Abominations Page 32

  Gwen didn't groan, though she already felt tired. If she had to stay awake for the next week, the next year, she'd do it in order to take down Mathews.

  That murdering fuck was going down.

  It kind of put little personal hardships in perspective.

  Chapter twenty-five

  Most of the work they wanted Gwen to do seemed simple enough. Check the load and make sure nothing shifted, which they took turns doing once per hour, sweep and clean, polish wood and brass. Occasionally she took coffee to the officers on deck. The pilot house actually, a little room that had large glass windows in the bow of the ship, so that they could see where they were going.

  She learned that, since he commanded the ship right now, the Admiral was called the Captain, but off the ship – in port or somewhere else – he would still be the Admiral. Or Uncle Thomas, depending on who was listening. Beth, not being a Westmorland for this trip, turned out to be addressed as the First mate, or for someone at Gwen's remove from her, ma'am. The name on her papers said she was Beth Cabot, and had been a pilot for the last three years.

  Gwen just used Katherine's papers, since in this world, unlike hers, it would be almost impossible for anyone to track her movements, barring the use of magic. If anyone watched that way, then no problem, since her working here fit her current claim to be attempting reform. Just to throw off any watchers, Beth was supposedly en route to the main Westmorland compound, having quit the Constabulary suddenly, possibly recalled for reassignment.

  They worked her hard enough, but no harder than anyone else, even if she was the lowest person on the totem pole. The only interesting part came up when it came time to shower, since the ship had been designed to be crewed only by men. No separate facilities at all. The Captain fixed this by sending Beth down at the same time that Gloria and Gwen were to shower and barring everyone else from the room for half an hour. They had to conserve water, so good hair washing was out, but at least they could knock off the sweat and grime once a day.

  When it came time to sleep she shared the tiny crew quarters with Smitty, which apparently everyone had thought she would be outraged over at first. She didn't worry about it at all. Smitty didn't so much as hint at anything other than sleeping and always gave her the room when it came time to change, even though that meant he had to do his own changing in the hall. The one time that one of the other guys, Meter, had even joked about it, Groundling had simply walked over and punched the man in the stomach. Not hard, but enough that the guy apologized before he even stood back up all the way.

  They put in to London first, offloading most of the cargo, which took just as long as getting it on had. Then they headed to Paris, where they dropped the rest of the load, and were scheduled to stop over for an unspecified time, waiting on their return load. Normally the crew would get leave at this point, but since no one knew when the new load would come in, the crew had to stay ready. The other loaders grumbled slightly, but no one complained too loud. After all they were there to earn a living, not play with foreign girls, Gloria told them more than once, and the faster they turned around, the more money they all made, since they all got crew portion, two percent of the profit got divided evenly between them all. That included the pilots and Sue, the cook, but was on top of salary. So literally, the less downtime they had as a ship, the more money everyone made.

  Gwen and Beth left in the middle of the night to go find Baron Mathews, who hadn't even bothered to hide or use an assumed named, but rather just checked into a hotel, counting on Europan law to protect him. Gwen mused out loud that you would think a criminal would think twice before using the law for protection, but Beth told her that it was actually pretty common thinking.

  “They suddenly don't remember how easy the law is to break when it comes to their own safety and well-being for some reason. Probably because it's always worked for them in the past.”

  The only snag that Beth could see was that she didn't speak Mongolian and neither did Gwen. Since that was the main language spoken, it seemed like it would be a huge problem, but it turned out that a small minority still spoke French in the area. It wasn't exactly like what Gwen had learned in high school, but the locals found her effort both understandable, after a bit of hand waving and pointing, and “charmant”. They found a taxi driver that was willing to help two foreign ladies find their “ill” grandfather and take him back to the airship. Since he could speak Mongolian, it made the whole thing much easier.

  The driver checked for grandpere at the front desk for them while they went directly to the room, already knowing the number. Beth dropped into her telepathic state outside the door, then came out when asked, reporting the man to be alone. Gwen knocked and simply hit the man when he opened up, taking him off guard this time. She didn't give him a chance to use any magic, clocking him in the back of the head with a small wrench she'd borrowed from the workshop on the Peregrine as soon as he hit the floor.

  Then they carried their “sick” grandfather down to the cab, an actual horse drawn carriage, the driver helping them get him loaded. The man, looking to be in his mid-twenties, even helped them get Baron on the airship, all for the price of cab fare. More expensive than in the Americas – by about three times – but well worth the price in Gwen's estimation. They hid Mathews in the officers' quarters, which were shared between Captain Welk, Beth, and Gloria.

  Luckily Gloria had to spend the time until they left on duty, supervising the loading, since the new shipment, amazingly, started coming in about an hour after they had Mathews secured. It still took a little over twelve hours to load up, since the goods all came on regular wagons, pulled by horses. That meant a smaller bundle each time.

