James, still battling against the urge to break the man in two, tried desperately to think. If they headed for somewhere other than Toronto, that would spoil Brendan Fagan’s plan. How was James going to keep Catherine from harm?
He grated, “I should throw you over the side now.”
“You think you could? Look around. You’d be mad to try.”
James looked. In addition to the steam units he counted at least five human crewmembers, all clad as pirates. Was that all Boyd was, then? A pirate dressed as a wealthy man, stealing and transporting human cargo aboard this vessel? To be sure, how else could he have amassed such an obscene fortune? And how could one man stand against him?
In order to protect Catherine, he would do as he must.
Upon that thought she reappeared, the armed steam unit at her back. James caught his breath; gone was the boy’s clothing. Instead she wore the pure white dress of a young girl, short enough to show her ankles and a pair of tiny, jeweled slippers. The innocence of the costume was belied by its neckline, ruffled and cut low to reveal the darkened wound on her chest and nearly all the perfection of her small breasts.
James felt like someone had punched him in the stomach. The likelihood of Boyd’s intentions made him want to vomit.
Catherine cast one look at him and then turned her eyes determinedly away.
Desperate, James started forward. The steamie on his left hit him in the arm with its cannon—just a warning but enough to make him reconsider his actions.
What would happen if one or more of those cannons discharged aboard an airship? The steel decking beneath his feet would withstand it, but if the blast hit any of the lines or, worse, ricocheted up and struck the envelope, they would all die. James stole another look over the rail, where he could see the broad ribbon of the river beneath the belly of the gondola. If they went down they would crash into the water. But they might all burn up as they fell.
“Ah,” Boyd said when he caught sight of Catherine, and the lechery in his voice set James’ teeth on edge. “Much better; I actually feel myself becoming aroused. But what’s this?” He gestured roughly.
Catherine’s hands rose to her chest. “The burn where the steam blast took me.”
“Nonsense. If it hit you there, you certainly wouldn’t be alive.” Boyd directed a glare at James. “I supposed that’s where your ugly pet mauled you. More damages added to his account. But no worry; he’ll pay. On your knees.”
Catherine trembled where she stood but did not comply.
“On your knees, I say!”
“Here?” Catherine croaked. “In front of everyone? Please, no.”
“Here. Or do you want to watch your mongrel die?”
The steam units guarding James stepped closer. Catherine met his gaze then, just one glance, but it revealed all that lay in her heart. James quivered in response.
She does love me, he thought, with absolute conviction, an instant before Boyd stalked up to her, planted his feet, and pushed her to her knees.
Time stood still for an instant. The breath froze in James’ lungs, and even the drone of the engines seemed to cease as his rage built—a mighty rage, unstoppable as a full head of steam, searing in its intensity.
“No!” he shouted, and the valve on his sanity burst.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Cat shuddered as her knees contacted the rough steel decking. Memory had started to return in earnest as soon as she saw Becky and Boyd—bits and pieces of things that appeared suddenly as the doorways opened in her mind. She now had a very good idea what sort of man Sebastian Boyd was, and a terrible sense of déjà vu accompanied this moment. He’d attempted this before, but certainly not before so many eyes, and not in front of Jamie, her Jamie whom she adored. Even though she felt revolted to her toes at the thought of this act, and even though humiliation burned in her cheeks, she resolved she could do this sickening thing for his sake. But would he be able to watch?
Her answer came almost instantly in a mighty roar that sent a shaft of alarm through her and turned her head. Her gaze found Jamie, and another memory unleashed itself in her mind. She’d seen this before: a man in a street and a horse…and her Jamie barely recognizable.
But no, she’d not seen this. By God, he would get himself killed.
She surged to her feet as Boyd swung away from her, suddenly rigid with alarm. Indeed, no one on the deck looked anywhere but at Jamie, who stood transfixed, his countenance dark with rage, every muscle bulging, and with absolutely no sanity in his eyes.
Off kilter—that’s what he’d called it. Off his head. But facing a cart driver in a Buffalo street differed wildly from snapping here, surrounded by steam cannon.
