The Sweetest Dark (27 page)

He threaded both hands through his hair, staring at his father; I could see the fury draining away. When he spoke again, he sounded just … confounded. Disbelieving.

“So he's lured them here. The Germans. He managed—oh, God, he managed to somehow start a rumor that Iverson's been turned into a secret munitions factory. That we're building explosives or something out here. I found cables and cables about it, and everyone knows how—how easy they are to intercept. He wanted the Germans to come to blow it up, don't you see? And he meant … I think he meant to shoot them first. With the Vickers.”

“I thought that ground fire couldn't reach the zeppelins,” I said. “I thought that guns on the ground didn't have the range.”

“Eleanore. Do you imagine for one particle of one second that he was thinking clearly enough to fathom that?”

“He was thinking clearly enough to fathom all of
this,
” I retorted, my hand flung out to encompass the roof. Blood stained my palm. “Clearly enough to have men haul all these crates into the castle in broad daylight all week long, so that everyone could see them and wonder what was actually inside!”

“I know!” Armand's voice broke. He walked back to his father, going to his knees beside him. He placed his hands upon the unconscious man's chest. “I know,” he repeated, beneath the screech of the wind.

Jesse left me to limp to them. The backs of his fingers grazed the top of Armand's head, not quite a caress. “Grief can break a mind. He loved and loved, your father, because that's his way. He couldn't turn it off.”

“He
shot
at Armand,” I felt compelled to point out. I wasn't in a forgiving mood; the duke certainly hadn't minded risking me and everyone inside the castle getting blasted into oblivion to gain his revenge. And the smell of Jesse's blood was becoming overwhelming. “He might have
killed
you.”

“Yet he didn't. He had the opportunity to kill both of us when we first made it up the stairs, but once he saw he'd wounded me, he simply shot around us. I suspect the bullet that got you, Lora, was more of an accident than not. All he wanted was for us to go, so that he could finish his plan. Burn away his grief.”

Armand was shaking his head. “I don't know what to do now. He's the duke of all this. The duke of everything. If people find out … I don't know what to do.” He rubbed at his eyes. “God, Dad.”

I had managed to get myself into the shirt, even past the throbbing ache of my arm.

“Right,” I said once more, because it sounded firm, and because Armand's brittle desolation was beginning to eat at me. None of this, after all, was his fault. “We get him downstairs. We sneak him out of the castle, back to your motorcar. You take Jesse to a doctor and your father home. Lock him in a room, pour some wine down his throat. Laudanum. Whatever you have to do to keep him out while I get rid of the guns. None of this ever happened.” I looked at Jesse. “Are there hidden tunnels to use? So no one sees?”

“I'm sorry,” said Jesse. “It's too late for that.”

“No, we can at least get him to—”

“Too late, Lora. Listen.”

I did, cocking my head to the wind. But I didn't hear any voices. I didn't hear people on the stairs. It was mostly schoolrooms over here; we were far from the populated part of the castle.

I held back my hair and shrugged at him.

Jesse glanced upward. Toward the eastern stars.

Thup-thup-thup-thup.
It was hardly a sound at all, it came so faint.

“What is that?” I asked sharply, but I knew. Oh, I knew.

The Germans had believed the mad duke's cables. The airships were coming.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

“What is what?” asked Armand. “I don't hear anything.”

I hadn't taken my eyes from Jesse. “There's more than one. Two at least, right?”

“Two,” he said. “I hear two.”

Armand stood. “Two
what
?”

I sent him a look. “Zeppelins. Headed this way.”

He stared at us, silent. And, really, what could he say?
Sorry my father doomed us all? Nice knowing you?

“All right, all right.” I chafed my hands nervously up and down my sides, rumpling the shirt. “I can—I can fly up there. Turn to dragon. Claw them open, make them crash.” Instinctively, I turned to Jesse, almost plaintive. “Can't I?”

He took up my hand. I swear I saw the stars brighten around him, a sparkling, silvered nimbus. “Perhaps.”

“Well, I have to. That's all there is to it. I have to.”

“No,” burst out Armand. “They have guns! Bombs! They'll fill you with holes before you can blink!”

“Not if I'm smoke.”

“
Smoke
can't tear apart a dirigible! We need to wake the others and evacuate the castle. Get everyone out before they make it here.”

“No time,” said Jesse. “We've only a few minutes. Look.”

And, yes, I could see them now in the distance, two round, dark blots against the purple sky, steadily enlarging.

Thup-thup-thup-thup-thup
 …

 … 
shoom-shoom-shoom
 …

“Hold up, what's that?” I ran to a merlon, tilting past it to scan the empty sea. The wind snapped my hair into a banner, a cheerful long flutter beyond my face. “Do you hear that, too? That swooshing sound? Is it a ship?”

“A submarine,” replied Jesse, matter-of-fact. “A U-boat sent ahead. They do that with the airships when they can. It's about ten leagues out. Headed this way.”

I think the word
despair
is much too small to encompass the magnitude of all it defines. For me, right then,
despair
meant that everything within me—my organs, my spirit, my hope—plunged down into a place of utter density, of blackness so heavy and bleak I had no idea how to lift any of it up again.

