by Mia Strange
I took a deep breath. What had just happened? A trick of the light? The swirling of sea fog? My imagination on steroids? Pulling on everything in me that was brave, my hands trembled. I looked once more.
There they were. Two non-descript guys, so normal looking you would pass them in any crowd and not even see them. They stared straight ahead, still, lifeless, frozen.
I shook my head. “I didn’t see it. I didn’t.”
Are you sure, Skye St John?
Great, Darius.
Fucking Darius.
Our Demon, had just come ‘round to say what? Good morning? I didn’t think so. Now that I carried Traveler Hale’s blood, Darius seemed to have a direct line into my head. Like my private phone number on speed dial that I so did not give him. Not that we had phones anymore. Still.
“Not a perk, Traveler,” I whispered. “Not even.” The only good news here was that Darius was securely locked in our engine, the Dark Horse. And without a key at his disposal, he could never get out.
But as our puzzle piece number two, he was irreplaceable. Darius was a powerful fire elemental, and we needed the demon to set the world right again. We couldn’t do it without him. And damn if he didn’t know it.
“Bye Darius. Time to take your steam bath.”
So hostile, Skye. Just saying-
Without having to try too hard, I slammed my ‘mental’ door right in his blood-red face. And I felt damn good about it. Traveler’s blood may have some perks after all. Darius was beyond dangerous. And being on his radar, did not improve my quality of life. Not at all.
Hopping up into my railcar, I shifted my thoughts to the task at hand. That would be surviving the night.
Surviving the vampire Traveler Hale when he tangled both of us up in silver.
2
An hour later– okay– an hour and fifteen minutes later, because I was a ‘be on time- challenged kind of girl,’ I stood on top of my railcar, waiting for my ride. I didn’t feel guilty, about being late. Not one bit.
Not one bit, because of course, Pilot was not here yet.
He was notorious for his, as Dr. Dark liked to say, ‘tardiness.’ I shook my head, who says tardiness anymore? Dr. Dark in his ‘formal’ mode, that’s who. I did a mental eye roll.
So. Pilot would be late. And as long as he wasn’t making Anastasia Hunt howl, I was okay with that.
I loved being up here. Loved. It.
I loved that I could scan a 360-degree view and see damn near everything. I loved that I could see the water, even if it was as gray as our skies. I loved I could see the crumbling silhouette of the Space Needle, as it listed and swayed in the November winds.
But mostly?
I loved I could see any threats coming our way.
I was so over the element of surprise. At times like this, I wish I was clairvoyant, like Drusilla. Or I wish I had a crystal ball, like that ancient old man in Jersey. The one who smelled like patchouli, wore a toupee, and pinched me in the ass. I wish I could see into the future, see what this night would bring.
I wish I could corral my fear…settle my nerves. I wished I knew if I could come through for Eli tonight. And if I couldn’t? I sure as hell hoped he could come through for me.
Having The Bone Man with me was a huge help. I loved his calming influence, his ‘tell it like it is’ opinions. I loved that he was my friend. Correction. That he was my best friend in this entire steaming, crumbling world. And after him? There weren’t a lot of people standing in line.
I was one of those ‘best of intentions’ kind of friends. You know the ones that always got you into trouble, the kind of trouble that had consequences. Sometimes lethal ones. I thought of Maddie. The guilt I felt had a life of its own, it crawled along the fringes of my mind, always present. It poked at my already bruised heart. A heart that had been stomped on the day I watched Emma torn from my mother’s arms by a rogue army of the rotting dead.
The Bone Man was born with albinism, and at six foot seven, he was one of the last of his kind in the world. He had once been hunted as ruthlessly as me. But now, traveling the rails with Dr. Dark, The Bone Man was safe. Well as safe as anyone of us could be in this dangerous, changing world.
He sat crossed-legged puffing on his mostly empty pipe. His snow-white hair trailed behind him like the steam that spewed from our engine when we were underway.
He still wasn’t talking to me.
I’d emptied his pipe when he wasn’t looking by slamming it against the sole of my combat boot. Caught in the act, because I was anything but stealthy, he refused any sort of conversation. So, I did what I always did. Filled the silence with my own rambling thoughts.
