Chapter Thirty-Five

Cat shuddered as her knees contacted the rough steel decking. Memory had started to return in earnest as soon as she saw Becky and Boyd—bits and pieces of things that appeared suddenly as the doorways opened in her mind. She now had a very good idea what sort of man Sebastian Boyd was, and a terrible sense of déjà vu accompanied this moment. He’d attempted this before, but certainly not before so many eyes, and not in front of Jamie, her Jamie whom she adored. Even though she felt revolted to her toes at the thought of this act, and even though humiliation burned in her cheeks, she resolved she could do this sickening thing for his sake. But would he be able to watch?

Her answer came almost instantly in a mighty roar that sent a shaft of alarm through her and turned her head. Her gaze found Jamie, and another memory unleashed itself in her mind. She’d seen this before: a man in a street and a horse…and her Jamie barely recognizable.

But no, she’d not seen this. By God, he would get himself killed.

She surged to her feet as Boyd swung away from her, suddenly rigid with alarm. Indeed, no one on the deck looked anywhere but at Jamie, who stood transfixed, his countenance dark with rage, every muscle bulging, and with absolutely no sanity in his eyes.

Off kilter—that’s what he’d called it. Off his head. But facing a cart driver in a Buffalo street differed wildly from snapping here, surrounded by steam cannon.

The capacity for reason, however, had clearly flown along with all other rational thought. Jamie struck out, swinging arms and fists, and knocked down the steam units on either side, one after the other. His rage made the act look so easy that for an instant Cat’s heart dared hope. One unit crashed onto its back and lost its weapon; the other tumbled toward the rail and began leaking steam from its neck joints at an alarming rate.

Jamie fixed eyes that glowed like blue fire on Boyd and started toward him.

Boyd began barking orders. Steam units rolled up from everywhere, tightening a circle around Jamie, and Cat’s heart sank again.

Like a stevedore facing a day’s work, Jamie took them on. Blow after blow did he rain on the steel that came at him, terrible, smashing strikes and punches that dented metal and sent the units crashing down. One of them fired its weapon, and Cat cried out. Only the fact that Jamie leaped at another opponent kept him from being blasted; the beam took out the legs of another unit instead and left them blackened and smoking.

Still another unit fired; the superheated beam traveled along the deck to skitter off the rail and over the side.

Boyd hollered, “Stop him! He’s just one man!”

Members of the human crew moved in. One fixed his gaze on Cat and galvanized her into motion. She lowered her shoulder and barreled into Boyd; they both fell to the deck, narrowly missed by another bolt that flared almost in Cat’s face, split the air over her and Boyd’s heads, and sent her scrabbling away from him.

She ran to the rail and looked over. The river, nothing but a broad gray ribbon glimpsed through the rain, slipped past beneath the gondola between green, forested banks. Should she jump? It might be better than the fate that lay before her: subject to all Boyd’s perverted demands and then passed on to his business associates and thence to the ghastly trade in which they must engage.

She knew that despite all the carnage he now wrought, Jamie couldn’t win this battle. But how could she abandon him? She spun with her back to the rail and watched in gut-wrenching dismay even as three more steam units closed in on him.

The energy of his rage had begun to subside. He’d maimed many of the steam units, but they’d done damage in return; the disfigured side of his face once more streamed blood and the flesh of his left forearm, caught by the flick of a blast, smoked. Her heart twisted in her breast with helpless, hopeless love for him.

“Seize him!” cried Boyd, who had also struggled to his feet. “Finish him!”

“No!” Cat shrieked and flew at Boyd again, feet and fingernails flailing. She managed to gouge his cheek, tearing four bright furrows that welled blood, before a human pulled her off, and just in time to see one of the steam units that corralled Jamie swing the butt of its weapon and connect with the side of his head. Jamie went down like a dead man, and her heart faltered.

All Boyd’s attention, though, rested on Cat. “Bitch!” he yelled. “You marked me!” He swiped at his cheek, and his fingers came away stained with blood. “That’s the second time.” His infuriated gaze pinned her where she stood. “You cannot imagine, wench, how you’ll suffer for this.”

He snarled at Cat’s captor, “Lock her up while I think of a suitable punishment.” He followed Cat’s telltale gaze to Jamie, who now lay white and unconscious in the pelting rain. A smile twisted his lips. “And put her ugly pet with her. Let them have a few final minutes together.”

****

“Jamie? Oh, my love.”

