The smoke from the explosion descends on her. She inhales it and knows right away what it is. The Toqwa have created a new batch of rahvek, more potent than before. She feels it in her blood, in her muscles, in her spine. It will make everything young again. It will put things back as they were. A sudden, irreversible cure for the Change, infecting all of Hosanna, breeding a new supply of prey for the Mudfoot and their allies.
Someone grabs her from behind, a creature covered in black fur. She slashes at it while fending off the human with her other hand. Falkirk barks beside her, behind her, above her, though she cannot see him. Like a starving feral, she sinks her teeth into her enemy’s furry hide and jerks her head left and right while the taste of iron floods her mouth.
She no longer cares who will win the war, who will be the latest to gain control of a lost city. She can no longer hear the scuffle and the clashing swords from the train car. The present fades. The blood in her mouth is all that exists, from the beginning of time until the end.
With her jaws chewing through flesh, crunching into the marrow of a man’s spine, she twists her head the way her people have done for millennia, without being trained. The vertebrae snaps in her mouth, one by one, and then the meat hangs limp like a sleeping child.
Chapter 22
The Path Diverges
Urna’s body lay on the floor of a passenger car, facing the wall. Mercy sat on the scratchy blue carpet, fiddling with a loose thread while the pup sniffed at Urna’s tail. When the pup tried to lick one of the wounds, Mercy tugged him away.
Outside, the trees flew past while the hills beyond remained eerily still. It was some kind of optical illusion. The wheels beneath the car clicked at regular intervals. Kuh-kik. Kuh-kik. Kuh-kik. A sound that the forest could never produce. She and Urna spent days following the rusty train tracks that cut through Mudfoot territory. The older wolves told her that the tracks carried a monster made of steel. Mercy had nightmares about a creature crawling on the lines to snatch her away. When she told Urna about it, her sister laughed. They were stories to scare children, Urna explained, nothing more.
Mercy whispered her sister’s name. She wanted it to be the pup’s first word. But the young one soon lost interest in the body, choosing instead to flick a loose bolt he found on the floor. Since Aunt Urna would not play with him, he would have to entertain himself. Mercy admired his pragmatism, his stubborn refusal to dwell on the past. For him, for all rulers, the past would rot, as it should.
She scratched behind his ear. He tilted his head to allow her to dig in deeper. She smiled, flexing muscles in her face that had lain dormant for a long time.
A tremor vibrated through the deck. The train wobbled, throwing off the steady kuh-kik sound for a second. Mercy’s heartbeat throbbed. The pup stopped with the bolt squeezed between his lips. Did they hit something? Did something hit them?
The front door slid open. Augur entered, tying his pelt over his shoulders. He crouched in order to get a better look out the windows.
Mercy whimpered, a sound that pleaded with him to tell her what was happening. He blew a puff of air that inflated his cheeks. Stay here, it meant. As he hurried past her, he reassured the pup with a pat on the head.
Mercy felt the train curving to the right. She followed Augur to the rear door, with the young one tugging at her ankle. As Augur reached for the latch, he balled his hand into a fist, his veins bulging into blue snakes. He collapsed to one knee.
Mercy grabbed his wrists and pulled his arms around her neck. He trembled while the pup barked at their feet.
“Someone is . . . interfering again,” he said.
Over her shoulder, Mercy eyed her sister’s corpse. Had Urna given the rahvek to someone? Someone who wanted to see the future? Who would want that kind of power? Who wouldn’t?
“Everything was a straight line a few seconds ago,” Augur said, gasping. “Now I see a web. A cloud. A . . . blizzard.”
She tried to hold him. But he broke free of her grasp, crawled to the door, and banged his forehead on the metal, rattling the frame. She barked at him.
“What do you see?” she said.
Before he could answer, the latch turned on its own and the door slid open. Creek stepped halfway inside. Seeing the human on the floor, the young wolf glanced at Mercy for an explanation.
Augur forced himself to his feet. A red welt bloomed just beneath his hairline.
