The Dragon Men (3 page)

“I felt the breeze. Besides, this thing could crush the
Lady
in seconds,” Gavin said. “It hasn't, which means it doesn't want to, or someone is stopping it from doing so. I don't think this creature is natural. Someone made it. Someone's
controlling
it. Someone who wants to capture us, not kill us.”

“That makes me feel so much better,” Phipps snapped. “Instead of being crushed or drowned, we're being kidnapped by someone who breeds giant squid for private amusement.”

Jaw set hard, Alice swatted controls on a deck panel, sending the nacelles into full reverse. The engines whined and protested. The
Lady
bucked and shuddered, fighting the creature's grip, but the towing barely slowed. Alice was growing desperate. Gavin knew she hated and feared being unable to control her world, and her fear made him angry at whoever—whatever—was causing it.

“We need more weapons,” she said, still pounding at the controls. “What do we have?”

Gavin shook his head. The
Lady
used to have a number of weapons, but they'd all been destroyed or rendered useless during recent events in France and Ukraine, and Gavin hadn't had time to make any more. In fact, the only real weapon they had was—

His blue eyes met Alice's brown ones, a meeting of sky and earth. In that instant, the same thought went through both their heads; Gavin could see it.

“No,” Alice said. Her eyes showed the whites.

“We don't have anything else,” Gavin countered.

“No.”

The
Lady
picked up speed. Ahead of them lay the island, thin as a knife, and it was growing larger.

“No what?” Phipps demanded. Then she got it. “Oh. Oh God. No, Gavin. We can't. Can we?”

“Do we have a choice?”

The
Lady
bucked again as Alice revved the nacelles with her spider-gauntleted hand, but it didn't slow one iota. Gavin glanced at the island and ran automatic calculations. Ten minutes, nine seconds at their current rate of speed, assuming the island was their destination.

“Go,” Phipps ordered. “Get the Cube.”

Wings clutched tightly to his sides, Gavin ran to the main hatch Alice had kicked open and dropped into the dark hold. Halfway down, his plague-enhanced reflexes let him snag a ladder rung that broke his fall and allowed him to sidestep the next hatchway that would have dropped him farther belowdecks. He ran down the narrow passageway past facing doors to the end. With every hurried step, the
Lady
moaned in the creature's grip.

The door at the end of the corridor opened into Gavin's laboratory, a small but efficient space with two little worktables, floor-to-ceiling shelves and cupboards, and several racks of scientific equipment. He yanked open one of the cupboards. Inside sat the dented brass head of a mechanical man with flat, motionless features, lightbulbs for eyes, and a speaker grill where his mouth should have been. The lightbulbs were dark, and one was shattered.

“'Scuse me, Kemp,” Gavin muttered, and reached for the shelf above. It held a cube-shaped object of struts and mesh made from the same blue metal as his wings. The cube was the size of a hatbox and felt light and springy in Gavin's hand. It also twisted the eye and made it go strange places. One of the rear struts seemed to fold over the front of the cube, or perhaps it was that one of the front struts was slipping behind the rear. At the same time, the top overlapped the bottom, which similarly overlapped the top. The Impossible Cube. Dr. Clef, Gavin's friend and mentor, himself a clockworker, had nearly destroyed the universe with it, and Gavin had nearly killed himself last month using it to save the citizens of Kiev from a devastating flood. He hadn't touched it since then out of fear and respect. Gavin hesitated for a fraction of a second, then fled the lab with it, along with a small box of tools.

Topside, the
Lady
was now skimming along just above the flat waters at greater speed than before. Below, the creature knifed through the water, pulling the ship with thoughtless power. Its stagecoach eye stared up, flat and expressionless. The island was less than half a mile ahead of them, and they would reach the shore in less than five minutes.

“What are you going to do with the Cube?” Alice asked tightly.

“I have to charge it. No one's touched it since Kiev.” Gavin knelt next to the small generator that puffed and purred on the deck, exuding steam and the smell of paraffin oil exhaust. Needles on readout dials flicked back and forth, indicating strength of current and health of machinery. A set of heavy-duty cables snaked from one side, across the deck, up the rigging, and into the center of the envelope. Trying not to think about the monster grasping his ship, Gavin set the Impossible Cube on the deck, pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, and snatched tools from the box. A moment's work with a wrench loosened one of the cables from the generator.

“Whatever you're going to do, hurry up!” Phipps called. “We're nearly at the shore!”

