I’d known Draven was depraved and possibly insane, but obsessive enough to track me into a foreign land full of hostile Erlkin? I shuddered to think what he’d do if he actually caught me again.
I slipped out through the hatch, unnoticed by any of the crew, and fled down the corridor, back the way I’d come. Windhaven jolted and swayed under round after round of fire, and there was a shriek followed by a thump that rocked me off my feet, sending vibrations through the entire hull.
Some kind of antiaircraft projectile. Windhaven righted, but I felt a change in the tenor of the turbines. We’d been hit, and a dip in my stomach told me the craft was losing altitude.
Hands took me by the arm and tried to right me, and I swatted at them reflexively.
“Relax!” Dean shouted over the whooping alarms and thudding of projectiles as Windhaven and the dirigible exchanged fire. “It’s me. Just me.”
“Thanks be for small favors,” I said, slumping. “We have to go, Dean. Now.”
His face was grim, and his jaw twitched when he nodded. “Yeah. Figure no good’s going to come of me staying here. My mother can take care of herself.”
I let him pull me to my feet. “Where are Conrad and the others?” I said.
“Cal and Bethina are in the regular cabins like you,” Dean told me. “My mother put Conrad in a holding cell down near the engine room.”
“Of course she did,” I muttered. Nothing could ever be easy on me and my family. “Is there a way we can tell Cal and Bethina how to meet us at the balloon bay?”
“There’s aethervox between the rooms, yeah,” Dean said. We stopped at a red iron box with a symbol stamped on the outside, three lines rising from a triangle. Dean picked up the handset and cranked a knob to bring up power, then turned two dials, one for deck number and one for room.
Erlkin were beginning to fill the corridor around us, rushing to and fro. Nobody paid any attention to me, since I was with Dean and they had more pressing matters, like the ever-increasing tilt of the floor beneath our feet. The hit to the bridge must have been worse than it looked. We were falling, and at a rate of speed that made my stomach float slightly off center, a sick reminder of the impact that awaited us. I’d brought Draven here, and now I’d destroy Windhaven like I’d destroyed Lovecraft—unless I got off the ship and directed Draven’s rage away from the Erlkin. I’d honestly rather be back under his thumb than have the weight of more lives on me.
“Cal!” Dean yelled. “Get the milkmaid and meet us in the balloon docks.” He paused and then rolled his eyes at me. “Why do you think, dummy? Get your ass moving!” He slammed down the handset and turned to me. “I swear, that kid’s thick as two boards. Let’s go.”
“I’m sorry,” I said as we ran against the tide of Erlkin moving toward the bridge and the doors to the outside. “This is my fault.”
“This is no more your fault than mine,” Dean said. “Draven’s the one shooting shells at our hull.”
As if to punctuate his point, an explosion rocked us against one of the curved walls and debris sprayed from a direct hit, filling the air with dust. The fine paneling and polished copper that made up the walls of the corridor and the section of hull beyond bowed and broke, and a shriek of cold air snatched at my hair and cheeks. A smoking hole reaching down into nothing stared back from where I’d been about to place my foot, half the floor and wall gone. Draven was using heavy shells—it took more than mere bullets to punch through inches of iron and rivets.
Dean’s forehead was cut, and blood ran from one of his ears. My own were ringing, like I’d stuck my head inside a bell, and wetness trickled into my left eye. “You’re bleeding!” Dean shouted at me, though I read his lips more than heard him speak.
I swiped at my face and my entire palm came away coated red. “I’m fine!” I shouted back. Whatever had hit me, I could still walk, and that was the important thing. I could panic about the amount of blood when we were away from Windhaven.
We struggled to our feet, and Dean went first along the narrow span of corridor that hadn’t been blown away. To the side was open air, and below I could see down at least four decks, sparks and escaping aether mingling to create tongues of short-lived blue fire amid the twisted wreckage.
“This way,” Dean panted. His voice came to me sounding flat and far away, like a bad connection over the aether.
We reached a stairwell, and looking over the railing dizzied me. We were at least twenty levels up.
