The Lightning Lord

by Anthony Faircloth

  “So you all moved into here,” Persi said, realizing the situation.

  Jane spoke, “We decided that sleeping near each other was more calming. We are a communal species after all.”

  “Yes, of course. Please forgive me, I should have checked,” Persi said, sitting up.

  Aiyana laid her hand on Persi’s shoulder. “No, you are part of our community now, and added to our peace. We thank you.”

  “Well, you’re welcome, I suppose.” She looked at them for a moment, then at the porthole. The faint moon glow gave contrast to the dark cabin wall. “Wait, what time is it?”

  “It is two hours after sunset.”

  “What?” she gasped, flinging the quilt back and sliding to the floor. “The plan, has Boots told you the plan?”

  “Plan? No, we have not seen Mr. Beacon,” Jane said.

  “It is why we came here to wake you,” John said. “There seems to be few people onboard. There are a couple of sootys in the engine room. They told us your engineer is asleep in his cabin with orders not to disturb, but other than that, no one is here. There is food on the table and a clean kitchen but neither Mr. Morris nor Mr. Nicholas was present.”

  “This not good,” Persi said, while rummaging through a trunk and removing a dark riding skirt, one of those split in the middle and forming two large legs. If I am called to action I want as much mobility as possible,” she thought. She looked up and saw the Nightwalkers watching her with interest, and then remembered she was nearly naked. She stopped for an instant, then deciding this was not the time for modesty, continued to dress.

  After adding a dark crimson blouse and donning her most comfortable black boots, she twisted her hair up, and with Jane’s help, fixed it under a black tricorne riding hat. With the addition of a several well-placed hatpins, the hat was bound to her head. She scooped up a black overcoat and calfskin gloves, and then looked to the vampires, “My friends, it is time to earn your keep. Follow me to the observation deck.”

  On the way, she noted that the Nightwalkers were correct and the ship was calm and quiet, which had the opposite effect on her. On the deck, the night was bright with a full moon. Persi strode to the telescope and pointed it toward the alley where she had witnessed the earlier events. “Please look through this telescope and observe the location.”

  John was the first to advance and look through the device.

  Persi continued, “This is where several of our crewman were abducted and from where they were transported to an unknown location. My husband has apparently run afoul of something similar, but I suspect that if we find the former crew, we will also find the latter.”

  Suddenly, they were all startled by a clattering against the airship from the opposite side of the deck. The Nightwalkers spread out, ready for a fight, crouching in preparation of an attack. There was something strange about them. In the dim light their hands and arms seemed longer, and their legs shorter. She realized they had begun to shift into their Nosferatu form.

  “Wait,” she called out, then walked across the deck to find small thin cage, leaning against the rail of the deck. “It’s connected to a cable reaching up into the darkness above,” she told the three, now gathered around her.

  A note was tied to one of the cage bars. She retrieved it, opened it and read aloud,

  “My dearest, Persi,

  Please relay the plan we spoke of earlier to our friends, then open the door and enter this aerial lifter and we will pull you up to the “Cisne Negro.” I shall be waiting to explain.

  Your loving husband, Boots.”

  “Hmm,” Persi said, folding the note and slipping it into her décolletage. “It seems my husband has added to our plan.” She summarized the situation and the part she hoped they would play. Before the end of her request, she knew their answer for they all began to smile. It was a smile she hoped never to see again, a smile from mouths too wide, and glimmering teeth too sharp to be human.

  She escorted the Nightwalkers back the telescope and showed them the alley again. Each looked through the lens them at the area with their naked eye, then to each other. Jane spoke, her speech slurred by her expanded mouth. “We would like you to take our clothsshh with you sshho we will have them oncessh we are finissshhhed. If we do meet you on this new airsshhip, we will return here and find sshhomething to wear.”

  Before Persi could answer, the Nightwalkers shifted completely, their clothes sloughed off, and they jumped over the railing of the airship. Persi gasped and rushed to the rail remembering the Daedalus hovered forty feet above the ground. To her relief, no broken bodies littered the ground below. She caught a glimpse of a pale blur form dodging into the closest ally, but the darkness quickly enveloped it.

