“He’s sent us on dangerous purchases before, and no one got murdered,” Jake grumbled. “We always expect an ambush. And we’ve run into obsessive collectors before, but no one’s ever dared to make such an open attack.” He looked at Rick. “I think we should assume that this isn’t over. That means New Pittsburgh isn’t a safe haven from whoever—or whatever—is after us.”
“Did Andreas give you any hint about what’s so important about the damn urn?” Nicki demanded. Nicki’s American-born mother, Jake’s aunt, had married a wealthy French textile manufacturer. Although raised in Paris and educated at an exclusive Parisian finishing school, Nicki was, Jake thought affectionately, completely American at heart.
“The London trip came up unexpectedly,” Jake said, taking a sip of his scotch and letting it burn down his throat. It did nothing to numb his grief. “Cullan barely had time to get the airship ready before we had to leave.” He smiled sadly at Nicki. “I don’t think George expected you to be joining us for the return trip.”
Nicki shrugged. “Ah well. Probably a good thing, given what’s happened. Aunt Catherine will need an extra hand. I’ll send a telegraph to let my family know about the change in plans.”
Jake sighed. “I can’t even imagine how Mother’s taking all this.”
“Your mother is one of the strongest, smartest women I know,” Rick replied. “She’ll get through this. We’ll make certain of it.”
“Back to Andreas,” Jake said, steering the conversation toward safer territory. He felt his control wavering, and he had no desire to break down in front of his friends. Jake shifted, maneuvering to get comfortable in his chair. At just shy of six feet tall, Jake Desmet was a few inches shorter than Rick, with a lean, athletic build. Jake’s wavy brown hair framed pleasantly angular features and intensely blue eyes that he suspected were his best feature. “What was so important about the urn that we had to scramble to get to London so quickly?”
Rick sat stiffly, his tension clear in his posture. “Father didn’t have time for a thorough briefing. Andreas was quite agitated and didn’t share more than that the whereabouts of the urn had just been discovered, and it had to be brought to him as soon as possible.”
Like Jake, Rick was in his mid-twenties, with golden blond hair and pale blue eyes, and a muscled build honed on Eton’s cricket fields. Rick and Jake had grown up together in New Pittsburgh, a result of their fathers’ partnership. Like Thomas Desmet, George Brand was an Englishman who had emigrated to America to expand his fortune, and, together, the two men had succeeded. But where Thomas had come up the hard way and fully embraced the raw vitality of his adopted country, George and his wife never gave up their English home and connections. Hence George’s insistence on sending their only son to school in England, and their dismay when Rick later demanded to return to the States.
“How bad does something have to be to worry a vampire-warlock?” Nicki asked.
“Witch,” Jake corrected absently. “He prefers to be called a witch.”
Nicki made a face. “He’s scary powerful, whatever you call him. Exactly what scares
him?
”
Rick tossed off the last of his cognac, but from the look in his eyes, it did little to blunt the loss they both felt. “I don’t know—and that scares me.”
“Sorry I couldn’t join you before this.”
Startled by the voice, Jake turned to see Cullan Adair standing in the doorway to the lounge.
“Don’t take this wrong, Cullan, but if you’re down here, who’s piloting the ship?” Rick asked.
Cullan grinned. “Tommy’s got the controls.”
Jake raised an eyebrow. “You’re letting your automaton pilot the
Princess
?”
“He’s the best there is—trained him myself,” Cullan replied. He chuckled at their concern. “Don’t worry. Mueller’s up there with him.” Eric Mueller, Cullan’s first mate, was nearly as renowned a pilot as Cullan himself.
“Sorry about your dad,” Cullan said, crossing to join the trio. “Harold let us know and told us about the change in plans before you reached the warehouse.” He glanced toward Nicki and smiled. “Glad to see you with us, Miss LeClercq. A rose among thorns, as it were.”
Cullan Adair’s black Irish good looks and his quick wit had won him many a lady’s favor—and many a husband’s enduring enmity. He winked at Nicki, who grinned and gave him a broad wink in return. It was a game they had played for years, and Jake was almost certain there was nothing to it beyond good-natured flirting. Then again, with Cullan, nothing was ever guaranteed.
“We’ll stop in Long Island to refuel, then on to New Pittsburgh,” Cullan said. “Given the bit of trouble you had back in London, I thought it best to wait until we’re nearly there to telegraph the port crew about our arrival—just in case.”
