but a quick-thinking teacher, Mr. Hainsley, pushed the door shut from the inside and held it, exhorting his students to flee by the window.

The attacker was attempting to batter the door open with his axe when he was apprehended by a group of teachers and a janitor. No students or staff were harmed in the attack.

The attacker was taken into police custody. He has been identified as Roderick Garman of Victoria. The motive for the attack is not known.

Colleen stared at the newspaper, baffled. Uncle Rod had taken an axe and attacked a school? She didn't know him well, but he'd always been gentle, amusing, and patient. It made no sense.

She checked the date on the paper. May 1, 1921. The day before the telegram. Uncle Rod should have been in police custody. How had he died?

She was exhausted and disgruntled when she finally walked down the gangplank of the Vancouver-Victoria ferry and stepped onto Vancouver Island. She had never been so far from home, but she was in no mood to enjoy the sights. She hoisted her suitcase and trudged down the dock.

"Miss Colleen Garman?"

Colleen looked up to see a woman of about forty standing before her. She had brown hair drawn up in a bun, and wore a modest blue dress and an uncertain smile.

"Yes?"

"Oh, it is you!" the woman gushed. "I knew it! Your uncle has- I'm sorry, had a picture of you in his house. I'm Jane Favisham. I was your uncle's friend."

"How do you do?" Colleen said automatically, and Jane shifted a parasol to her left hand so she could shake Colleen's hand. "How did you know I was coming?"

Jane smiled. "There's only one ferry each day from Vancouver, and I live quite near here. When I didn't get any replies to my telegrams I decided I'd come by each day starting today, for a few days at least. And here you are, on my very first day. You must have really hurried."

Colleen nodded. "Thank you for meeting me. I wasn't expecting it."

"Well, anything I can do. Rod was terribly fond of you, you know."

Colleen closed her eyes for a moment. She wasn't aware that she'd made much of an impression on her uncle. He had a picture of her? _Oh, Uncle Rod, I never had a chance to properly get to know you._

"Do you have a place to stay?" Jane interjected.

"No. I guess I didn't plan this trip very well."

Jane patted her shoulder and smiled. "That's all right. It must have been a terrible shock. I know it was for me. I'm afraid you'll have to check into a hotel. Your uncle's house, well, it's been damaged. And I stay in a boarding house.

"The Empress is the best hotel in town. It's really something, but expensive, I fear. I recommend the Queen Anne. It's not too pricy, but it's respectable. The best part is, it's not far. My, that suitcase looks heavy. Can I help you carry anything?"

The Queen Anne Hotel was a two-story building a block from the docks. By the time Colleen was checked in the sun was setting and her head was spinning. Jane smiled sympathetically and said, "You look done in, dear. Why don't you rest, and I'll come see you tomorrow morning."

Colleen slept late and rose still feeling tired. She was finishing breakfast when Jane arrived, the parasol dangling from her hand. The sky was overcast. She would need the parasol more for rain than sun today.

They made small talk as they strolled through the streets of Victoria. Colleen was not an experienced traveller. She hadn't realized her country had so much variety before this trip. Toronto, she now realized, was a bastion of industry and commerce. She'd been surprised that the smaller prairie cities were so different, built of wood and sandstone instead of brick. Now she was in Victoria, the most elegant city she'd seen so far. The heart of the city was filled with elaborate Edwardian architecture and somehow felt distinctly British.

The buildings became less ornate as they walked. Soon they were on the outskirts of town, surrounded by clapboard buildings. Jane put her hand on Colleen's arm. "We're getting close to Rod's house. I'm afraid it's been burglarized."

"Really?"

"Yes, it happened right after the, that is, right after your uncle was arrested. I went by the house to pick up a few things for him and the door had been pried open. There it is up ahead."

Uncle Rod's house was a small, stand-alone structure with peeling paint and a sagging front porch. It was surrounded by similar buildings. Fresh, unpainted wood showed on the door frame where it had been repaired. Jane unlocked the door, then handed Colleen a small brass key.

"I guess this is yours, now. I haven't cleaned anything up. After Rod- after everything happened, I was just too upset. I called the police and got someone to fix the door, and that's all I did."

"Thank you for doing that," Colleen said. "Thank you for everything. For caring about Uncle Rod. For looking out for me."

Jane smiled, her lip trembling, and Colleen turned away, stepping into the house before both of them broke down in tears. Uncle Rod's house was wired for electric lights. She found a light switch on the wall and pressed the button.

The house was a shambles. Colleen stared around the front room, her hand over her mouth, aghast. Padded chairs had been slashed open. Tables were overturned. A hutch stood open, the floor around it covered in smashed dishes.

Colleen moved through the house, shocked at the destruction. Every shelf, every drawer, every cupboard had been emptied onto the floor. Uncle Rod's mattress had been slashed open, the stuffing strewn around the bedroom. She could barely take a step without treading on his shattered possessions.

She realized she'd been looking forward to this, to seeing where Uncle Rod had lived. She'd wanted to get a sense of who he was, what sort of life he'd led out here on the coast. To get a sense of connection to him, if possible.

Instead she was surrounded by rubbish and ruin. This was no longer her uncle's home. Colleen hurried from the house, and stood outside taking deep breaths, trying to compose herself. The street was mostly empty, for which she was grateful. A man was loitering on the far side of the street, but he looked away as Colleen looked at him, giving her privacy to blink away her tears.

Jane came out of the house and stood beside her, mute and sympathetic, patting her shoulder. After a minute Colleen locked the house.

They walked back to the hotel, silent at first, each woman lost in her own thoughts. Finally Colleen blurted, "I don't understand. What happened? Why was he at that school, with an axe?"

Jane pressed her lips together and shook her head. "I wish I knew. It was very unlike him. He was the gentlest man you'd ever want to meet. You know that."

Colleen nodded, although she didn't really know Uncle Rod well enough to be sure.

"I saw him the day before, and he was agitated. He kept going on about some book he'd read. He had a collection, artifacts and antiquities from around the world."

Colleen smiled, remembering. Some of his get-rich-quick schemes had involved treasure maps, or hunts for lost cities, lost treasures, lost temples.

"I don't know what book he meant," Jane continued. "I can't remember what he said, exactly. But he kept going on about how it couldn't be true, it had to be lies, there was nothing that could be done. He was acting so strange, I told him he was scaring me. I left, I said, come and see me when you've calmed down." She looked down at her feet. "That was the last time I saw him, before he, he went mad."

"It's not your fault," Colleen said. "I don't know what happened to him, but it sounds like something you couldn't have stopped by talking to him about it."

Jane nodded.

"I know he was arrested," Colleen said carefully. "I don't know how he died, though."

Jane turned to face her, her face haunted. "He killed himself," she whispered. "I don't want to go into the details. But he killed himself in his cell."

They continued in silence, and stopped in front of the Queen Anne Hotel. "I have to go to work," Jane said. "They've been very understanding, but I'd better put in some hours soon, or their patience will run out."

"I'll be all right," Colleen told her. "I'm not sure what I'm doing next. Did Uncle Rod have a lawyer?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe I'll try to find that out. Thank you so much, Jane. I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't met me at the ferry."

The two women hugged, then Jane said, "I'll come by this evening after work. Maybe about seven. I live at Mrs. Rosebottom's boarding house on Tanner Street if you need to reach me." And she hurried away, a slim, lonely figure in blue soon lost in the crowd.

Colleen turned and walked into the hotel. She felt suddenly alone and far from home, all at sea in a world she didn't understand. She longed for the sight of a familiar face, a friendly voice. What she wouldn't give to have Roland come up behind her and call her name!

"Miss Garman?"

Colleen turned. The front desk clerk smiled. "We have a message for you, ma'am."

"For me? Are you sure?" No one knew where Colleen was except Jane.

The clerk handed her a folded slip of paper. "A couple of gentlemen dropped it off, not half an hour ago," he said. "They went to the bar." He gestured toward the hotel lounge.

The note was brief, written in a strong, flowing hand:

Mr. Smith and Mr. Carter would like to speak with you at your earliest convenience. We will wait for some time in your hotel bar. We have taken accommodations in the Empress Hotel and can be reached in rooms 304 and 306.

She thanked the clerk and walked down the corridor, puzzled. She stepped into the doorway of the lounge and scanned the room.

Two men sat at a corner table, glasses before them. She saw a stout man in a tweed jacket and bowler hat facing her. He had a round, amiable face and a brown mustache, and he saw her, raised an eyebrow, and spoke to his companion.

The other man had his back to Colleen, but she felt her pulse start to race even before his head began to turn. She stared, frozen, disbelieving, at his thin face, his intense eyes, his long dark coat. As he rose from his chair she turned and ran.

A voice in her head told her she should stop, confront him here with plenty of witnesses around, but an unreasoning terror had her by the throat and all she could think of was escape. She burst out the front door of the hotel, running hard, and didn't look back until she was a block away.

The man in the dark coat was loping down the street, half a block behind her.

Colleen fled, legs burning and breath sawing in her lungs. She grabbed the tailgate of a moving truck, lifted her feet, and hung there for a block, gaining precious speed. When the truck slowed for traffic she dropped off and dashed down a side street. She wove through crowds of pedestrians and darted around another corner.

She stopped, panting, her back against a wall. Finally she peered around the corner, looking back the way she'd come.

There was no sign of him.

Something caught her eye, though. A man was staring at her, a stranger in a dark red coat. She looked at him, and he quickly looked away, but he was sidling through the crowd toward her, and she was sure he was watching her from the corners of his eyes.

Also, she had a dreadful feeling that she'd seen him before. She racked her brain, and it came to her. He'd been loitering across the street from Uncle Rod's house.

More movement caught her eyes. The street was a bustle of pedestrians, people moving in every direction, but she could pick out two, no, three people converging on her. In addition to the man in the red coat she saw a burly older man with a forked beard and a dark-haired woman in a white bonnet. At first glance they seemed to have nothing in common, but all three of them were somehow similar. It was their expressions, she realized. There was something fixed, intense, almost animalistic in their faces.

Colleen turned and ran. She was thoroughly lost, running blindly, fighting a rising panic. She twisted and turned, darting around cars and wagons and people, and she heard feet slapping the pavement behind her as the strangers gave chase.

She dashed through an intersection, flinching as a truck gave her a blast from its horn. And suddenly she was in another world. The street was narrow, clapboard buildings looming close on either side. The sidewalk was far more crowded than it had been, and nearly every person around her was Chinese.

The strangeness of it heightened her sense of terror. Strange, spicy smells filled her nostrils and a babble of incomprehensible voices crashed against her ears. It was Chinatown, and Colleen lurched down the street, only too aware that her height and blonde hair made her a beacon in this crowd.

She glanced back. The man in the red coat was right behind her, a manic grin on his face. Colleen threw herself forward. When the press of bodies in front of her was too much she darted sideways, into an alley. It was narrow and dirty, but free of people, and she ran faster, her long legs giving her an advantage over the man behind her.

A man stepped into the alley ahead of her. He was black, and huge, a broad-shouldered man with a gleaming bald head, and he grinned as he saw her. She was running straight at him, and his arms came out from his sides, blocking her path, his fingers extending, ready to grab her.

Sobbing with frustration and terror, Colleen lunged at the first door she saw. She tore the door open and ran into a kitchen. For an instant she was face-to-face with a Chinese man dressed all in white, his hair in a braid hanging down his back. Colleen flinched away from him, and he flinched back as well. She gathered her courage and darted past him as the door behind her flew open and the man in the red coat came barreling in.

She fled, came to a wall, darted left without looking, and found herself at a dead end with a row of shelves on one side and a wall on the other. She turned.

The man had her cornered. There was a depraved glint in his eyes, and a long silver knife in his hand.

Colleen looked around frantically. There was nothing she could use as a weapon, nowhere she could go. A metallic clang made her look up. She saw the silver knife drop from the man's fingers. A moment later he folded up and collapsed onto the floor. She saw the Chinese cook behind him, a frying pan raised over his head.

She jumped over the man in the red coat, pushed past the cook, and ran through a low doorway. She was in a tiny restaurant, half a dozen patrons looking up from their plates to stare at her.

A strangled cry came from the kitchen behind her. Every nerve in her body screamed at her to run, but she turned her head, looking back into the kitchen.

The big black man had the cook pressed up against the wall, one huge hand wrapped around the cook's throat. Colleen's feet seemed to move on their own, taking her back into the kitchen. The cook had helped her for no good reason other than because she was in trouble, and outrage was rapidly overcoming her fear.

The frying pan lay in the middle of the floor. The man turned his head as she snatched up the pan, but he didn't have time to react. Colleen used both hands, spinning her entire body, and put everything she had into one mighty swing. The pan slammed into the side of the big man's head, the impact numbed her arms to the elbow, the pan tumbled to the floor, and the man fell sprawling across the floor tiles.

For a moment Colleen and the cook stared into each other's eyes. He was massaging his throat, but he grinned, and she smiled back. "Thank you," she said, then turned and raced through the restaurant, out the front door, and into the street.

Her pursuers were on her almost immediately, the woman in the white bonnet flanked by two more men. Colleen ran, panting for breath, wondering how much longer she could keep going.

Two men came around the corner in front of her. Their smiles and the way they spread out, blocking her path, told her it was two more of her new enemies. She stopped, scanning the street, and dashed down a staircase. She pushed open a filthy black door, banged her head on something, and scurried forward with her head bowed.

She was in a low, dark room, the air thick with sweet-smelling smoke. An old Chinese man sat on a stool near the doorway, and he gaped at her as she went past. A dozen or so people lounged on low sofas, most of them Chinese, a few white men dressed as sailors mixed in with them. They were no more than vague shapes in the gloom as Colleen stumbled through the room.

There was no back door, but a window at the back let in a little light. Colleen leaned past a couch to push at the window, which swung open.

She heard loud cries as her pursuers burst into the room behind her. She didn't look back, just stepped onto the couch. A soft shape squirmed beneath her foot, a voice cried out, and she realized she'd planted her foot in someone's stomach. There was no time to be delicate. She kicked off, pulling herself up to the window frame and wriggling through.

She found herself crawling into an alley, mud and fouler substances squishing between her fingers. Someone grabbed her foot and she kicked wildly, then squirmed her way outside as the fingers slid free.

She stood, looking around, and heard movement behind her. A man was coming through the window, his head almost touching her shoes, and she kicked him in the face. He flinched, sliding backward as his hands came up to protect himself, and she kicked him again. He fell back into the opium den.

