The Conquering Dark: Crown Read online

  Young Victoria looked up at Simon. “He breathes fire like a dragon.”

  With the princess still in his arms, Simon ran past the guttering fire column into the south transept. “Have no fear. We’ve slain many.”

  Victoria’s eyes widened farther when Simon deposited her in front of a young girl not much older than the princess herself, slender and dressed in a simple white shift. The blond-haired girl was staring angrily into the church as if straining to join the fight herself. “Mr. Simon, the lady with the arms is up. Do you want me to—”

  “I’ll see to it, thank you, Charlotte.” Simon coolly took up his sword and started toward the Kaliesque woman whose form wavered beyond the flames. She had seized hold of the legendary chair of King Edward. “That won’t do.” He nodded knowingly to himself and called back to Charlotte, “Take Princess Victoria to Kate.”

  Charlotte gasped at the princess and attempted a panicked curtsy. “Your Majesty!”

  Victoria kept her eyes locked on Simon as he charged back into the fiery maw. “Who is he? Who are you all?”

  Charlotte was already pulling the princess out the door, away from the blistering heat of the flames. “His name is Simon Archer. I’m Charlotte. We fight monsters.”

  Chapter 2

  Kate trailed the nobles, who hurried as best they could in their elaborate regalia. She ached to push them through the passages of Westminster, force them along so she could return to fight beside Simon. No ordinary man could stand against Baroness Conrad. She knew that Simon was extraordinary, but his reliance on aether was ingrained in him and could mean disaster. Simon had been the one who brought them all together and had sacrificed so much for her, and for all of them. Kate couldn’t stand to see him lose anything more. And she couldn’t stand the chilling thought of losing him. But she had a task at hand to protect these innocent people. She exhaled impatiently and continued to attend her frightened charges.

  Ahead of the crowd, screams sounded as a huge shape filled an archway. Kate stared at it, barely comprehending. It was a terrible sight. It appeared to be an incredible mechanized great ape. She had never seen a gorilla before, nor most likely had anyone around her, but her father was an intrepid explorer and had numerous journals on exotic animals including gorillas. None had looked quite like this one, particularly with its inhuman silver back clicking and shifting with every movement.

  Kate raised the sleek crossbow and fired a vial of amber solution over the heads of the grandees, who were surging backward. Thankfully none spoiled her aim. The glass crashed against the chest of the hairy ape, spewing forth a fine ocher mist that enveloped the creature. The gorilla flailed at the thickening cloud with a muscular arm, making its metal tubing clank together. The beast raged as the mist turned denser to become a block of solid amber.

  “Move on!” Kate extended her arms to prevent the crowd from fleeing back into the sanctuary where the main battle raged. “Run past it! It can’t harm you!”

  They balked at the sight of the frozen monstrosity, but a woman dressed in a gown of finest satin and velvet stepped toward the fearsome creature and turned her delicate back on it. Grace North, the wife of the prime minister, regarded the horrified crowd with a strangely calm face like delicate porcelain.

  With complete confidence in Kate’s amber, Grace called, “The beast is secured. Move on!”

  King William responded first, escorting the queen past the trapped monster. The other nobles were prodded to do likewise, although some of the women and a few of the men were close to fainting and had to be manhandled along by others. Grace North resisted the tugging grasp of her husband, Prime Minister North, and stood staring at the trapped ape.

  Kate gave an impatient gesture. “On your way, Mrs. North. This isn’t a salon for God’s sake.”

  Grace gave Kate a curious, almost humorous, glance before taking her husband’s hand and following the crowd out. Kate urged the elegantly bundled grandees through a courtyard of grey-and-buff stone and into another small room. She motioned them toward the door on the far side of the room that would lead them to safety outside.

  Just then, that door smashed apart and a huge gruesome ape filled the exit. Its massive head almost pushed against the ceiling. It reached out with an arm twice the girth of its leg and grabbed the nearest person in a hairy fist. Screams of terror filled the halls as the group tried to shift around a long table that took up the full length of the chamber.

  Kate pushed forward against the tide of terrified nobles. The tight space left little room to use her deadly arsenal of toxic dust and gas. Two andirons stood propped against the wall near an empty fireplace. She grabbed one of them, gripping a circular end as a handle. She hooked the crossbow onto her belt and drew a pistol.