The capacity for reason, however, had clearly flown along with all other rational thought. Jamie struck out, swinging arms and fists, and knocked down the steam units on either side, one after the other. His rage made the act look so easy that for an instant Cat’s heart dared hope. One unit crashed onto its back and lost its weapon; the other tumbled toward the rail and began leaking steam from its neck joints at an alarming rate.
Jamie fixed eyes that glowed like blue fire on Boyd and started toward him.
Boyd began barking orders. Steam units rolled up from everywhere, tightening a circle around Jamie, and Cat’s heart sank again.
Like a stevedore facing a day’s work, Jamie took them on. Blow after blow did he rain on the steel that came at him, terrible, smashing strikes and punches that dented metal and sent the units crashing down. One of them fired its weapon, and Cat cried out. Only the fact that Jamie leaped at another opponent kept him from being blasted; the beam took out the legs of another unit instead and left them blackened and smoking.
Still another unit fired; the superheated beam traveled along the deck to skitter off the rail and over the side.
Boyd hollered, “Stop him! He’s just one man!”
Members of the human crew moved in. One fixed his gaze on Cat and galvanized her into motion. She lowered her shoulder and barreled into Boyd; they both fell to the deck, narrowly missed by another bolt that flared almost in Cat’s face, split the air over her and Boyd’s heads, and sent her scrabbling away from him.
She ran to the rail and looked over. The river, nothing but a broad gray ribbon glimpsed through the rain, slipped past beneath the gondola between green, forested banks. Should she jump? It might be better than the fate that lay before her: subject to all Boyd’s perverted demands and then passed on to his business associates and thence to the ghastly trade in which they must engage.
She knew that despite all the carnage he now wrought, Jamie couldn’t win this battle. But how could she abandon him? She spun with her back to the rail and watched in gut-wrenching dismay even as three more steam units closed in on him.
The energy of his rage had begun to subside. He’d maimed many of the steam units, but they’d done damage in return; the disfigured side of his face once more streamed blood and the flesh of his left forearm, caught by the flick of a blast, smoked. Her heart twisted in her breast with helpless, hopeless love for him.
“Seize him!” cried Boyd, who had also struggled to his feet. “Finish him!”
“No!” Cat shrieked and flew at Boyd again, feet and fingernails flailing. She managed to gouge his cheek, tearing four bright furrows that welled blood, before a human pulled her off, and just in time to see one of the steam units that corralled Jamie swing the butt of its weapon and connect with the side of his head. Jamie went down like a dead man, and her heart faltered.
All Boyd’s attention, though, rested on Cat. “Bitch!” he yelled. “You marked me!” He swiped at his cheek, and his fingers came away stained with blood. “That’s the second time.” His infuriated gaze pinned her where she stood. “You cannot imagine, wench, how you’ll suffer for this.”
He snarled at Cat’s captor, “Lock her up while I think of a suitable punishment.” He followed Cat’s telltale gaze to Jamie, who now lay white and unconscious in the pe
lting rain. A smile twisted his lips. “And put her ugly pet with her. Let them have a few final minutes together.”
****
“Jamie? Oh, my love.”
The words trickled into James’ ear and roused him to a morass of pain. The right side of his face—the disfigured side—flamed in agony much as it had back when he’d originally sustained his injuries. His body throbbed in time with his heartbeat, as if he’d been pummeled and dragged behind a steamcab. None of that, though, matched the pain in his hands, raw and intense.
What had happened to him? Had he fallen into a rage, gone off kilter? Damned if he could remember, but Catherine must be with him if he could hear her voice, feel her touch at his shoulder and on his chest.
He opened his eyes and looked up into her face, which hung above him like a pale flower. A streak of blood marked her cheek, and he wondered if it were his, or hers.
Where were they? On the airship still, for he could hear the steady drone of the engines, but on the deck no longer and instead out of the rain. A small space, dimly lit, it felt like a prison. Catherine sat on the floor, and he lay on his back like a felled tree, his head in her lap.
