Chapter 17
Priest winged his way over the swamp with a bubble of jubilation lodged in his stomach along with the emerald. The crow might have escaped, but she did not have the stone in her beak when she flew out of his mouth. He had it! Now all he had to do was find a private spot and regurgitate. Then he would catch the zeppelin to Paris and leave this disgusting swamp behind forever.
After circling the swamp on lazy long flaps of his huge wings, he found a forest glade, private enough for his business and large enough for him to land. He swooped down, landed lightly on clawed feet, and settled his bulk and his long scaled tail. He could feel the huge stone swirling around in his first stomach. The acid churned and Priest belched flames. In seconds, he had disgorged the contents of his gut. There, in a disgusting pile of stomach contents, lay the Coeur de Flamme.
He quickly morphed back into Draak Priest, picked it up, cleaned it on the grass in the glade and held it up to the light. The red ruby heart glowed from the depths of the emerald and sparkled in the sunlight. Priest crowed with exultation. The stone was finally his. All the power contained in the heart was his to command. Bryn Sahir had lost.
Priest pinched the two ends of the chain together. He thought heat and the tips of his fingers glowed soldering the two broken ends. The crow had ripped the chain when she tore it off the witch’s neck. With the chain once again whole, he hung it around his neck and tucked it under his priestly vestments. It lay against his chest, warm and pulsing just like a human heart.
With the stone hanging around his neck, Priest had a problem. He could not morph back into the dragon. The process would destroy the chain and as a dragon he could not hold anything in his huge claws as small as the emerald. Faced with this dilemma, Priest decided he must walk out of the forest. Decision made, he turned south and headed for New Orleans. He would gather his traps and catch a hack to the airfield where he would find a seat aboard the zeppelin to New York. And if he got lucky, he would find someone riding or driving towards the city quickly. Someone he could command to either give him a horse or their carriage. He pushed his way through thick sharp-leafed palmetto scrub hoping he wouldn’t have to walk far.
* * * *
“Put this on, darling,” Fenix said to Bryn as she huddled on the seat. Bryn took the offered cloak and wrapped it around her naked body as Fingle poled slowly back down the bayou. She’d lost the stone. She could barely look at Fenix. Time would run out now and Fenix would surely die again.
“I failed,” she said. “I had it in my claws. Damn and double damn you Draak Priest.”
“What happened?” Quinn asked softly.
“Priest morphed into his hideous dragon form and incinerated the church. I had the stone in my claws,” she moaned. “I had it.”
“It’s okay, my love,” Quinn crooned from his place at the tiller. “Now come, my girl, don’t stop there. Tell us what happened.”
“Priest swallowed me.”
Fenix gasped. “What?”
“He tried to. I was caught in the dragon’s mouth, holding on for dear life to his teeth. You can’t imagine how disgusting it was and how frightening. I was sure he would swallow me and that would be it. While I was scrambling for a clawhold, I dropped the chain and the stone went into his gullet.”
“Your emerald is in Draak Priest’s stomach?” Quinn’s face reflected extreme astonishment along with righteous horror. “Let us but find him and I will rend him in two. One way or another we shall have the stone.”
“How did you escape alive from his mouth?” Fenix asked.
“He belched fire and I shot out of his mouth on a ball of exploding gas.”
“What happened to Marie LeVeque?” Quinn asked.
“I’m not sure. When last I saw her, she lay under a fallen beam inside the burning church, though I’m sure she survived. She’s too evil to die.”
Fenix scooted close to Bryn and put an arm around her. “Don’t feel bad, darling. You did all you could. Why you almost died.” She laid her head on Bryn’s shoulder. “What would I do without my big sister?”
Tears of frustration and agony dripped out of Bryn’s violet eyes. “I want to save you, dearest sister. I wanted to keep you safe.”
“You do.” Fenix kissed Bryn’s cheek. “Always, you do.”
Quinn steered the flat boat to the approaching dock and Fingle leaped out to tie the boat to a piling. When it was secure, they all disembarked and stood on the dock. “Where should we go?” Fenix asked.