  The Europans had regular lorries, she'd seen them on the street, but for some reason the traditional horses were favored. When she asked, Gloria just told her that they really liked horses and didn't add any more. Gwen wondered if it had to do with using them as a food source at first, but then remembered that the Mongolian hoards had conquered on ponies, so they may have brought that idea, love of horses, with them when they took over here. She would have loved to learn more about the city, but had other things to do at the moment, she thought menacingly.

  After dinner, a tradition after loading it seemed, no matter what time of day or night the work finished, Gloria finally noticed the old man tied up in her room.

  Beth asked her to keep it quiet about it until they were over international waters, about half an hour of flight time later. Gloria raised an eyebrow, but went back to work in engineering. The Engineer didn't even bother asking why Gwen stayed with the strange man.

  Gloria came back after the bell rang, signaling international waters had been reached. It was important, since it meant that what they were doing was technically legal now. Or at least not against any law.

  “Now... what the fuck?”

  Gwen pointed at the man, who sat on a bunk, bound and gagged.

  “Remember when I told you how some freaks stabbed me about a month ago? Well, this is the guy that did the actual stabbing. We're going to question him and find out who else was involved. Then... well, what happens then depends on what his answers are, I guess...” She planned to kill him herself, which worried her a lot, having never actually killed anyone before. It wasn't that she had cold feet about the death, that pretty much just had to happen, regardless of how. She just didn't know exactly how to kill someone cleanly. Hack them to death or shoot them, sure, but simply execute? That had only lightly been touched on in any of her martial arts classes and then only behind closed doors. In most of her classes she'd been a bit of a second string student, because of her looks. A few of the instructors seemed to intuitively understand her situation and gave her extra lessons and information, getting that she, of all their pupils, would probably have to use what they taught. Simply killing a person hadn't been in those sessions. Not stripped from defending yourself at the same time.

  Since he could use magic to mesmerize a person, if he could tal
k, they had to leave the gag on him. Given Beth's abilities, that turned out to not be a big problem. When he tried to block Beth out, Gloria jumped forward and hit him in the head suddenly with her open palm, then asked the question again, during the distraction.

  “Who organized the sacrifices?” She yelled, inches from his face. The action surprised Gwen, but she watched the older woman and picked up the basic idea. No one could concentrate that well if suddenly hurt. A master of mind control might manage it for a while, but enough sudden and changing kinds of input would force them into having lapses that someone like Beth could use.

  They had to do this over and over again, beating the man to keep him off balance, never really hurting him, just distracting him enough for Beth to pick up his immediate responses. Finally they got an answer though. Gwen couldn't believe it, but Beth assured her that it wasn't a mistake.

  “Debussey? As in our Doctor Debussey? Erin? The one that helped us disable their teleportation devices? What the fuck! That can't be right, is he trying to use some Jedi mind trick to throw us off or something? Debussey helped finger the guy!” Gwen blurted, causing everyone in the room, including Mathews to give her a funny look.

  “I mean, is he trying to trick us, to throw us off the real trail or something?” She added this in her fake accent, trying to cover her slip.

  He shook his head, more than a bit sadly, followed by Bethany a moment later.

  “He's disciplined and has magic of his own, but he can't hide something like that, not while being hit repeatedly. No one could really. Not and still be sane anyway – which he is. He just really believes that these sacrifices are worth it to open the communications to the old gods or whatever they are. As if that kind of information would be useful to the average person or even an academic... I don't know what convinced him, but he believes it. Now... I need to go back in his head and get the rest of the names.”

  Gwen sat in shock for a second.

  Debussey? Well, she had volunteered to help, and wanted to meet her, but that all made sense, didn't it? After all, Gwen would be interesting to her, both magically and psychologically, right? How many times did you get to meet someone that had been ripped from another world? Hadn't she been around when Beth had been in telepathic mode at least once?

  The Westmorland grimaced and turned her palms up.

  “If I was too focused on someone else, I may not have gotten what she was thinking, not if she took pains to hide it. We'll have to have a talk to her, when we get back. If she hasn't already taken off.”

  Baron Mathews just gave them what names he knew after that, since they'd already gotten a few of them and he didn't know they had them, they were able to tell that he simply told the truth. After a few hours of this, they knew everything he did about the sacrifices. Who'd been involved, and why they'd done it.

  On the last name they got, he gave up, but Beth and Gloria winced, then looked shocked and possibly horrified. It meant nothing to Gwen in particular.

  “Who's that, Scott Phillips? Is he related to Jonathon Phillips? ” Gwen asked, making Gloria stare at her again, as if she had just asked who Jesus was or something. Bethany just answered without inflection.

  “He's the Duke of Aubry. I don't know about Jonathon, we'll have to check that. It does sound rather too coincidental to be happenstance. Even if he's the only one at that level involved in this... It makes everything much harder to deal with. I'll have to get some of my relatives on this and take it through back channels. For now, both of you just forget you heard anything about it, understood?” Beth's voice had gone cold, almost brittle.

  Gloria nodded.

