The Bloody and the Damned

Chapter One

“AND WHEN IT WAS FINISHED, THE HERALDS SAW THAT IT WAS GOOD AND UNITED THEIR DIVINE ENERGIES DEEP IN THE HEART OF THE WORLD TO GIVE IT LIFE.”

—THE SACRED LAW OF THE HERALDS

There are two things people kill for on Trinity: cash and water.

Tonight, I’m killing for both.

I sit inside the belly of an airship, boots dangling over the edge of the open cargo hold doors. Harsh, hot winds smack against my legs, gusting into the airship’s interior. Beads of sweat trickle down my back underneath the layers of my kit that cover me head to toe.

Automatically, I reach for the compact canteen strapped to my thigh, unscrewing the top and pulling up the bottom of my full-face mask so I can carefully tip a small amount of water into my mouth.

Just enough to wet my tongue. Water rations are going to be the first thing I buy once I get paid for this job.

“Got ’em,” Dani calls back from the steerage deck, her hands steady on the ship’s wheel as she eases us through skies crowded with nimble little airships, ornate dirigibles, and massive homesteads—town-size islands of gold and polished metal that hover in midair.

“There you are, you doomed beauty. Hiding underneath a homestead. Very clever.”

I go still, one hand hovering over the knives tucked against my body.

I’m honestly impressed she found the airship I’ve been hired to infiltrate so quickly amid all the traffic up here.

Not that I’d ever tell her that. Wouldn’t want it to go to her head.

“Is that my cue? Or are you just congratulating yourself?”

“Oh my god, Val, was that a joke? It’s hard to tell with that monotone voice of yours, but it almost sounded like a joke.”

I raise an eyebrow, swinging my feet back and forth in the open air. “I would never expect you to appreciate the subtle nuances of my humor.”

Dani laughs, loud enough that I can hear it above the wind, and that’s another thing I’ll never tell her. How I really like to make her laugh. How the deep, full-throated sound of it blunts my sharp edges, even just for a moment.

“Subtle definitely is the word for it,” she says. “Hold tight, ghoulie. No rash actions before I give you the go-ahead.”

Anticipation crawls along my skin, kicking up my heart rate, and I hear it—a delicate, haunting melody, crooning in my head.

It’s always there, thrumming in the background, sometimes no more than a murmur, other times—like now—loud and insistent.

A wordless chorus of voices that slides in arcs from deep, husky, resonant notes to high, clear ones that pierce your chest, like the ballads street performers will play on their tin whistles.

But no one is singing to me; it isn’t made by a person and no one else can hear it.

It comes from the world far below me. The song of Trinity itself.

I’ve been hearing it all my life.

Wrapping my fingers around the edge of the cargo hold, I fold forward, leaning so very precariously out over the open air. Reveling in that feeling of the world tipping and swaying hundreds of feet below me. It’s reckless, but it’s the kind of reckless I like best.

The hot wind snatches at my face, ripples over my skin.

I fill my lungs with it. It smells like sunlight and excess and the exhaust from naphtha engines powering the airships.

We spin past a dirigible lined with gold and stained glass, skimming so close I could lean out and drag my fingertips over its sun-warmed gaudiness.

Hundreds of feet below me, the city of Covenant sprawls in a tangle of copper buildings, chapel steeples of whitewashed metal, and old airship docks.

From up here, even I can’t argue that this world—Trinity—is something to see.

Unfathomably big continents of bronze-colored metal alloy created by the Twelve Heralds thousands of years ago.

They’re arranged like slightly mismatched puzzle pieces, separated from one another by black bottomless chasms called the Elysian Depths.

Miles of covered aqueducts weave like a glowing net over the surface, carrying water and naphtha to every city, borough, and township.

“How close do you want me to get?” Dani calls back over her shoulder, her hands light on the wheel of the helm. “Because we’re quickly approaching the point where they might catch sight of me and what I’m doing.”

I sit up and swing my legs inside, lying down on my stomach. “Just give me line of sight like usual. I’ll do the rest.” I drop the upper half of my body out of the cargo hold to get a visual on the situation, hanging upside down over Covenant, my arms dangling below me.

I can see it ahead, just off the curved bow of the airship Dani rented, tucked underneath a giant homestead.

The little airship itself is not much to look at—battered and rust-spotted, with simple ornamentation and no identifying markings smelted into its tail fins.

The kind of ride people pick when they don’t want to attract a lot of notice.

People who, maybe, just want to get their travel clearance and make a break for another borough as quickly as possible.

According to Dani, that’s what Bloody Bill Kilpatrick, the head of the Gold Town Gang, says the handful of people on board are planning. Gold Town defectors who swiped a load of extremely valuable containers of water from him and now are trying to make a run for a big payday.

He’s paying me a lot of paper to get his cargo back and, most importantly, to teach the defectors what happens to people who try to screw over the boss of the Gold Town Gang.

Pushing myself back inside, I grab my goggles from the floor, secure them over my eyes, and then check the knives strapped to my body.

Wrath—a hooked, serrated knife—is tucked in a sheath across my chest. Reason sits on my hip, a half-moon blade that arcs over my knuckles.

Mercy—the triangular push dagger with a curved, T-shaped handle—is on my other hip.

And then there’s Toothpick—the retractable arm blade hidden up my sleeve that Dani gave me as a gift just a few months ago.

As I touch the hilt of each one, I fold up everything that makes me Val and tuck it deep inside my chest. Val is no use to me right now; I need to become something else.

“Hey, Bruinn.”

I pause, tilting my head, and see Dani half draped over the ship’s wheel as she looks back at me.

Her straight deep-purple hair swings above her shoulders, only an inch or two longer than the rounded line of her jaw, and her warm, light-brown skin practically glows, even against the dark gray of her shirt and vest. My eyes catch on the soft curve of her lips as she grins. “Remember to watch your ass out there.”