The words trickled into James’ ear and roused him to a morass of pain. The right side of his face—the disfigured side—flamed in agony much as it had back when he’d originally sustained his injuries. His body throbbed in time with his heartbeat, as if he’d been pummeled and dragged behind a steamcab. None of that, though, matched the pain in his hands, raw and intense.

What had happened to him? Had he fallen into a rage, gone off kilter? Damned if he could remember, but Catherine must be with him if he could hear her voice, feel her touch at his shoulder and on his chest.

He opened his eyes and looked up into her face, which hung above him like a pale flower. A streak of blood marked her cheek, and he wondered if it were his, or hers.

Where were they? On the airship still, for he could hear the steady drone of the engines, but on the deck no longer and instead out of the rain. A small space, dimly lit, it felt like a prison. Catherine sat on the floor, and he lay on his back like a felled tree, his head in her lap.

“Jamie, thank God. My love, look at me.”

My love. That he did remember—the way she had looked at him there on the deck, as if he possessed her heart. No product of any resurrection, that look; he believed in the truth of it at last. But what good would it do them now?

“Did I kill him?”

“Boyd? No, my love. No.”

“What happened?”

“You went off your head and damaged a large number of his steam units. I damaged him—but not seriously enough to save us.”

Cat looked at her hand with its dirty nails, Boyd’s vile blood trapped beneath. She shuddered. “Jamie, he’s going to want his revenge. I don’t know what form that will take, but you must promise me you’ll let me take the brunt of it.”

“Damned if I will.” James struggled up, the movement tearing a groan from his throat.

“You can’t possibly fight on.” Catherine swallowed convulsively. “Your hands…”

James looked at them and felt a rush of sick alarm. Less hands now than two battered clubs, they oozed blood and showed the gleam of white bone in several places. What had he done with them? He had no clear memory of it, but their condition told its own story.

Broken bones? He gritted his teeth and forced himself to flex the fingers. Maybe, maybe not, for he could still move them slightly.

He looked at Catherine. Her face, dead pale except for that splash of crimson blood, appeared pinched, her beautiful eyes haunted.

“You can’t expect me to stand by and let him do whatever he will to you,” he grated.

“You can if it spares your life.” Suddenly she pressed into his arms. He closed them about her, heedless of his pain, and felt the strength come. It returned to him softly, like faith, like certainty. She loved him. Whatever came, he had the one desire of his heart.

He kissed her forehead, and she tipped her face up so her lips met his. The kiss tasted of many things: resolve, terror, desperate courage, and enough devotion to steady James’ heartbeat.

“I love you, Catherine Delaney,” he breathed when it ended with a last lingering contact of tongue on tongue.

“I love you, Jamie Kilter. Whatever happens, don’t doubt that.”

“I won’t. Where are we?”

“I’m not sure. Some small room all made of steel. I tried the door; we won’t get out that way.”

“At least we’re together.” And he could hold her one last time, glory in the feel of her heart beating beneath his.

“He’s only shut us in here till he can devise a revenge that’s horrible enough. Jamie, whatever it is, he’ll make you watch.” Her voice quivered despite her determined courage. “He’s just that cruel. You must promise me you’ll endure it and not fly off kilter again. Because he only needs an excuse to kill you, and I think I can survive anything but that.”

“Watch him use you, debase you? Maybe give you to his crew after?”

“It doesn’t matter what happens to me.” She lifted a hand and fluttered her fingers over his ruined cheek. “How badly are you hurt?”

Bad, but he wouldn’t admit that to her. “Listen, there must be some hope. I know what’s in your mind, but please don’t sacrifice yourself.”

“What hope? We’re completely in his power.”

James’ thoughts raced. Brendan Fagan would be on his game, but Fagan had a welcoming committee waiting in Toronto. The airship might not even be headed there. How quickly could Fagan scramble his forces?

“Catherine,” he said, “If you see a chance for yourself, you have to take it. Don’t hold back for me. Promise.”

Her only response came when she kissed him again, soft kisses that rained on his lips, his chin, whispered across his wounded cheek, skittered down to bless his split and bloodied fingers.

“Catherine.” He seized her face between his hands and gazed into her eyes. “I mean it. Promise.”

Her eyes flooded with tears. “I can’t,” she said helplessly. “For you I can only battle.”

“Then we’ll go down battling together. Till then, tell me again that you love me.”

And she did.