He was scared. She could smell it.
“Intruders,” Creek said. “Two dogs.”
“I know,” Augur said.
The pup curled around Mercy’s ankle, oblivious to what they said. She pried him away from her leg and handed him to Creek. “Wait here,” Mercy said. “No one comes through.”
While squirming in Creek’s arms, the little one cried out to Mercy as she stepped outside with Augur. The door closed, sealing in the pup’s wailing.
Augur gathered himself. Despite the wind and the cold, a trickle of sweat slid along his neck. He pinched the bridge of his nose.
“They’re too late to stop this train,” he said.
She watched him, trying to determine if he said this to her, or to himself.
“Nothing can stop it,” he added. “But they can still hurt someone. Including your son.”
The door to the next car hung open. Mudfoot marauders stood in the aisles, awaiting orders. Carsa towered over them, the old wolf’s gray coat sticking out. Mercy barked to get her attention. Carsa nodded. She gathered the others and headed for the exit. Whoever was coming toward them would soon face a pack of wolves, as well as the Toqwa soldiers in the next coach.
Mercy motioned to the roof of the car. Augur immediately understood. She wanted to climb on top, to see the entire train as it made this long turn to the southeast. Mercy went first, planting her foot on the handle and pulling herself up. She slapped her palm on the roof at the exact moment that the windows on one of the cars blew out, releasing white smoke. A rifle fired in response before going dead. Mercy heard shouting and barking, more doors slamming, windows shattering. One of the passenger cars was pockmarked with bullet holes, each one piping with soot.
Beyond that, the flatbed with the trash truck remained intact. The intruders had left it alone, choosing instead to work their way to the engine.
“They won’t get far,” Augur shouted over the wind. “But they could decouple the train.”
The whistle in the locomotive blew, a signal to anyone watching from the surrounding countryside that the train was under attack. Soon, the fires would rise on the hills, and word would spread to Hosanna.
Mercy had seen enough. She needed to join the others. A pack leader who hid inside a steel contraption did not deserve her station in life. She brushed Augur with her tail and ran along the roof to the gap between the cars, where she jumped over. Below, Carsa’s enforcers streamed through the doors, swords drawn. Her people knew how to stalk prey out in the open. This bottleneck made Mercy nervous. But then she saw one marauder slash his scimitar against the doorframe as he passed through, leaving a deep dent in the metal, and she knew that these intruders could not fight their way through.
She pressed on to the next car, the one filled with Toqwa warriors. Judging from the gunshots reverberating through the hull, the intruders had arrived at a stalemate here. A window burst open as a bullet flew through. Metal clanged against metal. A human screamed. Smoke leaked from the holes in the roof. A cloud lingered inside, fogging the broken windows.
Directly below her, on the narrow platform, a canine warrior, armed with a sword, slashed at one of the Toqwas. It was a female, with crimson spattered from her chest to the tip of her nose. A set of human fingernails had raked across her snout, leaving four wet lines in her fur. At first, Mercy thought it was some crazy wolf with no pack. But then she smelled the blood. This was no wolf. It was—
“You,” Mercy whispered. The wet n
urse with the sword had returned. And she knew how to use it in a confined space. When the Toqwa swung his club, the blade deflected it, cutting out a hunk of wood that flipped away in the wind. The movement exposed the man’s ribs. The dog elbowed him, dropping him to one knee. Another swing cut through his shoulder, the blade so sharp it exposed the bone and muscle before the wound had a chance to bleed. The club fell between the cars and exploded under the wheels in a shower of splinters. The dog kicked the man in the chest, lifting him off the side of the train. He landed in the gravel and vanished.
When the dog readied herself for the next opponent, she spotted Mercy looming over her. The dog’s lips parted to reveal a set of tightly clenched fangs. Her fingers stiffened around the handle of the sword. Her brow knitted into a bolt of muscle. Somehow, this gentle creature, this plaything for humans, this gonney, had turned herself into a monster, boiling over with hatred. This dog had come to kill her.
