A Dawn Most Wicked by Susan Dennard
But he wasn’t.
I skittered to a stop, my arms flying out to keep my balance. Then I twisted around, cupped my hands over my mouth, and hollered, “Cass! Barnes ain’t here!”
For several moments the only sounds were the beating paddles and thrumming engine. Then Cassidy’s voice shrieked out, “Get me a depth, Danny!”
A quick scan of the first mate’s station showed his lead line was gone, so I swiveled around and dove toward the hallway behind the stairs . . . to a series of hooks where the extra lead lines should have been. They weren’t.
“Hey!” said a girl’s voice. “We’re over here!”
I flung a sideways glance, caught sight of Joseph and Jie hovering beside the clerk’s office, but all I could do was nod at them and then charge back onto the Main Deck.
“Cassidy!” I yelled up. “Full stop! Full stop! Now!”
Jie and Joseph rushed out behind me. “Where’s the first mate?” I asked them. “The man hollering depths—have you seen him?”
Jie shook her head. “He wasn’t here when I climbed down. The horns weren’t there either,” Jie added softly.
That stopped my shouting. “What?” I rounded on her. “Not there?”
“There’s only one set up there.” Jie lifted her hands defensively. “And it said Memphis on it.”
“Someone must have taken them down recently,” Joseph said. “Jie claims the wood is damaged.”
She nodded. “Maybe someone got to ’em before the race started.”
“Danny!” Cass’s voice ripped into my brain. “I need a depth!”
“The lead line ain’t here!” I bellowed back. “You have to call for a full stop, Cass! Full stop!” My gaze dropped down to the paddles, waiting for a slow in their rhythmic beat. If Cassidy didn’t know the depth and the boat ran aground at full steam . . . it would rip a hole in the Queen’s hull that would sink us in minutes.
Worse, it would jostle the boilers, and jostled boilers were a guaranteed explosion.
“Full stop!” I roared, and this time she roared back, “I’m trying! Murry ain’t responding!”
Black fear uncoiled in my chest. The command bells were broken—Cochran had said that. . . .
But why were they broken?
My eyes locked on Joseph. On Jie. We were going to die, and they saw it in my eyes.
As one, we burst into a sprint for the engine room. Behind the main stairwell, past the blacksmith, and finally into the electric-lit engine room.
But what met my eyes was far, far worse than I could have imagined. Sprawled just inside the doorway, blood seeping from the front of his head, was Second Engineer Schultz. I pulled up short, spinning my arms to keep from falling on him—and then I caught sight of Barnes, also in an unconscious heap a few paces away.
There was no sign of Murry. Or of Captain Cochran.
“Are they alive?” Joseph asked. He didn’t wait for an answer before crouching to check Schultz’s pulse.
And my attention whipped to the far greater emergency at hand: the paddles. Both pistons had clubs lodged in them—the valves were completely open and steam shrieked into the engine. But worse, the clubs were wedged twice as far as they were ever supposed to go—too far to be pulled back out. If the steam didn’t lessen, we could never slow the ship down.
I twisted toward Jie a few steps away. “Stop the firemen,” I ordered. “No more coal on the fires—none!”
Nodding once, she rocketed from the room. I jumped over Barnes, Schultz, and the kneeling Joseph, and scrambled for the speaking tube. I yanked desperately at the pilothouse bell. “Murry’s gone,” I screamed into the tube. “Schultz and Barnes are knocked out, and we got two engines jammed at full steam.”
I pushed my ear to the tube, and when Cassidy’s voice slid down, my heart stopped.
“Then God save us all,” she said.
A half breath later, the whistle screeched through the night, stabbing over the engines and shaking through the speaking tube. It would alert everyone on board to the emergency.
Then Cass was back on the tube. “Are Schultz and Barnes all right? And where’s my father?”
I glanced at the prostrate men. Joseph was applying pressure to Schultz’s head wound, meaning the engineer must still be alive, and Barnes’s chest moved steadily.
