3

Riley spun around, his gaze snapping to the ship and then down at the bustling port below us. People along the slips of the harbor took notice, and a rise of alarm moved through the crowd. A bell clanged out a warning that set the whole port into a tumult.

“They’re flying loose in back. Something’s wrong, you’re right,” Riley said and extended his hand to help me out of the seat. “I better get out there, make sure—”

“It’s a fire…” I squinted at the vessel, and the focus lens snapped back down within my left eye. The strange whirring inside my own head was unnerving as the ship moved into sharp detail. A fire raged at the rear of the air ship. It licked at the balloon harness ropes and spread along the bottom of the hull. People ran in terror aboard the deck. Panic and fear for them surged in my chest and I ripped my attention away, grappling for words. A series of minute shocks trailed down my spine from the device, and searing cold threaded along my limbs and across my chest. A numbing control filled with an incredible need to move…to act.

“It’s the aft deck and rudder.” I ignored his hand, instead I reached out and untied the bow knot, releasing the rope tethering us to the platform. “And they are heading right for us.”

He glanced back at the ship, his eyes narrowing. “How can you know that? It’s too far to see.”

“Not for me.” I avoided looking at him, buckling the seat harness across my waist instead. “If the fire spares their sails and air balloons, and they do not plummet into the seas, they will ram into us with no directional rudder. The trajectory is clear. We must hurry.”

Riley considered me for a moment and then slid into the pilot’s seat. His hands moved over the controls and we drifted from the platform, banking away.

“You’re certain?”

“I saw it, Riley. I can see the path…the ship will crash into port if we don’t do something.” I flexed my hands, and the gathering tension of suppressed spasms pooled in my muscles as the silver chemical pumped from the devices into my body. “And do not even consider dropping me off below first, we haven’t the time, and you know it.”

He growled through gritted teeth, but nodded.

“If we go, you stay in this ship, agreed? You stay safe.” Riley engaged the propeller’s steam engine and the rotors pushed us forward at rising speed. “Charlotte?”

“Yes, all right,” I said as I pulled the goggles atop my head down over my eyes.

We tore across the sky toward the flaming air ship. Every muscle in my body was coiled, my mind on fire with adrenaline as I took in the vastness of the vessel we raced to intercept. The hull of a Spanish galleon, once impressive in size and strength, now buckled under seething flames that lapped at the blistering air ballasts holding it aloft.

Riley signaled ships at the port to follow, the Morse light flickering frantically above my head. Slowly, several other air ships rose from the slips of the port, their propellers thrumming as they pushed full throttle to catch up.

Something inside me shifted—an awareness that sent a shaft of horror through my heart. I reached out with my thoughts and felt their sickening need and rage building as we approached the ship.

They were here.

“Hang on,” Riley shouted as he banked the dirigible along an arc to meet with the flaming ship.

The force of the turn flattened me against the side of the gondola and my goggles flew off my head as I clutched the cables with white-knuckled force. Teeth gritted, I watched him, waiting. A grimace pulled at his face when he saw them.

“No,” he gasped.

Tremblers overran the decks of the vessel, their quaking bodies lurching as they wailed and writhed amid terrified passengers. The monsters careened off of each other, moving so much faster than I had ever witnessed them move before. People screamed and clawed at the railing as the Tremblers tore at them, pulling them into thrashing clusters of keening, quaking bodies.

A terror ship teeming with the dead.

“Save them or sink them.” I unbuckled my harness, rising to stand on the seat, my hands on the balloon tethers as we sped along the port side of the galleon. “Your call.”

“What are you doing, Charlotte?” Riley reached for me. “Have you gone insane?”

“A ship of Tremblers crashing into your port, Riley. That is what will happen.”

His gaze snapped to the ship, to the screaming victims of the monstrous attack, and then back at me. Riley’s jade eyes went cold.

“Save who we can, sink the rest.”

I nodded.

Jaw tense, he flew closer to the ship. The heat of the fire flared my hair back with scorching wind.

Riley pulled a brass lever and a grappling hook shot from the side of our vessel and wound around the galleon’s mast. He stood next to me, his duster flapping as we dipped and swayed with the giant air ship.

“Are you sure you can do this?” His voice caught, worry wrinkling his brows.

I held his gaze letting out my breath in a cloud of icy vapor. The devices at my hands, neck, and legs sparked, the inner works cycling with power as the tremors clutching my muscles converted to harnessed strength. Stepping onto the bow of the air ship, I crouched, rode the upsweep of a swell of heated wind, and leapt.