“Do you think we will get out of this show alive?”
Silence.
“Okay. I think you will. Any thoughts about me?”
Silence.
“What are we gonna do about Zombie Phil? It’s not like he can run.” That got a response. If you can call rolling one’s eyes a response.
Guess I couldn’t blame The Bone Man. Tobacco was a rare commodity. And I’d just wasted a bowl full. I was trying to get him to quit smoking. Even though I knew after his opium addiction, he’d needed this crutch to get him through the roughest parts. The ones that left him screaming in the night. But it had been years now since Dr. Dark had rescued him from that dangerous, deadly opium den in the north.
And call me selfish, but I wanted The Bone Man healthy. I wanted him to have a long life. I needed him.
I loved him.
Tonight, after our last show at The Neptune Theater, we would either be chugging out of town on the rails in a safe and sane fashion or, with the help of Darius and his amazing snow shovel, we’d be stoking the midnight fires for the boilers.
Darius could shovel coal faster than anyone else. But let’s face it. Conjuring up the fires straight from Hell would be much easier. But nope, Darius was stubborn that way. Said he didn’t want to owe ‘his boss’ any favors. Still, he’d make sure we would be setting a speed record if we had to make a run for it. As much as Darius raged against us, he knew damn well that if The Gov got ahold of him, life would get much worse.
And really, how bad did he have it? Midnight poker games, all the popcorn he could pop, Aloe Vera for his red, cracking skin…still, all of us in the Academy knew one thing for sure. Darius was dangerous. Deadly dangerous.
Everything hinged on our grand finale, our last act before curtain call. And if things went horribly wrong, having Darius as a backup could be our secret weapon. I prayed it wouldn’t come to that. We all knew that releasing a demon back into the wild was never a safe, or sane, idea.
I shifted my thoughts to the show, wondering what part I would play. I could hear Dr. Dark now, “Hold your loved ones close, and please. We need complete silence, while I present to you, A Vampire in Silver.” I shivered, and not from the cold.
Shaking off the fear, I tried one last time with The Bone Man.
“I’m willing you my clawfoot bathtub.” He raised a white pierced eyebrow. I took that as progress.
“No really, I am. In case, you know, this whole blood bonding with a vampire thing doesn’t work out.”
He sighed long and hard. Took one last draw on his pipe, tapped it on the iron roof and looked up at me. “Skye. Just when I think you can’t come up with another harebrained idea.”
“What?” I had an opening, and boy was I taking it. I’d keep him talking until I lost my voice. Until he forgot he was mad at me. We had fought fights side by side, sometimes almost to the death. Surely a bit of tobacco was not worth holding a grudge.
“What part of me being almost seven feet tall, makes you think I would even fit in your tub?”
Before I could come up with what I’m sure would be an equally ridiculous idea, a whirl of gears and a deafening crank of iron cogs echoed above me. A loud hiss of steam filled the air. A giant shadow loomed. I looked up at the underbelly of The Mistress of Dark Destiny.
The airship’s brass fi
ttings gleamed and winked down at us, while the helium-filled balloon waved and flashed its stripes of black and gold. The airship’s shiny copper bell mounted on the undercarriage chimed shrill and loud, making my ears ring along with it.
I ducked as a braided leather and hemp ladder dropped between us. “Climb up,” a voice yelled.
I could just make out the wheat-blonde head of Pilot as he spun the dirigible’s wheel using his powerful arm. The one made of brass. “We need to head to The Neptune,” he shouted down. “Everyone has left but us.”
The Neptune Theater. I sighed. Showtime in just under twelve hours. Nervous anticipation gripped my chest, and my breath became choppy at best.
I had no doubt of what was to come.
Tonight would end in blood.
Yesterday I had almost welcomed it. Tonight, The Ignored, the ones that started me down the road with this whole blood bound to a vampire, the ones that tried to kill me with a wicked knife laced with black magic, would take front row seats. They would arrogantly demand free drinks, special treatment, and stacks of pitch cards. But in the end, they would get theirs. And, as I subconsciously rubbed my belly scar, I couldn’t say that made me sad.