“Jamie, thank God. My love, look at me.”
My love. That he did remember—the way she had looked at him there on the deck, as if he possessed her heart. No product of any resurrection, that look; he believed in the truth of it at last. But what good would it do them now?
“Did I kill him?”
“Boyd? No, my love. No.”
“What happened?”
“You went off your head and damaged a large number of his steam units. I damaged him—but not seriously enough to save us.”
Cat looked at her hand with its dirty nails, Boyd’s vile blood trapped beneath. She shuddered. “Jamie, he’s going to want his revenge. I don’t know what form that will take, but you must promise me you’ll let me take the brunt of it.”
“Damned if I will.” James struggled up, the movement tearing a groan from his throat.
“You can’t possibly fight on.” Catherine swallowed convulsively. “Your hands…”
James looked at them and felt a rush of sick alarm. Less hands now than two battered clubs, they oozed blood and showed the gleam of white bone in several places. What had he done with them? He had no clear memory of it, but their condition told its own story.
Broken bones? He gritted his teeth and forced himself to flex the fingers. Maybe, maybe not, for he could still move them slightly.
He looked at Catherine. Her face, dead pale except for that splash of crimson blood, appeared pinched, her beautiful eyes haunted.
“You can’t expect me to stand by and let him do whatever he will to you,” he grated.
“You can if it spares your life.” Suddenly she pressed into his arms. He closed them about her, heedless of his pain, and felt the strength come. It returned to him softly, like faith, like certainty. She loved him. Whatever came, he had the one desire of his heart.
He kissed her forehead, and she tipped her face up so her lips met his. The kiss tasted of many things: resolve, terror, desperate courage, and enough devotion to steady James’ heartbeat.
“I love you, Catherine Delaney,” he breathed when it ended with a last lingering contact of tongue on tongue.
“I love you, Jamie Kilter. Whatever happens, don’t doubt that.”
“I won’t. Where are we?”
“I’m not sure. Some small room all made of steel. I tried the door; we won’t get out that way.”
“At least we’re together.” And he could hold her one last time, glory in the feel of her heart beating beneath his.
“He’s only shut us in here till he can devise a revenge that’s horrible enough. Jamie, whatever it is, he’ll make you watch.” Her voice quivered despite her determined courage. “He’s just that cruel. You must promise me you’ll endure it and not fly off kilter again. Because he only needs an excuse to kill you, and I think I can survive anything but that.”
“Watch him use you, debase you? Maybe give you to his crew after?”
“It doesn’t matter what happens to me.” She lifted a hand and fluttered her fingers over his ruined cheek. “How badly are you hurt?”
Bad, but he wouldn’t admit that to her. “Listen, there must be some hope. I know what’s in your mind, but please don’t sacrifice yourself.”
“What hope? We’re completely in his power.”
James’ thoughts raced. Brendan Fagan would be on his game, but Fagan had a welcoming committee waiting in Toronto. The airship might not even be headed there. How quickly could Fagan scramble his forces?
“Catherine,” he said, “If you see a chance for yourself, you have to take it. Don’t hold back for me. Promise.”
Her only response came when she kissed him again, soft kisses that rained on his lips, his chin, whispered across his wounded cheek, skittered down to bless his split and bloodied fingers.
“Catherine.” He seized her face between his hands and gazed into her eyes. “I mean it. Promise.”
Her eyes flooded with tears. “I can’t,” she said helplessly. “For you I can only battle.”
“Then we’ll go down battling together. Till then, tell me again that you love me.”
And she did.
Chapter Thirty-Six
“So you want to fight, do you? Like a mad dog?” Boyd aimed a kick at Jamie’s legs. “You did a lot of damage out there, destroyed six steam units and banged up many more. But I’m going to give you a chance to redeem yourself now and possibly save your dirty wench.”
“How?” Jamie raised his chin and glared at Boyd. Cat could feel so much about him, and so easily. She felt his weakness and how desperately he sought to disguise it. She knew Boyd planned to hurt him in the worst way he could, had in fact taken the intervening time while she and Jamie whispered together of love and past sorrows to devise something awful enough to satisfy his cruelty.
