Shana Abe - The Sweetest Dark

In every raid, I witnessed the return fire from the rifles and pistols of the watchmen stationed atop the buildings. A short-lived torrent of lights, insignificant as matches lit and dying. If any of them had managed a hit, I’d never been able to tell.

The zeppelins simply flew too high. If there weren’t enough aeroplanes assembled nearby to dog them back to sea, they wiped out everything in their paths until they ran out of bombs.

No aeroplanes were coming to our rescue tonight.

Only me. A thing of smoke and tentative skills. I wasn’t even certain if my wings were meant for flight. I hadn’t exactly had any luck with it the one time I’d tried.

I could glide, though. Probably.

Maybe.

Should worse come to worst, I could smoke up to them, Turn to dragon right there, dig my claws in, and hang on. That might do it.

Looked like I was about to find out.

What I hadn’t thought about, what I’d completely managed to forget about, was that I wasn’t exactly skilled at maintaining my transformed shape, either. The reminder came to me rather forcibly as I was streaming my way east, over the channel, and felt myself beginning to solidify.

No. No!

Yes.

Several thousand feet up in the air, I Turned back into a girl. Screaming, cartwheeling, everything topsy-turvy purple as gravity reclaimed me and I plummeted down to the water.

fly! sang the stars, weighing in past my screams. fly, beast!

It was a damned near save. I was girl and then I wasn’t, managing the Turn so close to the sea that the foam from the cresting waves splashed up through the smoke of me.

Good thing I didn’t have a real heart just then. It would have stopped entirely.

I bobbled there, terror-riven, until the sounds of the airships drew me upward again.

Smoke, smoke, I thought fiercely. Just—keep—going—

Above me, still so far above, the dirigibles grew larger. And larger. And even larger. I’d seen them only from a distance; I’d never gotten any closer to one than the top floor of Blisshaven. It’d been obvious to me then that they were huge, but I hadn’t comprehended how huge they were, how chillingly titanic, until I was a wisp alongside one of the balloons, barely as wide as a seam, trying my best to slink up the curving surface of its fabric so that I could Turn on its top.

Bigger than buildings. Bigger than cathedrals. Bigger than anything.

Don’t look down. Dear God, whatever you do, don’t …

Contact with its skin nearly undid me. It felt alive with the resonance of the engines, alive and cold, reptilian. I couldn’t believe how quiet they were from below. From here, spread thin like wrapping paper against the monster machine, it seemed the noise would gel me back into a girl and shatter me into pieces.

It took an eternity to reach the top of the balloon, and once there, it was practically all I could see. Still arched above me was a bowl of amethyst, but below me there was only zeppelin. The other airship thumped to my left; I heard it, but again, couldn’t see it.

All right. I was ready.

I Turned—into a girl, not a dragon–and was immediately knocked backward by the wind. I tried to scream once more, but my lungs got no air, and my fingers had no purchase along a material that felt more like solid steel than fabric. I was rolled toward the tail fins in seconds. A few seconds more and I would fall again, this time maybe into one of the propellers.

At the narrowed stern of the balloon, I Turned back to smoke and got sucked instantly into the ship’s wake.

I tore apart. It was like when I had flown to the stars and been caught in the high winds, but much, much worse. No matter how I tried, I couldn’t right myself. I felt sick and dizzy and, in the end, had to give up. As the airship receded, the wake grew weaker, finally enough that I could rip myself free and drift.

The Germans were getting away. Both of them, both dirigibles, flying away from me utterly unscathed, closing in steadily on the castle. I hadn’t managed to stop even one.

I fervently hoped Jesse was having better luck than I.

It would have been so much simpler if he could have walked, or run, by himself. If he could have sent Armand on his way with the duke, instead of leaving the duke insensible on the rooftop and relying upon his son for steady steps and eyes that saw clearly.

But that wasn’t his fate, so Jesse told himself he should just stop wishing for it. Facts were facts. His left leg was useless. His sight was dimming. He could tell by the smell and the black guttering spots in his vision that they were leaving a trail of blood all along Iverson’s pristine floors.

He didn’t think Armand had taken note of that. Perhaps his sense of smell wasn’t as keen. Not yet.

No one else awoke. There was that slim blessing, at least. With Jesse’s arm slung around the other boy’s shoulders, they made it all the way to the main doors without rousing a peep from anyone. Just the two of them, and the castle allowing their passage, and the blood-smeared footprints seeping into runners and following them down the corridors.

That was good. That was better than if there’d been a fuss. He wasn’t certain his head was straight enough any longer to come up with even feeble lies to explain this.

Tomorrow morning, Jesse knew, was going to bring enough truth for everyone.

I was smoke atop a dirigible again, this time the one farther out from the shore, as if that might make a difference. I centered myself on its field of gray skin, fighting to stay apace with it. Fighting my revulsion of its living, pulsating power beneath me.

I Turned to dragon and dug in.

Dragon claws. As it happened, even though they looked like gold, they weren’t gold. Not the actual metal. Gold was soft, and my claws were anything but. I learned that as soon as I began to back up: My front talons sliced through the fabric of the balloon as if it were lukewarm butter, leaving a series of black, gaping slits.

Gas gushed past me, unscented and colorless, but I could still see it, how it bent the purple air and then began to suffocate me, flooding my nose and throat and lungs.

I flapped my wings and tried to pull free. One talon was caught and I yanked and yanked, choking, enlarging the gash.

The dirigible began a mild descent.

At last I got loose, shredded fabric rippling up to the stars. I skidded awkwardly to my right, wings outstretched, landing again, digging in again. The hydrogen was stored in separate gas bags. I wasn’t sure if emptying only one of them would be enough to fully bring the ship down.

The second set of slits was even longer than the first. Two of them combined in a sudden rupturing of material. The black maw of it gaped beneath me; when the ship listed hard aside, I nearly tumbled in.

Something zinged by me. With the gas in my face, I thought at first it was a gull or a gannet, but it wasn’t. It was a bullet.

It was followed by a volley of about a million more.

“Why—the beach?”

Armand was out of breath. They were outside, nearly to the motorcar. By now he was carrying practically all of Jesse’s weight, and even though he was strong—much stronger than he should have been, than a human boy his age would have been—Jesse weighed almost fourteen stone. He was heavy, and he wasn’t helping. His legs at this point were just meat.

“Grotto’s closer,” Armand noted, still gasping.

“The water,” Jesse said. His mouth felt so dry. He knew it was the blood loss parching him. That thinking about water or ale or tea or anything wasn’t going to help, but it did seem to sharpen his mind some. “Water,” he said again thickly, trying to clarify. “Distance. Must see it.”