Trent leaned close to me in the small space, the scent of cinnamon and wine mixing with iron and oil. “Are you okay?” he asked as we rocked, and I nodded as I held his arm for balance.
“Neither Landon or Ayer are in the last car,” I said, then went over the memory again, concentrating on the faces since the mystics weren’t as keen on them. “This second car doesn’t look good either, but they haven’t searched it as diligently.”
Trent’s eyes widened, and Jenks—now on Trent’s shoulder—looked up from cleaning his sword. “Ah, you got that from the mystics?” Jenks asked, and I nodded, grimacing when I realized the mystics had probably done more in fifteen seconds than he could’ve with his first run through the train.
Realizing it, too, Trent looked over my shoulder at Ivy, something unsaid passing between them before he looked up at Scott. The vampire was still lying on the roof since there wasn’t much room between the cars. “Okay. We’ll assume they’re forward,” Trent said resolutely. “Scott, you and Etude have our back door.”
“Check,” he said as he pulled back, and I heard the ripping of duct tape over the wind.
A surge of adrenaline went through me. People. There were too many people. “Maybe we should disconnect the cars as we go through them.”
Trent was working the door, punching in a few codes to try to get it to open. “You can’t do that when the train is moving like this.” Giving up, he gestured for Jenks to figure it out. “At least, you can’t do it more than once,” he said, smiling.
Nothing, nothing, the mystics lamented, and then a single flash of fear and hatred—and recognition.
Where? I thought, almost losing my balance as a massive amount of them went to find out. Jenks’s brilliant flash of dust heralded the clicking of the lock disengaging. “First class,” I said, vision wavering as the first mystics began to return. Their hatred was like quicksilver, elusive as a sunbeam. “I think they’re in the first-class cab.” It was a short train with only three cars.
“I’ll go see,” Jenks said, tugging at the door. “No offense, Rache.”
“None taken.”
Eyes upward, Ivy reached for the torn panel. “Scott! Hold up!”
“You’re not coming?” I said to Ivy as Jenks vaulted through the crack in the door and was gone.
Already up a step, she turned. “You handle it,” she said, expression grim. “I want to see what’s going on in the engine. Etude can come with me. Scott has the back.”
“Ivy,” I protested as the wind scooped in and she levered herself out. I could find out what was going on in the engine, but as she poked her head back in, I decided she wasn’t doing intel, she was busting heads. “See you when I see you,” I said, reaching up, and for an instant, our fingers touched.
The luck of the Goddess goes with you, I thought, my fingertips tingling as mystics left me. They could bring me back visions if she got in trouble.
Trent cleared his throat, and I flushed. “What . . .” I muttered. “I’ve got enough of ’em. There’s plenty left.” Jenks was at the foggy window, waiting, and I reached past Trent again for the door. “You coming or not?”
“I’m coming,” he said, but his smile was tinged with worry.
No one looked up as we entered. You weren’t supposed to move between cars while you were under way, but the attendants did, and I ran a hand over my hair, trying to smooth it. Thief black was not attendant stripes, but a disguise charm was out. The less magic I did, the more stable the mystics were. Only when we clustered at the lock at the opposite side of the car did anyone take notice.
“The back is out of peanuts,” Trent said, and the woman in the front row glared at him for his audacity. Still, no one raised a finger to stop us as Jenks tinkered with the panel until we got the green light.
We slipped into the small pass-through. First class, dead ahead. “Leave it unlocked?” Trent asked, and I nodded. I didn’t think anyone would investigate, and this way, we’d have a place to retreat.
“Well, Rache?” Jenks said as he stood on the keypad and wedged his sword behind a button just so. “What does your crystal ball say?”
I looked through the door. “There they are. Look for yourself.”
It was getting harder to focus through the anger the mystics were filling me with. Overwhelmed, I leaned against the rocking train and waved Trent off. He hesitated, and at Jenks’s whistle, he turned to the window. I already knew what they’d find.
