The Dead Gentleman (28 page)

The engine …

She began to climb. If she could shut down the engine and bring the
Charnel House
out of the sky, then she could use the resulting chaos to find Merlin. Plus she didn’t like the look of those guns that were taking aim at Tommy below.

She took hold of the nearest wire and hauled herself up into the rigging, eyes fixed on each span of cable ahead of her, climbing just a few inches at a time. The wind whipped her hair about her face, and the netgun slung on her back got snagged more than a few times, but all in all she made steady progress as she pulled herself along, hand over hand, toward the rear of the ship, where the great engine roared.

She shinnied up and through a doorway into the engine platform, a monstrous compartment near the back, and found herself face to face with a grease-stained, pallid engineer. He looked half dead like the rest of the crew. Seeing Jezebel, he pulled out a long monkey wrench and grinned with rotten yellow teeth as he approached. Jez didn’t know which way to go—the engine was there behind him, a massive wall of dials and pressure gauges—but the engineer was nearly upon her. She held her ground and drew her netgun.

I managed to get the aft under the surface just as the first volley of gunfire hit the waves. Cushioned by the churning water, most of the shots rang off the
Nautilus
’s hull with a loud echo. But enough of them had found their mark that the ship was taking on water as the engines screamed at me in protest. A three-foot tear in the
Captain’s quarters had swamped the bridge with a foot of river water before I’d managed to get the flood hatch closed. I imagined the Captain’s many priceless treasures disappearing out the hole and into the muddy river.

The
Nautilus
was a durable vessel, but she was also, in some ways, delicate. She wasn’t built for broadside naval combat, not like the steel-reinforced zeppelin. The
Charnel House
could outlast a frontal assault far better than Captain Scott’s old underwater ship. If I took her up again to the surface, away from the protection of the deep Hudson, we’d have maybe one chance to shoot before taking another full round of gunfire, and one more round would do us in. Our small guns just didn’t have the firepower to take down a hulk like the
Charnel House
, and the
Nautilus
’s torpedoes didn’t have the angle to hit an airborne target.

At that point the best I was hoping for was to distract the Gentleman long enough to give Jezebel a head start. She was still back at the Percy, and perhaps she’d even had enough time to find Merlin. Regardless, the bird was someone else’s responsibility now.…

You will save the life of this girl you will meet, you will catch her before she falls into darkness and you will die as a result. First you, then the world
.

This is precisely why I don’t put much stock in prophecies—I’d saved Jezebel, and if the High Father was right, my own life was now forfeit. But here I was, alive and fighting still. Perhaps the High Father had been wrong, or perhaps my death was just waiting for me. Perhaps this next volley.

So be it. I’d made my choice and the world would live or die because of it. When it had come down to it, there was no way I would let Jezebel die.

For what it’s worth, I’d grab her every time, even if it meant the world dying. Even if it meant a hundred worlds dying.

I cranked the wheel to port and dove deeper into the murky river. I had one last idea and I needed depth if it had any hope of working—a crazy, dangerous plan—but one that might just bring down the
Charnel House
. The water in the cabin had already risen to my knees. This wasn’t the plan of a seasoned Explorer; this was the plan of a cornered street thief—desperate and dirty.

I found myself whistling as I angled the ship’s nose upward. Just as it should be.

The engineer moved faster than Jez would have thought possible, but he wasn’t fast enough to avoid the net. With a pressurized thunk the net wrapped the engineer up tight, and the force of the shot sent him reeling backward and through a window, falling to the gunner’s deck below. Jez cringed at the thought of his body hitting the boards—she hadn’t meant to kill him. But when she looked down, she saw that he was still moving and she wondered if he’d actually ever been truly alive. What had Tommy called them?
Near-
dead?

She didn’t have time to worry about it. Already several Grave Walkers had spied the engineer’s fall and were climbing the rigging after her. She removed the mayfly from her pocket. Bernie had said that the little device was capable of destroying a portal—Jez could imagine what it might do to an engine. She gave the ball a twist and there was the sound of something clicking into place. Immediately the ball began to vibrate in her hand. She was so startled she nearly dropped it before tossing it into one of the engine’s many vents. Then she began her climb back along the rigging as fast as she could manage.

From deep within the engine she heard the sound of buzzing, like an angry bug in a jar. It was getting louder.

Just then Jezebel heard a great cry go up from the Grave Walkers, and as she looked down she saw Tommy’s submarine shooting up out of the river. It was nearly vertical, launching into the air on jets of water like a rocket. No, more like a missile—a missile aimed for the heart of the
Charnel House
. He was going to crash the sub into the zeppelin.

The rigging around her shook with the impact, and Jezebel barely managed to hang on. The whole ship quivered and quaked; countless Grave Walkers spilled over the railings into the churning water below. The
Charnel House
groaned and settled for an instant before the world around her cracked and burst into flame.

I held on to the wheel with one arm wrapped around the spokes as I searched frantically for the control panel. The water was rushing away from my feet, the near-vertical angle of the dying
Nautilus
causing the excess to wash to the back, drowning the aft engines and effectively killing them.

The viewport, and indeed the entire nose of the
Nautilus
, was mangled, crushed in places and torn in others. Not a foot from my face a large section of the
Charnel House
’s hull had splintered through the
Nautilus
like a giant spike—any closer and it would have taken my head off at the neck. The sounds of cables snapping, of metal grinding, filled the air with so much noise that I could barely think. But luckily I didn’t have to think. I just had to
do
and hope that the ship had enough life left in her to accomplish her last task.

Despite the pain of a hundred little cuts made by shredding,
flying debris, my fingers found the button I’d been searching for.