His fingers protected by rubber, Gavin jerked the cable free of the generator. Instantly, a large section of the envelope's endoskeleton went dark, and the
Lady
, unable to retain proper buoyancy, dropped straight down. Gavin's stomach lurched, his feet left the deck for a moment, and his wings automatically snapped open to slow his fall. Alice yelped. Gavin reached for her, though he was too far away to do anything. But four of the whirligig automatons caught at her arms and shoulders, the propellers spinning madly to keep her aloft. Phipps gave a shriek such as Gavin had never heard from her and dropped with the ship.

“Phipps!” Gavin shouted, but the lieutenant was already in action. A wire whipped out of her brass palm and wrapped around one of the tentacles still encircling the ship. The
Lady
hit the water with a spectacular
boom
. Water exploded in all directions. Phipps flicked the wire around her wrist, bent at the waist, and swung in a graceful arc to land beside Alice and Gavin, who had come down on the deck as well. With a jerk, Phipps released the wire from the tentacle, and it sucked itself back into her palm. Then she smacked Gavin on the back of the head. He grunted.

“Idiot,” she said.

“Sorry.”

The two women exchanged a glance they thought Gavin didn't see. The glances said
clockwork plague
in silent, pointed words. The plague killed most of its victims. It usually crippled survivors, though in most cases it ate the flesh from their bones and chewed through their brains, leaving behind demented, oozing zombies that shambled through shadows, spreading the disease even further. But in the brains of a tiny minority, the plague burned like a star and illuminated the dark corners of the universe, revealing impossible secrets and allowing the victim to create inventions both terrifying and benign. But such stars consumed themselves quickly, and Gavin's time was growing short. He was already finding the tiny details of what was before him more and more intriguing, and he tended to forget the bigger picture, such as the fact that diverting power to the Impossible Cube would drop the
Lady of Liberty
several feet into the Caspian Sea. Gavin's mentor, Dr. Clef, had felt sorry for Gavin and Alice and had tried, quite literally, to give them more time together, but he hadn't considered that by doing so he would destroy the universe. Gavin hadn't traveled quite that far down the clockwork road, but he could feel his grip slipping, and he hated that Alice and Phipps had noticed. It also scared the hell out of him.

The
Lady
was now floating on the water. Her partially charged envelope continued to hover above her, though it couldn't lift the hull any longer, and the creature still held the ship firmly in its grip. Wood groaned, and the rubbery stench of the sea creature stung Gavin's nose. Beneath his boots, the deck moved sickeningly up and down in a completely unnatural motion for an airship. The shore was now perhaps a hundred yards away. An enormous cave gaped like an open mouth, and the ship was moving inexorably toward it, skimming over the waves.

Alice looked over the gunwale again, her automatons following like a flock of nervous birds. “I don't think we've harmed the creature by landing on it. More's the pity,” she said with forced calm. “How did a clockworker create something so large? That's biology, not physics.”

Phipps growled, “Strange questions coming from a woman whose aunt could cure clockwork zombies. You've
seen
what they can do with biology.”

“Not on this scale.” She grimaced. “Or tentacle.”

“Can you see any damage to the
Lady
?” Gavin called. Now that Alice had come up unharmed, his concerns had shifted.

“No, though I'm no expert.” The breeze from the monster's towing had pulled Alice's long, honey brown hair out of its twist and it blew in soft waves around her face. She was so beautiful, even when she was disheveled and nervous. He wanted to scoop her off the deck and fly her to a secluded hilltop where she would be safe, but he hadn't tried carrying another person yet and didn't know if the wings could take it.

Alice added, “Now that you nearly killed us, darling, perhaps you could get that Cube charged? If that's what you insist on doing.”

Her tone was artificially light, and it didn't take clockwork genius to read the grim undertone. Gavin jammed the business end of the live wire against the Impossible Cube. Electricity cracked and fizzled, and the Cube glowed a faint blue that grew brighter as the object powered up. While it did so, it grew lighter and lighter until it was floating within Gavin's hands, for it was forged of the same alloy as Gavin's wings and the
Lady
's
endoskeleton. The Cube was a truly singular object. Dr. Clef, its inventor, had claimed it had no parallel object in any other universe; it twisted gravity and energy and even time itself in ways Gavin was only beginning to understand. As a side effect, the Cube converted sound waves into other forms of energy, making it a potent weapon for anyone with a good set of tuning forks—or perfect pitch.

The Cube continued to drain the generator. Ahead of them loomed the dark cave, and the
Lady
seemed to groan in fear. Gavin thought about telling the women to swim for it while he stayed behind to defend the ship, but one glance at Alice's heavy gauntlet and Phipps's equally heavy brass arm reminded him that neither of them was effective in the water.