  It amazed Gwen that she'd been living here for a little over a month and didn't know that they had dukes and stuff. She'd just assumed that their political system would be similar to the way it was back home, a democratic republic, with voting and all. Maybe the women wouldn't have voting rights yet, which she'd guessed based on how they all dressed, not any real information, but still similar. She shrugged. Whatever worked, she figured. Her concerns were about the matter at hand.

  “We need to deal with Baron here. Any suggestions?”

  Both Gloria and Beth had some and both ended with the man going over the side of the deck at five thousand feet over the ocean. The only thing that differed turned out to be how dead he would be when going over the side. After a minute of debate, Gwen broke in, her voice making the other arguments stop suddenly.

  “We kill him first. Drowning is a horrible way to die for one thing, and even if he's a killer, he at least didn't torture his victims first. No need to do it to him. But I want to see he's dead before he hits the water with my own eyes. No last second telepor... teletransporting or levitation or anything like that. I don't want him showing up in three months looking for vengeance or anything.”

  They took him to the third deck, the one that wrapped around the airship, it was still dark out and Gloria asked them to wait while she got some things. She came back with a large waterproof canvas tarp, and Groundling. Before either of them could protest, the man sized the situation up and simply started laying the tarp out on the hardwood, he didn't ask questions or even look at anyone in particular.

  Then he walked the old man to the center of the tarp and stomped on the back of his right knee, hard, making him kneel with a thump.

  The voice that came out of him sounded dead, without inflection or mercy.

  “If you don't want to see him die, I suggest you look away now.”

  He waited a beat, Beth and Gloria both closed their eyes, and Gloria covered her ears with her hands but Gwen swallowed, hoped she wouldn't get sick over this, and nodded to him.

  “Take the head all the way off please. I need... I have to make sure he's all the way dead.”

  The movements were fast and practiced, a knife appeared in Groundling's hand and he killed the older man with a single stroke, then with about a minute's work he took the head all the way off. He held it up by the hair briefly, showing it to her, waiting for her to nod that she was satisfied, then tucked the head under the dead man's right arm.

  The whole thing felt surreal to Gwen, but not that much blood came out, for a beheading, and Mathews hadn't screamed in terror or tried to beg for his life at the end, since they'd left the gag in. He just looked sad about the whole thing. Probably because the link to all that information wouldn't be coming now, rather than his own death. Bethany had said that he was sane, several times in fact, but how could a person justify murder like that if he was really sane?

  Then again, as cool as Bethany was, she may not know what counted as sane or not clinically speaking. That the guy wasn't, hadn't been, a schizophrenic was clear to Gwen. That wasn't the only kind of crazy possible though. Maybe he was just delusional? Well, clearly he was that, mentally coherent or not. Elder gods as pets... Yeah, that was sane.

  Then they wrapped the body in the tarp, Groundling surprised when Gwen helped him roll the body up and throw it over the side. He looked at her strangely for a while, both Beth and Gloria still stood with their eyes closed. She felt she owed the man an answer, since she wouldn't have been able to kill the old man like that. Not to execute him. Not as well as it had been done. In a fight? Sure. Tied up and put on his knees? She didn't think so. Ultimately the decision had been hers, so it was her that killed him, even if Groundling had done the work, but the skill made a difference in the end.

  “He was a killer and tried to kill me personally. Knife to the chest. I can show you the scar if you need, later. He even confessed before and escaped... This had to be done. It was the right thing to do. Again if you need to know, I can get the evidence for you that proves it. Thank you.”

  Looking amazed, he shook his head and his normal smile came back.

  “Three wars, forty-two executions, and only one person ever bothered to explain why, much less thank me for it. Probably just as well, I doubt most of them had as good a reason. Heh. Oh, it's safe to look now,” he added for the other two. Beth
jostled Gloria to let her know it was over, her hands still being in place to block sound.

  They all looked out into the night for a minute not saying anything, a moment of silence Gwen guessed, instead of prayers for the dead. Then Groundling asked if he'd be needed anymore, figuring he still had nearly four hours of sleep left, if he could get it.

  Beth went off to set up Debussy's capture, using the Peregrine's telestator, leaving Gwen and Gloria standing on the deck together. The bigger woman moved over to her and patted her on the back.

  “Revenge... It doesn't make things better, not really.” This came out quietly from the Engineer.

  Gwen smiled and raised her eyebrows. “You know... this wasn't about revenge. He had to be stopped from doing more... I probably could have forgiven him for stabbing me, with just a few more ass-kickings and the knowledge that he understood and would stop. I've had nearly as bad happen to me before and let it go. But, he's killed a lot of people already. If we let him go, he'd just do it again, trying to fulfill his dream or whatever crazy shit he thought him and his group had going on. Groundling surprised me... He always seems so normal, but he didn't blink did he? Not that I'm judging him. I ordered this, the death's on me, not him. I'd have made a mess out of that whole thing if I'd tried it, you know? Thank goodness he was here. I owe him, that's for sure.”