“No lifts,” Dean said. “We’re in one and another shell hits …” He clapped his hands together.
“I hope Conrad’s all right,” I said. He had to be. My dazzlingly clever brother, who could escape any trap. He’d be fine. If he wasn’t, I’d lost my only other family and was totally alone. I couldn’t let myself contemplate that right now. I could only run.
Dean didn’t say anything, but he did move faster, taking the stairs two at a time.
The downward journey seemed interminable, especially when I was alone with my own heartbeat and the faint screech of the alarms. Every time Windhaven bounced violently, I had to stop and grab the rail or risk being pitched headfirst off the landing.
“Here,” Dean said at last. “Prison level.”
“Thank stone you know your way around here,” I panted, slowing at last. Dean shrugged.
“I grew up here. Skip and I used to sneak off all the time.”
I tried not to look too surprised. I’d always thought Dean hated the Erlkin side of him, and had pictured him absconding to Lovecraft as soon as he could toddle. But maybe it had been later. Shard’s pain over Dean’s return certainly seemed to indicate that.
By the cells, two Erlkin in uniform carried the same sort of guns Skip and the other soldiers had carried slung across their backs when they’d caught us in the forest. The cells themselves were plain gray doors, each marked, mercifully, with a number rather than a foreign symbol.
“We should evacuate,” one Erlkin was insisting, gripping his gun so tightly I could see the white of his bone through his papery skin. They hadn’t spotted us yet, and I waited in the curve of the corridor with Dean, sharing his breath and smelling the salt of his sweat and the sweetish odor of tobacco that permeated his clothes.
“And do what with the prisoners?” the other Erlkin demanded.
“Hell, I don’t care!” the other said. “Leave their asses behind. Filthy Fae and slipstreamers, the lot of them.”
“Fine,” said the other as another artillery blast shook Windhaven. “Let’s get to the balloons.”
I pulled Dean into an alcove as they passed, but they were beyond caring about a couple of teenagers wandering around. Dean picked up a left-behind manifest hanging on a clipboard and skimmed the sheet of vellum, pointing down the corridor. “Cell nine.”
Relief coursing through me, I ran down the hall and stopped at number nine, peering through the barred window in the top half of the door. Conrad had braced himself against the far wall of the cell, and his face slackened in relief when he saw me.
“Oh, thank stone,” he said. “Get me out of here.”
The lock was a tumbler and a bolt, nine pins, too complicated for me to try to shove with my mind at a time like this. If I had an episode and knocked myself out, I’d be useless, and we’d be sitting ducks for Draven. “Dean!” I shouted. “Keys!”
“They’re not here!” he yelled back. “Guards must’ve taken ’em.” He came down the corridor, looking up as Windhaven shuddered like an animal in the throes of a death rattle. The aether lamps flickered, throwing us from bright to black and back again. “We need to move,” he said. “Before all the evac balloons are gone.”
“Leave me,” Conrad said. “There’s no help for it.”
“No,” I snarled. “We’re not splitting up again—that’s what got us into trouble the first time.” When he opened his mouth to protest, I played my ace. Conrad and I could be equally stubborn, but I was better at changing his mind than he was at changing mine. “Dra
ven is out there, Conrad. He’ll torture you. Throw you in some dark hole.” I’d already lost Nerissa. I couldn’t abandon Conrad to Draven and ever expect to sleep again. If he survived the crash of Windhaven at all.
“Yeah,” Dean said. “Nobody here is going to be your friend if you stay, man. It’s time to motor.”
“Aoife,” Conrad said. “Don’t listen to him. Get out before it’s too late and we’re both back in Draven’s cells.”
“Don’t,” Dean started, pointing at Conrad. “Don’t make your sister feel any worse than she already does.”
“I’m making her feel worse?” Conrad came to the bars, looking for all the world as if they were the only thing preventing him from wringing Dean’s neck. “You little grease monkey, it’s your mother who locked me up in here!”
“Both of you shut up!” I shouted, sick of their arguing. My head throbbed, warning me that all the iron on the prison level was building up in my blood. “Let me think!”
