A Matter of Circumstance and Celludrones (Dark Matters) Page 16

  She shook her head on that thought, suppressing a smile as she tugged William aside to answer the questions writ in his bewildered expression. She also knew that while that kiss might flutter with delicious warmth (she’d had a certain amount of experience in the matter before her marriage), it wouldn’t overwhelm her senses until the entire world dropped away, until it was just her and Devon and the surety coursing through her tingling body that this, right here in his arms, was her reason for being. Only her husband had ever made her feel that way and now he’d kicked her out…out of his heart.

  There was a time she’d believed nothing could ever break their love. Now she didn’t know if they could ever fix it, if they’d end up like so many couples, sparing a moment here and there to produce the obligatory heirs in between their separate lives.

  Ana’s climb was far more cumbersome, her narrow skirts making it practically impossible for her to bend her knees sufficiently to place a foot on each succeeding rung. On top of that, the Red Hawk was moving again, gliding into an ascending arc and causing the ladder to sway precariously.

  Lily left her position by the speaking horn, joining them just as Ana lost her footing, spinning into a tangle as she clawed and scrabbled for purchase.

  “She’s falling,” Evelyn yelped, and then, “Greyston!” as the momentum dragged him over.

  William dived, caught Greyston around the ankles, but Neco was already there, hauling Greyston onto his feet and then grabbing the ladder to reel Ana up and haul her on board like a whale snared in a fisherman’s net.

  “Bloody hell,” Greyston issued on the rumbling of a hoarse chuckle, “that was close.”

  “Not at all.” Neco hunched low to assist Lily in untangling Ana from the rope. “There was only a three point five percent probability I wouldn’t reach you in time.”

  “I had you, anyway,” William said, raising his voice to be heard now that the ship was on course and gaining speed rapidly.

  “That was quick thinking,” Greyston told him. “Thank you, lad.”

  Evelyn turned from them, her limbs suddenly weak from delayed shock. She rested her elbows on the railing and leaned in heavily.

  Her gaze landed on the oddest spectacle up ahead on the bank of the river that appeared to be a flickering dome of pure white. As they drew closer, the dome evolved into white flames threading an invisible framework.

  She blinked hard and long. While her eyes were still closed, Lily’s scream pierced straight to her skull.

  “The bitch is torching Forleough,” Greyston yelled. The ever-present humming in the walls changed rhythm. “Dammit Jamie, faster. Not slower!” He spun on his heels, racing for the steps and shouting out one last order for Neco. “I’m charging you with Lily and Evelyn. Do whatever it takes to keep them safe.”

  Evelyn’s hearted thudded in her throat as she now saw the many threads of the blazing shroud appeared to originate from a single point of source. “Sweet Heaven, what is it?”

  “That,” said Lily in a tight voice, her fingers ice-cold as she grasped Evelyn’s hand, “is what we’re running from.”

  “We need to get inside,” Neco said.

  Lily shook her head. Her voice sounded as numb as the cold fingers clutching Evelyn. “It’ll make no difference.”

  As they watched, one of the lightening threads whipped toward them. It seemed to strike the air alongside the ship, but suddenly the engines were struggling, grinding in the walls.

  They rushed to that side of the railing and peered over.

  The streaking fire had glanced the length of the hull and stuck along the same line, a spider web of white flames creeping over the black metal. The ship was trapped in the spreading web, the engine spluttering and the shell fracturing into molten red cracks.

  “Jean and Paisley.” Lily’s hand landed on Ana’s arm. “They’re down there.”

  Evelyn broke into a run, only to be yanked back by Neco.

  “No one’s going anywhere,” he said. “The ship is powered on a system of compressed steam pushed through twenty miles of steel piping built into the shell.”

  “Wh-what are you saying?”

  “The Red Hawk’s designed for speed and agility. We’ve never taken a hit before.” He collected the ladder and started untangling the rope. “There’s a seventy percent probability the hull is a steam bath by now and an eighty point five percent probability the entire ship will blow its top like a geyser.”