She thought about staying put, keeping them at bay, but there were too many of them. The rest would be coming around the block and trapping her. She turned away from the window and started to run.

She was too late. A pair of men loomed in the mouth of the alley, and she knew that the others would have the far end of the alley blocked in moments. Then a hand closed on her wrist and a man's voice said, "Now, Miss, if you fight you'll just-"

She twisted in his grasp, turning. A man's face was inches from her own, and she drove her fist into his nose. He fell back with a cry, letting go of her arm, but the strangers were all around her now.

She punched, a man grunted, and then a fist slammed into the side of her head and she fell to her hands and knees. She got a foot under her and threw herself forward, diving against the legs that surrounded her, and people tumbled as she went rolling out of the circle.

Some rubbish was heaped against the far side of the alley, and she sprang to it, coming to her feet with a chunk of timber in her hands. It was pine, four feet long and thicker than a baseball bat, and she raised the makeshift weapon over her shoulder as she turned to face her attackers.

There were five of them, the woman in the white bonnet and four men. One man was bleeding from both nostrils, and all of them looked angry. They spread out, surrounding her, and she edged back until her heels bumped the wall behind her. For a moment she was filled with terror. She was hopelessly outnumbered, and what did she know about fighting?

Then she tightened her grip on the chunk of timber. She knew a thing or two about tools, after all. She had used hammers and pry bars to break free rusted gears. This was a similar problem. Moving joints, much softer than the brass and steel she usually worked with. She just needed to separate some joints, lift some bones from their sockets. And she had the right tool for the job. She bared her lips in a snarl and said, "Come on, then. What are you waiting for? Is five of you not enough?"

They pressed in, and she stepped forward, giving herself more room to move. She deliberately turned to her right, showing the back of her head to the man on her left, and she heard the gravel in the alley crunch under his feet as he moved into range, thinking to blindside her. She swung as she turned, and his arm came up to protect his head. She kept right on swinging, and the timber hit his arm. There was a dry snap as his arm broke, and he screamed. Colleen spun and swung at a hand that was reaching for her. She connected with the hand, and a man flinched back.

"To hell with this," the woman said. "We're not getting her alive. Finish her."

Knives came sliding out from pockets and under coats. Colleen advanced, swinging desperately, and they fell back, circling around, trying to get behind her. She retreated, keeping the wall at her back, and they pressed closer.

Then headlights filled the gloom of the alley. Colleen turned, felt a brief surge of hope, then despair as she recognized the thin-faced man in the dark coat leaning out the window of a dark blue convertible. His companion from the hotel, the round-faced man with the bowler hat and mustache, was driving.

The car came barrelling down the alley and a shot rang out. She saw a muzzle flash, realized the man in the dark coat was shooting. He fired again and a sallow-faced man dropped his knife and stumbled back.

Her attackers scattered. One man was too slow, and the fender of the car hit him, sending him bouncing against the wall of a building. The car screeched to a halt in front of Colleen, and the man with the dark coat snapped, "Come with us, or stay here and die!"

Colleen dropped her timber, leaped onto the running board, and hung onto the top of the door with both hands. The car gave a mighty roar and sped down the alley, leaving her attackers behind.

### Chapter 3 – A Disappearance

"My name is Dirk Smith. We almost met in Toronto. I'm sorry I frightened you. I just wanted to speak to you, but you kept running away."

"How do you do," Colleen said, blushing a bit. To be fair, Smith and his intense eyes were still a bit frightening, even sitting calmly across a table from her in room 304 of the Empress Hotel.

"I'm Phillip Carter," said the man in the bowler hat. He smiled under his brown mustache. "You led us quite a chase. I'm glad you're safe."

"What's this all about?" Colleen asked. "I don't understand what's happening."

"I'm afraid you've ended up in the middle of a very large, dark conspiracy," Carter said. "You're caught in a spider web that has strands reaching all over the world. Maybe even beyond."

Colleen stared at him, and he cleared his throat. "Never mind that," he said. "Were you close to your uncle?"

"Not really. I hadn't seen him in a couple of years when he died."

"I understand his house has been burglarized," Carter said. "Do you know if anything was missing?"

"Hold on," said Colleen. "I'm not letting you pump me for information and leave me in the dark. Who are you? Who were those people chasing me?"

For a moment the two men just looked at her. Then Carter said, "It might be best for you if you just answered our questions and returned to Toronto. Believe me, you don't want to get involved."

Colleen's fingers went to the sleeve of her dress. Somewhere in Chinatown a knife had sliced through the fabric, missing her skin by a hair's breadth. She hadn't even known when it happened. "I'm already involved," she said. "People are trying to kill me. My uncle is dead, and I want to know why."

Carter rubbed the bridge of his nose. "When was the last time you heard from your uncle?"

Colleen crossed her arms and glared at him. "Forget it. You're getting nothing from me until I get some answers."

The silence stretched out, and then Smith chuckled. "I think she's got us, Phil."

Carter looked at him. "We can't just tell her-"

"She already knows too much," Smith said, "and she's got the attention of the cult. I think she has a right to know the rest."

The two men locked eyes, and finally Carter sighed, nodded, and turned back to Colleen. "The people who attacked you are part of a cult," he said. "It seems to have a worldwide membership, although we don't know how they communicate or organize themselves. Their goals- well, let's just say they have some unconventional religious beliefs."

Colleen frowned. "But what does this have to do with me?"

"Well, you're involved because of your uncle. He seems to have learned something. I think the cult wants whatever it is he uncovered, and they're hoping he said something to you, sent you something in the mail, perhaps left you a message."

"But he didn't send me anything!" Coleen wailed.

Carter nodded. "I was afraid of that."

"What did Uncle Rod find out? What does any of this have to do with him?"

Carter steepled his fingers. "This is a very old cult. They've been around in one form or another for centuries, perhaps longer. They believe some very curious things. They believe in ancient, malevolent gods that supposedly once ruled the Earth. According to their mythology, these gods were banished or locked away. They want to free these dark deities from their confinement, bring them back so they can rule the Earth again."

Colleen rubbed the goosebumps that had popped up on her arms. Carter continued.

"They are searching constantly for lost artifacts of some kind that will let them open a doorway to free their gods. Your uncle was a collector of antiquities, yes?"

Colleen nodded.

"We believe he found something, one of these ancient artifacts, or perhaps a document of some kind with a clue. The cult wants whatever he found."

There was a long moment of silence while Colleen absorbed this. Then she rubbed a hand on her forehead. "It all seems so, I don't know, crazy."

"Craziness, unfortunately, is a recurring theme with the cult," Carter said. "Every cultist we've ever captured has been at least half mad. And, whatever is at the heart of their twisted religion, it seems to be something that the human mind can barely withstand. Your uncle wasn't the first person to encounter this mythology and go mad."

Colleen stared at him.

"There are stories from the fourteenth century," he said, "about a book that would drive mad anyone who read it. The book was finally burned and the ashes scattered. There have been other stories. I think your uncle found something like that. Something that was more than the human psyche can bear. The cult knew he was beyond reach then. That's why they killed him."

"Killed him?" Colleen looked at Carter sharply. "I thought he committed suicide."

"There are many ways to kill a man, Miss Garman. In your uncle's case, smuggling a razor into his cell was enough. He did the rest."

She stared at him, aghast. "Are you sure?"

Carter shrugged. "No. But a madman wouldn't be issued a razor. He had to get it somehow."

Colleen closed her eyes, willing away the images that filled her mind.

"Can we talk about your uncle now?" Carter asked, his voice gentle.

Colleen opened her eyes. "Not quite. You haven't told me who you are yet."

Carter sighed. "I was hoping to avoid that. Miss Garman, I'm going to have to ask you to give your word that you'll keep the information I'm about to give you completely confidential."

Colleen nodded.

"I'm part of a team composed of members of the Bureau of Investigations in the United States. We report directly to President Harding. If the general public found out about this cult and their mad gods, there would either be widespread ridicule of our efforts, or widespread panic. So we operate in secrecy.

"Last year, the president contacted your Prime Minister Meighen to discuss the creation of a Canadian force to deal with cult activities on this side of the border. Mr. Smith here is our Canadian liaison."

Smith nodded.

"The rest of the team is on their way from Washington," Carter continued. "We expect them on the evening ferry."

A worldwide cult of religious fanatics? It seemed too fantastical to believe. Colleen fingered the cut in her sleeve, and thought of her gentle uncle taking an axe and attacking a school. There was no mundane explanation for what was happening. She might as well accept that it was true.

"So tell me about your uncle," Carter said.

Colleen shrugged. "I don't think I know anything that will help. I hadn't heard from him in years. I went to his house, but it was a shambles. I have no idea if anything was missing. It was a disaster area."

The men went silent, and Colleen replayed her visit to the house in her mind. Nothing there had reminded her of Uncle Rod. There were none of the things she associated with him. No ancient relics, no maps, no souvenirs of his travels. No tools, either.

"Where were his tools?" she said. The men looked at her. "For that matter, where did he work?"

Carter's eyebrows rose. "I'm not sure your uncle was employed."

"Uncle Rod wouldn't have a regular job. That was never his style. He might have repaired things, designed things, to make money. He was very good with his hands. A natural born engineer, my dad called him. But that house was tiny. There was no place to work."

Carter said, "Are you sure he-"

"The last time I saw him," Colleen interrupted, "he was drawing up plans for a flying machine with a propeller on the top, lifting it up. The time before that, he gave me a brooch he made from brass gears and silver wire. He was always tinkering. Always. He must have had a workshop. I guarantee it."

Smith and Carter exchanged glances. "This is excellent," Carter said. "The cult may not know about the workshop. Perhaps we can get a jump on them. If we can find it."

They spent most of the day on the telephone, and hit paydirt in mid-afternoon. After dozens of calls to every place of business they could think of that used complex machinery, they reached a John Roebuck who ran a tailor shop with half a dozen sewing machines powered by a central spindle. He'd hired Rod to repair the equipment, and he'd picked up the parts at Rod's workshop. He gave them an address.

They caught a taxi in front of the hotel, Carter declaring that the convertible was too conspicuous. The taxi took them to the outskirts of Victoria, where they found a run-down warehouse at the end of a dirt road. Carter asked the taxi driver to wait, and they walked forward to investigate.

The warehouse was ivy-covered brick, the windows filthy, rust streaking the brick under the window frames. There was a door for trucks, padlocked shut, and a man door, standing ajar. Smith drew his pistol as the three of them approached.

Carter yanked the door open, Smith sprang inside, and the taxi driver, clearly alarmed, drove away. Carter watched him leave with a shrug.

"It's clear," Smith said, and they followed him inside. The interior was gloomy, poor light trickling in through the grimy windows. A large boiler filled the space before them. Ancient, rusted machinery, wreathed in cobwebs, lined the walls. They moved around the boiler and looked into the rest of the warehouse.

Colleen immediately felt at home. Long benches lined one wall, dozens of tools racked above them. There was a treasure trove of machinery, metal lathes and drill presses and punches. She saw gears of every size, and brass and steel stock waiting to be made into parts or tools.

Machines littered the floor, in various states of repair or disassembly. She saw automobile engines, a washing machine, and something designed for stamping metal. It was all dirtier and messier than her father's workshop had ever been, but somehow delightful. Colleen gazed around the room and felt as if she had finally found something of Uncle Rod.

A cot in one corner showed that he sometimes slept here. That was where they began their search. There were few personal possessions, just dishes and a change of clothes. They expanded their search outward, examining every piece of equipment, every tool, every cabinet.

It was Carter who made the discovery. "Uh oh," he said, and Colleen turned to find him kneeling in front of the wood stove by Uncle Rod's cot. He had the front door of the stove open, and he brought out a charred strip of leather. "The good news is, it looks like he found a book. The bad news is, he burned it."

"Maybe it's for the best," Smith muttered, but he joined them at the stove. Carter lifted burned chunks of wood from the stove, setting them on the floor. Then he took a deep breath, reached in, and brought out a thick sheaf of blackened paper.

Most of the book had been destroyed, but a little bit remained. The back cover, blackened and bubbled, was essentially intact. On top were sheets of fire-damaged paper. Carter did his best to lift the top sheets, but they crumbled to ash at his touch. Undiscouraged, he kept going, delicately lifting away layers of ash, working his way deeper.

There were partial remains of perhaps a dozen sheets of paper. The top sheets were mostly gone, just a few words of Latin still legible on the fire-darkened paper. Smith drew a notebook from his black coat and took careful notes.

As Carter worked his way deeper the legible parts of the pages grew larger. Finally he came to the last page.

"This one's different," he said. I don't think it's part of the book. I think someone tucked this into the back."

"What is it?" Colleen asked.

"I'm not sure." The paper was badly fire-damaged. Nearly half of it was gone, and the rest was blackened, with large sections completely eradicated. The top of the page contained some sort of diagram, with curving lines in a pattern that meant nothing to any of them.

The bottom of the page held text, most of it gone. Carter drew a pair of spectacles from his pocket and peered at the sheet. "Tana," he said. "I can't make out the next letter. But it starts with T-A-N-A." He shook his head. "I suppose it could be anything."

It was a long walk back into the city. Eventually they reached downtown, and took a table at a small cafe. Colleen felt drained and spent. The three of them drank coffee and discussed what they'd found, making no progress.

"You should ask Jane what she knows," Colleen said. The men looked at her blankly.

"Jane," she repeated. "Uncle Rod's friend? You didn't know about her? That reminds me, she's coming by my hotel this evening. What time is it?"

It was nearly seven. They paid the bill and walked to the Queen Anne. There was no sign of Jane, and no message.

There was a knot of worry in Colleen's stomach as she asked at the front desk for directions to Mrs. Rosebottom's boarding house. The three of them walked through the darkening streets, grim and silent.

The knot of worry bloomed into cold, sharp fear when they saw a crowd of people gathered in front of the boarding house.

The crowd was a mixture of policemen and rubberneckers. Colleen, Smith, and Carter stayed on the fringe of the crowd, avoiding the police and picking up gossip. A woman had been attacked, less than an hour earlier, as she came up the steps of the boarding house. Several men had dragged her into a sedan and raced away.

When they had learned what little there was to know, the three of them returned to room 304 of the Empress Hotel. There they held a grim council.

"Well, that's too bad," Carter said. "Poor woman."

"We lost a good source of information," said Smith. "I hope she can't tell the other side too much."

Colleen stared from one man to the other, getting more upset with every word. "What are we going to do?"

They looked at her blankly. "What CAN we do?" Carter asked. "We don't know where they've taken this woman. It's probably too late to save her anyway. We need to focus on figuring out our next move. What does 'Tana' mean? How can we figure out what this diagram is?"

