He lifted his head and looked to my left, his jaw flexing. Dust and grit rained from his hair onto my face. I coughed, and he looked down, his eyes widening as though he were surprised to find me alive beneath him.
I coughed and croaked. “Is it dead?”
“It’s down…”
The wyvern let out a gods-awful whine that spurred Jack into motion again. He pulled me off the ground and into a run. I looked back to see the creature thrashing about, clawing its own eye out.
“There… goes… my… knife,” I said, between breaths.
Jack snorted, the sound combining with the memory of Jack twice tucking me in close, not to kill but to keep safe.
Chapter 18
Day
Jack stood between the tracks, staring into the enormous tunnel mouth.
There was no light at the end of it, just complete darkness.
If I went in there, I wasn’t coming out.
“We’ll go around,” I said.
“There is no going around, unless you want to take a week’s detour in minus twenty temperatures.”
The tunnel burrowed through the mountains. I didn’t really want to climb the snow-capped peaks either, but that wall of black would eat me, just like everything else out here.
Jack held out his hand.
Was he expecting me to take it?
He looked up. His bangs fell over his eyes while the rest of the messy locks fell about his cheeks. His shirt had lost a few buttons and his once perfectly pressed black pants had grayed, edges frayed.
“Take my hand. I’ll walk you through it,” he said, like having a vampire escort you into a dark hole in the ground was perfectly reasonable.
“It’s fine…” I rolled my shoulders and started forward, plunging into the dark. Immediately, the chilled air sank beneath my skin and sucked out all my warmth. I’d gotten deep inside the dark soup before stumbling over a railroad tie. At least, I hoped it was just a railroad tie. It was so dark I could have been walking over dead bodies without knowing it.
Jack’s fingers claimed mine. His were surprisingly warm.
“How long after this?” I’d spoken quietly, but my voice still barreled ahead in an endless echo. We wouldn’t be sneaking past anything living in here.
“Three days. We’re making good time.”
I lifted my free hand and could barely see it in front of my face. Jack walked confidently beside me, his vampire eyes adapted for complete darkness. They’d lived in it once, before deciding our world better suited them.
I stumbled again and swore. I didn’t hear Jack laugh, but I could hear his smug smile in his silence.
“You don’t have long to save your demon friend’s soul,” he said, dropping that bombshell at my feet.
“Why do you care?” It came out harsh, even for me.
“I don’t, not about him.”
“Right, so why bring it up?” He was trying to distract me from the fact I was drowning in darkness. I’d take it.
“Do you know how to help him?” he asked.
“No,” I admitted. “I was getting close, but I thought I had more time… and then Etienne happened, and here we are.” I wouldn’t be able to save Rafe. He’d be stuck as soulless. It hadn’t been my fault. If anyone was to blame, it was Lilith, but she wouldn’t fix him. To think he’d be a cold, heartless bastard for the rest of his very long life when I knew how he’d been very different before… it hurt inside, like many things hurt inside lately.
“I can help you,” Jack said.
I walked on, his warm hand in mine. In the dark, there was nothing else to see or feel or even hear, just my thudding heart and our footfalls. “Why?”
“Must I have a reason?”
It mattered, because I’d owe him, if he helped me. “Always.” I waited, but with no answer forthcoming, I sighed. “How then?”
“You must summon both the phantom and the demon into the same summoning circle. The demon summoning is easy enough, but once inside, the incubus will have to perform a similar summoning to pull the phantom to him. Only Raphael can reclaim his soul, if the incubus is strong enough.”
That didn’t sound so bad. Rafe was a brawler. I’d once seen him knock a vampire twice his weight on his ass with two punches. He’d used his tail to poke him in the eye first, but even so, Rafe had floored him in less than a second. But Rafe had been angling for a fight back then. Now, soulless, he’d told me there was nothing wrong with him. Would he fight for a soul he believed he didn’t want? “The books said it had to happen within a few days of him losing his soul. It’s already been that long.”
