The Dirigible Airship Disaster Read online

  Huang leaves the room with a rustle just as he entered it, and Vera slumps into the vanity chair. She sighs, stretching her legs out in front of her as Rueben covers Elyse with the duvet and stands from the bed. He looks out through the open door, the vapor of lingering, buttery smoke trailing out of the room and into the hall like it is a part of the mysterious, back-alley medicine man.

  Vera eyes Elyse, the skin at the corner of her mouth puckering as she chews the inside of her cheek. “She won’t be well enough to travel, I’m afraid. I’ll stay behind.”

  Rueben’s face, until now twisted with worry, falls like shifting sand. “So will I.”

  “No, you won’t,” Elyse says, lifting her head. Her eyes are glassy, the skin beneath them violet with exhaustion.

  Rueben crawls back into the bed, pulling her hair aside and kissing her temple.

  “I want you to go, and take Jane,” she whispers, closing her eyes again.

  “No. I should stay with you.”

  Elyse shakes her head, and clenches her jaw without looking at him. “You’re the only one who knows what to get me from that shack in Murano.”

  He gives a wry grin, rubbing her shoulder.

  “Please go. It would make me happy if you went, and escorted Jane.” She turns on her side, and pulls the duvet to her shoulder. “She wants to ride on the sofa in the sky,” Elyse whispers.

  Rueben glances over at Vera, lifting a shoulder in a sign of resignation.

  She nods. “I’ll finish up the packing and tell Ms. Jane to get ready.”

  Rueben pulls Elyse close to him as she falls asleep, eyeing the clock on the wall as it ticks down the last few hours to departure. He gets up, smoothing down his clothes and then his hair in the console mirror as she slumbers before he departs.

  Cho Huang returns three times in as many days. Through the miasma, the soft feel of lips upon the temple, the warm pressing of a mother’s hand upon the forehead, and the strong, tar-like scent of carbolic soap drift in and out of Elyse’s brain as she floats on the edge of cognizance for the better part of that week. And suddenly, like the breaking of an ice floe in early spring, the fog lifts and the pain recedes almost as fast as it had come.

  The smell of sickness and fever, panic and pain has soaked into her skin and hair, and with shaky relief like the rising of a newborn foal, she stumbles from the bed and into the bath, filling it to the brim with comforting, warm and soapy water. The crystal blue rose window above the tub is open, and a magpie calls from outside like a dry, clicking castanet in the fading light of day.

  She wanders the silent halls. For several days—and only during the day—she enjoys the solitude. Some would argue a bit too much. Once while in the garden, listening to the faint tinkling of the fountain splashing against the lilies, she could almost feel the entwining of Rueben’s fingers in hers. A place deep within her she did not know existed seemed to open, like the space in an hourglass left by the draining sand.

  She spends the remainder of their journey reading, rearranging the bookshelves, practicing the harp and re-composing the ink-blotted sheets that her mother had finished before departing. Elyse grins as her pen scratches out the dotted eighth sixteenths, returning them to whole notes. The thought of her mother’s dire reaction amuses her, and she has a mischievous urge to change the entire key of the song. Even Mrs. Vera Ewee’s soft knock on the door of the solarium does little to annoy her.

  “Are you excited for their return?” Vera asks, bouncing up on her tiptoes with an infectious grin.

  Elyse nods, tuning the pedals of the harp. “Yes. But it’s been nice to have the house to myself.”

  Vera scoffs, glancing around the solarium and out into the vast halls. “Oh, I don’t know.” She shrugs. “Seems a bit like a tomb, doesn’t it?”

  “How morbid of you.” Elyse sets the harp to the side of her chair beneath the waxy fronds of a golden hibiscus.

  “Well, you still have the evening and better part of tomorrow to enjoy your own mesmerizing company.”

  Elyse frowns and waves her hand dismissively.

  “Your dinner’s in the ice box. I’ll meet you tomorrow afternoon on the airfield.” With a turn of her heel, Vera Ewee leaves. But, her words are a curse.