Dean and Conrad stared at me for a moment and then went quiet. They both knew me well enough. I pressed my palm against the door lock and tried to tamp down the panic inside me, control my heartbeat and breath. It wasn’t easy. I felt fragile, as if the frantic racing of my pulse would shatter the delicate vessel of my body.
My Weird came as intolerable pressure against my skull. My vision skewed and filled with the glow of the aether lamps, but I pushed the pain back. I grabbed the pressure and squeezed it out through my pores, my tear ducts, my nose and mouth, funneled the thing in my blood into the lock. It popped open, dead bolt flying back so violently it bowed the iron of the door, which in turn swung back and hit the cell wall with a sound like a gong.
“Come on,” I said, reaching for Conrad, who stood still and glassy-eyed, and grabbing his arm. This was the first time he’d seen me use my Weird, and much as I wanted to know he didn’t think I was a freak, we just didn’t have the time to talk now. He stumbled as I yanked him.
“Jeez, Aoife,” he said. “I’m coming, I’m coming.”
Dean leading the way, we ran toward the balloon bays as fast as the jostling, tilting vessel would allow.
Just before we reached the outer catwalks, which sprang away from Windhaven like a collection of spindly antennae, we ran into Cal. Bethina was with him, clinging to his arm as Windhaven shuddered under our feet, the death throes of the city feeding through the soles of my boots.
“It’s no good in the balloons,” Cal said. “Some got off, but they got shot down. They’re trying to slag the docking arms.”
Indeed, many of the catwalks were wrecked and smoking, just twisted memories of what they’d been. My heart sank to my feet. Draven was going to make me his prisoner again. Torture and interrogate me. Use me to bring in my father.
No.
I dug my fingers into my temples, determined to stop the clawing and whispering of the iron poisoning that tried to seduce me into the frantic, illogical thoughts of end-stage madness.
“Is there another way off?” I demanded of Dean. He nodded.
“There’s emergency craft for the crew and the security force. The last ones off the boat.”
“Good,” I said, already moving. “Let’s get there before somebody else has the same great idea.”
“I don’t know if they’re anything you want to try to escape a hail of gunfire in,” Dean said. “Took one out once when I was a kid and damn near pasted myself against a mountain.”
I kept moving. “We don’t have a choice.” We could either risk dying while getting off the ship or be condemned to something worse when Draven caught us. In my mind, the course was obvious, no matter how slim the chance we’d all survive in one piece might be.
“Agreed,” Conrad said. “We have to run. However we can. If we stay here we’re dead for sure.”
“Okay.” Dean nodded. “Better than no damn plan at all. Come with me.”
Cal grabbed Bethina’s hand, and Conrad brought up the rear. I followed Dean, and we made our way back toward the top of Windhaven so we could fall toward the ground, and freedom.
Through the Mist Gate
BEFORE LONG, WE ran into clots of Erlkin in the corridors, and Dean cursed. “We can’t get down to the bay.”
“Where is it?” I said. Dean pointed his finger at the floor.
“Below the pilothouse,” he said. “They can reach it by evacuation tube.”
I bit my lip. The idea that sprang to mind just then was insane, but it was less of a danger than passively waiting for Draven to catch us again.
“Come with me,” I said, hoping the others wouldn’t ask too many questions, because I didn’t have a lot of answers. That was the problem with on-the-fly plans—sometimes you fell. I turned and started toward the room where Shard had kept me, hoping now wouldn’t be one of those times.
Dean shook his head as I crossed the room and opened the porthole. “Oh, no, Aoife,” he said, realizing what I had in mind.
“We’re not moving,” I said. “We can make it.”
“Yeah, and the next time we take a direct hit we’re going to get shaken off like so many pieces of dust,” Cal said, gesturing at the porthole and the ledge beyond. “This is crazy, Aoife.”
“You of all people have something real to lose when Draven boards us,” I told him, giving him a cutting look. Bethina glanced between us.
“What’s she mean?”
“Nothing,” Cal snarled. “Nothing.”