“You’re pa ain’t here,” I told Cass. “Schultz and Barnes will survive, but they can’t help me unjam the pistons.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
“I’ll be too slow if I fix the paddles alone,” I argued. “But if someone could help me—”
“Danny,” she snapped. “It doesn’t matter. We’re coming up on Devil’s Isle, and I can see from here that the water’s low.”
My eyes clenched shut. Devil’s Isle. A vicious sandbar that ran more boats aground than any other bar in the Mississippi. Even if the river wasn’t low, it would take constantly changing speeds, constantly shifting directions, and constant maneuvering to get around that bar.
And we couldn’t maneuver if the ship was stuck in full steam ahead.
“How close?” I asked, my voice pinched.
“Less than half a mile,” she said. “Even if the furnaces aren’t fed and we release the extra steam, the ship can’t stop in that little a time. Not without the paddles in reverse. There’s only one thing to do, Danny, and that’s get everyone off the ship. Now.”
For three pounding heartbeats I didn’t answer. There was really nothing I could say.
Because of course we couldn’t get everyone off the ship and Cass knew that. The roustabouts had cleared away all the excess weight—including lifeboats.
A ghost flickered in front of me, rasping in the voices of my past, but for once I was too distracted to care.
“Cass,” I started. But then Jie’s voice exploded in the engine room: “The horns!”
I flinched, my body snapping around.
“The engineer has them!” Jie cried. “I saw him up on the Texas.”
Joseph pushed up from his crouch beside Schultz. “You are certain?”
“Yeah.” She nodded quickly. “Big man with white hair and coveralls like his.” She pointed at Schultz. “He was heading toward the pilothouse.”
That was when it all locked into place—when I suddenly knew who had cursed the horns. The answer had been staring me in the face all along. There was only one man on this boat who would benefit from a haunting on the Sadie Queen. Who had a real, vicious reason to hate the captain. A man who wouldn’t care about passengers but would want revenge.
“Murry,” I said roughly. “He’s behind this. He’s locked us full steam into Devil’s Isle. He knows we can’t escape, and that’s exactly what he wants.” I rolled my head back, my throat tightening until I could barely breathe.
“You must pay,” the ghost whispered, still floating beside me. Its frozen breath sent ice down the side of my face. “You killed me, and now you will die.”
“If the engineer has the horns,” Joseph said, coming up beside me and staring at the ghost, “then we can only assume the horns do possess the curse and that he intends to cast it soon.”
I didn’t react. I found my body had slipped into a place of cool resignation and it had no desire to move. The inescapable weight of the situation was heavy. We would die no matter what.
The ghost was right, and I deserved this.
Jie, however, did move. She stomped across the room and planted herself in front of Joseph. “How do we stop the curse? There’s got to be something we can do, yeah? We aren’t dead yet.”
Aren’t dead yet. Something we can do. The words kicked around in my skull, overpowering the dead man’s endless whispers of guilt and retribution.
And then I blinked. Jie was right. As long as I was still alive, as long as breath burned in my chest and my fingers could curl into fists, then there was always something to be done.
I tipped up my chin. “You’re right, Jie. There is somethin’ we can do: get the horns a
Joseph nodded, his expression stiff. Severe. And absolutely unafraid. “I will get the lodestone and stop this curse.”
“I’ll help,” Jie said.
I swung my head toward the pistons. Toward the club. “And I’ll get these paddles stopped. Before it’s too late.”
Without another word we split up. Joseph and Jie to the stairs and me to the blacksmith cabin. I spotted what I needed on the wall, an ax that was rusted but still sharp. I hauled it off, pleased by the weight of it. It was comforting. And capable of doing just the amount of damage I needed. I loped back toward the engine room—only to instantly stop.
The electric lights were flickering. Then they started dimming. Fear swelled big and heavy in my throat.
But it was the apparition in my path that almost turned my bowels to water. A spirit I had seen three months before. Her exposed skull still shone. Her scorched fingers still flexed—clawing for me.
“Blood,” she rattled, moving toward me. “I will have your blood.”
The air crackled with cold and static. The hair on my arms rose. My ears popped.