Colleen wanted to scream. Jane was out there, suffering God only knew what tortures, in mortal danger, and they wanted to write her off? Just give up and move on?

"We can only do what we can do," said Carter gently. "Believe me, I would help your Jane if I could."

Colleen glared at him, unconvinced. She stood up, unable to keep still, and paced back and forth in the small hotel room. Finally she opened the door.

"Colleen, where are you going?" Carter sounded alarmed.

"I don't know," she snapped, and walked out.

She paced the corridor, then stomped down the stairs and paced back and forth in the hotel's elegant lobby. The hotel was vast, and the room she was in was huge, light, and airy, but she felt constricted, closed in by the walls around her. She gave a longing glance at the front doors. She wanted to go outside, but she was afraid. The cult was out there. So long as she stayed inside the hotel she felt reasonably safe.

Her illusion of safety was shattered when a hard, cold hand closed on her upper arm. She turned and found herself looking into a familiar face. It was the cultist with the red coat. He stood close beside her, sneering. He was unshaven and not particularly clean. She could smell sweat and alcohol on him, and some other scent, something bitter and dark that made her skin crawl.

"Where is it?" he said.

She looked wildly around the lobby. No one was paying the slightest attention to them. She wanted to scream for help, but her lungs seemed paralyzed.

"Where is Tanathos?" His voice was low, but it had a manic edge. His eyes glittered, and his fingers dug into her arm.

She gasped, "What- what-"

"Don't play no games!" His fingers twisted deeper into her arm. "You all left this morning in a taxi, and you came back looking like cats that got into the cream. You found something. You know where Tanathos is!"

She stared into his face, feeling the sour taste of panic on the back of her tongue. He was mad! How could she persuade him that she didn't know anything?

He gave her arm another twist, and it occurred to her that he thought he was hurting her. His pointless arm-twisting was supposed to keep her terrified. With that thought her panic vanished, and she grinned into his face. Men were always underestimating how strong she was. It wasn't their fault. Well-brought-up young ladies didn't spend their days in machine shops, after all. Most of the women Colleen knew would have been helpless in this man's grasp.

Not Colleen. She closed her hand on his wrist. He tightened his fingers, twisted again at her arm, and she chuckled. "Is that the best you can do?" she asked. Then she squeezed his wrist with all of her strength and twisted.

His hand tore away from her arm, his body rotated as she moved his wrist, and she brought up her free hand, grabbing him by the elbow.

He lifted onto his toes, his other hand went under his coat, and Colleen marched him forward, across the lobby. People were turning, staring, gasping, and she heard a woman say, "That man has a knife!"

Colleen chose a sturdy-looking pillar near the front door. The cultist, dancing on his toes, could only scurry beside her as she drove him forward. She didn't give him a chance to brace himself or use his knife. She marched him toward the pillar, and as she got close she picked up the pace. She was running by the time he crashed into the pillar.

There was a thud of impact, and she let go. He fell onto his back, the knife clattered onto the floor, and she drove her foot, hard, into his lowest rib. He grunted and curled up, his hands going up to cradle his bloody forehead.

Colleen knelt over him. "Where's Jane?"

He stared up at her, his face scrunched up with pain, mute.

She caught his hand, bent his index finger back until tears filled his eyes. "Tell me where she is, you-"

A man knelt behind her and to one side. Colleen caught a whiff of cologne and a glimpse of his knee, clad in elegant pinstripe trousers. A smooth voice with a British accent said, "All right, then, I'll take care of this ruffian." A hand rested on her shoulder. "Let him go, miss. I'll take it from here."

"You don't understand," she said, "This man-"

The tip of a knife pricked her back and she went silent.

"I said let go of him." His voice was pitched low, for her ears only. "You will, one way or another."

"You wouldn't dare. In front of all these people?"

"Not unless you force me," he said. "I'm taking Jimbo with me. One way or another."

The knife pressed against her a tiny bit harder and she released Jimbo's finger. In a moment the newcomer hauled Jimbo to his feet and hustled him out the door, holding his arms as if he were a prisoner. Colleen watched them go, the scruffy thug and a well-dressed man with greying hair. The Englishman kept his back to her as they hurried out of the hotel. Jimbo looked back, though. He gave her a glare full of hate and rage as his comrade dragged him out.

A buzz of conversation sprang up, and Colleen scurried out of the lobby, moving deeper into the hotel. The last thing she needed was the attention of the hotel staff. If they kicked her out of the hotel it could prove fatal.

She returned to room 304. Carter gave her a thin smile and touched the brim of his bowler hat. Smith ignored her. Colleen sat on an empty chair, tuned out their conversation, and let her mind wander.

She had a niggling feeling, like an itch she couldn't scratch. She knew the feeling well. It usually came to her when she was struggling with a tricky bit of machinery. Some part of her mind had figured out a solution. She just had to listen to herself to figure out what it was.

The feeling had come on her as she left the lobby. She had learned something, then, in her confrontation with Jimbo. She ran through every word he'd said. He was looking for someone named Tanathos. She explored that idea, and decided it was a dead end.

Well, if it wasn't something she'd heard, perhaps it was something she'd seen. What did she know about Jimbo, or his accomplice? The feeling, the mental itch, told her it was something about Jimbo, not the Englishman.

She ran through what she knew of him. An inch or two shorter than she was, maybe five foot seven. Not especially strong for a man. Greasy, unwashed hair, dark brown in color. Brown eyes, sallow complexion, perhaps Italian or mixed blood. Fleshy, unpleasant face. Not too meticulous about shaving or washing.

Colleen frowned. None of that was useful. Well, what had he been wearing? A red jacket and dark pants. Cheap canvas shoes. Under the coat? She struggled to remember. There was a cloth of some sort around his neck, like a bandana. A fairly distinctive cloth, with burgundy and white stripes. In fact, now that she thought about it, the collar of his shirt had the same pattern.

He was much too slovenly to choose matching clothing. Could it be some sort of uniform? It was, she realized. She knew it, because she'd seen it before.

She looked at the men. Smith was reading Latin phrases from his notebook and Carter was transcribing them onto hotel stationery.

"Never mind that," she said, and they looked up. "We have a lead." Carter quirked an eyebrow, and she continued. "One of the cultists is a sailor. Maybe a bunch of them are. He's wearing a ship's uniform. That could be where Jane is. On a ship."

The men stared at her. Finally Carter said, "Which ship?"

"I don't know. But we can find out. I saw more uniforms just like it, hanging on a line in Chinatown. We find the laundry, we'll find the ship. And then we'll find Jane."

They just looked at her, and the silence stretched out. Then Carter said, "Look, Colleen, there's no guarantee that your friend is on a ship. We don't even know that she's still alive."

"That's not the point!"

Carter sighed. "What is the point, then?"

Colleen ground her teeth, then made herself take a deep breath. "The point is, it's a chance, and Jane's life is on the line."

Carter was already shaking his head. "No, it's too risky. We're exposed on the streets. The cult has us outnumbered, and-" He stopped as Colleen stood. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to find Jane," she snapped.

"Now, hold on. Don't do anything hasty. We went to a lot of trouble to keep you alive, you know. Don't get yourself killed now."

"You want me to stay alive? Then you'd better come with me."

Carter glared at her. She glared back. Then she said, "If you won't do it for me, then do it because it's not what the cult wants. You're supposed to be fighting the cult, aren't you?"

He stared, his mouth opening and closing, and Smith laughed. He had a disturbing, raspy laugh, and it never quite reached his dark, intense eyes. "She's got you there, Phil. Stay here if you like. I'm going with her."

Carter turned his glare on Smith, then said "Hmph!" and took out a pocket watch. "Fine. We'll go to Chinatown. But we'll go by way of the waterfront. The ferry is coming in."

###  Chapter 4 – Striking Back

Colleen watched the rest of Carter's team disembark from the ferry and immediately felt better. There were four of them, three men and a woman, and they all exuded a tough, competent confidence. There was a brief flurry of handshaking. Then Carter said, "This is Colleen. We'll do introductions on the way. We're going to Chinatown."

They filled the convertible with luggage, left it at the docks, and took a pair of taxi cabs through Victoria. Colleen found herself sandwiched between two of the new arrivals, a stern-faced woman in her fifties, and a broad-shouldered young man with a black mustache and a lantern jaw.

Carter sat beside the driver and twisted around in his seat to make introductions. "Colleen Garman, this is Margaret Nelson and Richard Dalglish."

The woman smiled and said, "You must call me Maggie." She had a distinct southern drawl.

"And I'm Rick," the man said. "We've already heard about you."

"Maggie is a professor of antiquities, now retired from active teaching so she can work with us," Carter said. "Rick is part of the Canadian team. He's been seconded from your Dominion Police."

"It's the Royal Canadian Mounted Police now, actually," Rick said. "Pleased to meet you, ma'am."

"Call me Colleen."

"A few things have changed since our last telegram," Carter interjected. "The opposition has kidnapped a woman who may have vital information. We're looking for clues to her whereabouts." He nodded to Colleen and she described Jimbo's uniform, and the laundry she'd seen in Chinatown.

"I'm not sure exactly where I saw it," she admitted. "I was pretty distracted at the time."

Carter chuckled at the understatement.

"But it's fairly distinctive, and it's somewhere in Chinatown, so it shouldn't be hard to spot. How big can Chinatown be?"

"Second-largest Chinatown in North America," Rick said cheerfully. "Only San Francisco has a bigger one."

"Show-off," Maggie said with a smile.

Chinatown was less terrifying on this visit. Even with night falling everything seemed less strange, less foreboding. In part it was because she had seen it before, but the biggest reason was that she was back with friends, and with a purpose.

They divided into two groups, agreeing to stay fairly close together. Colleen walked with Carter and Smith, while the new arrivals worked their way up a parallel street. She was torn between a desire to rush and a terror of going too fast and missing something. She racked her brain, trying to remember landmarks from her first visit, but it was all a kaleidoscope of fragmented images. Was the kitchen before the opium den, or after? Did she see the laundry hanging in a street, or an alley?

She needn't have worried. Before they reached the end of the block, Rick and another man, David Parker of the Bureau of Investigation, came jogging around the corner. "We found it," Rick said.

Maggie and the last team member, a fat, older man named Garson, were standing in front of a clapboard building with a sign that said "Londry." Maggie gestured at a gap between buildings. "Is that what you saw?"

Colleen looked where she pointed. Laundry hung in three tiers on closely-spaced lines. The middle tier was full of dark trousers, neckerchiefs, and white shirts. The shirt collars and neckerchiefs all bore a distinctive pattern of white-and-burgundy stripes. Colleen nodded.

"The proprietor," Maggie drawled, "tells me these belong to the _SS Arcadia_. They aren't picking up their laundry until tomorrow afternoon, so they're in port for at least that long." She turned to Carter. "What now, boss?"

"Let's go take a look," he said.

They walked to the waterfront. It was full dark, and they kept to the shadows, circling wide around the streetlights as they slunk down the aptly-named Wharf Street. Smith was in the lead, and everyone froze when he raised his arm.

The _Arcadia_ was a vast shape looming in the darkness. She had a single chimney stack, so she was steam-powered, but Colleen could make out several masts as well. She was rigged for sailing, then.

She was moored at a wharf. The seven of them stood in the shadow of a warehouse and looked the ship over. No one was in sight, but lights burned on deck, and light gleamed from a few portholes. Colleen eyed the ship, trying to guess her size. Three hundred feet long? Four hundred? Maybe forty feet wide? It was a lot of ship to hide one woman in.

"What's the plan, boss?"

Colleen wasn't sure who asked the whispered question, but it was Carter who answered.

"We watch. We have no idea what we're dealing with, or how many there are. So we set up surveillance, keep track of who comes and goes. Tomorrow we'll find out how long she's in port, and set up some kind of schedule."

Surveillance? Tomorrow? Colleen thought of Jimbo, his feverish eyes, his knife, and knew there was no time to spare. She thought about arguing with Carter, decided it would be pointless, and shrugged.

So be it.

"Hang on, Jane," she murmured. "I'm coming." And she stepped out of the shadows.

Carter's voice was an urgent hiss. "Colleen! What are you doing?"

She turned to him, her heart thumping in her chest, almost hoping he could persuade her to stay back. But her voice was level as she said, "You do all the surveillance you want. I'm going after Jane." And she turned her back on the group, ignored Carter's sputtering voice, and set off down the wharf.

She reached the ship, moving to the edge of the wharf where the ship cast a long stripe of shadow. The hull was close enough to touch, a pitted surface of chipped white paint and flaking rust. There was no gangplank, and the side of the ship rose above her like a wall. Colleen kept walking, hoping to find a way up.

In the middle of the ship the hull was lower, and Colleen stood looking up. The top of the hull here was even with her head. She had no idea what lay beyond it. She shrugged and crouched, preparing to jump.

A rustle of feet made her turn her head. Carter, Smith, Rick, and David Parker were marching up the wharf. She raised an eyebrow when they reached her, and Carter shrugged.

Smith waved Colleen back, then sprang nimbly, clinging to the top of the hull. He lifted himself up until he could peer over the top, then pulled himself up and over.

Colleen went next. Smith was crouched below the gunwale, a pistol in his hand. Colleen dropped into a crouch beside him, and the others quickly joined them.

They were in the shadow of the forecastle. Electric lights on the masts burned down, painting the deck in alternating stripes of light and shadow. The deck was an orderly clutter of ropes and davits, lifeboats and pipework. For a long moment nobody moved. When Colleen realized they were waiting for her, she rose and darted to the forecastle.

She found a door, unlocked, and slipped through. There was a corridor ahead, and a ladder leading down. She took the ladder, guessing that Jane would be hidden deep in the ship, away from prying eyes. They arrived at a lower deck, she had a quick glimpse of another corridor, dimly lit, and she took another ladder deeper into the ship. She could hear the rustle of footsteps as the team followed her, and the hum of machinery in the bowels of the ship.

The ladder ended and she stepped into a corridor. It was an oppressively big ship, and her heart sank as the immensity of it sank in. However, there was nothing to do but keep on.

The corridor was too narrow for two people to walk side by side, but Smith was close behind her, pistol in hand. The others were not far behind, and she saw more handguns. She headed down the corridor, glancing at the closed hatches that they passed. She was betting that Jane would be guarded, that there would be people and noise wherever she was.