  “Well, we’re off,” she smiled before collecting the clothing and moving back across the deck to the frail looking cage dangling from a thin cable disappearing into the blackness far above her.

  Persi slung her legs over the rail and managed to open the wrought iron cage door without too much trouble. She climbed in and looked around for a bell cord, or some other method, with which to signal those above she was ready to ascend. She reached for the latch to return to the safety of the airship’s deck just as the cage jerked and began to ascend. The jerk of the cage caused Persi to let out an uncharacteristic screech and drop half the Nightwalker clothes. She couldn’t help but yell into the heavens above as she rose rather quickly, “Husband, there will be a reckoning for this!”

  Chapter 42 – The Black Swan

  Persi ascended through the warm night air until a dark shape loomed above her, another airship, much larger than the Daedalus. The cage continued up toward the base of the keel. She saw no hatches, but then it was very dark and the moon was on the far side of the hull and above the balloon. Just when she thought she would crash into the bottom of the ship, a hatch opened inward and the aero lifter slid through.

  The lift stopped suddenly and the clothes she had managed to hold onto fell to the bottom of the contrivance. Boots stood next to the cage and stepped up to open the door.

  “Husband, I believe we may have a communication problem.”

  “Do we?” he said, lifting the latch, opening the door and extending his hand.

  “Yes, I was under the impression we had a plan, a specific plan, a plan to which you seem to have altered thereby rendering it un-specific.”

  “Well,” he said, shifting his stance to offer his other hand in assistance. “The plan is still very much the same, it was just that Genevieve, uhh, I mean, Miss Bourdieu,” he quickly corrected, “offered to help us track the progress of our friends and Grimm and I accepted.”

  She picked up the clothes from the floor of the lift and laid them across his arm, then stepped down from the cage. Persi pinned him to the bulkhead with her look. “Well, then let us not keep our benefactor waiting. I would like to meet this wondrous Genevieve Bourdieu, come along.”

  Boots tried to keep up with Persi, giving her directions through the ship while simultaneously stopping to pick up clothes that he continued to drop. “Persi, you seem to be a little on edge.”

  She stopped at the bottom of a stairwell, turned and gave him ‘the’ look.

  Hairs stood on the back of his neck, while several of them abandoned his neck all together. He stopped, cold. “Ahh, yes, just up that stair, dear heart,” he said.

  She turned and climbing the remaining stairs, stepping out onto a large dimly lit bridge, much larger than the one on their ship. The stairwell was located in the back of the space and to her left was a bank of valves, levels and switches. A man in a simple white uniform stood at parade rest. To her right, a large table with a cork top displayed a chart pinned to it. Captain Grimm stood above it, a compass in one hand and a pencil in the other. Most of the light in the room came from the silver oil lamp that illuminated the charts where Grimm worked.

  Persi looked forward at the back of a large high-backed chair ten feet away. The chair faced a wall of window panes and an arche
d lampstand stood behind it, a silver oil lamp- similar to that in the navigation space -hung from it. In the dim light, Persi saw two booted legs, dressed in trousers, hanging over the left arm, while a long black mane of hair dangled from the right side. Smoke rings erupted from the chair, and floated high into the room until they were sucked into a vent pipe suspended from the arched ceiling.

  Persi approached, wiping her hands down her clothes to remove unwanted wrinkles and then touched her hat to ensure it was still anchored to her hair. The legs disappeared, as did the hair, and a beautiful woman stepped into view. Persi’s first impression was that the woman had read too many dime novels of West Indies pirate adventures for she was dressed like Edward Teach, without the black beard of course. Her garb included a long sword that hung down from her right side and she reached for a hat sitting on the table next to the chair, a tricorne, very similar to that of Persi’s.

  “Welcome to the Cisne Negro, I am Captain ...”

  “Genevieve Bourdieu,” Persi interrupted, reaching her hand out toward the woman.

