Fate of Flames

by Sarah Raughley

  “Effigies heal.” Chae Rin pulled Belle up by her collar. “And people die. What, you think you’re the only one who’s ever lost somebody?”

  Her voice echoed into the night. Belle gritted her teeth, but couldn’t look the younger girl in the eyes.

  “This is bigger than you.” Chae Rin shook her. “This is bigger than Natalya. This is bigger than us. Look around you. Look where we are.”

  Lake had just come outside, quiet as a cat. She stayed close to the door, anxiously watching the night.

  “We have to do something,” I said.

  “And you, too!” Letting Belle drop to the ground, Chae Rin pointed at Lake, shivering by the door. “Stop shaking! We have to do this together.”

  But Lake wasn’t the only one. I could hear the quiet tremor in Chae Rin’s voice.

  “The four of us.” Chae Rin straightened up. “We have to do this together.”

  It was a command and a plea at the same time. I took Lake’s hand and squeezed it gently, like Lake would have done, like Lake had done for me not too long ago.

  The phantom came at us from nowhere, quick as a thief out of the darkness.

  It was so fast I thought it was a missile at first. Screeching, it rocketed its long body between the cars with a crash, so close Belle had to jump out of the way to avoid being taken with the railing.

  We ducked, shielding ourselves from the destroyed metal hurtling through the air. Screaming. People were screaming, in that car and the next.

  Saul’s siege had begun.

  I ran inside the car to find passengers shrieking and gripping each other as they cowered in their seats.

  The phantoms rose out from the floor. First smoke, then bone, then flesh, all incomplete, seeping inside from the metal, linking and twisting into a shape I knew all too well. Saul’s wolves.

  “Get down!” Rhys ducked down just as two phantoms jumped at him. With the swiftness of an experienced fighter, he pulled two long knives from the holsters strapped around his legs and clicked them on. A hazy blue electricity zipped down the blades, giving them an extra, serrated point, which he promptly jammed through a wolf’s head.

  “Help! Oh god, help!”

  “Oh my god!”

  I couldn’t tell who was shrieking what in the pleas and whimpers surrounding me. People were already beginning to squeeze through the windows.

  “Stop!” I tried to get to them, but a phantom reached me first. Grunting, I grabbed a man’s briefcase to shield myself from the snapping jaw. The force of the impact shoved me onto the lap of the briefcase owner, his paper files flying into the air.

  “I can’t take this!” The man shook his head. “No, no! I have to get out of here!”

  Shoving me away, he opened his window and dove, headfirst, outside.

  “No, wait!” But I couldn’t stop him. I watched, frozen in horror as his frail body tumbled down the steep hill with the others, tumbling into the many waiting tentacles of a rotting phantom at its foot. I’d known that phantoms could take many forms. I’d known that they took the appearance of beasts and ancient monsters, but this one . . . I’d never in my life thought that I would see something so grotesque. Its head, round and pulsating, split in two, sharp, twisted teeth frothing as it snared wayward passengers. A horror movie made flesh.

  Somewhere, Lake was screaming.

  I had no time to watch the fate of the man whose briefcase I’d stolen. Another wolf leapt at me. I rolled over the top of the seat, blocking its jaws with the briefcase.

  “S-someone help me!” I cried, bucking under its weight.

  A blade pierced the wolf’s head, pinning it to the side of the wall. Belle’s sword. I backed away quickly as Belle grabbed the hilt, pulling it out with one tug, letting the phantom slide to the ground.

  Outside, another phantom torpedoed toward us from across the countryside, its long body flying fast through the night air. I braced myself for the collision, but it never came. The hill shuddered beneath us and the phantom collided with a wall of earth instead.

  The impact shook the train car. I tumbled back, grabbing on to my seat to keep myself steady. I could see the wall of earth crumbling and the phantom’s broken head falling with the dirt and soil.

  “Chae Rin!” I climbed onto the seat. “Where is she?”

  “The roof.” Belle flipped her sword. “And if she’s not careful, she’ll level this entire hill.”