  Lily slapped a hand over her mouth. “We have to do something.”

  “I’ll go after them,” Ana said, moving swiftly across the deck.

  “Ana, wait.”

  Ana threw a placid look over her shoulder. “A little steam will not melt me, Miss Lily.”

  “Is that true?” Lily asked Neco.

  “A little steam can do no harm to us.” He twisted a fist into one end of the ladder and cast it over the side.

  Evelyn looked from him to the dangling ladder. The drop between the last rung and the ground wasn’t reassuring. “We’ll never survive that jump.”

  “We’re abandoning ship?” demanded Lily. “What of Greyston and the others?”

  “We’re only preparing to abandon ship,” he stated calmly. “There’s a good chance Grey will get us out of this.”

  The celludrone was all about precise percentages and now he decided to be vague? Evelyn didn’t trust it one bit. “Seventy? Eighty point five? What probability percentage, exactly, do you mean by good?”

  Neco hesitated before responding, as if his mechanical computations could simulate the equivalent of human emotion associated with breaking bad news. “So far, Grey has proven a hundred percent successful in surviving.”

  So, not emotion, just taking his time to compute odds that didn’t quite dull the fear hammering her pulse. “Yes, but has he ever had a lightning bolt attach itself to his ship before?”

  “Not that I’m aware of, m’lady.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Greyston jerked one lever after the other, but no matter which way he manipulated the sails, no matter that the throttle was engaged and locked on maximum output and the engine laboured in forward thrust, they weren’t going anywhere. Jamie stood at the Piping Control Unit, following the ruptures signalled on the active map and shutting down valves to redirect the steam.

  “The demon witch has us trapped like a fly in her web,” Greyston muttered. His jaw clamped hard enough to shatter and it felt as if the rest of him already had. He’d heard the screams from the boarding cabin, a rapid series of agonising shrieks, and then nothing. And he hadn’t been able to do a thing. He’d already seen the incinerated husk the whole damn ship would be reduced to, ashes showered to the wind, if he didn’t free them from the white fire.

  “We’ve lost twenty-five percent power, but the damage is contained.” Jamie said. “For now.”

  “There’s no yield in any direction. She’s stuck to the bloody air.” Running on seventy-five percent power should still give them more thrust than the average air ship. Greyston cursed beneath his breath. “That bolt isn’t just fire, we’re caught in a force field of sorts.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Greyston took a deep breath. Closed his eyes for a moment. Cleared his head. His eyes snapped open. “Shut off the entire Starboard side,” he barked. “Now!”

  “That’ll cripple the ship.”

  Or save it.

  “Only for a couple of seconds. The pressurised steam is accelerating throughout the shell in a circular circuit,” he explained quickly. “I think we’re creating a magnetic force that might damned well be feeding the energy bolt.” He flipped the lever position on the throttle gear to set the sails for a bearing of twelve degrees to the north. “Stand ready to re-open the valves as soon as we’ve broken loose.”

  Greyston was attuned to every creak, hum and hiss in the Red Hawk. He heard the pressurised power drop bit by bit as each valve turned off. He tensed, every nerve rigid with anticipation, dread, if
he was wrong…the ship catapulted forward in a lurch that pressed him back into his seat and swiped Jamie from his feet. “We’re free.”

  Jamie pushed up from the floor and started twisting furiously at the valves.

  His blood pumping almost as fast as his beautiful ship, Greyston brought his hand from the sail levers to the rudder wheel, which operated the turbulence steam rotators situated beneath and along the sides of the hull for greater steering precision.

  As the ship cut a graceful upward arc through the dusky horizon, Greyston shifted slightly to take in the scene they were fleeing. The pilot cabin was built into the nose of the capsule with a wide angle of reinforced glass that gave them a two hundred and forty-five degree view outside.

  A spread of fire bolts was shooting after them, but they were sailing too fast and the tail of sparks couldn’t quite reach. Lady Ostrich was too slow, taken by surprise at their burst for freedom.