  Since the Delafayette party departed nearly two weeks ago, every night the vast and silent house swallows all sound—from the ticking of the clocks, right down to her very breath. The long shadows on the walls become blacker than ever, like the whole construction of the place has fallen through time and into another dimension.

  With the last rays of the sun sighing their goodbyes through the window panes, Elyse draws the shades on the canopy bed, cocooning herself beneath the sheets and the duvet. The bed is like a lonely asteroid hurtling through black space, and she is alone on this unmoored island; a bleak and empty seclusion. She longs for her family’s return, and for him.

  For his warmth—the strength of his arms wrapping around her. His breath fanning her neck, and all his solid reassurance. The ache within her yawns, the shape of it his very fingerprint. Gratitude that only this one night remains before his return acts as a soothing balm through her indisposition, and she drifts off into a fitful sleep before the gaunt, pale light of morning creeps over her restless form.

  Her footsteps sound throughout the halls in a clipped, staccato echo so deafening as to drive her mad. Time marches slow as syrup in winter, and a restless itch tugs at her bones and the hollow place below her sternum where all the love that walks on two feet should fill with its constant and wanted presence. The clock strikes three, the time for her to rendezvous to the airfield. At that moment, she hopes to be pregnant within a year.

  The trolley clatters along through the humid city, the summer leaves brushing its glass roof as they tinge yellow just before fall. She plays with the end of her sleeve, pressing the lace eyelet through moist fingertips, and her hairline itches beneath the brim of her straw hat. The sky darkens as they reach the edge of town, a few blocks from the airfield, and lightning crisscrosses the sky like a violent patchwork. Her spirit sinks—now their landing will be delayed.

  With a hiss of steam, the trolley comes to a stop at Stonemiller’s Field, and she departs, waiting at the fence line with the gathering, excited crowd for Vera Ewee.

  Across the airfield in a copse of rangy pine, four witches gather. Their arms are raised to the sky like the stiff prongs of oyster forks, and their butterfly sleeves billow from their translucent elbows as the electric storm gathers within their circle.

  Callista Tromperie stands at the north point, the whites of her eyes raised to the sky as she leads the quartet in a foreign, guttural chant. She conjures the elements of air and fire, and her hair twists within the howling wind in wild, opalescent knots.

  The dirigible carrying the Delafayette party and nearly 100 other passengers, including the all-too important figure in Reuben’s case against precinct 48, Senator Custus, floats above the witches, its silver belly almost brushing the tops of the pines like a fish through seaweed. Clouds swirl and gather around it like an enveloping, putrid smoke, and lighting flashes throughout the swollen, bruised sky.

  The dirigible does a sharp turn as the wind gathers speed, then dies down at a key change in Callista’s destructive chant. Her companions follow suit, and their veins begin to raise beneath their flesh like a network of swelling tributaries, turning a deep purple. As Callista’s face distorts and discolors from such powerful, deadly magick, she holds back the destructive rage of air and fire, allowing the dirigible to come into the airfield unobstructed.

  But then, as the mast is moored, and the ropes drop to secure anchor to earth, Callista Tromperie—now Savannah’s most successful mass murderer—shrieks a high note of ill intent. Lightning originates from the veins of the witches like the spindly blades of crabgrass, and bursts through the air, striking the back end of the dirigible. It ignites in blue and orange flames.

  The witches collapse on the ground, pine needles digging into
their skin as the screams of the passengers and onlookers mix in a ghastly duet with the keening wind. The dirigible’s silver frame is quickly encased in a brilliant conflagration, and it sinks to the ground at breakneck speed. With a sickening crunch, the entire alighted structure hits the earth. No recognizable trace of it remains, now only a pile of smoldering wreckage; sharp, hot, and wreaking of burnt flesh and industrial waste.

  Heavy, rancid black smoke blankets the airfield and surrounding forest as the sirens wail. With a gust of cool wind, the sky opens, and a heavy downpour commences like the very planet is now crying along with the pale-faced onlookers.

