by Karen Chance
I could have kissed her, but didn’t have time. Because my mother was standing to the side, talking to him urgently, although the beating he was taking made it unlikely he was paying much attention or that he had shields up—around either of them.
There were people packed all around her, and no place to shift closer, so I just started pushing forward, climbing or crawling or jumping over anyone in my way. Outraged voices rose all around me, and several people pushed back, but I barely noticed. Mircea had gone for the mage at the same moment, and if he could distract him for just a couple of seconds—
And then the train rocked hard around us, sending people staggering left and then right as it almost left the tracks. I didn’t know what had happened until the back window exploded in a wash of bright red energy. And not just the back one. The metal body of the car must have acted like some kind of conductor, because window after window burst in a long line, like firecrackers on a string.
Glass pelted the screaming crowd, which surged to its feet, people scrambling after bags and umbrellas and jostling me on all sides. Then the lights blew out, plunging the entire train into darkness. And that was it for the passengers, who collectively rushed away from the chaos and toward the only door out.
Which happened to be the one we’d just reached.
I jumped for my mother, but someone stepped on my instep and someone else elbowed me in the ribs, and then I was knocked backward entirely, shoved into the side of the car. My head hit hard enough for me to see stars, but I struggled back to my feet anyway, mainly to avoid being trampled. The people in the last car were pushing into this one, the ones in this one were pushing into the next, and the ones in the next were putting up the kind of fuss you’d expect with three or four hundred crazed passengers trying to stuff themselves into an already overstuffed area.
But the commotion meant that I couldn’t hear Mircea, and the lack of light meant that I couldn’t see him. Or the mage. Or my mother.
Goddamnit, I’d had her! I’d had her. If I didn’t get another chance, I was going to—
Freak out at the sight of a man slithering in the missing window beside me.
An emergency light had come on and was flickering dimly at the front of the car, giving me an intermittent look at his face. But for a moment, I didn’t believe it. Because it wasn’t a face I’d expected to see again.
I had assumed that the Spartoi had ended up underneath the wheels, because there had been nowhere else for them to go. There was almost no clearance around the train, not on top, where the roof almost skinned the ceiling of the tunnel, and not on the sides, where the curved walls were streaming away maybe six to eight inches from the windows. It was physically impossible for a grown man to squeeze into a space that small; hell, I couldn’t have done it, and he had at least seventy pounds on me.
But he was coming in anyway.
I watched, torn between fascination and horror, as his body seemed to shrink, to elongate, to flow with an almost serpentine movement. He could have broken out the rest of the glass in the window, giving himself a bit more space. But he didn’t bother. He just oozed through the small opening like he’d suddenly gone boneless, an amorphous mass of skin and flesh and distorted, running features, including a patch of floating hair with no skull to give it definition anymore, and two round eyeballs swimming in the gelatinous mass of his face.
Eyeballs that were nonetheless looking straight at me.
I made a sound between panic and revulsion and stumbled back, and he oozed the rest of the way through the window. And as soon as he did, he started to solidify, bones and muscles and assorted free-range body parts all snapping back into place, like a balloon inflating. And I suddenly stopped worrying about losing my lunch and started worrying about the rifle he was aiming at the crowd.
Or, more precisely, at the back of my mother’s head. I didn’t know why he was concentrating on her with me standing right there, but at that moment, I didn’t care.
I could see her in the next car, her copper hair gleaming under the emergency lights as she looked around frantically, as if trying to find someone. She started pushing forward, calling out something I couldn’t hear over the sound of the screaming crowd and the rattling train and my own blood rushing in my ears. And then I grabbed the long barrel and forced it down, even as he fired.
I didn’t see if I’d been fast enough. I didn’t see anything, because a vicious blow sent me skidding backward, until my head stopped me by smashing into a metal railing. In the next compartment.
