The Dead Gentleman (29 page)

When she looked back, after the light subsided, the Gentleman was gone. In his place was a handsome young man. He had pale cheeks and thick, coal-black hair. His mouth was unusually red, but his eyes were dark and cruel.

He hesitated at first, as if touched by fear, but then he took a long, deep breath. It came back out with a loud, full-throated laugh. He shouted as he raised his arms to the sky.

“THE DEAD GENTLEMAN … LIVES!” he cried.

Just then the sun broke free from behind the clouds and Jez heard Macheath cursing as he struggled against his bonds. But the Gentleman ignored his servant and turned his face toward the light, shouting in defiance.

“The Gentleman lives, but the rest of this world will die,” he cried. “In time, I alone, in all of creation, shall possess the gift of life. I will burn like a fire in the heart of a great black darkness.
I alone!
”

Jezebel covered her ears as a whip-crack of thunder rocked the heavens, and she looked up to see the prow of a second black zeppelin coming through the swirling portal. And another. And another. The curling vortex was expanding, making way for
a thousand-thousand ships and their crews of grinning, leering Grave Walkers.

Jezebel crawled over to Tommy and laid her head down next to his. They’d failed. The Gentleman had stolen Merlin’s life, his soul. That was the secret the Gentleman had been after all this time—he’d been plotting to steal the bird’s soul so that he might live. Now the sun could not harm him. Now his army would kill everything else. Everything.

Something caught Jez’s attention; something flickered out of the corner of her eye. She lifted her head and saw the Cycloidotrope lying a few feet from her. It sparkled softly despite the gloom. Jezebel grabbed the little device and looked at the Gentleman. His arms raised, he was still shouting his triumph, and the ship around them began to rise out of the water. Fires died and shredded metal began to knit itself back together. Under the Gentleman’s power, the
Charnel House
was rebuilding itself. Even the sunlight seemed weak and ineffectual in this new world—the Gentleman’s world. Jezebel imagined what must be happening all over the city. She pictured the things that were crawling out of the dark spaces, and the millions of people who slumbered fitfully in their beds, unaware of the danger.

She looked down at the little cube. It lit up in her hands. She willed herself to see Tommy and there he was, still alive. In the cube Tommy was clinging to the wheel of his ruined ship as a wall of metal exploded into his chest. Next, he was fighting the wheel as the floor filled with water.

The Cycloidotrope was going backward.

“Yes!” she said. “Show me Tommy.”

He appeared before her in a hologram of light. His back was to her, but she still felt her throat catch when she saw him moving
about, shouting orders at no one in particular as he flipped a row of switches and brought his ship around to aim at the
Charnel House
’s belly. There was that swagger in him, even at the end.

A glance at the Tommy here and now—his cold lips, his dusty-gray skin. The first time he’d visited her, he’d used the Cycloidotrope to project his image to the future so that he could communicate with her. He’d told her that the future was malleable, changeable, but that the past was fixed. You cannot alter events in your own life, you cannot change what has already happened, and to do so risks great danger.

“Tommy,” she said. He didn’t hear her. “Tommy!” she shouted, but he wasn’t seeing her. He was busy fighting to control his ship. He was going to drive it straight up into the
Charnel House
.

She had to stop him. He didn’t need to sacrifice himself to bring down the Gentleman’s ship—the mayfly would have taken care of that. He didn’t have to die.

She gently laid Tommy’s head down on the deck—she was glad that she didn’t have to close his eyes.

“I’ll see you in a minute,” she whispered, and then she leapt, one more time, into the light.

“You okay?” whispered Tommy.

“Huh?” asked Jez, blinking.

“I asked if you’re okay.”

“Sure,” answered Jez, rubbing her eyes. “For a minute there, I … you’re alive!”

Jezebel grabbed Tommy and wrapped her arms around him in a giant bear hug.

