She led out, circling to bear farther right than where they’d been. Dahlia, Bronwyn, Maizey, and Emma followed, straightening their line.
The Kreak’s massive jowls opened, metal and steaming as if they’d been scorching hot before being immersed in water, and the creature let out a guttural moan at the plane blockade. It pulled itself out of the water completely, large claws digging into the sand.
“Keep at its eye level,” said Victoria.
Over the rumble of her craft, Victoria heard the Kreak’s crackling, huge metal arms as it finally succeeded at pulling itself out of the rippling ocean. The limbs were made up of gears and metal pieces so intricate, Victoria had a familiar longing to get a closer look, just to see how they worked. Better yet, they were swirled, just like the piece she’d found earlier.
“Hold steady,” she commanded as the planes adjusted their height to stay directly in front of it.
It rose to its full height—a good twenty feet over the roofs along the boardwalk—and shook water from its head. The spray smattered against Victoria’s windshield. She triggered her wipers to clear her view, glancing one way, then the other. Dahlia and Maizey on her right, Bronwyn and Emma on her left.
“Now?” Bronwyn asked.
“Wait for my signal,” Victoria said.
She had been nervous her first several flights after she’d finished her training—especially the first time she’d had to help keep the Kreak at bay. But after two years, the sight of the monster’s large mechanical body and stuttered movements motivated her more than anything else.
“First round. Now!” she cried, and she ignited the air with flame, syncing with the other hovercraft around her.
Orange light exploded through the air, riding in a gossamer wave of rippling colors as it combined with the Kreak’s poisonous breath, almost like a sunset. The Kreak howled a deafening shriek, metal scraping metal.
Victoria rested her gun, letting the fuel refill the tank for another shot. If only we didn’t have to take this time, she thought. If only we could continue the attack. But the rudimentary equipment needed time to reboot.
In the lapse of time, the creature crawled forward, its body barely missing the churning tide. Its claw-like metal talons gripped the shore, slicing into the sand as it dragged itself forward.
“Prepare the second round!” Victoria ordered. Maizey and Emma shot flames from their end positions, warding the beast back.
Victoria took a moment to glance downward. People scattered below, scrambling and struggling to secure their gas masks in the process. Some dropped their bags, some collided with one another. Victoria couldn’t help peering down at them, stunned at the number of people who hadn’t yet found shelter.
“What are you doing?” she called to them as if they could hear her. “Do you think this is a show? Get inside!”
“Fools,” added Bronwyn.
One woman in a tan brocade skirt and hazel corset struggled to capture an excited toddler who kept evading her grasp, clearly thrilled at the prospect of meeting the overlarge mechanical monster. She snatched the back of the boy’s jacket, but he wriggled free.
“Come on,” Victoria muttered urgently to the woman, at the same time preparing her gun and pointing it at the creature.
“Someone should land,” added Emma. “Perhaps we could help that woman and her child.”
“Steady on,” Victoria urged, her training blaring in her mind. She could send one of them to land. But by the time the pilot got down there it would be too late. Breaking formation would allow the Kreak an opening to attack, and Victoria couldn’t do that. Another demerit was the last thing they needed. The last thing she needed. The woman should be able to get her gas mask on her own.
She couldn’t figure out what appeal the townspeople could possibly have for the monster. Did it eat them? It wasn’t all mechanical, she knew. It had a heart and lungs like any other creature, and the flames had a dousing effect on the Kreak’s poisonous breath. As if the thing could hear her thoughts, it rumbled, emitting with a shudder another cosmic amount of green haze.
At that moment, human screams joined the colors in the air.
No, Victoria thought. She didn’t want to look. But she couldn’t help it. The child’s form flailed on the boardwalk below, a small gas mask concealing his face. His mother was not so fortunate. Her mouth gaped, her screams inaudible beneath the loud rumbling of the hovercraft. The sight struck Victoria with a sickening helplessness, sending chills down her arms.