For a moment, I couldn’t move, too stunned to do anything but lie there as the car swam sickeningly around me. Two head blows in quick succession had me trying to decide between passing out and puking up breakfast, or possibly doing both at the same time. I rolled over, glass crunching under my hands, but some old clubbing advice about never passing out on your back got me onto my hands and knees. I looked up, dazed and disoriented.
In time to see the gun leveled at my head.
I stared at it for a split second, my eyes crossing, and then I tried to shift. But my head wasn’t clear enough, and even if it had been, panic makes shifting difficult. And nothing panics me quite so much as staring down the wrong end of a gun. I tried again anyway, but the mage squeezed off a shot at the same moment, and I knew I was dead.
Only for some reason I wasn’t, despite the sound of the shot and the smell of gunpowder in the air. It told me I hadn’t shifted, but I couldn’t figure out how else he’d missed me from all of two yards away. And then I looked up and bumped my head on the suitcase, which was still bobbing about despite having had a smoking chunk carved out of its butt.
I didn’t know where it had come from, since I hadn’t brought it with me. But I didn’t ask questions, just grabbed the thing for a shield I didn’t need because Mircea had arrived. And he was no longer looking so interested in caution.
He snatched the Spartoi’s gun out of his hand, the metal squeezing up through his fingers like Play-Doh. The demigod looked from his ruined gun to the enraged vampire and back again, and for some reason, he seemed more perplexed than frightened. And then Mircea used the gun to thwack him into the opposite side of the now-empty compartment.
The blow had looked effortless, almost casual, like someone swinging a golf club on a Sunday afternoon when he really doesn’t give a damn if the ball goes into the hole or not. And yet it sent the Spartoi far enough into a metal side panel to bow it outward in the shape of his body. And I decided that my estimate of the clearance must have been about right. Because we were suddenly treated to the nailson-a-chalkboard sound of metal being dragged over concrete, as his steel-covered ass scraped along the tunnel wall outside.
He didn’t move, and I thought he was done for, was sure of it. To the point that I whipped my head around to see if my mother was all right. But the movement was too fast for my aching skull, folding my knees under me after a halfhearted attempt to stand. Mircea moved to help me, and therefore he also wasn’t watching when the Spartoi peeled himself out of the panel and jumped—straight at us.
Mircea did sense him in time to turn, to get an arm up—which the Spartoi used to throw him the remaining length of the car. I stared as he busted through the shattered back window, twisted in midair, caught the bottom of the jagged windowpane and propelled himself back inside. Only to get hit with a spell that sent him sailing what looked like half a mile down the tunnel.
All that took far less time to happen than it did to say, and then a blast hit the suitcase I was clutching hard enough to toss me back like a rag doll. I felt something scrape across my back and something else rip what felt like a chunk out of my scalp, and then I was tumbling end over end into almost pitch-darkness. Until my back hit a wall, hard enough to knock the air out of my lungs, to cost me my grip on my floating life preserver, and to send me tumbling to the floor.
My knees hit gravel and my hands hit steel and blood was cascading into my eyes and I couldn’t breathe. So it took me a second to real
ize that I’d been tossed back into the tunnel. But that somehow, I was still alive.
I had to be. Death didn’t hurt this much.
But I didn’t understand why until I looked up to see the Spartoi walking toward the next compartment as the train sped off. He didn’t bother to look back, didn’t even wait until I was safely out of sight before turning away. Like he hadn’t bothered to waste power disposing of me.
Blood trickled into my eyes as I sat there, understanding flooding me along with something that made my hands shake and my cheeks burn. Mircea had been a threat, and had been dealt with accordingly. But in the Spartoi’s eyes, I wasn’t worth pursuing. I wasn’t worth killing. I was just some minor nuisance to be taken care of on his way to murdering my mother, and I didn’t think so motherfucker.
I grabbed the suitcase and leaned forward, and the little platform shot ahead like a bat out of hell. Mircea grabbed me around the waist a second later, appearing out of the darkness and vaulting up behind me. He said a really filthy phrase in Romanian that I probably wasn’t supposed to know.