Reason sings as I take it from its sheath. “I always do.”

I take one deep breath, then another, stretching my lungs and filling up all my cells with oxygen. Timing the breath is the biggest challenge when it comes to what I can do. If I don’t get it right, I could wind up gasping for air at a really bad moment.

Then, on one final inhale, I flip backward over the edge of the cargo doors and into open air.

I fall away from the airship, arms and legs spread out, the wind screaming past me, but my pulse is calm, relaxed. I fix my eyes on my target—I can’t just think my way somewhere, I have to see it—and then, on my next inhale, I disappear.

This. This is what I’ve been waiting for. What my anticipation has been building toward. I am nowhere and everywhere. I am nothing. I am air and space and darkness. I am a blur streaking through bright skies and a constellation of metal. Trinity’s song rings wilder, clearer, brighter in my ears.

And then, in a moment, I’m solid again, the curving walls of the other airship closing around me as all the pieces of my body re-form.

The first breath scrapes down my throat, and I suck it in greedily, a little lightheaded after phasing such a long distance.

I let the pull of Trinity’s song give me my bearings, automatically reorienting myself to its constant, humming chorus.

It tugs at me, just a little, always in the same particular direction—northeast—and I’ve gotten accustomed to using it as a compass, so I know which way I’m pointing, even in the middle of a phase.

I take in my surroundings with a few sharp glances. The corridor is narrow, with a burnished floor and walls lined with dark-red paint that went out of fashion decades ago. The fake gold varnish along the ceiling and naphtha lighting sconces is faded and peeling.

My mouth already feels parched again—phasing sometimes does that to me—but I leave my canteen where it is. I’ll drink whatever I have left when the job is done.

I check my goggles, adjusting the layers of colored lenses that allow me to see through the walls around me and pick up on things like movement and body heat.

The airship’s layout bounces back to me in shades of blue and black, and it’s a pretty typical one for a ride like this.

The top deck is made up of bunk rooms, a galley, and a dining compartment, with the steerage deck up at the prow of the ship.

Below me should be the naphtha engines and the cargo hold, but those will come later.

First, I need to stop by the steerage deck and pay a visit to the two figures inside, glowing bright-orange in my lenses.

One heat flare stands at the ship’s wheel—that must be Karolyi. His name was part of the information handed over to Dani, but I don’t know much about him. Except that, apparently, he was the only trained helmsperson who was either bold or idiotic enough to throw in on this venture.

The other has to be Eteri, the reported ringleader.

I can pick her out just by the shape and attitude, draped casually across a seat, swinging her legs back and forth.

Unlike Karolyi, Eteri I definitely know.

She’s been neck-deep in most of the Gang’s less savory business for a long time and built a reputation for being casually cruel.

I’d wondered how long it would be before her aspirations landed her on the other side of my knives.

I guess now I know.

I creep forward on silent feet, listening to their muffled voices vibrating through the door.

“How much longer?” I can hear a little thrum of tension in Karolyi’s voice. Like he’s struggling to sound calm. “It feels like we’ve been sitting underneath this homestead for hours.”

“It takes as long as it takes,” says Eteri. She sounds exasperated. Bored. “You can’t rush the process.”

I tighten my grip on Reason and quietly slip Wrath free.

I’m not sure what process they’re talking about exactly—getting clearance to leave?

connecting with a buyer for the water?—but it doesn’t matter.

No one pays me for those kinds of details.

They pay me to kill. They pay for the reputation that earned me my nickname: the Butcher.

A mysterious assassin who appears from nowhere, kills without question, and somehow disappears without a trace.

“I just like to know the specifics is all.”

“Shit, if I’d realized you were all gurgle and no guts, I never would’ve brought you along.” Eteri sighs, tilting her head back to the ceiling. “Quit worrying so much. Everything is covered. All you gotta do is fly this thing, so just relax. Say a prayer to the Heralds or whatever.”

Bad choice of words. There’s no salvation coming for them. Not from the Heralds or anyone else.

There’s just me.

In the space between breaths, I phase and reappear in front of Eteri—tall and sharp-featured, with long wavy hair dyed harsh blond.

In the second she registers me, I move, punching both blades into her stomach.

Shock crosses her face, pain, rage. Her eyes meet mine, and I see the shadow of fear deep inside them as it hits her:

She’ll never see another sunrise.

There’s a muffled thud deep inside my rib cage, where I’ve tucked Val away, but I breathe them out on an exhale. The Butcher is in charge of my skin now.

Eteri lashes out with a long arm and strong hand, and I almost don’t phase away quickly enough.

I can feel the whisper of knuckles across my mask as I re-form on the other side of the deck.

Both of them turn and lunge for me—Karolyi scrambling to get around the helm—and I barely skip away again, slipping through the air.

My lungs are tight. I let myself get distracted and didn’t get a deep enough breath between those last two phases.

I piece myself back together in a corner, inhaling hungrily. I need more than a heartbeat to steady myself, but that’s all I get because Eteri is close and her reach is long. She swings, focused despite the blood staining her shirt.

Darting low, I drive the knives forward with three quick jabs and disappear. Then I’m there again, slashing high and then low, aiming for openings and vulnerable points.

Eteri collapses in a heap.

Karolyi leaps at me. But I’m dead space between his fingers. I’m a ghostly apparition, reappearing at his back. I strike fast, and a moment later, he sinks to the floor.

One breath, in and out.

I step over the bodies, wiping my blades clean, and fix the helm in place. Don’t need the airship drifting around suspiciously while I’m trying to do a job. Then I turn and step back out into the dark-red corridor, using the edge of my thumb to adjust my goggles.

Time for part two.