Above us, I heard the whirr of powerful turbines and a knocking against the hull.
“Boarding ladders,” Dean said. “The Proctors are coming onto Windhaven. We don’t have any more time.”
I levered my leg out the porthole. “I’m going.”
“Me too,” Bethina said, squaring her shoulders. “It couldn’t be any worse than here.”
Clinging to the metal skin of a vessel floating in midair was not my idea of a pleasant experience. I reached out and grabbed the nearest rudder, and for a breathless moment before my foot found the ledge, I swung free.
Dean followed, then Cal. He helped Bethina, and Conrad came last. I allowed myself a small moment of relief that everyone had gone along with me with minimal arguing. We might have a chance after all.
“I changed my mind!” Bethina shrieked above the wind howling around us. “I want to go back!”
“No!” Cal shouted. “No going back now! I’m right behind you.”
I crawled down the side of Windhaven, gripping the rudders and the rungs of a maintenance ladder, feeling the shudders of Draven’s boarding under my hands. But as the bottom hull curved, holding on became harder, gravity pulling my weight away from the hand- and footholds.
“You okay?” Dean grunted as we climbed.
“No,” I gritted out. I couldn’t see him where he hung above me, just heard his ragged breathing. “Okay is not what I am at the moment.”
“Hang on, princess,” he said. “This is nothing. This is a walk in the park.”
“You have a very strange idea of a park,” I panted. Two plump blue balloons were tethered at the bottom of Windhaven’s hull. I reached the first and risked taking one hand off the hull to open the basket door. My hands and arms were on fire, and I could feel tremors starting in my shoulder and working down to my fingers.
“Go on,” Dean said. “Start untethering this thing and I’ll help the others.”
To get into the basket, I had to turn myself around and crawl in upside down and practically headfirst. Spinning with vertigo, I let go and dropped onto the wire mesh. I pulled myself to my feet and went to the balloon’s tether, a flexible metal arm that was attached to the evacuation tube above us.
Dean landed on the mesh next to me, then stood and pulled Cal into the basket after him. He reached out for Bethina, who shook her head, copper curls hanging free in space. “I can’t let go!”
“Foul the gears, Bethina!” Dean shouted. “You can’t stay plastered to the bloody hull for the rest of your life!”
“If I
let go, I’ll fall!” Bethina cried. Tears were streaming down her face, streaking like rain in the wind.
“You won’t fall, doll,” Dean promised, his voice changing to a soothing tone. “I’ve got strong arms. I’ll catch you.”
“Go!” Conrad snarled at her from where he clung to the ladder behind her. “I could have climbed up and down this ship twice in the time it’s taking you.”
“Conrad!” I snapped, horrified at how he could be so insensitive at a time like this. “That is really not helping!”
Bethina extended one trembling hand to Dean, and he caught her and hauled her aboard. When she stood up, shaking, she cast Conrad a look that could have stopped traffic. Cal wrapped his arms around her, and she buried her face against his collar. I almost wished she’d just slapped Conrad. Maybe then he would have learned that he couldn’t say whatever he wanted whenever he wanted to whoever was within earshot.
I finished untethering the balloon and the craft floated upward, bumping gently against the underside of Windhaven.
“At last,” Conrad breathed, and moved to close the gap and jump aboard from where he hung.
But before he could, Windhaven groaned, the propeller blades spinning to life high above us, and the floating city listed sharply to one side.
Conrad missed the balloon cage and lost his grip on the hull, pitching off the edge of the cage. He caught the mesh with two of his fingers, slipping down toward the nothing of the mist below.
“Conrad!” I shrieked, diving across space and catching his hand. He flailed and latched onto my sleeve, and with horror I felt myself sliding out of the balloon cage. Bethina screamed, sounding very far away, and Dean shouted something at Cal, but all I could see was the fear in Conrad’s eyes as he hung over the gently roiling cauldron of fog. Everything else was sucked away; there was only the knowledge that I had to save him, and the resolute stone in my stomach saying it wouldn’t end this way. Not after everything we’d been through.
The Nightmare Garden Page 7