  “E-everyone!” Lake. She was at the back of the train car, blood dripping down her gorgeous face. “Clear the way!”

  Rhys and I did what we could to get the passengers into the seats while Belle slashed and hacked the wolves still leaping at her.

  “Out of the way!” Lake bellowed one more time and lifted her arms. Belle had just dived into the seats as a torrent of wind barreled through the hall, so sharp and fast it almost looked like a blade, dissecting phantoms and slicing through the floor. Breathing heavily, Lake fell to her knees just as I heard another crash. Chae Rin was practically terra-forming the landscape, but the car was already unsteady on the rails.

  It started tipping.

  “Damn it!” After grabbing hold of an armrest, Rhys looked around, holding a little girl in the crook of his bloodied arm. “Maia? Maia?”

  He was calling out to me, frantically, wildly, but the second I tried to answer, gravity flung me to the floor. With my cheek pressed against a forgotten sneaker between the seats, I tapped around with a sweaty hand, too shocked by the shifting gravity to fully register the pool of blood beneath my palms.

  We were going off the rails.

  “Victoria!”

  I managed to hear Belle scream even in the midst of the chaos.

  Lake? Did something happen to her?

  The car continued to tip under the weight of passengers colliding against the wall.

  Then the train car froze. Something stopped the momentum; I could feel the sheer force of it whipping against the walls from the outside. My own voice joined the confused gasps and whimpers as I pulled myself onto my knees and looked out the window.

  Lake. She was sliding down the hill, stopping the train car by summoning a violent torrent of wind. With her other hand she gripped Chae Rin’s arm.

  Chae Rin? She must have fallen off the train.

  But Lake couldn’t focus on the car, Chae Rin, and herself at the same time. She continued to slide back, unable to stop—sliding and sliding toward the monstrous phantom at the foot of the hill.

  “Lake!” The blood drained from my face. “Lake!”

  With a final burst of power, Lake managed to push the car back onto the train tracks at the very moment the phantom’s tendril caught her around her ankle. She and Chae Rin both shrieked as it dragged them down.

  I could barely breathe. The ground rumbled. I pressed a hand against the window, frantic. Chae Rin broke open a fault beneath the hill phantom, sucking it deep into the earth, but the suction was taking them with it. I tried to climb out the window to help, but a fresh wave of screams drew my attention toward the front of the car.

  Saul. He’d finally made his appearance, his wolves growling at his feet.

  They rushed toward me. I jumped into the hallway, pushing a little boy out of the way before the phantom could reach him. After kicking one phantom in the face, I caught the knife that Rhys tossed to me and jammed it into its skull while Belle and Rhys hacked their way to Saul.

  “Guys!”

  Was that Lake’s voice? I turned. She and Chae Rin were safe. I inhaled, relieved to see Lake’s foot finding the window. Chae Rin hopped through first, but the moment our eyes met, Chae Rin’s face twisted with shock.

  “Maia, watch out!”

  Saul’s phantom came from behind. I’d barely had time to turn before I felt a rough hand push me into an empty seat. Rhys cried out in pain.

  “Rhys!” I lifted myself off the seat, horrified to see the blood gushing from his chest.

  Belle hopped across the seats to get to him, throwing her sword, pier
cing the phantom before it could gnaw off his flesh, but I was the one who caught him as he fell to the ground.

  “Ow,” he said. An obvious understatement. He was shaking.

  There was so much blood. So much. I pressed against the wound to stop it from flowing, but there was just too much. It drenched my hands, soaked my jeans. Rhys’s blood. Rhys’s blood.

  “I’m sorry.” I swallowed a gasp as his blood spilled over my fingers. “I’m sorry.”

  Rhys’s eyelids fluttered as he stared up at me, his lips twitching as he struggled for breath. “Maia . . .”

  “Marian.”

  I could feel him. Saul. His breath raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

  “I need you to come with me,” he said.

  “No.” I gripped Rhys’s knife, ready.