“Good idea,” Rick replied. “Since we don’t know who’s after us.”
Cullan regarded his three passengers, and Jake guessed that they looked the worse for wear, after their chase. “Your bags are in your cabins,” he said. “You’ve still got a couple of hours until dinner. Why not get some rest, freshen up? By then, we should be well over the Atlantic.”
“Captain Adair.” The voice sounded over the airship’s speaking tube. “You’d better get up here. We’ve got company.”
Cullan’s smile vanished. “You might want to hang on,” he said. “This could get bumpy.”
Cullan sprinted for the bridge, while Jake and the others ran to the lounge’s observation windows. Through the clouds, they could make out dark shapes, too big to be anything but pursuing craft.
“There!” Nicki cried, pointing. Jake caught a glimpse of a one-man dirigible, much smaller than the
Allegheny Princess
. Instead of a passenger compartment under the dirigible’s balloon, the smaller craft had what appeared to be a gunner’s seat. A second later, fire flashed from the pilot’s underslung mount.
“What the hell was that?” Rick strained to see what was going on.
“Looks like a Gatling gun to me,” Jake observed.
Rick ran to the other side of the lounge. “There are two more on this side, closing fast.”
“I see one... no,
two
more behind this one,” Nicki reported.
Jake frowned. “Those can’t possibly have the range to follow us across the Atlantic. It’s suicide for them to come after us. Their ships can’t carry Tesla cells powerful enough to fuel them that far.”
“They don’t have to,” Rick replied, his voice cold. “Not if they can dock with that.” Jake and Nicki turned in time to glimpse a full-sized airship that was easily as big as the
Allegheny
Princess
, partially hidden by the clouds.
The
Princess
lurched, and Jake nearly lost his footing, saving himself by grabbing the railing that ran along the windows. A bullet cracked against one of the windows, sparking against the aluminum frame. “Damn,” Jake muttered. “That’s too close for comfort.”
“Get down!” Rick ordered as he pulled Nicki to the floor and Jake dropped. A shot embedded itself in the thick glass. New Pittsburgh was well known for its glass industry, supplying fine housewares that were the envy of the world. But the city’s captains of industry invested in more practical products, like the bulletproof glass that had become all the rage since the Braddock riots a few years earlier.
Rick found himself tangled in Nicki’s skirts as she turned and gave one of her dazzling smiles. “Rick… really you shouldn’t have.”
“Nicki! I…” Rick blustered as his face turned bright red. Fortunately he was saved by a lurch of the ship.
The hiss of steam and the hum of gears grew louder as the
Princess
pulled ahead, and Jake guessed Cullan was attempting to draw their pursuers out over the Atlantic, where there would be more room to maneuver, and fewer prying eyes. The deck beneath them began to vibrate, and from below, they could hear the whirr of cables and the clank of metal.
“What’s Cullan doing?” Nicki shouted above the din. She had braced herself behind one of the large leather chairs, which were bolted to the floor. Rick and Jake had done the same, trying to avoid sliding across the lounge as the airship banked and turned.
“Just a guess, but I’m betting he’s launching those,” Rick said, pointing toward the windows. “Damn it, Adam… holding out on me again! I helped with the specs for those and he never told me he put them into production!”
Several brass and aluminum saucers hovered outside the windows. Gears and pulleys covered them like sinews, and Jake could make out the rounded domes of aluminum-shielded balloons. Each was as wide as the passenger compartment of a carriage, but only a few feet high, and slung under every one of the contraptions was the unmistakable barrel of a Gatling gun.
The saucers opened fire on their pursuers, pushing the attacking mini-dirigibles farther away as Cullan banked the
Princess
hard to port, and Jake felt the engines rev, picking up speed. What he dared glimpse from the windows looked like lightning sparking in the clouds as the smaller craft battled each other. With a brilliant flare, one of the small dirigibles burst into flames and dropped from the sky.
“They’re gaining on us!” Rick yelped. The ship banked, and Rick began to slide across the floor until he caught hold of the leg of a table.
“It feels like Cullan’s pulled out all the stops,” Jake replied, holding on to avoid a similar slide. Nicki shot Jake a cavalier grin that seemed to suggest she was enjoying the adventure.