The Ignored had earned their name just a few months after the wars had ended and magic spewed into our world. When they realized they had not been ‘gifted’ with magic, many of them simply took what they wanted anyway. Soon it had escalated to hideous acts of violence, lawlessness and in some cases insanity. Magic had ‘Ignored’ them, and now, because they were so dangerous, so unpredictable and brutal, we couldn’t ignore them.
And tonight, Bishop West, a powerful Archmage who had thought he killed the last of the bloodline of the Dark alchemists, just might get his, too. Years ago, the Bishop had unknowingly let the last alchemist in the long history of the Dark Dynasty slip right through his fingers.
That alchemist was Dr. Elijah Dark. Our Dr. Dark.
Bishop West and there were four of them, one for each direction and section of what had once been the United States of America, was the most brutal of them all. As the power behind The Gov, and with their ‘mandatory’ Church of Guidance and Good, the Bishops pulled all the strings, held all the cards, and were the true puppet masters of our destiny.
That’s it. I was all out of clichés. But you get the idea, like the Wizard of Oz, they were all-powerful. Oops. That was one more.
Oh, and wait. They were pure evil. Let’s not forget evil.
And tonight, according to Dr. Dark, Bishop West would die.
The thought made my breath come hard and fast, like the promise of hyperventilating and the need for a brown bag. It frightened me, raised my blood pressure, and made it hard to catch a breath.
And what about Traveler Hale? The thought nagged at me, and I chewed on my bottom lip. What would happen when the silver hooks pierced his flesh? Would the protective coating Dr. Dark had conjured up, truly change silver into a harmless base metal? He was the best alchemist in the world. Transformation was his gift. But would it work? Would it protect Traveler? Would it protect me?
We didn’t know. Couldn’t know until the magic in the steel set. And that was at best, just before showtime. At worst, it wouldn’t happen at all.
But we had no choice. The Bishop had demanded proof that we harbored no magical people on our train, and Traveler Hale, the most popular act on our venue, was the one to prove it. The Bishop was not convinced that a mere human could hang from hooks, fly, heal, and continue to do the act over and over and over again.
So as Dark often said, the show must go on.
And Dr. Dark and his Traveling Troupe Academy knew how to put on one hell of a show.
Even if it meant leaving a trail of blood behind.
Tucking my spyglass into the pocket of my hoodie, I grabbed the last rung on the ladder. “I’ll go first,” I said to The Bone Man.
“You do that,” he stood and gestured with his hat.
I swung up and hooked a leg through another rung. Hanging upside down, I kicked up, righted myself, and easily climbed the rope steps to the short distance leading to the deck.
Pilot grasped my hand and heaved me up and over the smooth teak railing of the airship. Like the strings of a guitar, the copper stanchions sang an off-key tune when my toe caught on one and then another.
By habit, I reached out and traced the horseshoe that Dru had hammered on the airship’s oval cabin door. My fingers tingled with magic as the iron touched my skin. The wards were firmly in place, still spilling their protection spells all around the ship. I breathed a sigh of relief. Seems the wards, bobbing high above The King Street Station, had dodged the black spells that the four clocks spilled out, every hour on the hour. Where we were headed, we were going to need them.
“Well, there you are.” Pilot’s face lit with a broad smile.
“Miss me?” I shifted my feet solidly on the teak deck and adjusted to the sway of the ship.
“Sure. Who wouldn’t.”
“Oh, I can think of a few… dozen.” Pilot raised an eyebrow. I smiled sheepishly and shrugged. “Dozens?”
He laughed and gave me a wink. “More like, the entire graduating class.”
“Come on. That’s not fair. It’s made up of mostly wolves. You know the shifters hate me.”
“Well, if you dropped a building on my Alpha? I might have a problem with you too.”
“Accident.”
“When isn’t it?”
“Come on. He’s a werewolf. He survived.”
“Yeah. But you gave the term ‘nose out of shape,’ a whole new meaning.”
I couldn’t help it. I hid a smile. The alpha had healed perfectly…almost. His nose? Not so much. I would have felt bad except for the fact that the Alpha was a bully and a complete and total asshole.
