The opening door revealed a large room lined with galleries extending several stories upwards. The room was filled with people, constructs and clanks. They all turned towards the opening door, revealing, at the center of the crowd, none other than the Baron himself.
Silence spread, until Klaus, his eyes wide in surprise at the figure in the doorway, stepped forward. “Judy?” he whispered.
CHAPTER 10
Go to sleep, lay down your head,
The Heterodynes, they are not dead.
They will return to us someday,
And send the monsters far away.
Lilith went white. “Klaus!” Adam set Agatha down and moved forward. Klaus saw him and his brows lowered. “Punch?” Without taking his eyes off of the little group he snapped out orders. “Contain them, and find my son!” Several of the guards began to spread out, and a small squad raced off, no doubt to try to encircle the three. The others began to move forward, but the Baron checked them with an upraised hand. Agatha noticed that he was dirty, and that his clothes were torn; with surprise, she saw that his left hand was bandaged. Another part of her mind took note of the fact that she was shocked that he could be injured. The rest of the group had obviously been through a tough ordeal. Many were injured, and all looked weary.
“Something very odd is going on here,” Klaus muttered.
Lilith swallowed. “Klaus, we—”
Suddenly a lone Jägermonster pushed its way forward until it was right behind the Baron. A distant memory was obviously fighting its way to the surface of its mind. “Vait! Meester Ponch?”
Without hesitation, Klaus backfisted the Jäger in the face and it dropped to the ground unconscious. “Damn! He’ll be a problem.” To the others he said, “Seal the area, and keep the Jägers out of here.”
At this point Agatha didn’t know what was happening, but thought to correct things before they got further out of hand. “Herr Baron,” she piped up, “there’s been some sort of a mistake. These are my parents: Adam and Lilith Clay.”
Klaus nodded slowly. “Punch and Judy. So you’re the unfindable Clays. This explains so much. But the girl—she’s not your real daughter.”
“She’s just an orphan we took in,” Lilith interjected.
“I’m sure she is. Lucrezia and Bill’s, I imagine. Or is she a surprise from Barry’s past?”
Agatha blinked. It almost sounded like the Baron knew her parents. He must be confused. They’d had many a laugh around the dinner table about the coincidence of the names—
A shriek caught them all by surprise. A wild-eyed Von Pinn pushed her way to the fore. Klaus put up a hand to check her progress, and she glared at him while she panted in short, excited bursts. “Yes!” She spoke in a strained voice. Gone now was the controlled fury that Agatha had seen before. “She is the daughter of Lucrezia Mongfish! When first she came, she gave to me an order, which I obeyed without thinking!” She whipped her head around and glared at Agatha with unreadable emotions distorting her face. “That will not work again, Girl Agatha. Now you are mine!” She clutched at Klaus’ hand and, shockingly, pleaded with him. “She—Klaus, she is mine! Nothing have I ever asked, but now—!”
“Hold.” Klaus did not speak loudly, but Von Pinn instantly went silent, and returned to staring, quivering, at Agatha. The Baron closed his eyes, and pinched the bridge of his nose.
“Yesss… so she was the Spark in Beetleburg. It’s so obvious now.” He sighed. “I must be getting old.”
Lilith took a small step backward. “Klaus, we’re going to leave now.”
The Baron’s eyes snapped open. “Oh no. Not this time. Not without an explanation. I was gone for less than four years, and I came back to a world in ruins! Death, destruction, chaos—the endless fighting—it was like the Heterodyne Boys had never existed. Things were worse than ever.
“So I stopped it. And I did it my way this time. No more negotiating, no more promises, no more second chances. Rule by conquest and peace by intimidation because that was all the geniuses I dealt with could understand. And I did it alone because I had to. All my friends and companions were gone, gone without a trace! I thought them all dead and gone and no one even knew what happened to them—and now here you are, the Heterodyne Boys’ steadfast companions. I had considered us mutual friends; I had always thought of you as people, decent people, and yet you’ve obviously been hiding from me for all these years.
“Well, I will find out why you were hiding from me. I will find out where the Heterodyne Boys went and I will find out what else you have been hiding from me, because I assure you, you will tell me.”
Lilith glowered. “You always could play to the gallery, Klaus, but Barry came back.”
Klaus sighed. “Wonderful. More puzzles. Apparently that’s supposed to worry me?” He waved a hand dismissively. “Soon enough. Katz!” A Lackya stepped forward. “Have these people locked up—In separate quarters. I want them guarded by at least two guards each around the clock.” Klaus frowned. “And not by the Jägers; in fact they’re not to know of this until I’ve sorted this mess out.”
Katz nodded. The door swung open. Everyone tensed, but the only one there was Bangladesh DuPree. She was obviously trying to keep herself from laughing about something. “Hey, Klaus,” she announced, “we found your boy! Babbling a bit, but that’s pretty normal. Get this—Says his fiancée knocked him out.”
Few announcements could have broken Klaus’ concentration, but this certainly appeared to be one of them. “His what?”
He spun about in time to see Agatha wearily rest her face in her hands. He went white. “Ah,” he said a trifle unsteadily. “I see that history repeats itself. That will stop—”
Again DuPree interrupted. “Hey! That’s her!”
Klaus tensed. “Explain.”
Bangladesh waved towards Agatha. “That girl I told you about. The one in my Phenomena Log, the one with Gil and the Geisterdamen. That’s her!”
“Worse and worse! All right, in addition to being confined, this girl is to be kept sedated—”
With a hollow sound, the head of the Lackya standing next to Klaus snapped back and the guard dropped to the deck.
In the next second, a small object tore through the Baron’s leg. He roared with pain and dropped to one knee. Almost simultaneously, another object glanced off of Boris’ skull and knocked the wind out of Bangladesh, sending them down.
A brief pause as Adam poured another handful of rivets into his immense hand. Lilith touched his arm. “I’ll get Agatha out of here. Meet us at the dock.” Adam absentmindedly blew her a small kiss as, in the space of half a second, six more rivets flew to their targets, taking out one of the giant battle clanks, a Radiohead, and three crewmen. The only surprise was Von Pinn, who coolly plucked the rivet out of the air and dropped it to her feet. Before it hit the deck, Adam had sent another dozen at her. She darted forward, her arms blurring into invisibility as she successfully deflected them all, but this did prevent her from being able to stop Adam himself, who, moving like a juggernaut, caught her with a roundhouse blow to the jaw that snapped her head to one side. But even as her ruby-red monocle flew back, her arms whipped upwards and grasped Adam’s arm. Adam tried to recoil and he blinked as his arm remained where it was. With that, Von Pinn flashed him a toothy grin of triumph, and effortlessly tore his arm free from its socket.