by Grace Draven
“You need not answer if you wish.” He was strong and lithe against her back, a literal pillar of strength.
“I don’t mind,” she said. “I was almost married. Well, almost engaged.” A shooting star arced across the sky before disappearing into the horizon. “Unbeknownst to me, the man who courted me was the youngest son of a marquess, a lord. Because there was already an heir and to the title and another brother in line after the heir, his family tolerated his ‘eccentricities’.”
As aware as she was of his every touch and breath, Lenore didn’t miss the slow stiffening in Colin’s body as she spoke. “Like you, he served aboard an airship. The Pollux to be exact. He loved it, embraced it, risked scandal over it.
“You understood his passion.”
She nodded. “I did. I think we’re born with a love for a particular thing that calls to our souls. To ignore it reaps unhappiness.”
“What happened?”
Five years on, and it still hurt to recall that meeting and the events which followed. “I didn’t know it at the time, but my almost-fiancé had lost both brothers to cholera in the space of a week. He became the heir to the marquisate. His duty was to the estate and providing the next generation of heirs to succeed him.”
“And you were an inventor’s daughter.” Colin’s voice sounded clipped and cool, even as his hand stroked a comforting rhythm along her ribs.
Lenore swallowed, willing down the clot of tears trapped in her throat. “Indeed. A mésalliance not to be borne. Once they discovered his intention to propose, his mother paid me a visit. She presented a sound argument. Accept his offer and consign myself and any offspring we produced to the status of outcast.” She sighed. “I would have suffered it gladly. I have no interest in or fondness for the nobility. My children, however, and their children as well would be burdened by our selfishness, ostracized from Society the moment they were born.”
“You refused him when he asked.”
She wondered at the odd flatness in Colin’s tone. “I did and will regret it all my life. We parted on bad terms. He was killed while fighting at the Redan.”
Colin’s arms tightened around her, his embrace both comforting and strangely desperate, as if he sought solace in her nearness as much she found it in his. They held each other for a long time, Lenore lost to her memories.
Her creeping melancholy threatened to cast a pall over this lovely but oh-so-brief time with the Guardian, and she resolutely shook it off. It was best to speak of other things, lighter things.
“I was at first disappointed that my inaugural voyage would be on a ship other than the Pollux,” she said. “But I think now it was for the best. Adjusting to my role aboard ship is much easier when it’s a peaceful journey on a cargo lifter. I’m not certain how well I’d do on a skyrunner in the midst of battle.”
Colin pressed his cheek to the side of her head. “Every crewman feels that way on their first flight,” he whispered near her ear. “I think you’d learn quickly enough to hold your own if put to the test.”
Either Fate played some great joke on her or had chosen to bestow some great beneficence. Colin Whitley might look like a ghost himself, tethered to this earthly realm by the most gossamer of threads, but to her, he was almost too good to be true. He heard the dead speak and protected their remains by means both mysterious and sometimes violent. People ran from the sight of him, even if dogs didn’t, proving what she’d always thought—man’s four-legged companion was often a lot more insightful regarding another’s character than the its master.
That last thought made her recall the intrepid little dog who’d tried to rescue her from the resurrectionists. “What happened to the hound who kept me company when I was unconscious?”
Colin exhaled a slow breath. “She’s currently in the care of the rector’s wife who spoils her relentlessly. She, however, fancies herself my dog.”
The news lightened Lenore’s heart. “And why wouldn’t she? I imagine you make a wonderful master.” No doubt, he’d make an equally fine spouse. The thought startled her almost as much as the peal of the bells that signaled the end of her watch.
She did turn then, still held in the cove of Colin’s arms. “My watch is over,” she said and wondered if any watchman ever regretted departing his post as much as she did.
The Guardian brushed his lips across hers in a tantalizing hint of a kiss. “I must go before your relief arrives.”
She traced the arch of his eyebrows with her finger. “Thank you for your kindness in keeping me company.” One eyebrow twitched under her touch.
