“Are you crazy?” Cullan shouted, stalking over to the hole in the deck. “Get out of there right now!”
Nicki muttered something unflattering in French that made Cady giggle. “Not until we’re done,” she said.
Just then, the headset squealed. Jake was shouting loudly enough for everyone to hear.
“No, of course I wasn’t trying to kill you,” Nicki replied calmly. “How was I supposed to know you’d seen them coming? Don’t be ungrateful. They ran away, didn’t they?”
“Why did Flyboy let you have the guns? Who’s in charge up there?” he demanded.
“Don’t you yell at me! And don’t even try that—just because he’s the pilot doesn’t make him the boss of me!”
“Oh, my God! What is that thing?” Cady’s voice rang out across the bridge. Nicki released the transmitter and stared through her glass bubble at something that appeared to have come straight from one of Grimm’s fairy tales.
A hunchbacked old woman flew through the air like a witch from a child’s nightmare. Her gnarled hands had long fingers and sharp nails, and her skin was pulled tightly over sharp cheekbones and a jutting chin. Her mouth was open, filled with jagged teeth, and her eyes glowed red in the darkness.
“The Night Hag!” Nicki exclaimed. She sent a hail of bullets through the creature, to no avail. The gessyan twisted and writhed, fighting the power that summoned it back to the deep places, to the depths where she and the rest of the gessyan would be bound once more.
Nicki caught her breath as the black wraiths followed the Night Hag like a swarm of vampire bats, black winged and deadly, their shroud-like figures blotting out the stars.
“It’s working!” Cady exulted. “The Alekanovo stone and Marcin’s book—they’re working! The gessyan are returning to the mine!”
Nicky’s headset filled with static “…need that beam now!” Jake’s voice broke through.
“You couldn’t give us a little more warning?” Nicki yelled. “Cullan! Adam! Jake said he needs us to fire the beam.”
“Now!” Jake shouted.
Nicki stood up and yelled to Cullan. “He says, fire at the mine. Now!” To Jake: “He’s doing it. He’s doing it. Hold your horses!”
“We’ve got trouble!” Cady sang out. “Just picked up a Department telegraph. Good thing they don’t know I can read them. They’ve got airships on the way. We’ve got to get out of here!”
“There’s something you need to know—” Nicki started.
“Now, dammit!” Jake’s voice sounded followed by a burst of static.
An explosion echoed beneath them as a fireball rose from what had been the Vesta Nine mine. Cullan sent the Allegheny Princess upward at an alarming rate of ascent, leaving Nicki’s stomach feeling as if it had dropped into her shoes. She clung to the gun handles, careful not to press the trigger, feeling lightheaded from the sudden change in altitude.
In a dizzying sweep, Cullan brought the airship down and back into position.
The now-familiar whine of the Tesla ray warming up grew to a deafening crescendo. This time, forewarned, Nicki covered her ears, squeezing her eyes shut. The ray cut loose, so bright that it shone even through Nicki’s closed eyes, turning the world red for an instant.
The ray hit the mine’s main entrance.
“Everyone brace!” Cullan shouted. The Allegheny Princess shot up into the sky with a lurch. The shockwave from the explosion struck and nearly threw them all from their seats. The ship bobbed like cork on the ocean waves.
“Go, go, go!” Cady shouted at Cullan. “Those Department ships will be here any moment!”
“Too late.” Cullan’s voice was tight. “Two black airships sighted, at ten o’clock and two o’clock. Evasive action!” he shouted to his bridge crew. “Get us away!”
A barrage of gunfire erupted from the closer of the two airships. Bullets zinged past Nicki’s bubble, narrowly missing the Allegheny Princess. The blast was deafening, and a second round sent a bullet into the reinforced glass of the gunner’s mount, shattering one small panel.
“Baise-moi!” Nicki muttered. She gripped the controls of the Gatling gun, slid her chair into position, and opened fire.
A hail of bullets streamed toward the Department airship as Nicki circled back and forth along the chair’s track, laying down covering fire.
“Are you trying to get us all a one-way ticket to Western Penitentiary?” Cullan shouted. “Those are government agents!”
