Blood Curse: Book 2 of the Blood War Chronicles Read online

  One of the colonel’s men stood a just few feet inside, and the chaingun started whining as he raised it. Jake took one fast, long step forward and put his boot in the middle of the man’s chest as hard as he could. Cracking ribs shattered like so much kindling, and the trooper sailed backwards twenty feet to disappear over the edge of the floor. He couldn’t scream as he fell, seeing as there wasn’t any air left in his lungs.

  Another jump-trooper came around the corner with the chaingun spinning, but two shots in the heart from Jake dropped him in his tracks. He fell backwards and followed his comrade over the edge. As Jake ran forward, Ghiss leapt up to his right and grabbed onto the cargo netting about ten feet off the ground. An electric hiss-blast from one of his pistols set Jake’s hair on end, and a scream filled the cargo hold. A chaingun clattered across the deck, coming to rest against the exterior cargo hold door.

  A jump-trooper popped around from behind the thick door of an animal stall and opened up with his chain gun. His body was mostly hidden by the door, and Jake’s shots only impacted into the thick wood, forcing him to duck to the left out of the line of fire.

  Bullets chewed their way through the crate where he’d been standing, and then another hiss-crack from Ghiss put a hole the size of an apple through the door and the man behind it. The trooper stood there for a few seconds, the barrel of the chain gun still firing and chewing through the floor as it slowly lowered. It stopped spinning, went silent, and then he toppled onto the deck, motionless.

  Keeping out of sight of the gunners below, Jake made his way to the left around the gap in the deck while Ghiss held his position above, covering him. A muffled thud came from further down in the hold, past the stalls.

  “Hold your fire or I’ll kill the girl!” a man screamed from the darkness beyond. He had the same accent as Szilágyi. He stepped out into the open, dragging the limp form of Skeeter. Her grimwig was askew, along with her complicated brass goggles, and her long braid dangled down her chest. She was still wearing her long coat, and it had streaks of dirt and dust all over it. The jump-trooper held a foreign-looking pistol to her head and had his chain gun slung behind his back.

  “Ghiss!” Jake yelled from his position around the corner from the stalls. “Hang it up and get down from there.”

  “But—” Ghiss’ metallic voice clanged out.

  “You heard me!” Jake holstered his pistols and stepped out into the open with his hands up. “Take it easy, mister,” Jake soothed. “Ain’t no need for anyone else to get killed today … especially not a little girl.”

  Ghiss dropped down to the floor behind him, sliding his pistols home into their holsters with a hiss of steel on leather.

  “Tell the captain of this zeppelin to shut down his engines and prepare to be boarded,” the man yelled as he glared at Jake.

  Another trooper stepped out from one of the stalls, and he held a small gadget to the side of his head, obviously talking into it. A chaingun dangled on its strap, held loosely in his off hand, but it was too heavy for him to hold the barrel up.

  Four loud thuds vibrated the floor beneath them as massive, steel grappling spikes hammered into the bottom of the Jezebel near the four corners of the gap in her belly. Jake turned and could see long cables trailing down from the two forward grapplers. The firing from the starboard zeppelin stopped, and a few seconds later, so did the guns from the Jezebel.

  The trooper grinned. “The colonel is coming aboard whether you like it or not, so your only option is whether to save the life of this girl. All we want is the Lady’s catafalque.”

  “Her what?” Jake asked.

  “Let me go!” Skeeter screamed and started struggling.

  The jump-trooper yanked her up by the collar, cutting off her air. “Easy, miss. Your friend here is doing his best to keep me from shooting you in the head.”

  “Son-of-a-bitch,” Skeeter muttered. She looked at Jake, and he could now see that the side of her face was deeply bruised. She stopped struggling and hung limply in the man’s grip.

  She stared into Jake’s eyes, not with fear but resolve. Her eyes traced a slow line down to Jake’s Peacekeeper, and then she looked down at her left arm, wiggling her fingers slowly. The brown leather and brass exoskeleton of her stun-glove gave him a glimmer of hope.

  The Jezebel lurched, and the cables pulled taught with a snap. The colonel was reeling them in and would soon have the top of his zeppelin right up against the belly of the gondola. They’d be able to stroll right up into the cargo hold and walk off with the Lady’s box.