“The summoning must happen before the phantom feeds again. As there’s little for them to feed on around the station, his soul should be safe for a while.”
That didn’t change the fact that, to get home, we still needed to get through this tunnel, whatever lay beyond, and the phantom-infested barrens.
“Why help me, Jack?”
“I assume you care for him.”
“No, yes, but I mean, why are you saying this?” His hand still wrapped mine in warmth, and it felt… right, in all the wrong ways. I knew I should push him away. I could get through this tunnel without him, although it would take longer. I shouldn’t want to feel his touch, should I? Just knowing he was here chased away my fear of being alone in a big wide world I had no experience in.
“Lilith is a powerful ally,” he finally answered. He wanted to help Rafe so he could get Lilith on his side.
“Yeah, except maybe she doesn’t want him restored…”
“Why wouldn’t she—ah—” he cut himself off.
“Ah?” I frowned. “What does ‘ah’ mean?”
A metallic twang rang ahead, like a distant bell chiming, growing louder and louder.
“Ah,” Jack said.
“Ah again?”
“I was concerned this might happen.”
“What—” The chime pinged through the tracks and traveled on behind us. “Ah,” I said. A train. Of course it was.
And I couldn’t see either exit.
“It’s fine.” He drew me to one side. “Press close against this wall.” He lifted my hand, pressed it against cold brick, then held it there.
It wasn’t fine. These trains were huge and loud and hot and would fill this tunnel, boiling the air with steam. Jack would think it was fine. He didn’t need to breathe.
“We should have gone over the top,” I muttered.
The light came first, a growing pinprick in the distance. The tracks twanged and hummed, signaling imminent danger. Brighter, the light glowed. I couldn’t hear the engine yet, but soon it would be screaming.
Light filled the tunnel with shades of gray, bleaching Jack’s frown. He stared up the tracks. Fine, my ass. His face was pinched with worry. He saw me looking and frowned harder. The train’s whistle screamed. I yanked my hand from under his.
Distant thunder rumbled the air. It wouldn’t be a quaint puffing train. They never were. More high-value cargo, maybe, and this time, I’d be a single step from its huge wheels.
I pressed my back against the wall and spread my hands to hold myself in place. I’d have preferred to face the rakshasi again.
“Lynher…” He had to say it loud with the engine rumbling closer.
“Will you stop calling me that.” I looked away from the light and up at Jack. The light turned him ghostly, but his eyes shone. Even now, with his lips set in a grim line, his expression locked, he had something, and I felt that same powerful pull from him, like he could absorb all the light and noise and make it disappear out of sheer will. But as the engine thundered and the tracks jumped, there would be no vanishing this iron beast. We just had to get through it.
His hand found mine again, and I let it.
A hot wave of wind pushed ahead of the train. My hair lashed around my face. I couldn’t look. Not anymore. The noise was too much. I squeezed my eyes closed, my heart thumping against my ribs. The whistle screamed again.
> When the train launched past, it tried to rip me from the wall and throw me under its wheels. The wind pulled at my body, its fingers digging in, hoping to dislodge me. I couldn’t breathe, and when I did, steam sizzled my tongue. Jack’s arm, pinned across my chest, held me to the wall. On and on the wheels raced by, then the carriages clattered, their hinges clanging and moaning, and then it was over. The wind rushed out, dragging with it the steam and dust.
I gasped.
It was over.
A tingling shiver ran down my spine.
Gods, what a rush.
Jack’s arm opened, letting me step forward. I slumped over and panted hard, bracing my hands against my thighs. “Damn…”
The train was fast dragging the light away, and when Jack didn’t say anything, I looked up. His smudged gray outline slid down the wall and slumped on its ass.
“Jack?”
He wasn’t moving. I reached for his shoulder, managed to find it, and stroked upward to his neck. His skin burned hot beneath my fingertips.
