Ghosts of War (23 page)

Banks had clearly been telling the truth, back at the hangar. The senator must have had Abraham make any number of them for his own, nefarious use.

Gabriel and Rutherford locked eyes. Both men knew what had to come next. The likelihood was that one of them was going to get killed, torn apart by the mechanical beasts or shot dead by one of the crewmen, but they had to get through that door.

The men first, Gabriel decided. He usually balked at killing others like this, always waiting for them to shoot first, to prove to him they deserved to die, before he let loose with his armory. These men had already shown their hand, however, throwing their lot in with the senator, manning the cannons that had taken potshots at their biplane, and worst of all, preparing to commit genocide on the British people. Gabriel would not mourn their passing, and he would not punish himself for it, either.

He hoisted the barrel of his fléchette gun, nodded his head to Rutherford to indicate he was going left, and then launched himself through the open doorway, bellowing insanely at the top of his lungs and squeezing the trigger bulb to release a hail of tiny razors into the air. One man dropped, clutching his throat as gouts of blood sprayed between his fingers, decorating the galley wall and spattering the pots and pans ranked up beside the sink.

Beside Gabriel, Rutherford went right, taking out two of the men with consecutive blasts from his shotgun before ditching the weapon and drawing his handgun, rolling to avoid a burst of retaliatory fire from a crewman who produced a pistol from his belt, and another who was standing beside the window and quickly bent to retrieve the dead man's snub-nosed rifle.

This latter was too slow, however, and was caught across the chest by Gabriel's second wave of fléchettes, felling him where he stood, the rifle still clutched tightly in his hands.

Gabriel dropped left, falling to one knee to avoid a swipe from one of the raptors, which had come for him almost immediately, unfurling its wings and gliding across the gondola above the pounding gunfire. It shrieked and lashed out with its talons, catching him in his upper arm and raking suit fabric and flesh alike.

Gabriel swore and rolled, trying to get away from the raptor's grasping claws. He caught a momentary, stuttering glimpse of the last remaining crewman collapsing across the floor, and then Rutherford was being wrenched into the air by the other raptor, slamming him hard against the galley wall.

Gabriel had to think quickly. He had limited weapons, and he knew his fléchettes could do little but puncture the creature's wings. At least, he supposed, that would be a start.

From his position on the floor, Gabriel sprang up and over the corpse of one of the dead crewmen, landing heavily on his side. He came up with his weapon arm aimed directly at the raptor and the stillwarm corpse covering his body as a makeshift shield. He let fly with the fléchettes, spraying the creature's wings until the taut panels of human skin were shredded in their frames.

The raptor howled and dropped awkwardly to the ground, losing its balance and stumbling over onto its side. Gabriel took the opportunity to jump to his feet.

Rutherford was just about managing to keep the other raptor at bay. They were locked in a stalemate, with the spy still pinned against the galley wall but successfully grasping the raptor's wrists, preventing it from raking at his flesh.

Gabriel looked to the door. The other raptor was blocking the way, scrambling to its feet in the gangway.

If he could only get to the bird…Gabriel's experience in Greenwich Village had shown him the bird was the key to the raptor's animation. If he could find a way to kill it, he could stop the mechanical beast in its tracks. But he'd never be able to get close enough to prize open the little door in its torso before the raptor took his head off.

He glanced around desperately for anything that might serve as a weapon. And then he spotted it, right there in the galley beside Rutherford: a pan of boiling water, still bubbling on the stove.

He had only seconds to get to it before the raptor was on him again. He leapt across the gangway, taking great strides toward the galley. He heard the raptor closing in behind him, its rotors still spinning with a frantic whine as it tried to lift itself off the ground.

Gabriel's fingers closed on the pan handle just as he felt the creature's claw bite into his already-damaged shoulder, and he called out in pain, barely managing to hold on to the pan. Then, grimacing, he twisted around, allowing the creature to drive its talons even deeper into his flesh and muscle, and hurled the boiling water into its chest.

The sizzling water splashed across the brass skeleton, drenching the tiny doorway that housed the bird. The pan clattered noisily to the floor.

