The Iron Duke (20 page)

Mina looked to Trahaearn for confirmation. He nodded.

The knot around her chest eased. Knowing about the bug fever, she couldn’t be truly relieved. But knowing that they hadn’t killed any boys helped.

“So who has the
Terror
now?”

As if Trahaearn’s voice stirred her, the Dame smiled. “Hunt,” she said dreamily. “Hunt has her.”

Whoever Hunt was, the Dame apparently couldn’t have hit Trahaearn harder. The duke’s face whitened with cold fury. His fingers found the machete’s handle.

Oh, no.
Grabbing his wrist, Mina tried to head him off, to distract him. “Who dropped Haynes in London?”

“I did, for her. She was already sick and wanted it done.” Evans’s face seemed to crumple. “We used almost all of our ice on him.”

“We’ll get more,” she promised. “We’ll take her back—”

A deafening boom cut Mina off, knocked her sprawling to the stone floor. Pain shot up her elbows. She couldn’t draw breath, as if someone had punched her in the chest. The lights flickered.

Smoke billowed through the room, hot and acrid. She felt Trahaearn’s hand, and turned her head, searching.

He kneeled next to her, and through the ringing in her ears, she realized he was shouting
Inspector!
again. Faintly, she recognized his other words:
a firebomb
.

Shot from one of the navy ships? She struggled to understand. Why would the navy bomb them?

She saw Evans looking wildly around, his body covering the Dame’s. Mina got her boots under her, but apparently not quick enough. The duke hauled her up. Her hearing cleared, the ringing fading to a buzz.

“. . . all right?” he was saying.

Dizzy, but not hurt.
She nodded. Then her heart stilled. “Newberry!”

She sprinted for the corridor. The duke caught her in the chapel, amid the smell of rot and smoke and death. She fought him off.

Grabbing hold of her overcoat, he whipped her around, pushing her back up against the wall. “You can’t!” he shouted. “If a firebomb hits
Bontemps
, the hydrogen envelope will blow! And you can’t make him haul those boys up any faster!”

No.
But she could order him to leave the boys and run.

As if he’d read her face, Trahaearn gave her a shake. “He wouldn’t run. Because that means he’d leave you down here. His only chance is if he’s already up in
Lady Corsair
. We have to go back. Evans will tell us another way out that won’t take us past a hydrogen—”

Another boom shook the chamber. Trahaearn flattened his body against hers as rubble rained around them.
That one hadn’t been as bad
, Mina thought, but then her ears popped and the air thinned, as if sucked through the corridor by a giant lifting bellows.

Trahaearn’s face stilled. “Fuck me,” he whispered hoarsely.

In a powerful surge, he dived with her to the corner of the chamber, tearing her overcoat down her arms. Shoving her bottom to the floor, he crouched over Mina’s form and flung the wool over their heads like a tent.

The fireball exploded from the corridor, visible around the loose edge of the overcoat. Gasping, Mina flattened it against the wall, sealing them in. Orange light and heat radiated through the thick wool, charring with a rancid stink. Flames roiled and flicked between their legs, hot against her boots. Over the roar, she heard the hiss of Trahaearn’s indrawn breath, knew the overcoat was burning against his back, and so didn’t scream that her feet felt boiled in leather.

Then it passed, and Trahaearn whipped the overcoat away. Mina had expected cool air to hit her face but it was hot, thin. She blinked, adjusting to the dim light. The electric bulbs had blown out, but fires burned in patches on the wooden benches and the sheets covering the bodies.

His gaze searched her face. “Are you all right?”

She nodded. “You?”

“I’ll live. Come with me.”

He pulled her up. They ran back to the parlor, her feet shrieking with every step. Though the fireball had burned itself out before reaching the chamber, the lights were off. The sound of the generators had vanished.

Mina called out, didn’t receive an answer. Still holding on to Trahaearn, she felt her way to the sofa. Evans and the Dame had gone.

Stunned, she stared into the dark. The duke gave a short bark of laughter, gruff and amused, and she almost liked him for it, but then another explosion rocked the chamber and she was on her knees, coughing, with Trahaearn coughing beside her. Crashing sounds came from the chapel, wood splintering against stone, the shriek of metal. Not the bomb. The underground chambers were being shaken apart.