The corridor ended at a hatch, a door with rounded corners and a circular handle in the middle. Colleen glanced at Smith. He nodded, hefting his pistol, and she gave the door a push. It opened a crack, and she pushed it farther until she could peer out.

She saw another corridor, but more plush than the one she was in. The floor was carpeted, the light fixtures were fancy rather than strictly functional, and the walls were perforated by doors rather than hatches. She guessed she was seeing the passenger section of the ship. A man in a crisp white uniform crossed her field of vision, not glancing her way, and she eased the hatch shut.

The others looked at her and she shook her head. She was guessing that the entire ship wasn't crewed by cultists. The man she'd seen had lacked the depraved, half-mad look of the cultists she'd seen so far. And the passenger section just felt wrong as a hiding place. If Colleen was right, Jane wouldn't be in the passenger section. She'd be tucked away in a boiler room or a corner of the hull, somewhere only a small part of the crew might go.

They retraced their steps, took a perpendicular corridor, froze at the sound of echoing footsteps, then resumed moving as the footsteps faded.

A left turn had them moving toward the stern. The corridor ended at an open hatch, and Smith peered in, then stepped through. Colleen followed, and smiled. They were in the boiler room. She felt immediately at home. It was one vast room, as wide as the ship, but crowded by vast steel shapes. She could see two boilers, with only a narrow space between them. Pipes ran in every direction, and valves and gauges sprouted everywhere.

A man came walking from behind a maze of pipes and stopped, staring at them in astonishment. He was greasy and dirty, wearing stained coveralls and carrying a wrench. Smith pointed his pistol at the man, and Carter hustled forward, took the wrench from the man's hand, and said softly, "Keep quiet if you want to live."

The team members spread through the boiler room and found two more sailors, dirty sullen men who might have been cultists or innocent bystanders. Carter herded them into an empty coal bunker and jammed the wrench through the wheel on the hatch, effectively locking it.

It was David Parker, the burly Bureau of Investigations agent, who spotted the hatch in the back bulkhead of the boiler room. He cocked the snub-nosed revolver in his fist, glanced at the others, and pulled the hatch open.

There was a gunshot and Parker fell back. Rick, the Mountie, dragged Parker back as Carter and Smith fired through the hatch. When the bulk of a boiler was between Parker and the hatch, Rick said to Colleen, "Do what you can for him." Then he ran to join Carter and Smith.

Colleen stared down helplessly at the man. She knew how to fix machinery, not people. She shut her eyes for a moment, made herself breathe deeply, and murmured, "You can do this. You can."

She opened her eyes. Parker was staring up at her, his face grey, his lips pressed tightly together. She looked him over. The damage was easy to spot. There was a hole in his left sleeve, just below the shoulder joint. There was no blood on the fabric, but blood was pooling on the floor beneath him. Well, that would be the first priority, then.

In the corner of her eye she saw the others charge through the hatch, going deeper into the ship. She shrugged. She had her hands full for now.

Her one attempt to get Parker's jacket off left him gasping and white-faced with pain. She balled her hands up, frustrated, looked around for something she could use to cut the fabric away from the wound, and finally asked him, "Do you have anything sharp?"

He nodded, and pointed to his front pants pocket with a shaky right hand. Colleen dipped her hand in the pocket and came up with a folding razor. She cut apart the seam of his jacket where the sleeve met the shoulder, tugging to tear the threads in the places her razor wouldn't reach. Then she went to his wrist and drew the sleeve down and off.

His shirt was a bloody mess. Colleen told herself that it was a repair job, nothing more. A mechanical malfunction that happened to involve blood and flesh. She sliced the shirt sleeve open, wielding the razor with delicate precision, and eventually slid the sleeve from his arm.

She could see the bullet's entry hole, a small black circle oozing dark blood, but not the exit. "You'll have to roll onto your side," she told him. He nodded, used his right arm to stabilize his left wrist, and she slid her hands under his back, lifting, helping him roll. He grunted with pain but didn't cry out.

The exit wound was a mess. A chunk of flesh was missing, leaving a gory, ragged hole two inches across. Colleen cut a section of his shirt sleeve, wadded it up, and pressed it into the hole. She wrapped the rest of the sleeve around his arm and got him to hold it in place with his free hand. She looked around for something to hold it all in place, and finally used Parker's shoelaces.

By the time she was done blood was soaking through the makeshift bandage, but slowly. He wouldn't bleed to death, not soon. Now they just had to get him off of the ship. She draped his jacket over him and got up to take a look around.

There were four boilers in all, three of them cold. The fourth boiler was lit, a fair amount of pressure showing on the gauge, enough to run a few onboard systems, she supposed. She moved past the lit boiler to the hatch at the back of the room and peeked through the opening.

Carter, Smith, and Rick hadn't advanced very far. Rick was no more than six feet past the hatch, pressed into a gap between thick pipes on the wall of the corridor. Carter was a few feet past him, on the other side of the corridor, flattened into a hatchway. Smith was a short distance beyond, crouching behind more pipe. Shadows moved deeper in the corridor, a shot rang out, and all three men flinched. They were pinned down.

Colleen drew back. The longer they remained stuck, the longer the cultists had to circle around, or to get rid of Jane. Clearly something had to be done, but what?

Her eyes drifted naturally to the lit boiler. They had the awesome power of steam at their fingertips, if they could figure out how to tap it. She examined the boiler and the surrounding equipment. The water level was decently high, so she could crank up the heat without too much danger. She examined the firebox. There was a coal hopper, almost full, and a grate to allow coal to tumble into the fire. She kicked the grate open, sent coal pouring into the firebox, and opened the air vent. The needle on the pressure gauge twitched, then crept upward.

This was steam power on a larger scale than Colleen had ever worked with. She took her time examining the pipes, hoses, and gears around her. She found a pipe with a T-intersection on it, the base of the T ending after six inches as if the pipe had been cut off. Above the cut-off was mounted a red-painted handle. She tugged the handle gently, and steam came hissing out of the pipe end. She shoved the handle back and the steam stopped.

Her eyes scanned the room and fell on coils of hose mounted in racks on one bulkhead. She pulled down a coil. The hose was thicker than her arm, stiff but moderately flexible. It felt like rubber wrapped in canvas. She dragged the end of the hose over to the T-intersection. There was a clamp on the hose end, and she found that the hose end fit neatly over the base of the T. She used the clamp to lock the end of the hose in place.

"What are you doing?"

She looked down at Parker. "Hooking up a steam hose. They would have used it to power tools or to do steam-cleaning. I'm going to use it more directly. Do you think you can stand up?"

"I'll try."

She helped him to his feet and led him to the T-intersection. He leaned against the pipes and she showed him the red handle.

"When I knock twice, metal on metal, you pull this handle down, okay? When I knock twice more, you push it back up. Then repeat, when I knock again."

He looked puzzled, but he nodded.

Colleen took the free end of the hose and started toward the hatch where the men were pinned down. On the way she picked up a wrench from a wall rack. She peeked into the corridor.

Rick, Carter, and Smith hadn't moved. Colleen took a deep breath, plunged into the corridor, and banged her wrench hard, twice, on the pipe beside Rick. Then she raced forward, passing Carter and reaching Smith. She heard Carter say, "What the hell are you-"

A man moved in the shadows ahead, she saw a gun barrel gleam in the darkness, and then the hose squirmed in her hand and steam came blasting out. In an instant the corridor was filled. She couldn't see a foot in front of her face. A shot rang out, she heard the bullet ricochet on metal, and a man began to scream.

She charged forward, and she felt shapes brush against her as Carter, Smith, and Rick followed. The temperature rose as they ran into ever hotter clouds of steam, and she swung her wrench blindly. It banged on metal, the sound ringing out like the peal of a bell. She banged again and the flow of steam ended.

They reached a cross-corridor. The steam was dissipating quickly here, and they could see for several feet. A man knelt in the corridor, a gun in his hands, clutching his face. His skin was red and blistered, and Smith stepped up behind him and slammed the butt of his pistol into the top of the man's head. The man collapsed, Smith pocketed the man's pistol, and the four of them looked around in the fading mist.

A hatch swung open ahead of them and a man leaned out, his face twisted with rage and a pistol in his hand. Smith fired once and the man sagged into the corridor. Smith moved forward, peeked through the hatch, then looked back at the others and grinned. He dragged the body out of the way and stepped through the hatch.

Colleen and the others advanced. By the time they reached the hatch, Smith was coming back out. Jane was with him, her arm over his shoulder, his arm supporting her. She looked terrible, her face swollen and cut, her head lolling on her shoulders. Colleen, torn between relief and horror, dropped her steam hose, pushed through the men, and helped support Jane.

The sound of a pistol being cocked was the only warning they got. Colleen and Smith ducked, Carter and Rick pressed themselves against the walls, and the blast of a gunshot echoed through the corridor.

Rick and Carter returned fire. Colleen wriggled out from under Jane's arm, grabbed the dropped steam hose, and banged her wrench sharply on the floor. On the second bang the hose thrashed under her hand. She was about six feet from the end of the hose, and it flapped and writhed, spraying steam in every direction. Rick sprang back, cursing, and Colleen crawled forward, pinning more and more of the hose to the floor.

The corridor was completely filled with steam. She didn't see Carter, not even when he bumped into her on his way past. She got a grip on the end of the hose, then banged her wrench a couple of times. This time she kept her grip on the hose as she retreated.

They spilled into the boiler room, Colleen dragging the hose behind her, and Carter slammed the hatch shut. He kept a hand on the wheel as the group took stock.

Rick was burned, not badly, but the side of his face was bright red. Colleen said, "Oh, I'm so sorry," and he smiled.

"Better than a bullet. Thanks, Colleen, I think you saved my life."

The wheel under Carter's hand twitched, and he grabbed it, keeping it from turning. Colleen wrapped her steam hose through the spokes of the wheel, immobilizing it, and he let go.

"We need to get out of here," Smith snapped. "They know the ship better than we do. They'll be circling around and cutting us off soon."

They organized themselves quickly. Carter helped Jane while Rick helped Parker. Smith went first, gun in hand. Rick and Parker brought up the rear. Rick supported Parker with one arm and held a pistol in his free hand. Colleen found herself in the middle of the group, the wrench clutched in her sweaty hand.

They hurried down a long corridor, moving toward the bow of the ship. When they came to a ladder Smith darted up while the rest of them waited. Then Smith waved them up. Carter and Colleen boosted Jane upward until Smith could reach her wrists and lift her. Parker was able to climb, gripping the hand rail with his good hand, his face tight.

On the next level Colleen took over supporting Jane while Carter and his pistol brought up the rear. A sailor came through a hatchway carrying an oil can, gaped at them in astonishment as several pistols came to bear on him, then dropped his oil can and stepped back through the hatch. They heard the slap of his feet as he ran away.

At last they reached the same ladder they had first come down. Smith went up first, and swung open the hatch leading to the deck of the ship. Almost immediately he flinched back. "Gun," he said. "At least one man. He's got good cover."

Carter climbed up beside him. "I'll cover you while you run for it?"

"I don't know. There isn't much cover close by. And if they have someone up high, I'm done for."

Colleen drew back from the group. She helped Jane sit down and whispered, "Hold on. We're almost clear."

Jane nodded, tried a small smile, and flinched as a cut on her lower lip opened.

Parker sat at the base of the ladder, a pistol in his hand. Rick stood beside him, ignoring the discussion above, eyes scanning the corridor. Colleen hefted her wrench and set off down the corridor. She heard him hiss a question, but she kept walking.

She came to another ladder and went up. There was no hatch. Instead she found a corridor with portholes on one side. She examined a porthole, figured out how to swing the circle of glass open, and peered out.

The hull of the ship stretched below her, flat and smooth. She could see the wharf, six or eight feet down. The men would never make it through an opening this small, but she thought she might get through.

She craned her neck around to look up. There was a railing just above her. She looked carefully in every direction and didn't see a sign of life. She listened intently, heard only the slap of water on the hull and the creak of the boat as it moved in the water. Finally she tucked her wrench into the belt of her dress, took a grip on the porthole, and started working her way out.

She squirmed around until she was sitting in the round hole, the wrench digging into her stomach. She stretched her fingers upward and found a precarious grip on a flat surface somewhere above. She pulled with her hands, squirmed with her hips, and slid out, her backside hanging over the wharf. She worked her hands up higher, got a better grip on the surface above, and squirmed and wriggled until she could draw a leg out and get a foot on the sill of the porthole.

From there it was almost easy. She stood, took the wrench out of her belt and set it on the deck above her, grabbed the vertical bar of a railing support, kicked off with her feet, and pulled with all her might. She drew herself up, let go with one hand and scrambled frantically for the railing above her. She caught it with her fingertips, then scrambled with her toes on the smooth hull. She got a toe on the deck, and hung awkwardly by two hands and a foot, her skirts riding up in a most unladylike way.

She wasn't sure she could make it over the railing, but she had to, so she gritted her teeth and heaved. She gained a precious half inch, took a better grip on the railing, and in moments she managed to swarm over.

Colleen found herself on a walkway about four feet wide. On one side was the railing she'd climbed over. On the other side was the hull of the ship, pierced every few feet by portholes. She ducked low under the portholes and moved quickly sternward, toward her friends.

She reached the back of the forecastle. The walkway made a right-angle turn, and Colleen crouched in a strip of shadow, looking down on the deck of the ship eight feet below. By her calculation, she was directly above the hatch where Smith and Carter waited. She scanned the deck, looking for the gunman who had them pinned.

She spotted him, a man in a white uniform shirt and dark trousers, crouching behind a vast coil of rope. His attention was focussed on the hatch below her. She was pretty sure she hadn't been seen. The rest of the deck seemed empty.

Colleen crept along the walkway, feeling exposed for the first several feet until the coil of rope was between her and the cultist. She followed the walkway until she found a ladder going down. There she froze for long moments, listening to the mad beating of her heart, straining her eyes and ears into the darkness. If she'd been spotted, the ambush would be here.

Was she unseen? It was impossible to be sure, but there was no time to be cautious. She went down the ladder as quietly as she could, took a firm grip on her wrench, and tiptoed into the darkness. No light reached this part of the deck. Each step was a cautious probe with her toes. She inched forward, moving past big, dark, shapeless structures, and finally saw the coil of rope gleaming ahead of her.

Now she moved faster, terrified that the gunman had heard her, was already reacting. She went around the coil of rope quickly, almost running, and found him turning, his mouth open, the gun swinging around toward her.

She swung the wrench with all of her strength at the pale gleam of his face. She hit him a glancing blow on the forehead. The gun wavered in his fist, and she brought the wrench up and swung at his wrist. Metal crunched into bone and the pistol fell clattering to the deck.