  What had once been Forleough Castle was now a hill of salt.

  Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

  His only regret was the stables. He didn’t fool himself that the horses’ deaths had been painless, but he prayed it had been instant.

  “Hold this bearing until we hit the North Sea and then bring us down along the shoreline,” he told Jamie, swivelling his seat away from the controls. “Our destination is still Cragloden.”

  Neco was coming down the stairs as Greyston passed through the landing they referred to as the Pilot Grid.

  “Everyone here is fine,” Neco called to him.

  He caught a glimpse of Lily’s vibrant red riding skirts as she descended on his man’s heels and, reassured, he pushed through the inter-leading door.

  The mechanical yap, yap of the infuriating puppy echoed off the silent metal walls, the first indication that this chamber had taken most of the damage. The second was the mangled pipes visible through a massive internal crack. The entire ship casing, inside and out, was fashioned on the new German technology of lightweight aluminium alloy, anodised to coat the surface with a crust that was diamond hard. Nothing should have been able to pierce the shell.

  Slumped beneath the crack, Ana looked as if she’d taken as bad a hit as his ship.

  All this, Greyston took in with the natural sweep of his gaze from left to right as he entered the boarding chamber, but he hadn’t seen the worst yet.

  Paisley knelt on the floor, her face haggard and tears streaming down pale cheeks.

  Ian, the only greybeard on his crew and the closest thing they had to a doctor, looked up from where he was bent over a body lying prostrate on the ground. “Live piping erupted from the wall,” Ian informed him, his voice sombre.

  The man rocked back on his haunches, his hands raised helplessly above Jean. He’d placed a pillow beneath her head and pulled a blanket over her, leaving her throat and face uncovered. Blistered, raw skin covered three quarters of her face, transparent thin patches melted onto the bone along the ridge of her cheek and into the hollow of one eye socket. “She must have been right on top of the pipes when the steam blasted.”

  Evelyn rushed to Paisley’s side, wrapping an arm around the distraught girl.

  “Tied pipes. To each. Other.” Ana’s staccato phrases didn’t bode well. “The steam. Stopped. Suddenly.”

  “We turned off the valves,” Greyston said dully. Also too late. “Neco, check on Ana, see if there’s anything to be done.”

  Yap, yap, yap.

  He rubbed at his temple, at the throb that had started there, and glanced around for William. The lad was hovering near the door, his forehead grooved into a deep frown. “William, do something about that infernal yapping.”

  Lily came up to him, her worried gaze going from Ana to Jean. “Is she…?”

  He looked away, didn’t want her to read the absolute loss of faith and hope in his eyes.

  “Her pulse is weak, but there,” Ian answered. “I’ve injected poppy opiate straight into her blood to induce a painless sleep.”

  Ian grimaced at him, shaking his head.

  “It h-h-happened so quickly,” Paisley said, teeth chattering. “Sh-she’s going to be alright, isn’t s-she?”

  “Of course she will,” Evelyn said softly, rubbing a hand over the girl’s shoulder. “She has to be.”

  “We’ll set course for Edinburgh at once,” Greyston decided, however futile it may be. “The hospital there is fitted with advanced facilities and has access to outstanding surgeons.” He backed away, slow steps until he could swing around into the relative privacy of the Pilot Grid.

  He put one hand to the wall, bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut to close the world out. The memories were all there, original woven into the altered time span from his recent time-run, and all those before and after.

  Evelyn on her tip toes at the top of the stairway.

  Him storming into the kitchen, demanding the truth from Jean about his mother’s activities.

  The ride back from Cragloden, refusing to agree with Lily’s conclusion that Lady Ostrich must be one of Kelan’s demons but admitting she made a damned persuasive argument anyway.

  The scalded, blistered skin covering Jean’s face. Raw patches melting off bone.

  The taste of Evelyn’s mouth as his tongue delved inside.