I can't do this. I'm just Lora Jones. I can't even remember how to tell a shrimp fork from an oyster fork. I can barely find middle C. I can't save Jesse and Armand and the castle. I can't defeat them all.

But I had to. We were going to die unless I did.

I pulled back from the merlon. I stood with my hands at my sides and made certain my face was scrubbed clean of any expression before I turned around to them again.

Jesse had decided to sit. The darkened figure of the duke stretched out flat behind him; the ruby from his ring was making a warbling noise, small and sorrowful.

“Is the tide high enough right now for a torpedo to make it inside the grotto?”

“Aye. I think so.”

“But they won't know about the grotto,” protested Armand. “How could they know?”

“It's been there for ages, Mandy. Longer than the castle, even. It's part of the geography of the island. How difficult could it be to find out about it?”

One strike. I'd bet that was all it would take. One lucky strike, and the grotto, the columns, the foundation of the castle itself, would shatter. And down we'd all go.

My heart was thudding so loudly I thought I might retch. Armand had taken my hand and was crushing it in his. His heart beat nearly as frantic as mine.

Blood and muscle. Muscle and blood.

Jesse only watched us both from the limestone as his leg leaked a slow, slick puddle along the fitted grooves. I freed my hand and dragged off the shirt.

“I'll start in the air,” I said, far more steadily than I thought I could, considering. I knelt to tie the shirt around his thigh, cinching it tight above the wound; he stiffened but let me finish the knot. “The air first, the airships, and then—then I'll dive.”

“You can't swim,” broke in Armand. “You told me that you can't.”

“Maybe I can now. If I'm a dragon.”

“Don't be an idiot! If you can't swim, you can't
swim,
Eleanore! You'll drown out there, and what the bloody hell do you think you're going to do anyway to a
U-boat
?
Bite
it open?”

I stood again. “Yes! If I must! I don't hear you coming up with a better—”

“You'll
die
out there!”

“Or we'll all die here!”

“We're going to find another way!”

“You two work on that. I'm off.” I fixed them both with one last, vehement look, the Turn rising inside me.

Remember this. Remember them, this moment, this heartbreak, these two boys. Remember that they loved you.

Armand had reached for my shoulders. “I forbid—Eleanore, please, no—”

“No,” echoed Jesse, speaking at last. “You're not going after the submarine, Lora. You won't need to.”

Armand and I paused together, glancing down at him. I stood practically on tiptoe, so ready to become my other self.

Jesse climbed clumsily to his feet. When he swayed, we both lunged to catch him.

“Armand will take me to the shore. I'll handle the U-boat.”

“How?” demanded Armand at once.

But I understood. I could read him so well now, Jesse-of-the-stars. I understood what he meant to do, and what it would cost him.

I felt myself shaking my head. Above us, the airship propellers thumped louder and louder.

“Yes,” said Jesse, smiling his lovely smile at me. “I already sense your agreement. Death and the Elemental were stronger joined than apart, remember? This is our joining. Don't waste any more time quarreling with me about it. That's not your way.” He leaned down to me, a hand tangled in my hair. His mouth pressed to mine, and for the first time ever I didn't feel bliss at his touch.

I felt misery.

“Go on, Lora-of-the-moon,” he murmured against my lips. “You're going to save us. I know you will.”

I glared past him to the harsh, baffled face of Armand. “Will you help him? Do you swear it?”

“I—yes, I will. I do.”

I disentangled Jesse's hand, kissed it, stepped back, and let the Turn consume me, smoke rising and rising, leaving the castle and all I loved behind me for the wild open sky.

...

Airships aren't actually powered by air. They have propellers and engines that run on fuel, much like a water-bound ship, and they stay aloft by means of the hydrogen gas trapped inside the cells of their great elongated balloons.

I knew that much from the reports in the London papers, but what I recalled most about them, watching them float over St. Giles to let loose their unholy fire, were the windowed gondolas that hung beneath the balloon part, filled with crew. And the bomb bays positioned behind those, filled with death. When the ground-defense searchlights landed on them just so, you could clearly see the figures of the men behind the glass.

I remember thinking that the Germans must have had a very fine view of all the neighborhoods they were obliterating.

In every raid, I witnessed the return fire from the rifles and pistols of the watchmen stationed atop the buildings. A short-lived torrent of lights, insignificant as matches lit and dying. If any of them had managed a hit, I'd never been able to tell.

The zeppelins simply flew too high. If there weren't enough aeroplanes assembled nearby to dog them back to sea, they wiped out everything in their paths until they ran out of bombs.

No aeroplanes were coming to our rescue tonight.

Only me. A thing of smoke and tentative skills. I wasn't even certain if my wings were meant for flight. I hadn't exactly had any luck with it the one time I'd tried.

I could glide, though. Probably.

Maybe.

Should worse come to worst, I could smoke up to them, Turn to dragon right there, dig my claws in, and hang on. That might do it.

Looked like I was about to find out.