“All right,” he said a moment later. “Evans isn’t a bugger. He’s carrying a woman twice his size. He’s not gone too far.”

“He’s carrying a woman who needs more ice,” Mina added. “He brought some from the passageway nearest the table.”

“We’ll go that way, then.”

He helped her up. Within a minute, they found the passage entrance and hurried along its length, using the curving sides as a guide.

At the end of it, Trahaearn paused before tugging her to the left. “There’s faint light there, do you see?”

Faint light and the familiar sound of a steam engine. They ran toward it. The quick pace beat tears of pain from her eyes, but by the time they emerged into a new chamber lit by a single gas lamp, the agony in her feet had reached excruciating, and so she didn’t need to feel it anymore,
wouldn’t
feel it anymore.

And then she stopped running anyway, her jaw dropping at the sight of the rattling, hissing machine in front of her. The enormous armored vehicle had to be the tree harvester. Twice Mina’s height and half as long as a locomotive car, it resembled a giant black scorpion with two sawing pincers, and a long chute lined with shredding blades at the tail.

Trahaearn shouted, “
Evans
!”

She spotted the horizontal slits at the vehicle’s front and back, the flickering light that shone through. Evans looked at them and shook his head. The machine lurched into motion, rolling on a track of segmented steel plates.

“Goddammit!” Trahaearn roared and started for him, then staggered as another explosion came from deep within the compound. A long spar of shale shaved off from the ceiling. Mina screamed a warning. Trahaearn covered his head and the stone crashed to the floor less than two yards from where he stood, shattering into thousands of razor-edged pieces.

Mina’s hands flew to her mouth. He stared at it, shocked, before looking toward her.

“We have to get out of here,” she said.

He nodded. “We’ll follow him out on foot.”

Mina snatched up the gas lamp. The harvester was already far ahead of them, rolling at speed down a long passageway dug out to the machine’s dimensions.

Trahaearn took the lamp and pulled her into a jog. “The generator’s off, but the furnace is probably still burning. If that boiler blows, it’ll be worse than any bomb.”

Oh, blue heavens.
Mina ran faster. Her thighs began to burn as the passageway sloped uphill. Ahead, she could see daylight, and that was . . .
terrible
.

“That harvester doesn’t break through the fort’s walls every time they use it!” she shouted over their pounding feet. “This passageway will probably take us outside the fort!”

Trahaearn laughed again, shaking his head. She realized it wasn’t a denial, but a
What next?
But he knew what to do. He dropped the lamp, let go of her hand, and drew his machetes.

They slowed as they neared the exit—a steel door that probably remained closed except for when the harvester came and went. Now it stood wide open, facing the forest. Birds chirped and twittered merrily among the branches, as if zombies didn’t prowl the earth below them.

Mina checked her weapons. “Please tell me that fire and explosions will frighten the zombies away.”

He cast her a look that she couldn’t interpret—almost as if he was deciding whether to lie. Finally, he shook his head. “No. The noise draws them.”

“Lovely,” she said, and sighed. “We’re past the south wall of the fort. Do you think
Lady Corsair
will still be waiting for us there?”

“No. Not within range of the firebombs.”

Mina frowned. “They seem to have stopped.”

“Because they’ve sent in the steelcoats. Listen.”

She strained to hear, beyond the birds and the distant rumble of the collapsing compound. There was a regular rhythm, like heavy footsteps all moving in sync. The sound sent unease trembling through her belly.

Trahaearn rolled his shoulders, as if loosening stiff muscles. “I’m going to see where Yasmeen’s gone. Stay put.”

Moving quietly for such a big man, he vanished around the steel door. He returned a moment later, his jaw tight.

“She’s over the forest. Not far. A two-hundred-yard run.”

Through the forest.
She swallowed hard before nodding.

“And inspector . . .” He strode forward and stared down at her, his gaze fierce. “You
run
. Because I am not taking a zombie into my bed.”

Mina’s mouth dropped open, and he bent his head as if to kiss her. She jammed her gun barrel under his chin. He grinned.

