He scowled. Engineers. He loved them and cursed them at the same time. “We need to end this fight now.”
“She’s powered by an aether engine. If I can disable it, she’ll just be like any typical four-armed freak.” Penny pulled large pliers from her bag.
“I’ll distract her,” he whispered. “Keep her talking till I get in position.”
“Shouldn’t be hard.”
Penny slapped him hard on the shoulder in a manly sort of way, which earned her a look though she didn’t notice. Her attention was already focused on the target.
“So, Baroness,” Penny shouted into the temple, “I’ve enjoyed seeing some of your little gadgets. But I guess you didn’t have time to prepare any real weapons, huh?”
The Baroness called out, “Your derivative technology is impressive, Miss Carter. Professor Watkins indicated you were an excellent mimic.”
Penny’s face twisted in spite to hear her mentor’s name so casually spoken by that fiend. “Funny. He never mentioned you to me. I guess your research didn’t leave much of an impression at Cambridge.”
“It’s difficult for idiots to understand the level on which I work. The laborer turning the same bolt day after day can hardly grasp the vision of the engineer who designed the machine. Some people are never truly qualified to face their greatest challenge. For example, the time I just spent delaying you has allowed my mechanicals to repair themselves.” The disabled machine-gun arm lifted as if it were brand-new.
“Repair?” Penny grumbled. “How damned smart is she?”
Malcolm dove from behind a distant column, rolling to his feet. He ran, guns blazing. He tried for a headshot. There was little enough target with the Baroness’s blasted helmet, but it would get her attention. The first shot knocked her head to the side, and the second and third brought the whistling whine of escaping steam. Malcolm smirked. Dodge that, you four-armed blighter.
One of the Baroness’s mechanized arms rotated ninety degrees behind her seemingly of its volition. Something rattled and clicked, and it vomited a long snakelike appendage from its forearm. Her metal fingers grasped the cable and whipped it toward Malcolm.
He realized too late he was within striking range. The whip wrapped around his chest, pinning his arms against his torso. He tried to raise his Lancasters toward her, but a current of energy surged through the metal whip, locking his muscles and even clamping his jaw shut. The robot arm yanked and he toppled over like a dead tree. The whip began to retract, dragging him closer to the Baroness. He lost his grip on the pistols. He couldn’t move his head and his only view was the stars etched on the volcanic ceiling. He heard Baroness Conrad yelling something to Penny. He feared he had stumbled into a stupid trap, and he prayed Penny wouldn’t do something foolish to rescue him.
A strange shape moved into Malcolm’s line of sight. To his shock, he realized it was Imogen. Her skin showed a milky white against the dark stone. She had torn her dress short so it wouldn’t encumber her legs. Her shoes were off and her wide-splayed toes and fingers clutched the rippled surface of the ceiling. She scuttled over the Baroness and dropped like a spider on top of her.
Startled, the Baroness reared back, unsure what had attacked her. Penny burst from cover and raced forward. Malcolm could do nothing more than gape like a fish on a hook. Hogarth ran up to free him, but the moment the manservant’s hands touched the coils, he too locked rigid.
Jane appeared and grabbed Hogarth. The current crawled over her as well, but had no effect. She pulled the big man away, breaking his grip. As soon as Hogarth’s hands were released, he gasped and fell backward. The manservant lumbered to his feet, shaking off the effects like a big bear, and rounded on the Baroness. He braced his feet and locked one of her arms in a wrestling hold. Jane touched the whip and a visible bolt of light sped back up the snake into the mechanical arm, ending in an explosive shower of sparks. Malcolm could move once again although he was stiff like an old man as he tried to lurch to his feet.
Imogen was still hanging on to the Baroness’s head, dodging wild blows from mechanical arms. Her quills pinged off armor, but she spotted bare skin through a seam at the back of the Baroness’s neck. She jammed her forearm against the gap in the armor and stabbed several quills into flesh.
Penny had positioned herself behind the villain’s back, nearly lost in the cloud of steam escaping from the damaged armor. She jammed her pliers into the circuitry built into the Baroness’s back, her hands moving quickly and deliberately. She knew exactly what she was doing. Even though the Baroness’s work was intricate in construction, it was also clear in design and function.
