This Perilous Path: A Blackburn Chronicles Free Read Read online

  “Nothing has changed,” he continued over the murmurs. “The quakes only make our dilemma more immediate.”

  “The Great Calamity has taken entire cities,” Fordham said. He straightened his ragged vest, smoothing his hair back from his eyes. “Whole states and territories are gone. We are not in the same situation.”

  “We are in a worse one,” Lizzie countered. “Before, when people flooded to the cities, they were seeking a better life. Now…” she gestured to the ruined foundry, her glance going to the glowing red of the fires just outside the window. “Now they are fighting to survive.”

  “Supplies are being horded in the few cities still standing. People are starving if they don’t die from the smoke and vapors first,” William snapped. “If they valued us so little before, now we are nothing but fodder for the fires. They couldn’t care less as our children search between crumbling buildings for scraps to eat.”

  Julia Ward nodded, her face going red. A fellow garment factory worker, she had approached Lizzie, desperate for a way to fight. “Yes, while theirs are shipped to the havens in the untouched areas. We have to do something!”

  “There’s talk of closing the cities. Of not letting anyone else find refuge here,” another man said, his face was bruised and smeared with soot. He pushed in, shutting the door on the swirling smoke. “Making trouble now is the worst thing we can do.”

  Assenting murmurs rose, and Lizzie shook her head in frustration.

  “There are promises of The Order stepping in,” Fordham said. “Perhaps, with their resources—”

  “The Order, if it still exists, cannot help us,” William argued. “And their loyalty is to the elite of this broken country. I would not be surprised if they simply carted everyone who could pay out to Europe.”

  “Has anyone heard anything of Ohio?” a young man asked. “Anything at all? My…my family is…” his voice trailed off.

  Lizzie took in his red eyes, and her heart broke. “We are hearing that most of Ohio fell to a chasm.”

  “What are they going to do?” The boy asked. “Who…who is in charge?”

  “No one,” William said. “The president is lost, most likely dead—”

  “Don’t say such a thing,” Fordham hissed. “Something will be done. I know it.”

  “By whom?” Lizzie snapped. Her heart ramped up at the shift in the floor. It was subtle, but there. Forcing herself to remain calm, she caught Fordham’s gaze. “Who could possibly discern what is happening much less stop it?”

  “Some say it is an act of God,” someone whispered.

  “Others blame the earth-shifting on the government. Something they have brought on the entirety of North America it seems,” Lizzie countered.

  “I heard they’re gathering scientists,” the boy offered. “My father said after the first wave of quakes took out the capital that the government was using our best men to stop this.”

  The ground rolled, undulating under her feet in a shaking wave. The support beam next to her cracked lengthwise. She yelped, sucking at the wound to her palm. The tremor rose to a cacophony, shattering the windows. Lizzie screamed and dove beneath the table, hands over her ears.

  When will it stop? When will our world stop toppling around our ears?

  The ground stilled and Lizzie counted her breathes, too scared to move. Slowly the others rose, peeking out from their hiding places. No one ran outside anymore. No one tried to right the overturned furniture or replace broken windows. Their world had been shaking apart for weeks now. A mysterious calamity wrought by God or by men. It did not matter to those cowering in the jagged ruins of what once was. The country, so nearly destroyed by the States War, would surely fall in the face of this never-ending storm of destruction.

  “Whatever the solution to our broken country, you can be sure that we won’t be considered in it,” Lizzie said quietly. The image of that poor boy in the factory flitted across her mind. Had it been so recent that her heart broke over the loss of only one child? Now there were hundreds more gone. “We have to claim a place for ourselves here. Before we are tossed out.”

  “What are you talking about,” Fordham said. “They can’t do that.”

  His voice trailed off at the sound of horses outside.

  “Quick, the lanterns,” William snapped. The lights winked out leaving them in complete dark save for the glow of flames through the broken windows. Lizzie felt her brother’s hand at her shoulder.

