The Dirigible Airship Disaster Read online

  “Something took her! Ow, stop it,” I said, jumping about the wrecked room, avoiding Mrs. Ewee’s blows.

  Anger tore into me. I couldn’t understand why I was always taking the fall for those wretched deadlings.

  “Vera, stop, stop it now.” Mr. Pembroke grabbed her arm and pulled her away from me. She slumped onto the bed, her mouth twisted in a snarl and her eyes wet as she glared at me with a hatred unmatched.

  “I’m sorry. I tried to get her out of here before anything happened,” I said, crossing the room. Broken glass crunched beneath my bare, bloodied feet, and a shard managed to pierce through the callous on the sole of the right one. I grimaced before turning to face them.

  “An excellent job you’ve done there,” Mrs. Ewee scoffed, sweeping her arm across the wrecked room before hugging herself.

  “I’ll bring her back,” I said.

  “Do you even know where she is?” Mr. Pembroke asked, adjusting his glasses, the flesh around his mouth pulling at odd directions as worry and fear took over.

  “No, but I’m about to find out.”

  Mrs. Ewee made another disapproving sound and crossed her arms, glaring at me over her shoulder. “We’re calling the police.”

  I shrugged, adjusting the sash of the bathrobe. “You can, but I’m the only one who can bring her back.”

  I passed through the threshold, crushing the splinters of the door beneath my feet and Mrs. Ewee yelled after me. “I suppose I’ll just clean up your mess then.”

  “Appreciate it,” I said through the doorway before running down the stairs, and out the door to the dark, empty thoroughfare where Andy waited in his jitney.

  “Jesus, what happened to you? And where are your clothes?” He looked behind me over his shoulder, then waggled his eyebrows and smirked. “Ah, jealous fiancé, huh? You cad.” He hooted with laughter.

  “Shut up and drop me off where you found me. And hurry, for god’s sake.”

  The jitney creaked as he began to pedal. “A bit touchy? Not my fault your rocks didn’t get off before the man o’ the house returned.”

  I sighed, weary and misunderstood. After four hundred years, I could only surmise that it was the lot I was destined to occupy.

  A thin curl of blue smoke twisted from the crooked chimney of the shack as I barreled down the dock, throwing open the door. Tiodora, a worn grimoire in hand, startled from her seat in a rickety old rocker. She stood immediately, clutching the book.

  “Oh god, he got her?” She covered her mouth.

  I shook my head, closing the door, and crossed the room to the cot where my clothes lay. “No, but something did. I need you to find out.”

  “I will, but where are Lucius, and Henderson?”

  “Lucius? I suspect either Abaddon or Callista has him. Henderson is in pursuit of Elyse,” I said, tearing off the robe and tossing it to the floor. I heard Tiodora’s skirt rustle as she turned away from me to face the fire.

  “Your back,” she said.

  “I know.” I pulled on a pair of trousers and buckled them.

  “Feed from me.”

  I looked over at her, staring into the fire and still holding the grimoire. The firelight danced in her hair. Embers sparked at her feet. I knew I needed it, but I truly hated that monstrous part of my heritage. I could only use it to fight those creatures as centuries-long penance for what the dark half of me compelled, whispering in my ear in the dark of night, urging me to indulgence. It was a miserable, agonizing, never-ending pull.

  She turned her head, watching me from the corner of her eye. “I’ll need the energy anyway if I’m to discern her whereabouts.”

  “There’s no other way?”

  She cleared her throat and turned. A frown pulled at her mouth. “There is another way, but you best not take it.”

  I scoffed. “It has to be better than that.”

  She set the grimoire on the seat of the rocker and took a few steps toward me. “You’re strange for a dhamphyr, denying yourself like that.” She stopped in front of me, close enough to touch, the top of her head barely reaching my chin.

  All her talk of feeding, while my blood dripped from the tear between my shoulders set a buzzing in my ears like a swarm of hungry hornets. I felt my eyes turn red as she stood close, so very close. Her warmth seeped into me like she was the very fire in the hearth.

  “There is no other way,” she whispered, craning her neck. The vein inside her danced like the embers.

