“And a warlock, who we all care about and has become a part of our family. I care for you. Do not do this.”
“Soon you will be presented with a choice,” the Monk said in a voice that rumbled with thunder. “You will not choose wisely, but I must warn you not to let that dissuade you from your true path.”
In his head Orion heard the words the Monk had said to him about his true role. Helping Gavin. The old man knew he would do this. Orion didn’t believe it until now. What had he been about to do?
“This is my family’s future,” Orion said as he placed the bag containing the stone back into Gavin’s hand. Gavin embraced him and held tightly. Tears sprang from Orion’s eyes. Orion pressed their cheeks together, leaned his head back, moving their mouths together and kissed Gavin deeply and desperately.
Their lips parted. Orion touched both sides of Gavin’s face and stared into his eyes. The magick collapsed, and Landa stumbled forward out of its grasp and looked out the porthole.
“I knew they’d discover us once I started the boiler. It’s not just your father who’s come. The entire Council is out there, looks like, and the Grenadiers, security, standard naval men running, using steamwalkers, and others in small boats on the River Thames. And big ships. Lots of ships,” she said. She turned to Orion and pointed. “Which means I’ll have to deal with your arse later.”
“I know what to do,” Gavin shouted.
“That rock tell you?” Wish said snidely as he grabbed Orion by the vest and shook him.
“Stop. Don’t make me regret what nice things I’ve said about you,” Gavin said, clapping Wish on his shoulder.
While they fought, the steam had filled the roped-down balloon that would bring them aloft and to safety. It was prepared to sustain flight.
“Landa, full steam. Let’s get this ship out of the water,” Gavin said.
“Right. And what will you be doing?” Landa asked.
“What I do best,” he said, smiling for the first time in a long time as he headed for the helm.
“Wait!” Lucas shouted. “Isn’t anyone else mad as hell at Orion? He just tried to steal the stone from us.” Lucas’s face had grown bright red and splotchy. Wish had his fists balled into hammers next to his waist, ready to pounce.
“But he didn’t,” Gavin declared. “And we don’t really have time.” Gavin pointed out the window to the scene unfolding up the dock from them.
The oncoming steamcab barreled down the planks of the wooden docks. It got close enough for Gavin to see his father, who raised him, and wanted to kill him, in the window, shouting orders.
Wish shook his head in disbelief. “I need to be done with you lot, but now I’d be just as murdered as you, so I’m stuck,” he said. He stepped onto the deck with the rest of them and pointed out, “Is that…? I thought he was dead.” A two-legged steamwalker charged across the dock toward them, Masheck aboard.
“I guess he got better,” Gavin stated. “And now he has come to kill us. Will you help?”
“Do I have a choice at this point?” Wish stated.
Gavin’s eyes grew wider as an ear-piercing whine grew louder until its screeching threatened to burst their eardrums. It was followed by massive gears on the control tower turning until the searchlight shined on them, blotting out the night sky. On the water an ironclad battleship zoomed toward them, as well as several smaller craft propelled by steam, their inflatables nearing readiness.
The Grenadiers with his father had fired their steam-powered grenade cannon at them, and the shot tore into the decking at his feet. The loud blast shocked Gavin to move.
“Let’s go now!” Wish yelled. “That was targeting. The next one—”
The earth lit up around them like noonday when the cruiser’s cannon loosed a shot. Fire bellowed from its big gun on the foredeck.
“Brace for impact!” Wish yelled. They all ducked for cover.
Fire slammed into the back edge of the main cabin. Part of the skyship exploded in shards of glass and splintered wood. Orion threw a quick pulsing shield of energy around those closest to him. He pushed his power outward, but it did not reach one of them in time.
From inside the safety of the cabin, Gavin saw debris strike Lucas in the face. Lucas crumpled to the wooden deck. Smoke and flames hampered Gavin’s view.
“No!” Gavin screamed, struggling against the bubble of energy to get to Lucas. Orion dropped his magick, and Gavin skidded across to the fallen boy. “Lucas, Lucas.”