  “They found us, go!” He whispered and pushed her towards the rear entrance. “Get as many out as you can.”

  “But—” the sound of his revolver hammer ratcheting back made her body instantly cold with fear. “Wills, no!”

  Before she could move, soldiers burst into the warehouse. They shouted, trained a lamp beam on them, and opened fire. Lizzie screamed, terror freezing her in place as flashes of scrambling bodies and horrorstruck faces lit up with the blasts. Fordham tried to run, but was mowed down in a barrage of rounds. Her brother fired back, his body jerked once to the side and then the dark swallowed him up.

  “William!” she flailed for him. “W-where are you?” The flares of bright light blinded her, and the material of his sleeve slipped just past her fingertips.

  Someone rammed into her, and she bounced off a length of pipe. Pinpricks flashed behind her eyes, and she felt the warmth of blood at her hairline. All around her, the room flared and roared as the soldiers slaughtered them. She crawled on her hands and knees, sobs ripping from her chest, and wedged herself underneath a bundle of corroded pipes.

  The floor tilted. Lizzie didn’t know if it was from the dizziness or another quake. A loud buzzing filled her ears, and she felt herself falling. Trying to catch herself, she tried to sit up, banged her head again, and then everything went black.

  Shards of sunlight filtered through the smoke and broken windows. Lizzie stirred, wincing at her stiff muscles.

  Morning? How long had she been out?

  When she moved to rise, pain sliced through her head and sent a wave of nausea roiling through her. Panting back the graying of her vision, Lizzie fought to remain conscious. She crawled from the pipes and looked around. The morning sun, wan and obstructed by smoke, cast the warehouse in a hazy light. Eyes still blurry, Lizzie squinted, trying to see.

  “W-William?”

  Water dripped off somewhere off the shadows. She stood on shaking legs, using an overturned table for support. A form on the ground near the back of the room caught her eye, and she stumbled forward, stomach knotting.

  “Wills?” Her voice broke. Throat aching, Lizzie forced herself to take a step forward, then another. “Is that y-you?”

  It was the curve of his jaw that pulled the sob from her. The dark hair, so unlike her own ginger locks, were matted to his cheek. Deep brown eyes, once earnest and true, stared blankly at the ceiling.

  “No!” She ran to him, her heart tearing.

  “No, no, no,” Lizzie cried. “Don’t leave me here alone, Wills. P-please…I am not strong like you.” She cradled his head in her lap. Fingers knotted in the material of his shirt, the sobs shook her. “I’m not strong.”

  ****

  The vast crowd around her moved towards the dais as the suited men exited the enclosed carriage and took the stage. All those who possessed gas masks or breathing filters jostled and clumped together along the cracked and steaming streets. Some curious. Some afraid. All with their gazes locked on the newly constructed building behind the stage. A steady thrum rose from its inner workings, and the closer Lizzie came to the strange construction, the more her hair rose. It stood on end, suspended by the crackling energy surrounding the machinery. Sparks flicked from her fingertips to the man in front of her, and he jumped, giving her an annoyed glance. Grateful for the obscurity the mask offered, her gaze slipped to the soldiers peppered throughout the throng looking for any sign of recognition. Lizzie paused at the sight of their rifles. They were strange. Dark metal she had not seen before.

  She
moved in, getting closer to the front as quickly as she could without pulling their notice.

  Gray banners decorated the elevated platform where two men stood in impossibly clean suits despite the smoke and ash blowing across the ground. Lizzie eyed the governor of the newly formed Vir-Hio City State as he fussed with tube of his gas mask. The pin on his lapel matched the flags behind him; a depiction of a dark bird, rising from below, jagged wings spread. Lizzie shook her head, not understanding. Where was the familiar stars and stripes of her country’s flag?