  Before I could deny the magnetic pull any longer, my fangs erupted with a horrifying snap, and with my reluctant hand around the back of her head, I bit into her like the fiend I’d tried but failed to bury.

  She was exotic; she was spice like masala, orange as the bonfires of Tahiti. Her breath came fast and hot against my chest, and her nails dug into my arms like tantalizing bites. A bulbous, pewter ring sat on the middle finger of her right hand, and the metal cooled my skin, which began to boil along with hers. She scintillated like a roman candle, and a nebulous shroud enveloped us as her magick began.

  That shroud . . . I’d first seen it as a very young boy, before my transformation. It poured from my mother’s fingertips, and into her eyes, turning them hazy like the decomposing fish heads on the banks of the Seine. The sight of it had frightened me to stupefaction, before my father found me frozen with my eye to the keyhole and put his cane to my back.

  An unintelligible incantation passed Tiodora’s lips, and we levitated in the warmth of the shack, our toes brushing the dirt floor. I drew deeply from her blessed, tender vein, and her life essence filled me. My wounds began to close like a tightening fist. Slowing my pull on her blood, she lowered us to the floor as I released her, turning away quick to the bed so she couldn’t look at me.

  My hands shook as the blood-drenched high filled my head, warming my very dead bones, invigorating me, yet filling me with a familiar melancholy. The thing I hated most about myself was the thing which would destroy Henderson and Marquis, and save Elyse. Such a sad irony. Burying it, hiding from it had only weakened me, and Trina and our child had paid the price. Frowning, I wiped the blood from my lips and threw on my shirt and fastened the buttons. I stared at a crack in the wall where moss had grown in, waiting to feel my eyes turn back to their rightful shade of deep blue before turning around.

  She stood in the middle of the room, eyeing the ring whose lid was flipped, and the shroud which had covered us while I fed from her puffed from the face of the ring’s interior like the white plume of an ibis. The wounds in her neck had already begun to stitch together, and her face grew pale as she watched the scene unfold, somewhere in the misty face of the ring. I shuddered to think of what she saw. Her eyes were covered by that filmy layer, and with a shriek, the plume and the shroud over her eyes disappeared into the ring, and the lid snapped shut.

  “Callista has her,” she said, staring at me with a furrowed brow.

  I sucked in a breath, pulling my boots out from under the bed and lacing them. The frayed end of the tie caught on the edge of a metal eyelet and I mumbled a curse, worrying for a moment that Callista could sense her spying through whatever portal that ring held. “I suppose you didn’t happen to see Lucius anywhere in that gaudy ring of yours?”

  She frowned. “It only works for one person at a time.”

  “Right.” I pursed my lips and stood. “She can’t see you? I mean, through that thing. It’s not a two-way mirror, is it?”

  Tiodora smirked, quirking an eyebrow. “No. She shouldn’t know. Callista never paid much mind to me anyway. I was low in the hierarchy. She once referred to me as a ‘mute.’” Tiodora gave a wry smile, scoffed and shook her head. “If there is any justice in this world, Callista’s arrogance will be her downfall.”

  “Well I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting on justice.” I rolled my eyes. “Callista probably doesn’t want Abaddon to use Elyse to close the portal. At least, I hope that keeping her alive is what we both want.”

  “You’re not seriously consid
ering striking a deal with Callista?” Tiodora asked, her mouth twisting in a frown.

  “I am. I’ll let her believe that I’ll work to keep the portal open, and that I’ll fetch Lucius from Abaddon.”

  “That’s if Abaddon even has Lucius,” Tiodora said, her eyes narrowed with incredulity.

  I sighed, clenching my jaw. “I have to get her back, and buy us some time, at least.”

  “You can’t go in there empty-handed with Callista.”

  “I’m not. I’m going in there to offer my services.”

  Tiodora scoffed and crossed her arms.

  “In the meantime, why don’t you take all your annoyance out on some poor, unsuspecting crocodiles head and find out where Lucius is.”

  She rolled her eyes, picked up her book and slumped into the rocker.