“I’m not hitting them, I’m warning them! Fly, dammit!”
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Cullan grumbled, and activated the Tesla ray one more time. He aimed it between the Allegheny Princess and the pursuing ships, to dissuade them from coming closer. Nicki heard the machinery whine, closed her eyes, and squeezed the trigger on the Gatling guns, sending out a spray of bullets. Just for good measure, Adam dispatched two of his unmanned hover-saucers, the same ones that had proved so valuable in the fight above the Atlantic. As the black airships drew back, the hover saucers pursued them, sending out bursts of gunfire that forced the government craft to keep their distance.
“Oh, my!” Cady exclaimed. “I’ve never heard anyone telegraph those kinds of words before! They didn’t even bother with code.”
“I don’t care if they’re angry,” Cullan replied between gritted teeth. “I care that they don’t catch us!” He barked orders to the rest of his bridge crew, who scurried to do his bidding.
“Won’t they recognize the name on our airship?” Cady asked. “They’ll know who we are?”
“I changed the registration number on the stern and painted over the name,” Cullan snapped. “Honestly, it’s not like this is the first time we’ve done this sort of thing. Give me a little credit!”
“It’s working!” Nicki yelled. “They’re falling back!”
“They’re not giving up,” Cullan shouted back. “They’re maneuvering, trying to box us in.”
“Shall I shoot them again?” Nicki asked.
“No!” Cullan replied. “Wait. Yes—dammit!” He swore under his breath. “We are so screwed.”
“Wunderkind!” Nicki shouted into the transmitter. “We need ideas!”
“Well I haven’t tested it in anything like this but… against an airship it might work without any permanent damage,” Adam replied.
“We’re listening. Be quick—we don’t have much time.” Cullan snapped.
“I brought the disrupter. I use it in the lab to shut down experiments in an emergency. If we aimed it from the turret, it shouldn’t affect the Princess but would shut down another airship, or at least make their systems stall for a few minutes. They won’t fall from the sky or anything— just hang there, dead in the water, so to speak.” He paused. “I’ll be up in a minute.” It seemed like he was on the bridge before the transmitter went silent, carrying something that looked like a cross between a rifle and a steam-powered canon.
Nicki grinned. “You’re a genius. That’s perfect. The men in the other airships are just doing their jobs; we don’t really want to hurt them, just give us time to get away.”
She moved to offer Adam her seat in the gunner’s mount, but he shook his head. “Actually, it would be better for you to shoot it,” he said. “You’re a much better shot than I am. Just pretend it’s a rifle. The effect spreads like a cone. We’ll just have to hope we’re close enough and it’s strong enough,” Adam said as he handed the odd contraption to Nicki.
She positioned the device on top of the gun controls, steadied it, and squeezed off a shot as soon as Cullan brought the first Department ship in range. The pursuing ship’s running lights went dark and its engines fell silent. It careened slightly to one side, and Cullan put on a burst of speed.
“Second airship at twelve o’clock!” Cullan yelled.
“They’re at the wrong angle. I can’t get a good shot without hitting part of our ship!” Nicki shouted back.
In response, the Allegheny Princess suddenly descended, so quickly t
hat Nicki felt her seat drop out from beneath her for a moment. She yelped, holding tightly to the disrupter and narrowly avoiding hitting her head on the low ceiling of the bubble. Cullan swung the Princess around, then climbed rapidly, so that she was now coming up on the Department airship from below and behind.
Nicki aimed and fired. Again her aim was true and the second Department ship went dark. Cullan angled them away sharply.
Only then did Nicki realize that Jake was shouting. At first, she made out a few curse words, and exclamations of complete and utter consternation. After a moment, Jake’s verbal torrent slowed, and the words became more coherent.
“If you can hear me, get out of there! We’ll meet you. It’s done. Go!” he urged.
“You heard the man,” Nicki said, scanning the horizon for any more of the black Department airships. “Let’s go home.”