  Jake didn’t like his options, but he didn’t really have any other card to play. Skeeter’s idea was all he had. She would probably be dead if he let Szilágyi on board, and he couldn’t give up the Lady’s box.

  He took a deep breath and let it out slowly, then he gave Skeeter a single nod. He watched her make a tight fist, and he spotted the trace of a bright green glow from inside her sleeve. She dropped suddenly, her head moving below the gun barrel, and slapped her gloved hand on the man’s leg.

  A flash of blue lightning coursed over his body and he went stiff … and so did Skeeter. The pistol in his hand went off just as Jake’s hand darted to the Officer’s pistol at his hip. It was out in a split second, and Jake fanned the hammer in a blur with his brass left. The shots went off so fast that it almost sounded like a single, drawn-out gunshot. Six bullets hit the man dead center in his chest, hammering into him one after the other and throwing him back like he’d been kicked by Lumpy.

  Skeeter slipped from his grasp, and he hit the deck like a sack of wheat, sliding a few feet. He never moved again.

  A single hiss-crack from behind sent a bolt of energy through the second soldier. He got a surprised look on his face, dropped the gadget in his hand, and tumbled backwards.

  Jake was already running as Skeeter hit the floor. He leapt over the fifteen-foot gap without thinking, slid into her limp form, and cradled her in his arms. He checked quickly and discovered she was still breathing. He looked at her stun-glove, impressed at what it could do, and realized the thing had burned itself out. The power cells were dead and the outer part of it appeared badly scorched. At least it worked, Jake thought.

  “Ghiss! Get over here!” Jake raised his eyes as Ghiss holstered his pistol, took two long strides, and leapt the fifteen feet across the gap in the floor. He ran up as Jake rifled through Skeeter’s pockets. Finding what he was after, he handed Ghiss four spherical poppers; two were wrapped in thick paper, the other two were covered with small brass plates riveted into place. Each had a stem that stuck out of the top and a small pull-ring set into the stem.

  “Would you be so kind as drop them poppers into that compartment of theirs?” There was pure venom in Jake’s voice. “You probably don’t want to hang on to them too long after you pull the pins.”

  “I’d be delighted, Mister Lasater,” Ghiss said almost gleefully. He grabbed them and stepped up to the edge. With fast movements, he pulled the pins on the paper-wrapped stun grenades. Peeking over the edge, he hurled the spheres downward. A few seconds later there were two dull thumps. With a satisfied nod, he pulled the pins on the brass poppers and hurled them down. Seconds later, two much larger explosions sent small bits of debris up into the cargo hold of the Jezebel.

  Ghiss quickly pulled out his pistols and shot the two forward grapplers attached to the gondola, blowing them completely out of the bottom of the Jezebel. He leaned forward for just a moment to spot his targets and then pointed his pistols downward to his left and right. A simultaneous blast from both pistols blew clear through the deck of the ship, and the Jezebel lurched as she was cut loose from Szilágyi’s zeppelin.

  Jake felt the Jezebel rise slowly, just as Skeeter’s eyes fluttered open. The ship turned sharply to starboard, and the deck vibrated as the forward turbines revved up.

  “Hi, Jake,” she said, smiling. “Did you get him?”

  “And then some,” Ghiss replied as he stepped up to both of them. “I managed
to attend to the other.”

  Jake breathed a sigh of relief, delighted that Skeeter wasn’t hurt. “You scared the hell outta me, kiddo.”

  That’s when the air filled with Gatling gun fire from the outside aiming in.

  “Oh, shit,” Jake said.

  Chapter Six

  Lady Down

  “I can’t count the times Skeeter’s brains pulled our collective bacon out of the fire.”

  ~ Cole McJunkins

  None of the bullets came through the cargo hold, which meant the enemy zeppelins were aiming for the envelope or the rotors to bring the Jezebel down.

  Jake figured that since Szilágyi’s men hadn’t been able to board her, they were willing to crash the ship and risk the Lady’s box rather than give it up. With a groan of timbers, the ship lurched, and everyone’s stomach fell as the nose tipped steeply downward.