“Where will Priest go?” Quinn mused. “Where would he go to disgorge the stone?”
“He will do that as a dragon,” Bryn said. “Then he will run. He can’t carry the stone as a dragon, so it will have to be as a man.”
“Will he go back to his room to collect his things?” Quinn wondered aloud.
“You’re right, Quinn. He wouldn’t leave New Orleans without his possessions. And he’s very careful to leave no sign of himself behind. And from what you told me, there are things in his room he would not wish discovered.”
Quinn ran down the dock. “I’ll fetch the carriage. We can find him and stop him before he leaves town.”
“You’re right, Bryn, he won’t transform into a dragon now,” Fenix said. “He would be unable to carry either the stone or his possessions in that body.”
Bryn pulled the cloak tight around her. “Yes, and as a man, he will have to travel as we do, slowly. But before we can follow him, I must find suitable garments. I cannot go out in public wrapped in a man’s cloak.”
When Quinn tooled up in the carriage, his horse tied behind, Fingle helped Bryn and Fenix up into the high seat and climbed onto the box behind. Bryn leaned over to speak to Quinn. “We must go back to my apartments. I have to find clothes.”
“It will slow us down too much,” Quinn snapped. “If you have to, turn back into a crow and find Priest for us.”
“I like that. It’s an excellent idea. Eutheos korax!”
Bryn was instantly a crow, the cloak an empty puddle on the vacated seat. She cawed loudly and took off toward the city.
“Can you read her?” Quinn asked Fenix.
She closed her eyes. “Yes, I see the city below. She’s heading for St. Louis Cathedral. Follow her.”
Quinn picked up his whip, cracked it and the carriage shot off toward the city behind galloping horses with the full moon lighting their way.
* * * *
Priest had been lucky. He ran across a man driving his mule toward the city by moonlight. The farm cart behind the mule was piled high with collard greens and turnips with greens. The turnippy scent filled his offended nostrils. He ignored his distaste, shoved the man, now in a trance, off the bench seat of the cart, and whipped up the mule. The stubborn creature resisted the whip and all his efforts to mentally encourage it, plodding along at one pace no matter what he did. Priest stopped it, shoved all the stinking greens off the back and resumed his seat. The mule looked back reproachfully at him when he struck the animal repeatedly with the whip, but kept up the one sedate pace. Priest groaned with frustration, but at least he wasn’t walking.
When he arrived at St. Louis Cathedral, he abandoned the cart and the mule and ran into the Holy Father’s living quarters. It only took a few minutes to pack his belongings in two carpet bags. Then he stood in the center of the room, lifted his hands and erased all signs of his presence. A whirlwind rose in the center of the room and spun into every corner stirring up dust and erasing all signs of Draak Priest. When it died, he opened the door and slipped into the stone passageway. The priests would soon rise and begin their daily duties. He needed to hurry.
Day would dawn in less than an hour. The zeppelin was scheduled to take off for New York and then Paris at nine o’clock. It would take him at the least two hours to get out of the city to the airfield.
Once he was away from the church and in Jackson Square, Priest breathed deeply of the predawn air and freedom. Joy filled his heart. Soon he would be a young man filled wit
h the juice of a hard cock and a tight pair of testicles. He would fuck every woman he saw and all of them would be his thanks to the green stone hanging under his vestments.
The square was uncharacteristically quiet. No hacks sat on Decatur Street waiting fares. He would have to resume his fight with the mule. He closed his eyes and summoned the stubborn animal drawing the farm cart. A movement in the middle of the square caught his eye and he spotted the mule cropping grass. The creature might be slow, but he had the stamina and the strength to get him all the way to the airfield beside Lake Pontchartrain. He walked briskly across the square, tossed his bags into the cart and whipped up the mule. It took off at a rapid shuffle and Priest had to be satisfied.
* * * *
“Bryn spotted him,” Fenix said. “He’s driving a mule cart toward the lake.”
Quinn pulled up the two steaming horses and walked them down the cobbled streets. “We’re almost to the Garden District. We have to turn around.”
Fenix groaned. “We’ll never catch him.”
