The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2)

by Cassandra Duffy

  “For people to live, something has to die,” she said.

  “Sure, but I doubt vegetarians feel remorse for their rampant cabbage genocide,” Liam said, trying to inject some levity into the conversation.

  Claudia found she didn’t need to force her little laugh at his joke. She turned to look at him when they reached the road. They were flanked by the setting sun, which broke through the clouds at the last moment to light their path in a golden glow.

  “You are a good reminder to me to not be so serious,” she said, meaning it as a compliment for him and a reprimand for herself.

  He took her in his arms and kissed her. It wasn’t a surprise, nor was it unwelcome, but it felt sad that it came when it did. She grasped the back of his neck with one hand and his muscular shoulder with the other. He tilted his head down to hers, and she lifted hers to meet him. The passion of the moment, kissing on the lonely road lit by the setting sun, didn’t fizzle with the direness of their situation as Claudia suspected. Rather, the kiss, which stretched on long past what either of them likely intended, built something of a fire in Claudia, bright enough to outshine the primary concerns of survival. When their lips finally parted, she was a little frightened about how easily desire for him distracted her from the task of keeping them both alive.

  Chapter 24:

  A Night Interrupted.

  They walked on until the evening threatened with darkness. Their path was all downhill toward the ocean, ending in what looked to be old little league fields. The silence of the uninhabited peninsula base and the calmness of the night let them hear the distant crash of waves. They sought out shelter in one of the old dugouts as the sky darkened under gathering storm clouds as well as the coming night.

  Claudia thought they were probably far enough away from any position of tactical importance and well away from any travel routes the Slark might use. A fire would be safe, and probably preferable, since the only thing less appetizing than Slark meat was raw Slark meat. They created a low fire, shielded slightly at the open mouth of the dugout, below the cement lip. The cave-like structure intended to hold a baseball team caught the warmth of the cheery little fire, and soon they were comfortable in a way they hadn’t been since leaving the City of Broken Bridges days prior.

  Unfortunately, the dugout roof, in addition to the heat, caught the vile smell of cooking Slark meat. Cooking the alien meat over the fire was simple as the limbs seemed tailor-made for spit roasting, but the smell, the unbearable stench of the meat, was something neither of them anticipated. Liam gave description to the stink in saying it smelled like someone dropped a burning hunk of plastic into a bag of wet dog hair. Claudia had no idea how he would know what that smelled like, although she agreed the odors were probably similar.

  They ended up throwing the meat out into the dirt field, completely unconcerned that it would attract any predators. Liam postulated it might even keep animals away. The only benefit of the failed experiment in Slark meat was a momentary relief from their hunger. As the memory of the smell faded and the stench itself floated away on the ocean breeze, their hunger returned in full force.

  They cuddled into the back corner of the dugout resting with Liam’s back against the wall, and Claudia curled up along his side with her head against his chest. She could hear his heartbeat, slow and regular, as though he didn’t have a care in the world. She could also hear his stomach complaining bitterly about the promise of food not being fulfilled.

  The rain began to fall, knocking out their fire and dropping them into blackness. They fumbled to set up rain catchers for their canteens and returned to their huddled position in the dry corner.

  The darkness and the pounding rain brought Claudia back to Utah and the mudslide that nearly killed her. She imagined if Liam could hear her heart, it would be pounding frightfully. They drifted off into sleep troubled by hunger with Claudia drawing comfort from Liam’s protective arms around her and Liam pulling warmth from Claudia’s irradiated heat.

  †

  Claudia’s dream came in as vivid as reality, which was unusual for her. Most of her dreams had a fuzzy edge with bleeding colors and muffled sounds. This one rivaled reality for its clarity. She knew she was in Tombstone from the people, but the building was Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall from Las Vegas. She was dressed to perform in her black fishnets, shiny blue hot pants, matching go-go boots, and a frilly black bustier. Her hair was up in tight spiral curls in an ever shifting hairdo possible only in a dream.