Malcolm pulled his long blade from his coat as he staggered up to the Baroness. He jammed the blade between armor plates on her side and shoved it in as hard as he could, twisting it back and forth to widen the gap. It didn’t go in nearly far enough to kill, but he took great pleasure in the scream of pain. The Baroness grabbed his arms. Her metal fingers dug deep into his all-too-tender flesh. She started pulling him apart. His scream matched her own.
There was another loud snap and a harsh tearing sound of metal against metal. Penny fell back with a glowing piece of metal in her pliers. The Baroness shuddered. Her remaining limbs flailed as she lost control of them with a cry of fear and despair. She thrashed with unrestrained mechanical power and her armor threw off a massive electrical pulse that blasted her attackers aside. The Baroness screamed with pain as her own mechanical body revolted against her. She ran toward the open door, slamming against the jamb, losing her helmet. With eyes clear, the Baroness fled.
“She’s getting away,” Penny shouted, already legging it after the escaping Baroness.
“What did you do to her?” Malcolm asked breathlessly as he retrieved his pistols. The fight had taken more out of him than he cared to admit.
“She had a little siphon crystal like the altar and that goon Simon mentioned from India. So I took it; she won’t be repairing herself. And I made some dirty adjustments to her aether motor.”
They ran out of the stifling temple into the hurricane of heat that was London. They both stopped in their tracks. The city around them was ablaze. Smoke obscured much of the familiar cityscape, which was jagged and broken. Streams of lava slid along paving stones, burning swathes in the earth. Dead bodies littered the ground. The temple itself was stable, but when they reeled dumbstruck off the steps, they felt the ground shaking. Gaios was ripping the city to pieces.
Penny managed to overcome her shock and climbed on a pile of bricks. “There!”
They were off and running again. The Baroness could be seen just ahead of them, racing south. Her metal limbs hung useless.
“She’s heading for the river! If she has a boat there, we’ll lose her.” Malcolm sprinted, forcing his legs to pump harder despite the pain spiking through them. He pulled ahead of Penny, but the rubble in the streets and the chaos of injured and terrified people hampered him. “I thought you took out her infernal engine.”
“I didn’t have time to shut it down completely. It must be powering her heart too, or Imogen’s quills would’ve stopped her.”
The Baroness raced into the ruins of a house. Malcolm leapt over the remains of the stoop and ducked inside after her. There was a hole in the back wall. As the Baroness ran toward it she slammed her shoulder into the bricks. The wall started to collapse behind her. Malcolm spun and blocked the charging Penny just in time. He turned her aside, covering her as the cascade of bricks crashed to the ground. The rubble scattered across the carcass of the town house, raising a cloud of dust. Malcolm dragged Penny after him, following and fighting against the heat and thick air.
By the time they scrambled over the bricks, the Baroness had gained considerable distance, weaving through narrow lanes. Both Malcolm and Penny were laboring for breath, but neither would relent. Between buildings, the Thames came into view. She was going to reach the river before they could stop her. Malcolm could see green smoke boiling from a docked boat, simil
ar to the one they had hijacked to Gaios’s island.
Without breaking stride, the Baroness weaved around overturned wagons and vaulted the many bodies that littered the broken street. She reached the steps down to the river where her boat waited with its funnel steaming and ready. A quick hop onto the deck and she would be away. The Baroness glanced back with an obnoxious grin. She would have a waved a jaunty hand if her arms had worked.
“No,” Penny moaned, coming to a halt in the center of the street.
Malcolm ran a few steps more and stopped too. His fingers trembled with exhaustion as he tried to jam thick cartridges into the chambers of one of his pistols. Penny had something in her hand and she threw it hard. He realized it was one of her clockwork messenger birds. It buzzed through the air and struck the Baroness in the back of the head hard like a cricket ball. With no way to catch herself, she fell forward in a hard tumble on the stone steps to the edge of the water.
Several men scrambled from the boat and laid hands on her. They heaved the Baroness to her feet where she cursed and bodily shoving them away. They all shrank back.
