Devon Monk - Tin Swift

“Who’s Les Mullins?” Cedar asked.

They were all busy reloading their weapons, and glancing up at the ship closing down on the field, while the singing cry of the Swift beating against the wind to make her retreat filled the air.

“He’s a man I should of killed when he was in my sights. Works for a general who wants me and mine dead.”

“Which general?” Miss Dupuis asked.

“General Alabaster Saint,” Hink said. “Heard of him?”

“Yes,” Miss Dupuis said, pumping the shotgun in her hands. “I have. Dismissed from command for trading weapons between the North and South, among other offenses.” She glanced at Cedar. “He is in league with the forces you and I were speaking of earlier, Mr. Hunt. Dark forces.”

“The darker, bloodier, plain crazy hell on earth thing the Saint can find,” Hink said, “is what he’s going to be in league with. Never saw a more bloodthirsty insane rabid demon in my life.”

“What does he want with you?” Cedar asked.

“He wants me dead.” Captain Hink holstered his gun and picked up a modified Smith and Wesson. “I served under him. Mutinied. Saved a hundred and fifty men’s lives that day, and got the Saint discharged for disobeying the president’s direct orders. He’s wanted my head ever since. The feeling is mutual.”

The shadow of the airship had passed over them now, and the ship itself was coming into position just to one side of the landing pad. It wasn’t moving in fast, whether due to the shifting winds or smoke, or if they were waiting to see if the cannons were manned, Cedar wasn’t sure.

“Well, that’s some good news,” Captain Hink said. “They’re looking for us.”

“And how do you define that as good news, Captain?” Theobald asked.

Hink grinned at him over his shoulder. “Son, so long as the Swift ’s in the sky, we all have a chance of getting out of here. I know Les Mullins. He’s got a gut wound from our last meeting and a crew who’d just as soon kick him out of the boat as take a bullet for him. We shoot, we put a few holes in that ship, and Mullins is gonna turn tail and run.”

Cedar lifted his head. There was a scent on the wind, a song he could feel in his bones.

Wil snarled.

The Strange. He narrowed his eyes and searched the ship’s portholes. Steely-faced men stood there, rifles, shotguns, and flamethrowers at the ready.

Theobald pressed his spectacles closer to his face, glanced at the same portholes Cedar was looking at, and swore. “I think we’ll need more than guns for this fight.”

The men staring out of the ship were not human. Well, not all of them.

They were strangeworked.

Just like the things that had nearly killed Mae, Wil, and little Elbert back in Hallelujah. Just like Mr. Shunt.

“Why do you say that, Theobald?” Captain Hink asked.

Cedar’s heart thumped against his ribs. “Those aren’t men.”

“What?” Hink asked. “Of course they’re men. I know his crew.”

“They aren’t men,” Cedar continued as Theobald got busy unpacking things from his carpetbag and handing them to Miss Dupuis and Miss Wright. “They stink of the Strange.”

Hink took a moment to give Cedar a long look. Then, “Strange. All right. So they’re not men. Haven’t met a thing that breathes that can’t be unlunged. Take the ship first. Fans, and rudder, don’t aim for the envelope. Unless we have fire, a few rounds of bullets won’t take her down. And if we ground this beast, be ready to aim for the head of anything that crawls out of her belly.

“We clear on that?” he asked.

“Yes, Captain,” Miss Dupuis said, latching a contraption of brass and tubes and gauges that fit over her shotgun, like a second weapon.

“Aye, sir,” Theobald said, adjusting his goggles and shrugging a belt of bullets over his shoulder, that fed into the chamber of the blunderbuss in his hand.

“Aye,” Miss Wright said, winding a coil of wires up her left arm and sliding her gun into a fanned-out device of brass and copper that looked like a dinner plate–sized shield with tubes and wires rolling around it.

“Mr. Hunt?” Captain Hink asked. “Are you in agreement?”

The beast pushed against Cedar’s bones. It wasn’t the full moon—wasn’t even close. The new moon should be tonight, complete blackness in the sky. But he couldn’t think. Couldn’t just think as a man ought to. The hunger, the need, the scent of the Strange drew a hard, killing thirst up through him.

His grip on logic, on the thoughts of a man, was slipping.

The beast thrilled and tore at his mind. Taking. Ruling.

Kill , it whispered. Destroy.

Cedar strained to push that desire away. His sanity was sliding with each breath.

He growled, and pulled his goggles into place, his crystal-sighted Walker heavy in his palm, and the need to spill blood and tear bones from flesh rolling through him in a hot wave.

“You have me,” Cedar rasped, answering Hink, answering the beast within him. And promising the ship full of strangeworked men, coming down hard over the landing pad now, doors open, guns rattling through the air, that he would be their end.

Distantly, Cedar was aware of the captain and the others firing at the ship.

He didn’t care about the ship. Didn’t care about the bullets spraying through the air. Didn’t care about the cannons locked and loaded, fuses lit.

He ran. To the ship, to the strangeworked crew, Wil beside him, ahead of him.

All the world seemed to slow to a dream landscape. He could sense the heartbeats of the strangeworked men in the ship. He could hear their sour song, hungry to devour this world, tainted with the nightmare singsong stitched together by Mr. Shunt’s thread.

The song, the beat of hearts, the blood he could almost taste in the back of his throat were so clear, they made Captain Hink’s yell, the gunfire behind him, the gunfire ahead of him seem like the softest hush of wind through leaves.

Cedar’s world was filled with the scent of the Strange. All his reason for breathing was their death.

He was running, close enough now so he could see their faces clearly, the flat hatred twisting features into snarls of malevolence. The ship wasn’t near enough the ground, still, three of the strangeworked men jumped from it.

Their legs should have shattered. But they landed cat-light, and were running, guns firing, straight at him, each with a flamethrower at the ready on his back.

Cedar didn’t pause. Ax in one hand, gun in the other, he shot the first Strange in the head, then pivoted and hacked the second man through the neck.

They both fell.

And they both stood up again. But not for long. Wil was on them, tearing out throats, breaking necks.

Cedar laughed. He licked the blood off his lips, shifted his grip on the slick ax handle, and lifted his gun. He took aim again and fired.

Captain Hink realized all the shouting in the world wasn’t doing a thing to stop Cedar Hunt from charging straight into enemy fire.

He’d seen that sort of thing on the battlefield before, where a man goes fool-headed and doesn’t know when to retreat.

But there was something about Mr. Hunt that he didn’t expect.

He moved fast, far faster than a man should, and seemed to have an uncanny awareness of where the bullets were headed and when to duck them.

The wolf beside him was the same. They moved and fought like two creatures with one mind, faster than their enemies, always knowing where their enemies would be and how best to take them down.

Before Hink could even get more than a few cuss words out, Cedar and the wolf had killed three men.

Except then the three men got back up again.