by George Mann
As if on cue, Gabriel heard the sputter and bark of a machine gun and threw the biplane into a steep dive to avoid the flashing spray of bullets that threatened to chew their aircraft, and the two of them, to pieces.
The rat-a-tat-tat continued, and Gabriel brought the biplane round in a tight loop, swinging beneath the airship in an attempt to get out of the line of fire. He hadn't expected to encounter gunfire—forgetting, of course, that Goliath was a warship, and had been suitably armed for any such eventualities. Banks had obviously been concerned that Rutherford, or someone else, might have gotten a warning to the British, and had armed Goliath to the teeth in anticipation of the crew having to fight off any welcoming committee when the vessel arrived in the skies over London.
Beneath the passenger gondola hung a massive, bristling cannon emplacement that now roared to life, spitting huge gobbets of hot metal at Gabriel's plane.
“Hold on!” he screamed to Rutherford as he sent the aircraft into a long spiral, twisting away like a corkscrew to avoid the powerful discharge of the cannons.
The tumbling cannonballs slammed into the Hudson with a series of almighty whooshes, sending towering waves cascading over the docks and rocking the moored steamships in the harbor back and forth like children's toys. One of them struck the ground near the water's edge, sending plumes of concrete and dust into the air. People scattered in its wake.
More machine gun fire rattled and barked as Gabriel fought to maintain control of the biplane as he danced and weaved around the giant airship. He could see the muzzle flash of weapon emplacements all over the fat lozenge of the vessel, puncturing its silvery skin.
Rutherford had twisted around again in the passenger pit and was staring at him, wild-eyed. Gabriel knew the question that the Englishman was desperate to ask—how the hell were they going to get close enough to the ship to do anything without getting themselves killed?
Gabriel had no idea.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The first thing Ginny knew about the monster was the sound of people screaming.
One minute they were filled with all the cheer of the fair, bustling and cajoling one another, laughing and kissing and eating and smiling; the next they were screaming shrilly and scrambling over one another to get away.
At first, Ginny had no idea what had happened. She'd been standing close to a carousel, watching the brightly painted wooden horses gallop their way sadly around their perpetual circuit, when she'd turned to find a middle-aged man barreling into her, almost knocking her over in his haste to get away. Cursing, she'd looked up to see others swarming in her direction, and she'd been forced to take shelter behind the ride, watching in confusion as the crowds of people suddenly turned on one another, clawing at each other's clothes, shoving each other out of the way.
Whatever had spooked them was clearly terrifying, and it occurred to Ginny with a sudden rush of hope that it might have been one of the raptors. So, shoving her way out into the press of people, fighting against the tide, she had forced her way through, past the screaming, stampeding hordes, to where the monster had attacked a line of people at an ice cream stall.
Now, standing there watching it, transfixed to the spot, she wished that she had stayed where she was.
The thing was enormous—a great, tentacled behemoth, dragging itself across the asphalt as if it were a fish out of water, unused to the cold, oxygen-rich environment of Lower Manhattan. Its flesh was thin and translucent, and Ginny could see its pulsating organs deep inside its immense bulk. It was like something akin to a squid, and her first thought upon seeing it was to wonder if it had crawled out of the Hudson. Yet it seemed somehow alien, like nothing that could have been born via the normal evolutionary process. She had no idea where it could have come from, but the sheer sight of it terrified her more than she had ever been terrified before.
The monster was pulling four or five dead, leaden limbs behind it, but the others, at least six of them, were still febrile and strong, surmounted by snapping jaws that darted about as it moved, searching for prey. It looked deadly, and Ginny wondered how anyone would be able to stop it.
Nevertheless, it was clear from the appearance of the dead limbs and puckered scars and welts that covered its body that something had happened to it. Ginny wondered if they were battle scars, or perhaps the symptoms of some ravaging illness.
Whatever the case, it was the most ugly, terrifying thing that she had ever seen, and every inch of her body was telling her to turn and flee, to hot-foot it away from that place, to find somewhere safe where she could lock herself away, pretend this was all just a figment of her overactive imagination.
