claws were anything but. I learned that as soon as I began to back up: My front talons sliced through the fabric of the balloon as if it were lukewarm butter, leaving a series of black, gaping slits.
Gas gushed past me, unscented and colorless, but I could still see it, how it bent the purple air and then began to suffocate me, flooding my nose and throat and lungs.
I flapped my wings and tried to pull free. One talon was caught and I yanked and yanked, choking, enlarging the gash.
The dirigible began a mild descent.
At last I got loose, shredded fabric rippling up to the stars. I skidded awkwardly to my right, wings outstretched, landing again, digging in again. The hydrogen was stored in separate gas bags. I wasn’t sure if emptying only one of them would be enough to fully bring the ship down.
The second set of slits was even longer than the first. Two of them combined in a sudden rupturing of material. The black maw of it gaped beneath me; when the ship listed hard aside, I nearly tumbled in.
Something zinged by me. With the gas in my face, I thought at first it was a gull or a gannet, but it wasn’t. It was a bullet.
It was followed by a volley of about a million more.
• • •
“Why—the beach?”
Armand was out of breath. They were outside, nearly to the motorcar. By now he was carrying practically all of Jesse’s weight, and even though he was strong—much stronger than he should have been, than a human boy his age would have been—Jesse weighed almost fourteen stone. He was heavy, and he wasn’t helping. His legs at this point were just meat.
“Grotto’s closer,” Armand noted, still gasping.
“The water,” Jesse said. His mouth felt so dry. He knew it was the blood loss parching him. That thinking about water or ale or tea or anything wasn’t going to help, but it did seem to sharpen his mind some. “Water,” he said again thickly, trying to clarify. “Distance. Must see it.”
“Care to let”—they stumbled over a groove in the path; Armand heaved them both back up—“let me in on—whatever the hell it is you’re—planning, Holms?”
“No,” said Jesse.
Armand only grunted, pulling them on.
• • •
The other airship had machine guns. They had veered in close and were firing them at me. Perhaps I’d panicked them enough that they weren’t even thinking about the fact that they were helping to annihilate their comrades.
The zeppelin I had wounded—like an animal, like a vicious keening animal—kept listing. That’s all that saved me. I was too slow to duck a bullet; they pocked into the skin of the balloon and left fresh new holes for the hydrogen to escape, and I was rolled out of range. By now I could hear the shouting of the crew in the gondola far below, trying to understand what was happening. For all they knew, their allies had turned on them. Perhaps even some of the gunfire was striking them, although, as far as I could tell, none of the men in their ship were firing back.
The night sky was diminishing. The writhing sea rushed to meet us. I withdrew my claws and opened my wings and let the channel winds have me, jerking me away from both ships, and the wounded one sank and sank.
I wanted to watch it go all the way down. But the men in the other ship had spotted me, had trained their weapons back on me. I had to dive fast away from them and then up, up, because I thought—I hoped—they wouldn’t have the means to fire at me once I crested the side of their balloon.
I heard the first zeppelin smashing into the water behind us and couldn’t help but glance back. Their bombs began to explode, one after another after another, deafening, and then everything was blue fire, white fire, and I was blinded.
I flapped around like a bat amid a stream of bullets, graceless, falling.
My front right leg was struck. My left wing.
smoke! shrilled the stars.
Of course. That worked.
As smoke, I was able to get my bearings again. I had ended up somewhere between the sinking wreckage of the first ship and the slipstream of the second. I narrowed into a dart and raced toward the untouched ship, something livid and pitiless waking within me.
I don’t think I’d felt much of anything beyond desperation up until then. There had been no time. But as I sped toward that second