  Chapter 9

  Elyse Delafayette

  All around me, the sounds and smells of the night beckoned, but no words could escape my lips, sealed shut by some foreign magick. My heart pounded with panic as the wind whipped the billowing sleeves and the hem of my kimono. The scalloped edge tickled my ankles, and my insides churned. I felt unbalanced, like I was being pulled from behind instead of moving forward. All was black beneath the hood, but two distinct, female voices could be heard conversing behind me through the thick, scratchy material covering my head. A wheel creaked, and a bat screeched somewhere far away, calling me, searching for me in the blackness. I wanted to cry and scream but my mouth was slammed shut and I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed.

  “Your freezing spell has held up rather well, I see. I must say, I’m impressed,” A woman said with a heavy southern accent, like slow, sugary sweet molasses.

  “Humph, you ought to be. Your levitating charm leaves much to be desired. I was afraid when we grabbed her we’d smash into the building.” This one sounded older, gruffer, nasally almost.

  “Oh, hush. It’s working just fine. And he can’t see us. The invisibility shield is really the most important part of the plan.”

  “Maybe he can’t see us, but he is gaining purchase. If he’s fed from her recently, he’ll sense her.”

  “Pish posh, it doesn’t really matter. If he reaches the boundary, he’ll disintegrate to ash, the love-sick puppy. Vampires are so cloyingly possessive once they determine a match.”

  “That they are, and I certainly hope he does disintegrate. But Callista’s sunbeam spell seemed a bit weak this morning.”

  “That’s her fault for not feeding. I offered her my assistance. But she just refused, shaking her little head with her nose in the air like the queen she is.”

  The other woman snorted a laugh, and I heard a sharp, quick sound like a slap against her arm. “Ow!”

  “Don’t make fun, now! I offered for the cause.”

  “Whatever. Your face leaves as much to be desired as the sunbeam spell.”

  “Is that right? Bless your cold heart. Have you looked in the mirror since The War of Northern Aggression? I mean a real one, not an enchanted one.”

  The woman scoffed. “Would you hurry up? He’s closer.”

  The wheel creaked faster, louder and the wind blew strong in my hair. I shivered.

  “Maybe she’ll feed from this one. Did you see her? Quite the bit’ o’ jam.”

  “Yeah well, pretty girls are a dime a dozen. Can she do magick? That’s when no one will hold a candle.”

  “Shush, you. She can still hear us. It’s a freezing spell, not a deaf spell.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do, Belinda. I’m still older than you.”

  “And wider by a country mile.”

  “Oh, you just shush, now. And man those gears for the landing so we don’t all die, please.”

  We lurched downward. Bile burned the back of my mouth, threatening to spew everywhere. I panicked even more at the thought of choking on my own vomit, beneath a black hood and paralyzed. My head spun, and I grew hot from the fear of what they would do. Feed? Disintegrate? A sharp wrenching sound, like metal grinding against metal, shrieked in my ears. As my blood rushed through my veins, regret and anger at my own stupidity for not following Samuel threatened to crush the breath from my lungs. Tears spilled from my eyes, and I grit my teeth to stop them. I couldn’t even wipe at my nose. We landed with a heavy, jarring bump, and whatever kind of carriage we were in rolled to a quick stop.

  I could smell smoke, and some odd, bitter scent like roots boiling tickled my nose and I wanted to sneeze. There was no sound except the crackling of the fire, and the huffing of whoever had been peddling. Skirts rustled in the grass, and I sensed the two women standing in front of me.

  “Should we take it off?” The one with the gruff voice asked.

  “No, no. Wait for Callista. I’m not sure if one of us should fetch - oh, here she comes.”

  Someone approached, silently. I could only smell this Callista, like tropical fruit, or a warm ocean breeze. Someone lifted the hood from my eyes. It was her, Callista whatever.

  She stood before me in a midnight black robe, runes of mauve woven throughout it in diaphanous, shimmering thread. Or perhaps it was enchanted to glimmer so, like stars. Her hair, wispy and lavender-hued, swirled in the breeze, whipping around her. It was uncouth for a woman to wear her hair down in mixed company. A pang of jealousy gripped me along with utter awe, and the fear of what she had planned.

  “She’s crying. Goddess, don’t leak, please.” Callista reached into a fold of her skirt, and pulled a black kerchief from a hidden pocket, tossing it into my lap.