The gas mask she’d failed to place dangled from the woman’s hand as she slammed against the brick side of the mercantile shop on the boardwalk, struck by some unseen force. Her mouth hung open, her eyes pouring upward into the sky as if something was being dumped on her from above. A man in shirtsleeves dashed out, grabbing the child at her side and pulling him into the shop. It was too late to do anything for the woman.
And then the spots arrived. Massive, purplish spots like welts spread across her skin in an instant. Victoria knew she should look away; the time to fire would once again strike, and she needed to be ready if they wanted any hope of scaring the thing back into its saltwater depths. But the woman fell to the street, clawing the gravel as her skin slowly transformed from cream to bruised. With one last effort, her body sighed its soul and stopped moving. Blood trailed from her lifeless mouth.
Victoria very nearly vomited in her hatch. She tore her gaze away, wishing she could wipe the memory from her own eyes. Was that how it’d been for her father?
Gauge recharged, Victoria gave the signal to fire once more. They’d drifted too close to the beast, in breach of the fifteen-foot rule. But Victoria barely noticed. Feeling like a machine herself, she aimed and ignited the flames. The Kreak lifted one of its mechanical arms with agonizing slowness and swung toward a hovercraft at the center of the formation, right next to Victoria’s plane—Dahlia’s plane.
“Dahlia!” Victoria cried. Bronwyn and Maizey shouted too. Dahlia was uncharacteristically silent, as if frozen in panic.
“V-gull. Circle back, ladies! V-gull formation!”
“It’s too late,” Emma squeaked.
The metal arm collided with Dahlia’s fuselage, tearing a hole in the metal with its claw. A horrible, wrenching sound split the air, and the impact jarred Victoria’s plane. The blow whirled her plane like a fan, crashing it to the sand below.
“Dahlia!” Victoria screeched. “Report in! Dahlia!”
There was no response.
The Kreak tipped its head back as if in conquest. It trundled forward, resting its weight on its claws, clockwork eyes bent straight at Dahlia’s fallen, steaming plane. In a split second Victoria pictured it. That claw, rising. Crushing Dahlia in a single swoop.
“I don’t care what my uncle says,” she muttered. “It can’t do this.” The abandoned child, the woman whose skin discolored and whose body . . . she shuddered. And now it had taken down her dearest friend.
She broke formation and flew forward. Though her fuel gauge levels were reading low, she hovered directly in front of the creature’s white-hot teeth. Its eyes, like golden rims around a clock, swiveled as if blinking. It paused. Spouting words that would make her mother blush, Victoria lit the air just as the Kreak opened its mouth.
The flame caught, following the trail of breath and landing inside the monster’s mouth. Bronwyn, Maizey, and Emma did likewise, changing position and shooting flame directly at the monster. It let out a harsh moan, reared back, and slowly capsized into the sea. Victoria hovered, waiting for it to return, to dare challenge her again.
“Take that, you grisly brute,” she said, panting as she watched the beast retreat into its watery hideout.
The ocean frothed and bubbled at its center, and eventually, one by one the bubbles subsided.
Trembling, she tapped her earpiece. “Dahlia, check in. Dahlia! Ladies, is she okay
?”
A silent hum filled with noncommittal murmurs rode through the headset. “Blast,” Victoria said, glancing down to the woman’s purpled, collapsed body, motionless on the boardwalk.
Four
Oscar Radley held the child in his arms. The boy lost his mother in such a ghastly way. The image of the woman’s death scraped the inside of his skull, and he clung hard to the small boy, wishing there was something more he could do.
The siren had sounded and most of the shoppers had fled. Oscar had been frantically herding people, guiding them to the exits or helping them untangle the gas masks his father stored for purchase from below the counter. He’d only just gotten his own mask in place when he’d glanced out to see the woman with her son.
He’d ducked out to nab the boy just in time. No son should ever witness his mother dying in such a horrific way. But just because the boy hadn’t seen it didn’t mean Oscar hadn’t.