But it wasn't. It was terrifyingly real.
Ginny jammed both hands into her pockets. Her fingers closed on the butts of the Ghost's twin pistols, which he'd handed to her earlier that night, before all of this madness, before he went and got himself abducted by the raptors. She wished he were there with her now, and hoped beyond hope that he was still alive.
Ginny watched as the myriad darting mouths of the beast thrashed out at the throng of people, who were now reduced to blind panic, trampling over one another as they attempted to flee the fairground. She wanted to scream at them to slow down as she watched them crushing each other to the ground, exacerbating the problem, blocking all of the possible escape routes so that they were penned in like so many cattle, ready for the slaughter.
All the while, behind the beast, the Ferris wheel continued its luxurious revolutions, lighting up the skyline with its dancing, flashing lights.
Ginny raised her pistols and stalked forward toward the beast. The ice cream stall had been overturned by its thrashing, and now pools of creamy, yellowish fluid were pooling on the flagstones all around it. It held two people in its grasp, each one speared on the end of a flickering tendril, a man through the stomach, a woman through the throat. Ginny could see the thing was draining their blood, gulping it down hungrily as if trying to quench some unslakable thirst. The dark fluid coursed through its translucent limbs, pooling in its torso inside what Ginny could only assume was its stomach.
She had to try to do something. The police would be along soon, probably the army, too. But in the meantime she had to try to stop it killing any more people. She was shaking as she held the two pistols out before her, one in each fist, and squeezed the triggers.
At first, nothing happened. She couldn't even tell if she'd managed to hit the creature or whether her aim had gone wide as she'd shook with fear. She thought it unlikely, though—the thing was so big it was impossible to miss. Whatever the case, it simply continued to drag itself relentlessly forward, farther into the crush of people, its tendrils whipping out to snap at anyone who wasn't quick enough to get out of its way.
Ginny took aim again, firing shot after shot until she'd emptied the chambers of both weapons. She realized with frustration, however, that she hadn't even managed to attract the monster's attention.
She lowered her weapons and backed away. What was that thing? She'd emptied two handguns into it and it hadn't even flinched. And now it was coming toward her, following the stampede of the crowd.
From overhead, the roar of engines mingled with the sounds of the chaos below. Ginny became aware of the thumping of cannon fire and the chatter of machine guns, and she glanced up, assuming the airship—which she'd originally thought to be a passenger liner or cargo vessel—had opened fire on the creature, too. She was dismayed to see that was not the case, however: the fat, cylindrical airship drifted lazily in the sky, harried by a tiny biplane that buzzed around it, dancing away from the flashing guns. Explosions flared briefly, casting sudden, intense flashes of flight on the scene below.
The monster had now finished with the two corpses it had been draining of blood, and it cast aside their pale, exsanguinated remains, its tentacles probing the air for fresh fodder. Around it, people had fled into the night, some even diving into the river to avoid its terrible reach. But those trapped in the still-turning Fer
ris wheel had no chance of escape.
Ginny heard a woman shriek as one of the beast's tendrils snaked inside the car in which she'd been cowering with her date. The monster plucked them out like ripe fruit from a vine, gorging itself on their spilled blood. The woman's scream fell silent as the creature's gnashing mouth chewed a hole through her chest.
Then, as if drawn to the easy pickings of the other dangling cars, each one of them filled with whimpering people, the creature wrapped its other tentacles around the spokes of the Ferris wheel and began hauling itself up, slowly probing the cars in turn, searching out the warm bodies inside.
From one of the cars above the creature, a man jumped, crying out as he hurtled toward the paving slabs below, dashing himself across the ground rather than face being eaten alive by the monster. Ginny averted her eyes.
She had no idea what to do.
Donovan had been trying to find Ginny when the panic ensued. He'd come to the conclusion that they needed to call off their search for Gabriel, to reconvene and try to come up with a more cohesive plan. What they needed was a systematic door-to-door search of the area, and that would take time to organize. If he could get to the precinct and find Mullins, perhaps they could make a start that night. It would need the commissioner's approval, though, and Donovan knew how difficult that was going to prove—especially if the commissioner didn't want him to find the raptors at all.