“WELL, WHAT DO you know about that?” Nicki mused aloud in the parlor of the Desmet home. She set aside the newspaper and looked to Catherine and Jake. “They’re calling it the Great Vesta Strike of 1898, and by all accounts, everyone says it will be one for the record books.” She chuckled. “Amazing how people can just un-see the supernatural things they can’t explain. There’s not a word anywhere about killer ghosts or hell hounds. Imagine that!”
“Good thing we were nowhere nearby,” Jake replied, leaning back in his chair. Days later, he was still sore, and all the scotch in the world was not going to erase the nightmares.
“I wager Richard Thwaites wishes he hadn’t been in town,” Nicki said.
“Imagine getting caught in the middle of a deal with such disreputable buyers—and by the Department, no less,” Cady added.
“That’s something we won’t be reading about. But the muckraking reporter who ran so many articles on the Night Hag murders and the ‘Totems and Idols’ exhibit at the museum did manage to get a solid scoop on some real criminal activity,” Nicki continued. “Seems he was a friend of Ida Tarbell’s, and when Miss Tarbell visited Aunt Catherine—while we were off doing everything else—she happened to meet him, and she had the clout to get the reporter’s story taken seriously. What with all those charred bodies at the mine, and documents suggesting Thwaites had those unsavory Tumblety and Brunrichter characters on a hidden payroll and records of payoffs to the police…”
“Don’t forget the miners picketing his house and the feeding frenzy of reporters and photographers that kept him pinned inside, until the government filed their unlawful mining charges,” Catherine said with dubious innocence, as she reached up to secure the hairpins in her chignon.
“You put Ida Tarbell onto Thwaites, didn’t you?” Jake said, unsure whether to be proud or horrified.
The ghost of a smile touched Catherine’s lips. “What are old friends for?” she replied with a sidelong glance at Wilfred. The butler’s expression was utterly unreadable. “I just dropped a few hints, and passed along some typed notes recalling some of Thwaites’s scandalous behavior, things everyone in our circles knew but no one said aloud.”
“Aren’t you worried someone will trace it back to you?” Rick asked.
Catherine chuckled. “Hardly. Thwaites was a bully and a womanizer; if every jilted suitor and wronged young lady’s father were asked to stand in line for a shot at him, the queue would go around the block. It’s just that the gossip hadn’t traveled outside of certain social circles.”
George and Rick occupied two of the other parlor chairs, and like Jake, they each had a glass of fine scotch to celebrate the occasion. The bottle of expensive scotch sat on a side table, a gift from Adam Farber, in thanks both for his new secret lab and for the stash of tourmaquartz Jake and Rick had managed to grab just before they had fled the mining compound.
“Veles and the Oligarchy really hung Thwaites out to dry, didn’t they?” Rick said, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “The gossip rags have made a hash of his reputation, the photos are there for all to see, and now that the government has pressed charges, odds are he’ll be occupying a cell at Western Penitentiary for a very long time.”
“Everyone’s talking about it,” Nicki said. “Poor boy. I suspect his career prospects have dimmed—not to mention his marriage prospects.”
“Tesla-Westinghouse and their clients are beside themselves now that Adam Farber turned up alive,” Rick noted. “Seems they also found a trail of paperwork implicating Adam’s supervisor and that shady assistant in Thwaites’s schemes. And if the Department saw or suspects anything about the Tesla ray incident at the mine, well, they’re not saying.”
Jake took a sip of his scotch and let it burn down his throat before he replied. “Actually, Adam filed a police report as soon as he got back to the Castle. Said he went through the rubble and found that several of his experimental machines had been stolen.”
“Imagine that,” Catherine remarked with a sly smile, not looking up from her needlepoint.
“Oh, and Dr. Nils sent word to the office that his staff found a couple more Brand and Desmet boxes that were delivered to the museum by mistake… all from the Krakow-to-Paris run,” Jake said, shaking his head.
“Did Cullen get the Allegheny Princess patched up?” George asked.
“Oh, yeah,” Rick replied. “Good as new. After all, the Princess is his baby. If he hadn’t been able to outrun those Department airships, I think he would have rammed them.”
“Mon Dieu!” Nicki exclaimed, fanning herself with exaggerated horror. “I thought we were goners.”