Someone stepped out of the doorway below. Another dog—a husky—firing a rifle into the car as he retreated. He saw Mercy and raised the barrel, the muzzle a perfect circle between his bright blue eyes. A hand grabbed Mercy’s shoulder and pulled her away as the rifle fired. She landed on her tail with Augur beside her, his arm draped over her chest for protection. Mercy sat up and saw the two dogs retreated inside the car, sealing themselves inside.
The tracks edged along the side of a highway. A truck drove parallel with the train, gathering speed as it belched smoke from its tailpipe. While one wolf drove, another was perched in the pickup, aiming a mounted machine gun at the train. He waved to Mercy.
She pointed to the car where the intruders had fled. Then she ran her fingernail across her throat.
The wolf aimed the gun and fired. Yellow flashes burst from the muzzle, followed by a sound like an insect flapping its wings. Bup-bup-bup-bup-bup. Shells flipped off the side of the truck, tinkling on the asphalt. The rounds shredded the hull, bursting out the other side. The gunner swept from front to back, stopping before he hit the trash truck on the flatbed. Part of the roof sank as the bullets sliced through the walls. The gun went dead as the last rounds emptied from the chamber.
The wolf reloaded. Mercy raised her hand, signaling him to hold off. On the platform below, a pair of humans awaited her orders. Mercy flicked her chin toward the bullet-riddled passenger car. That was all they needed. The first human broke the window, reached inside, and unlocked the door. Once it slid aside, the Toqwa warriors piled in, with more wolves following. Mercy could taste blood in the air, as strong as an open wound on a deer. She could not contain herself. She needed to join them. She prepared to climb down, but once again Augur’s hand grabbed her shoulder.
“Wait,” he said, wincing in pain.
She exhaled through her nostrils, a sound that demanded more information.
“Look,” Augur said.
The compactor on the trash truck slowly opened like the mouth of an enormous fish. A fluid thicker than water gushed out and splashed along the sides of the car.
In the driver’s side window, a furry head leaned out to see what was happening. Another stowaway. But not a dog this time. A mountain lion, perhaps, judging from the ears and whiskers. Or a mere housecat. Either way, he knew how to operate the vehicle.
Something inside the compactor moved. Layers of skin unfolded, then stretched forth in eerie, slithering appendages, like great serpents. The creature’s head emerged from beneath the lid of the compactor. Two enormous eyes blinked. A mouth opened to a vortex of white teeth. A three-pronged claw hooked onto the lip of opening.
Augur had tried to prepare Mercy for this, in the event that she came face-to-face with a Sarcops. It took only a dozen of them to destroy half of Hosanna. But no description of fangs and tentacles by the firelight could do justice to this alien, this abomination. Prepared or not, Mercy knew a hunter when she saw one. This beast was ready to strike.
As the creature emerged, Mercy noticed the plastic tubes stuck to its skin, drawing blood. That was how Augur’s precious rahvek was made—by siphoning it from the living tissue of this perfect killing machine. The Sanctuary Union must have invented this mobile torture chamber for this very purpose, to sedate the creature and contain it while drawing away its life. The Toqwa were going to return the Sarcops to the city as a gift as soon as they collected their own share.
A hail of bullets struck the compactor. In a panic, the gunner truck had opened fire again. To get closer to the train, the driver swerved off the road onto a grassy patch.
“No!” Augur shouted. “Hold your fire!”
Though dazed from its long slumber, the creature homed in on its attacker. A tentacle shot out from the compactor and whirled around the wolf’s neck. Another wrapped around his ankles. Together they lifted the wolf from his perch in the pickup. The gunner tried to hold the stock of his weapon, but the tentacles pulled him away. Mercy could feel the wolf’s fingers break. The tentacles stiffened, changing from slithering pythons to two slim branches. In a great burst of red mist, the tentacles ripped the wolf’s body in half at the waist before dropping the two mangled pieces alongside the train.