Up at the front, six men were celebrating loudly and keeping the first-class attendant busy. The woman was harried, and the few other first-class passengers looked miffed, forced to listen to their noise as they sat as far back from them as they could comfortably get without being squished together in an obvious pile. I didn’t see Ayer. Landon was drinking, but even through the mystics I could tell that he wasn’t drunk. Little black boxes under their seats held an uncountable misery that was beginning to impinge on me. Twelve boxes, for twelve cities. They could impact eighty percent of the country’s population within three days—eighty percent of the United States floundering as Cincy now was, the tenuous balance between Inderland and human crumbling as the undead starved and died.
Trent cracked the door for Jenks, returning from his own intel.
“They stink like gunpowder and wild magic,” he said, wings invisible with motion though he stood on Trent’s palm. “Some have been wounded but treated with first aid. I didn’t see Ayer, and these guys aren’t vampires.” He looked at Trent. “They’re all elves. Rache, we can’t let them take those five people hostage.”
This had been Landon’s plan all along. He had used the Free Vampires, fully intending on making them the scapegoat. He’d tricked Bancroft into talking to the insane splinter to remove his voice and clear his path. He was going to use wild magic to destroy the vampire society from the inside out, eliminating an entire species to further his own. And he’d used me to take Trent’s voice from the enclave, the only one who would have stood up to say no.
No wonder the demons didn’t like them.
My stomach hurt, and I gave Trent’s hand a squeeze. He looked ticked, a hard anger slowly fanning to life in his eyes. I thought of Ivy and Etude up at the engine. The sporadic messages from there gave me nothing, and the rocking pace of the train hadn’t eased at all. Feeling overfull and slightly out of control, I looked at Trent. “You get them out. People like you.”
Trent took a breath, hesitated, then pulled the shade on the window behind me. “They’ve got glamour glasses and Landon knows what I look like,” he said, but then his brow eased. “Jenks, slick your hair back. You’re the newest member of the line’s elite security team.”“I am?”
The pixy rose up, and Trent rummaged in his belt pack until he found a pen and a fifty. It was probably the smallest bill he had. “You are.” Trent slapped it on the rocking wall and began to write on it. “You’re the line’s latest endeavor to police the trains during this time of crisis, so secret even the attendants weren’t told.”
“I am!” Hands on his hips, Jenks hovered a few inches from the bill.
“Give this to the attendant. She can get them moving to the back, and we can get them into the next car.” Tucking the pen away, Trent folded the bill up. He held it out to Jenks, then hesitated. “No swearing. Public servants don’t swear.”
“Damn right they don’t.”
Again we cracked the door, and I saw a little light go red at the attendant’s station. Concerned, she tapped the panel, satisfied when it went out when the door shut behind him. I never saw Jenks make his way to the front, but I did see a glitter of dust in her work space and the woman start. She vanished behind a half-pulled curtain. Her face was white when she peeked out. Trent waved, and she ducked back.
“She’s not going for it,” he said, and I put a hand on his arm, stopping him.
“Wait,” I said, and together we peered through the foggy plastic as the woman went from shock to fear and finally to bravery as she pulled her shoulders up and tugged her apron straight. Jenks was on her shoulder. Her hands shook as she prepared a tray of ice water, but her steps were even as she made her way to the back, pausing briefly to tell first one, then another to leave everything and make their way to the back and out of the car.
“See?” I said, and Trent leaned into me, shocking me with the scent of green and growing things among the harsh oil and diesel we rocked within. “She’s got shelf loads of courage.”
“Maybe,” he said as he opened the door for the first woman and her preteen son. “But she’s moving them out too fast.”
My heart pounded, and I looked over the heads of the fleeing people to see their departure had been noted. Suddenly the pass-through was full as Trent grabbed the first and pulled her in. The woman’s fear was heady, and I all but shoved her and her son through the passage. The businessman was fast behind her, but the fortysomething geek who wouldn’t leave his laptop behind and was busy wrapping cords wasn’t going to make it.
