The Glass Books of the Dream Eaters

Contessa looked up at Miss Temple and sneered.
    “Why, look who it is, Caroline—your little charge.”
    Her fist flashed forward, driving the spike into Caroline’s throat with a meaty smack, causing Miss Temple to flinch and Mrs. Stearne’s still body to react not at all.
    “Where is everyone else?” she asked with a smirk. “Do not tell me you alone are left? Or if you’re here, I suppose it is more accurate to say
I
am the only one left. How
typical
.”
    She rose to her feet, her dress dripping blood, and gestured with her free hand to the whining machinery.
    “Not that it mattered—I could have cared less who killed Trapping—if this romantic idiot hadn’t killed Lorenz and our crewmen—much less set off my own
anger
—we could be sharing
tea
. All of this for nothing!
Nothing
! I merely want people I can control! But
now
—just listen!” She gestured at the grinding machinery and scoffed. “We’re all finished! It makes me so very …
savage
…”
    She stepped closer, and Miss Temple raised her pistol—she was still looking into the wheelhouse from the stairs. The Contessa saw the revolver and laughed. Her hand shot out to a lever and wrenched it down. With a shudder that shook the airship to its very frame—and threw Miss Temple all the way to the bottom of the staircase, her stinging fall broken only by the distressing cushion of the first crewman’s body—the spinning momentum reversed direction. A broken chopping sound erupted from one of the propellers. The grinding from the wheelhouse rose nastily in pitch and volume, and as she shook her head Miss Temple heard the Contessa’s footsteps coming down the iron steps.
    She clawed her way free of the body—she was moving too slowly, she had dropped her revolver—and looked ahead of her, hair hanging in her eyes. The hatch was closed, but the sudden jolt had knocked everyone off their feet. Chang sat on the floor with Elöise, cutting her bonds. Svenson was on his knees, facing Lydia and the Prince, skulking in a corner just beyond his reach. Miss Temple pulled herself toward them, feeling stiff as a tortoise.
    “Cardinal!” Miss Temple gasped. “Doctor!”
    Ignoring Miss Temple utterly, the Contessa’s voice shot out from above.
    “Roger Bascombe! Wake
up
!”
    Chang and Svenson turned as Roger did just that, returning to awareness in an instant. Roger leapt to his feet, took in Xonck andthe Comte on the floor, and threw himself at the open cabinet of weapons. Chang raised the saber—Miss Temple was dismayed to see still more blood around Chang’s mouth—and struggled to stand. Doctor Svenson collected his own cutlass and reached his feet with the help of a brass wall bracket. He shouted to the Contessa.
    “It is finished, Madame! The airship is falling!”
    Miss Temple looked back, relieved she was not dead, but having no idea why it was so. The Contessa had paused on the little landing mid-way down the stairs, where in a small alcove—emblematic of the cunning use of space so necessary aboard vessels of all kinds—her minions had lashed into place an enormous steamer trunk.
    Miss Temple heaved herself to her knees. She saw her revolver, slid half-way across the floor, and screamed at the Doctor as she flung herself toward it.
    “She has the books! She has the books!”
    The Contessa had both hands in the trunk and when she pulled them out each held a book—in her bare fingers! Miss Temple did not know how the woman did it—indeed the Contessa’s expression was ecstatic—how was she not swallowed up?
    “Roger!” called the Contessa. “Are you alive?”
    “I am, Madame,” he replied, having retreated at Chang’s approach to the other side of the unmoving Francis Xonck.
    “Contessa,” began Svenson, “Rosamonde—”
    “If I throw this book,” the Contessa called, “it will surely shatter on that floor, and some of you—particularly those under-dressed and sitting—will be killed. I have many of them. I can throw one after another—and since the alternative means the end of
every
book, I will sacrifice as many as I need. Miss Temple,
do not touch that gun
!”
    Miss Temple stopped her hand, hovering above her revolver.
    “Every one of you,” cried the Contessa. “Drop your weapons! Doctor! Cardinal! Do it now or this book goes
right
…
at
…
her
!”
    She glared at Miss Temple with a wicked smile. Svenson dropped his cutlass with a clang, and it slid with the tipping of the craft toward the Prince,