“Jack? What’s wrong?” I traveled my fingers higher to his jaw and cupped his face. Was he out cold? Was he hurt? I couldn’t see enough to know. Why wasn’t he answering? “Wake up.”
I roamed my other hand up his hard chest, feeling for a sign of life. I couldn’t feel a heartbeat or hear him breathing, but I was doing enough of that for the both of us. “Dammit, Jack, you prick… You can’t leave me here.”
He gasped.
His hand locked on my wrist, holding my hand off his chest. “Lynher…” he growled.
In the dark, his eyes threw their silvery glow, and between one moment and the next, the ruthless, blood-hungry thing he was inside peered out from behind his gaze. Then he blinked, and it was gone, along with their strange shine.
“What happened? Are you hurt?”
“Nothing… No, I’m… ” He audibly swallowed. “She knows.”
“She?”
He looked down, saw how he had my wrist trapped, and let go so suddenly I rocked backward.
“We need to hurry.” He was up and moving and gone, leaving me to scrabble around in the dark, following the tunnel wall so I didn’t turn myself around and head out the wrong way. He found my hand again, but the touch wasn’t nearly as soft or warm as before. He pulled me along, barely letting me get my feet under me. “Hurry or I’ll carry you out of here.”
“I’ll shove my stake in your heart before I let you carry me anywhere.”
When we made it out the tunnel, dusk had the sky bleeding red. Jack freed my hand and marched on between the tracks, his limp awkward again. “Keep up!”
I was hungry, tired, and thirsty, but I wouldn’t be the one slowing us down. The station was a few days away. We’d make it, even though the she Jack had mentioned had realized her overseer wasn’t where he was supposed to be. It had to be the queen. Who else could render him so useless? Who else could make him afraid? And who else would he be running from, if not the only monster worse than him?
Chapter 19
Night
Something was wrong with Jack. More wrong than normal. He’d stumbled a few times in the last hour. Every dusk on this journey, he’d gone off to feed, but not tonight. Tonight we weren’t stopping, and it showed in Jack’s weariness, but he wasn’t the only exhausted one.
Blisters burned my feet, I staggered too often, and my belly had turned to knots trying to eat itself. I needed rest, fresh water, and another rabbit wouldn’t go amiss, but Jack hadn’t replied when I’d asked him to stop, and now it was night, and we were both weak, resulting in a whole lot of stupid.
Jack stumbled and fell to his knees, muttering a curse. I circled in front of him, planted my hands on my hips, and stared him into looking up. “We rest.”
“Can’t.” He gritted his teeth and pulled on his leg, trying to make it work again. My wretched human heart did a little sympathetic flip, and rolling my eyes, I offered my hand.
“She’ll find us,” he said, grasping my hand and allowing me to pull him back onto his feet. He tried to straighten his wrinkled and stained shirt cuffs, like he thought he could put all of his pieces together and recreate that impeccably dressed gentleman act. That ship had sailed. I knew I looked like shit, but he looked like death. His cheeks had hollowed and his hazel eyes had grown hard and metallic. If he smiled, I’d probably see fangs.
“If anything finds us, we’re as good as dead,” I said. “There was an old building back there.” I nodded back the way we’d trudged. “We should rest up inside for the night.”
He was still fixated on his cuffs, trying to make the fabric lie correctly against his wrist, probably so I wouldn’t see the tight lines around his eyes. He was in pain. Had he been human, he’d have been panting and sweating, but now he was suffering; all that human nonsense was just baggage he’d discarded along the way. The more vampiric he looked, the more he was hurting.
Maybe I should leave him for “her.”
The station couldn’t have been much farther. I peered into the dark, sensing home was close. If I stuck to the tracks and stayed quiet, I’d make it.
“Miss Aris?” Jack said. “You are the hostess, are you not?” He’d found his overseer tone again, and even as pale as the ghost he pretended to be, he lifted his chin and found some typical VG haughtiness. “Gerome taught you to care for everyone, even those you despise. So help me.”