Then the spirit spoke in my mother’s voice, “You left me to die, Danny. You will pay.” A stench invaded my nose, coated my tongue. It was a pungent, dank smell that stung my eyes, that made me think of dirt and inescapable death.
This was the smell of the Dead. Of spirits returned.
Of vengeance unquenched.
This was the stink of suffering. “You left me to die, Danny.”
I nodded numbly—I had left her. Once Ma had hacked her last, blood-spraying cough, I had kissed her forehead and left her dead body lying in the alleyway we called home. Her blood had covered my hands, my shirt, my soul.
And now she wanted payment for leaving her—
The electric lights flickered again, jerking me back to the present. For a moment the apparition seemed to grow solid. To grow into real bone and real blood.
But then a surge of power slammed into me. The lamps exploded. Glass sprayed.
And an inaudible scream burned into my brain.
Blood everywhere!
The curse had cast. With the lights out I couldn’t see—but I didn’t need to. Somehow I knew the ghosts were solid now. And I knew this ghost wanted my blood.
Die, she shrieked in my brain, no semblance of my mother’s voice left. Just this ghost’s own personal rage.
Ice stabbed my neck. I screamed and swung my ax like a baseball bat. The cold pierced deeper, but then I used my momentum to wrench from the ghost’s grasp. My blood poured down my neck. I felt her claws reach for me once more. . . .
But I dropped to the floor and rolled, the ax clutched to my chest. Then I was back on my feet and sprinting toward the engine room.
Moonlight shone on the machines as I skittered through the door—careful to avoid Schultz and Barnes. With a single kick and a desperate prayer I shut the door before the ghost could rush through.
It seemed to stop her, for though the ghost’s screams grew louder in my mind, her form didn’t appear. But how long would this work?
“Mr. Sheridan.”
I whirled around, hefting the ax high. But it was only Kent Lang. He stood in the middle of the room, his eyes bulging. Sweat matted his curls to his forehead, and he looked as if he might piss himself at any second.
“What . . . what’s happening?” Lang asked in a rough voice. “It’s as if hell has broken loose.”
“Because it has.” I lowered the ax and staggered toward him. “All the apparitions—they’re real now. They have forms. They can kill us.”
“I . . . I know.” Lang gestured to his forehead, and I realized it wasn’t sweat that matted the man’s hair. It was blood. “Miss Cochran sent me here,” Lang continued, “to help in any way I can.”
“I’m not sure there’s much you can do.”
Lang hesitated, clearly at a loss. “I . . . But what are you doing? Surely I can help.”
I crossed toward the larboard engine and pointed. “You see that wood stuck beneath that lever? It’s holding the steam valve open.”
Lang nodded.
“I’m about to take this ax and beat that club to pieces. Every time the arm swings up, I’ll move in. Then I’ll dive back out before it swings down and breaks my neck.”
Lang’s mouth bobbed open and closed. His Adam’s apple trembled, and I was all set to dismiss him—there was work to be done.
But then he said, “Let me do it.”
“Huh?” I grunted.
“I said,” Lang pushed out his jaw, “let me do it. I can break out that club and you can go where you’re needed.”
“I don’t think that’s a—”
“Let me,” he snapped. He was a man who was not used to being disobeyed. “I know how I look to you, Mr. Sheridan. I’m some rich fellow with no grit. And I cannot lie, I’m scared to death. But I am not useless. I can help. You just have to give me that ax and trust me.”
I eyed the other man, a strange respect unfurling in my chest. I kept judging him by his looks—pretty and soft—instead of his actions. He had dominated Cochran up in the captain’s suite, so why couldn’t he dominate the engine too? It was something the other man could do, and I was needed elsewhere.
So I inhaled until my lungs pressed against my ribs, then I made a decision. “All right. Take this.” I thrust the ax into his hands. Then I grabbed his shirt and yanked him close. “You gotta be fast, Mr. Lang. If that arm hits you, it’ll kill you.”
He swallowed. But he didn’t flinch. And he didn’t turn away. “I understand.”
“Good.” I gave him a final once-over. Then I pointed at a tall brass lever. “When you get the wood cleared away, you hit that. It’ll shift this paddle into reverse and stop the boat. I’ll feel it when we stop, and then I’ll come get the Queen where she needs to be.”