He cried out and clutched his wrist, and she slammed the wrench into the top of his head. He swore, and she gritted her teeth and clubbed him again. This time he slumped forward.

When she peered around the coil of rope she saw Carter and Smith already charging through the hatch. She gave them a wave, then turned back to the gunman.

He was moaning and holding his wrist, struggling to sit up. She shook her head. It was harder than she'd ever suspected to knock a man out. She picked up the pistol, pointed it at him, and found she couldn't bring herself to shoot. Well, he was injured and disarmed. That would have to do.

She stepped around the coil of rope and a shot rang out. She flinched, looking around, as Smith dove for cover. Carter was nowhere in sight. Smith caught her eye and pointed above her. She turned and saw a dark shape moving high on the aft mast.

A horizontal hatch swung open in the middle of the deck, fifty feet or so aft of Colleen. A man's head and shoulders appeared. He held a gun, a rifle or shotgun by the look of it, and Smith snapped off a couple of quick shots, making him duck.

A sudden glow appeared below the gunwale of the ship, an engine thundered, and tires squealed. The dark figure on the mast fired at something beyond the ship, and Colleen took advantage of the distraction to spring up and run to where Smith was hiding behind a lifeboat. She dropped into a crouch beside him.

The convertible raced up the wharf, headlights ablaze. Colleen could just make out the shape of Maggie at the wheel. Garson was beside her, standing, his fat body wedged against the seat back, his legs wide for support. He had a machine gun in his hands, a Tommy gun with a drum magazine, and he fired a stream of bullets at the ship.

"Now's our chance!" Smith cried. He leaped up and ran back to the hatchway, and Colleen followed. Carter came through, supporting Jane. Colleen dropped her wrench, pocketed the pistol, and took Jane's arm as Carter turned back to help Parker.

Colleen brought Jane to the edge of the ship and the car screeched to a halt below them. Pistol shots rang out behind her, but Colleen focussed on helping Jane clamber over the railing. She held Jane's wrists, lowered her as far as she could, and Garson came running over to catch Jane's legs. Colleen let go and Garson lowered her to the wharf, then helped her into the car.

"Go, for God's sake," Carter snapped, and Colleen hopped over the railing and dropped to the wharf. Rick came next. Smith and Carter almost threw Parker over the railing and into Rick's waiting arms. Rick grunted, stumbled, and Colleen caught him. They lugged Parker to the car and dumped him into the back seat.

Smith and Carter came flying over the railing, Maggie gunned the engine, and Colleen sprang onto the running board and hung on.

Maggie didn't waste time turning the car around, just put it in reverse and hit the gas. They went screaming down the wharf, Colleen clinging white-knuckled to the top of the car door, Rick on the running board beside her, his teeth gleaming as he grinned in the darkness.

Garson was back in the front passenger seat, Tommy gun in his hands, and Colleen flinched as the machine gun fired inches in front of her face. She smelled hot metal and gun smoke and tasted the tang of cordite in the air. Garson's face was fixed in a snarl and he fired in short, controlled bursts.

It wasn't enough. Return fire came from the ship, another machine gun. Colleen could see muzzle flashes coming from the top of the forecastle. Bullets ripped up the planks of the wharf, then smacked into the front of the car. Steam billowed from the radiator, the car swerved, a line of bullet holes appeared on the hood, and Garson grunted and let go of the Tommy gun.

The Tommy gun landed on the hood of the car, and Colleen thought about reaching for it, but the car was swerving violently and she was afraid to let go. Then Maggie gave the steering wheel a sharp jerk and the Tommy gun went bouncing off into the darkness.

They reached the end of the wharf. Maggie turned sharply, braked hard, and threw the car into first gear. They lurched forward, steam from the damaged radiator blowing over them, and Maggie muttered to the car as she fought the controls. They rumbled down Wharf Street, moving no faster than a man could run. A block later the engine gave a sharp bang and died.

"That's it," said Maggie, "we're walking from here."

"I think Mr. Garson was hit," Colleen said. He was sitting slumped forward in the front passenger seat, and she put a hand on his shoulder, pushing him back. His head lolled to the side as his body flopped back, and she could see a line of bullet wounds in his chest and stomach. His eyes stared blindly at the sky.

Rick reached past Colleen and put two fingers on the side of Garson's throat. "No pulse," he said, and closed Garson's eyes.

"We have to move," Carson said. "We'll have to leave him, and the car. They'll be coming, and they have us outnumbered."

Colleen helped Jane out of the car. Rick and Carter got Parker out and held him supported between them. Colleen glanced back at the wharf. A knot of men had gathered beside the _Arcadia_. As she watched, the men broke into a trot, heading down the wharf.

"Here they come," said Carter, his voice grim. "Let's move."

###  Chapter 5 – Flight

Their progress down Wharf Street was painfully slow. Jane was crying, her eyes screwed shut, only moving forward because Colleen was pushing on her back. Parker was getting worse, barely walking, Carter and Rick taking most of his weight. Colleen glanced backward and couldn't see the cultists, but then she caught the slap of shoes on pavement. The cultists were gaining.

Smith trotted ahead, examining vehicles parked along the street. He tried doors and peered in windows, and Colleen felt a surge of hope. If Smith could get a car started, they might still escape with their lives.

A light came on in front of a warehouse, a door swung open, and a figure appeared, a burly older man in the uniform of a night watchman. He stared at them, and Carter lifted his pistol and said, "Best you stay off the street."

The watchman nodded, stepped back inside, and closed the door.

A car started behind them, and Colleen looked back, excited. If someone came driving up the street, they could flag the car down, beg for a ride-

Another engine started, and Rick swore. "They've got wheels," he said. "Looks like we're done for."

As if in answer, an engine roared into life ahead of them. A pickup truck came rolling backward down the street, Smith leaning out the driver's side window. He stopped in front of them and everyone clambered into the back.

Headlights flooded the street as a couple of cars bore down on them. The truck roared forward, but their pursuers were very close. Jane retreated to a front corner of the truck box, sitting with her arms clutching her knees. Parker lay sprawled on the floor of the box, moaning, sliding back and forth when the truck swerved or turned. Colleen knelt by his side and tried to keep him still.

Carter and Rick crouched at the back of the truck, checking their guns. Colleen caught snatches of their conversation. They were nearly out of ammunition.

Maggie knelt beside Parker and took his hand. Her eyes were bright with fear, but her voice was calm as she murmured, "Hang in there, David. It will all be over soon. You'll be fine."

They raced through the dark streets of Victoria, their pursuers always close behind. From time to time a shot rang out from the cars behind them. No one returned fire.

They reached the outskirts of the city. Colleen could see the dark expanse of the ocean on the right, with the shipyards of Esquimalt shining in the distance. On the left the occasional building flashed past, then darkness. There would be no more innocent bystanders to be hurt by a stray bullet, but no witnesses, no help, if the cultists caught up with them.

The truck raced through the darkness, and Colleen could do nothing but clutch Parker's jacket and pray that no bullet would hit them. She shot worried glances at Jane, who was staring into space, her eyes unseeing. There was nothing she could do for Jane, though. She thought about trying to check Parker's bandages, but the truck was lurching and bouncing so much, she didn't think she could do anything even if his bandages had come loose.

The image of her workshop in Toronto flashed through her mind, and she wished for home with an intensity that startled her. She felt as if she would do anything to be back home with Roland's arms around her. He symbolized everything she'd lost, safety and family, a sense of security.

The truck swerved, pressing her against the side of the box, and suddenly they were bouncing along on much rougher track. They passed a tree so close she heard branches whipping against the side of the truck.

Rick looked past the cab and said, "Oh, damn it!" Then he dropped to his knees, reaching out to brace himself, and cried, "Dead end!"

A moment later everyone lurched as Smith hit the brakes and brought the truck around in a tight turn. They stopped, gears clashed below them, and the truck lurched back.

The cars with the cultists were coming in fast, Colleen heard the skid of tires as they braked, and the truck lurched into motion. It looked like the truck and the cars were going to crash head-on, and Colleen did her best to brace herself and Parker. Then one car went past on her left, close enough that she could have reached out and slapped the roof as it went by. On her right there came a squeal of metal as they brushed the other car in passing.

A shot rang out, she heard the impact against the truck's fender, and Rick leaned out and fired into the nearest car. Then the truck went bouncing back up the track, with the two cars backing and filling behind them as they turned around.

All too soon the cars were turned around and following, their headlights bouncing crazily as they raced up the track. The truck turned back onto a paved road, picking up speed, but the cars were soon closing the gap.

Soon a dark green sedan was right behind them, nearly hitting their back bumper. The sedan edged to the right and accelerated, and the truck swerved right, keeping them from pulling alongside. Then they came to a curve, the road broadened, and the sedan slipped into place beside the truck.

Rick and Carter went to the right side of the truck, looking down on the car roof, trying to line up a shot on the driver. They didn't seem to notice when the other car, a blue coupe, started to gain ground.

Colleen left Parker's side and moved to the tailgate. A figure was crawling through the passenger-side window of the coupe. When skirts suddenly billowed in the wind she realized it was a woman. The woman stood on the running board, one hand clutching the door of the coupe, the other hand clutching a pistol. The coupe accelerated.

The woman was wild-eyed, her face demented, her hair streaming behind her. Her attention was fixed on something near ground level. When she levelled the pistol, Colleen realized she was planning to shoot the truck's rear tire.

Colleen felt a moment of paralyzing terror, which ended when she noticed something in her pocket digging into her hip. It was the pistol she had captured on the ship. She drew the pistol out, her hands moving almost unconsciously. It was a simple enough mechanical device, and she'd picked up the basics automatically, watching the others use their guns. Draw the hammer, watch the cylinder rotate as the hammer clicked into place.

The coupe was very close. The woman was crouching on the running board, her arm extended, her gun very close to the tire. Colleen pointed her pistol at the woman's face.

The woman looked up. Colleen recognized her; it was the woman who had ordered her killed in Chinatown. She stared into the muzzle of Colleen's pistol for a long moment, and she smiled. Then she ignored Colleen and turned her attention back to the truck tire.

Colleen experienced a brief torrent of thoughts, an agonized certainty that she couldn't do what she needed to do, a sharp awareness that Jane and Maggie and Rick and Carter and Parker and Smith were all going to die if that tire blew, and above all a realization that she had no more than an instant, there was simply no time to think about this, no time to wrestle with the morality of taking a life. There was only time to pull the trigger.

The impact of the gun against her hand shocked her. She was dimly aware that the pistol was pointing at the sky, but her horrified attention was taken by the woman she'd shot. There was a sound, a horrible noise of wet, reverberating impact that came to her clear as birdsong even over the echoing blast of the shot. She saw exactly what the bullet did to the woman's head, squeezed her eyes shut far too late to save herself from that image.

She still had her eyes closed when a hand closed over hers and gentle fingers tugged the pistol from her grasp. She opened her eyes and saw Rick, his face sympathetic, tucking the pistol in his waistband.

Her eyes went to the road. The sedan was slewed across the road fifty feet behind them, and the coupe was stopped behind it. The truck, though, was bouncing and shaking as if they were driving over railroad ties.

"They hit our tire," Rick said. "We're going to have to hoof it."

A black despair washed over Colleen. She'd done something that was going to haunt her for the rest of her life, and the truck had lost a tire anyway.

The bouncing and lurching got worse until finally the truck slid into the ditch. Carter opened the tailgate, then joined Rick in lifting Parker out. Colleen moved to Jane's side, but Jane surprised her by standing unaided. "I can walk," Jane said, and climbed to the ground.

Smith led them across the road and into a row of trees. "This is where we'll make our stand," he said grimly. Carter and Rick set Parker on the ground. Then the three able-bodied men each chose a tree to hide behind, knelt, and waited.

Maggie knelt beside Parker, examining his bandages. Colleen found herself with nothing to do. She looked around. There were stripes of cloud in the sky, but in the gaps she could see the cold, bright blaze of countless stars. They shone brighter than she'd seen them in years. The light and pollution of Toronto didn't allow for starry nights like this.

She stared upward, shivered, and was filled with a yearning to somehow survive this night. She wanted more from life, more starry nights, more wonderful evenings with Roland, more of everything that life had to offer. She didn't want to die by the side of a road in British Columbia, unarmed and helpless as the cult closed in.

She lowered her gaze and looked around her. Was that a darker shape on the ground ahead of her? She stared at what was essentially a black rectangle against a nearly-black background, unsure of what she was seeing.

The others were waiting, silent. Somewhere beyond the trees the cultists were closing in. There was nothing Colleen could do to help, so she walked forward into the darkness. With every step the dark rectangle became more distinct.

A shot rang out behind her. She turned, couldn't see anything. There were no more shots, and finally she turned back to the dark rectangle. She kept walking, and finally made out the outline of a small wooden shack.

She couldn't see the water, but she heard the lap of waves on rock. The building before her was right on the water's edge. In fact, when she reached it she found that it extended into the water. She tried the door. It didn't budge.

If this was a boathouse, though, it would be open from the water side. There could be a boat, and that might mean escape. She went to the side of the building, clambered blindly down a sloping shelf of rock, and splashed into the water. She waded outward, gasping with the cold. The ground fell away sharply, and soon she was swimming, following the wall of the building.

The seaward side of the building was wide open. It was a boathouse, all right. Colleen swam inside and pulled herself up onto a wooden platform inside. Her fingers fumbled along the walls, found a switch, and flipped it on. Light filled the boathouse.

There was one boat, a long rowboat with a couple of oars in the bottom. It would be a slow escape, but the night was dark enough that they would be safe from gunfire once they were a dozen feet from shore.

The door could be unlocked from the inside. She flung it open, and a long rectangle of light spilled across the ground. She ran up the slope toward the trees. Arriving out of breath, she called out, "There's a boat," and dropped to her knees beside Maggie. Parker looked terrible, but he grinned at her. Colleen said, "This is going to hurt, Parker," and grabbed the fabric of the shoulder of his jacket. Maggie gave her a dubious look, then grabbed the other shoulder. They set off toward the boathouse, dragging Parker, Jane trailing behind them.

Shots rang out from the tree line behind them. The men were covering their retreat. Colleen ignored the burning in her muscles, the fire in her lungs, and concentrated on dragging Parker as fast as she could. They reached the boathouse, manoeuvred their way through the doorway, and managed to get Parker into the bottom of the boat.

He let out a low groan, and Maggie said, "Oh, stop being such a baby! We did all the work."