I couldn’t have agreed more.
The train had disappeared around a bend and we leaned left and followed, scooting around the corner at what had to be fifty miles an hour. We didn’t bother discussing a plan, because the plan was simple: find him; kill him. I actually wanted that bastard’s head more than the kidnapper’s, who at least didn’t appear to want my mother dead.
Right after we took out the goddamned Spartoi.
I leaned forward a little more, to the point that I risked tipping over, trying to milk every ounce of speed out of the spell. It should have been insanely frightening, rocketing into a pitch-dark tunnel with seemingly no end in sight, and no way to know if we were about to take a header into a wall. But apparently fear and fury don’t work together, because I didn’t feel anything but hurry, hurry, hurry thrumming through my veins and echoing in my ears, along with the growing rattle of the train up ahead.
And then light flooded the tunnel and we passed a station filled with people staring in the opposite direction, probably wondering why the hell the train had just barreled by without stopping. Or maybe they were wondering about something else. Because a couple of seconds later, we zipped into the tunnel’s mouth and almost ran into three figures streaking along ahead, barely discernable against the gloom.
It looked like the remaining Spartoi had arrived a little late to the party. But they were catching up fast, courtesy of some motor scooters they’d commandeered from somewhere and levitated. Two were on one and one was on another and they were tearing down the tunnel at a rate of speed that left them little more than blurs against the night.
I stared at them, horrified, because I’d just seen what one of these things could do. There was no way we could let three more get to that train. Just no way.
“Mircea—”
“I know. Get me close,” he said, like I had a choice. The damn tunnel was twelve, maybe thirteen feet across, and they were right in the middle of it. Which meant that anywhere I went was going to be close.
“Why?” I asked anyway.
And then we shot in between them, and I found out why.
Mircea savagely kicked the guy on one scooter, sending him crashing headfirst into the wall. And then he leaned over and kept him there, as we and the scooter and the guy shot ahead. Or, at least, most of the guy did. I was thankful that the headlight on the thing was jumping around, so that I didn’t get much more than a glimpse of the black streak left by his head as Mircea ruthlessly ground it into solid cement.
And then kicked him off and jumped on his scooter. The body went flying, tumbling back into darkness, and the scooter ricocheted away from the wall. And straight at the one driven by the other two guys.
It looks like caution is kaput for this round, I thought blankly.
But we’d had the advantage of surprise on the first attack, and we definitely didn’t now. One of the Spartoi jumped onto the front of Mircea’s scooter and then flung himself to the side, trying to tip him over. But Mircea flexed his thighs and stayed seated, which meant that they shot down the tube spinning sideways, over and over, as there was no inertia in midair to stop them.
I couldn’t help because the other Spartoi had spotted me and was right on my tail. I felt a bullet brush past my shoulder and another graze my thigh, leaving a line of searing pain all the way up to my hip. But it could have been worse—and probably would have been, but the suitcase steered like a wounded buffalo and was bouncing around all over the place.
But that wouldn’t help for long, and I didn’t have time to come up with something that might. Other than the definite impression that being the one in front was not a plus here. I pulled back on the suitcase, the Spartoi shot by me, and then I hurled myself ahead, getting right on his tail for a change.
The Spartoi spun, gun in hand, just as I aimed my bracelet at him and two ghostly daggers arrowed in his direction. They looked brighter than usual in the dim light, but had all of their usual enthusiasm for any kind of violence. I flung myself to the side to avoid any more bullets, so I didn’t see them land. But I did see the headlight from the scooter sling wildly around the tunnel, heard it crash into the wall, felt the heat when its engine decided “to hell with this” and exploded in a ball of orange fire.
I slowed down, the case turning in a wide arc as I stared at the flames licking up the side and roof of the tunnel. And felt vaguely sick. I hadn’t had a choice; I knew that. But it didn’t make me feel a hell of a lot better. I could count on one hand the number of lives I’d taken, and I wasn’t thrilled about increasing the number.