“Don’t—I repeat, do
not
—tell your mother about this,” Jake warned Nicki, imagining his aunt’s reaction.
“Not a chance,” Nicki replied with a wicked smile. “This is too much fun. Isn’t it Rick?”
The sound of gunfire made all three of them duck before Rick could think of a response. Jake raised his head warily. One of the brass and aluminum drones had taken a hit and smashed against a large window pane. The bulletproof windows did not shatter, and the damaged drone was lodged in the reinforced glass for a moment before wiggling lose and wobbling off to rejoin the fight.
“Quite a firefight out there,” Rick observed at the flashes of light beyond the windows.
Jake dared a glance over the railing, and paled. “That’s not from the Gatlings,” he murmured. “Cullan’s steered us right into a lightning storm!”
“Is he daft?” Rick scrambled to join Jake by the window. The dark clouds and white streaks confirmed Jake’s conclusion. “If we get hit by one of those, we’ll go down just as surely as we’d have from the Gatling fire.”
Pieces of one of the unlucky mini-dirigibles peppered the observation windows like aluminum hail. Bursts of lightning lit the sky like the flashes of a photographer’s phosphorous lamp as they flattened themselves against the deck.
The whirr of the engine was drowned out by the sound of an explosion that lit up the sky, and the
Allegheny Princess
bobbed like cork on a wild sea. Jake felt his stomach lurch, threatening to send back his lunch. White light illuminated the lounge and the
Princess
began to drop so rapidly Jake thought he might come off the floor. Anything loose in the lounge, from their cocktail napkins to their forgotten glasses, became airborne. Jake was grateful that the furniture had been bolted to the deck, or they might have been bludgeoned with tables and chairs.
“Are we hit?” From the expression on Nicki’s face, it was clear that their situation had suddenly ceased to be a game.
Cold fear seized Jake’s heart.
Please don’t let my mother lose Father and me on the same day
, he thought. He braced himself for impact as the airship fell, wondering how he would die: in the cold North Atlantic waters, or engulfed in flames.
Before he could decide, the
Princess
slowed its descent, and in a few more heartbeats, leveled out, reducing its speed to a sane pace.
“This is your captain speaking,” Cullan’s voice echoed from the speaking tube. “In case you weren’t sure, we’re still alive. I’ll be down as soon as we get the last of this storm behind us.” He paused. “And if you’ve been airsick, do try to mop up after yourselves.”
Jake gave Nicki a hand, hauling her to her feet in an effective, if not decorous, way. Rick climbed to stand beside the table, and looked out over the wrecked lounge. One of the observation windows was cracked, a clouded mass of splinters held in place by the special bulletproof coating. Several of the panes on the port side bore scratches and nicks where the exploding mini-dirigibles had peppered them. Through the remaining windows, Jake could see the clouds growing lighter.
Henderson, the steward, ran into the lounge and looked around in a near-panic. “Sir, is everyone well? Anyone hurt or injured?”
Jake dusted off his jacket. He managed an encouraging smile, although he doubted that it fooled Henderson, who had been with them for years. “No, everyone’s fine. Just a little clean-up for later. Thank you.”
Henderson glanced around the ruined cabin and raised an eyebrow, but merely nodded in response. “Very well, sir. Ring if you need anything.” He left almost as quickly as he had arrived.
Nicki sank into one of the armchairs. Her hands grasped the arm rests as if she was not quite ready to believe their ordeal was over. “We made it!” Now that they were safe, her eyes sparkled with excitement.
Jake was peering out the port side while Rick scanned the starboard skies. “I’ll hand it to Cullan,” Rick said. “He shook off our uninvited guests.”
Jake gazed down at the gray water that rolled far beneath them. “If that big bang was the mothership, then I doubt any of the mini-craft could have made it back to land, even if the drones didn’t knock them out. I’m guessing Cullan had us too far over the ocean by then for them to turn back.”
A hard glint lit Rick’s eyes. “All the better. Let whoever sent them wonder.”
Jake collapsed into a chair. “But why? If it’s the urn they want, they’re remarkably persistent. And if it’s related to Father’s murder, then why are they after us? Whoever sent that airship after us has resources, and I’m betting we haven’t seen the last of them.”
“Maybe they don’t want the urn,” Nicki replied, staring at the ruined window. “Maybe they just wanted to make sure that we don’t make it back to New Pittsburgh.”