Jane stood just inside the doorway looking uncertain and lost. Colleen climbed out of the boat, snapped, "Get in!" to Jane, and untied the rope at the prow. Then she moved to the doorway.

Two men were running down the slope. She recognized Carter, running in the rectangle of light from the doorway. She couldn't see who the other man was.

Shots rang out at the tree line, and Carter looked back. Then he stopped and turned, and took a single step back toward the trees. Rick reached him then, stopping him. Colleen heard the sound of a shot, saw a flash of red near the trees, heard the whack of a bullet striking the boathouse. Realizing the men were dangerously well-lit, she flicked off the lights.

Carter, his voice hoarse, panted, "Dirk's still up there!"

"You can't save him." There was pain in Rick's voice. "If you go charging up there, then he's died for nothing."

Carter tried to push past Rick. The tall Mountie grabbed Carter's shoulders, hauled him back, and sent him stumbling toward the boathouse.

Colleen turned her back, knelt beside the boat, and gave it a push. As the boat drifted out she jumped aboard. Maggie had the oars in place, and the two women took an oar each, ready to pull.

Carter and Rick came barreling into the boathouse. The boat was a foot past the edge of the boathouse now. They ran, jumped, and the boat rocked wildly as they landed. Parker cried out as Rick landed on his legs. Water splashed over the gunwales and both men crouched, stabilizing the boat. Colleen and Maggie pulled hard on the oars and the boat moved swiftly across the dark water.

She couldn't see the cultists as they swarmed into the boathouse, but she heard their excited voices echoing against the walls. Then a muzzle flash lit the boathouse for an instant as someone fired into the darkness. She caught a quick glimpse of half a dozen people crowded together. There were several more shots, all of them wild. Colleen and Maggie rowed for their lives, and soon the boathouse vanished in the darkness of the shore.

"I didn't know," Carter murmured. "I didn't know he was staying. The last thing he said was, 'Let's go!' Then he stayed behind to hold them off."

No one replied as the boat moved deeper into the darkness.

###  Chapter 6 – A Midnight Caller

The sun was rising as Colleen and Carter let themselves into Uncle Rod's workshop. Parker and Jane were in the city hospital, with Rick and Maggie keeping watch. Carter planned to get a few hours of sleep, then go back and spell them.

Not that it was likely necessary. The hospital was crawling with police. Victoria had to be one of the most peaceful cities in Canada. Gun violence was so rare as to seem downright bizarre, and the night's events had the local police force's undivided attention.

The team members had claimed to know nothing. They were innocent bystanders, injured in passing when half of the _Arcadia's_ crew had inexplicably gone berserk. The local police weren't entirely convinced, but Rick's contacts in the Canadian government would smooth things over.

Jane wasn't seriously injured. The doctors wanted to keep her for a day. Carter had promised that when she was released, he would arrange for her to be resettled in the United States, somewhere peaceful, somewhere the cult would never find her.

Parker's case was more serious. He was dangerously low on blood. He had undergone emergency surgery and was resting.

Carter insisted that Colleen take Uncle Rod's cot. He already knew from their earlier search of the workshop where to find a spare blanket, and he stretched himself out on a rug.

Colleen lay down, still wearing her filthy, bedraggled dress. She longed for a hot bath and clean clothes, but she was afraid to return to her hotel. So she stared up at the ceiling, thinking of the moment when the gun had kicked in her hand and a fellow human being had ceased to be.

Several long minutes dragged past. Then Carter mumbled something.

"What was that?" Colleen twisted around to look at him. "Did you say something?"

"Oh, sorry." He looked embarrassed. "Talking to myself. Talking to Dirk, actually. Trying to apologize, not that he can hear me now. I didn't mean to, you know."

"Didn't mean to do what?"

"To leave him." Carter sounded surprised, as if his thoughts should be obvious. "We were always a team. We stuck by each other. He pulled me out of some pretty tight spots, let me tell you, even when it meant putting his neck on the line. I tried to do the same for him."

He lapsed into silence. Colleen stared at him, uncertain what to say, disturbed to realize that he was just as haunted as she was.

"He wasn't always like that. Like the man you met. All intense and wound up. He used to be a baker, can you believe it?"

Colleen tried to imagine Smith with his arms dusty with flour, and couldn't do it.

"He lived in Calgary. Had a little house there. I think he still owns it. Owned it, that is. I saw it once. It was a nice place. I always hoped someday he'd be able to go back, take up that life he had before."

"What happened?"

There was a long moment of silence, and she thought he wasn't going to answer. Then he sighed and said, "The cult happened. His wife worked at a museum in Calgary. I don't even know what she found out, if anything. But the cult thought she knew something she shouldn't. They killed four people that night, and burned the museum to the ground. After that, well, Dirk's been with us."

He fell silent again. Then he spoke again, his voice so soft she didn't think he meant for her to hear. "Until last night. I'm sorry, pal. I never meant to let you down."

"It's not your fault," Colleen said. The words sounded hollow to her ears. "If it's anyone's fault it's mine. I insisted we go after Jane."

"No, we had to save the lady," he said. "You were right to remind us of that. If we hadn't, it would have been harder to live with than, than this."

Colleen closed her eyes and saw, for the thousandth time, the face of the woman on the running board an instant before the gun went off. Now, there was someone who could be blamed. Someone who had taken up a gun and set out to do kidnapping, torture, and murder.

"It's not my fault," Colleen whispered. "You made it happen. You took Jane, you hurt her, you came after us. You made me do it." It sounded like an excuse, and her conscience wasn't satisfied.

She spent a rotten morning staring at the ceiling, dozing off, having nightmares, and coming awake with a start. Finally she and Carter admitted they weren't going to get any more sleep and set out for downtown.

She made him stand guard in her room while she bathed and changed. Then they went to the Empress Hotel and she sat in his room while he cleaned up. Smith's room was next door. All of his stuff would be there. The last time she'd been in this room, he'd been sitting in the chair she now occupied. The thought made her melancholy. Despite her exhaustion she was only too happy to get up and leave when Carter stepped out of the bathroom.

They stopped in the lobby, where Carter explained that Mr. Smith in 306 had been suddenly called away on business, but a Mr. Richard Dalglish would be taking the room. A Miss Margaret Nelson would be requiring a room as well. Carter paid for the rooms, then left with Colleen for the hospital.

They found a policeman in the corridor outside of Parker's room, and Chris nodding in a chair inside. He stood, yawning and stretching, as Carter told him about the hotel room. He left, still yawning, and Carter sank into the chair.

Parker was sleeping. His face was pale, but he didn't look too bad. Colleen tucked the blankets around him and went out into the hall.

Another police officer was on guard a little way down the hall. He nodded as she stepped past him into Jane's room.

Jane had sticking plaster on four different places on her face. Her bruises had darkened, and her lips and cheek had puffed up. Overall she looked much worse, but she smiled when she saw Colleen.

Colleen looked around the room. "Where's Maggie?"

"She left when the policeman outside made it clear he wasn't going anywhere. It's all right. There's police all over the place. I'm perfectly safe for now." Her face went somber. "After that, well, I'm going to be leaving Victoria. Leaving Canada completely, in fact."

"I heard," said Colleen.

Jane shrugged. "The only thing really keeping me here was Rod. And he's gone now. Even without everything else that's happened, I might have left, just to escape the memories." She shook her head. "Poor Rod. I miss him so much."

Colleen nodded. Her uncle had left a bigger gap in her life than she ever would have expected.

"It's over, I guess," said Jane. "This whole nightmare."

"I guess it is," said Colleen.

"Thank you for coming to get me. The others said you were the one who made them come. You made them save me."

Colleen blushed and looked at the floor. "Well, you kept helping me."

"Oh, posh. You got me off of that horrible ship, and I'll never forget it. I don't know where I'll end up, but wherever it is, you'll always be welcome. You're my family now. I mean it."

Colleen stared at the other woman, speechless, and Jane grinned. "Now, don't get all teary on me. You'll spoil your macho hero image."

Colleen left the hospital room feeling better than she had in quite some time. The nightmare really was over. She was going to catch the next ferry to the mainland and head immediately for Toronto. There, she would be spending time with Roland. It was time she thought about building a family of her own, a real family. A life with Roland, far away from mad cults and murderous plots.

She said her goodbyes to Carter and left the hospital, feeling optimistic. Uncle Rod's house wouldn't be worth much, but it would be enough to hire a lawyer to handle his estate for her. Lawyers did that, didn't they? She doubted he owned the warehouse that contained his workshop. Well, the lawyer could figure that out, and take care of whatever needed doing.

The streets of Victoria, sunlit and bustling, made the dark machinations of the cult seem distant. With police swarming all over the _Arcadia_ , the cult's members dead or scattered, and witnesses all around, the danger was clearly over. Colleen walked through downtown, unescorted and unafraid. She would feel even safer once she got back to Toronto. First, there was business to take care of.

She spoke to a glib lawyer at a firm called Thorpe and Thorpe, pored over a fat contract, and signed it. Everything would be left in the firm's capable hands. She would go home and wait for a cheque.

She went back to her hotel room and sat on the bed. The next ferry left Victoria the following day, at nine in the morning. She would have dinner, get a good night's sleep, and leave early for the ferry port. She glanced at her pillow. It looked marvellously soft, and she was so exhausted she could barely sit up. Perhaps lying down wouldn't be a bad idea, she decided. Just for a minute or two, until the worst of this weariness passed. It wouldn't do to fall asleep.

Sleep, of course, took her almost immediately. She dreamed of Toronto, of Jane, of the woman on the running board. Once again Colleen stretched out her arm, pointing the gun, her finger tightened on the trigger. The woman looked up, and it was Smith's face she saw in the last split second before the gun went off.

Her eyes flew open. The room was dark, and her stomach rumbled loudly. She wondered if she would still be able to find something to eat. In the hotel, ideally. The idea of walking the streets of Victoria after dark didn't hold much appeal.

Her stomach felt heavy, so much so that she was having trouble breathing. She tried to touch her stomach with her hands and found that her arms wouldn't move. She looked down at her body. It was obscured by a dark shape. In the blackness of the room she couldn't figure out what she was seeing. Then the mattress creaked and teeth gleamed above her in a smile.

She screamed, and a hand closed over her mouth, silencing her in an instant. A smell filled her nose, sweat and sawdust and grease, and she knew it was Jimbo before he spoke. His voice was a coarse whisper.

"Where is Tanathos?"

She flailed, kicked her feet, sucked in desperate breaths through her nose and tried to scream. Nothing came out but a muted whimper. He was straddling her, his knees on either side of her rib cage, pinning her arms. She drummed her knees against his back, thrashed from side to side, and he pinched her nostrils shut.

She panicked, thrashing frantically, and he leaned in close and hissed, "Stop it!" He released her nose long enough for her to take in a single breath, and pinched off her air again. "Stop it," he repeated, and Colleen forced herself to lie still. He let go of her nostrils and she concentrated on drawing one desperate breath after another.

"I just need the map," he said. "Tell me where it is and I'll leave you alone. I'm going to uncover your mouth. If you scream, I'll kill you. Do you understand?"

She nodded.

"Will you tell me where Tanathos is?"

She nodded again.

"Will you scream?"

She shook her head.

"Good girl." He lifted his hand and Colleen let out a piercing shriek. His hand slammed down, cutting her off in mid-cry, and he pinched her nostrils shut again. She kicked and thrashed, knowing it was hopeless, staring at the dark outline of his head as swirling spots of light began to dance across her vision.

The door crashed open. The gleam of Jimbo's teeth disappeared as he turned his head. Then the weight came off of her, she could move her arms, she could breathe!

She sprang from the bed, stumbled to the door, and flicked on the lights. Two men were rolling on the floor beside her bed. She could see Jimbo's greasy hair and familiar red coat, and she scanned the room for a weapon. Her eyes fell on a bedside lamp, but it seemed too flimsy.

She picked up the entire bedside table instead. It was a sturdy piece of furniture, and she grunted at the weight as she hoisted it over her head. The two men rolled back and forth, hammering each other with their fists. Then Jimbo slammed down his elbow, the other man cried out, and Jimbo rolled on top of him.

Colleen swung the table with all of her strength, slamming it down on Jimbo's skull. He flopped forward. She hoisted the table high again and stood trembling, but Jimbo didn't move.

The man underneath put a hand on Jimbo's shoulder and shoved him aside, and Colleen, afraid she was dreaming, tossed the table onto the bed and dropped to her knees. "Roland!" she cried, and threw her arms around him. "Oh, my God, Roland! Is it really you?"

It was hours later before the last policeman left. Jimbo was taken away in an ambulance, his skull fractured, his survival in question. Colleen was surprised to find herself fervently hoping that he died. He had chosen his path, and the world would undoubtedly be better off without him.

Roland's nose bled for more than an hour, but didn't seem to be broken. The police finally accepted their story that she had been attacked by a prowler for reasons unknown, and left. Roland wedged a chair under the doorknob and they lay down on the bed, fully dressed. She put her head on his shoulder. His arms went around her, and she clung to him, wanting never to let go.

"I want you to come back to Toronto with me tomorrow."

"Yes, Roland."

"Having you so far away, worrying about you, and now nearly losing you... I don't ever want to lose you, Colleen."

She smiled and squeezed him tighter.

"I think we should get married," he said, and she answered with another squeeze.

"There will have to be some changes," he told her, and she nodded against his shoulder.

"Whatever you want."

"No more workshop," he said sternly. "No more tools. I want you to stay at home and raise our children. I think we should have lots of children, don't you?"

"I think that sounds wonderful," she told him, and drifted off to sleep.

###  Chapter 7 – The Decision

The story came out in fits and starts on the ferry ride to Vancouver. There were parts she didn't want to remember, but she told him the highlights. When she got to Jane's rescue, his face clouded over.

"That was irresponsible," he declared. "They never should have done that. They certainly shouldn't have let you participate."

She stared at him, startled. "But we had to help Jane!"

"At what cost?" He shook his head. "No, you don't make progress by turning a disaster into a catastrophe. Sometimes you have to accept your losses and move on."

He sounded so certain that she didn't argue. She thought of Jane in the hospital, though, talking of her plans for the future. Surely that wasn't a bad thing! Smith and Garson were dead. That was a high price to pay, a ghastly price, but what was the option? Allow the cult to flourish, look the other way? Surely that wasn't a realistic strategy.

She stared moodily out at the water, trying to recapture her happiness of a few hours before. If Roland had a blind spot, it stemmed from his absolute determination to keep her safe. She couldn't fault him for that.

