The League of Doorways (A Book of Vampires, Werewolves & Black Magic) (The Doorways Trilogy - Book Two) Read Online Free PDF Page B

voice seemed to lack any kind of feeling or emotion. It was monotone.
    “What do you mean ‘model?’” Zach asked him, his fingertips never too far from his crossbows. “Are there more of you?”
    “That is correct,” Faraday said back, his blank eyes staring straight ahead.
    “Oh , great,” Bom grumbled from the far side of the overhang.
    Ignoring him, William asked, “Are you a man or a machine?”
    “I’m mechanical,” Faraday said flatly.
    “Is there a difference ?” William asked, glancing back at Zach.
    Zach shrugged his shoulders and said, “I don’t think so.”
    “What are you?” Neanna suddenly spoke up from beneath her cloak.
    ”I am the result of what happens when advanced technology falls into the hands of those who really don’t know how to use it,” Faraday said, jumping up with a speed not expected from a man constructed of cogs, pistons, and levers.
    Faraday looked at Zachary, who now stood with his crossbows drawn and clenched in each fist. He turned his black eyes on William, who now had his loaded catapult drawn.
    “What technology? Whose hands?” Zachary pushed, his crossbows aimed at Faraday’s head.
    “Human technology in the Mechanical Man’s hands,” he replied, seemingly unmoved that he had weapons aimed at him.
    “But you’re the mechanical man, right?” William asked, as some of the branches in the fire gave off snapping sounds, sending a flurry of sparks upwards.
    “That’s what I have been trying to tell you – there are more like me,” Faraday said, his pale , leathery skin and dead, black eyes reflecting the firelight. “I didn’t make myself or the others – we were made by a human. It was he who was called the Mechanical Man.”
    “So where is this man now?” Zachary asked.
    “Dead,” Faraday said, his synthesised voice showing no emotion. He then began to brush the sand and dirt from the sleeves of his flight suit. As he worked, the sound of whizzing and whirring could be heard.     
    “So you’re definitely not human?” Zach asked him, unable to believe that this man – machine – could look so lifelike, move with such speed and precision.
    “I might have been once,” Faraday said, and again he showed no emotion in his voice. He sounded like he didn’t care, or that it didn’t matter. It was as if he had no feelings.
    “But you’re different from us,” Bom cut in.
    “And you’re different from me – but not that different,” Faraday said back, now kicking the dust from his boots, and brushing it from the grooves and folds of the flight suit he was wearing.
    “Well, at least we have faces,” William barked.
    The man touched the cloth that covered his face and said, “My face doesn’t always look like this. In fact, when properly maintained, it’s just like yours. It was what happened in Clockwork City that did this to me.”
    “So it does exist then?” Neanna asked from the shadows. I watched her pale blue eyes flicker from Faraday to me.
    The stranger took his hand away from his face. “Yes,” he said flatly. “But before I explain what happened there, please lower your weapons. You couldn’t kill me, even if you tried.”

Chapter Five
     
    The Delf shuffled up the spiral staircase to the top of the Splinter. The stone steps seemed unending, and several times she stopped, lent against the wall, and mopped the sweat away which streamed from her wrinkled brow and down the sides of her face. As she gasped for air, maggots oozed from her nostrils and crawled from the corners of her puckered mouth. The Delf knocked them away, and they dropped onto the steps where they wriggled away into the shadows.
    With her bag of potions and charts, she continued upwards, her breath laboured until she reached the top of the Splinter. At the top, she pushed open the door and shuffled into the Queen’s chamber. Much of the room was cast in shadow. Candles, which were attached to black iron spikes, barely lit the room, and the Delf peered