“Kalamack!” Landon shouted, pointing at us with a half glass of something clear and potent as he stood. “We finish this now!”
“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted, horrified when they dropped their glasses and reached under their seats.
“Too fast,” Trent muttered, then ran into the car, shoving past the geeky guy to stand between him and the elves. My knees buckled as he pulled on a ley line and the mystics flashed to full alertness.
“Get. Out!” I said, breathless as I shoved the businessman to safety, then jerked when I felt a circle go up. “Trent!” I shouted, diving into the car and into the aisle as a spate of bullets popped and zinged. Mystics poured into me, and I clenched into a ball, telling them I didn’t need to know what it looked like from the ceiling.
Breathless, I looked up in the sudden quiet. Damn, he had been practicing, because that was not a small circle Trent was in. The computer guy was safe with him, and I scooted out of the way when Trent dropped his circle and shoved him down the aisle.
Malcontent lay under the seats in little black boxes. I could feel the trapped mystics, angry and frustrated as they circled endlessly, never growing or becoming. Wild magic glowed from them, making me dizzy. Jenks had left the attendant, standing with Trent to dart back and forth to slash fingers and blind eyes. Trent shielded him best he could, his thrown spells raking through my soul with the ripping feel of wild magic.
Way at the front, the attendant huddled. She’d never make it through without becoming a hostage. I looked behind me as the computer guy vanished into the pass-through. They were still vulnerable. I had to break the linkage. Ivy was up at the engine with Etude, but we’d lose Scott.
“Sorry, Scott,” I whispered as I crawled to the door. The cars swayed, and I stood in the pass-through, flinging an access panel up. It looked just like the movies, but there was no way I could move it without using magic.
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed a handhold and tapped the line. Ley line energy poured in, the scintillating core of wild magic now clear and obvious to me. I’d been blind before, but with the mystics reflecting and exalting in it, strength spiraled through me, lifting the mystics like a heated updraft. They swirled, adding their own force until I could hardly breathe.
“Hold it, hold it . . .” I panted, trying to focus. I couldn’t think, and panic trickled through me until I found the spell I wanted. “Apredee!” I shouted, then yelped when it burst from me in a pained pulse.
Every free mystic in a hundred-foot radius arrowed to me. I staggered, my grip on the handhold going slack as they hummed in the spaces inside me, looking for danger, for something to attack. I cowered, berated by the most complex mystics that it wouldn’t have hurt if I hadn’t tried to harness my wishes with a clunky spell, but just willed it to happen. Dizzy, I watched the fabric and steel cover begin to tear as the cars separated. The wind roared in, and I fell back to the tiny platform. A cluster of faces watched me from the retreating car. The first-class door had shut behind me. I didn’t think I could open it quite yet.
There is nothing to attack! I demanded, but their combined voices wouldn’t listen, and I couldn’t breathe. There was danger, or I wouldn’t have called. Go away!
The wind roared, becoming the sound of blood in my ears. The track was a mind-numbing blur, mesmerizing, and I felt my grip falter. It would be so easy to just . . . let go.
“Rachel!”
A sharp pain pinched my arm. A quick yank and my shoulder slammed into the rocking wall of the car. Ivy! I realized, her eyes black with fear as she stood over me between me and the numbing track. And still the mystics sang, demanding I do something wicked, something permanent.
“How’s the engineer?” I slurred, and she pulled me farther from the edge.
“Hurt. Landon has control of the train. He knows we’re here. Hell, everyone knows we’re here. They’ve got a news helicopter and everything. But you did good. Everyone is safe.”
An explosion shook the first-class car, red and yellow flames bursting out the windows and pulled away by the wind. Well, almost everyone was safe.
The acidic scent of sulfur shocked through me, clearing my head. Shut up! I screamed into my thoughts, and the mystics scattered. Damn, I should have done that ages ago.
But then a soul-ripping silence descended, broken by the wind and the rocking of the car. Scared, I looked at Ivy.
“Morgan!” Landon shouted, voice coming through the broken windows. “Get in here!”