  Rhys fought against pain and tried to heave himself off the floor, gasping for air as his body jerked and spasmed. He wouldn’t reach me. Saul moved too fast, lifting me up by my collar. With an almost unsettling gentleness, he touched the crook of my neck, and in the next second, I disappeared with him.

  I COULDN’T FEEL MY LIMBS.

  What I could feel was my body slamming against the grass and the cold prickling against my skin. When I tried to move my arms and legs, it was if the nerves were attached to nothing. With my eyelids stuck shut, I couldn’t even be sure I still had them.

  My head spun with the fury of an amusement ride, and my short, desperate breaths were the only proof I still had lungs. Saul was used to disappearing, but for me it was like being pulled apart from the inside, parts of me ripping out as Saul dragged my body in and out of the space-time continuum. Only after the spinning stopped was I able to feel my hand still gripping Rhys’s knife.

  With great effort, I pried my eyelids apart. Clutching the ground, I pushed myself up, dirt building beneath my fingernails. It was still dark. Where was I? I couldn’t see anything but fields and hills under the waxing moon. Where had Saul taken me?

  Grunting, I twisted my body around, only to gasp. Belle?

  What was she doing here? The last I remembered, the battle princess was jumping across seats to get to me. Somehow, Belle must have disappeared and reappeared with me, but she was in just as bad shape. Clutching her stomach, Belle lay on her back, writhing on the ground. Whatever flash of foolish hope Belle’s appearance might have sparked within me vanished just as quickly. She was a mess, and so was I. Neither of us were in any shape to fight.

  And fighting was exactly what we’d need to do.

  I heard his groaning first before I turned and saw him: Saul, stumbling toward the train.

  Train?

  I pulled myself to my knees and squinted, my eyes adjusting to the night. It was the train. Our train. It was still on the rails at the top of the steep hill, not even that far away. If I could just gather enough strength to blitz Saul from behind, maybe I could drag Belle back with me.

  A cold breeze laden with specks of snow brushed past my ears, gathering in Belle’s hands. She was re-forming her sword, determined to fight despite the fact that she could barely move. It was too risky. If I could feel the shift in the air and the sudden drop in temperature, Saul would too.

  I was right. Through sheer will alone, Belle managed to struggle to her feet, but the moment she tightened her grip on her sword’s hilt, long, vine-like limbs cracked through the ground beneath her. With lightning speed, they whipped around her, holding her in place. The phantom they belonged to remained hidden deep in the soil.

  One limb clasped her wrist and squeezed so tightly, her fingers trembled apart. The sword clattered to the ground before disintegrating into the air.

  “I have nothing against you,” said Saul. My body seized as he spoke. “I truly don’t. I didn’t know you’d grab hold of me the way you did. I’m sorry I took you with me. But this must be between Marian and myself alone.”

  Saul had changed. His posture was rigid and professional, his demeanor quiet and forthright. Even his eyes were different. He looked at us almost apologetically before turning back to the train. Maybe that was why it took me a few seconds to realize that his accent had changed as well, to a sharp, cool British lilt.

  Nick. He was Nick now.

  He faced the train, his legs shaking beneath him, his ragged pants and simple white shirt billowing in the wind along with his pale silver hair, now loose from its binds. He lifted both his arms, not easily, but with a sweeping, grand gesture that reminded me of Moses raising his staff to part the Red Sea. But it wasn’t the sea that rose.

  Phantoms. Long-bodied serpents, a class I knew too well now. They appeared from the other side of the train, arching their torsos over the track. Each car shook violently as the bodies collided against the metal. For a horrifying, dizzying second I thought the flesh, bone, and shadow would crush the train, but the phantoms only coiled around it, trapping the passengers inside. It was a relief, but not much of one.

  And then . . . the phantoms shuddered, their bones shifting and freezing. For a second, I thought Belle was behind it, but Belle could barely move, restrained by phantoms and still fighting off the effects of Saul’s transportation. She’d probably used up her last bit of strength summoning her sword. In the condition she was in, it’d be a miracle if she could even manage to make a snowflake.