  The glow that lit a passion in Lily’s eyes when she finally threw off the gird of conventionality and leaned into the exhilarating experience of galloping astride. The sensation of his heart leaping as he’d glanced at her over his shoulder and couldn’t seem to look away again.

  Greyston focussed on a single memory.

  Today was not the day he’d had to leave a man, woman, or celludrone behind. He’d outwitted the demon—suddenly he was more inclined toward Lily’ way of thinking—once more and this would be the last time he ran. Kelan had indicated Cragloden was a haven, a place where Lily would be safe, while that bastard McAllister taught him everything there was to know about these demons and how to defeat them.

  He’d returned to Forleough looking for the truth behind his father’s hate and his brother’s death. But now it was no longer just about resolving the past, it was about claiming back his future.

  He’d never had much, and that had been taken from him, but it stopped with the Red Hawk.

  His crew had become his family.

  This ship had been his home for the last four years, more so than the fortress he’d built on Es Vedra.

  He was done with running and he didn’t mean the occasional hop back in time. Standing here, on the Red Hawk’s deck, nothing seemed impossible. Determination, hope and the possibility of triumph over the world at large chased through his blood.

  He looked up from Ana’s progress at the rope ladder and his gaze landed on Evelyn.

  He’d spent the first half of the afternoon with Lily saturating his mind. On the outside, she was prim and proper and took fright at the drop of a pin, but inside she carried a strength that took his breath away, a strength she didn’t seem to be aware of. She was loyal and stubbornly committed. Once she’d cast her lot with him, she gave her all, absorbing the surreal reality he’d led her to without drowning in the detail. She trusted him, she believed him, she believed in him.

  He, on the other hand, was all brass courage, muscle and bold recklessness, and he knew exactly how badly he was flawed on the inside. They were complete opposites, and perhaps that was the root of this attraction that clawed its way through faster than he could erect barriers.

  He’d spent the latter half of the afternoon regressing to his worst childhood fears. Aragon had been on his way to Es Vedra when the storm had capsized the ship, taking his life and that of his wife. And when Kelan had started talking about demons, he’d known the coincidence was too blatant to bury.

  His da had been right all along. He was the vermin that had somehow destroyed his entire family.

  And then he’d opened his bedroom door at Forleough and there Evelyn had stood, damp and half dressed. He’d grabbed at the
chance for a moment’s oblivion from the insanity inside his head. She had the beauty of an angel, the nature of a sprite and the mouth of a sinner. They were a perfect match.

  A grin tugged at his jaw as he recalled just how vehemently she’d disagreed with that assessment.

  The subtle vibrations beneath his feet changed as the ship switched gear from the oscillatory rotators to the auxiliary oars. “Once her nose is turned in the right direction, we’ll pump her engines to full throttle and shoot straight down the river,” he said to Evelyn. “We’ll reach the headland in less than ten minutes.”

  As always, the memory was right there, an intact, tangible presence until he reached for it. And then the same thing happened as when he tried to breach the thirty-minute boundary to step further back into the past. The picture dissolved, dribbling through his fingers, ice turned to water upon contact and just as impossible to catch hold of.

  He tried another memory, and another, skipping forward until up to a few minutes ago. Retracing hours, and then days, into the past.

  Nothing worked and, he knew, nothing would for at least another twelve hours. Each time-run created some sort of epicentre of disruption that expanded in a circular wave for a twelve hour radius, preventing him from stepping back.

  Greyston’s eyes snapped open.

  He slammed his palm against the wall, cursing the pointless laws that appeared to govern the nature of running back through time. Jean had never not been there for him, for Aragon, with her advice and scolding and pampering and the affection he hadn’t wanted, hadn’t needed, and now gone.

  He slammed the wall again, cursing aloud.

  Lily stepped out onto the Pilot Grid, clicking the door closed behind her. “Greyston, I don’t think Jean is going to make it.” Her voice was low, a confidential whisper of urgency. “You need to take us back.”