“It wasn’t kindness, Lenore,” he said in that low, sensual voice. “It was selfishness, and temptation, and need.” He kissed her a second time with the sweep of his tongue across hers before setting her from him.
Lenore’s breath streamed from her nose and mouth in small clouds. For the first time since she’d boarded the Terebellum, she wanted to shed her layers of clothing and cool off her overheated skin. “I don’t know why you’re on this ship,” she told him. “But I’m glad of it. So very glad you’re here with me.”
He gazed at her in a way that made her heart pound as hard as his kiss did. “I am always with you, Lenore.” A pause. “Good night.”
He was gone before she had a chance to raise her hand in farewell, a wraith embracing the darkness beyond the door.
“Good night,” she whispered to the empty room.
CHAPTER TEN
The return journey from Gibraltar to London was proving as uneventful as Nathaniel hoped. The Terebellum was a fine ship and so far hadn’t suffered a single problem. He was both relieved and suspicious. Some might accuse him of an unnecessary paranoia; however, since the woman he loved was currently aboard, he’d argue for his caution. Nothing ever remained problem-free, and judging by the look on his former captain’s face as she handed him a snifter of brandy, she was about to prove him right.
They stood together at a pair of windows, staring down at the Portuguese coast. The city of Lisbon perched on the Atlantic, its imposing Sao Jorge Castle overlooking a cluster of white buildings with red tile roofs that marched down the hillside to the beach and gleamed under a cold winter sun.
Nettie swirled the brandy in its snifter, her expression grim. “I’m telling you first before I gather the crew for the announcement. We’re sailing to the Redan.”
His stomach wouldn’t have lurched any harder if she’d cocked back her arm and gut-punched him. Nathaniel stared, silently willing her to correct her statement. He surprised himself with the calm in his voice. “Why?”
“I received a cable from Fleet command. The fighting has been fierce. Two ships lost to the horrifics, four others crippled with a number dead and injured crew on board.” She abused the brandy, tossing it back as if it were gin. “The Terebellum, the Bellatrix and the Gatria are to alter course and offer assistance in both ballistics and transport.”
Nathaniel took a bracing swallow of his own, welcoming the burn of alcohol down his throat. The only sounds in the captain’s quarters were Nettie’s soft breathing and the constant background whir of the Terebellum’s propellers. Inside his head, the clamor was deafening with the wrench and squeal of broken girders, the screams of the dying, the gunshot snap of rivets popping out of steel.
The shuddering ship.
He closed his eyes to clear the images and opened them again to Nettie’s knowing, pitying gaze.
“The Terebellum isn’t built as a skyrunner,” he said.
She lowered her chin and gave him a don’t-play-stupid-with-me-lad look. “I think we both know she isn’t just a cargo lifter either. I’ve seen you inspecting her. Her middle gun deck alone has enough cannon and gun batteries on her to make the Pollux’s arsenal look like a child’s toy chest. Her engines can put out three times the horsepower for speed if pushed, and her shield is powerful enough to withstand a full broadside from the biggest horrific.”
Nathaniel shivered. He doubted anyone living had yet encounter
ed the biggest horrific lurking in the dimensional rift. “That’s true, but her principal firepower is in that keel-mounted weapons platform. Completely unsuitable for fighting in the Redan. She’s a nautilus killer, Captain. Her guns are meant to blow holes into submarines and sea pirates. The rail ties can move the platform out a distance, but without a port or starboard rotation, the guns can’t target anything directly above the ship.”
“Jonas Tibbs is a first-rate helmsman,” she said. “I’d have poached him off the Serpentis years ago if Captain Narada hadn’t threatened to put a cannon ball up my arse if I tried it. God rest his poxy soul.” She pinned Nathaniel in place with a sharp gaze. “A good helmsman paired with a good gunner can make the clumsiest ship do cartwheels on a high wire and hit a fly at a hundred paces.”
Nathaniel returned the look she’d given him earlier. “That is either the most spectacular exaggeration I’ve ever heard, or the most ridiculous. I’ve not yet decided which.”
