Emma Holloway - A Study in Ashes

Such good manners , the deva said approvingly.

“What about the roof?” Nick asked, disliking the idea the moment he said it.

“Maybe,” Digby said. “It will be a bit of tricky flying to get close to those towers.”

I shall inhale .

Striker stabbed a finger at the glass, a scowl on his dark-skinned face. “That’s all well and good, but where are his defenses?”

It was a good question. Nick hovered between caution and a deep desire to get in and out before dark. The roof would be fast, and there was no evidence of guards or weapons up there. In fact, the castle looked utterly deserted. Was that good or bad, or did they just have the wrong place?

He made a decision. “We’ll give a roof approach one try, but back off the moment the ship is in danger. I’d rather walk a mile if I have to.”

Striker gave a derisive snort. “If someone lives in a castle like this, if you don’t take him by surprise, you don’t take him at all.”

“You can’t sneak up on someone in a steamspinner,” Digby pointed out. “It’s not that kind of ship.”

“I rest my case,” Striker said darkly, stomping from the bridge with his coat swinging behind him. “I’m going to the weapons locker.”

The Athena slowed, and they drifted closer, the deva’s uncanny ability to hover under her own power giving the enormous vessel a precision that would otherwise be impossible. One thing Nick noticed was that steering the new, larger vessel required more teamwork between the helmsman and the air spirit. The engines quieted as they made the final approach, the crenelated battlements sweeping into view.

The ash rooks circled, almost but never quite in the way. But then they shot out from under the ship, sweeping upward in a chorus of croaking so loud that Nick could hear it through the glass.

“What is it?” he asked.

There is something below , Athena replied. The ashes of souls .

Nick had no idea what that meant, but Evelina was down there with it. “How do I get through?”

Only darkness will allow you to see them. Look into the darkness and refuse to fear what you see .

That sounded more than usually vague, even for a deva. “Any practical advice?”

Take Mr. Striker’s special blue weapons .

By the time the ship was in position, gray clouds were rolling in from the water and making an early dusk. Striker groaned when the ladder unfurled from the ship’s hatch—he had never been a fan of heights, and was even less so after the wreck of the Jack —but he made no move to back out of the mission. Nick descended first, his gaze sweeping the rooftop for anything suspicious. Above, Striker crouched, weapons drawn for covering fire. The rooks clung to the rigging of the ship like a ragged cloak, loath to leave its shelter.

When Nick’s feet touched stone, he drew his own weapons, covering Striker while the other man made a laborious descent. The guns were of Striker’s own design, shaped like a gourd that had mated with a cannon. Nick thumbed the switch that activated the weapon’s charge, and it hummed slightly as a crackle of blue light snaked around the barrel in a continuous double helix.

Striker landed with a grunt, and the ladder began to ascend. The crew was on standby, waiting for the signal to send reinforcements.

“What now?” Striker asked.

Nick pointed to the door in the top of the tower. They started forward, their boots scuffing on the stone. Nick could see nothing unusual, but he could feel something there. It wasn’t even as literal as eyes watching from the shadows. It was a scent, or a mood, or a taste in the air that was wrong, as ephemeral as the tension in a room after a fight.

Striker reached for the door handle, but hesitated, swore at nothing in particular, and then yanked it open. “I hate this damned place.”

Refusing to look afraid, Nick went through the door first. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, and he pulled out his chemical light. Striker did the same. But then his eye caught something just as Striker twisted the brass tube and began the chemical reaction that gave off a thick, greenish glow. “Wait,” Nick said urgently. “Turn that off.”

Without argument, Striker snapped the shutter closed. Nick squinted, trying to make out what he thought he’d seen in the near darkness. Not much met his searching gaze—just boxes and crates stacked on the wooden floor and a spiral stair leading downward. Even castles, it seemed, needed rooms for miscellaneous storage.

And then he saw it. At first he thought it was a shadow, but it shouldn’t have been there. To his eyes, it looked simian—the limbs out of proportion, the head low and jutting, the eyes sunken pits of black. There might have been six limbs, or three, or perhaps more than one head, but the one overriding fact was the menace that rolled off it like smoke. “Black Mother of Basilisks,” he swore softly.

“What?” Striker snapped, clearly unhappy. “I’m just an ordinary bloke. I don’t see a thing.”

“I believe I’ve found the sorcerer’s guard dog.” But the moment he said it, he realized there was more than one. He saw them wherever the room was darkest. He watched one move, vanishing as it flowed across a feeble ray of sunlight, only to reappear on the other side. Light didn’t hurt them; it cloaked them. “There’s a whole pack,” he amended.

“Where?”

One sprang at Striker. It thumped into him, baring needle-sharp fangs. The man roared in disgust and alarm, firing the magnetic gun. The blue charge slammed into the thing, exploding it into black droplets that faded before they reached the floor. Athena said to take the magnetic weapons . The electric charge scrambled whatever the things were made of.

That made the others creep backward, pressing themselves to the walls. Nick heard, more in his mind than with his ears, a soft muttering eddy around the room.

“You saw that one?” Nick asked.

Striker was breathing hard, but the gun was steady in his hand. “Just as it was about to bite my face off. What the hell was it?”

“Some sort of shadow creatures. I can’t see them unless they’re in near darkness. I think they have to become solid to attack, which means they’re visible for that one instant.”

“Did I kill it?”

“I’d say yes.”

“That’s all I need to know.”

They began moving toward the stairs, Nick first and Striker moving backward, the muzzle of his weapon in a constant sweep from side to side. The staircase was a tight spiral only wide enough for one, so Striker was forced to turn sideways to cover their backs as they began their descent. Nick’s heart pounded, nerves wound to the breaking point, but the shadow creatures didn’t seem willing to risk another attack. They were a third of the way down the stairs when he realized their mistake.

The stairway was made from the same slick black rock as the rest of the tower, the curving stairs slim triangles just wide enough for a man’s foot. Oval slits let in gray afternoon light that hung uncertainly in the gloom. It took them a moment to realize that the stairway was filling with a thin mist.

“Nick?” Striker asked in a tight voice as the mist rolled down, engulfing them both.

They kept going another moment, stair by stair, while Nick thought. “They know they’re vulnerable when they attack, so they don’t want to be caught. We can’t fight a mist.”

“But then why …?”

His question was answered before it was finished. In the next heartbeat, the mist divided into individual forms and became solid. The stairwell was full of the creatures, blocking them in from above and below. Shooting them in such close quarters should have been easy, but they were already too close. Nick was pinned, his back pressed against Striker’s, his arms too confined to properly take aim. He fired a random shot, but the creatures dodged out of the way. They began to open their misshapen mouths, revealing teeth that belonged to some horror from the ocean deeps.