  “’scuse me, miss.” A photographer gestured for her to move, then hunkered beneath his drape, and held up the powder tray. “Governor Hatfield, Lord Rothfair, over here please.” It flashed, bathing the scene in bright light.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the governor said, his muffled voice tinny through the filter. “We are gathered here to inaugurate our new territory. Through the brilliance of engineering, we move forward from this devastation. I give you…” He gestured to the building and then at the device rising from the stage to waist height. “The Tesla Dome!”

  “Our great governors have not faltered,” Rothfair added. He pulled the sheet from the machine before them with a flourish.

  Twisted and bulging, the pipework machine thrummed with power. The crowd stepped back, a collective murmur rose from behind the breathing apparatuses. Wisps of electricity quivered out from the device giving it an eerie glow.

  Lizzie smoothed her hair back into the required bun and wiped the sweat of her hands on her skirts. She scanned the edges of the crowd, spotted the others, and nodded. They moved into position, and waited for her signal.

  The governor pulled the brass handle on the equipment, and a great roar rose from the building. The churning, thrumming of the steamworks shook the ground sending billows of smoke into the sky. Pressure built, popping Lizzie’s ears and making her teeth grind. A slip of violet light slid along the goggles on the upturned faces of the crowd. Lizzie gasped at an intense flare of energy. Once, twice, three times, like sun was flaring. And then purple lightning sped towards the sky around them forming a vast grid dome that canopied the city; a barrier that lit up the mottled sky. The clouds nearest the dome’s apex shredded to vapor from the heat of the protective latticework.

  “Behold,” the governor shouted over the excited crowd. “We have ignition!”

  The purple light pulsed once, twice, and then glowed steady. The wind stopped. The smoke floating across the darkness outside the dome from the ruined parts of the city dissipated on contact. Lizzie blinked behind her goggles. First one man, then another peeled off their mask and took a tentative breath.

  “It’s working,” a woman said through a quivering lip. “It is working.”

  One of Lizzie’s group broke a piece of wood from an abandoned wagon and tossed it at the grid nearest him. It shot back towards him, propelled by the incredible energy, and landed near Lizzie’s boot. Charred, it glowed with embers.

  “It is,” Lizzie said through an ache in her throat. “But at what cost?”

  So many had perished during the building of the massive machinery that powered their salvation. So many women and children enslaved to work in the mines to feed the need for constant power for the domes. Unable to fend for themselves out of fear of being tossed into the poisonous wastelands outside the refinery factories, they endured heinous conditions. More would give their lives if nothing was done.

  “Who cares what the cost is?” the woman asked. Her wondrous gaze tilted towards the lighting caging her. “We are safe. At last, we can be safe.” She wandered off, hugging a nearby child. They cried together in relief.

  Movement in the corner of her eye made Lizzie turn. A wagon pulled into view from behind a nearby fence. Stolen at the beginning of the festivities, the white sides of the governor’s carriage bore their message in blood-red paint. It had taken weeks to locate paint in the rubble of the state, but as the letters dripped downward in their battle cry Lizzie decided it was worth it. She just hoped the news photographer got a good photo.

  The driver lit a torch on fire and leapt down from the seat. He reached for the cloth at his neck, his gaze snapping to her.

  Lizzie did the same—pulled the blue material over her mouth and nose like a bandit’s disguise.

  “There’s no turning back after this,” he said.

  She looked at him. At his wind chapped face and tanned arms from a life at sea before the quake chasms erupted with molten earth and boiled the oceans. She knew him only as Charon. A name he’d given himself since he never knew his real one. She’d escaped the work camp with his help. “Do it.”

  He turned and threw the torch into the carriage. In a soft whoosh, the kerosene she’d ordered to be poured onto it struck ablaze. He stood next to her as the flames lit up the rally cry emblazoned in red.

  Defiance!

  People noticed the blaze. Shouts of alarm sounded as men scrambled for pails of water at the pump. Lizzie and Charon melted into the fray, the chaos a cover for their real mission. Lizzie pointed to the dais. He nodded, grabbing the governor’s satchel and tossing it to her. They walked quickly from the crowd, heading for the alleyway. Out of the corner of her vision, the photographer’s powder tray went off, flaring the scene of the flaming carriage in bright light. Lizzie smiled inwardly.