She shrugged and downed the rest of her brandy before setting it on the nearby table with thump. “It doesn’t matter. What I want to know, lad, is if I need you to shoot at something, will you do it? Can you do it?”
His stomach jerked taut against his backbone, leaving him queasy. The shuddering ship.
The Nathaniel Gordon of five years ago had earned a reputation within the airship fleet as a gunner both accurate and precise with his shots. The Nathaniel Gordon of now hadn’t fired so much as a slingshot in five years. For all he knew, he couldn’t hit the back end of a coster’s cart.
“You already have a senior gunner aboard with three juniors under his command. You don’t need a second senior.”
“Who says I have to ration gunners? Why limit myself to one senior when I have two on board?” She raised a hand to halt his reply. “I don’t need you telling me how rank protocol works. I’ve been doing this a lot longer than you have, mate. Owens is a capable gunner with a good eye, but you have more experience in a turret, not to mention fighting at the Redan.”
That Nathaniel would agree was a foregone conclusion. Short of assassinating Lenore for her, which was a ludicrous idea, he’d do anything Nettie asked of him. “I’m rusty,” he said. “I might miss.”
Her disbelieving snort made his lips twitch. “They’re horrifics, Nathaniel, not hummingbirds.”
The reminder of the peril they’d face when they reached the Redan killed what little humor Nettie’s sarcasm had kindled inside him. “Lenore...”
“Is a crewman aboard this ship. No better, no worse and no different from anyone else serving.” Nettie squeezed his forearm, her lined features softening. “Lad, don’t think I don’t worry for her. For both of you. Arthur’ll haunt me until I’m dead if something happens to his daughter, and I still wake up in a sweat some nights remembering when you fell from the Pollux.” She was pale but resolute—the Nettie he’d always known. “But I’m not stopping or turning around to let one crewman off. Besides, Lenore would refuse. You know that.”
Nathaniel abandoned his half full snifter next to Nettie’s empty one and scraped his hands through his hair. “This is a nightmare.” His great relief at learning that Lenore would sail on the Terebellum on a peaceful test flight and supply run had shredded with the wind rising off the ocean waves.
Nettie nodded. “It is and no avoiding it,” she said flatly.
He stood in the shadows as Nettie informed the crew of their new orders, his gaze on Lenore. The blood slowly drained from her face, leaving her ashen. Her pupils had expanded with her fear, turning her brown eyes black. Some of the brasher crewmen whistled and cheered at the chance to taste battle. Others less cocky and more experienced stared at their captain with grim, determined faces. Nathaniel suspected if someone suddenly held up a mirror to him, he’d see that same expression stamped on his features.
Nettie answered several questions from the crew before dismissing them. She sought out Nathaniel’s gaze and jerked her head toward Lenore’s retreating back. “Follow her, idiot,” couldn’t have been clearer if she’d yelled it in his face.
He tracked her to the berth she shared with another female crewman. Only Lenore occupied the space at the moment, and Nathaniel closed the door, locking it behind him. She didn’t startle or even look at him. Instead, she stripped the sheets off her tidy bed and began remaking it.
“Are you frightened?”
She paused at his softly uttered question and stared down at her pillow. “A little,” she replied. They both stared at the hand she raised. Her fingers twitched and trembled. Lenore’s smile was sheepish. “A lot.”
He gathered her into his arms, words hovering on his lips. He was frightened as well. They would face something that made even the most hardened crewman’s stomach drop through the floor. The horrifics’ colossal size alone induced open-mouthed terror, their appearance straight out of an opium-eater’s hallucination of Hell. Nathaniel had fought at the Redan in more than a dozen battles, and each time he’d nearly pissed himself at his first sighting of a horrific.
Lenore shook in his arms, her face pressed into his shoulder. She mumbled something he couldn’t make out. Nathaniel leaned back and tilted her chin to look at him. “What did you say?”
“Do you think me weak for being scared?”