How many humans had reached out to him, begging for help? How many had he slapped down? How many orphaned children had he sent to the farms? And he had the nerve to plead for my help. A human. It must have cost him a great deal of pride to ask.
I should leave him to die. Something out here probably ate vampires. Or maybe his queen would find him in the dirt. It was all he deserved.
Kensey wouldn’t leave him. Even knowing everything Jack had done, Kensey never turned anyone away. “Anyone can be saved,” he’d told me once. Gods, my brother was too damn good for this world.
“Go then,” he grunted, tugging at his leg and hobbling forward. “But stay on the tracks. The iron will keep you safe from most things.”
I sighed at his back, swore under my breath, and grabbed his arm. “Gods and spices, we’re going back to the shed. Don’t argue or I will leave you. I should leave you…”
He leaned close, trying to maintain some dignity as we stumbled back along the path. I’d been up close and personal with Jack too many times, but this was the first time I’d felt him tremble. Part of me enjoyed seeing him weak, but a smaller part, the softer part, found the change alarming. If something like Ghost was afraid of the queen, the rest of us had no chance against her. If she was really coming, how could I stop that?
We hobbled back to the shed, half hidden in the undergrowth. It was easily missed and made for good cover at night. I rested Jack against the wall on one side and crouched against the opposite, watching him rub his leg.
“You should leave,” he said sometime later. “Why haven’t you?” He’d pulled his coat closed but shivered anyway. It wasn’t the cold making him shiver; he didn’t feel it. It wasn’t the pain from his leg either. Something inside was making him sick, and it had started after he’d blacked out in the tunnel.
“Your queen is doing this to you from a thousand miles away. She’s in your head, right?”
He nodded tightly and rested his head against the wall. His eyes fluttered closed. “It’s a little more complicated than that, but simply put, yes, she’s in my head.”
“Can’t you… stop it somehow? Block her out?”
He either smiled or winced. In the shadows, I couldn’t tell which. “No.”
He was resisting her. I hadn’t known such a thing was possible. Did resisting his queen make him different? Gerome had told me the vampires were all the same at their core. They knew nothing beyond their service to the queen. Drones were the most obvious example of the control she exerted, and although more human in appearance, Jack had the same genetic design.
“Why run?” I
whispered.
His expression twitched. “Have you never wanted to see outside your prison?”
“I’m not in a prison.”
Now he definitely smiled. Bastard. “You should leave me. Why haven’t you?”
“Because you want me to.” Maybe staying with him was stupid, but vampires didn’t send their prey off with no hope of chasing them down. And the times he’d saved me…? Maybe those times had been to get back to the station, but not this time. He was sick, and he’d told me to leave, even though we both knew he could kill me, drink my body dry, and make himself right as rain by morning. The only possible explanation was that Jack cared that I kept on breathing.
“Why do you think the station will keep you safe?” I asked.
He opened his eyes and lowered his gaze. “It is my only sanctuary, Lynher Aris. My first and last hope.” He paused, his glare fixed on mine, mining it for something I couldn’t fathom. “I don’t expect you to understand. You understand so little. That is Gerome’s legacy.”
“How well did you know Gerome?”
“Well enough.” He grimaced. “You are like him. Every night you lie and manipulate with that silver tongue of yours. Gerome was a master of the dance.”
He spoke of someone I didn’t recognize. The Gerome I knew was kind and true and good, like Kensey.
“I don’t trust you,” Jack added. “I watched you at the station, before all this, from the moment we met on that platform and you strode through a crowd of vampires like you had all the power in the worlds. You wrap the Dark Ones around your little finger. They believe you work for them, but you have them all working for you, and none of them see it. You’re human, and you hide behind that weakness, turning it into a strength. You, Miss Aris, are unsettling. I’ve only met one other like you, and she’s currently in my head, demanding my return.”
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