Wish held a canister he had grabbed from the wall of the cabin. With a quick flick of a toggle, brass gears started to spin on the side of the metal tube, and the spout opened. White powder began to spray out of the nozzle and covered everything Wish pointed it at. Quickly the flames subsided, and the deck fire was all but out.
Gavin lifted Lucas’s head. There was blood across his cheek, and his body was limp in his arms. Then Lucas groaned and slowly came to life, his face bloody from cuts across his head. Gavin’s thumb smeared the rosy substance, and it gave Lucas’s normally pale face an unnatural pallor.
His jaw was tight as he gently set Lucas on the deck and turned to fight. Another boom and a bright flash filled the shipyards. Gavin clenched his fists. A man on a mission, ignorant of the torrent surrounding him, he stood to face the tide.
“Gavin, no!” Landa shouted as she watched Gavin turn toward an army.
Gavin lifted his hands as if to push back the very wind. He thought of Lucas, his Lucas, bleeding on the deck, and he knew, for once in his life, exactly how he felt and what he wanted. Life was always so complicated, muddy, confusing. Being kissed. Misled. Trapped. Hated. Loved.
He couldn’t make promises of hand-holding or proclamations over flowers. He assumed he would be dead soon, or worse, standing over the bodies of everyone he loved. But on the deck of a stolen ship, he could make sure no one could hurt his Lucas ever again.
It was no longer complicated. His chest filled with all the fury his heart could stand and he thrust it all at the ship and screamed. Too much. It was too much to handle anymore.
“Arghhh!”
A crackling deep orange ball of flame leapt from his arms and clapped like thunder as it sped across the water toward the ship.
At the same moment the enormous red circle of fire that had erupted on the deck of the battleship was almost upon their airship. It blinded them, lighting up the night sky in an eerie, aethereal glow as it headed toward Gavin.
Hate set Gavin’s face, his body taut, arms extended as his flames crashed into the missile, engulfed and destroyed it, and carried on toward the ship that had fired upon them. Men leapt into the water before the ball of flame encapsulated the battleship, blowing the bow apart.
Jacobson’s steamcab lurched to a stop, and he looked out in terror. Masheck stepped behind his walker, pressing his back against the protection of its hide. The British Navy’s prized battleship rocked up against the explosion and settled back into the water at an angle that could only mean it had started to take on water. Did Jacobson’s son really sink a vessel of that magnitude with magick?
The Grenadiers formed a line, blocking any hopes of the kids escaping back toward land. Their rifles were drawn, but none fired. The deck smoked above them. Gavin’s father was shouting over the pandemonium using an amplification box one of the Grenadiers was operating. He squeezed the handheld cone so tightly the gears struggled to turn to power the device. The electric crackle preceded his voice.
“This has gone too far,” Jacobson bellowed at Gavin in his commanding voice. Gavin’s father used that voice to much success in his political and personal life. Men cowered to him. It meant to convey no other option but to obey. “Look at what you’ve become. A foul magick user.”
“Me? What about what you’ve done, Father,” Gavin shouted across the thirty or so yards separating them. “It is over.”
“Son.”
“Now I’m your son?” Gavin mocked. “Was it your son you tried to have murdered?”
/> Jacobson grimaced. “You are surrounded by my navy and army—”
“What’s left of it,” Gavin shouted, both hands cupped around his mouth, making sure he was heard. Jacobson’s snide face grew taut. Gavin turned into the cabin and grabbed the ascent lever and pulled hard. The airship bounded up out of the water, and everyone aboard nearly fell to the deck from the sudden jolt.
Cassandra Unchained
IN EÍRE, Blaylock scried into a large stone basin. He witnessed Orion on his smog ship using magick to steal the stone from the unsuspecting clockwork users. Revulsion filled him, hands clutched tightly to the base of the bowl, threatening to rend it in two. His heart yearned for the battle; he filled with anticipation of his long plotting to finally come to an end.