Malcolm braced himself with his feet apart. He grasped the wrist of his gun hand to steady his aim. The Baroness stepped to the edge of the jetty. The heavy paddle wheels of the steamer churned the water. She smiled at him, licking blood from her lips. Then Malcolm’s bullet put a red streak across her unprotected temple.
Her eyes went wide. She was slammed off the dock. She hit the bow of the steamer and hung there for a split second. Her arms flew helplessly around her. She bounced off the rail and splashed into the river. Her head bobbed up once and she screamed. Then a heavy plank of the paddle wheel swept down and smashed her beneath the water. Her metal form rose again briefly before another paddle crashed onto her and dragged her under the dark river.
Malcolm and Penny reached the edge of the jetty. The steamboat was roaring away into the river with its crew hardly sparing a look back at their lost mistress. Malcolm kept his pistol trained on the boat in case they attempted an attack, but the crew had nothing in mind but escape.
Penny stared down at the foaming water slapping heavily against the dock.
Malcolm returned his pistol to its holster. “It’s over. With that iron body she’s on the bottom of the Thames where she’ll stay. She’s an anchor now.” His hand reached over to grab hers and she turned to him. She let out a hard breath and nodded.
They both turned around and saw Jane stricken. She leaned on the side of a demolished building, a ruin of bricks, staring at the dead lying around her. A trembling hand clutched her glasses as if trying to decide whether to drag them off her face so she could see no more. Malcolm turned her to look at him.
“Jane.”
Now she covered her ears, trying to block out the sound of the dying city. Her tear-streaked face was inconsolable. “I did this. This is all my fault.”
“That’s a load of shite. This is about that madman. This is his doing, his revenge for an age-old crime. You were nothing but a pawn.”
She searched his face for redemption. “But I did what he asked.”
“To save the life of your father. I would have done the same for anyone here.”
She took in the devastation around her, her voice but a shadow. “How can one man do all of this?”
“Because he believes he can do as he pleases. We believe otherwise. You can do good or ill. He chose poorly. What about you?”
Something changed in Jane’s eyes as she looked up at him. The fear and despair faded to be replaced with purpose. “What do I have to do?”
Chapter 23
After leaving Malcolm to handle the Baroness, Kate and the others followed Simon down the steep slope into the stygian blackness. The cave walls around them were alive and shifting constantly. They had to move quickly to stay ahead of it as the very floor tried to drag them back to the main temple above. In the distance a deep red glow beckoned.
It was hard to tell how long they struggled through the madhouse of a tunnel, but eventually the ground settled into a permanent state. They rushed forward until finally they turned a corner and stared into a vast cavern. Fifty feet ahead of them, the black volcanic soil ended abruptly in a massive lava pool, bubbling like a witch’s cauldron that dominated the huge center of the chamber. Magma exploded from the pool in orange geysers, bursting in evanescent arches of liquid rock morphing from orange to black in midair as they cooled. The lake seemed to breathe, expanding and contracting, rising and falling, its surface level changing several feet in a matter of minutes, spectacular and terrifying at once. Black plates, cut by jagged cracks of orange, floated atop the magma. They shifted and rolled like a child’s puzzle with the pieces skewed.
An island rose in the center of the burning pool. It was nearly one hundred feet across and Gaios knelt with his arms buried in the ground as the earth heaved and bucked at his command. The waves of blistering heat made the air shimmer.
Simon slipped off his coat and flung it aside. He loosened the collar of his white shirt and rolled up the sleeves. His chest glowed as the runic tattoos flared.
Kate pulled several vials from her bandolier and handed them out. She stared pointedly at Simon. “Put on more of this before you do something stupid.”
“You mean in case.” Simon uncorked it with his thumb and poured a generous amount in his hand.
“I mean before.” Kate made sure they all slathered the heavy lotion over their exposed skin.
“Gaios is in a trance,” Nick pointed out, allowing the gel to be placed only on his face and neck. “He’s drawing power from the Earth.”
“Then he’s vulnerable. Be ready.” Simon was in motion. He raced to the edge of the lava and bounded onto the tilting stone platforms, hopscotching across the lake. He didn’t see the column of rock that rose and slammed into his midsection, shoving him up against the roof of the cave forty feet above.