“Hurry up.” Phipps's jaw was tense. “That cave won't be a holiday resort.”

Gavin gritted his own teeth. “I can't make the power flow faster, Lieutenant.”

The black tentacles continued to hold the
Lady
in bands of iron. Alice hovered anxiously over Gavin, and her automatons hovered over her.

“What are you going to do with it once it's charged?” she asked.

“Something horrible,” he said shortly. The initial shock of fear had worn off, and he was getting angry again. This monster had taken
his
ship and threatened
his
fiancée. It was
his
duty to fend off the beast and set things right. Waves spumed and broke on rocks as the
Lady
reached the mouth of the cave and slid inside. The light faded. Beneath the surface, the dark creature squirted along under the ship, hauling her forward by orders understood only to itself. The Impossible Cube glowed a full sapphire blue that indicated it had reached a full charge just as the
Lady
glided into the cave entrance. Gavin disconnected it from the wire and held it aloft in triumph at the exact moment the squid men attacked.

Ch
apter Two

A
lice, Lady Michaels, jumped away from the gunwale as the first squid man shot from the ocean in a fountain of water and landed on the deck with a rubbery
thwap
that echoed through the huge cave. The creature had a man's body, though its skin was covered in greenish blue slime, and its head was that of a squid. Tentacles formed a horrid squirming bush around its neck, and enormous dark eyes too round and large to be human glistened in the half-light of the cave. Its fingers and toes were webbed, and they dripped more slime. Although it was naked and had a male build, it showed no male accoutrement
.
With a frightened squawk, Alice stepped back and bumped into Gavin as another squid man vaulted onto the deck, and another and another and another. In seconds, the deck was teeming with more than two dozen of them.

The sight of those doll-like eyes, the smell of the oozing slime, and the sound of the writhing tentacles crawled over Alice's skin like cold worms. The creatures spoke no words and closed in around the trio with outreaching arms and faint squishing sounds. A fear she didn't know she possessed poured ice water down Alice's back and froze her voice. She had faced down zombies, gargoyles, and a mechanical war machine several stories tall, but these creatures touched something primordial. She wanted to leap behind Gavin and Phipps, or even hide in a closet.

“Good Lord,” Phipps breathed. She had her cutlass out, but it seemed small and senseless compared to the crowd facing them. Gavin didn't react. He simply stared at the squid men, either fascinated or mesmerized, Alice couldn't tell which. Thanks to the clockwork plague, Gavin fell into these fugues more and more often, and it wasn't just when they came across something as strange as a school of squid men. A simple leaf or air current could capture his fancy with equal ease. This unnerved Alice even more than his recent dive over the side of the ship. Right now, the clockwork fugue was proving dangerous—Gavin had lost track of himself while he held their only weapon.

Alice tried to speak, but no words came out. She coughed and tried again. “Gavin! The Cube!”

Gavin came to himself with a snap. The eye-twisting Impossible Cube glowed in his grip, and he held it out in front of him. Metal wings formed a chain mail cloak that rippled down his back, and the blue light of the Cube lit his white-blond hair with an unearthly glow. The squid men oozed closer in eerie silence, and Alice's breath came in fearful gasps. She couldn't stand such horrible creatures, and she felt foolish and helpless hiding behind Gavin, who was four years younger than she. Still, she had rescued him from danger more times than she could count, so what was the harm in letting him and his powerful weapon take the forefront?

The squid men reached for Gavin with their dripping arms. He opened his mouth and sang a single, clear note. Alice had no idea which—Gavin had perfect pitch, not she—but the impact was electric. The Impossible Cube flickered in Gavin's strong hands, and his voice . . . changed. It roared from his throat with the sound of a thousand tigers. A cone of sound thundered across the deck and flung squid men aside like toys, clearing a corridor all the way to the gunwale. The sound continued to boom from Gavin's throat, and pride fluttered in Alice's chest. He looked handsome and powerful and, God, he was so young, but Alice loved him with every particle in her body. The squid men crashed into one another and tumbled across the wood without uttering a sound.

Phipps was also busy. She slashed one creature with her cutlass, slicing off its arm at the elbow. Blue blood gushed over the deck and her victim staggered back, but Phipps was still in motion. She gave another squid man a side kick to the midriff. It fell back into the attacker behind it while Phipps back-punched another squid man in the face with her metal hand. Her knuckles sank into the flesh between its eyes, then pulled free with a sucking sound. Undaunted, the squid man grabbed her wrist. Like a cat, she twisted round and bent her attacker's arm, sending the creature to the deck with its neck tentacles writhing in what Alice assumed was pain.