Only it looked like I hadn’t yet.
Because someone walked out of the flames, charred and burned and leaving blazing bits of himself behind on the tunnel floor. His clothes were mostly burnt off, his hair was on fire, his skin was cracked and charred and running, and fiery light was gleaming on the blood cascading down his body. But he was on his feet, acting like he didn’t even feel it.
And he was smiling.
Chapter Thirty-seven
I’d like to say that I planned what happened next, but I’d be lying. All I could think about was getting the hell out of there, but the Spartoi went for me at the same time. I started to turn back in the direction of the train, and he leapt in my path and grabbed the suitcase.
Although, in retrospect, that turned out to be okay, because the spell was a strong one and I was leaning forward with everything I had. And instead of stopping me, he was dragged along underneath, his feet making rhythmic bump, bump, bump sounds on the crossties.
At least, they did until a very alive-feeling hand gripped my thigh right over the bullet wound and I almost whitedout in pain. My body jerked and the scarred piece of luggage went shooting into the floor, hitting down hard and then scraping the Spartoi’s entire body across gravel.
I hadn’t planned that, either, but I damn sure kept the pressure on once it happened, knowing from personal experience exactly how sharp that gravel was. The chunks were big and there had never been any rain down here to wear off the knifelike edges. They were also coated with a layer of black grit or dirt or dust or whatever the hell—anyway, it was finer than sand, as it proved by flying up in a choking cloud all around us, leaving me gasping for air and the demigod cursing inventively beneath me.
But he still didn’t let go. Instead, he pushed off the ground, trying to use his extra weight to flip us, I guess to give me a taste of my own medicine. Which might have worked if we hadn’t hit a bend in the tunnel, which neither of us saw coming, thanks to the Underground’s idea of adequate illumination. I might not have seen it, but I felt it when we hit, and heard it when something of his went crunch.
It was alarmingly satisfying.
It was also useless, because the next moment, he flipped us anyway, using the wall for leverage, fighting and scratching and kicking as best as possible from two different sides of the case.
“Just fucking die,” he s
narled, and I actually saw the expression through the diffuse light sifting in from somewhere up ahead.
I tilted my head back and saw the body of the train, which had either slowed to a crawl or was stationary. And either way would do.
“You first,” I snarled back, and flipped us one last time. Last, because a second later we slammed into the back of the train.
Or, to be more precise, he did.
Being on top, I sailed through the missing back window to experience the joys of rug burn on a whole new level. Which, all things considered, was better than smashing into a hunk of steel face-first. Although it wasn’t feeling so much that way at the moment.
I rolled to my knees after I rolled to a stop, almost to the door at the far end of the compartment. My body was crying out for rest, for oblivion, but my brain was telling it sternly to shut up. But it kind of looked like the body might win, because when I tried to stand, I staggered and wobbled and went back down. And not just because of pain and dizziness and a distinct desire to throw up.
There was something wrong with my feet.
I managed to focus bleary eyes on my filthy, bloody soles, and the glass, gravel and God knew what sticking out of them. Clearly, the Underground was not the place to go barefoot. I doubted I could walk, much less run, in this state.
And then the Spartoi’s head poked up over the serrated edge of the window. He would have looked like he was doing some kind of old vaudeville act, the kind that makes people wince these days at its deliberate racism. Except that blackface didn’t usually involve a ton of blood, a halfmissing scalp or a bunch of gravel embedded in the raw flesh all along one side of the face.
I screamed, and he grinned and flopped another arm over the ledge. And this one held a gun. And I discovered that—surprise—I could run after all, a scrambling, hobbling gait that got me through to the next compartment just before bullets started strafing this one. I stared at the back of the seat in front of me as it was quickly shredded and tried to think, only that wasn’t going so well. My brain was frozen in horror and seemed to be stuck on a loop screaming no, no, no, no over and over, which was less than useful.