  Kate pushed her way in front of the fierce gorilla and screaming woman, whom she recognized as the queen’s sister, the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar. She swung the andiron and slammed it into the gorilla’s chest. To Kate’s relief, the ape cried out in surprise and pain. It looked down with dark yellow eyes. Its thin lips curled back over buttery tusks that were five inches long. A thick-barreled arm swung down at the slender woman.

  Kate braced her arm over her head with the cold cast-iron set along her forearm. It absorbed the majority of the blow, protecting her bones, but the force brought her onto one knee and the hard iron bent inward. She aimed her pistol at the broad chest and fired point-blank. Blood spurted over Kate and flowed with a rhythmic flush that meant she had struck a major vein. The gorilla stayed on its feet, perhaps kept so by the attached machinery, but it dropped the unconscious duchess and turned all its attention on its attacker. The ape growled and foamed a frothy red mix.

  “Run! All of you outside!” Kate tossed the spent pistol aside and pulled a short sword from the scabbard at her waist. The silverback reared up into the ceiling, beating its broad chest, baring its teeth at her in an earsplitting challenge. It followed her a few steps from the door, giving space for the nobles to flee. Several hands grabbed the unfortunate duchess and carried her out. As the last of the grandees disappeared into the daylight, Kate snarled and shoved the sword into the ape a scant distance from the bullet wound. She tried to twist the blade but couldn’t because of the solid muscle around the steel.

  The ape’s high-domed cranium and bulging forehead loomed over Kate. Her father would find it ironic for her to be killed in the heart of London by one of the exotic beasts he had written to her about from the wilds of Africa.

  Suddenly a new roar shook the room. Even the gorilla’s head jerked toward the horrific sound. Kate recognized it instantly.

  “Charlotte!”

  The once child stood beside a gaping Princess Victoria, now as a towering werewolf. Kate had no time to wonder how the two children had found each other.

  “Get her out of here,” Kate shouted.

  The ape’s attention returned to Kate and its large fist rose into the air. She lifted her iron-braced arm to intercept another crushing blow.

  Lanky canine legs bunched and launched Charlotte across the table onto the mountainous shoulders of the silverback. Her long snout bit deep into the ape’s bulging neck. The gorilla dwarfed even Charlotte’s impressive werewolf form. It roared and flung itself against the wall. She clung to its back, twisting away from the ape’s massive hands as it reached for her with meaty fingers.

  Kate had the moment she needed. She grabbed a vial from her bandolier. Inside it, a fine grey dust swirled. Dodging the ape’s desperate grappling, Kate slapped the vial inside its gaping mouth between the extended tusks. Then before the animal could spit it out, she slammed the heavy andiron straight up under its chin. Large jaws snapped shut and the vial shattered inside its mouth.

  “Charlotte! Move away!” Kate warned as she scrambled back herself.

  The agile werewolf leapt aside as a cloud of toxic dust swirled out from between the gorilla’s hairless lips. The beast gagged, coughing violently, its muscular chest seizing with a rigid spasm. It swayed and t
oppled forward, crashing through the solid wooden table.

  Kate grabbed Charlotte’s long-fingered hand and turned to the princess. She knelt, and Charlotte did so also but only because she followed Kate’s example. Victoria couldn’t draw her stunned attention away from the werewolf hunched awkwardly in front of her.

  “Your Highness,” Kate said, “don’t be afraid. Charlotte is a friend.”

  “Is she afflicted? She was a little girl like me just a moment ago.”

  Amazed by Victoria’s presence of mind, Kate replied, “She still is at heart. Charlotte can do remarkable things.”

  “Is she a dog?”

  “No. Dogs mind.”

  “I’m a werewolf,” Charlotte growled bluntly and with a bit of pride.

  Young Victoria curiously regarded Charlotte’s long-nosed countenance and smiled. “You are very brave.”

  Kate knew if it were possible, Charlotte would have blushed. Instead the werewolf gave a low keening whine and pressed her hairy head against Kate’s forearm. Kate retrieved her empty pistol and reached out her hand to Victoria. “Come with us, Your Highness.”