Meanwhile, the squid men Gavin had scattered began to recover. Their movements changed from slow and shambling to quick and nimble. The ones that had fallen rolled to their feet, and the rest surged forward. Strangely, they seemed to be ignoring Gavin and reaching for Alice.

“What the hell is going on?” Phipps panted. She took a punch to the jaw, staggered, righted herself, and kept on fighting. Her monocle gleamed an angry red, helping her aim.

“Shout at them again!” Alice cried. “Shout at—”

One of the squid men grabbed her from behind with cold hands. Alice screamed as nightmares she didn't remember having smeared her mind with slippery darkness. She struggled and kicked, and another grabbed her as well. Gavin turned, the Impossible Cube still glowing in his hands. Phipps was raising her cutlass against another group of squid men.

And then Alice noticed the spider on her arm.

Last spring, the iron spider had wrapped itself around her hand and forearm at the behest of her aunt Edwina, a world-class clockworker. Soft, flexible tubules had burrowed into her flesh and gorged themselves on her blood, which now bubbled and flowed up and down the spider's body and legs. The spider's head and five of its legs clutched the back of her hand and each of her fingers, creating a strange gauntlet. Alice had tried to get it off, but it refused to budge, and it had quickly become so much a part of her that she was now afraid to try more drastic methods such as cutting it away. These days, she didn't entirely want to. What currently caught her attention were the spider's eyes. They glowed red. Her fear vanished despite the rubbery arms that held her.

“Wait!” she cried. “These . . . people have the clockwork plague!”

Before Gavin could respond to this news, Alice swiped at the arm that held her with the claws that tipped her left hand. The hollow claws sprayed her own blood over the wounds she created, mixing scarlet and azure. The squid man released her and reeled away. Two more stepped up to grab at her, but Alice swiped both of them with quick, darting motions. More blood mixed in the scratches, and they staggered away, too. The first squid man was now writhing on the deck. Soft clicking sounds emerged from either its neck or chest; Alice couldn't tell which. The other two soon joined it. Their skin tone was changing, shifting from dark blue to a mottled pink.

All this happened in just a few seconds. Phipps had dispatched or driven back half a dozen squid men of her own. Her cutlass and metal arm dripped with blue blood, and she had lost her hat. A wild look had come over her eyes as more squid men crowded toward her. Gavin opened his mouth to roar again.

“That's enough!”

The new voice echoed through the cave. The squid men all froze, except for those writhing and clicking on the deck because Alice had scratched them or Phipps had lopped pieces off. Alice turned. What
now
?

Skimming across the channel that cut through the cave floor came a man. He was barefoot and wore a black bathing costume with short sleeves and leggings. Around his waist he had an elaborate, heavy-looking belt with a number of clunky pieces of machinery attached to it. Over everything, rather strangely, he wore a long gray cloak. He was standing sideways and seemed to be riding a low wave until he came closer and Alice realized he was standing on the back of another creature. How he kept his balance she couldn't imagine until it came to her that, like Gavin, he was a clockworker and had the requisite enhanced reflexes that he would enjoy until plague burned out his brain. No doubt this was the man who had created both the giant squid and the squid men. Alice pursed her lips.

Gavin traded a look with Phipps while the scratched and wounded squid men squirmed on the deck. The ones Alice had slashed continued their metamorphosis, with their skin growing paler and their neck tentacles going still. Alice wanted to examine them, see if they were in pain, but she didn't have the chance. The clockworker skimmed closer to the ship, and in moments he vaulted from his creature's back and scrambled onto the deck, his gray cloak fluttering behind him. He had a Persian's dark hair and complexion, and the wrinkles around his eyes and mouth put him somewhere in his forties, or perhaps near fifty.

“That's enough,” he repeated in accented English. “Leave my poor men alone!”

Phipps, Gavin, and Alice stared. The crowd of squid men remained motionless. Alice recovered herself first.

“And you are?” she asked.

“You may call me Prince Mehrad al-Noor,” he said. “I already know who you are—or one of you, at any rate.”

“And that would be?” Phipps said.

“Alice, Lady Michaels, late of London,” al-Noor said. “You are the one with the cure to the clockwork plague, and you have demonstrated it on my poor men.”

“What are you talking about?” Alice said, still trying to get a full grip on herself. “Why did you bring us here? I assume that this creature”—she gestured at one of the tentacles still encircling the ship—“attacked us at your behest.”

