Free Heart of Veridon by Tim Akers Page B

else broke, meat cracking under the hammer and his hand hung limply at an awkward angle. His scream changed, pitching through agony and frustration into animal terror. He put his other hand on me, but I elbowed it aside then drove the hammer’s claw into his cheek. There was blood and bone, his skin came off in lumps that hit the wet ground and scurried away.
    Shocked, I backed away. Half its face had crumbled, but there was something else behind it, pale white and bleeding. He threw himself at me, clubbing me with the ruined stump of his arm, the iron fingers of his other hand around my throat. I fell backwards. Twisting, I was able to get the hammer hooked against his chest. There was resistance, then blood, and I flung him over me. I struggled to my knees, gasping for air. When I looked up, he was throwing himself at me again, the wings beating and flailing, falling apart as he rushed me. I met him with the hammer, again and again, stumbling backwards as I struck, just staying out of reach of his hand, the whirring bloody machine of his stump, the hammer arcing back and forth, head then claw, head then claw, each blow hard and wet with gore.
    The end was sudden, like a light being switched off. He fell to his knees, then his hands. His whole body seemed to pour off him. A glittering tide plunked into the water of the drowned lawn and swept out, tiny smooth shells like a ripple in a pond. When they had scurried away, they left behind a body, a girl. I turned her over with the hammer’s claw, red blood smearing across her white dress. It was the Summer Girl, the performer, her mouth open. The delicate machines of her mouth were clenching in the rain.
    I fished out my pistol and headed back to the Manor. The lights were still on, the Corpsmen running around shouting and pointing rifles. I snuck along the side and went to the carriage house. I stole one of the Tomb’s cogdriven carriages and crashed the gate, rumbling down the road, the long way to Veridon.

 
    Chapter Four
     
    Survive or You Don’t
     
     
    I TOOK THE carriage to Toth and left it in a stable under the Tomb family name. It was still raining when I got to the Soldier’s Gate and my clothes were soaked through. The blood and oil had stopped leaking from my chest, but my heart had developed an awkward grind that I could feel in my teeth. Dawn was still an hour away, though the city’s earliest and latest denizens were already on the streets.
    I finally pried the hammer out of my coldstiff fingers and left it in a gutter by the Bellingrow, then caught a ride on the pneumatic rail that circled the city’s core. I ignored the stares of the factory boys and businessmen, took a seat on the pneumatic and rested my head against the glass as we tore over the city, the car rocking around the corners. The pipe that ran between the tracks breathed in loud gasping sighs of steam and heat as we ripped along. Below us the city dropped away as we went over the terraces. The farther we got from the Bellingrow, the newer the buildings. Everything smelled like fire and energy, up here in the ambitious orbits of Veridon.
    My mind was numb. A storm of concern gathered around my temples, but I couldn’t get through it yet. The Corps would be looking for me, asking questions about Prescott and the angel. Whoever sent the Summer Girl too, whoever had burned a killer’s pattern into her head and remade her body into a weapon out of myth. The gun must also lead somewhere, must have someone behind it. There were a lot of troubles rising out of the Glory ’s wreckage.
    The storm was still tearing up the sky when the pneu, let me off at the Torchlight extension. I walked the Bridge District, bought some kettle soup and ate it as I went. I felt thin, like the night’s trouble had calved me over and over, leaving splinters of me behind with each step. My remnants drifted up into the Torchlight.
    While I walked I fished the ID card out of my pocket. Wellons peered up at me, clean