Her skin was hot satin under his fingers, her body a sliver of paradise in his arms, and he wished her anywhere but here aboard this ship. “No. Fear can be a good thing. It keeps you sharp and alert. It isn’t a weakness when it benefits you.”
She cupped either side of his jaw with slender hands. He bent at her coaxing, his moan low when her lips gently teased his open and her tongue slipped inside his mouth. He lifted her in his arms, reveling in the feel and scent of her as gehenna blood roiled and bubbled in his veins.
Lenore’s fingers slid into his hair to massage his scalp. She ended their kiss with a soft sucking tug on his lower lip. Her breasts pressed against his chest in a shallow rise and fall. “When this is over and we’re home safe again, I would like another glass of pomegranate wine.”
He set her down and loosened his embrace. The ashen pallor from earlier had faded. Her cheeks were rosy and her mouth full and red from his kiss. “We will share a glass in a winter graveyard,” he promised.
“And you will recite verse to me.” Her lips turned up, and the corners of her eyes crinkled.
“Then kiss you under the moon.” He traced the contours of her corset stays beneath her bodice.
“It will be terribly improper.” Her hand glided down his arm.
He captured her hand and kissed her fingertips. “We won’t care.”
“No, no we won’t.”
A last kiss, urgent and hot enough to send the blaze of a blush from Lenore’s cheeks to her neck. Even her ears were pink. She left the berth before Nathaniel, her work boots tapping a quick rhythm on the gangway as she headed for sick bay to help prepare for receipt of the injured from the crippled ships.
He watched until she turned a corner, disappearing from view. He would share the wine and recite poetry and for a second time, put his heart on a plate before her. “This time, Lenore, tell me yes instead of no.”
They reached the Redan in record time, the Terebellum’s engines proving their worth and Nettie’s statement proclaiming the ship’s impressive speed. None cheered over their speedy arrival. Crewmen stood at their posts, faces tight with resolve or slack with disbelieving horror.
One crewman spoke, his voice high and thin as if he squeezed the words out of a constricted windpipe. “Blood o’ Christ, would you look at that.”
Nathaniel’s gut was a snarled knot that churned and twisted itself around his ribs. He forced down the fear and made himself stare into the great, lightning-fractured wall known as the Redan.
Twenty-seven years earlier, a renegade group of outcast guild mages, greedy for limitless power, met in a secret convocation and proceeded to rip a hole in the universal fabric that separated worlds, a small tear but one that grew like
a lesion on a plague victim. What squirmed and crawled through made the worst nightmare conjured by a human seem a sweet daydream by comparison.
The Guild responded, using a magic similar to that which made the dimensional rift to build a barrier wall called the Redan . Half the guild mages in service to the Queen died in the effort. Since then, countless airships and crews from every nation defended the wall and the countries it shielded against monstrous abominations known as horrifics. In Nathaniel’s opinion, Hell’s levels didn’t go deep enough to hold these spawn of some dark, pustulant god.
The Terebellum swung to port, and he got his first look at the crippled ships. Two were missing engine gondolas or propellers, another a portion of the control room gondola. They hung in the air, the catastrophic loss of power turning them into helpless prey unable to avoid or flee a strike from the rift’s abominations. A fourth ship spewed black smoke from its forecastle engine. The bow section of its steel envelope was flensed away from the hull from top to keel.
Lightning flashed across the Redan, illuminating a kraken-like thing with multiple bulbous eyes, tentacles edged with barbed spines like harpoons and three mouths. Those gaping maws were big enough to swallow the Terebellum whole and ask for more. Fangs filled the mouths like sharpened menhirs, eager to shred anything that drew too close.
The thing crowded against another equally giant horrific that raked a seven-finger clawed hand along the Redan. The barrier held but tore in spots. Before it could heal itself, a claw inserted into one of the tears and casually gouged away the control gondola from the airship spewing black smoke. Bodies plummeted toward the ocean below. The broken airship yawed first to port before pitching back on her stern to follow those who sailed her.
