Sing Down the Stars (The Celestine Series Book 1)

by L. J. Hatton

  “Klok?” I tried to ask.

  He pulled us backward until a wooden plank slammed over our heads. We’d crossed into Zavel’s car and were cowering in the secret compartment of a magician’s disappearing cabinet.

  While we watched through a narrow gap between slats, a reserve soldier held Birdie by the back of her nightshirt. Obviously taken from her bed, she’d been caught off guard and was in a disheveled state similar to the feral look she’d had when she first boarded the train. She tried to kick him, but he raised her off the ground, out of range.

  “We have to help her,” I whispered.

  “We can’t help anyone if we’re caught,” Winnie said.

  Another man joined the first and demanded details.

  “This is the only girl I’ve seen,” the first man said while Birdie did her best to free herself.

  “Too young and wrong color,” the second said. “Warden says our target’s all knees and elbows, passing herself off as Roma’s boy.”

  My stomach dropped. The first guard had thought she was me. They’d wrecked the train to find me.

  “Hey!” I recognized Jermay’s voice, and my stomach lurched back to where it belonged. “You really need body armor to handle one little girl?”

  I was about to call out, hoping the reserves would let the others go to chase me, but as the man holding Birdie turned, a flash powder explosion went off. Jermay had ignited one of his father’s prop bags on a side table.

  Birdie finally landed her kick. Her captor howled, dropping her, and she scrambled away.

  “That one boy enough for you?” the injured man snarled at his partner.

  His partner jerked him to his feet, and their heavy boots stomped off down the hall. Klok waited for a five count before removing the back exit from the cabinet so we could escape. Another glance through the window showed Jermay and Birdie running together toward the open field that had previously held the circus’s tent city. They must have found one of Zavel’s rabbit holes and gotten out that way.

  “We need Squint,” I said and headed for the front of the train.

  Klok shook his head; he opened his palm to show me his secondary display as we ran. It flashed: “Squint and Small Molly have left the train. I assisted.”

  That was no surprise. My memories of Squint and Smolly went as far back as my memories of Klok. They’d joined our circus when he was a boy, and despite his being bigger than both of them put together, he’d followed the pair like they were his parents. No one bothered to correct him, least of all Squint and Smolly.

  “If they’re out, then there’s no one to wait for,” Winnie said.

  There was, however, another problem. The next car was on its side, like my room, and completely impassable.

  Beep.

  “Squint has rerouted the exhaust into the cooling system. Pressure will increase without ventilation. Once it has exceeded capacity—”

  “He set the train to blow?”

  Years of my father’s work were caught up in our engine and magnificent gilded cars, and generations of our family’s memories were spread across the rooms and walls.

  “Our future’s worth more than the past,” Winnie said. “We have to get out of here.”

  It made me sick, but she was right. I glanced around, desperately seeking something I could take for a memento stronger than a memory. The only thing small enough to carry was my father’s red leather work coat, which had fallen from its peg. He’d worn that coat forever, and I was responsible for half the soda stains on it.

  I slipped it on and belted it around my pajamas to keep it from falling off. My father’s a lot bigger than me.

  “Right, then.” I climbed up a pile of toppled furniture and pushed one of the now overhead windows open. “Up and over.”

  I had an idea.

  The sky blazed red and orange, with smoke trails weaving from all directions. The train had been sliced in pieces by eruptions of rock. The ground below rumbled, with shallow cracks radiating from the feet of a woman in a black uniform. She was terrakinetic, an earth-mover, like Anise. At the right angle, her uniform took on a greenish sheen.

  The reserves held back and let her work, watching her bring down what remained of the tents in the field. Thankfully, none of them seemed to notice the three of us running along the top of the train.

  In the distance, the Jeseks’ silhouettes scaled the cables from the central balloon that held the big top aloft. The basket below it was big enough to hold thirty people, and everyone knew that if it came to a raid, we were to use it to get to the Hollow, a safe haven that belonged to my parents. The balloon’s guidance system could find it from anywhere in less than a day.

  Once the last Jesek was in the balloon, two of the others detached the cables and let them fall on whichever unfortunate members of the raiding party happened to be inside the big top. Bruno steered the balloon toward the open field where Jermay and Birdie would be waiting along with the rest of our Show family.

  I dropped back into the train on the other side of the wrecked cars, and took off, pounding the floor with my bare feet. Winnie landed lightly behind me; Klok shook the entire car.

  “Penn, what are you doing?” Winnie asked. “Get back outside.”

  Klok reached over her, likely to make good on his promise to Anise. I jumped back, out of reach, but his arm kept coming. Sometimes it was easy to forget his body wasn’t human, and then he’d do something to remind me—like letting his telescopic arm grow an extra two, three, four feet. I flattened out on the ground and let his hand fly over me.

  “Stop it,” I snapped. His arm retracted in my direction. “We’ll go, but first, we can increase our odds.”

  If it was my father’s legacy the warden was after, I’d give him more than he could handle.