Lang nodded. “Be careful.”
“Same to you.” I gave the other man a tight smile. Then I added, “And I’ll see you soon. Real soon.”
CHAPTER NINE
When I scrambled onto the Main Deck, I came face to face with a battleground. Spirits swooped and grabbed, making streaks of black across my vision. Firemen ran, screaming, swinging at opponents they couldn’t possibly beat.
Over the panicked cries and constant shrieks for blood, over the relentless thump of the paddles and the roar of fires that still blazed too bright, I heard a new sound. Loud cracks like lightning came from overhead. From the saloon.
Cass—I needed to get to her. If Murry had been on the Texas with the horns, he might have been headed toward the pilothouse. . . .
But what could I do against Murry? Joseph, my brain nudged. You need to find Joseph first.
A spirit—pure black and stinking of ancient, dank grave dirt—screeched at me. I ducked but not fast enough. Its icy fingers sliced into my scalp; my blood sprayed the deck.
I shoved the pain aside, instantly back on my feet and pumping my legs toward the main stairwell. As I skittered around the banister, I caught a glimpse of Devil’s Isle on the horizon. The sandbar was high—higher and wider than it should have been, thanks to a summer dry spell. And approaching much too fast.
Come on, Lang. We’re running out of time.
I leaped up the stairs, two at a time, then hit the boiler deck sprinting. Spirits lurched for me, their arms of rotted evil somehow growing longer as they clawed for me.
More stabbing pain—in my shoulder, in my back—and more blood, yet on I ran. The popping electricity grew louder, washing me in waves of static as I raced for the next set of stairs.
But then I skidded to a stop. A spirit blocked the steps. A spirit I knew, even if she was just a gaping mass of energy now. The targeted hunger in her screams had been there ever since I’d first seen her in the boiler.
She wanted my blood.
There was no way around her. In a move too fast to see she left the stairs and slammed into me. I flew backward, hitting the deck—
Then her talons were in my neck, the cold piercing my skin.
A howl erupted from my throat. I kicked. I punched. I tried to roll. But it was useless. Where my hands grabbed, she slithered away. Where my foot rammed, she buried it in brutal cold.
And where her fingers squeezed, my neck ripped slowly apart. She wasn’t strangling me; she was trying to slit my throat. Each putrid finger seared through my flesh. Slowly. Cruelly. Reveling in the pain exploding through me.
I roared louder.
Blood. The word ripped through my mind. Behind my eyeballs. Blood, everywhere.
And there was. My blood wept down the back of my neck. I fought harder, punching and wrestling and not caring how much the cold and stench scalded.
My eyes locked on hers. Pinpricks of yellow flame filled with more pain—more rage—than I had ever known.
And somehow I knew that if I died like this, I would become just like her. Angry. Vengeful.
“No!” I roared. “No!”
Crack! Blue light and scorching heat sizzled over her. My eyes squeezed shut. This was it. This was the end.
But then the heat snapped away. The burning light broke off. And the ghost was writhing off me. Away.
My eyes fluttered open. My vision swam as Jie’s face appeared over mine. “You all right? Mr. Boyer fought that ghost off you.”
“No,” I groaned. “I’m not all right.”
“Well, get up anyway.” Her arms slid beneath my back, and with surprising strength, she hefted me to my knees. Joseph leaned against the wall nearby, his body slouched and his hands on his knees.
“Mr. Boyer?”
“He’s exhausted,” Jie said. “Already. The saloon is just . . .” She shivered.
I shoved fully upright. My uniform was striped with blood, but my injuries would have to wait. Besides, I could still breathe and my fingers could still curl into fists. I couldn’t stop now.
“Mr. Boyer.” I stepped in front of Joseph. “You can’t stop all these ghosts.”
Joseph’s head lifted. He gave a heavy, clenching blink and nodded. “Non. If I could only get the lodestone, then I could destroy it. That would . . .” He drew in a ragged breath and straightened. “That would stop the ghosts. Blast them to oblivion all at once.”