For a moment, nothing happened, and Gabriel thought he'd made a terrible mistake, that the raptor was about to reach forward and rip out his throat, but then its claw went into spasm on his shoulder and it staggered back, its hands going to its chest, clawing at its rib cage as if trying to get at the pain inside.

It issued one final shriek of dismay, and then the light in its eyes blinked out and it crumpled to the floor, nothing but a pile of brass and bone.

Gabriel didn't stop to celebrate. He turned to Rutherford, still grappling with the final raptor. “Keep it busy,” he said, and then made for the door.

The captain—the thin, gray-haired man that Gabriel had seen earlier—didn't survive long enough to issue more than a start of surprise as Gabriel burst through the door boot-first and cut him down with a short burst from his fléchette gun. The man slumped over the wheel, dripping blood, and Gabriel stepped forward and heaved the body to the floor. There would be time to consider his actions later—right now he was running out of time to make a difference.

The tall, panoramic windows that flanked the control car provided Gabriel with a spectacular view of the city below. The scene at the fairground, however, was one of utter pandemonium. The creature from the pit was still engaged in plucking civilians from the cars attached to the Ferris wheel, and the crowds that swarmed around the thing were in utter chaos, with people attempting to flee in all directions at once but managing none.

Gabriel grasped the main steering wheel and spun it hard to the left, feeling
Goliath
groan in protest as the propellers fought to keep up with his demands. The gondola bucked violently as the liner slewed around. He ran across to the other wheels, spinning them wildly, forcing the rudders to bend to his will, dipping the nose of the airship so that the vessel pitched forward, slowly diving out of the sky…directly toward the Ferris wheel and the alien beast.

Gabriel hoped it would be enough. The monster was half dead anyway, poisoned and weakened by Abraham's ministrations. When
Goliath
hit, there would be an explosion unlike anything he had ever seen, a massive, roiling ball of gas. If anything could destroy the monster, it had to be that.

Gaining momentum as it began to slowly fall out of the sky,
Goliath
plummeted toward the earth.

Gabriel looked to the door. He hoped Rutherford hadn't finished off that raptor.

Ginny saw it coming. She saw the airship bank in the air, apparently out of control, and begin its inexorable dive toward the earth. She saw that it was headed directly toward the Ferris wheel, and she saw hundreds of people who were going to die in the ensuing explosion.

Not knowing what else she could do to warn the people around her of the terrible danger they were in—they had failed to listen to her pleas, her shouts, and her screaming—she withdrew one of Gabriel's pistols from her pocket, along with a handful of loose bullets, and began loading the gun with shaky fingers.

A moment later, when she'd managed to slide six bullets into the chamber, she climbed up onto an overturned garbage can, hoisted her arm above her head, and squeezed the trigger, firing off all six shots in rapid succession. The sound was incredible, even against the backdrop of screaming and stampeding feet.

A handful of people turned to look, hopeful, she supposed, that someone had finally arrived to tackle the beast, someone with military training. But instead they saw a small woman in a pink cloche, standing on a dustbin firing bullets into the sky and pointing toward a falling airship that was growing larger with every passing second as it loomed over them, gaining momentum.

It was enough to clear the area, finally, as people fanned out, spreading away from the crush to put enough distance between themselves and the site of the oncoming collision.

Ginny saw Donovan hurtling toward her, and she leapt down from the garbage can, allowing him to take her hand as they rushed off toward the river. Donovan didn't even speak—he didn't need to.

Ginny could hardly breathe. She was waiting for the moment the airship was going to strike, waiting for the sound of the explosion, waiting for…

And then it happened, and it was at once the most devastating and most beautiful thing that Ginny had ever seen. She heard it first, her back still turned as she fled the scene, trailing after Donovan, who pulled her along behind him as he ran.

She released his hand and spun about, and everything she saw from that moment on seemed to occur in a sleepy haze of slow motion. It was as if none of it was real, as if she had somehow entered some dreamlike state as she stood there beside the river and watched the massive liner
crumple
into the Ferris wheel.

