Doctor Who_ Camera Obscura - Lloyd Rose [98]
With a hiss she withdrew to her throne, liquidly swift as a shadow. For a few minutes she only stared at him. Sabbath held her yellow gaze.
She shrugged. ‘It was worth trying.’
‘He is yours in the end anyway. Why bother?’
‘He annoys me,’ she said sulkily. ‘He has teased me before. He dies yet does not die. I would punish him for his arrogance and his trickery and the way he continues to live. I suspect he is unnatural.’
Sabbath had been handling the conversation fine so far, but, considering its source, this last remark threw him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You will find out,’ she said carelessly. ‘Do you want him? Then here, take him. I am glad to be rid of his stench – and yours.’
She gestured to her left and, turning, Sabbath saw another tall clock, this one of ebony, its plain white face arrayed with eight long minute-hands. He opened the door to the works. The Doctor hung inside, impaled on a meathook.
* * *
‘You took your time,’ said the Doctor. His face was drawn and livid, but his voice was quite normal. The meathook, Sabbath saw, was somehow attached to the clock’s weight chains, so that the Doctor had become part of the mechanism. Sabbath almost shivered. He looked around. The black throne and its occupant had vanished.
‘I don’t suppose,’ Sabbath said, ‘that I’m going to be fortunate enough to discover that this –’
‘– is a dream? Er, sorry, no.’
Sabbath sighed. ‘It’s not, by any chance, a hallucination in which you are only an unpleasant element rather than an active participant?’
‘Not that either, I’m afraid.’
‘Give me one piece of good news. Tell me at least that you’re actually hung on a meathook.’
‘In so far as actuality has any meaning here, yes, I’m actually hung on a meathook.’
‘Well, that’s something.’
The Doctor smiled apologetically. Sabbath noticed that the tip of the meathook protruded from where his missing heart had once been.
‘I don’t suppose,’ he said almost wistfully, ‘that I could just go myself and leave you here?’
‘You’d only come back.’
Sabbath sighed again. ‘I suspected as much. Why don’t you explain to me exactly what is happening?’
‘As near as I can figure, your heart – I mean the one that’s really my heart – is not only keeping me alive, it’s also healing its twin. Presuming we make it back, I should be as functional as I was before I was stabbed.’
‘That’s how you got here?’
‘That’s how.’
‘Who stabbed you?’
‘Who do you think?’
Sabbath’s lips tightened. ‘I’ve explained to her –’
‘– how harmless, indeed cuddly and inoffensive, I am. Yes. Well, don’t be too hard on her. I lured her into it.’
‘Yes,’ said Sabbath. ‘You would have.’ He eyed the clock. ‘How did you get in a clock?’
‘Am I in a clock?’
‘What do you see?’
‘Not much of anything except you. I’d rather not be in a clock,’ the Doctor went on doubtfully. ‘They have grinding gears and things.’
‘You’re on a meathook.’
‘Yes, but if I don’t move, it doesn’t move. Speaking of which, you might want to get me off.’
Sabbath gripped him under the arms. ‘Why did she impale you?’
‘I got on her nerves.’ Sabbath raised an ironic eyebrow ‘Anything alive gets on her nerves,’ the Doctor said drily. ‘So perhaps we’d both better hurry.’
Sabbath braced himself to lift. ‘Put your hands on my shoulders.’
The Doctor did and, very slowly, Sabbath raised him off the hook. There was a wet, tearing sound. The Doctor’s head fell back and he made a noise somewhere between a whimper and a groan. Then he righted himself, gasping, and looked down, and for one terrible moment, Sabbath saw his own face staring at him. He stumbled, biting back a cry.
‘What is it?’ The Doctor was in his own face again.
‘Nothing,’ said Sabbath between his teeth. He half-turned, moving the Doctor safely away from the clock, and set him on his feet. The Doctor’s knees gave and Sabbath held him up. ‘Can you even walk?’
‘Let’s see.’ The Doctor tried to stand. ‘No.’ He squinted curiously at Sabbath’s shirt front. ‘You’re bleeding.’ Sabbath looked down at the slight red stain, inconsequential next