Glitter & Doom: A Masque of the Red Death Story by Bethany Griffin Read Free Book Online Page B

laughed.
    They were almost to the gangplank.
    “Hurry,” she begged, all seriousness now. “Malcontent is driven. I’m afraid that Elliott is underestimating the danger. Malcontent’s men are watching the ship . . . feverishly. Could they have fixed your bomb, or built a new one?”
    “That’s impossible,” he said. But was it? Were there any other inventors in the city who’d be able to see what he’d done and correct it in a matter of days?
    A path cleared before them and Kent took off.
    “No!” April threw herself at his back and stopped him.
    “What?” He spun around, just as the world went up in flames.
    The ship exploded.
    April’s face was crushed into his vest. He fell forward, his body protecting hers. If she hadn’t grabbed him, if he’d run those last few steps. . . .
    He couldn’t hear. His shoulder was throbbing, probably burned, and the smoke stung his eyes. April had saved his life. He staggered back up to his feet and helped her to hers.
    She reached up and pinched a strand of his hair. “It was on fire,” she explained.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    “Will you go . . . will you look for Elliott?” She grimaced and looked down. Could Elliott have survived that blast? Or did she mean Elliott’s body? “I have to find Araby. My father wants her. I can still save her.”
    “How did you know?” He meant about the blast.
    “Malcontent’s men were all cowering down. I knew something was about to happen.”
    She’d spent a large part of her childhood watching the faces of the people around her. But that didn’t account for all of her perceptiveness. “You’re so fearless,” he said, repeating the description that had first come to him as they escaped from Malcontent.
    They stood in the middle of the thinning crowd, both singed, staring at each other. She broke the silence. “Before you go, I’m going to kiss you.”
    He reached up to take off his spectacles, but she put her hand over his. “It’s okay,” she said. “Leave them on.”
    And then she wrapped her arms around his neck, and thoroughly kissed him.
    It was over too quickly. Bits of ash were still falling from the sky. The city was on fire, and if any of Elliott’s grandiose plans were to be carried out, they had to find a way to fight through the madness.

CHAPTER ONE
    M Y FATHER IS A MURDERER.
    Above the smoldering city, the airship rocks violently. The rain stings my face and cold gusts of wind threaten to dislodge me, but I can’t look away from the destruction below.
    From this vantage point, the city is simplified into rectangles and squares. Burning rectangles and shattered squares. Smoke pours from windows. The cathedrals are skeletons, open to the rain.
    Kent, the one who built this amazing ship, stands at the wheel, fighting the wind that threatens to blow us off course. We are escaping, to recover from the ambush that almost killed us, and from the onset of the Red Death, the horrific new plague.
    “You should go inside,” Kent shouts over the wind and rain. I shake my head, shielding my face with my arm, and keep my eyes on the city. The river, a ribbon of frothy blue, winds through the symmetry of the streets, everything in miniature from this height, even the destruction.
    It reminds me of the model city that Father built for my brother using toothpicks. A man who would spend hours gluing tiny slivers of wood into round towers with his son couldn’t be the man who would destroy all of humanity, could he? Not on purpose . . . tears start at the corners of my eyes.
    “Araby?”
    Elliott is right behind me. I feel him, though he doesn’t touch me. Not yet. I pull myself to a standing position, unwilling to let him see how afraid I am.
    “It’s cold without you.” His voice is ragged, and I imagine that if I turn, I might see into him for once, but the ship lurches and I can’t do anything but hold on. My knuckles are bone white against the railing as the ship is blown from side to side with each gust