I couldn’t really hear my own voice over the destruction, but I shouted the order anyway.

One last hurrah before I died.

“FIRE TORPEDOES!”

The ringing subsided, but her ears still felt like they were filled with cotton. At first she thought she was just dizzy from the blast, but she soon realized that what she was seeing was the motion of the
Charnel House
tossing about on the waves—the zeppelin had fallen from the sky into the Hudson below. Large sections were on fire, but the giant airbag and gunner’s deck had broken away from the ship proper and landed in another part of the river, floating on the rough waves; the rest of the ship looked like some great, sinking water beast spouting flame and smoke. Jez could hear the mayfly buzzing in the distance, tearing apart chunks of machinery in its fury even as it sank beneath the surface. The portal still twisted, darkly, above them.

But it wasn’t Jez’s mayfly that had brought the
Charnel House
down. This destruction had been caused by something else. Some
kind of explosion when Tommy’s submarine had impacted with the zeppelin.

Jez was tangled in the rigging, suspended just a few feet above the dark water. The storm waves crested below her, and her shoes dangled in the surf. A long bloody rope burn cut across one cheek where a snapped line had whipped her on the way down, but otherwise she was miraculously uninjured. Charred and broken bodies of Grave Walkers floated everywhere, some still struggling to swim despite having lost a limb or two. The near-dead were, ironically, frustratingly hard to kill.

But one body in particular caught her attention. It floated near a broken ship’s wheel, its hand lashed to one of the spokes. Panic rising in her chest, Jezebel managed to pull herself free from the rigging and dropped into the river. When she reached the wheel she grabbed it for support and cradled Tommy’s head in her arm, pulling his head free of the water. She kicked with her feet, netgun slung over her shoulder, Tommy in her arms, and paddled back to the gunner’s deck, which was still afloat. It took all her strength to haul Tommy up out of the churning water and onto deck, but she did so. For once she was thankful he was so small.

She rolled him over onto his back, but his face was white and his lips already blue. A long splinter of metal protruded from his chest. Three inches of steel had entered his heart. Tommy Learner was dead.

“Such a shame to go like that,” said a voice in her ear. “I’d hoped to have the pleasure myself.”

The Dead Gentleman was standing before her. He was nothing more than a grinning skull in an immaculate black business suit, but his voice sounded like it was right next to her ear. He had Merlin clutched in a bony fist.

Her face was wet with river water and sudden tears. She wanted to shout something at him, tell him to shut up, but she couldn’t get the words out of her tight throat. Tommy Learner was dead.

The Gentleman bowed his skull and put one ghostly hand over his chest. “To our honored opponent. Our fallen foe, I salute you!”

Behind him, a few survivors had assembled, a motley group of wounded Grave Walkers. And in the middle was Macheath the vampire. He had removed his filthy cap, but his face was nothing but a gloating sneer. In the other hand the vampire held Tommy’s Cycloidotrope, the one they’d confiscated back in the Gentleman’s cell a hundred years ago. He was spinning it in his palm like a toy.

“A moment for Tommy Learner,” said the Gentleman. “You gave your life to bring down my ship, but it was all for naught—my victory is at hand!”

The Gentleman reached out toward Tommy’s body. Jezebel felt a chill descend around her. “May you serve me better in death than you fought me in life.”

“NO!” Jezebel screamed, finding her voice. “You won’t take him! You won’t make him one of you!”

She slid off the netgun and took aim. The Gentleman chuckled. “Well, aren’t you something? All dressed up for the part. You even have one of their ridiculous weapons. You sure that thing still works, my dear? It must be an antique, by now.

“Macheath,” he said. “She’s yours. The last Explorer is yours to feed on. You’ve waited long enough.”

Jez fired. Two shots—one at the Gentleman and one at Macheath and the Grave Walkers. The nets expanded as they
flew, and Macheath cursed as one twisted around him and he fell, caught in a mass of kicking Grave Walkers. The Cycloidotrope clattered across the deck.

The second hit the Gentleman squarely in the chest, but he tore it away like it was so much paper. “Useless,” he said, glancing back at his tangled henchmen. He took two long strides and backhanded Jezebel. She rolled and cracked her head, hard, against the rail.

“You’ll both serve me soon enough,” said the Gentleman. “But I’ll waste no more time on children. My hour is at hand!”

The Gentleman reached up and with a bony finger stroked Merlin’s head. “Such a rare thing, this artifact! I have found you at last,
Brother Theophilus!
”

With that he popped the little bird’s head back with a click, opening it up like a pill bottle. Inside was a ball of soft golden light.

“How do you live forever?” asked the Gentleman. “Brother Theo thought he’d found the answer. He gave up his physical self—his fragile, feeble flesh and blood—for something more durable. An immortal soul in a body of brass and gears, so he could be an Explorer till the end of time.”

With two fingers he scooped out the light, cupping it gently in his palm. He let Merlin fall to the ground, a hunk now of dead metal.

He held up the little ball of light. “How does the song go?
If I only had a brain …
”

The Gentleman peered up at the heavens. “This world abhors what I am.” The sky was already lightening in the east; the storm was waning and dawn threatened to break through. “The soulless cannot exist here for long. Already I can feel myself begin
to dissipate. As the sun rises, my power wanes.”

He looked back at Jezebel, his skull’s grin seeming to get wider. “A soul in a bottle—that’s what Brother Theophilus made himself into. And I will gladly swallow him whole!

“Bon appétit!” he said, and then he plopped the ball of light into his mouth.

At once he began to shine. First it was just a dull glimmer in the hollows of his cheeks and the dark sockets of his eyes. But the light continued to brighten and expand until Jezebel had to turn away.