What I hadn't thought about, what I'd completely managed to forget about, was that I wasn't exactly skilled at maintaining my transformed shape, either. The reminder came to me rather forcibly as I was streaming my way east, over the channel, and felt myself beginning to solidify.

No. No!

Yes.

Several thousand feet up in the air, I Turned back into a girl. Screaming, cartwheeling, everything topsy-turvy purple as gravity reclaimed me and I plummeted down to the water.

fly!
sang the stars, weighing in past my screams.
fly, beast!

It was a damned near save. I was girl and then I wasn't, managing the Turn so close to the sea that the foam from the cresting waves splashed up through the smoke of me.

Good thing I didn't have a real heart just then. It would have stopped entirely.

I bobbled there, terror-riven, until the sounds of the airships drew me upward again.

Smoke, smoke,
I thought fiercely.
Just—keep—going—

Above me, still so far above, the dirigibles grew larger. And larger. And even larger. I'd seen them only from a distance; I'd never gotten any closer to one than the top floor of Blisshaven. It'd been obvious to me then that they were huge, but I hadn't comprehended
how
huge they were, how chillingly titanic, until I was a wisp alongside one of the balloons, barely as wide as a seam, trying my best to slink up the curving surface of its fabric so that I could Turn on its top.

Bigger than buildings. Bigger than cathedrals. Bigger than anything.

Don't look down. Dear God, whatever you do, don't
 …

Contact with its skin nearly undid me. It felt
alive
with the resonance of the engines, alive and cold, reptilian. I couldn't believe how quiet they were from below. From here, spread thin like wrapping paper against the monster machine, it seemed the noise would gel me back into a girl and shatter me into pieces.

It took an eternity to reach the top of the balloon, and once there, it was practically all I could see. Still arched above me was a bowl of amethyst, but below me there was only zeppelin. The other airship thumped to my left; I heard it, but again, couldn't see it.

All right. I was ready.

I Turned—into a
girl,
not a dragon–and was immediately knocked backward by the wind. I tried to scream once more, but my lungs got no air, and my fingers had no purchase along a material that felt more like solid steel than fabric. I was rolled toward the tail fins in seconds. A few seconds more and I would fall again, this time maybe into one of the propellers.

At the narrowed stern of the balloon, I Turned back to smoke and got sucked instantly into the ship's wake.

I tore apart. It was like when I had flown to the stars and been caught in the high winds, but much, much worse. No matter how I tried, I couldn't right myself. I felt sick and dizzy and, in the end, had to give up. As the airship receded, the wake grew weaker, finally enough that I could rip myself free and drift.

The Germans were getting away. Both of them, both dirigibles, flying away from me utterly unscathed, closing in steadily on the castle. I hadn't managed to stop even one.

I fervently hoped Jesse was having better luck than I.

...

It would have been so much simpler if he could have walked, or run, by himself. If he could have sent Armand on his way with the duke, instead of leaving the duke insensible on the rooftop and relying upon his son for steady steps and eyes that saw clearly.

But that wasn't his fate, so Jesse told himself he should just stop wishing for it. Facts were facts. His left leg was useless. His sight was dimming. He could tell by the smell and the black guttering spots in his vision that they were leaving a trail of blood all along Iverson's pristine floors.

He didn't think Armand had taken note of that. Perhaps his sense of smell wasn't as keen. Not yet.

No one else awoke. There was that slim blessing, at least. With Jesse's arm slung around the other boy's shoulders, they made it all the way to the main doors without rousing a peep from anyone. Just the two of them, and the castle allowing their passage, and the blood-smeared footprints seeping into runners and following them down the corridors.

That was good. That was better than if there'd been a fuss. He wasn't certain his head was straight enough any longer to come up with even feeble lies to explain this.

Tomorrow morning, Jesse knew, was going to bring enough truth for everyone.

...

I was smoke atop a dirigible again, this time the one farther out from the shore, as if that might make a difference. I centered myself on its field of gray skin, fighting to stay apace with it. Fighting my revulsion of its living, pulsating power beneath me.

I Turned to dragon and dug in.

Dragon claws. As it happened, even though they looked like gold, they weren't gold. Not the actual metal. Gold was soft, and my claws were anything but. I learned that as soon as I began to back up: My front talons sliced through the fabric of the balloon as if it were lukewarm butter, leaving a series of black, gaping slits.

Gas gushed past me, unscented and colorless, but I could still see it, how it bent the purple air and then began to suffocate me, flooding my nose and throat and lungs.

I flapped my wings and tried to pull free. One talon was caught and I yanked and yanked, choking, enlarging the gash.

The dirigible began a mild descent.

At last I got loose, shredded fabric rippling up to the stars. I skidded awkwardly to my right, wings outstretched, landing again, digging in again. The hydrogen was stored in separate gas bags. I wasn't sure if emptying only one of them would be enough to fully bring the ship down.

The second set of slits was even longer than the first. Two of them combined in a sudden rupturing of material. The black maw of it gaped beneath me; when the ship listed hard aside, I nearly tumbled in.