  Victoria glanced at the dead silverback ape quivering on the shattered remains of the table. “Are there more of those?”

  “Possibly. But we will deal with them.”

  “I’ll eat them if there are!” Charlotte announced.

  “You will not,” scolded Kate. “No eating anyone.”

  Charlotte’s head drooped. “I was only joking.” She looked up with her expressive eyebrows shifting rapidly up and down. “I would never eat anyone! Unless they were really, really bad?”

  “No. Not even then.”

  Charlotte sighed, but then smiled a toothy grin pointing at the dead animal. “I don’t even know what that is.”

  “It’s never wise to eat anything you don’t recognize,” Victoria replied.

  The two girls giggled. Kate rolled her eyes at their antics. Had she ever been that young and preposterous? Holding each one’s hand, they moved to the door. “Come on, you two. And that creature is called a gorilla.”

  “What’s a gorilla?” asked Charlotte.

  “Like a giant monkey.”

  “Are they evil?”

  “Only if evil is done to them.”

  The two girls quickly began to chatter away about the ape, but Kate’s attention was already focused at what they might be facing outside. She could only hope that any danger had been dealt with.

  That hope was dashed as they came out onto the Broad Sanctuary, a wide thoroughfare leading from Parliament Square to the southwest, named for a place where once the unfortunate were protected from the civil power by the sacred character of the Abbey. Sadly, that was not the case today. The area was a disaster.

  The late-summer day was chilly and dreary, rain had fallen heavily through the night, and dark clouds crossed the sky. Crowds had remained undeterred by drenching showers, and vast numbers had lined the streets for the coronation. Now they found themselves in the midst of terror. A mechanized ape was crushing an overturned carriage and tossing soldiers left and right. Two other gorillas lay dead, their heads crushed.

  “Imogen!” Kate shouted, looking wildly about the chaotic grounds for her sister, who had been told to hold her station here. Kate had feared Imogen wasn’t ready for such a violent mission.

  “Here,” answered a deep masculine voice. Kate’s manservant, Hogarth, stepped out of the shadows. In his hands he carried a massive iron and bloodied mace. Beside him stood a specter-thin figure draped in black silk mourning clothes with an opaque veil over her face that hid her peculiar eyes, one milky white and the other mechanical. Curiously, only her right arm was bared, revealing opal white skin.

  “Imogen.” Kate breathed a sigh of relief. “You’re both all right?”

  “Yes, Miss Kate,” Hogarth replied confidently.

  Charlotte bounded over, jumping about the two of them with unrestrained energy. “I bit a big monkey!”

  Imogen lifted her milky right arm, which bristled with long hairlike quills, and motioned to one of the apes lying in the gutter. Its huge body was punctured with the same filaments that graced Imogen’s arm.

  “Marvelous,” Charlotte decreed. She pointed to the girl on the other side of Kate. “I met the princess! Princess, this is Imogen. She’s afflicted too.”

  Kate interrupted the impromptu introductions. “Hogarth, you and Imogen take Her Highness to safety.”

  “Of course,” said the manservant. “Come with me if you please, Your Highness.”

  The young heir did not hesitate to go with the towering man and his mournful companion, especially since Charlotte was nodding encouragement.

  Behind them, an ape barreled through a long wrought-iron fence. It scattered panicked dignitaries and gawking commoners alike across the thoroughfare. With frightening intent, the brute paused in its rampage and plunged a mighty arm into the tumbled crowd. It grabbed up Prime Minister North in a crushing grip.

  Kate started at a run, fumbling for a vial to load into her crossbow. By the time she fought her way across the yard, close enough for even a desperate shot, the prime minister had stopped screaming and was dangling limp in the ape’s large hand. The gorilla poised to strike at the slender figure of Mrs. North, who watched the scene of horror. The ape’s loud roar fluttered Grace North’s hair and satin dress. To Kate’s amazement, the woman didn’t flinch. She simply stood staring at her husband. She must be in shock, Kate thought, and ran all the harder, dodging people and debris. Then Grace’s hands lifted from her sides, palms open in what appeared to be supplication before the great beast. Her head cocked, as if she were studying the murderous animal with scientific curiosity.