He stared around his father’s shop, at the bags of wheat and rice on display, the bolts of dark and brilliantly colored fabric stacked on pegs behind the counter, wishing he could somehow use that fabric to scrap the memory from his brain.
Why had he bothered coming back to this infernal town? He’d forgotten how awful the attacks were. And the tactics were the same as they’d been a year ago. He had high hopes for the Naut Academy’s Protection Program. But the young ladies did nothing more than blow flames to scare it away. Something bled wrong about that. Here he’d been at University for a year, bettering himself in order to better others, and the unchangedness of Chuzzlewit at his return astonished him.
The small boy stared up at Oscar with bright, stormy eyes. Oscar patted his dark hair and retrieved a sweet for him from his pocket, smiling to mask his own shock.
Several women flocked around Oscar and the boy, their gas masks now removed and dangling from their arms like strange octopi. A short woman with dark skin and large lips wearing a light blue dress lowered her arms and lifted the boy from Oscar.
“Where Mama?” the small boy asked in a quiet voice, wrapping his tiny arms around the woman’s neck.
“She’s gone to our Maker, sweet angel,” said the woman with more tenderness than Oscar could have managed at the moment. “Let’s go find your papa.”
Oscar gritted his teeth. His own father stared down at him in plain shirtsleeves, suspenders and vest, his brow bent with worry. Without a word, Oscar rose and crossed the length of the small store to the stairs behind the counter. Halfway up the narrow, steep steps, he paused and rested his arm on the cool wall.
This is maddening, he thought. He expected some type of advancement in the town—it was only natural that people should progress in some way. But from the look of things, nothing had changed.
He had held the quivering child, watching the monster sink back into the ocean. The girls in their hovercraft had dissipated as the danger did, and he couldn’t help the feeling that he wanted nothing more than to escape back to Wolverton and establish a life for himself there. To establish a life anywhere but here, really.
And as for the cursed celebratory dance the following evening . . . he had no desire to attend. It was meant to be in his honor, but he wanted no special attention, especially not after what just happened. How could he receive praise when a small child had just lost his mother? Oscar clenched a fist against the cool stone wall.
“The worst part is, it could have been prevented,” he said while anger surged beneath his skin. There must be a better way to handle these attacks. He just knew it.
His father’s head appeared at the base of the stairs. “Can you give me a hand down here, son?”
Oscar inclined his head at his father and returned back down the stairs. There was only one reason to attend the bothersome dance, but even the prospect of seeing Rosalind was futile if her father attended, which he was sure to. Perhaps she was like Chuzzlewit—unchanged. Perhaps it would be better to simply sneak back out of town after all.
Five
Victoria landed her aircraft on Down Street. The sun was nowhere in sight—the shades of night had fallen fast. Fingers trembling, she fought her restraints and managed to slam her palm against the hatch release and extract herself from the cockpit. She leapt from the wing, landed on the street, and ran for the soft sand.
Evidence of the Kreak’s attack scarred the beach. Canyons carved into the sand pooled with water. Maizey stood by Dahlia’s plane, staring, horrified at the cracks in Dahlia’s windshield and the gash in her fuselage below the left wing.
Bronwyn approached next, tall and stocky, followed by a timid, shrinking Emma. “Is she okay?” Bronwyn asked.
Victoria rushed forward, feet sinking in the sand, until she approached the others. Without a word she hefted her way up onto Dahlia’s plane. Steam seeped from the engine’s cracks, and the metal burned her hands. She peeled up the sheet of crackled glass that was once the hatch. Her hands rushed to her mouth.
Dahlia lay unconscious, her head tipped to one side, showcasing her prominent nose. Blood caked along her left ankle, close to where the Kreak had ripped through the plane’s metal frame. The buckles along Dahlia’s corset had caught on her steering. One was ripped partially to hang by a single thread dangling from the leathers along her stomach.