“Yes, yes.” Al-Noor waved his hands in a series of complicated gestures, and several of the squid men dragged the ones Alice had scratched and those Phipps had wounded to the side and leaped overboard with them. Splashes followed. They left trails of blue blood on the deck. “Why else would a giant squid attack a passing airship?”

“How do you know the name Lady Michaels?” Gavin demanded.

“Everyone knows this name,” al-Noor replied with a white grin. “She is the angel with a sharp metal hand who spreads the cure to the clockwork plague. She coasts through the heavens in a glowing blue airship piloted by her lover, dropping to Earth to bestow her blessings wherever people are good and kind and deserving of her notice.”

Alice felt her face turn hot. “Gavin's not—”

Phipps trod on her foot, cutting her off. “So you've heard of me,” she interrupted, holding up her metal arm. “I'm flattered. That doesn't explain why you intercepted us and tried to destroy my ship.”

For a split second, Alice found herself wanting to correct Phipps. Then she shut herself up. Any advantage they could take, including a case of mistaken identity, could work in their favor.

“I apologize if I gave you that impression, Lady Michaels. I got wind that the very famous angel of mercy was coasting over my ocean, and I merely wanted to invite you for a visit. Unfortunately, giant squids are not good at subtlety. We will, of course, repair any damage to your fine ship.”

“And your . . . men?” Gavin gestured at the crowded deck. The Impossible Cube glowed close to his chest.

“They guard the mouth of the cave and became too enthusiastic when your ship appeared. Again, I do apologize.” Al-Noor gave a little bow. “You will come with me, have a wonderful meal, spend the night in comfortable rooms, and in the morning, you will go on your way.”

“Oh?” Phipps said. “Well, if you—”

“Liar,” said Alice.

Al-Noor looked taken aback. “I do not understand. You refuse my hospitality?”

“Was I unclear?” Alice snapped. “Let me be blunt, then. You did not invite us here. You captured us, and now you're acting polite to put us off our guard. Once we've eaten at your table, the laudanum you put into our food will send us to sleep, allowing you to do whatever you wish. So let's skip over the bad food and the drugs and go straight to what you wish. What might that be, Mr. al-Noor?”

For a moment, al-Noor looked hurt and astonished, and Alice thought she had made a terrible mistake. Then a cool, calculating look slid over the man's face. “You are a clever woman, Miss . . . ?”

“Susan Phipps,” said Alice. “At your service.”

“Miss Phipps,” al-Noor said. “Yes, very clever indeed.”

Phipps wiped her cutlass clean on a handkerchief. “Flattery from a liar doesn't sit well, al-Noor. What do you want, then? Do tell, before my friend here blasts you into your component bits.”

At this, Gavin waved the Impossible Cube. It hummed softly and left a blue trail hanging in the air. His face was set hard. The squid men stood motionless on the deck, though their dark eyes seemed to be following the Cube.

“I think he will not.” Al-Noor pressed a switch on his belt, and a tremor went through the black tentacles wrapped round the
Lady.
Wood groaned and cracked.

Gavin cried out and lowered the Cube. “Wait!”

“Yes,” said al-Noor. “A flick of my finger, and electric impulses will force the squid to crush this ship to flinders. That famous metal arm of yours, Lady Michaels, will drag you to the bottom, and you will drown.”

Alice shot Gavin a hard look. He seemed upset, but was it over the idea that she was in danger or that the sea monster might destroy his ship? He was a clockworker and could get strange ideas about what was important. Her glance flicked about the deck, looking for solutions. Her gaze inevitably came back to the Impossible Cube resting in Gavin's hands. It was the most powerful weapon on Earth, but the moment Gavin tried to use it, al-Noor would try to kill all three of them, and chances were better than even that he would succeed at least once. The Cube was useless in these circumstances.

There was one alternative. An obvious one, really. Alice could see that Gavin knew what it was, but he was hesitating to take it, waiting for her to give the word. One word. Alice started to speak, but her throat closed around the word, trapping it like hope at the bottom of a box. Gavin looked at her, his soul in pale blue eyes. Alice clamped her lips shut, and her chin trembled with the force of holding it in.

Phipps did it for her. “Fly,” she hissed.

Gavin gave her a sharp look.

“Fly,” Phipps hissed again.

He gave Alice a wild look, then ran for the gunwale through the gap in the crowd of squid men the Impossible Cube had created. Before the squid men could react, he hurled himself over the side. Alice held back a cry but still reached for him. She felt that her heart might spring out of her chest and follow after.