He tried to shush her. “Keep your voice down! Of course I’m alive. We’ve already been through this. I did like you asked. I have to say, I’m pretty impressed at your sabotage. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

Jezebel let him go and looked around her. They were on the Gentleman’s ship, hidden away behind a crate of gun shells. The sky above was still dark, but there was the pink of early dawn in the east. The zeppelin tossed about on the waves of the river, but
it wasn’t sinking. Grave Walkers were scurrying overhead, desperately trying to put out a fire that had originated in the engine but was quickly spreading to consume the airbag itself. The
Charnel House
had been forced to make an emergency landing on the river.

It was strange. Jezebel could remember everything that had happened to her—the explosion, finding Tommy’s body, using the Cycloidotrope to jump into the past. But she also had memories of bringing down the ship with the mayfly grenade, of hiding from the Grave Walkers and of Tommy’s surprise at seeing her appear inside his ship. She’d persuaded him not to attack. She explained that she’d sabotaged the
Charnel House
’s engine, though she had more trouble explaining how she got aboard the
Nautilus
. Luckily there wasn’t much time for questions, as the Gentleman’s ship came tumbling out of the sky and Jezebel and Tommy, alive and well, snuck aboard the wreckage.

It was like these two sets of memories were trying to occupy the same space in her brain. In one, Tommy died and the Gentleman won. In the other, she stopped Tommy’s suicide run. They were competing for room, and when she tried to focus on just one it felt like someone was digging around in her skull with an ice pick.

She’d done it. She’d actually changed her own past. “It worked,” she said, squinting against the pain.

“What worked?” asked Tommy. “You’re starting to worry me, Jez.”

“Never mind,” she said, suddenly self-conscious at her own confusion. “I’m fine.”

“Well, you’ve bought us some time, but we still need to find Merlin.”

“The Gentleman’s got him.”

“You keep saying that,” said Tommy. “But are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” Jez answered. “Look, you said that the Gentleman could never conquer Earth because the undead can’t exist here for long—they cannot walk in the sun, because the undead don’t have souls.”

“That’s right.”

“Well, I think he’s found one. He’s going to steal Merlin’s.”

“Merlin’s a gadget,” said Tommy. “He doesn’t have a soul.”

“Does the name Brother Theophilus mean anything to you?”

“Sure, Fat Theo,” Tommy answered. “He’s a founder of the Explorers’ Society. He discovered Merlin, actually.”

“Merlin is Brother … eh, Fat Theo. Somehow the guy put his soul into that bird so that he could live forever, and now the Gentleman is about to steal it for himself.”

Tommy was thinking it through, Jez could tell. He was chewing the side of his cheek as he looked for holes in her theory. But Jezebel couldn’t tell him that it wasn’t just a theory. She didn’t want to tell him that she’d broken the rule about changing your own timeline. She didn’t want him to know that she’d done it to save him.

The ice pick was stabbing at her brain.

He was still struggling to make sense of the Gentleman’s plan. “But even if you are right, even if he wants to get a soul—to be alive—what good would it do him?” he asked. “He’d be here on Earth, but what about his army?”

“You said yourself that his army is the
near-dead
. That’s why he’s been gathering them from all sorts of different worlds. Their bodies are decomposing and gross, but they must still have their souls—he’s keeping them just on the brink of death so that they
can be his servants in the daylight. There are hundreds, thousands of ships full of them waiting just on the other side of that big portal. And I think the more killing they do, the more things that die—the stronger he’ll become.”

“He’s going to kill everything,” Tommy said.

“No, he’s not,” said Jez. “This time we’re going to stop him. Come on!”

“This time?” asked Tommy, but Jezebel ignored him.

They came out of their hiding place in time to see the Gentleman emerging from his quarters. Bloody Macheath loped along at his side, squinting nervously up at the weak sunlight that had managed to peek through the clouds. Again, he was holding the Cycloidotrope in his palm.

“We’ve lost the
Nautilus
, sir,” he said. “She surfaced for a minute after we set down on the river, but then she went under again. We’re assuming she’s too damaged to make another attack.”

