A Dawn Most Wicked (Something Strange and Deadly 0.5)(26)

I didn’t react. I found my body had slipped into a place of cool resignation and it had no desire to move. The inescapable weight of the situation was heavy. We would die no matter what.

The ghost was right, and I deserved this.

Jie, however, did move. She stomped across the room and planted herself in front of Joseph. “How do we stop the curse? There’s got to be something we can do, yeah? We aren’t dead yet.”

Aren’t dead yet. Something we can do. The words kicked around in my skull, overpowering the dead man’s endless whispers of guilt and retribution.

And then I blinked. Jie was right. As long as I was still alive, as long as breath burned in my chest and my fingers could curl into fists, then there was always something to be done.

I tipped up my chin. “You’re right, Jie. There is somethin’ we can do: get the horns and stop the paddles.”

Joseph nodded, his expression stiff. Severe. And absolutely unafraid. “I will get the lodestone and stop this curse.”

“I’ll help,” Jie said.

I swung my head toward the pistons. Toward the club. “And I’ll get these paddles stopped. Before it’s too late.”

Without another word we split up. Joseph and Jie to the stairs and me to the blacksmith cabin. I spotted what I needed on the wall, an ax that was rusted but still sharp. I hauled it off, pleased by the weight of it. It was comforting. And capable of doing just the amount of damage I needed. I loped back toward the engine room—only to instantly stop.

The electric lights were flickering. Then they started dimming. Fear swelled big and heavy in my throat.

But it was the apparition in my path that almost turned my bowels to water. A spirit I had seen three months before. Her exposed skull still shone. Her scorched fingers still flexed—clawing for me.

“Blood,” she rattled, moving toward me. “I will have your blood.”

The air crackled with cold and static. The hair on my arms rose. My ears popped.

Then the spirit spoke in my mother’s voice, “You left me to die, Danny. You will pay.” A stench invaded my nose, coated my tongue. It was a pungent, dank smell that stung my eyes, that made me think of dirt and inescapable death.

This was the smell of the Dead. Of spirits returned.

Of vengeance unquenched.

This was the stink of suffering. “You left me to die, Danny.”

I nodded numbly—I had left her. Once Ma had hacked her last, blood-spraying cough, I had kissed her forehead and left her dead body lying in the alleyway we called home. Her blood had covered my hands, my shirt, my soul.

And now she wanted payment for leaving her—

The electric lights flickered again, jerking me back to the present. For a moment the apparition seemed to grow solid. To grow into real bone and real blood.

But then a surge of power slammed into me. The lamps exploded. Glass sprayed.

And an inaudible scream burned into my brain.

Blood everywhere!

The curse had cast. With the lights out I couldn’t see—but I didn’t need to. Somehow I knew the ghosts were solid now. And I knew this ghost wanted my blood.

Die, she shrieked in my brain, no semblance of my mother’s voice left. Just this ghost’s own personal rage.

Ice stabbed my neck. I screamed and swung my ax like a baseball bat. The cold pierced deeper, but then I used my momentum to wrench from the ghost’s grasp. My blood poured down my neck. I felt her claws reach for me once more. . . .

But I dropped to the floor and rolled, the ax clutched to my chest. Then I was back on my feet and sprinting toward the engine room.

Moonlight shone on the machines as I skittered through the door—careful to avoid Schultz and Barnes. With a single kick and a desperate prayer I shut the door before the ghost could rush through.

It seemed to stop her, for though the ghost’s screams grew louder in my mind, her form didn’t appear. But how long would this work?

“Mr. Sheridan.”

I whirled around, hefting the ax high. But it was only Kent Lang. He stood in the middle of the room, his eyes bulging. Sweat matted his curls to his forehead, and he looked as if he might piss himself at any second.

“What . . . what’s happening?” Lang asked in a rough voice. “It’s as if hell has broken loose.”

“Because it has.” I lowered the ax and staggered toward him. “All the apparitions—they’re real now. They have forms. They can kill us.”

“I . . . I know.” Lang gestured to his forehead, and I realized it wasn’t sweat that matted the man’s hair. It was blood. “Miss Cochran sent me here,” Lang continued, “to help in any way I can.”

“I’m not sure there’s much you can do.”

Lang hesitated, clearly at a loss. “I . . . But what are you doing? Surely I can help.”

I crossed toward the larboard engine and pointed. “You see that wood stuck beneath that lever? It’s holding the steam valve open.”

Lang nodded.

“I’m about to take this ax and beat that club to pieces. Every time the arm swings up, I’ll move in. Then I’ll dive back out before it swings down and breaks my neck.”

Lang’s mouth bobbed open and closed. His Adam’s apple trembled, and I was all set to dismiss him—there was work to be done.

But then he said, “Let me do it.”