He'd spotted Ginny standing by a carousel looking forlorn, and he'd realized she must have come to a similar conclusion as he had: that there was no hope of the two of them alone being able to trace Gabriel and the raptor that had taken him. Even with the help of the scant few uniformed men he'd been able to round up from around the fairground, there was little hope. There were literally hundreds of buildings that could have housed the creature's nest, and Gabriel could be in any one of them.
It was then, as he'd made his way over toward her, that the situation had changed, and the crowd of people had suddenly gone wild, screaming and stampeding as they fled something over by the ice cream stall.
When Donovan had finally caught sight of it, his heart had nearly stopped in panic. He'd had to fight for breath, leaning against a lamppost to fight the sudden wave of dizziness that came over him. He could barely believe his eyes.
The beast was exactly like the creature he had fought with Gabriel and Celeste in the basement beneath the Roman's mansion. Had it somehow survived? He didn't think so. He'd watched its death throes at the hands of Celeste, after she'd sacrificed herself to poison it with her blood. Gabriel had incinerated the corpse and destroyed the gateway through which it had been summoned. No, it couldn't be the same beast, although it was clearly a specimen of the same race, which begged the question of how it had suddenly appeared here, at the docks.
Whatever the case, there was little time for those sorts of questions now. The beast was already chewing its way through the crowds of civilians, draining their corpses of blood and tossing them away like used candy wrappers.
Donovan tried to focus, tried to muster the last reserves of his strength. What would Gabriel do? He'd get people to safety. That had to be his first priority.
He'd lost track of Ginny in the ensuing panic, but he knew she'd make her way toward the scene of the attack. He barely knew the girl, but he knew that much about her. She had gumption. She wouldn't stand by and watch people die if she thought there might be something she could do about it, whether Gabriel was at her side or not.
In any event, it was the muzzle flare of her handguns and the ringing of her shots that drew his attention, and he'd struck out, pushing his way through the crowds toward her. As much as anything, he needed to warn her about the creature. He knew what it was they were dealing with here, and he knew that whatever good she thought she could do, she'd only result in putting herself in grave danger. He needed to get her away from there and then help to evacuate the fairground. Gabriel would have to wait, wherever he was. He'd understand. He'd do exactly the same, Donovan was sure.
As for what they were going to do about the creature, Donovan had no idea. He didn't know how they could contain it, let alone kill it. They'd have to bring in the armed forces, see if any of their weapons might be able to cause it any harm. He was doubtful. From what he'd seen in the basement beneath the Roman's house, there was very little that could even cause a blemish on the creature's flesh, let alone put a stop to it altogether.
Donovan cursed. He'd hardly had time to consider what the hell was going on overhead. A battle appeared to be raging in the sky, a massive airship going head-to-head with a biplane. The crack of gunfire and the flare of explosive rounds was lighting up the sky. He couldn't help wondering if Gabriel had anything to do with it, as unlikely as that seemed. Unless he'd managed to get away from the raptor.
He caught sight of Ginny, crouching behind a garbage bin, and ran to her side, panting for breath. “Ginny! Are you okay?”
She looked up at him, terror in her eyes. “What is that thing?”
Donovan dropped to his haunches beside her. “A monster,” he replied, “like nothing of this Earth. I've fought them before, Ginny, with Gabriel. There's nothing we can do to stop it, not now, not here. We have to get these people to safety, and then we'll go for help.”
Ginny looked back at the Ferris wheel, at the horrifying, tentacled monstrosity that was steadily devouring the civilians in the cars. “But what about them? What about the people on the ride?”
Donovan shook his head. “They're already dead,” he said sadly, unable to offer her any hope. “That thing is virtually unstoppable. We have to leave them.” He rose to his feet, taking her by the arm and pulling her up beside him. He could see she was still shaking with the shock. He didn't feel much better himself, but he repressed it, hoping he could hide it from her. He needed to be strong, now. “I need you to help me to marshal these people. Can you manage it?”
