I looked to the next support lattice, at least six feet away across open space. “Am I supposed to sprout wings?”
Casey pointed up, grinning. “Those wires will hold us. You just lace your legs above it and then pull hand over hand and you’re over in no time.”
The idea of hanging upside down over certain death didn’t exactly appeal to me, but I wouldn’t be any kind of hero if I balked. I followed Casey’s lead and grabbed the wire. She slung herself up easily, muscular legs encased in men’s dungarees wrapping around the thin line and holding her weight.
The wire jiggled as Conrad followed me, and bowed a bit as Dean joined him. I couldn’t see them, but knowing they were behind me gave me the nerve I needed to edge along after Casey.
Casey tracked the progress of the ice breaker, which had nearly reached the tall stone lighthouse at Half Moon Point.
“Scoot,” she hissed. “And keep it quiet. There’s men up there on the bridge.”
Clinging to that wire was one of the most singularly miserable experiences of my life. The cold cut straight through my trousers and my gloves everywhere I touched the wire. My skin was rubbed raw, and my hands ached so much I hoped they wouldn’t simply break off and fall away.
Casey was nearly all the way across, and I close behind her, when I felt a shudder in the bridge and heard an explosive cracking of ice in the river below.
My shoulder began to throb with a vengeance. When I was in Arkham, a shoggoth, one of the mindless creatures made up of mouths and eyes that roamed outside the city, had latched onto me and left a bit of itself in a black and puckered scar flushed with venom even now. I gasped at the pain, losing my grip on the wire. I dropped rather than try to hold on, my feet landing on the edge of a support beam.
“There’s something down there!” Conrad shouted from his vantage above, and I looked down to see the ice churning and the water foaming as something fought its way out of the depths.
“Shut up!” Casey hissed at us. “Keep moving!”
My shoulder throbbed so badly it caused black whirlpools to grow in my field of vision. I looked at Dean frantically as he dropped down to stand beside me. “This is wrong …,” I said, my throat raw from cold. I sounded like I was floating far above myself, my voice a hollow and metallic echo. Something was rising out of the river. I could see through the fog that it had yellow, lidless eyes, lanternlike beneath the dark ice, and rubbery green limbs extending from a bullet-shaped body.
Ice shattered when it broke the surface, sending shards and spray in all directions. The creature wrapped its tentacles around the bridge, battering the solid parts of its body against the supports and nearly shaking all four of us free.
“What is that?” The shout came not from any of us but from the roadbed above. A cluster of Proctors peered over the side of the bridge, rifles at the ready.
“Leviathan!” one shouted. “Shoot that bastard before he shakes the bridge down!”
Dean lost his grip as the thing battered itself against the bridge again, and I reached out and grabbed the back of his jacket before he could fall.
“Never seen one that close before,” he panted. “Must’ve picked up the vibrations from the explosion. Gotten turned around.”
Leviathans were abominations of the deep supposedly caused by the necrovirus, but really, who knew where they came from? Its tentacles were spiraling up the supports of the bridge even as the Proctors opened fire, bullets zipping past us too close for comfort. My stomach lurched as the bridge rattled under its assault, and I abandoned all pretense of bravado. This was not good. Not at all.
“We should move!” Casey bellowed. “While they’re distracted.”
Dean nodded at me. “Get back on the wire. I’ll help you.” He put his hands on my hips without any more preamble and lifted me like I didn’t weigh a thing.
The wire swayed and bounced under the assault of the leviathan, and I screwed my eyes shut, focusing on the sting in my palms as the wire bit into them.
I moved forward, concentrating so hard that I started when hands grabbed me and Casey pulled me onto the last support. We were below the elevated section of Derleth Street, the gray half-light shining through the slats of the river walk. There was a gaping hole in the boards, and Casey pulled herself up.
“We owe that old deep water bugger a thank-you,” she panted. “He distracted those blackbirds right and proper.”
“I’ll feel better when everyone’s across,” I said, squinting against the ice glare to make out the others where they clung tightly to the great structure. The leviathan roared as the Proctors shot at it, then battered its entire weight into the bridge. There was a groan and the iron vibrated under my feet, and then everything stilled as the leviathan slid back into the river, causing violent waves of ice and black water to crash into either shore.
The sound was small in comparison, but it was high and close—a light ping as the rusted bolts holding the wires of the suspension assembly in place snapped in half, one by one, like aether bulbs blowing on a circuit. The wires whipped free like the tentacles of a second, metal leviathan hanging in the air above the first.
Dean dropped and caught himself by the elbows on the support where Casey and I were crouching. Casey grabbed Dean’s arm, and I reached out for Conrad, but just like when we’d been in the balloon, I grasped only air.
My heart stopped and I watched helplessly as Conrad plummeted, a scream ripping from his throat, until the wire he was clinging to reached the end of its arc and snapped. Conrad swung a good thirty feet below us, small above the vast expanse of the river.
I locked my arm through the iron lattice to brace myself and grabbed the top of the wire with my free hand. “Help me!” I screamed at Dean and Casey, the icy air tearing my throat raw.
“No!” Conrad yelled up to us. “Just go!”
I shook my head, trying to pull the wire up and bring Conrad with it. I wasn’t leaving him.
Casey, on the other hand, made a move to crawl up to the roadbed.
“What’s that for?” she hissed when she saw Dean’s reproachful look. “He said leave him, and we gotta move before that boat sees us!”
Dean just grunted and grabbed the wire along with me. Between the two of us, we hauled Conrad up, and the three of us climbed after Casey to the roadbed, leaving the Proctors and the bridge behind us.
Once we stood on Derleth Street, behind the arcade of the river walk to hide us from the Proctors, I ran and caught up to Casey, leaving Dean to walk with Conrad, who was swaying like a tree in a hurricane. He was pale, but I knew he’d be all right. Conrad was tough in ways you couldn’t see. He didn’t let fear or panic ever get their hooks into him. I wished I could be more like that.
“That was way closer than I like to cut things,” Casey told me. “From now on, Miss Grayson, you need to listen to me and do as I say.”
I had only intended to talk to her, but her comment sliced through my patience, and all the frustration and horror of the last few days exploded to the front of my mind. I balled up my fist, hard and sure like Conrad had taught me, and smacked Casey in the face.
She reeled, and there was already a fat red bruise growing near her lip when she turned back. “What on the scorched earth is your malfunction?”
“The next time you suggest leaving any of us behind,” I snarled at her, “that’ll be the last suggestion you ever make to anyone.” In that moment, I meant it entirely. I couldn’t recall a time I’d ever felt such pure, hot rage before.
“Aoife, whoa.” Dean appeared at my side. He squeezed my shoulder. “Take it easy.”
Casey touched her lip and winced. “I’m just doing what you asked me to do. Gee whiz.”
“You know who else just does what they’re asked? Proctors,” I snapped back.