  “Everyone into the stalls, now!” Jake hollered. He grabbed Skeeter by the arm and dragged her into the nearest animal stall. Ghiss moved past them and took the next one down the line. Jake slammed the heavy door closed and shot the bolt home, sealing them in. “Let’s hope these things are strong enough.”

  “I just hope the captain can pull off a crash landing and not just a crash,” Skeeter mumbled. Her eyes were wide with fear, and she trembled slightly.

  Jake had never seen her scared before, and it really put a knot in his guts.

  The guns of the Jezebel lit up again as the ship swerved to port, and this time they could hear incoming gunfire penetrating the upper portions of the gondola. Men screamed above, and the hull shuddered with the pounding of heavy machine gun fire. The nose of the Jezebel tipped even further down, and an explosion above shook the ship from stem to stern. Jake grabbed Skeeter, put his back against the forward wall, and with her back to him, wrapped his arms around her tightly.

  “It’ll be fine,” he said with a whole lot more confidence than he felt. Her trembling eased up as she placed her hands on his arms and pressed into him. “These stalls are built to take a beating, and I suspect they factored in crash landings when they designed them. Some pretty high-priced animals get shipped in these things, and it wouldn’t do to have the company billed for a rich man’s dead critter.”

  “Do you think Lumpy will be okay?” Skeeter asked, deeply concerned.

  “Lumpy?” Jake chuckled. “You could probably push him out the door at a thousand feet and he’d walk away from it … just more pissed off than he usually is.”

  Skeeter’s easy laughter made Jake’s worry fade away … mostly.

  The incoming machine gun fire eased up, and then it stopped, which prompted the gun emplacements aboard the Jezebel to stop, all except the distinct steady hammering of El Diablo. Jake had to smile. He knew Cole well enough to know he’d keep shooting till there wasn’t anything left to shoot at … or he was out of ammo … or dead. The forward propellers roared, and the ship lurched again as the nose rose. Jake figured the captain was doing his best to level out before they hit the ground.

  “Jake?” Skeeter asked quietly.

  “Yeah?”

  “If we die, you still owe me a goddamn trip to San Francisco.…”

  Jake stared down at the girl, incredulous. It took real guts to laugh in the face of danger, and it seemed as if she had more guts than most full-grown men Jake had met in his time. Seconds ticked by and the silence thickened. Then he burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. Her own laughter started in, both of them filled with a love of life that couldn’t be squelched.

  There was a reason he’d taken her in. She was going to grow up to be one hell of a woman someday, and he couldn’t wait to see it. His respect for her grew more than he thought possible, and for the first time he understood what it felt like to be a proud father. She was simply indomitable.

  Between laughs he managed to say, “You got a deal, kiddo.…” He gave her a fatherly hug and smiled down at her. “Now stop making me laugh! We’re about to die. This is serious stuff, and you’re messing it up.”

  “What are you gonna do, send me to bed without any supper?”

  “I may just do that. Now hang on, this is gonna be rough.”

  She squeezed his arms even tighter, and they both closed their eyes tight, waiting for the impact. Trees scraped the hull first, but that lasted only a few seconds, then there was a massive crash as the Jezebel tore into the earth.

  The entire ship shuddered, and the pale electric lamp at the back of the stall flickered out. Lumpy bellowed once, over the sound of other animals, and then massive bodies hammered against the sides of the stalls. Men and furniture and God knows what else smashed around and above them as the hull slid across rocky ground, the destruction thundering in their ears. Wood splintered and timbers creaked. It sounded like the entire zeppelin was coming apart around them, but the stall held together.

  The grinding of the hull against the earth slowed. With a final, shuddering lurch, they came to a halt, and everything went quiet except the soft hiss of aether escaping from the envelopes above.

  In the darkness, Jake heard Skeeter rustling through her coat. He dialed his ocular so he could see something besides inky black. She clipped an attachment to her goggles that hooked onto each side and had small brass tubes sticking out, about two inches long and an inch in diameter. She flipped a switch on the side of one and two bright beams of light pierced the darkness.

  “Ow!” Jake yelped, shutting his left eye. He opened his right eye and closed his left. The air was thick with streamers and puffs of fine dust stirred up by the crash.

  “Sorry, Jake,” Skeeter offered. “Forgot about your eye.” They heard moving feet and sliding furniture from the deck above.