  Charon slipped his hand to hers entwining their fingers. “They’ll hunt you down.”

  Lizzie tilted her head back and gazed at the sky beyond the crackling grid above the city. Charon’s ship, the Stygian, waited just beyond.

  “Let them try to catch me.”

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  The Tremblers

  Charlotte Blackburn—a beautiful, intelligent, and gifted tinkerer—lives in a cloistered world of wealth and privilege beneath the Electric Tesla Dome that shields survivors of The Great Calamity. But when her father is abducted, and a strange sickness starts transforming men into vicious monsters, she discovers that technology is no protection at all.

  Ashton Wells has a dire mission: Secure Colonel Blackburn and deliver his research to The Order of the Sword and Scroll. But the plan goes awry, and he is left with nothing but the colonel’s daughter who has a target on her back and is willing stop at nothing to rescue her father—including handing over to the enemy the only means to stop the monstrous plague.

  Branded as traitors, Ashton and Charlotte brave the treacherous floating sky ports of Outer City to hunt down the elusive inventor, Nikola Tesla—the only person able to activate the strange device that harbors the secret to their salvation.

  With the government closing in, a rebellion brewing in the streets, and terrifying Tremblers attacking the innocent, the two must work together to stop their fragile world from crumbling once more into destruction.

  Wind Reapers

  Charlotte Blackburn—hero, hunted, the unwitting symbol of a dark rebellion—she thwarted the deadly intent of the treacherous Order of the Sword and Scroll, but at a shattering cost. Now, she fights to survive among a tribe of fierce Wind Reapers who troll the wasteland aboard massive metal walkers. But a new storm is brewing and Charlotte is once again the linchpin in a deadly plan.

  Sebastian Riley has one goal: Help the citizens of his floating Outer City to survive the Ashen Croup, a terrible affliction that drowns victims in their own lungs. But help comes in the form of the infamous Lady Blackburn, a woman wanted for treason who is determined to run headlong into destruction to prevent a coming war—even if it means reaching out to those who want her dead.

  Pursued by the shadowy Order and hunted by the furious Reaper clan, Riley and Charlotte brave the monstrous hordes of decaying Tremblers and the terrors of the Wasteland to stop the bloodshed and secure a mysterious calculating engine—a device that can bring about the destruction of an entire nation.


  With brutal forces gathering against the unsuspecting citizens inside the Tesla domes, a vicious scientist intent on capturing Charlotte for his experiments and the whole of the country in deadly peril, one of them must make a sacrifice too terrible to comprehend.

  Chasm Walkers

  Charlotte Blackburn—Legend, traitor, the Order’s worst nightmare —she escaped the torturous experiments by the villainous Viceroy Arecibo, but is forever changed. Now, she battles to retain her humanity as she fights to survive among the wild sky settlers of Outer City. But an old threat emerges and Charlotte must choose between revenge and redemption.

  Ashton Wells has one purpose: Stop Europe’s Coalition forces from slaughtering the citizens of The Peaceful Union to prevent the spread of the Trembling Sickness. But his plan to overthrow The Order from within is thwarted at every turn by his ex-love, Charlotte Blackburn. A woman he betrayed. His treachery resulted in her capture and now she will stop at nothing to destroy the Order – even if it means all-out war with Ashton.

  Hunted by the brutal Viceroy and struggling to regain memories of the past two years wiped by The Order, Charlotte must fight to master the devices and startling abilities thrust upon her as a result of her capture. As Charlotte and Ashton endeavor to discover the real reason for what was done to her, they uncover an unfathomable plan against the most innocent of outer City's citizens.

  With ruthless enemies mounting against the struggling citizens of Outer City, Charlotte must brave the terrors of the churning sea and face her darkest truth to retrieve a strange submersible machine—a device that may very well be humanity’s last hope of

  Prologue