  So then what was happening to the phantoms? Why did their bodies shiver and harden? And the sheet of ice sliding up their entire length encasing them in a pallid sheen . . . what the hell was that?

  It was Saul who answered my unspoken question. “I’ve learned much over the decades. Too much.” Lowering his arms, he turned to me. I could see the strain on his flushed face. “Petrification. It’s an ability all phantoms have. To become impenetrable. It should keep your friends from following us here.”

  Feebly, Belle struggled against her binds. “What are you—!”

  A tendril whipped around her mouth, silencing her.

  “Like I said.” Saul began toward me. “This is between Marian and me.”

  My whole body was crumbling. I managed to stand, placing myself between them, but the moment I felt steady on my feet, Saul pushed me back down.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ll discuss everything with you later. I promise.”

  He pulled something from his pocket and continued toward Belle. I could see only the tips sticking out from inside his fists, but I didn’t have to wonder for long. Belle gasped as Saul jammed the device in her neck.

  The inoculation gun . . . But that was a Sect device. Saul had felt the sting when I’d jammed it into him in Argentina. Now it was Belle wincing in pain.

  I was on my own.

  I looked up at him as he approached, a quiet rage burning my skin from the inside. “You gonna jam that thing in me, too?”

  “And return the favor? No. That would be counterintuitive.” He sheathed it in his pocket, pausing when he saw me inching away from him. “I just want to talk.”

  “About what?” I cried. “What do you want from me? Why did you come to Brooklyn? Why did you follow me here? How did you even escape? What are you . . . ?” I tried to swallow, but my throat was so dry. “What are you going to do with me?”

  Saul knelt beside me. It was the same Saul who’d attacked those cities and besieged the train, and I was still terrified. But his manner had become soft and careful. He maintained a respectful distance, watching over me with silent concern.

  Concern. No. It was a lie. It had to be. He was trying to sneak himself through the barbed wire I’d erected between us. He wouldn’t win. When he touched my hand and tried to pull me up, I yanked it away and scrambled back, my heart hammering against my chest. The fact that this made him look so sad infuriated me.

  He had no right.

  “I know I deserve this, but I don’t have much time,” said Saul. “Maybe it was the drugs they sedated us with. They affected Alice much more than they did me, but she’ll be back. She can probably still hear us. I can hear sometimes too. I heard you . .
. I heard you say my name in Brooklyn.” He shook his head. “But she always comes back. And when she does, she’ll be far less kind to you.”

  Stooping down, he grabbed me by the upper arm, yanked me to my feet, and dragged me toward the train, ignoring my whimpers.

  “Your name is Maia, isn’t it?” He didn’t look at me as he tugged me along. “Maia, I need you to do something for me.” He finally stopped, holding my wrist so I wouldn’t go anywhere. As if I could; my legs still felt like jelly slopping beneath me. “I need you to find her. Marian. There’s something I need to ask her.”

  “You keep saying that,” I spat. “But you never tell me why.”

  Saul shook his head. “Some things are better left—”

  “Tell me why, Saul.”

  I could feel his hand tremble against my skin.

  “Please don’t call me that,” he begged. Actually begged. “That’s the name she chose for us once she took my body. A king from the Old Testament who united god’s chosen. So wonderfully brazen. But Alice was always like that.”

  Even his smirk held no life in it. The bitterness was clear on his face.

  “I have control now, but I don’t know for how long. I can’t even remember the last time I felt my own heartbeat.”

  As if he couldn’t help himself, he pressed his free hand against his chest, breathing deeply.

  I watched him. “Who . . . are you?”

  I could feel the pressure of his fingers against my pulse. “Nick. Call me Nick.”

  “You’re over a hundred years old.” My eyes traveled down his body, still as hard and fit as a young man barely out of his teens. “How?”

  “1871,” he answered solemnly. “The third of June. A year after Marian died. It was the day I became one of the accursed.”

  I frowned. “Accursed?”

  “Like you. I was called to this life after Alice passed, just as you were called after the death of the one they called the Matryoshka Princess.”