  CHAPTER 6

  We approached the metal door that kept my father’s golems secured. If it had been only the reserve unit outside, I would have risked making a run for it, but not with hounds, and especially not with hounds strong enough to topple a multistory train like a set of blocks. We needed something to cover our escape.

  “Open it,” I said.

  Klok ripped the door from its frame with the locking pins still attached.

  In their pen, our unicorn herd pawed at the ground; their eyes snapped on, glowing an ominous red instead of their usual gold. Bijou lifted his head and trumpeted out a shriek. I’d never seen any of them act this way—as though they could sense the danger we were in.

  “Grab what you can. We’ll go out through the overhead release.”

  Beep.

  Another message streamed across Klok’s display: “No power. No hatch release.”

  “Winch it by hand,” I shouted over the growing noise through the walls. My understanding of the train’s construction was vague, and I hoped the engine wasn’t ready to blow.

  Klok leapt from crate to crate, toward the ceiling, pushing the hydraulics in his legs to their limit. Winnie took the backpack that held her tail and rebreather from its hook on the wall.

  “We can share the breather,” she said, hoisting the bag onto her shoulders. In the water, only the hydrokinetic hounds could follow. “I’d rather outrun one than all of them.”

  Klok dropped from the ceiling, landing hard enough to dent the floor. His face had taken on a stony resolve that made me shiver. It was a look I’d seen on my father’s face a hundred times.

  “The hatch is open,” he said.

  “Loose the Constrictus, and turn out the herd,” I told them. “Let Scorpius run free, but get out of his way. I’m going after Xerxes.”

  Winnie hit the master switch for the unicorns’ paddock; they swarmed out into the car while the great snake oozed along below their hooves, lifting them as he passed.

  Klok helped her onto Bijou
’s back, and they rose into the air as Scorpius went on a rampage. He slashed his tail along the walls of the car, bashing his head and claws against everything he touched.

  In his enclosure, Xerxes’ head rested on his paws with his wings tucked against his back. Even inert, the effect of breathing was there, making his body rise and fall. I climbed up near his neck and laid my hand against the control plate to activate him. He stretched, pulling back on his forepaws, then tilting forward, before deploying razor-edged wings. His head whipped around, so we met eye to furious eye and nose to beak.

  “We’ve been boarded,” I said. The whole train shuddered. “Help me.”

  There was no question of comprehension, and no hesitation. One powerful beat of his wings, and Xerxes launched us through the hatch. The side of the golem car crumpled below us as Scorpius burst free. Behind him came the rush of unicorns and the slithering clink of the Constrictus in search of something to crush.

  After that, only bedlam.

  The clearing was now a nightmare of everything that made The Show thrilling. Too much action to see everything at once. A frenetic swirl of lights and smoke with strange sounds coming from places no one could find. But we weren’t losing, and that was what mattered.

  The Constrictus made straight for the nearest truck, crushing it small, then dragging it off. Scorpius attacked like a thing possessed, whipping his tail for a bludgeon in ways his programming shouldn’t have allowed. Our little mice went after the vehicles, scurrying up into the casings. As the trucks passed on, they dropped bits of their engines and froze useless in the field.

  Across the field, shining figures appeared everywhere there was resistance—unnoticeables, but they didn’t engage.

  This was the final stand of Magnus Roma. My father had been prepared for this day, even if we hadn’t, and he’d set his creations to protect what he couldn’t. Wherever he’d gone, it must have been an attempt to stave off this collapse, but he’d failed.

  Our unicorns became a line of unbreachable rage. Shoulder to shoulder with their horns pointed outward, they created a blockade between the reserves and the train, defying anyone to test their resolve. Each man foolish enough to try was met by rampant feet, or the slash of honed metal seeking an artery to sever. And then suddenly, the unicorns were swept aside by a blast of wind, as easily as someone sweeping clutter off a table.

  I’d forgotten the hounds.

  A girl appeared in a uniform identical to the one worn by the woman who’d flipped the train, only hers was tinted violet. I wasn’t sure if that was just the light, or if the wardens sorted the hounds like any other tool, and I had to shake the image of Vesper confined to a purple suit out of my head. Around the field were other girls, some Birdie’s age and size. Flashes of red and blue signaled pyro- and hydrokinetics.

  At first, I thought it was their clothes giving off the color, but then I realized the tint rose from their skin like an aura. My sisters had never given off such colors. No one else even seemed to notice the effect. Was it a consequence of captivity?

  The aerokinetic hound walked on wind toward the train. She moved with a puppeteer’s jerk, prying at a metal-and-glass collar around her neck. Similar bands at her wrists and ankles began to glow. Her body seized; she opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came out. Then she fell to the dirt, covering her uniform with dust as her body convulsed. When she stood up, she was calm; her eyes were glassy and distant. She flicked her hand and another gust cleared the few remaining unicorns to make an entrance to our train and allow the warden’s men to ransack it.

  I thought about calling out to her, warning her that the train was going to explode, but held my tongue because she held hers. She looked right at me, and instead of turning me in, she didn’t say a word.