  Genevieve smiled and took it. “Just so,” she said, then nodded, “I appreciate your taste in dress, madam.”

  “Yes, well, I thought I might need to be more active than normal.”

  Boots appeared at the top of the steps behind her, drawing their attention. He stopped to brush his hands down his waistcoat, then slipped them back along his hair.

  Persi narrowed her eyes and turned back to Genevieve, “Because my partner, Boots here, failed to tell me we would be visiting the ...” she paused to consider the name of the airship, “the black something, I’m sorry, my Portuguese is a little rusty, actually non-existent.”

  Genevieve smiled. “She was once registered as a British warship, a frigate. I ... acquired it several years ago and renamed her, Black Swan.”

  Persi arched an eyebrow.

  “Oh, she is not quite stolen, they know I have her. They just do not have the means to take her back.”

  “They cannot use another ship like this,” she said, and smiled.

  Grimm stood beside her. “Captain Genevieve acquired the ship through espionage, from a secret base in Galloway Forest, England.”

  Boots spoke up. “Suffice it to say, there is no other like her.”

  “Well, they had invited me to stay for a little talk.” She wagged her head. “A talk that involved torture, and though I declined, they encouraged me to stay for a bit. When I decided to leave, I needed transport so I liberated some friends, other guests of the base,” she looked at Captain Grimm and smiled. “And I borrowed this ship.”

  Persi also looked at Grimm but decided to hold her questions about his involvement in the ship’s liberation until later. She returned her gaze to the woman. “So you stole the ship from an English base and flew it back here. I’m sure the base commander paid dearly for that. His superiors would not be happy with losing such a fine resource.”

  “Oh, he did pay. Since he participated in many of our … discussions, personally, I thought it only fair that he should come along. The men and I had several pleasant chats with him, then at a point over the Azores I escorted him from the ship.”

  “So you tossed him overboard and let him drown in the Atlantic,” Persi said.

  Genevieve shook her head with no hint of emotion. “No, I believe we were flying over São Miguel Island, in the Azores.” She smiled, “The city of Ponta Delgada to be more specific.”

  Persi wrinkled her nose. “What did those poor people do to you?”

  “No, I was helping the poor man. Each time he had me stripped and hung by arms to be whipped, he spoke of the small estate he bought just outside Ponta Delgado. He painted such a pastoral picture, with a cottage, sheep and ...” She drifted off for a second then her eyes refocused, “He planned to move there when he retired.” She placed the hat on her head, adjusting for fit. “I just helped him reach his dreams a little earlier than he planned.”

  She looked at Grimm and smiled again. “Dinner will be served in fifteen minutes. We will dine on the deck.”

  Grimm nodded and she left.

  “I am not sure what to say,” Persi said, turning to Grim. “Captain, you know the most interesting people.”

  “Her trip to Galloway Forest started when she worked for President Guillermo Tell Villegas during the revolution in 1869. Villegas had heard a rumor that Britain planned to side with the opposition, José Ruperto Monagas, and since her mother was British, Villegas sent Genevieve to England to gather information. She was caught a week later and taken to Galloway Forest, a place where they not only held and interrogated persons of interest, but were also building the most modern airship the world had ever seen.”

  “The Swan is not that large.” Persi said, looking around again. “I mean, she is bigger than the Daedalus obviously but not as large as our government’s USAS Leviathan.”

  “My dear, it is not her size,” Boots said, placing his hand on her shoulder. “It is her accoutrements that make her the belle of the ball.”

  “Oui, she is how do you say, ‘loaded with a bear’?”

  Persi smiled, “Loaded ‘for’ bear, Captain, for bear.”

  Grimm nodded, “As you say. The Swan’s armaments include standard twenty, 9-pounder cannons and five belt-fed rotary steam cannons based on Mr. Gatling’s design, as well as a magazine full of self-propelled rocket bomb she calls her, ‘Cygnets’ used for air to air conflict.”

  “Even if the British war machine wanted to acknowledge this ship,” Boots said, “they have nothing readily available with which to put against it.”

