“I prefer all or nothing. Now you’d do well to say good-bye to your lovely wife while you still can.”
“And you’d best get in your boat and go while you can,” Thom said, and she’d never heard his voice so hard and cold. “I was raised under the boot of men like you, who use people and toss them away. When that tower came down, I tore apart men like you. We called them the Horde, but they were the same. And if you don’t back away, I’ll tear you apart, too.”
“They put you down with a tower.” Southampton took a step, his blade rising. “I’ll do it with a sword.”
He lunged, jabbing the blade toward Thom’s heart—and stayed, as if his blade had embedded in flesh. Screaming, Georgiana flew forward. But it wasn’t what she’d thought. Southampton hadn’t impaled Thom’s chest.
Thom had caught the blade in his fist.
He stood, staring at Southampton as his fist slid farther down the sword toward the hilt—the glove preventing any spark from steel scraping against steel.
Jaw clenched so hard that his face seemed to shake, Southampton tried to pull back on his sword, then tried to shove it forward.
With a twist of his wrist, Thom snapped the blade and tossed it over the side. Stepping forward, he swung his right fist. A terrible wet crack split the air. Southampton flew back into the shadows at the center of the deck—but by the shape of his head, Georgiana could see that half of it was gone.
Stripping off his bloody glove, Thom threw it to the deck and looked into the dark. “Any of you want a go?”
“I don’t think we do,” Mrs. Winch answered quickly. “We’ll consider Southampton’s gold your ransom.”
“Fair enough.” Thom looked to Georgiana. “Now you hang on to me again.”
They’d done it. Heart pounding with sudden relief, she leapt up onto his back, winding her arms around his shoulders. He reached the airship tether—five hundred feet below, still connected to Oriana—and grabbed on with his gloved left hand. With his right hand, he hauled the boat over the side by its mooring line.
“Ready?”
She buried her face in his neck. “Yes.”
He went over, sliding down the cable toward the water. The tether bowed slightly under their weight—the airship was sinking, the cable taking on slack. With their feet just above the sea, Thom lowered the boat to the surface, then carefully slid the rest of the way down.
Standing in the boat, he hugged her fiercely. Georgiana clung to him, refusing to think of the forty leagues. They’d made it this far.
A splash suddenly sounded nearby, followed by a dismayed shout from Mrs. Winch. Thom stiffened against her.
“Those damned fools.” Letting her go, Thom dragged up the oars stowed lengthwise beneath the wooden thwarts and moved to the bow. “Sit, Georgie.”
Georgiana quickly took a seat on the center thwart, searching for another pair of oars on the bottom boards. “What happened?”
“They threw the body over.” He fitted the oars into the rowlocks. “Now hang on.”
“But let me—”
Thom surged backward with a mighty pull. The boat shot forward, almost tumbling Georgiana off her bench. A wild laugh broke from her.
“Oh, Thom! Perhaps forty leagues is not much at all!”
He grinned and pulled again, and they sped across the swells. Georgiana faced forward as long as she could, watching him, until the wind and salt spray blinded her. She turned to look behind them.
Lit by the moon, the airship had just settled onto the surface of the water, the balloon sinking in on itself. The mercenaries had begun filling the other boat—across the distance, she made out their dark silhouettes, the items being tossed from the airship to the mercenaries waiting below. Supplies or gold.
She looked around again as Thom suddenly stopped rowing. The expression on his face warned her to silence. Quietly, he tucked the oars inside the boat and moved to her thwart.
“Shh.” He gathered her to his chest, his voice a whisper in her ear. “No noise against the bottom of the boat. Stay absolutely quiet, no matter what.”
She nodded against his wet coat, not daring to breathe. They waited, rising and falling with the roll of the sea. Minutes passed.
The boat suddenly jolted, rocking deeper into a swell. Moonlight glinted on a blade of steel racing past the stern—a razor-edged dorsal fin taller than Thom would have been standing. Sharp terror jumped through Georgiana’s skin, spearing her heart.
A megalodon.