  The gorilla suddenly shuddered and, before Kate’s eyes, withered. It seemed to shrink in size and muscle mass, hunching to the ground as if it lacked the strength to hold itself upright. The distinctive silver tinge on its furry back spread to cover the rest of its dark hair until it looked old and feeble. The prime minister slipped from the quivering grip of the collapsed ape. He crumpled at the feet of his wife, who knelt slowly beside him. His face was still and bloodless. Her delicate hand rested on his motionless chest.

  Kate ran up and fell to her knees, reaching for a vial of her elixir vitae, although she doubted it would be of any help now. Before she could administer it, the prime minister gasped and shot up into the embrace of his wife. Grace North looked neither distressed nor ecstatic over his abrupt recovery from what Kate had perceived as near death. Kate glanced back at the ape. It was alive, but barely. Its dark brown eyes were watching them with fear and confusion. It no longer was a terrifying monster but a sad, decrepit creature. Kate actually felt sorry for it.

  Her attention returned to Grace North and her husband. The woman was cooing over him and telling him how brave he was. Then Grace flashed a radiant smile at Kate. “Thank you. He would have died without your heroic intervention. England owes you much.”

  Kate stared at her, not sure how to respond.

  Inside Westminster, wooden pews burned like seats in Perdition. Flames flew from the bare hands of the enraged Irishman. Malcolm crouched behind a colossal column at the foot of the choir as liquid fire rushed around him, singeing his skin and hair. He took the moment to reload his weapon.

  Malcolm looked above him at the stone arches coated in flame. Penny wasn’t visible through the smoke and fire. He hoped she had gotten out and was angling for a better position to blow this elemental bastard to kingdom come.

  The wave of fire that had swept around Malcolm ceased. All magic users, whether magicians like Simon had once been or elementals like the Irishman, used aether. Ferghus had used it wastefully, spending far too much of it in a single attack. Malcolm now had precious seconds to take him out before the aether recharged. He braved the terrible heat, feeling it soak into his face. He spun toward the choir and emptied his pistols. They roared in a rhythmic song, as the self-ratcheting gears aligned the quad barrels one after
the other. The Irishman couldn’t form another heat shield so he dropped to the ground as bullets peppered stone memorials behind him. Malcolm holstered his guns and rushed forward, leaping onto the Irishman. His fists pummeled the man’s head, hoping to keep him disoriented.

  “Come on, you bloody Paddy,” Malcolm shouted into his opponent’s face. “Or don’t you have the bollocks to take me on?”

  Ferghus’s temper consumed him as quick as his flames. He surged up and they fell against the ornate choir screen, rolling under the organ loft. Malcolm felt Ferghus’s fingers starting to burn as they dug into his face. The fire elemental’s power was coming back. Malcolm fumbled for one of his spent pistols and slammed the thick barrel against Ferghus’s head. The man reeled and his grip weakened. Malcolm kicked out from under the elemental as flames started to coat the man’s face and hands in a blazing drape. Malcolm’s trousers caught fire, but he had no time to put them out. He ran toward a column to get behind it. Heat surged at his back and he knew he wasn’t going to make it in time.

  A boom sounded from the top of the choir and a shell exploded where Ferghus stood. It rocked the church. The organ loft shimmied, then settled. Dust fell through the shafts of colored light. Penny lowered her smoking blunderbuss. Soot covered her triumphant face. She pushed ash-coated goggles above her eyes to see the damage she had wrought. She let out a low whistle of amazement.

  “Jesus Christ, woman!” shouted Malcolm, extracting himself from beneath an iron candlestick that had shaken loose from a column.

  “Would you rather be roasted, you ill-tempered Scotsman?” she shot back.

  Malcolm glared at her and ran toward the collapsed archway where Ferghus had hopefully fallen, but the man was not there.

  From her high perch, Penny saw the Irishman running toward King Edward’s chair. “There!” She pointed and reloaded her stovepipe cannon.

  Ferghus vaulted up to the ancient chair, which lay on its side. The thought of Penny’s blowing to dust the ancient Scottish relic, the Stone of Scone that lay beneath the chair, propelled Malcolm toward the Irishman. They collided and tumbled over the chair to crash at the feet of Simon and the Baroness, who were still locked in struggle.