  The bodies of Senator Custus and the Delafayette party were never recovered. And now, the yawning ache that had filled our heroine with what was thought to be only their brief absence, remained forever.

  Chapter 3

  Present Time

  Talcott Henderson

  Her eyes shone in the darkness with fresh tears as she recounted such a horrific tale. I longed to lick them from her lashes. The scent of such pungent, lingering sorrow coursing throughout her veins had my talons stinging like hornets, and I painfully itched to suck her dry until she came-to on the other side of death in my cold arms, where nothing ever hurt but the insatiable bloodlust. As she wiped at her face with her sleeve, I readjusted the pillows, stood, and approached her.

  “What became of the estate?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I never returned.”

  Interesting. My mouth watered and burned.

  “It sits there? Unoccupied?”

  Sniffling like a dainty fool, she gave a small nod. Now I knew from whence we would reign, my tender bride and I.

  With Lucius dead and The Quartermaine the sole focus of her hatred, I was free to do with her as I wished. I could leave her be, but no fun would be had by either party. I could have drained her dry right then and there, but then she would be a perishable good. No, no—I would turn her like I’d initially planned. But I would remain as her sire, her king, her master. I threatened to cry blood-stained tears of joy.

  The heat, the life rolled off her in delectable waves as I outstretched my arms. I expected her to recoil at my gesture, but surprise of all surprises, she fell against me like seismically shaken, crumbling bricks. She shook against my chest as her sorrowful tears soaked into my shirt. The perfume of it was like the sharp rays of the darkening moon—silvery, faintly sweet like almond milk. I carried her to the bed as my gums itched, my talons growing beneath the backs of her knees and entwining into her soft, fragrant hair.

  I placed her onto the bed. She looked up at me, her eyes wide, beautifully sad. I felt myself harden, electrifying into a ravenous fiend. The vein in her neck pulsated as I loomed over her, transmogrifying into my full, devilish form. I traced the outline of that precious vein with the sharp edge of my talon, and again to my surprise and delight, her eyelids fluttered closed, she sighed, and by tilting her head, she exposed herself to me in such exquisite submission.

  My fangs burst forth into sharp rapiers, and as she lay beneath me, prone and softly open, tear-stained, resigned, I merely stood still and drank in the draught of her; like tangy meringue, or a moist devil’s food cake, and leaned down to her carotid. I blew upon the sensitive flesh with ice-cold exhalation, tasting her shiver in the air, and my fingertips shook at this tender prey. I was the shark in the water, the hawk as it circled the terrified field mouse, the lone wolf as he prowled the edge of darkness, growling like the flames of hell. The points of my fangs touched the edge of her unbroken skin, but with the beat of her heart, I was at once repelled.

  My stomach lurched in a somersault as worry tugged at me, and I leaned down again to take a bite of her. Another strong thump, and a pulsating forcefield hit me in the gut, pushing me away like I was the wrong end of a magnet. The back of my legs hit the hard edge of the window seat, and at their meeting, like a tuning fork hitting a dissonant bell, my worry turned to complete and utter panic.

  She sat up, confusion furrowing her brow as she regarded me, my breath escaping my lips in shallow puffs.

  I shook now for entirely different reasons.

  Lucius Marquis, my maker, my owner, had ordered me to never take from the supreme, coveted vein of the neck so long as he walked this earthly realm.

  At the stark realization that the brash, infuriating bastard had managed to dodge the pointed end of the hickory stake, a fury grew within the empty, hollow jug of my soul, threatening to peak in a fearful consummation. I bit down hard, slicing my flesh, and what should have been her vibrant, red blood staining my lips was now my own—a quintessential disappointment. The flames inside me burgeoned to bewildering heights as she sat there unawares, looking like a beautiful, unpunctured idiot.

  “Give me your arm.”

  “What?” she asked.