Ginny nodded, weakly at first, and then more definitely. “Yes. Yes, I can manage it.”
“Good.” He tried to sound decisive. “Now, keep out of its reach. Whatever you do, give it a wide berth. Everyone on that side of the Ferris wheel, try to persuade them to head that way, out through the park. They can get back into the city that way. I'll move the rest of them round the other way. Let's try to bring some order to this chaos.”
He put a reassuring hand on Ginny's shoulder, but she shrugged him off, not unkindly. “Let's get to it, Felix. We have work to do.”
He nodded in agreement. Yes, didn't they just.
“Christ!”
Gabriel couldn't believe what he was seeing down below. Left untended, the creature from the pit had somehow managed to find its way out of the hangar and was now embarking on a full-bloodied massacre on the streets below. He'd seen it topple an ice cream stall as he'd passed beneath Goliath, weaving upside down to avoid the flash of its machine guns, and now, coming back over the top of the airship again and glancing down over the side, he could see the creature had mounted the Ferris wheel and was happily plucking the civilians out of the cars.
Rutherford, too, had seen what was occurring below, and seemed as torn as Gabriel about what to do. On one hand, Gabriel's instincts told him to abandon their pursuit of the airship, to break free and head for the fairground to see what they could do to help. But on the other hand, he knew that this was just a minor taste of what was to come if Goliath was ever able to deploy its weapon.
The Goliath's weapons were taking increasingly bold potshots at the little biplane, but the cannons were firing wide, the missiles streaking harmlessly away through the air. The falling cannonballs had managed to destroy a number of warehouses and other industrial buildings below, but had so far, mercifully, remained clear of the fair-ground and the civilians below.
The two aircraft were stuck in a deadlock, Gabriel knew, and it was not a deadlock he could win. Sooner or later one of the weapons would strike home, or else the biplane would run out of fuel and go spiraling toward the earth, out of c
ontrol. It was a light craft, built only for ferrying cargo around the tristate area, no match for the airship, which was built to have stamina—a warship designed to carry its precious payload right across the Atlantic.
Gabriel felt the zip of a stray shot strike the fuselage by his legs, and he glanced round to see a man leaning out of a window in the flank of the passenger gondola, brandishing a snubnosed rifle. He sneered at Gabriel and brought the sight up to his eye to ready another shot. Gabriel took the controls in his left hand, holding the plane steady for a moment, and flicked his right arm up and around, allowing the barrel of his fléchette gun to flip up onto his forearm beneath the sleeve of his shirt. The trigger bulb landed neatly in his palm and he squeezed it, setting loose a shower of tiny metallic blades.
The fléchettes struck home, splintering the glass window and embedding themselves in the man's chest and face. He jerked suddenly, dropping the rifle and crumpling to the floor.
The biplane veered, and then Gabriel grasped the controls with both hands once again and eased the aircraft away from the belly of the great Goliath. He couldn't hold out in this stalemate much longer.
Gabriel pulled back on the controls and the biplane climbed. He needed a moment to think, to work out what he needed to do. That was when he saw them, bright and shimmering on the horizon. The eyes.
He stared into them, and they seemed to imbue him with warmth, with calm. He could hear Rutherford shouting something, unsure why they were climbing away from the airship, climbing higher and higher, but Gabriel ignored him.
He thought he realized for the first time what those eyes represented. They were nothing but a mirror, reflecting everything back at him. They belonged to Gabriel Cross. The real Gabriel Cross, the man he had buried so very long ago. They were a reflection of the man trying to get out, the man who now sat behind the controls of the biplane. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps that was why he was now seeing them properly for the first time. His buried conscience, the hidden things that defined who and what he really was—they were surfacing now because he had dropped his mask, because he'd allowed himself to become Gabriel Cross the man, rather than Gabriel Cross the pretender or his alter ego, the Ghost. All those myriad facets of his life had merged into one. He felt whole again for the first time in years.