“Dahlia! Are you all right?” Forehead creased in alarm, Victoria climbed in, crouching to check for a pulse. Her fingers searched Dahlia’s cold skin, pressing hard. She breathed in relief. It was light, but it was there. “Dahlia,” she said again. “Wake up. Wake up!”
“Is she okay?” Bronwyn’s lower voice dragged Victoria’s attention back to the sand, to the medic hovercarriage tending to the woman’s remains on the boardwalk.
Victoria’s muscles were rigid. Shock raked over her. She wanted to run, to hide from all of this, to go back to an hour before when she’d been walking with Dahlia toward the beach, joking about Charles Merek.
“Help,” she managed through her clamped throat. “She needs help. Get that medic crew over here!”
Bronwyn took off across the beach, with Maizey following close at her heels. Emma stood by, wringing her hands. Victoria glanced back at Dahlia. The fiery girl didn’t look this subdued even in her sleep. Her injuries must be substantial.
A pair of nurses with white strips of cloth tied around their upper arms charged across the sand, chasing after Bronwyn and Maizey as they made their return.
“Hurry!” Victoria called, leaping down from the wing. The first nurse to approach was older, her face lined and kind. “She’s alive. She’s breathing, but her leg is cut and she won’t wake—”
“It will be all right,” the woman soothed, climbing up. The next nurse joined, followed by the puttering hovercarriage, stirring sand as it made its way over. Several men with similar white bandages around their arms helped extract Dahlia from the plane and into the hovney.
“They have her,” Emma said, putting an arm around Victoria’s shoulder. “She will be all right.”
Victoria doubted that. How would any of them be all right?
She stared out at the sea, not realizing one of the men was speaking to her until he placed a hand on her shoulder. Sweat beaded along his receding hairline, and he wiped it with a cloth.
“We’ll take her to the hospital in Wolverton,” the medic was saying.
“Wolverton,” Victoria repeated, distracted, still staring at the ocean.
His gentle hand slid to her arm, succeeding at drawing her full attention. “You acted quite heroically, Miss Digby,” said the medic. “If you hadn’t charged forward, who knows what more damage that beast might have done to our shores?”
Victoria shook her head, fighting back the tears burning at her eyes. She was no hero. If she was, she’d find a way to knock the monster out of its watery hold for good and stop it altogether, not merely push it back again to come another day.
Six
> It was all Victoria could do to park her plane properly in its hangar. She couldn’t believe Dahlia had been injured. It was always a possibility—their training proved that daily.
But Dahlia . . .
A hovney awaited her, the driver patiently holding the door. Exhaust spewed in a small cloud and collected below the vehicle’s metal drop-ladder. Victoria climbed in, settling herself on the velvet bench inside.
“Gingham Range, please,” she said to the driver before he bowed and closed her in.
Victoria sank her head back into the cushion as the driver propelled the craft past the homes at the edge of the town. Shops faded, and the closely crammed dwellings of the lower class began to thin out as they broached the countryside. Victoria stared out the window at the expanse of grass and trees that separated the packed, smaller homes from the finer manor houses.
She had difficulty grounding her thoughts. The reality of it all consumed her. Dahlia was going to the hospital. Victoria didn’t think she could ever forget seeing her like that, unconscious in her plane, blood streaking her cheek and leg.
She passed several stately manor houses, and the sight of one in particular caught her eye. Silverton Manor was a long, rectangular structure with many windows stacked one beside the other below many pointed arches.
It was her childhood friend, Rosalind’s home, and Victoria’s thoughts shifted there as they hadn’t done in months. She cared for Rosalind as she did for Dahlia, and she would much rather have gone there than return to her own home at the moment.
A lecture and a reprimand awaited her at Gingham Range, she was sure of it. And with this canker in her chest, and the night’s events, she couldn’t bear to face that. She very nearly signaled the driver to turn around when Gingham Range came into view.
The Perilous In-Between Page 3