The Girl in the Steel Corset - By Kady Cross Page 0,57
glanced away, feeling like an awful person. As luck would have it, when she raised her gaze, she found herself looking right into Griffin’s eyes.
Griffin told himself to turn away, but he couldn’t. He wanted to go to her and take her away from this, but he had an escort of his own to think of, and the night’s entertainment was about to begin.
Then he felt it, a disturbance in the Aether. It was like a ripple—a shimmer of something tickling the back of his neck, sending a cold shiver down his spine. He looked around and saw a small, spindly automaton with a serving tray heading toward Finley and Dandy. Its movements were jerky but determined, as though it had never moved that way before. It reached for Finley…
“No!” he cried, leaping into action. All thoughts of rudeness and propriety vanished. He pushed through the crowd, fighting the throng to get to her.
But it was too late. The automaton already had her by the throat.
Time seemed to slow. His vision altered, seeing the people and surroundings through the veil of the Aether, auras blazing. Finley’s dual aura flared dark—the color of her other self. Dandy tried to fight the automaton. Jasper had a pistol in hand as he fell into step beside Griffin. The cowboy wouldn’t shoot unless he had to, though—too much margin for error. Someone could get hurt—or worse.
And then Finley seized the spindly metal arm attached to her throat. A normal human would have no hope against such strength, but Finley was not normal. She snapped the arm at the elbow joint and then ripped the offending hand from her neck.
Holding the arm by the hand and wrist, she used it to beat the automaton, driving it savagely into the control panel as people screamed and rushed around her. They were scared gazelles, running for an exit, terrified they would be the machine’s next victim. Meanwhile Finley beat the thing to death, for lack of a better term, with its own arm. It tried to fend her off, but it wasn’t built to sustain damage, only to serve. She snapped off the other arm in a similar fashion and drove both of them into the metal’s “neck,” severing connections, snapping gears.
Griffin and Jasper stopped a few feet away, finally free of the crowd. They could have rushed in, but there was nothing for them to do. Sparks flew from the automaton’s wrecked neck, raining around Finley’s smiling face like little fireworks.
Her darker self had fully taken over.
Those who hadn’t fled in panic had watched the entire altercation, and now they drew closer, closing in like curious cats, eager for a peek at the girl who had just destroyed a machine literally with her bare hands.
The bodice of Finley’s costume was torn, revealing what appeared to be a metal corset beneath. Griffin heard people whispering about it—whispering about her. And Finley looked as though she was ready to take a piece out of the hide of anyone who dared approach. He had to get her out of there. It was a big risk for his own reputation and secrecy, but he couldn’t leave her there to hurt someone, or to let someone else hurt her.
He moved forward, reaching out to stop Dandy as he tried to touch her. “Don’t. Not unless you want to lose that hand, Dandy.”
Smart fellow that he was, Dandy froze, dark eyes watchful behind his devil mask. Griffin approached Finley like he might a scared animal. “Finley?”
She looked up at the sound of her name. “Rich boy. And Mr. Dandy, as well. Aren’t I a lucky girl?”
“Let’s get you out of here,” Griffin said, trying to hold her gaze and work his Aetheric magic at the same time. If he could control her aura, he might be able to subdue her, but then everyone would see that he had done something to her, even if they didn’t know what it was.
Fortunately for him, she seemed to like the idea. “All right. Where do you want to go?”
“Anywhere you want,” he lied. “We’ll take my carriage.”
She tossed her head, straightened her spine, calling attention to the rips in her bodice and the metal beneath, so close to her skin. “No velocycle tonight, Your Grace?”
He smiled. “Not tonight, no.”
She stared at the hand he offered for a second before putting her own in it. Her fingers trembled as their gazes locked once more. This time he exerted his power toward her aura.