At first, everything was silent. The nose of the airship came down at an acute angle, striking the beast and then collapsing as the rear of the vessel folded in on itself, forcing the Ferris wheel over. Then the gasbags exploded with a detonation the like of which she could never have even imagined. She covered her eyes involuntarily as the flash seared her retinas, and all she could hear for seconds afterward was the ringing of the explosion in her ears.

When she finally peeled the crook of her arm from her face, the Ferris wheel, toppled to a jaunty angle, was alight and spinning like a giant pinwheel, and the beast—that strange, alien creature—was writhing beneath the ruins of the liner, squirming in pain as its flesh burned with a sickly sweet stench. It issued a terrifying screech, an inhuman wail, and then lay still, its body roasting in the intense heat of the flames.

The wreckage of the airship was like the massive, shattered carcass of a whale, its aluminum ribs jutting toward the sky from which it had fallen so dramatically. The silvery skin had been all but incinerated in the explosion, and now, Ginny found, it was hard to imagine the wreckage had ever been an airship at all.

Around the fallen vessel a number of trees had caught alight as the gasbags had gone up, and they burned with gusto, their wintry branches cracking and popping in the ferocious heat.

Ginny stepped forward, taking it all in, feeling the warmth of the fire upon her face. Beside her, Donovan was surveying the scene with a blank expression. He clearly didn't know what to make of it all.

She heard someone call out, and she looked up to see an object hurtling out of the sky. It glinted in the firelight, and at first she couldn't make out what it was. But then she felt as if her heart had stopped in her chest, and she was running, sprinting across the grass verge to where the projectile was about to strike the earth.

“Ginny!” Donovan called after her, and she sensed him break into a run behind her. But she wasn't about to be stopped.

Seconds later the object slammed into the ground with the crunch of buckling metal, rebounded twice from the flagstones, and then finally came to rest after a long, grating slide across the dock.

The object then broke into three distinct components, each one rolling away over the ground. Near to her, the remains of a raptor, still sparking and twitching, the rotors of its engines spinning fitfully, came to a dramatic stop.

A little farther away, two men, both bruised and covered in spattered blood, lay panting—and laughing—on the ground.

“Gabriel!” gasped Ginny, as she ran to his side. He looked up at her through barely open eyelids. His face was streaked with black soot, and his shirt was torn open, exposing a chest that had been shredded by the claws of numerous raptors.

He grinned. “Hello, Ginny,” he said. “Found me at last, then.”

She grinned, crouching down and placing her cupped hand to his face. “Something like that,” she said, before kissing him brightly on the forehead. Then, bracing herself, she took his hands in hers and hefted him to his feet. He stumbled slightly, and she took his weight for a moment while he righted himself. “How did you steer that thing?” she said, glancing at the remnants of the raptor.

“We didn't,” replied Gabriel, laughing. He looked over at Donovan, who was helping the other man to his feet. “So you've met Jerry Robertson, Felix?” said Gabriel, still smiling. “Or rather Peter Rutherford, our missing British spy.” The other man, looking just as haggard as Gabriel, was brushing himself down, which Ginny found faintly ridiculous given the torn and bloodied state of his suit. He smiled at her expectantly.

Donovan's eyes widened in surprise, and Ginny laughed, suddenly caught by how incredible the whole thing seemed. Gabriel had just come tumbling out of the sky on the back of a raptor, and now he was standing there introducing them to the British spy they'd spent so long searching for the last few days.

“I take it the two of you had something to do with that?” Donovan asked, nodding toward the burning wreck of
Goliath.

“Well…” Rutherford started, but Gabriel cut him off with a wave of his hand.

“We'll explain in the car, Donovan. We'll tell you everything. You need to know the truth.” He paused for a moment. “You do have your car, don't you?”

Donovan laughed. “Somewhere around here. If it hasn't been flattened by falling aircraft, that is.”

Rutherford approached Gabriel, clapping a hand on his shoulder and causing Gabriel to wince in pain. “It's over, Gabriel. Thank you.”

Gabriel shook his head. “No. It's not over yet. We still need to stop Banks.” The look on Gabriel's face was telling. Ginny knew what that expression meant.