And stepped back. “I’ll be behind you. Don’t stop for anything.”

No stopping.
She drew a deep breath. Another. With her hand, she verified the direction, saw his nod. And she took off.

She immediately spotted the balloon, so bright and white through the leaves. Racing toward it, she dodged trees that blended together, imagining every one a zombie with clawing hands until their shapes resolved into trunks and branches. Everything was loud, her heartbeat, the airship engines, the crash of her feet though the grass and the brambles, and the Iron Duke behind her. Would the zombies hiss and growl? Would she even hear them before their teeth were tearing pieces from her? Lungs burning, she sprinted through a small treeless glade, where the knee-high dried grass wanted to wrap around her ankles, and though her feet burned she was glad of her boots, because after the Horde had turned so many creatures of the sea into monsters, the stars alone knew what they might have done to the animals on land. Unless the zombies had eaten them all. With no people left to kill, they must be consuming something.

Hopefully they’d started eating each other.

Another cluster of trees, and then she burst through into another glade, and there was the cargo platform, waiting ten feet above the grass. She heard a shout from above and the platform fell to the ground with a clank. She leapt aboard, heart racing, chest heaving.

The airship’s engines huffed and hissed. The platform lifted from the ground. Her scream
Not yet!
was lost in the noise. She spun to look for Trahaearn.

Terror gripped her in an icy claw. He was crossing the glen at a dead run, two zombies racing in from the sides, streaked with gore and their hungry visages too terrible to believe. Trahaearn met her eyes—and dropped his machetes.

Through her shock and horror, she understood. He couldn’t jump and catch on to the platform with weapons in his hands. And if he stopped to kill the zombies, to wait for the platform to lower again, more would come. She could see them through the trees now, running, so
fast
.

Mina braced her feet. He couldn’t stop them.

So she would.

 

 

Rhys saw the inspector’s weapon come up, and hoped she
had decent aim, or she’d soon be putting a bullet into his brain, too. Her gun cracked once, twice. The cargo lift had almost raised her over his head.

Leaping up, he snagged the chain. His stomach slammed into the edge of the platform, half his body still dangling over the side. Fighting the hot pain that threatened to swamp his vision, he swung his leg up and hauled himself aboard. He looked down. The zombies were twitching on the ground.

He collapsed onto his back and laughed, which pulled like hell at his gut—but at least he wasn’t going to end up in a zombie’s.

The inspector stared down at him. “You’ve gone mad!”

Maybe he had. He’d never tossed away his weapons before, and rarely put his life in someone else’s hands. “I weighed chances that you’d miss against the odds that Yasmeen would leave me here. I chose the right one . . . and I’m glad you didn’t miss.”

She smiled a little, and he liked watching that sweet curve form on her lips. If he wasn’t tasting her mouth, then looking at it was the next best thing.

“But if she left you, you couldn’t pay her,” the inspector said.

He got to his feet. “She doesn’t need me now. She has eight boys aboard that she could hold for ransom.”

That surprised a laugh out of her. Rhys’s gut twisted again, but with possession and need and a deep emotion that had formed in the dark chambers of the fort. Admiration made up some of it. She had balls of steel, this woman. But there was more, too—and he wanted all of it.
Needed
all of it, all of her. But what he had now was looking, and so he took in his fill.

The black roll of hair at her nape had lost its pins somewhere between the first explosion and the third, and fell in a tangle to her waist. Without her long wool overcoat, he could see the modest layers of lace sewn to the back of her trousers, as if the ruffles could conceal the perfect shape of her ass. Her short coat fastened to her throat and nipped in at her narrow waist, and suggested that she had no tits to speak of under those buckles and her armor, but a little mouthful would be enough, her nipples against his tongue—as soon as he got those buckles open.

The first opportunity he got, Rhys was going to shag her blind.

That wouldn’t be now. The platform rose into place beside the weather deck. Rhys helped the inspector over the rail—she was still shaking a little. Christ Jesus, he was amazed she didn’t scream and cry. He could only see a few bruises and cuts, but Rhys felt like he’d been beaten all over; she probably felt just as ragged.