The Conquering Dark: Crown Read online

  Kate ran and dove for shelter in one of the stone alcoves that lined the parapets of the bridge. She slammed her back against the wall of the domed niche as the flames curved around it. The hair on her skin seared off and the fire stole the oxygen around her.

  Abruptly the vacuum was gone and Kate sucked in a deep hot breath. The retort of Malcolm’s pistols sounded. She dared to peer out and saw Nick on his hands and knees, looking spent. Malcolm was covering him as best he could.

  Imogen moved awkwardly toward Ferghus. The flames illuminated her black mourning clothes. She unbuttoned her right cuff and pulled the sleeve up over her elbow. From the ghastly white skin of her forearm rose a host of thin filaments, some six inches long, wavering in the firelight. The young woman halted and swept her arm in front of her, sending several of the strange quills flying toward the Irishman. The fragile needles never reached him because Ferghus’s heat shield rose again and the filaments virtually melted out of the air. The strange specter of the veiled Imogen distracted Ferghus enough, however, that he turned away from Kate.

  With fingers that felt tight from the heat, Kate pulled free the largest canister at her hip. She ran at Ferghus, pulling the top and pointing the canister at the mad elemental. Her hat tumbled from her head and her long braid swung free. She pressed a trigger and the cylinder sprayed a wide stream of clear gelatinous goo that hit Ferghus in the back. The canister moved up and down, coating him. He turned, dripping, with burning hands and brutal eyes. She prayed there was enough left in the canister as she aimed for his chest. She pressed the lever. The substance whooshed out and splashed over him. The flames rising from his fingers smoldered out. Ferghus stared at his hands in confusion.

  “Now!” she shouted.

  Imogen loosed a single quill, which struck Ferghus in the neck. Malcolm tackled him, and the two men tumbled across the bridge. The Irishman grabbed Malcolm’s coat with slippery hands and tried to ignite it. He yelled angrily as his powers failed him. His limbs slowed as his strength faded. They flopped to the ground weakly as Imogen’s toxin hit his system. Malcolm reared back an elbow and struck Ferghus in the face. The Irishman was so drunk he didn’t feel it. Blood poured from his mouth, but he just grinned through it. Ferghus crashed his fist into Malcolm’s cheek.

  Nick came up behind Ferghus and slammed a chunk of stone against Ferghus’s head. The Irishman slumped over unconscious.

  Simon dodged the massive mechanical arm as it tore off a section of the balustrade larger than their wagon and chucked it at Penny. She aimed her blunderbuss at it and fired. The flying stone shattered as she ducked under the dust and shrapnel.

  Charlotte called down from somewhere atop the mechanized beast. “No way in!” Then she had to dodge aside as the arm swiped for her. It struck the top of the machine and dented it. Charlotte eagerly renewed tearing at that section of the metal.

  Simon threw one of Kate’s vials at the creature’s legs as it swept past. Mist swirled and hardened, encasing it in a block of amber. The crawler stumbled, but steadied itself quickly. The arm reached down and the segmented fingers examined the rock-hard substance. The tentacle-like appendages then crushed it to dust. The arm slammed down onto the ground and brought everyone to their hands and knees. The bridge cracked, a line racing down its length. It groaned, shifting from side to side. The machine headed straight for the wagon. Penny started to intercept it.

  “Fall back!” Simon ordered. Penny paused but then moved to his side.

  Red steel fingers seized the armored wagon in a crushing grip, lifting it as if were but a child’s toy. The steel groaned and bent inward but the three-hundred-pound stone inside didn’t fall out. Then the machine’s head swiveled on some sort of axis to face behind it, and it scuttled toward the western side of the bridge.

  “Charlotte!” Simon shouted at the figure still attacking the machine. “Get off!”

  Charlotte either didn’t hear him or was too enveloped by her rage to take note of what was happening. Simon took off in the wake of the machine and saw Kate angling toward them. She was focused on Charlotte high above so he assumed that meant Ferghus was captured or dead.