She scrambled up in her now-stained and filthy dress to face Boyd. “You’ll leave him alone and bargain with me.”
“I think not.” Boyd glanced at the dented steam unit behind him as if for protection.
Coward, Cat thought, and her lip curled.
“He owes me a heavy debt.” Boyd aimed still another kick at Jamie, who pulled his legs out of reach. “He stole and sullied you, costing me more than half your value. He went on that rampage up on deck. I’ve thought about it, wench, and there’s one deal on the table—only one.”
“Tell me.” Jamie, too, arose, and Cat felt him stifle his agony. Even injured, he towered over the other man.
Boyd backed a step, and Cat realized he feared Jamie precisely as he might the mad dog with which he equated him. It made a slight advantage, when they had so few.
But something avid also shone in Boyd’s eyes, a desire to cause pain that outweighed the fear. Pain, and the terror of others, entertained this man. A weakness? Cat couldn’t tell.
Boyd ran his gaze over Jamie thoughtfully before he said, “I will let you fight for her like the ugly hound you are.”
Cat’s stomach plummeted, but Jamie straightened himself. “Fight?”
“It will alleviate the boredom till we reach our destination. Have you ever attended a dog fight?”
Jamie grimaced and what little color he retained siphoned from his face. “I have, though not by choice. I’ve also seen the results of such ‘entertainment,’ and I despise the bastards who organize those pits.”
“Well this time you’ll take the place of the vicious dog. There’s still some piss in you, I’ll wager. And I’ve learned it’s often the injured curs that are the most savage.”
“Who?” Cat forced the word from her throat. “Who will you pit against him? Not more of your steam units. You know that’s not fair.”
“Fair? You dirty trollop, haven’t you figured out life isn’t fair? It belongs to the strong, to men like me. Everyone else dances to the tune I play. And he will dance now, if he knows wha
t’s good for him.”
“You haven’t named his opponent,” Cat insisted. With all her being she longed to reach out and tangle her fingers with Jamie’s, but she would not give Boyd that satisfaction.
“One opponent, only one—not a steam unit, but a new addition to my crew. The fellow says he’s a champion brawler, and I believe him. And I’ve sweetened the pot for him; if he wins I will pay him one thousand dollars.”
A thousand dollars? Cat’s mind reeled. She could barely imagine such a prize.
Boyd’s lips twisted. “If he kills you, cur, I will pay him two thousand.”
“No, Jamie,” Cat said under her breath, not able to hold back the words.
Jamie didn’t so much as glance at her, his gaze fixed on Boyd. “And if I win? What’s my prize?”
“Well, I debated that. I could give you your life.”
“Not mine—hers.”
“I thought you’d say that, since you’re such a great hero. Her life, then.”
“I want her life and her freedom. You let her go safely, understand? And you don’t use her first or give her to your crew.”
“Jamie,” Cat breathed again.
Boyd grinned. Cat had never seen him smile that way, and it chilled her to the bone.
“Very well, I agree. She’s of little value to me now anyway. But you realize if you lose—if your opponent kills you—she’ll be entirely at my mercy.”
Jamie did look at Cat then, a single glance that seared her like a caress. He fisted his ruined hands. “Don’t worry; I won’t lose.”
****
Out on deck, a ring had been formed of bashed and dented steamies. Some of them, James saw, were no longer operable—killed when he went off kilter. Several of those that still worked leaked steam at an alarming rate. The clouds of hot vapor rose and mingled with the heavy, wet air. The rain had now turned into mist, and, stealing a look over the rail, he saw why.
The river still slipped beneath them, but as a wide, gray band no longer. Instead it seethed, dark green studded with white where it foamed past rocks and outcroppings, hell bent to tumble downstream. Just ahead of them more mist rose and the green water dropped over a cliff. He knew, then, where they were—just above Niagara Falls, approaching the cauldron of the lower Niagara River.
Off Kilter Page 21