  She was singing her usual set of Katy Perry songs with a few Taylor Swift numbers interspersed. Her audience of Tombstone men and Raven attendants paid close attention to her every word, her every move, and her writhing, changing hair. In the audience, walking among the darkened faces gathered around the tables was Veronica, dressed entirely in white. Claudia felt unreasonably happy to see her. She held out her hand, offering to bring Veronica on stage with her.

  Veronica took her time making her way to the front of the crowd. She accepted the offered hand, and Claudia helped her onto the small, round stage, lit in pale blue. Veronica was in her typical saloon girl attire of knee boots, cleavage creating corseted dress, and feather boa, but it was all white, where Claudia remembered the outfit having a lot of pink and green before.

  “You abandoned me on the bridge,” Claudia said, ending her set prematurely.

  “You abandoned me in Tombstone,” Veronica replied.

  “I am here now.”

  “So am I.”

  Veronica walked behind Claudia, gently nudging her shoulders whenever Claudia tried to turn to follow her. Veronica seemed determined to keep Claudia facing her audience in the darkened hall, and Claudia relented. She waited while Veronica walked back and forth behind her. Finally, Veronica’s fingertips grazed across Claudia’s exposed shoulders, sending tingles shooting across her skin. Soon Veronica’s lips and hot breath followed. Claudia could smell the strawberry lip gloss Veronica favored. She had no idea where or how Veronica kept finding it in a world that had long since lost any interest in manufacturing such frivolities. Her musings on Veronica’s remarkable scavenging skills were interrupted by Veronica’s hands making their way up the backs of Claudia’s legs. Veronica’s fingertips plucked across Claudia’s fishnets until they finally came to rest on the swell of Claudia’s ass.

  “Sing for me,” Veronica purred into Claudia’s ear, accompanying the command with a firm squeeze of her behind.

  Claudia opened her mouth to sing, but her throat suddenly felt too dry to manage the notes. She licked her lips and swallowed to no avail. Veronica, for her part, didn’t seem deterred by Claudia’s sudden performance anxiety. She pressed on, sliding her hands around Claudia’s hips from back to front. Claudia could feel her stepping in closer, pressing her breasts against the backs of Claudia’s shoulders. The firmly held cleavage, encased in lacy frills was thrilling and welcome after such a long absence.

  Claudia tried to sing again, this time finding enough space in her parched throat to eek out a soft melody belonging to no particular song Claudia could think of. Veronica seemed pleased by the tiny success. She nibbled at Claudia’s earlobe, sending shivers down Claudia’s spine. Veronica’s hands parted ways from their tandem work; one came up to cup Claudia’s left breast while the other pressed down along Claudia’s stomach until it slipped into the top of her hot pants.

  Claudia sang, full throated, in French, the old Edith Piaf song Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien. It seemed like such a horribly inappropriate song to sing to Veronica of all people. Regretting nothing, the good or bad she’d done in the past, was all necessary, even abandoning her Raven sisters and her lover in Tombstone. It seemed like a lifetime ago, as though it happened to someone else.

  Veronica’s hands were heavenly, one massaging her breast with gentle, urgent caresses and the other teasing her lips through her fishnet leggings. Veronica’s voice came to her ear, whispering the lyrics to the song Claudia was singing. Claudia was glad of the help as she imagined she would
lose her place otherwise. She wanted more of Veronica, wanted desperately to turn and kiss her former lover, but Veronica held her fast to the performance.

  “Avec Mes Souvenirs J'ai Allume Le Feu, Mes chagrins, Mes Plaisirs, Je N'ai Plus Besoin D'eux,” Claudia sang—Veronica’s left hand slipped in the side of Claudia’s bustier to caress her bare flesh. She was hot, only getting hotter, and dying for more when Veronica finally slipped a single digit between the netting guarding her pussy and inside her.