“It’s almost dawn,” Quinn said. “This is the morning Tomlinson said he was going to test his new flying machine. He’s in a farmer’s field quite near here.”
“A flying machine?”
“It’s his second model and experimental, but yes, he’s trying to fly like the veritable birds.”
“Has he succeeded? Sam had one in London. It crashed into the Thames.”
“Tomlinson took off from a cliff with the last one, flew for a short space, and then crashed into the sea. I believe he told me the engine was too heavy. He’s been working on a lighter version that he assures me will fly.”
“And precisely why should we find him?”
Quinn tilted his head. “Why to get him to fly over the city and follow Priest, of course.”
“Impossible,” Fenix snorted.
“I’m sorry, Fenix, but in the past week many things I thought were impossible or highly improbable unfolded right before my astonished eyes. Believe me when I say Tomlinson will fly.”
“I’ll try to convey your message to my sister.” Fenix closed her eyes and became quiet. In Quinn’s opinion, she looked very pale and drawn. Her porcelain skin was crisscrossed with blue veins. Even the skin on her face seemed translucent, as though he could he look right through it and see her fragile bones. He noticed her hands, demurely folded in her lap, shook with a slight tremor. She clutched them tightly together to still the shaking, but could not altogether stop it.
Quinn had to walk the sweating horses for a mile to cool them. He put the pair into a trot when he entered the dirt lane where Farmer Huggate’s cow pasture was located. His spirits rose when he saw the dray Tomlinson used to transport the flying machine parked beside a fence. As the first rays of the sun sprayed light through the oak trees growing on the west side of the pasture, he saw Tomlinson and a large black man pushing the experimental aircraft to the far side of the field. A group of startled cows huddled under the trees mooing and milling uncertainly. Quinn sighed. This had all the signs of another one of Tomlinson’s disastrous experiments.
Fenix sat up suddenly and stared. “Where are we?”
“Did you contact Bryn?”
Fenix nodded. “She’s still following Priest. She told me, it looks like he’s headed to the lake.”
“The lake? What’s out there? I thought he might catch the train. It seemed like the logical thing for him to do.”
Fenix scrunched up her face. “The airfield. Sam’s out there working on the zeppelin. At least she was yesterday. She was supposed to install her new steam engine. She, like your Tomlinson, has been modifying the bulkier heavy engine they were using into something lighter and faster. She told me she’d developed a new kind of fuel as well.”
“What an amazing coincidence. Tomlinson has done the same thing. Maybe flying is in our future.”
Fenix shrugged. “If there were problems, which there always are, she could still be at the airfield. I remember she told us the zeppelin is supposed to fly to New York and then Paris this morning.”
“That’s where Priest must be going. He plans to ride the zeppelin thinking it will take him far away before we can catch him.” Quinn struck his thigh with his palm. “And he will succeed if Tomlinson cannot get his infernal flying machine into the air.”
“Will we all fit?”
Quinn pulled the curricle behind Tomlinson’s dray. “No, we will not. Fingle, take Miss Fenix to the airfield by Lake Pontchartrain. Stop and change horses. There’s a posting house on Canal and North Rampart I’ve used before. Charge it to me.”
Quinn leaped out of the carriage and handed the reins to Fingle. “Get there as fast as you can. I’ll try to do the same.”
Chapter 18
Quinn ran across the field toward Tomlinson. His assistant had rolled the flying machine all the way to the end of the field and the top of a hill. When Tomlinson reached the summit, he bent over and began fiddling with the engine. Quinn raced up and stood behind him panting and gasping. Tomlinson heard him and did not even flinch. “If you must stand there gasping, at least make yourself useful. There is a full jug of my special fuel inside the cockpit. Please fetch it for me.”
“Nice to see you, too,” Quinn said, but he grinned as he said it. Tomlinson was so pragmatic.
“Don’t have time for pleasantries, do we? If you are here and in such a rush, there must be a great need for this aircraft to work.”
“Great deduction.” Quinn handed him the jug of clear fuel. “We need to fly to the airfield outside the town as fast as possible. Bryn’s headed there as well as Fenix and the Soho murderer. We have to catch him.” Quinn tapped on the jug. “What is this stuff again? It looks like water.”
