Chapter One Wolves One of his hands tugged cruelly at her hair as the other squeezed her throat. Miss Temple could not breathe--he was too strong, too angry--and even as part of her mind screamed that she must not, that there must be another way, she ground the revolver into the man's body and pulled the trigger. It kicked against her wrist with a deafening crack and Roger Bascombe was thrown into the cabin wall. The red imprint of his fingers marked her windpipe, but his shocked blue eyes--the fiance who had cruelly thrown her over--showed only dismay at her betrayal. His gaze punctured her heart like a blade. What had she done? She stumbled, aware for the first time that her feet were freezing, that she stood in six inches of icy seawater. The airship had spiraled into the ocean. They were sinking. She would drown. Dimly, Miss Temple heard her name--Celeste! Celeste!--the calls of Doctor Svenson and of Chang. Her memory seemed two steps behind . . . they had climbed to the roof, with Eloise. She must follow, it was her only chance to survive . . . but she looked again at Roger, crumpled and wan, and could not move--would they die together after all? But then something nudged Miss Temple's leg. She cried out, thinking of rats on a ship, and saw it was another body, floating with the rising water . . . the Comte d'Orkancz, alchemist savant who discovered the blue glass, run through with a saber by Cardinal Chang. Miss Temple forced herself to slog past the dead man's bulk, barely able to feel her legs. Other bodies loomed as she crossed the cabin, each more gruesome than the last . . . Francis Xonck, with his flaming red hair and elegant silk waistcoat, shot by Doctor Svenson . . . Lydia Vandaariff, decapitated with a blue glass book . . . the Prince of Macklenburg, legs broken clean away. Miss Temple crawled up the stairs, the foaming water keeping pace as her fingers clawed the cold metal. The cries above were fainter. With a piercing shock she remembered the one body she had not seen, the Contessa di Lacquer-Sforza . . . had she jumped to her death? Had she somehow hidden and killed the others? Was she even then waiting for Miss Temple? The cold salt water reached her throat, splashing at her mouth. Her arms became too heavy to lift. Behind lay Roger . . . her terrible guilt. Above floated the open hatch. She could not move for the ice forming around her legs, locking her joints stiff. She would perish after all, just as she deserved . . . Miss Temple woke--weak, starving, and riddled with aches--to a sour-smelling room with dark raw-cut beams above her head. A single smeared window framed the feeble light of a heavy, cloud-covered sky, the very image of boiled wool. She sat up in the frankly noisome bed, doing her best to shake away the vision of the sinking airship. "At least it does not reek of fish," she muttered, and looked about her for any sign of where she was or, for that matter, her clothing. But the room was bare. She crept gingerly off the bed, feeling the unsoundness of her limbs and the lightness of her head, and peered under the frame, to find a chipped porcelain chamber pot. As Miss Temple squatted down, she rubbed her eyes, and looked at her hands, which were flecked with half-healed abrasions and cuts. She stood, slid the pot back beneath the bed with her foot, and noticed a small rectangle of glass, no bigger than a page of poetry, hanging from a nail--a mirror. She was forced to stand on her toes, but despite the effort, stayed staring into the glass for some minutes, curious and dismayed at the young woman she there met. Her chestnut curls hung flat and lank, which had the effect of making her face--from a certain vantage somewhat round--even rounder. This was only set off by her sunken cheeks, the dark circles of distress beneath each eye, and once more a scat Excerpted from The Dark Volume by Gordon Dahlquist All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