The Sarcops oozed out of the truck, a deformed child birthed from a metal womb. Rather than opening the door to the coach, it punctured the metal and slithered into the hole it had made. Despite the roaring wind and the clicking tracks, Mercy heard the first man scream, along with the second and the third. The roof suddenly bulged as the creature lifted one of the warriors and broke his skull against the ceiling. The only intact window remaining became shaded with a coat of blood. At the front of the car, the warriors formed a stack of bodies as they tried to retreat. A man on top of the pile yelped as something grabbed him and pulled him inside.
“We can stop this,” Augur said, as calm as a drop of rain rolling off a leaf. “But you have to come with me. Now.”
A dreadful screeching sound began as the roof of the coach split open, ripped asunder by the tentacles. Bodies lay draped on seats, spread-eagled in the aisle. Huddled in the far corner, the husky and the wet nurse held each other the way Mercy and Augur did, with the world tearing itself apart around them. The Sarcops had let them live.
“Come on!” Augur said. “There’s still time.”
Mercy turned to follow him to the front of the train. When she did, the city of Hosanna appeared on the horizon, the first time she had seen it. The morning light reflected off the smooth glass of a skyscraper, creating a second sun. Windmills of every shape spun on the rooftops—some round like sunflowers, others with three enormous propellers, shaped like the wings of a swan. All of it formed into a sea of metal and brick where a green valley should have been. Every path that the rahvek revealed—even the ones that scraped at Augur’s mind—led here, on this single track into the future. These people trying to stop her could never understand. Their journey would end, one way or another.
Chapter 23
Welkom
Mort(e) opened the door and stepped out of the driver’s seat. The train had entered a straightaway, cutting between another town and the highway. Here, the houses were more densely packed together, many of them with rusted vehicles still parked in the driveways. On the rooftops, people of all species had gathered to watch the train enter the city limits. A dog with a pup on his shoulders waved like an idiot, like some toy with the string pulled. On the roof of an office building, a family of rodents lifted a sign that read welkom in giant red letters.
Something landed on the flatbed only a few feet from Mort(e). It was a hunk of bread, freshly baked as far as he could tell. Bread. For wolves. These fucking people.
Mort(e) could not remember a train zipping through his neighborhood before the Change. And yet, if he had read the maps correctly, the house where he grew up and fell in love could not be far from here. Something must have remained from the quarantine. Perhaps the Queen had decimated everything except his master’s home and the little
square of sunlight where he spent most of his days. It would be a nice spot to fall asleep and never wake.
Behind the train, a great cloud gathered in the streets. More trucks and cars and motorcycles appeared, disturbing the dust that had caked this suburb for over a decade. As Mort(e) suspected, signal fires burned in the hills. A chorus of howls rolled along, barely audible over the clatter of the train. All the wolves would descend on the city now. It was what the wolves and their sycophantic puppy allies had always wanted. A straight fight. How many of these gawkers knew about it? How many of them prayed for this day to come?
Fine, Mort(e) thought. Let’s die together.
He turned to the front of the train and saw the full devastation of the coach where the Sarcops had cut through the humans. With the roof torn off, the broken walls jutted upward in ragged spikes and valleys. Most of the bodies overlapped in the center aisle. A human sat in one of the seats, his hands folded in his lap, his head spun completely around, the neck purple and swollen. The only survivor would not last much longer. He leaned against the wall under the fire alarm. With his spine broken, the man lazily covered a puncture wound on his stomach. The tattoo on his face became like that a sad dog waiting for scraps from the dinner table.
Strangely, the doorframe remained intact. Rather than hop over the sharp metal, Mort(e) slid the door to the side until it broke free of its moorings and flopped onto the first row of seats. Across the aisle, D’Arc and Falkirk huddled beside the baggage rack. She had pulled her knees into her chest. He placed his arm around her neck, as if she would float away if he let go. The wind carried their voices away. But since they kept repeating themselves, Mort(e) eventually caught their words.
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