The Black Lung Captain - By Chris Wooding Page 0,64

took the blade from his throat. It fell from his hands, ringing as it hit the stone floor.

Rest. Peace. He didn't deserve it.

He got to his feet. From the dark, there was only silence.

The daemon that made him stab his niece had left him alive for a reason. It wanted him to suffer for his arrogance in meddling with forces he didn't fully understand. To spend day after day in torment. In trying to avoid his sentence, Crake had unwittingly made it worse. By refusing to let her die he'd condemned them both to an eternity of misery. He'd only served two years, but it had almost broken him.

Yet now there was a chance of release, he couldn't take it. Not while Bess was still alive. Bess needed him, and she was his responsibility.

He'd spent three months as a drunken vagrant before he pulled himself together and found the Ketty Jay. Life on board had brought a window of clarity, but once the whole Retribution Falls affair was done he'd begun sliding back again. Blocking out the pain instead of tackling it. He'd always meant to do something about Bess, but somehow it had never happened. He was too afraid of the possibility of failure. Too scared to leave the relative comfort of the crew to strike out on his own. He knew, one way or another, that this was a task for him alone, and that frightened him.

But now it came to it, now he had the chance to give up his burden of grief, he found that he couldn't. He'd never atone for what he'd done, but he couldn't turn his back on it either. So there was only one other option. He had to face up to it, and fix it.

The thought lit a flame in his breast. This was his burden and he'd bear it. Suicide was the coward's way out. And Grayther Crake was no coward.

'Look what you did to me, Uncle,' whispered the voice. Crake turned, and saw her. Lying there, just as he'd found her that day, with that same look of incomprehension and betrayal on her face. Blood-soaked, gasping, paralysed by shock.

The sight brought fresh tears to his eyes. His lip trembled and he teetered on the edge of hysteria again. But he heaved in a shuddering breath, and he made himself look.

'Yes,' he whispered. 'Yes, I did that.'

He walked over to her, picked her up, and held her against him. The sodden, slight, ragged weight of her. She squirmed in his arms, trying to push him off her, but he was too strong and wouldn't let her go. Warm blood slicked his neck and hands.

'Don't worry,' he murmured. 'Uncle Grayther will make it better. I promise I'll make it better, somehow.'

She began to squeal and shriek, thrashing in his grip. She pummelled and scratched at him. But he held her tight, tears streaming down his face, as the bloody child fought against him. The pain meant nothing to him now. He could take everything and more, as long as he didn't stop holding her.

Her screams reached a deafening crescendo, and then the darkness erupted into chaos.

'Crake!'

It was Plome. The child in Crake's arms was gone. An unnatural wind was blasting through the sanctum, a hurricane, sending apparatus crashing past him in the dark. There was a terrible roaring, and the sound of something pounding against metal.

He snatched up his lantern before it could be blown away. On the floor was a sharp length of steel, tipped with blood. His blood. A moment after he saw it, it was caught by the wind, skidded along the floor and out of sight.

He looked for Plome, and saw him, on the other side of the room. He was struggling with his control panels, lit by the faint glow from the gauges. Desperately trying to keep up the perimeter defences.

'The chamber!' Plome yelled, pointing.

Crake staggered into the wind, towards the chamber. It was rocking against its struts, dented by the inhuman pummelling from the creature within. The door was still firmly closed. The daemon bellowed as Crake stumbled past the porthole, and he caught a glimpse of a thrashing muddle of eyes and teeth in the lanternlight. Then he was at the control panel. Fumbling fingers found a lever. He threw it.

The daemon screeched as it was bombarded with agonising frequencies. Crake leaned against the lever, his eyes closed, wishing ever greater pain on the monster in the chamber. For what it had done to