Tomlinson took it and held it carefully. “Don’t slosh it around like that. It’s very volatile.” He opened a brass cap attached to the fuel tank by a brass chain and carefully poured the contents of the jug into the tank. “We shall fly to the airfield. If this contraption works as I planned.”
“What happens if it doesn’t?”
Tomlinson tilted his head looking just like a sparrow. “I’m sure you can figure that out for yourself.” He replaced the brass cap on the tank and tossed the empty jug into the grass. “It’s time.”
Quinn closed his eyes. Tomlinson loved melodrama. “Time for what?”
“Time to start the flying machine, of course. Stand in front of it and spin the main propeller. I will handle the controls.”
Tomlinson clambered into the seat of the machine and pulled a pair of heavy black rubber goggles over his eyes. He tossed another pair to Quinn. “Put these on.”
Quinn fixed them over his face and blinked. Everything was tinted yellow. He grabbed the central propeller and spun it. The two propellers on the wings spun as well. Tomlinson did something inside the cockpit and the engine coughed. A cloud of black smoke erupted from a smoke stack on the side of the engine. The chug chug of the steam engine pumping sounded strong and true. Quinn heard water bubbling deep inside the engine. The chugging increased until it was a steady hum instead of chugging.
“The pressure gauge says we can take off. The boiler is hot!” Tomlinson waved to Quinn. “Get in.”
The propellers spun wildly as Quinn threw himself into the back seat. Tomlinson opened the throttle and the aircraft began rumbling down the hill. “There’s a belt back there. Strap yourself in.”
Quinn was terrified. In his entire life, he’d never felt this much fear. He fought to control it as he scrabbled around under him and behind and found the safety straps. When he had them cinched tightly around his body, the aircraft was halfway down the hill and going faster and faster. Cows scrambled in all directions as Quinn clutched the sides of the flying machine and Tomlinson screamed from the front. “Hold on. We’re going up!”
Quinn couldn’t possible hold on any tighter. His heart filled his throat as the flying craft lifted into the air inches from the fence at the end of the field. Frightened cows ran
everywhere, mooing. Quinn turned to look back at them, ignoring the fact they were now above the trees.
“We’re flying!” Tomlinson yelled.
“I know,” Quinn croaked.
Tomlinson used a strange stick to bank the aircraft in a slow turn. When it was finished, they were headed toward Lake Pontchartrain and the airfield. Below them Quinn saw trees, swamp and isolated houses. He relaxed slightly; the takeoff had been beyond terrifying, but this wasn’t so bad.
* * * *
Bryn circled high above the farm cart with Priest in it, thinking long and hard about her options. Priest would have to be stopped before he got on the zeppelin. If they didn’t stop him, she’d have to follow him, and with Fenix this close to death, her sister would have to go as well which meant Fenix better get here fast.
When Priest had five miles left to travel to reach the zeppelin, she went looking for her sister and Quinn. Where could they be? She saw a shadow approaching over the ground. What in the world? The wind carried her higher and she opened her wings to float on the currents. Below her, a strange aircraft flew leaving a trail of black smoke behind. It seemed to be headed for the airfield which when she thought about it was logical. It was an aircraft.
She swooped lower to examine it, and if she’d had a mouth, she would have smiled. Quinn sat in the back seat. He was coming to the rescue. His assistant, Tomlinson, sat in the front guiding the machine.
She circled and dropped to fly just above Quinn’s head, cawing loudly. If Quinn was here where then was her sister? Quinn’s hands were gripping the sides of the craft so hard his knuckles were white. He looked up and saw her but did not loosen his grip. Bryn knew where he was going and was tired of flying above him, so she dropped back. She swooped lower, found the road to the lake and flew along it. There was Priest, savagely whipping the poor mule in the traces.
She swooped close and began pecking his head. He slapped at her and she grabbed a hunk of his hair. When she flew up yanking it, he pointed a finger at her. She dropped the hair just in time to avoid being hit by a bolt of black fire.
The Flight of the Zeppelin Page 12