“You feeling better?”
“Much,” I said with a smile.
“Huh.” He scratched his chin with his brass hand. “I didn’t think it was possible.” His green eyes sparkled with humor.
“What?”
“That you could look even better. I dare say. Sexy Skye is back. And then some.”
I looked down at my inside out sweatshirt and faded torn jeans. My miss-matched socks. My clunky boots. I thought about my tangled, twisted hair, my face, bare of makeup. Eyelashes free of theater mascara. Even my burgundy henna highlights had faded from my long soak in my tub. Sexy Skye? Hardly. But in the back of my mind, I knew what Pilot saw.
And maybe he was more right than wrong.
He saw a girl flush with health. With pink cheeks, and full, moist lips. He saw thick glossy hair, where, thanks to a zombie tug and pull, a bald spot the size of Cincinnati should have been.
He saw a twinkle in my eye. And I was so not a twinkle in the eye kind of girl.
He saw what the power of Traveler Hale’s healing blood had done for me. I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment and pushed it from my mind. Right now? I couldn’t, I just didn’t want to deal with the phenomenon of Traveler’s blood. I didn’t want to think of demon warnings and vampires and creatures of the night. That line of thinking? Sucked, in more ways than one. A pun. I know. And a bad one.
Pilot gave me the thumbs up with his brass hand, and I wondered yet again when Dr. Dark had found the time to fix the frozen thumb that had been damaged in the zombie fight to rescue me. I shook my head. No sleep. Dr. Elijah Dark operated with no sleep.
Pilot and I both hung over the thick railing and watched as The Bone Man carefully stashed his pipe inside a pocket of his duster. His parasol disappeared into another. Dialing in his goggles, he gazed up at the craft.
And froze.
The Bone Man did not like to fly.
I shook my head. Helping an almost seven-foot guy up a narrow swinging rope ladder onto the deck of a moving airship was not easy, even if he wanted to come. And I knew damn well he didn’t.
Pilot sighed beside me. “There he goes again. Playing statue.”
A smile of sympathy tugged
at my lips. I didn’t really blame The Bone Man. Airships with their unstable lifting gasses and mostly poor construction were scary as hell. But not ours. The Dark Destiny, with a skeleton built of copper alloy and the building talent of an alchemist the caliber of Elijah Dark, was both solid and safe.
Logically The Bone Man knew this. Emotionally? Well, that was another matter completely.
“Bone Man,” I yelled down. “Grab on. We got you.”
Pilot looked at me and raised his eyebrows. He knew what I did. That even with two of us, maneuvering a guy the size of The Bone Man up the narrow ladder, over the railings, plus weaving around the stanchions, would be damn hard. But not impossible. Never impossible.
It’s just that The Bone Man would have to help.
I watched as The Bone Man reached in his pocket for the security of his pipe.
“Oh, no you don’t,” I yelled down at him. “Even you know better than to smoke around an airship. Filled. With. GAS.
“Thought I’d wait and ride in The Madison with Jin and Turk,” he said not wanting to meet my eyes. He tucked the pipe away. “You know. Take the scenic route.”
“Right. Like the scenery from up here isn’t spectacular,” Pilot yelled down. “From these heights, you can see all of Seattle, even the top of the rusty Space Needle. Or at least what’s left of it. No one goes as high as me. And-”
I kicked Pilot’s leg.
“Ow.” He rubbed his calf and swore.
“Not helping,” I said between gritted teeth as I watched The Bone Man become even paler.
“Oh. Yeah,” he whispered. “Sorry. Still. Damn it, Skye. That’s gonna bruise.”
I rolled my eyes. For the bravest and most fearless air pilot of our time, not my words, our billboards, he sure could be a wuss. I turned back to the problem at hand. “Come on Bone Man,” I shouted. “The Madison left over an hour ago and you know it. And it’s not like you can hitchhike.”
“Plus, we got Phil.” Pilot leaned all the way over the railing, and by balancing on stanchion lines made of braided copper, he looked like he was almost standing on his head. “Come on. I’ll give you a hand.” He reached out with his brass arm and the metal fingers beckoned to The Bone Man in unison.
