Wind, flecked with ice crystals and smelling of ozone, blasted across thePollux’sgun batteries and glazed theempyrean-loaded carronades in a thin sheet of ice.
The gunnery crew shouted as one when a tentacle lashed out of the obscuring cloud, the curving claws stretched across its underside extending and retracting as it reached for thePollux. The ship dove, narrowly avoiding the shredding appendage. The tentacle retreated into the miasma.
“Steady, men,” he called out to the other gunners.
“Look sharp, lads.” Nettie’s command traveled through the speaking tube, as bracing as the wind threatening to freeze his hands to the battery shield.
Despite the numbing cold, sweat trickled down his ribs beneath his heavy woolens. The fissure contorted and labored as if trying to whelp the unearthly life squirming within it.
Three tentacles burst out of the nebula and struck the ship.
“Fire!” he roared into the link. “Fire!”
Crimson light filled his vision as the carronades belchedempyreanfrom their barrels. An explosion deafened him. ThePolluxsquealed and yawed hard to starboard. Wood shrapnel and broken tether lines exploded into the air. A wash of heat splattered his face. Blinded, he wiped at his eyes and came away with a glove smeared in blood. Something heavy struck his shoulder and bounced across the gunnery deck—an arm, shredded at the shoulder joint, and no body attached to it.
ThePolluxsuddenly pitched back on her rudder, sending him careening into the nearest cannon. His tether cable jerked taut, smashing his stomach against his backbone. Scorched wool filled his nostrils. He clutched at a broken railing to stay upright. Hot metal burned through his glove, searing his palm. He gritted his teeth against the pain and held on. The agonized screams of men rent to pieces filled his ears.
He looked up—far, far up to the boiling sky where an arching nightmare laced with curving white claws hurtled toward the woundedPollux. The deck bucked hard beneath his feet. He lost his grip on the railing and jittered across the slick surface like a marionette dancing to the tune of the shuddering ship...
...the shuddering ship.
Nathaniel’s eyes snapped open. He inhaled a strangled breath. A voice, achingly familiar, cut short its casual monologue.
“Who’s there?”
He blinked, desperate to clear his mind of the images that seized and held him fast in frozen horror.
“Who’s there?” The sharp tones of Lenore’s repeated question, didn’t quite disguise her fear. She peered into the ivy shielding him from view, poised to take flight at the slightest motion, her brown eyes wide in her pale face.
Nathaniel breathed deep, willing away the terror, the memory of the churning nebula, the whipping tentacle.
...the shuddering ship.
“Forgive me, miss,” he said in a smooth voice and stepped from the ivy’s concealment. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”
Despite his knowledge of her character, he still expected to her run. She didn’t. Instead, she wilted, her stiff shoulders relaxing in obvious relief. It was a first for him in this new incarnation. Guardians weren’t persecuted outright, but they were shunned and feared. Most people avoided them as if they were plague-ridden. Lenore wasn’t most people.
She drew closer, head tilted. “The Guardian.”
He acknowledged her designation with a low bow but said no more.
Her somber features softened a little, and her eyes warmed. “You’ve done a fine job taking care of Highgate’s citizens.” She gestured to Arthur’s grave. “Not a brick moved. Even the flowers I placed here last time are as they lay.” She bent to trace the discolored edge of a wilted white rose with one fingertip. It had taken all of Nathaniel’s willpower not to claim the small bouquet for himself or at least the ribbon that bound it together.
“It isn’t safe to be here alone, miss. Have you no companion?” Some things never changed. The one time he’d remarked on Lenore’s penchant for taking solitary jaunts, she’d arched an eyebrow at him and tipped her chin in such way that he braced himself for a setdown. She wore the exact same expression now.
“This isn’t Whitechapel, sir, and we’re in broad daylight with many perfectly respectable people nearby taking the air.” She shrugged. “Besides, had I a maid or companion with me, she would no doubt have abandoned me to my fate the moment you made an appearance.” The eyebrow lowered, and she offered a faint smile.
He tipped his head. “While I might argue the wisdom of taking the air of London, I cannot refute the last. Guardians aren’t sought after for their charming wit and illuminating conversation.”
“True, but there is a difference between avoidance and fear.” A puzzled line creased the smooth skin of her forehead. “People flee when they see Guardians, as though their lives are in immediate danger if they so much as glimpse you, yet I’ve never heard of a Guardian doing harm to anyone.”
That was because he and his brethren made certain there was nothing to investigate or report when they did away with resurrectionists. The only evidence left of the ones Nathaniel had immolated were soot marks on the grass, and those had washed away with the next inevitable rain. All but one body thief’s soul had crossed the Veil, and Nathaniel ignored that ghostly voice which joined the chorus of others. He admitted none of this to Lenore.
“We’re frightful sights to look upon, and our choice of employment far too macabre to discuss over tea.”
Her mouth tightened, a sure sign she was settling in for an argument. “Those aren’t adequate reasons to flee as if the Dartmoor Hound were snapping at your coat or dress hem.”
“For some, those are perfectly acceptable reasons.” He suspected people would be more inclined to linger and stare if they saw the Hound. It was a creature far removed from themselves in every way. He, on the other hand, was still a little too similar for comfort. After Harvel’s experiment, and withgehenna-tainted blood in his veins, he was no more human than the Hound and a hundred times more terrifying. Like those fearful folk, he’d once been an ordinary person. Now he represented the horrors that might have happened to any one of them but by the grace of God had not. In his observations, people feared thealmostfar more than thewhat if.