When they docked in Vancouver Roland got in line at a news stand and Colleen walked into the middle of the terminal. It was the first time she'd been more than a dozen feet from him since he'd burst into her hotel room, almost the first time she'd stopped touching him since he saved her life. She wanted a bit of distance, enough room to think without the intoxicating aura that he seemed to generate.

Not so much distance that she couldn't see him, of course. She watched him shuffle forward in the lineup, proud of his height, his broad shoulders, his casual confidence.

A group of cowboys blocked her view. There were six of them, lanky, weathered men in long dusters and Stetsons. You saw every kind of person in a place like this. A prim little man in a grey business suit came over to meet them and led them to the ticket counter. Colleen smiled. What would a group of cowboys do in Victoria? Catch a ship for somewhere else, she imagined. There weren't many cattle on the island.

Roland bought a newspaper and came strolling toward her. He stopped beside her, but he gazed past her shoulder and said, "Now, what's the matter with him?"

Colleen turned and found the short man in the grey suit staring at her from across the terminal. He had striking features, a face almost perfectly round with a bristling Chaplin-style mustache under his nose and round, steel-rimmed spectacles. He held her gaze for a moment, then turned away, talking to the cowboy beside him.

"Friend of yours?"

She glanced up at Roland. "No, I've never seen him before." Well, she had bruises around her mouth from Jimbo's hands, and dark circles under her eyes. Small wonder people were staring. "Shall we go?"

She and Roland left the terminal and joined a queue for taxis. There were over a dozen people ahead of them, and not a cab in sight. Roland grinned and opened his newspaper. "I guess I should have waited until we got to the train station," he said. "I let everyone get ahead of us."

"I don't mind," Colleen told him. "It's nice to be by the ocean." She left him minding their luggage and holding their place in the line, and walked to the corner of the terminal building. She watched gulls wheel and dive. After a while a horn sounded, and soon she saw the ferry moving away from shore.

She could see the cowboys in a line at the ferry railing and wondered again what brought them to Victoria. A man in a suit had come to meet them, so it had to be something important.

For some reason, the man in the suit bothered her. She thought she remembered him vaguely from the morning's crossing. He'd come across just to meet with the cowboys and bring them back, then. What troubled her? She was sure she'd never seen him before. His face was too distinctive to forget.

She chased the thought in circles, then pushed it from her mind. Her brain would serve up the answer if she gave it a chance. She walked back to rejoin Roland.

"Cor," said a voice behind her, "we'll 'ave a 'ard time makin' our reservation now."

Colleen went cold as the memory came rushing back. A hotel lobby, the prick of a knife, and a voice behind her, a cold, clipped British accent. A man in a suit. She'd never seen his face.

"Darling?" Roland's voice was tight with concern. "What is it?"

She stared at him. "That man. The round-faced man in the train station. I think he's a member of the cult."

His eyebrows rose. "Are you sure?"

She wasn't sure, far from it. She hadn't even heard his voice this time. The suit was similar, and the way he'd stared at her was unsettling. It could be coincidence.

"It doesn't matter," Roland said, as if she'd spoken aloud. "There's nothing we can do about it now. He's gone. We're out of it now. Forget him." And he turned away, calmly scanning the street for a taxi.

Colleen stared at the back of his head, speechless. He wasn't pretending. He honestly didn't care. Colleen was safe. They were leaving. In Roland's mind, nothing else mattered.

She looked toward the ocean, the ferry, and Vancouver Island somewhere just over the horizon. She was safe, but she wasn't the only person involved.

A taxi pulled up and the man in line ahead of them got in. Roland and Colleen were next.

She kept staring after the ferry, thinking about the cowboys. Six men, tough-looking, on their way to Victoria with a cultist. They were reinforcements, she was sure of it. There would be guns in their luggage. And Carter and Rick and Maggie had no idea they were coming.

She looked at Roland, sighing as she realized the dream of safety was going to slip away. If going with him would mean safety. The cult might leave her alone, but she could never be sure. She would be looking over her shoulder for years, scrutinizing every stranger, clinging to Roland and wondering if proximity to her would eventually get him killed.

Some stubborn streak inside of her began to reassert itself. Even if her friends weren't in deadly danger, she realized she couldn't go with Roland. She wasn't going to live in fear. If the cult was going to terrorize her, she was going to take the fight to them. Again and again, until they were no more threat to her or anyone else.

Another taxi pulled up, and Roland picked up his valise and her suitcase. He smiled at her, then froze as he saw the expression on her face.

"Thank you so much for saving me," she said. "Thank you for coming. But I'm not going back with you."

His jaw dropped. "What do you mean?"

Colleen stood on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. "There's something I have to do," she said. "Goodbye."

### Chapter 8 – Tick Tock

She left her suitcase in a locker in the ferry terminal. Leaving Roland was harder. She ignored him as he pleaded, demanded, and argued. She walked along the waterfront, talking to boat crews, and he dogged her footsteps, calling her a fool, telling her to stop being childish. He delivered an ultimatum, telling her it was her last chance to be sensible or he'd leave without her. When she ignored that, more ultimatums followed. After the third ultimatum he finally followed through, turned away, flagged a passing taxi, and left.

Part of her felt devastated to see him go, but she felt more than a little relief, too. He could be a real pain, she saw, when he didn't get his way.

Fear for her friends overrode every other concern, though. Later she could patch things up with Roland, or try to, or not bother. In the meantime, innocent lives hung in the balance.

She finally found a fishing boat that was docked waiting for her nets to be repaired. She haggled briefly with the captain, hampered by not knowing what a charter should cost, and by her own sense of urgency. She wrote him a cheque and came on board.

They set out immediately. None of the crew was on board. The captain sat at the wheel, staring placidly at the horizon, showing no interest in conversation. Colleen took a seat at the prow, stared toward Victoria, and willed the boat to move faster.

They arrived after dark, well after the ferry. Colleen dashed ashore, looked in vain for a taxi, and ran to the Empress Hotel.

No one was in. She left messages for every member of the team, then took a taxi to the hospital. Jane had checked out. There were different cops outside of Parker's room, a pair of stern broad-shouldered men with cold eyes and hard faces. They refused to let her past, and a nurse nearly as intimidating told her in no uncertain terms that visiting hours were over.

Colleen left the hospital, sick with worry. Parker was safe enough, but where were the others? She trudged back to the hotel, hoping against hope that they had returned.

They had not. Colleen stared around the elegant lobby. It was past midnight. Where would they go, in the dead of night? If the cult had them, where would the cult have taken them? They no longer had a ship. Where else could they be?

She caught another taxi, wincing at the money she was spending. She directed the driver to the outskirts of the city and had him stop under a streetlight a block from her destination.

The driver peered out his window at the surrounding darkness. "Are you sure, Miss? I don't like to leave a lady alone in a place like this. Are you sure I can't take you to your door?"

"I'll be fine," she told him. "Right here is good."

She crept up to the warehouse on foot, keeping to the shadows, placing each foot carefully so that no rock was sent rolling, no stick broke underfoot. There was a faint glow through the dirty windows. Someone had left a light on inside.

The front door would be her entry of last resort. Instead, she slipped around to the back, hoping to find an unlatched window. Instead she found broken windows and a back door that had been smashed open.

She crept to a window and peeked over the sill, seeing nothing but darkness and shadow. A sound came to her, though, a drawn-out groan, like a man in great pain trying hard not to cry out, and failing.

Colleen moved to the back door, which hung swaying from one hinge. The door frame was a splintered mess. She stared into the darkness beyond, her thoughts racing, fear and prudence warring with concern for her friends. She told herself that the sensible thing to do was flee, run back to town, summon a squad of police. But that would take hours, and what would the team members go through in the meantime?

Another pain-filled groan came echoing through the window, and Colleen abandoned her inner debate, took a deep breath, and stepped through the shattered doorway.

She found herself in a shadowed space behind a mass of rusted, filthy machinery. Nothing moved. No one was watching the doorway.

She crept forward, watching where she put her feet, careful not to let detritus or broken glass crunch under her shoes. She inched her way to where the mass of machinery ended and peeked around the corner.

The boiler loomed before her, several tool cabinets beside it. Beyond that would be the main workshop area. Colleen crept forward, keeping the cabinets between her and the open area beyond.

She paused to examine a set of wrenches hanging from hooks on a cabinet door. The biggest wrench caught her eye, a massive steel tool longer than her arm. She lifted it down, holding it two-handed, feeling its comforting weight.

She crept up to the last cabinet, knelt, leaned down so her head was just above the floor, and peeked around the corner.

A cowboy loitered near the front door, thumbs hooked in a wide leather gunbelt, right hand close to a holstered pistol. Three more cowboys, similarly armed, sat on crates and smoked cigarettes. The round-faced Englishman in the business suit paced back and forth in the middle of the room, one fingertip absently rubbing at his absurd little mustache.

Beyond him, four people stood with their backs to the rusted machinery that ran the length of the room. Rick was nearest to her. His face was swollen and bruised. Blood from his nose was caked around his mouth and chin. His shirt was in tatters, revealing a blood-stained white undershirt. Fury shone from his features. The muscles of his arms and chest were taut with rage.

His hands were behind his back, and Colleen saw ropes at his ankles. He was tied to the machinery behind him.

Next to Rick was Maggie. Her eyes were black, and swollen so badly she might not have been able to see. She was pressing herself against the machinery behind her, cringing back from the Englishman.

The shadows grew deeper past Maggie, but Colleen could make out Carter's familiar outline. He was sagging against the metal behind him, his head hanging, his shoulders slumped. Beyond Carter was another shape, shrouded in darkness. Colleen couldn't see who it was.

The Englishman stopped pacing and stepped close to Carter. His dapper suit and refined accent stood in sharp contrast to the sordid scene. "Your courage is commendable, but pointless," he snapped. "You will tell me everything. That is a certainty. The only question is, how much of you will remain when I am done?"

Colleen shrank back, thinking furiously. She was badly outnumbered, and there might be two more cowboys, along with God only knew what other cultists, close by. She had to do something, but what?

Her eyes kept straying to the boiler. Steam had always been her friend. It had saved her on the _Arcadia_ , given her a weapon. Could she use it now? She couldn't see how.

She stepped back, and her foot came down on a loose bit of metal. It grated under her shoe, and she froze.

The Englishman's voice continued without pause, a string of threats and invective. There was no other sound. She hadn't been heard.

There was no other sound. That was the problem. She couldn't act without drawing attention to herself. Every footstep might draw the gunmen to her. She eyed the boiler and the gears and pulleys attached to it, and made her decision. She would fill the workshop with noise and movement and smoke, and send the cowboys rushing in every direction trying to find her. Then she would find a way to reach her friends.

Lighting a boiler in dead silence with hands that shook with tension proved to be quite a challenge. There was a stack of newspapers beside the firebox, along with kindling and a hopper full of coal. Colleen eased her wrench to the floor and set to work.

The loudest sound she made was when she finally struck a match. She timed it poorly, dragging the match head across the side of the box just as the Englishman paused in his diatribe. The match flared to life in her hand, and she cupped it, listening, hoping desperately to hear the man resume his rant.

Silence, except for the hiss of the match in her fingers. She pushed the match under the twists of newspaper she'd prepared, picked up her wrench, and darted into a gap between the boiler and a cabinet. She swung the cabinet door wide, hiding herself, and waited.

The soft scuff of boot heels came to her straining ears. She held her breath and tightened her grip on the wrench. It was maddeningly difficult to judge distance or direction when all you heard was the occasional brush of leather on concrete. She stared at the cabinet door inches in front of her face, wondering if her feet showed underneath, wondering how many men were just on the other side of it.

Fingers appeared on the top edge of the door, she lifted the wrench, the door swayed away, and she found herself staring into the astonished face of a man in a brown Stetson. She swung the wrench like her life depended on it, and connected with the side of his head. He flew backward, a pistol dropped from his hand and clattered across the floor, and he landed on his back, his arms and legs splayed wide.

Colleen scanned the room. No one else was in sight. That wouldn't last long, though, not with the noise she was making. She put down her wrench, scooped up the fallen pistol, and knelt to grab a huge knife the cowboy had sheathed at his waist.

He was unconscious, his face peaceful despite a welt rising on the side of his head. Colleen thought of Maggie's black eyes and drove a kick into his ribs.

"Jed?" The Englishman's voice was sharp with impatience. "What's going on?"

They would be coming in moments. Colleen looked in the firebox, saw the kindling burning fairly well, and yanked open the chute from the coal hopper. Her little fire was quickly buried in coal. It would catch or it would go out; there was nothing she could do about it now. She fled deeper into the building.

Sounds of pursuit came quickly. She heard men blundering in the shadows and calling to each other. Colleen crept through narrow gaps in the machinery or dropped to her hands and knees, crawling awkwardly with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, keeping out of sight.

She worked her way back toward the prisoners. From her hands and knees she had a whole new perspective on the former factory's mechanical setup. A gearbox near the boiler turned a spindle as thick as her leg, which ran down the center of the factory floor. Production machinery had been connected to the spindle. It was that line of machines that the prisoners were now tied to.

The spindle itself was mounted about two feet above the floor, with a filthy crawl space underneath. Colleen, aware that she was ruining her second dress in two days, wormed her way into the crawl space and inched her way along.

Mostly she was in near-darkness. To her left she could see a stretch of floor and the back wall of the warehouse. To her right were the machines the spindle had once powered. Each time legs appeared to her left she froze, counting on the dirt on her arms and legs to help her blend into the dirty crawl space. When the legs disappeared she resumed crawling.

Small gaps opened up to her right from time to time, giving her brief glimpses into the main workshop area. She usually saw the Englishman pacing back and forth with a pistol in his hand. Then she came to a gap, peered through, and saw a trouser-covered leg with rope wrapped around the ankles.

She scanned the open floor to her left. No one was in sight. She worked her way out of the crawl space, straightened up, cracked her neck, and tried to peer through the mass of machinery before her.

She could see the back and side of a man's head. It was the shadowy fourth prisoner. She stared at him, and his head turned, putting the side of his face in the light. Colleen gasped. It was Smith, battered but alive.

She tucked the pistol into her pocket. It was a very large pistol, with a long barrel, so she rammed the gun deeper into the pocket until the barrel tore through the lining. She could feel cold steel against her leg, but the pistol felt fairly secure. She climbed onto a rusted safety guard and wriggled forward, toward Smith. She worked her head and shoulder past a pipe and found that she could see his hands, bound behind his back, his arms around a metal clamp. She stretched out her right hand, the cowboy's knife stretching toward the ropes on Smith's wrists.