  Claudia could feel how easily Veronica’s finger slid between her lips, how much she’d really wanted to be touched in such a way for too long without relief. Esme, Olivia, and Liam were forgotten in the moment, only to appear before Claudia’s very eyes. The trio was walking among the audience, just as Veronica had, curious eyes locked on her, all dressed in white. Claudia sang on, her voice picking up tiny gasps between the lyrics as Veronica’s soaked finger made its way up to Claudia’s clit, accompanied with a near electrical surge of pleasure. Claudia’s body wanted to buckle around Veronica’s hand, but she held her up, never relinquishing the hold she had on Claudia’s breast.

  The audience picked up on the beat of the music and the building pleasure of the public sex act. The faceless patrons of the saloon stomped in unison, missing several beats at a time before bringing in another thunderous stomp that threatened to shake the room. The lights above the stage flashed in odd intervals, illuminating Esme, Olivia, and Liam’s faces when they did. The trio looked on passively at Claudia’s building pleasure, watched without expression as Claudia writhed lewdly in Veronica’s embrace.

  Claudia knew it was a dream, knew it was a product of sexual frustration brought on by Liam and guilt left over from Veronica, she knew it wasn’t real. She didn’t care. It was an earth-shattering sexual experience to climax on stage at the hands of such an insistent and wanted lover in full view of the three sexual partners she would gladly invite into bed at a moment’s notice.

  She climaxed screaming, losing the song entirely in the act. Her voice vanished in the thunderous stomping of the audience. A crash and a white flicker of light over an inhuman face in the audience shot Claudia from sleep.

  She couldn’t remember where she was in awaking to the storm. Part of her thought she was still on stage and part of her thought she was back in the hellish canyon in Utah. She didn’t recognize the field or the dugout in the darkness, didn’t really recognize the world until a flash of lightning brought a strobe’s worth of daylight to the stormy, black night. It was enough, just enough to catch another glimpse of the face from her dream. Across the field from them, at the edge of the derelict fence they’d hurled the cooked Slark limbs at, was a wicked, reptilian face, with eyes that reflected a red glow from the lightning.

  Claudia leapt to her feet and out of Liam’s arms, startling him awake as well. The storm raged down on them, pouring rain, roaring with thunder, and flashing with cracks of lightning. The next strobe of light confirmed what Claudia’s mind might have confused in coming out of sleep. Worse still, the Slark on the other side of the field wasn’t the most immediate concern. What she could only describe as mutant Rottweilers were racing toward the dugout.

  “Skate, skate, skate!” Claudia shouted, repeating the alarm she’d heard Alfie use.

  It seemed to work to galvanize Liam. He was on his feet, rifle in hand a moment after. She tore at the holster for her Walther beneath her coat, getting it out an instant before a heavy body slammed into her, knocking her to the cement floor.

  The dog creature reeked of spoiled fish and death. The lightning flash illuminated its mangled maw coming toward her face and Claudia knew she was going to die. An instant before the creature’s jaws could clamp over her face, Liam’s rifle tore off several rounds into the beast. His next few shots sprayed upward as a second monstrosity struck him. Claudia struggled to extricate herself from beneath the dead mutant hound. She’d dropped her pistol and couldn’t imagine she would be able to find it in the rainy darkness.

  She drew her hunting knife and leapt to Liam’s aid. He was fairing better against the creature than she had, keeping his feet beneath him even after it leapt on him, although the next flash of lightning showed he’d sacrificed his arm to its mouth to keep it from finding his throat. Claudia found the dangling beast with her left hand to be sure she wouldn’t hit Liam in the darkness. She grabbed hold of it around the middle and stabbed hard several times, hoping to find a kidney or knick the liver. The dog yelped, released Liam’s arm, and began thrashing against her. One of its front paws swung around, knocked her head to one side, and raked down her shoulder. Talons shredded her jacket and buried themselves in her flesh. She shrieked, stepped back, and tripped over the corpse of the first mutant dog. The wounded animal in her arms managed to squirm from her, limping away with her knife still buried in its flank.

  She struggled to her knees, unsure if she would make it to her feet or if it was even a good idea to try. The lip of the dugout was protecting her from incoming fire like an army trench so long as she stayed low. Her plan, which was fear-based and shaky to begin with, backfired immediately when a powerful hand grasped her tangled, wet ponytail and yanked her off her feet by it. She screamed, grabbed at the hand to prevent it from tearing her hair out at the scalp, and kicked her legs to try to get them under her. She was pulled painfully out of the dugout and hurled into the field. She slid across the mud on her side, coming to rest several yards out.