Blaylock left the room while Orion held Gavin at bay. He walked through the castle. He passed the aged queen slumped over her chair, asleep. Oh, how he loathed her. He wished she could die, but if she were to suffer an unfortunate accident, squabbles would ensue. There’d be endless infighting for the crown. They would argue over ancient political tomes, and debate Orion’s potential ascension. That would not benefit his plans. That would not hasten his rule. He needed the Dragon’s Heart Stone.
Down in the bowels of the abbey’s cells, Blaylock passed an isolated cloister of the faithful in prayer. In the dormitories he strode down a dark hall lined with dozens of doors on each side. He paused in front of one, took a deep breath, and pulled it open.
In the middle of the tiny room, a tall, preternaturally beautiful slender woman awaited him. Her face and throat were white with makeup, save for the red Celtic knot tattoo on her neck. Her purplish-black hair lay straight and long. She stood taut and still as if she had awaited him forever. Her partially open coat showed the tips of a dozen throwing knives. Blaylock’s gaze drifted to the curve of her hip the cut of her vest exposed. The quickness with which she moved to the narrow bed, picked up two small swords, and placed one to her own lips startled Blaylock. He knew the Brotherhood’s assassins were dangerous, and still allowed himself to be lulled.
“I knew you would come for me, Master,” she said, her voice raspy, seductive, chilling. She slipped the swords into their sheaths. She caressed the gold buckles and straps along her tall black leather boots, up the ties holding the leather pants together along the hip.
“Cassandra,” Blaylock said as he shook away the desirous thoughts and the growing in his groin. He knew her and her wicked ways. “Eíre is in danger.”
“I answer.”
“Very good. I need you to come with me to retrieve the wayward boy. Orion will be brought back to the Brotherhood. He has something he cannot be trusted to hand over at the appointed time. I know of the ill-formed plan he and his foolish stepfather have concocted. When the time is right, I want you to hand me the stone he carries.”
“And if the son of Oberon refuses?” She smiled.
“He will join us or die. Accidents happen. Ensure your actions do not bring unwanted scrutiny.”
Blaylock reached deep inside to keep his hands away from her curves, to evade her powerful seductions. His tool had grown quite good at what she did, and what she did was not pretty like her.
“And the British?”
“They will be utterly defenseless, thanks to my faerie friends,” Blaylock boasted.
Cassandra stepped up to him, kissed him on the lips, and walked around Blaylock toward the dormitory entryway. She stopped before she reached the first stairs that would take her on her mission, and cocked her head sideways to look over her shoulder at him.
“You men with your plans. Is there anything else?”
“Yes,” he said, smiling and knowing what she wanted to hear. “Kill anyone else who is helping him or stands in your way.”
She smiled as she ascended the stairs.
The Fighting Irish
GAVIN GUIDED their airship up out of the water and climbed over the Thames, out over the city of London. The electric twinkling lights showered the cityscape, and smog choked the air over countless buildings and steamcabs dotting the motorways. Behind him the cabin of the airship had grown eerily quiet.
“Talk to me,” Gavin ordered from his place at the steering column. “Are they giving chase…?” His words fell off as he turned to see their shock-stricken faces.
“Oh, I think they all want to talk to you,” Wish said, staring hard at Gavin as if he were an animal about to attack.
“I can—”
“What, explain?” Landa said. “What’s to explain? My best mate is full of secrets that he couldn’t share with me.”
“Is everyone a goddamned warlock now?” Wish asked, his arms raised to the sky for answers.
“We don’t have time for this,” Gavin said, starting to lose control of his emotions.
“No, we don’t. Not with the entire British Navy, or what’s left of it, trying to capture us for you sinking their ship,” Landa said. “With magick. Did you know?”
“Landa, please.”
“Did you know?”
“No, I didn’t know, until the…,” Gavin pleaded. “Until the Monk. I swear. He showed me a vision. He showed me that I have used magick before to save us, to save you, Landa. The last experimental flight. The wreck. I didn’t even know I used magick to keep us from dying that day. And there’s more.”