  “No problem, kiddo. But let me go first. I wanna make sure it’s safe out there.”

  “Yessir.” She stepped away from Jake and let him move to the door.

  Jake slid the bolt aside, pushed the door open, and peeked around the corner. “You alright?”

  Ghiss stood just outside the door, a black smudge against the darkness. “I appear to be undamaged, although I must speak to the captain about that rather uncivilized landing. It left a great deal to be desired.”

  “I’m just happy we’re all drawing breath,” Jake sighed. He scanned the darkness of the hold. There was nothing moving, so he turned to the stall behind him. “Come on out, Skeeter.”

  She stepped into the hallway and pointed the bright lights on her goggles down at the floor. “What’s the plan, Jake? Them boys ain’t gonna stay in the air forever. They brought us down for a reason.”

  “You’re probably right, although they may call in for reinforcements. Hard to say.” Jake looked around the cargo hold, searching for something. “Did you see any heavy chains lying around?”

  “Yeah,” she replied. “Back that way, where that son-of-a-bitch clobbered me.” She pointed down along the hallway toward where the jump-trooper had dragged her.

  “Language, Skeeter,” Jake admonished.

  “Yessir,” she grumbled.

  “Do me a favor, go police it up and drag it out here. Then see if you can coax Lumpy out of his stall.”

  “We gonna drag that box outta here?” she asked as she rolled up her sleeves.

  “That’s the plan. We gotta get moving, and in a hurry.” He narrowed his eyes at the girl, sizing her up. “You’re the one who got them to move the crate, didn’t you?”

  “Yessir. I figured they’d be expecting to find it here, and it would have made good cover for them, being as tough as it is.”

  “How many men did it take to move it?”

  “Six. The thing is a hell of a lot heavier than it looks. Do you have any idea what’s in it?”

  “I can’t say for sure, but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion that there’s more inside than just Lady Dănești’s bloomers.” Jake looked at Ghiss and could feel the man smiling at him.

  The incident with the fog and Jake waking up fit as a fiddle had only one explanation, and both he
and Ghiss knew it. “And do me a favor. See if you can get that wagon in some sort of working condition. I don’t fancy dragging the ass end all across the road to Denver.”

  She nodded, and they all turned as the doors to the external cargo hold doors slid wide open. Bright lights split the night outside and shined into the darkness within. The lights all focused on the trio as a group of men made their way into the hold, forcing Jake to shade his left eye.

  “Everybody okay?” Cole shouted from behind the lights.

  “We’re fine, Cole. Looks like we managed to walk away from another one, but I reckon Szilágyi is planning his next move. We gotta move fast.”

  “You’ll get no argument from me, Mister Lasater,” Captain Wordsworth offered from the darkness behind the lights.

  “Jesus, Jake!” Cole shouted as he shone his light on Jake’s bloody clothes. “What the hell happened?”

  Jake looked down and then back at Cole. “Let’s just say I had an accident. I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “If you say so,” Cole replied, his eyes wide.

  Jake turned to the captain. “Sorry about your ship, sir,” he offered, feeling responsible for a great lady brought down before her time.

  “Ballocks,” Wordsworth retorted. “We all went into this with eyes wide open, and we certainly did more damage to them than we otherwise would have thanks to your little device. Mister Jones here explained to me how you were able to wreak havoc on two of their vessels. We saw the portside zeppelin disappear into the clouds and explode a few miles behind us. The other was severely damaged and burning as she drifted astern during our descent. The main zeppelin left us to our rather unseemly landing and made to assist her crippled sister-ship. I’d say we fared much better than we would have otherwise.” The captain bowed slightly to Jake.

  “We owe that one to Emperor Norton, actually,” Jake said. Thoughts of the paper still in his pocket left him thinking the damn thing might be genuine. Norton was neck deep in stuff way over Jake’s head. “One of these days I reckon I’ll have to track him down and ask him a thing or two.” Wordsworth raised an eyebrow and looked as if he was about to ask a question, but the sound of Skeeter dragging chains stopped him. “Could a couple of you men go help Skeeter round up them chains?” The captain nodded to two men who ran off to help the girl. “And can we get a few more to bring that box out here where we can wrestle with it proper?”