  The fury swelled within me as I took two heavy steps to her, my feet pounding at the floorboards and threatening to dislodge them. I faintly heard her breath catch as she recoiled against the pillows, and I willed myself not to slice her to ribbons. I pounced on her, my cold, furious hand covering her mouth, trapping the scream in her throat, her perfect, tender, smooth, intact throat! Oh, the many tears of frustration that fell from my eyes to her white dress, staining it with deep crimson drops.

  She struggled, rather uselessly, her arms flailing around like weak doves. I pinned them above her head, and sunk my teeth into the inside of her left wrist, sucking, feeding, having my delicious fill of what I was still allowed.

  Allowed, pah! I parted her thighs with my knee, and her fear and her pain that I was too impotent to take away tugged at me, enveloping me like the thick blankets of smoke that must have poured from that doomed dirigible in her woeful tale.

  Her blood filled and invigorated me. I grew strong as she weakened, going limp as a wrung dish towel. She fainted in my arms as I released her.

  My anger was sated along with my hunger, if only for a moment, and I got up from the bed, wiping at my mouth and sighing with satisfaction. Her face was glassy and wan like marble. I traced the outline of her gently rising and falling breast beneath my fingertip, and felt her heart flutter beneath her ribs.

  “Soon I shall have you, my doll, and you will be my queen forevermore,” I whispered to her slumbering form, and sat on the window sill with a heavy thud and began to don my boots. Just like Ilse should have been, my queen that is, before that disgusting rat Lucius had her murdered before me.

  Lucius, the unfit king, still reigned. He must die before I could ever seize my rightful happiness. I eyed the moon through the open shutters as it retreated behind a hazy cloud to the westward horizon. The sun would return soon, and I would be forced into hiding until dusk. But, a faint sliver of optimism pierced my silent, black heart—if Lucius was alive, then The Quartermaine must be dead. Perhaps all was not so bleak, after all.

  With the final knot in my laces tied, I took my greatcoat off the back of her vanity chair, and draped it over her as she slept. I kissed her temple, and departed from the room for the ruins of the Delafayette estate.

  As dawn’s orange fingertips caressed the façade of the old country home, a shaggy black rook startled from the pines overhead, its caw becoming the screams of the dirigible’s doomed passengers in my fuzzy brain. The encroaching daybreak had me sluggish, and I hurried up the mansion’s crumbling steps. I could still smell her on my skin, and taste her on the tips of my fangs. A sting of regret for how roughly I’d last handled her trickled into my spirit, like water dripping from the point of an icicle. This foreign, long forgotten feeling unsettled me, and I broke the lock on the door with a deft and forceful twist of my hand, and entered the silent, dark, musty house.

  Plaster had fallen from the ceiling in tiny bombs like powdered sugar, crunching beneath my boots. I closed the door behind me with a creak, and my eyes glowed in the darkness, bathing the interior in bright, green light.

  Beautiful cobwebs, like delicate lace, festooned the main hall. My ref
lection bounced off a filthy hanging mirror, flattering the space in an emerald prism. I passed the entrance to what was once a solarium, the plants all dead and brown, wilted like decapitated prisoner’s heads on the pikes of London Bridge. A black tote, lumpy as a bag of bones, sat forlornly beneath the brown, crispy dead leaves of what must have once been a lurid hibiscus. I approached with a giddy bounce in my step, and unzipped the bag.

  Inside was a lap harp, clean and untouched, its brass crown still shiny as a freshly molded coat button. I plucked the strings with my talons, longing to discern her secrets in the untuned notes.

  I pirouetted down the hall, turning around the back end of the main staircase until I reached the front of it again. The place was sad and perfect and grand, just like she and I. I did a quick, ragtime jig on the bottom step, and ascended to the second floor, determination and a foreign, longed-for optimism steeling my blue blood. Once I reached the top, I took a deep draught of the air, searching for a memory of Elyse within the walls, like a vague daguerreotype, and became drawn to the third door from the top step.

  I waltzed down the filthy parquet floors, the heels of my boots whispering against the wood, imagining her in my arms with blood red lips and spinning, matching eyes hued in crimson. Oh, but she would be livid upon waking, or worse, terrified.