“I wouldn’t make such an assumption,” answered the Gentleman. “But it’s no matter. Captain Scott’s toy boat is little threat now.”

“Can’t say I care much for that sun, either, Captain,” said Macheath, shielding his eyes against the sky. “You won’t mind if I scurry on back belowdecks?”

“Once I have the soul, my power will be such that you will not need to worry about the sun ever again,” said the Gentleman. “But every minute I spend here without it uses up vast reserves of energy. If I remain as is, I shall surely perish.” As he spoke Jezebel noticed that he did seem weaker, somehow. There was a haze about him, almost a transparency to his bones.

“BRING ME MY PRIZE!” he called, and a pair of Grave Walkers crossed the deck to him. One of them carried Merlin in
his hands. One of the bird’s wings was bent sharply in the wrong direction and flapped uselessly at its side.

“You have a plan?” asked Tommy.

“I have an idea,” admitted Jez. “But I don’t know if it’ll work. We need to create a distraction.”

Tommy nodded. “No worries.” He pulled a cylinder from his belt pouch. It was a funny-looking thing with a strange crank on the side. He flicked his wrist and it extended to several feet.

“Spare Tesla Stick,” he said. “Grabbed it off the
Nautilus
. Just hope it didn’t get too wet.” He turned the little crank and the end of the staff sparked blue.

“Wait, Tommy,” said Jez, but it was too late.

“See you soon,” he said, and smiled as he leapt across the deck, shouting as he ran at a full charge toward the Grave Walkers.

“Stupid boy,” she muttered as she began circling around. She hadn’t meant for him to charge them head-on, but perhaps she could take advantage of the chaos and get close enough to grab Merlin.

The Grave Walkers turned and met Tommy’s charge. The Gentleman was shouting at them to ignore the boy and bring him the bird, but Tommy had already stunned the first one with his Tesla Stick and was threatening the other, who still held Merlin tight. Tommy’s attention was fixed on the Grave Walker, however, and he didn’t see Macheath sneaking up on him from behind, a long blade in his pale hand.

“Tommy, look out!” shouted Jez.
Oh well
, she thought.
So much for stealth
.

Tommy turned just in time to deflect Macheath’s attack, but it gave the Grave Walker an opportunity to escape. The black uniformed cultist ran for his master, Merlin in hand.

“Bring it here!” the Gentleman cried. “Quickly!”

Jez remembered the netgun slung over her shoulder. She took aim at the running Grave Walker and fired. The shot flew wide and struck the deck where the cultist had just been standing. Bernie had warned her—four shots only. That meant she had one left. This time Jez aimed in front of the Grave Walker and fired.

He fell to the floor in a heap of tangled filaments. The Gentleman let out a howl of rage. As he did so, Jezebel noticed that the cloud cover was disappearing in the east and pink-orange sky was just barely visible on the horizon. The Gentleman’s grip on this world was slipping. The sun was coming out. He was racing against the dawn.

Merlin rolled from the Grave Walker’s fingers. He hopped away, flapping his useless, crippled wing. Jez ran for the bird, tossing the spent netgun away as she went. She dove, skidding along the deck and skinning her arms and legs. But her fingers found Merlin.

“Gotcha,” she said, and she was greeted with a tweet in response.

“An impressive shot, and a brave move,” said a cold voice. “But now what are you going to do?” The Gentleman stood over her, his skull face more ghostlike than ever. “The battle is finished. What can you possibly do to stop me from taking that from you and crushing your soft head between my fingers?”

Jez fought down the brutal wave of panic. Every nerve in her being was filled with the intense desire to beg for mercy before this dark creature. But she struggled through the pain in her head as she remembered what the other Gentleman had done, in a different time. She pictured where he’d placed his fingers near the bird’s throat.

“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, and Merlin gave her a soft, reassuring chirp. It didn’t struggle when she placed two fingers under its chin and found the indentation there. She pressed down and heard a metallic click. The shine went out of the bird’s eyes as its head flipped back on its hinged neck, revealing the soft ball of light underneath.