  A flash lit up the sky. A Gator, perhaps even larger than the one she’d killed in Carson City, was the unseen attacker who had thrown her aside so casually. Liam was climbing out of the dugout to give it a fight even with his tattered right arm at his side. He’d found her Walther somehow, but rather than use it in his own fight, he looked her straight in the eye on the next lightning flash and threw it to her.

  It was a miracle of astounding proportions that the pistol even made it to her and even more amazing that she caught it despite the lights being turned out again before it reached her. The gun struck her in the chest, and she managed to get her arms beneath it to clutch it against her stomach. She heard heavy paws splashing through the muddy field toward her at a full charge on her right. She barely managed to roll away from the sound, taking a glancing blow from the attacking hound that knocked her backward, but didn’t contain the same force or fangs as the first hit she’d taken. She waited for the lightning flash, hoped it would come before the unwieldy and heavy animal could get itself stopped and turned around to make another charge. She yanked the slide to chamber a round. The sky flashed in white, just enough to see by. Claudia found the snarling, drooling monstrosity. It had lumpy flesh with patchy fur and pulsing, vascular muscles below its sore-riddled skin. She fired off three quick shots, satisfied with the hits as the dog yelped and fell before the lights went out again.

  She couldn’t shoot into the fight between the Gator and Liam. In the darkness and rain, she would hit them both or nothing at all. As futile as it was to try, she lunged at the barely visible wrestling match that Liam appeared to be losing. One of the Slark’s upper hands managed to swat her across the face with a remarkably hard backhand that sent stars flashing across her vision. Before she could recover from the staggering blow, he had her by the throat.

  A flash of lightning illuminated the world just long enough to see Liam’s knife come down on the Gator’s hand around Claudia’s throat, cleaving it off at the wrist. Claudia fell backward with the lopped-off hand still at her throat while Liam and the rest of the Slark tumbled into the dugout. An instant later, the night lit up with an explosion not from the sky as Liam’s remaining grenade exploded inside the sunken, cement baseball team bunker.

  Only the sounds of the storm remained after the lingering effects of the concussive explosion wore off. Claudia sobbed weakly as the rain fell on her. It took everything in her not to simply lay there until morning. She rolled onto her stomach and crawled tentatively toward the edge of the dugout where impenetrable darkness once ag
ain overtook the cement enclosure. She waited at the edge, listening hard for any signs of life. There was no groaning, no faint breathing, and nothing stirring.

  “Liam,” she called weakly into the darkness, waiting for a response, any kind of response, which never came. “Liam!” she cried again, this time loud enough to be heard not only by a wounded man in front of her, but anything else in the area that might be listening. Still, no response.

  She pulled herself to her feet, wrapped her arms around her chest to hold in what little heat she could, and began walking. The destination wasn’t important. She was fairly certain she was heading north, although she doubted direction mattered either. She was freezing, wounded, bleeding, unarmed, and now completely alone. More than that, with death so obviously chasing her down, she started to welcome its arrival.

  Chapter 25:

  Trudging Toward Glory or Something Like It.

  Bruce Coffey and his top hat mechanics worked straight through the 24 hours given to them to upgrade the torch brigade tractors into something useful for war. Olivia asked for thirty useable platforms—the top hats delivered sixty. Bruce pointed out not all were armed or armored for frontline combat, that some were fitting only for support, but he assured her at least forty were ready for full-scale war. Olivia looked over her new column of armored vehicles and could see what he meant. Many looked like World War I holdovers, back before tanks became gargantuan feats of technological triumph, and some were clearly just mobile, armored machinegun nests. They would still be slow, loud, and likely couldn’t hold more than four people each including the driver. She thought the tanks fit her soldiers well—they weren’t fleet-footed, but they likely had more fight in them than met the eye.