“Danny Maguire sure came out smelling like a rose,” George observed, pointing to the newspaper Nicki had discarded. News of the mine disaster had dominated headlines for days, and speculation about the cause of the blast fueled rumors each more fantastic than the last.
George picked up the paper and pointed to a large photograph of ‘Dynamite’ Danny Maguire, with a headline proclaiming him ‘New Pittsburgh’s Little Giant’.
“Seems like Maguire is getting credit for setting the Pinkerton boys back on their heels,” George continued. “He’s won a blow for labor, and folks are predicting it might take him to the governor’s mansion—maybe even the White House.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to have friends in high places,” Rick noted with a hint of a smile. The deep scratches inflicted by the gessyan’s attack were healing well, thanks to Renate’s magic.
“Certainly might be good for business,” Jake added. “Changing the subject a bit, did you read Drostan Fletcher’s final report?”
George nodded. “The carriage was empty when Mitch and Jacob went back for Tumblety and Brunrichter. They never did find them, and Drostan guessed that the two mad doctors must have fled on foot.” He sighed. “On a brighter note, with the mine destroyed, the river murders and the rest of the monster sightings have stopped.”
“Sad they didn’t find Tumblety or Brunrichter,” Rick said with a sigh. “I imagine Mitch is steamed about that. He figured they would be his trump card with the Department.”
Jake walked to the window. Despite the triumph at the mine, he had not been able to shake a feeling of melancholy. Nicki slipped up beside him. “You’re thinking about your father,” she said.
He nodded. “I guess we got justice for him—sort of,” he said. “Thwaites is going to jail—not for arranging Father’s murder, but it’s punishment all the same. Veles lost lots of money on the deal, and a high-society business partner, and came out looking like a fool. That’s some kind of payback.” He sighed. “Neither one is very satisfying.”
Rick joined them and put his arm on Jake’s shoulder in silent support. Nicki looked at Jake, and for once all mirth was gone from her expression. “It won’t be, Jake,” she said. “Your father is gone, and revenge can’t bring him back. But the men who were behind it paid a price. It’s not fair, or satisfying—but sometimes, it’s all you get.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Jake said after a moment.
“But you never know what opportunities tomorrow will bring… and we are a cr
eative bunch,” Rick said, letting Nicki steer them back to where the others were still regaling one another with details from the big fight.
Wilfred appeared a few minutes later holding a clockwork pigeon. “Excuse me,” he said, “but this flew into the kitchen a few minutes ago and refuses to leave.”
Rick and Jake exchanged glances. “Mitch,” they said in unison.
Jake rose and took the mechanical carrier pigeon out of Wilfred’s hands, placing it on the writing desk and looking the bird over for a message capsule. Inside was a small note. Press button by tail feathers, it read in cramped handwriting.
“Next he’ll want you to pull its finger—” Rick abruptly fell silent, remembering that ladies were present, but Catherine chuckled quietly and Nicki just grinned.
Jake found the button and pressed it, then stood back.
“Glad you got out,” a scratchy Edison cylinder recording of Mitch Storm’s voice said. “That was close. Wanted to tell you, all’s good with the Department. They already had spies in the mine and think Veles and Thwaites blew it to cover their trail. They were thrilled to catch Thwaites in the middle of a deal and nab the crystals he was selling. The offer to work with you still stands. Drostan knows how to find us. Oh, and we won’t tell about the other crystals. You owe us one.”
The recording stopped and smoke began to seep from the hinges and joints of the mechanical pigeon. It began to rock back and forth violently. Then with a muffled thump, the metal bird ballooned to the size a turkey and fell to pieces, leaving nothing but a smoking pile of twisted tin.
“I guess Mitch got the last word,” Jake said, staring at the ruined mechanical bird.
“Not exactly,” Wilfred said from the doorway. “We’ve just received a telegram from your brother Henry in New York.” Henry had retreated to New York for an extended convalescence after his injury in the gunfight at the cemetery.
“Henry? I’d nearly forgotten about him—and I was enjoying that,” Jake said. Catherine gave him a reproving glance, but the half-smile suggested that she did not altogether disagree.
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