  With its prize in hand, the machine strode straight to the balustrade and crashed through the rail, sending massive stones into the river. Its forward legs whirred and stretched out to the new bridge upstream. People who had been crowding the rail there shouted and scattered before the steel barbs slammed down among them. Horses reared and screeched. Wagons careened into chaotic mobs. Charlotte dug in her claws to maintain her grip as the machine tilted suddenly and winched itself over the water. Its legs continued to work furiously, lumbering over the new bridge, breaking flagpoles and smashing lampposts. Then it dropped off the far side into the swirling Thames. The machine began to wade forward, lowering into the dark water.

  Only when a wave suddenly splashed against her did Charlotte look up from ferociously pounding on the machine. She climbed higher atop the thing’s head.

  “Does she know how to swim?” Malcolm asked anxiously rushing to the broken balustrade.

  “No!” Imogen cried out. “We have to get to her!”

  The machine was submerging. The werewolf looked back at their distant figures, her molten yellow eyes reflecting her sudden terror. She flinched as wave after wave crashed over her, almost dislodging her.

  “She’ll drown if she stays there.” Malcolm’s normally steady tone rose in alarm.

  “Jump, Charlotte,” Simon shouted, hoping her keen hearing would pick up his cry. He already had a leg over the edge when Nick grabbed him.

  “What do you think you are doing? You can’t swim out to her. You’re wearing bloody armor.”

  “I don’t intend to, but the current will bring her back to us. I can grab her.”

  “If she isn’t dragged under first!”

  Simon glared back at him firmly asking, “Can you swim?”

  Nick shook his head. “No.”

  “Then we have to hope Charlotte’s lycanthropy gives her the strength to stay afloat until she gets to us.” Simon climbed over the rail and lowered himself down onto a stone pier.

  Charlotte cried out in fear, glancing at the water that was now at her knees.

  “Simon will grab you as come past,” shouted Kate, unsure if Charlotte could hear her, signaling the girl to come toward them.

  “Kick for all you’re worth,” Imogen encouraged her. The young woman’s veil was off, and fear drenched her white features.

  Charlotte hesitated, but only for a moment as the water closed in around her waist. With her last purchase of solid ground, she jumped back toward the bridges. She landed with a great splash fifty feet upriver from the new bridge. She was now below their line of sight, so they all crowded lower to peer through its high arches.

  Simon climbed down farther. He crouched on the broad top of the piling with the frothing water just a few feet below him. He watched the oddly small shape of the werewolf flailing in the water. Poor Charlotte was getting dunked over and over, her long muscular arms paddling madly. The current shoved her against the arch of the new bridge, smashing her into the slick stones. She scrabbled with her claws, gouging deep lines in the wet walls, but always bouncing back into the flow.

  She emerged from beneath the bridge. Kate gasped loudly as Charlotte went under the dark brown water. There was a deafening silence as everyone held their breath, waiting for her to surface again. Finally, her head burst into the air, her arms flailing madly.

  Simon judged which side of the pier the current would take her. His steel fingers dug into the stone above him. Malcolm reached to grab his other arm. Nick was behind him, anchoring Malcolm. Should Simon catch Charlotte’s heavy form, there was real danger they would all be dragged into the churning river. The turbulent water roared through the narrow arch and over a drop of at least six feet into the swirling currents on the downstream side of the bridge. Even in a sturdy craft, only the bravest and most foolhardy riverman would dare “shoot the bridge.” />
  The young werewolf rushed toward Simon, reaching out in a panic. He leaned into the hard spray, the water pounding him. His feet slipped and he nearly took Malcolm and Nick off the bridge behind him. His fingers were battered in the rolling water just where it plunged over the churning waterfall into the whirlpools beyond.

  “Reach, Charlotte!” Simon shouted. “Reach for my hand!”

  A hairy arm stretched up to him. She was tiring against the power of the water and its icy chill. Charlotte’s heavy hand slapped against his arm and for frantic seconds her grip slipped, but then her claws dug along his flesh and into the steel of his gauntlets. Her sudden added weight pulled him away from his hold on the piling. He heard Malcolm shouting with alarm. Water cascaded over Charlotte’s face as she hung on to Simon, sputtering. The waterfall roared behind her.

  Simon gasped under the strain, but he didn’t have the strength to do more than just hold on. She was too heavy to lift and she was too spent and frozen to pull herself up. With Malcolm’s death grip on his other arm, it felt like his limb would be torn from its socket. “Charlotte, change form!”