“I can imagine,” she said, suddenly looking terribly tired.
“My father knew. He captured a faerie, and I saw him torture the poor thing—”
“Poor thing?” Wish protested.
“Landa,” Gavin continued. “He tortured it with an electrical field somehow. It showed the Council and my father a vision, a prophecy. It showed me using magick to destroy.”
“Destroy what?”
“Everything.” Gavin hung his head, choked with emotion, overwhelmed with the weight of it all. He sniffled, then added, “Orion started to train me when the Monk said I could change everything—”
“Well, that’s just great. Just great,” Lucas said, propping himself up on one elbow.
“Lucas!” Gavin exclaimed. “Are you all right?” Lucas’s face was bleeding a little and he wiped at it.
“Playing magick with the Brotherhood spy because the deranged old monk told you to. I’m sure that would help avoid destroying everything. You lied to us. To me.”
Gavin continued to raise the airship despite feeling deflated.
“You’re unbelievable,” Landa said to Gavin.
“We can’t turn on one another now. Not when we’re this close,” Orion said.
“I do hate to agree with the ponce in the ridiculous outfit,” Wish said, commenting on the pilot outfit Orion still wore. “But we have the stone. Haveland doesn’t. You know, the other Haveland. So isn’t the threat, you know, over?”
“That’s actually a good question, Wish,” Lucas said. “Isn’t it over? Can’t we go home now? Can’t you go home?”
Wish stood in bewildered silence for a tick before responding quietly, “I guess so.”
“It is possibly over for Britain now that the stone is away from your father and his like,” Orion said to Gavin. “But my people are still enslaved by the Brotherhood.”
“But isn’t that changed now too?” Landa asked.
“Not until I give it to Siobhán.”
“Should we destroy it? Throw it in the sea?” Wish asked.
“No,” Gavin said, as if it were more a command than an answer.
“Gavin, you have a grand destiny with it, according to the Monk. Not one of destruction but of creation, building,” Orion said. “I can feel it now.”
“You should go, take it,” Lucas said to Orion, not being subtle in the least.
“Wait. You intend to let him hand over the most dangerous weapon in the world to the warlock who just tried to steal it?” Wish asked.
“Yes,” Gavin answered.
The entire group, even Orion, gaped.
“We still have a little problem.” Landa pointed o
ut over the aft section.
“How many?” Lucas asked, sounding weak.
“Lucas, are you—” Gavin’s concern got cut quick by Lucas.
“I’m fine. How many?”
“About ten single warships, and….” Wish paused, possibly for dramatic effect, although the moment did not call for additional drama. “I am pretty sure I see another battle cruiser farther up the river.”
“That’s bad?” Orion asked.
“Yes, ya’ bleedin’ simpleton. That’s right awful,” Wish said. “They are going to be gunnin’ for revenge as much as country now.”
“Gavin? That’s not the worst of it. There’s something I need to tell you,” Orion said.
JACOBSON HAD commanded the leader of the Grenadiers to get ships in the air to give chase. Another battle cruiser was on its way, he was told via photophone. He climbed aboard the first vessel ready to fly. Masheck and Abberline joined him.
Jacobson had seen Councilman Rolston and the others, the ones not in his inner circle, show up as he lifted off. He knew they were too fat and spineless to join him in the air to do what must be done. Like always, it would be up to him to really and truly lead England out of crisis. Again.
His ship gave chase and had climbed a couple of hundred feet into the air when something slammed into the side, jolting them harshly over.
“Was that magick?” Masheck asked. Masheck had fought in the war and carried the result of that in his powerful arm and the clockwork eyes that saw farther and clearer than any other man. His every movement, every click, every steam-powered hiss was a souvenir of that time.
“What the hell is going on?” Jacobson demanded. He looked out into the darkness past the flames that were being put out by soldiers with fire-resistant canisters. There, he saw it against the smog. The outline of a grand ship of Eíre, barreling directly toward him.
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