“You seek to harm me in my own temple?” Gaios turned slowly around, his hands coming loose from the volcanic soil. “Is there no end to you fools? There is nothing you can do against me. Why won’t you learn?”
Simon shouted in pain as the pressure threatened to crush him. Gasping out a spell, a tattoo flared again and his skin solidified into stone, holding back the column. Below him, Nick’s hands coated with ice. Steam rose as the cold vapors evaporated in the heat, encircling him in mist. Nick flung bolts at Gaios, but a curtain of magma lifted and the ice lances merely evaporated. Kate vaulted from rock floe to rock floe until she was near enough to shoot a vial and throw several more with her other hand. Gaios raised a maelstrom of swirling stones that smashed them all, save one, which broke against the demigod’s calf. He screamed as acid ate at his still-very-human flesh.
Kate leapt the final gap across the molten pool to the shore of Gaios’s island, her pistol flashing from its holster. They had to keep the elemental’s attention on them and give Simon a chance to free himself. Nick swung his arms out and a wave of lava rose straight up out of the back of the pool and flopped toward Gaios. The demigod saw it at the last moment and held up a hand, solidifying it into solid black stone.
Kate launched another vial. A cloud of amber swirled around Gaios and solidified on his chest and head. She let loose a cry of triumph. She shot at the demigod, but the ball pinged off a chunk of rock that flew up in its path.
Kate saw something hurtling toward her as Gaios yanked Simon off the ceiling and threw him at her. Simon’s stone spell made his form something Gaios could manipulate. Simon couldn’t even cry out to warn Kate. He was going to crush her.
She tried to jump clear but Simon veered with her. He screamed with tremendous effort as his body suddenly shifted, the hardened shell around him cracking and flying out behind him. He collided as flesh and bone with Kate. The hard impact sent them tumbling toward the edge of the lava pool. Kate’s vision went brilliant white. She lay beneath him as he thrust his arms and legs out spread-eagle to halt their momentum. Kate stirred under Simon�
��s desperate hand and her eyes blinked open. They had skidded to a stop inches from the edge. The heat from the lava seared their exposed skin even through the gel. They came to their feet.
Gaios’s amber prison abruptly shattered, sending shards of it everywhere. Simon covered Kate and a few of the slivers struck them, but none were debilitating. Simon spun back to face Gaios. The elemental straightened, brushing the remainder of the amber from his robes with annoyance. His eyes grew dark and seemed to roll into his head. His fingers stretched taut.
“Come, children,” he pronounced. “I want you to see the end.”
Simon and Kate started desperately at Gaios again, but their knees buckled under them. The singular sound of their footsteps in the rough soil was quickly shattered by a splitting noise that sounded like giant trees cracking open and the ground was wracked by a tremor. Simon crashed into the dirt. Kate tumbled next to him. The earth roared and a huge wave of force washed over them. The roof of the chamber exploded outward. Columns toppled and smashed into pieces. Huge chunks of flaming marble blasted into the sky. Flames spewed forth from the rent ground. The vulnerable humans were thrown about like leaves. They reached for one another, trying to help, trying to support. Chunks of black stone rained down around them.
Then the sky broke open. The blackness split into a grey haze. A burning stench rolled over them in a wave of smoke. The quaking earth wrenched to a stop. The stone walls around them had disappeared and they saw the smashed remnants of the black basalt temple and beyond that, the crumbling bricks and stones of London. Gaios had brought the floor of his chamber to the surface, destroying much of his temple in the process.
Kate pushed herself up on shaking arms. Simon was fighting his way back to his feet as well. She looked around and saw Nick and Charlotte nearby, recovering their wits quickly. The earth shook under her, rattling through her aching bones. Her eyes quickly found Gaios.
A hot wind blew the demigod’s hair and robes. Smoke from burning London swept past him. Gaios laughed wildly. He raised his arms like a symphony conductor calling down the triumphant finale. The ground around him began to crack and magma seeped up to the surface.
The Conquering Dark: Crown Page 26