  Her terrified expression showed she was afraid of how vulnerable she would be as a little girl. If they lost their hold on one another, she couldn’t survive the drop into the vortex. Their eyes met and instead of a hulking werewolf, suddenly she was only a small child. Strength fled and her grip on Simon’s arm loosened.

  “No!” she screamed as her small fingers slipped.

  But Simon’s steel gauntleted hand held on. Inch by inch Charlotte was dragged up. Her drenched frame emerged from the torrent, so frail and battered. Simon pulled her close, fairly crushing her against his sodden coat and hard breastplate as Malcolm drew Simon back onto the ledge of the pier several feet above the water. Simon handed the girl to Malcolm. The Scotsman wiped her sodden hair from her face. He looked uncommonly distraught.

  “Pass her up!” Kate shouted from the bridge.

  Malcolm almost unwillingly handed her to Nick, who lifted her to the shattered railing. Kate and Penny took the limp girl and Kate threw her jacket over Charlotte’s shivering body.

  “We’ve got you, child,” Kate soothed, wrapping her arms around Charlotte tightly. Her expression of gratitude warmed Simon as she looked down for him. Imogen fell to her knees beside her friend, clutching her wet form tight.

  Malcolm and Nick slumped on the stones next to Simon.

  “You damn fool,” muttered Nick. “We could have all drowned.”

  “Yes.” Simon climbed wearily to his feet.

  Malcolm looked at him, his teeth chattering from the cold. “Thank you.”

  Simon laid an aching hand on his shoulder and climbed up. He went to Charlotte and tilted her chin. “Reckless. But admirable.”

  “I knew you wouldn’t let me go.” She embraced him. “Even without your magic.”

  Simon caught sight of Kate’s grateful, expressive eyes. That look was always well worth any risk.

  Chapter 7

  When Simon heard the first explosion rumble through Hartley Hall, he ran for the library. They had secured Ferghus in the cellars below yesterday and he was relieved to see the door intact. Simon opened it and heard no disturbances from below.

  “Nick!” he shouted. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.” Nick appeared at the base of the stairs and started up. “What the hell was that noise?”

  “I thought it was Ferghus.”

  “No. He’s still down here coated in that goo. And he’s still not talking.”

  Another boom sounded in the distance, and Kate appeared in the library door as Simon turned to the French windows. “The wards to the north. Something supernatural has entered the grounds.” He reached for the door handle when a series of rolling explosions shook the room, vibrating through his chest.

  Penny rushed in behind Kate, balancing her brass cannon on her shoulder. She had a collection of pistols shoved in her belt, and she carried Simon’s gauntlets as well. She tossed the heavy metal gloves to him.

  He shoved his hands in and flexed the fingers to test the charge. “Where are Malcolm and the girls?”

  Penny stepped past him out onto the terrace. “Malcolm went for the roof with a scope. The girls went to find Hogarth and get the servants to safety.”

  The floor rocked and Simon only kept his feet by grabbing a chair. He staggered out beside the stumbling Penny. The stones of the terrace were quivering and cracking.

  “Simon!” came a hoarse shout from above. Malcolm hung off the eaves at the northeast corner at the front of the house, clutching a stone gargoyle with one hand and a brass spyglass in the other. He gestured out beyond the front of the mansion. “Something is in the forest. Something big. I can see the trees moving!”

  Simon ran to the front corner of Hartley Hall, watching flocks of birds circling overhead and others streaming away into the distance. Kate, Penny, and Nick followed him. The vast manicured lawn stretched away from the house for about two hundred yards, dotted by shrubs and ornamental trees before reaching the distant line of heavy woods. The trees were shaking as if in a stiff wind, but the air was still. The disturbance continued to come closer accompanied by the cracking sound of wood.

  A gravel road led from the front of the house and into the forest. The ground around it shuddered and undulations surged outward. Ancient trees teetered and were torn from the earth. The noise was deafening. Branches and trunks snapped as the massive forest giants were tossed aside as if a huge child were digging sand at the beach. Trees toppled into terrifying heaps of rolling and tumbling colossi, shedding landslides of dirt from their roots and raising a cloud bank of dust and debris.