  “Hmm, and we are here, why, husband?”

  “Observation of the chase, and assistance should our friends need it. The Cisne Negro is also equipped with the latest Aetheric Detection and Ranging Device.”

  “Oh, do tell,” Persi’s voice hinting at sarcasm.

  Boot’s patience was wearing thin. “Persi, perhaps you need reminded that we are still on a mission. We are agents our government and as an agent, I decided access to this resource warranted a small alteration of our plan.”

  Persi bristled immediately and Boots knew this would not be over in a single discussion but he forged on. “With the ADRD we can track the Nightwalkers progress, discover that evil woman’s lair, and assist in the recovery of our people. You see the sense in this, I know you do.”

  Boots saw her resolve falter.

  “And, you are here. In the end, we are still together and the mission is moving forward.”

  “Yes,” she said, “It was a good decision, and appropriate. I am trying to see too far into the future.”

  He smiled softly. “Mending socks?”

  She nodded.

  He approached and took her into his arms.

  “If you will excuse me,” Captain Grimm said, I am going to the observation deck. The Captain, she is very keen on timeliness.”

  “We will be there briefly,” Boots said. When Grimm was gone, Boots raised Persi’s chin and kissed her. “My heart, I will do all that is in my power to keep you near me and away from the darning needle. Do not let this cloud your judgment, let it come on its own time and we will face it together.”

  “Yes,” was all Persi could manage. “Now, I suppose we should get to table, after all, neither one of us needs to be thrown overboard for missing dinner.

  Boots smiled, allowing her time to dab at the tears with her handkerchief, then offered his arm and led her to dinner. “And, we have vampires to track,” he offered.

  “Well yes, there is that,” Persi agreed, taking his arm.

  Chapter 43 – Dinner with Captain Genevieve Bourdieu

  Persi decided that Captain Genevieve Bourdieu might be a homicidal maniac, or perhaps a sociopath, but she did set a splendid table. The table was itself a wonder, seemingly made of one solid piece of mahogany, though one of the stewards, a handsome young man named Julius, explained that when not in use it lowered back into the deck on steam pistons. It was 12-foot-long and 4-
foot-wide, with battle scenes inlaid with silver wire, which, Julius said, depicted one of their many revolutions.

  Around the table was assembled her officers, ten she counted quickly, as well as Boots and Grimm. She suspected at least one officer was left on watch in the control room, and perhaps another in the engine room bringing the total to twelve. If each officer represented three to five men ... the crew of the Black Swan was quite substantial.

  The table was spread with fine dinnerware, only one-dessert spoon away from a formal setting. Their first course was what Julius called, Cachitos De Jamon. It was similar to a French croissant, and filled with finally minced pork and some type of cheese. Persi found it delicious, and without being too rich and filling. The steward called the second dish offered, Sopa De Mondongo. She knew by the mild ‘wet dog’ smell it was made with tripe, but she also saw a mixture of root vegetables, cabbage, and celery floating in it. She was polite and tried but in the end could not eat it.

  “It is not to your liking, I suppose.” Genevieve said, sipping her wine, the crystal sparkling in the lamps circling the table.

  “I mean no offense. I have been off my food as late. I’m sure it is well prepared,” Persi replied.

  The Captain never dropped her eyes but she shrugged.

  Persi felt as if she was in the presence of a well-trained attack dog, awaiting the proper trigger that would launch her across the table to rip Persi’s throat out. Persi pulled her skirt up slightly to aid in retrieving her pistol should she need it.

  The third dish served was roasted pork drizzled with guasacaca. It was quite spicy.

  “Excuse me Julius,” Persi called the young steward. “This sauce is quite delicious what is in it?”

  “I am no cook, Madam,” Julius said, “but I believe it is made with things like avocado, parsley, coriander, onions, garlic and pepper.”

  “I am a cook,” Genevieve said, leaning in to the table, “and he is correct. In Venezuela, guasacaca is royalty among the sauces.”