  Her eyes were bright like gold, and crows’ feet puckered their corners. They were enchanting, beautiful almost. I was instantly drawn to her like a naive sparrow flying into a closed window, believing its reflection is an equally impassioned mate.

  She beckoned to me, then turned on her heel. I could only see her. The voices I’d been hearing were just that, voices, disembodied, and without an earthly vessel. I saw no one else but her, and I followed her across a field, a fire on the edge of my vision crackling and illuminating the tall grass. Daubing at my eyes with the kerchief, I sensed the other two behind me, but I could only stare at Callista. An aroma of tropical candy, perfume like far -off beaches drifted from her and my stomach and fear calmed themselves in her presence. I hurried to stay close to her.

  “I’ve taken you to keep you safe.”

  I nodded. She turned suddenly, the space between her eyebrows puckering. Her skin was luminescent, delicate like crepe paper. The lines in it as mysterious and enchanting as the cracks in fine, valuable china. I’d never seen a woman so beautiful, unconventionally so.

  “Are you listening, child?”

  That was the second time in as many hours that I’d been referred to as a child. The first time, I was angry, dejected even, but when she said it, I only wanted to acquiesce to her judgement.

  “I’m listening,” I said.

  She smiled, slowly, enchantingly. I wanted to lick her. It was terrible. Disgust formed in the pit of my stomach like the knot of a walnut seed, but the gaze that fell from her eyes, the curl of her cupid’s bow lips disintegrated it before she turned, motioning for me to follow her with a graceful pianist’s finger, the nails round and long and perfect. She walked, and I followed across the dim field like a shade.

  The night soon swallowed the light of the fire. I don’t know how long we continued like that, walking in the dark. I stumbled a few times over uneven ground, the night so black I could barely see my feet. The field was expansive, or maybe it was small. We reached the edge where it met an even darker forest, and beneath the drooping boughs of the pines, a stone structure in Romanesque revival stood, like the motte and bailey castles of yore. Lights blazed through the embrasures. Smoke alternated in hues of purple, green, and blue from the chimney stacks, like the building was alive and breathing. English ivy grasped the rusticated stones over the archways, and curled like green snakes around the porch columns.

  We traversed the cobblestone walkway, approaching the oaken fro
nt door, the width and height of two men and snug as a heart in a ribcage beneath thick columns and a low roman archway. Callista gave a sweep of her hand and the door opened of its own accord.

  I gasped before she turned and eyed me, head to toe and back again, with those shining, golden eyes. Firelight and the smell of fragrant herbs spilled from the entree way.

  “That power can be yours.”

  I tilted my head, eyeing her from the corner of one eye.

  She laughed like the trilling notes of a mandolin. “You doubt me.”

  “No, ma’am.” I shook my head, and wondered at my sudden loose lips. “Someone else has recently offered me a bargain involving a great deal of power.”

  Her eyebrows rose as she nodded once before turning to the open door and leading our procession through it. We stopped inside the threshold of the expansive, strange fortress. It was warm and inviting, bathed in soft light from the candles that lined its halls, shining beneath mirrors, flickering from high sconces and spindly candelabras. The ends of Callista’s hair brushed my shoulder as she turned to my two captors.

  “Belinda and Cecilee will take you to your quarters,” she said, giving another sweep of her hand. The door groaned shut.

  “Shall I get the hood?” Belinda croaked. She was as wrinkled and brown as a peeled granny smith apple, pulling at the frayed innards of her dress pocket where I could only assume in renewed terror that she kept that ghastly hood.

  I shuddered at the thought of wearing it again.

  Callista frowned. “That’s no way to treat a guest, Belinda. Your old age has rendered you feral.”

  Cecilee, round and fat as a rich old housewife, stifled a giggle. Belinda slapped her arm with the hood.

  “Guest? I certainly never received an invitation,” I said to Callista, miffed.

  Callista’s eyebrows rose. “My apologies for the rough introduction, but I had to get you away from the two incompetents fighting in your bedroom, and someone else much more terrifying. But you need not concern yourself with him now.” She rested her hand on my shoulder and a ripple tore through me, like dropping a stone in still water. I felt like I’d swallowed honey.