  Then the ground rose into a wall. That embankment became a solid wave of dirt and stone and timber some twenty feet high roaring toward Hartley Hall. Turf and arbors and statues were all dragged into the thundering swell that smashed everything in its path into bits of flotsam.

  Simon grabbed Kate and Penny. Running was the only option. There was no standing up to this. As they neared the house, stones clattered loose under their feet. One by one, they fell. The moving mountain closed in on them, filling the air with a roar that pounded through their heads.

  The wave seemed to slow as it came nearer. The rippling line of rocks and brush along the crest was blasted backward like an ocean wave fighting a heavy gale. Barely twenty yards from the house, the avalanche stopped dead, crashing against an unseen barrier and smashing itself to bits. The air exploded with choking dirt. Debris rained atop the huddled figures.

  Then everything went still except for the sound of stones and sticks clattering to the ground. Simon was on his knees, stunned. Kate stared with her mouth agape at the proof of destruction beginning to show through the clearing haze. The entire facing grounds of the hall were a churned field. Beyond that, the grand old forest was a jagged wasteland.

  “My God,” Kate breathed. “My God.”

  Penny felt for her cannon, which was partially covered in sand and stones, but her eyes were wide. Her lower lip clamped between her teeth.

  In the distance, something moved through the dust. A man-sized shadow grew clearer. A tall man with white hair and beard emerged from the smoking hell that just had been a peaceful forest. He stopped and stared at Hartley Hall in surprise. His eyes were angry; his mouth drew tight with bitter acceptance. Brushing dirt from his fashionable suit, he started toward the house. The ruined earth seemed to flatten out before him.

  “You must be Archer!” the man shouted. “A word with you if you please.”

  Simon actually laughed. The incredibly inappropriate statement stabbed his sense of the absurd. He stood, kicking idly at a nearby rock. “Were we expecting you, Gaios?”

  The white-haired man frowned at the glib reply. His gaze shifted up and in a sudden motion, his hand swung around. A wall of rock bloomed on his left at the same instant a rifle shot sounded from above. The ball cracked harmlessly off the rock shield.

  Gaios snarled
and used both hands to gesture. The stone wall shifted like water, flowing into a shape some fifteen feet tall. It gathered itself into a humanlike frame and began to move. The living rock creature reached down with long jagged arms to wrench a huge stone from the ground and hurl it at Hartley Hall in a single fluid motion.

  The rock flew like a cannonball for the spot where Malcolm crouched. The Scotsman scrambled back as the huge stone seemed to smash against the house and explode. Nick pulled Simon and Kate back under the feeble cover of ledges and window settings. Stones and dust rained down around them.

  “Malcolm!” Penny shouted, pushing away from the house, unmindful of the detritus plummeting around her.

  They saw an arm waving from above. Malcolm peered down, his face white with dust. The house was uninjured. The stone had been obliterated before impact through some unknown force. Still, Penny turned angrily toward Gaios.

  “No!” Simon grabbed her arm before she could bring her cannon to bear. “You can’t harm him. Stay next to the house. We’re safe here. I think.”

  “You are partly correct. You can’t harm me.” Gaios strode closer so his booming voice could be heard more clearly. The stone golem moved beside him with pounding, grinding steps to stay between its master and Malcolm. “But you are not safe. Not even here in the house that Sir Roland built.”

  “It’s still standing!” Kate proclaimed with a vial in one hand and a sword in the other.

  “For now.” The white-haired earth elemental shifted his glowering gaze to Kate. “When I’m done, there will be nothing left of the Anstruthers. All those years of Sir Roland’s hounding me around the world, prying into my affairs. I was never able to seize him because of that key of his. Do you still have it?”

  Simon pulled a gold key from his trouser pocket and held it up. “It’s worthless thanks to your Egyptian magic-eater.”

  “Just like you, Archer.” Gaios stared at the key. “If it’s powerless, you won’t object to giving it to me.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, Simon threw it toward the elemental. Kate and Penny both cried out in alarm. As the golden key spiraled through the air, a column of dirt shot up from the ground, surrounded the object, and collapsed back to the earth.