"Leave him." Carter's whisper was so faint she thought she'd imagined it. He was still staring at the floor, ignoring her. "Free me. Not him."

She hung there, frozen with indecision, and finally wriggled her way back until her feet were once again on the floor. She moved along the bank of machinery. When she judged she was behind Carter she started the process again, trying to clamber over the machinery without making a sound.

She found she could see the Englishman. Once, he stopped pacing and stared right at her, and she froze. Then he resumed pacing, and Colleen continued worming her way forward.

Pipes and metal tracks dug into her shoulders and back. She never did see Carter's hands. She ended up sprawled across a bench behind him, her legs poking in the air somewhere behind her. He was the only thing keeping her from the Englishman's view. She could see Carter's shoulders, and she put the knife against his sleeve and traced his arm downward, navigating by touch.

She knew she'd hit the rope when her knife met resistance. Her arm was bent awkwardly over the edge of the bench, her hand completely out of sight, as she set to work sawing back and forth. Her arm scraped the edge of the bench, and the Englishman's pacing suddenly stopped.

Colleen crouched motionless, unable to see the Englishman, unable to do anything but hold herself still. Then Carter moved his hands up and down, sawing the rope against her knife. She stayed frozen, letting him do the work, as the Englishman's pacing resumed.

Finally Carter's shoulders moved as the rope parted. He kept his arms behind him, but his hands came up, fumbling blindly for the knife. Colleen put the knife into his hand, then wormed her hand back, wriggled the pistol out of her pocket, and put it in his other hand.

Boots thumped on the floor to the right, and the Englishman stopped pacing. Colleen heard one of the cowboys reporting. He had a slow Texas drawl, and he described how they were searching, how they weren't finding anything. Colleen took advantage of the distraction to work her way backward and get her feet on the floor.

###  Chapter 9 - Daylight

The claustrophobic crawl space seemed infinitely worse without a gun and a knife. She actually moved much faster, now that her hands were free and she didn't have to worry about accidental metallic clanks, but she felt horribly vulnerable.

Soon she found herself peering around a chunk of rusted machinery into the open area with the boiler and tool cabinets. She could hear a faint hiss of air being drawn into the fire box. The fire was burning well, then. She squinted at the pressure gauge. It was dirty and at least twenty feet away, but she thought the needle was pretty far over.

A man stood in the middle of the floor with a pistol in his hand. He was a cowboy, Stetson pushed back on his head, with long graying mustaches that curved around a cruel mouth. His face was in profile. If Colleen moved, he would spot her instantly.

Someone moaned, and the cowboy turned away from her. The man she'd hit with the wrench lay by the far wall, and the armed cowboy walked toward him. Colleen rose, looking around, knowing that if she tried to come up behind him he would likely hear her footsteps. She needed noise, confusion.

There was a metal casing near her, the main gearbox for the factory floor. A massive red handle stuck up from the top of it. Colleen calculated her options. The gearbox itself would provide cover, if she could pull the handle quickly enough.

She shot a glance at the cowboy, who still had his back turned, and darted to the gearbox. She grabbed the red handle and heaved.

Nothing happened.

Cursing under her breath, she wrapped both hands around the end of the handle, brought her feet up, braced them against the side of the gearbox, and pulled for all she was worth.

For an awful moment the handle refused to budge. Then, with a squeal of metal, the handle dropped six inches and the factory machinery came to life.

The cowboy spun at the first metallic screech, and Colleen was keenly aware that she was in plain sight. But things were moving all over the room. Gears turned, belts and chains quivered, dust came billowing down from tracks in the ceiling, and the man stared, trying to look in every direction at once. When his head turned for an instant, Colleen let go of the handle and dropped out of sight behind the gearbox.

Two gunshots rang out behind her. Either the Englishman was shooting the prisoners, or Carter had shot the Englishman. The cowboy ran past Colleen, and she rose from her hiding place.

Another shot echoed through the warehouse, and she ducked involuntarily. She wasn't about to rush empty-handed into a gunfight, so she turned to the boiler instead. She poured in more coal from the hopper and checked the water level. The water was good. The pressure level was decent, and climbing. She opened the air vent on the firebox and considered her next move.

Her gaze went to the man on the floor by the wall, the cowboy she'd knocked out. He was still unconscious, and she thought about smothering him as he lay there. She didn't doubt that he'd do the same to her, but she knew she couldn't kill him in cold blood. She needed to focus on the task at hand, which was drawing the cultists away from her friends.

Clumps of dust-clogged spider web drifted down around her, and she turned her gaze to the ceiling far above her. She hadn't really noticed just how much of the factory's machinery was ceiling-mounted. There was a large structure beside the boiler, with a slowly-turning vertical shaft surrounded by a zig-zag metal staircase. It gave her the rudiments of an idea.

Several toolboxes littered the workbenches around her. She grabbed the biggest toolbox she could see, grunting at the weight, and headed for the staircase. She ran up the stairs, not caring about the noise she made, and someone fired at her from below, the bullet knocking rust from the steps above her.

She found a platform she could huddle on just below ceiling level. She was mostly surrounded by machinery, enough iron and brass to deflect a bullet.

She heard a shot, and a ricochet that sounded dangerously close. She couldn't see the shooter, or where the bullet had hit. She decided he was shooting wildly, hoping to get lucky, and pushed him from her mind.

She opened her toolbox. The top tray was filled with screwdrivers, pliers, and small wrenches. She pulled the tray out and set it aside. Underneath was a jumble of wrenches and a couple of hammers, and she smiled. She had missiles now. Anyone trying to follow her up the stairs was going to have a hard time of it.

She scanned the machinery around her. Some of it was in motion. The big vertical shaft connected to a gearbox which in turn moved a flat metal chain. The chain rested in a track that ran the length of the building, a couple of feet below the corrugated iron of the ceiling.

There was a second gearbox beside the first one, and a second metal chain. The rod that should have connected the two gearboxes was missing, though. That meant the second gearbox was pure raw materials. Colleen grabbed a screwdriver and set to work.

She removed the casing and set it aside, and looked over the gears inside. She used a hammer and screwdriver to knock a cotter pin loose, and set to work prying loose a gear that had to be a foot and a half wide.

She caught a flash of light from the corner of her eye as a shot rang out and a bullet spanged against metal. Colleen shrank back, then peered over the edge of her platform. A cowboy stood below her, aiming his pistol carefully, and she flinched back.

She looked up. A circle of light glowed on the ceiling above her. The last bullet had punched through the ceiling, and she could see the lightening sky beyond. She measured the distance. He had missed her by a good four feet. She shrugged and decided to keep working.

The next shot was closer, the one after that even closer. He was firing every five seconds or so, so she kept working for another four seconds and flinched back. A bullet banged off of the gearbox and she leaned back in, grabbed the big gear in both hands, and pulled it off of the shaft.

She sank back, holding the brass circle in her lap. It was more than two inches thick, heavy enough to crush bones. She shouted, "Come and get me! I'm ready for you!"

She peered over the edge of the platform, and the man below snapped a shot at her. Then he broke the pistol open, spilling cartridge casings on the floor, and started reloading from the loops on his belt. He was looking down at the gun in his hand, and Colleen saw her opportunity. He was too far out to hit with the big gear, so she picked up a wrench and let fly.

It was going to fall short, she knew it as soon as the wrench left her fingers. It landed with a clatter at his feet, bouncing up to hit his shins, and he jumped, dropping the cartridge he'd been loading. He looked up, just in time to take her next wrench in the face.

He swore, scrambling backward and crashing into the equipment behind him. He dropped his pistol, clapped a hand to his mouth, then scrambled forward to scoop up his the gun. She could see blood leaking between his fingers as he gave her a glare and retreated behind some machinery.

The staircase creaked below her. Her plan was working. Someone was coming up the steps. Colleen picked up her biggest hammer and leaned over the far side of the platform. From here she could look down on a section of staircase fifteen feet below. A cowboy stepped into view, gun in hand. He was bareheaded, watching above him, and he spotted Colleen immediately and pulled back out of sight.

She heard him moving up the staircase. From the rustle of his steps and the creak of metal she could pretty much count each step of the staircase as he advanced. He reached the landing directly beneath her, and she smiled. He assumed that if she couldn't see him, he was safe. After all, bullets travelled in practically straight lines.

Hammers, though, didn't behave like bullets. She waited for the creak of the next step, then leaned out and lobbed her hammer inward. She threw blindly, but she knew exactly where he was, and she heard the hammer slam into flesh before clattering against metal. He grunted, and she heard him fall, then get back up. He swore, and the gun blasted three times.

Colleen let out an involuntary shriek and cringed back as jagged holes appeared in her platform. She smelled dust and gun smoke and fear, and she looked down, wondering how close those shots had come.

A chunk was missing from the toe of her shoe. She stared, filled with a sense of unreality. A ragged half-circle was gone from the end of her shoe, and she blinked, wondering how the bullet had missed her toes. Then she saw the wet gleam of fresh blood and knew that the bullet hadn't missed. There was no pain, not yet, but the tip of her middle toe was gone. She saw a white gleam in the redness, the bone of her toe, and squeezed her eyes shut as the warehouse started to spin around her.

The sound of stealthy footsteps snapped her out of her shock. There would be time later to swoon like a dime-novel damsel. Right now she was still in mortal peril.

She picked up the huge brass gear, adrenalin giving her strength, and looked at the staircase below her. She tried to figure out which step he would be on, but she had lost track, and she was still having trouble focusing. Her ears rang from the gunshots, and the subtle scuff of footsteps seemed distant, directionless. She made her best guess. He would be half way up that section of the staircase, about four feet below the landing. That would put the top of his head about eight feet below her and four feet out, right about... there.

She gathered herself, swinging the gear back, and as she swept forward, the cowboy sprang into view on the landing below her. The pistol came to bear on her, she felt her stomach lurch with the sure knowledge that she was going to die, and she tried to change the trajectory of the gear in mid-throw.

The gear left her hands, the pistol went off, she saw sparks fly as the bullet hit the spinning disk, and she saw that the gear was going to miss him. But his eyes went wide with panic and he tried to dodge back down the stairs. With only a split second to react he made the wrong choice and dove into the path of the gear. It slammed into his chest, knocking him backward, and he hit the railing behind him. The railing broke with a screech and he tumbled into space, the pistol spinning away as he fell.

"You couldn't have dropped the pistol up here," Colleen grumbled, dropping to a sitting position on her platform. The strength seemed to leave her limbs, and a sudden wave of agony from her toe filled her eyes with tears. She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around her legs, and let the tears flow.

Footsteps scuffed the concrete floor far below, and she lifted her head. A cowboy, his hand still clapped over his bleeding mouth, glared up at her, his face filled with hate. He lifted his pistol, taking careful aim, and she heard the thunder of a shot. The cowboy twitched, and two more shots rang out, somewhere behind him. He dropped his pistol, started to turn, and collapsed to the floor.

Colleen closed her eyes and murmured, "Thank God." Someone else was still alive. It hadn't all been for nothing.

A voice spoke directly below her, a clipped British accent in a voice dark with malice. "You win this round, little girl. But it doesn't matter. We'll find Tanathos first. We'll be waiting when you get there. We'll kill you all. And then He will come."

Footsteps rustled across the floor. Then the squeak of hinges, and silence. He was gone.

# # #

She stayed on the platform until Carter came looking for her. She climbed down to join him, and the two of them made a circuit of the warehouse, checking that all the cultists were gone. They tied up the unconscious man and went back into the main workshop area.

There were two dead cowboys on the floor, and Colleen grimaced as she stepped over a man's outflung legs. Maggie and Rick sat with their backs against the wall, pistols in their hands. Smith was still tied to the machinery, and Colleen stared at him, confused. She took a cautious step toward him, and Carter murmured, "Don't get too close."

Smith stared at her for a long moment without speaking. Then he said, "Cut me loose." When she hesitated, the veneer of sanity abruptly dropped away. His eyes opened wide until she could see the whites all the way around, his lips peeled back to expose his gums, he strained against his ropes until tendons stood out in his neck, and he screamed, "CUT ME LOOSE! Cut me! Cut me! He's coming! He'll take us all! It's too late, it's been too late for a hundred years, cut me, cut me now, cut me."

His voice subsided to a low mutter and he sagged in his bonds. Colleen drew away, aghast. Behind her, Carter said, "Maybe something can be done for him. We're certainly going to try. The Dirk I know is in there somewhere. I think. We'll help him if we can."

Rick left to summon police and an ambulance. Carter and Colleen joined Maggie against the wall. Maggie squinted through the bruising around her eyes and said, "Thanks for coming for us, Colleen."

Carter rubbed his bristling mustache. His bowler hat was missing, and Colleen could see sweat glisten on a balding spot on the top of his head. He said, "I guess you'll be going back to Toronto now?"

"No."

"No?" His eyebrows rose.

She shook her head. "The Englishman's still out there, and I got his attention, not in a good way. I don't think I'll be safe back home. Not for a long time."

"What will you do, then? We could send you into hiding, like we did with Jane."

"Actually, I think I'd rather help you find Tanathos." She glanced at Smith. "These scum are more dangerous even than I realized. I don't think I can just walk away. Not when I can help."

Carter nodded. "Well, I appreciate the sentiment, but we still have no idea who Tanathos is, much less where to find him."

"It's a place," Colleen told him. "Not a person. The Englishman told me that on his way out. And I think I figured out what that picture was, the one my uncle burned. I think it's a map."

Carter frowned, staring into space. "A map. You could be right. That could have been a coastline, maybe with a river down the middle. If we go through enough charts and atlases, I bet we could figure out where it is." His gaze switched to her face. "Maybe you can be helpful, at that."

Maggie snorted. "Look around you, Phil. Did you really need more convincing?"

He grinned, then turned serious. "Well, we do have an opening for a Canadian liaison to the team. I suppose you could be a candidate. You've seen what can happen, though. Are you sure you want the job?"

Colleen closed her eyes briefly, thinking of the life she could still have back in Toronto. But she thought of a little house in Calgary as well, and the life that Smith could have had, and she nodded. "I'm sure."

Carter's eyes searched her face. At last he nodded. "Welcome to the team. Next stop, Tanathos."

# # #

### Author Notes

Thanks for reading. I'd love to hear your comments. Go to SteamPunch.com to leave me a note or to learn about other stories. I can be reached by email at brentn@netscape.net.

###

Colleen's adventures continue in Dark Island, available now.