  I shook my head, but she nodded with a sad smile and let herself drift inside, pulled along by the influence of her bands. She was giving me a chance, and shackled as she was, maybe boarding the train was the only kind of chance she had left. I couldn’t even thank her for letting us go.

  I didn’t want to live in a world where death was the only mercy I could show.

  There was another rumble and I looked for the terrakinetic woman, but this wasn’t her, nor was it the Constrictus returning for seconds.

  From the back of the train, and through the pulsing wall of smoke created by so many foundering machines, came screeches and roars from the menagerie that my sisters had released to save them from the train’s destruction. Horses and zebras stampeded into the open, followed by the graceful lope of a pair of giraffes. Performing dogs shot between the legs of men in their way, while screaming chimps and small monkeys made for the trees. Unstoppable in their momentum, but slower for their size, our elephants brought up the rear.

  In the lead sailed Vesper, still in her white dress and the shoes that Evie had scared me out of. A storm at her side, her blonde hair streaming, Vesper became our avenging angel. This was the tempest in full fury, and she was both terrifying and magnificent to behold. I couldn’t imagine her reined in by collars and manacles that forced her to do some warden’s bidding.

  A piercing V-shaped flock of wind birds flew ahead of her, clearing her path as they went. The warden’s men stared until the last possible moment, then scattered as live animals trampled their motorcade. The herd reached the unnoticeables and ran straight through without stopping. Straight through their bodies. Some of the unnoticeables flinched, some didn’t, but none fell. They were ghosts.

  Evie’s flaming dog, Samson, ran headlong into the troops trying to regroup, swiping the air with fiery paws. Anise’s looming Kodiak and Vesper’s raptors struck from opposite sides. Nim’s dolphins carried the rubble away over the side of the cliffs to ease everyone’s escape.

  After all their talk of not staying behind, my sisters did exactly that, to make sure the rest of us got out alive.

  We weren’t losing . . .

  As a soldier reached for Nagendra, a cobra struck from inside the sleeve of his coat.

  Near the tree line, our lion master and his wife stood their ground with whips in hand, protecting their beloved cats as they tore into body armor like tins of potted meat.

  Zavel whisked off his top hat and threw it at the men chasing him. It hovered in the air behind him, spinning faster and faster without falling, captivating them until they stood still and watched it twirl. When the hat’s timer ran out, and the flashing lights on its brim turned from blue to red, it exploded in a cloud of smoke and sparklers.

  We were winning . . .

  The balloon reached the first of our escapees. Nagendra climbed to the top of the ladder, and Zavel grabbed the rungs as they skimmed past. He made sure Birdie and Jermay were on the ladder below him before he began to climb. The extended Show family was safe and on its way.

  “Get on the ground,” a voice ordered behind me. When I turned, Evie’s unnoticeable was hovering in midair.

  “Y-you’re a hologram!”

  “Penelope, listen to me—land. He doesn’t care about the rest of them, and you’ll never make it by air. They’ll target this signal. If you don’t land—”

  “Get away!” I screamed. He knew my name. My real name. How did he know? Evie wouldn’t have told him, so who did?

  I pulled Xerxes around to face the unnoticeable. He struck out with his wing, but it went right through.

  “Is your entire family this bullheaded?” he asked. “I’m trying to help you! Get your friends on the ground, before—Down! Get down! Now!”

  Something tiny streaked past my face, another tore into my shoulder, and for the second time that night, I heard Winnie warning me.

  “Hummers!” she screamed.

  Scorpius crashed snout first into the dirt. His tail went limp at his side, and the next instant he had shrunk down to the size of a spinning top. One by one the lights went out in the unicorns’ eyes. The Constrictus arche
d up off the ground, thrashing from one end of his massive body to the other.

  “Higher,” I ordered. “Get above them!”

  But it was too late.

  My father had created the hummers to incapacitate dangerous or malfunctioning machines for repairs. They were a safety measure meant to aid in healing, and the Commission had corrupted them into this obscenity.

  Bijou, with Klok and Winnie still atop, peeled sideways into a spin. Klok wrapped his arms around Winnie’s body, tucking her head under his chin so she was protected as they fell. Another unnoticeable remained in the air where they’d been. She blinked out of view at the same time as Evie’s man, and I swear he mouthed I’m sorry to me as he faded.

  Something struck Xerxes’ flank near my leg, and I glanced down, praying that I wouldn’t see what I knew it had to be. A metal hornet, the size of a walnut, protruded from Xerxes’ false flesh, spitting sparks. He roared, bucking uncontrollably as his systems were rewired and his power cells drained.

  Another hummer struck, and another, and another, until Xerxes began to go dormant. The thrumming through his limbs stopped; that odd effect of breathing ceased, but he fought death until it brought him down. His eyes went dim, and it felt as if I was watching my father being killed—pulled out of my reach because I wasn’t strong enough to hold on to him.

  I expected to crash against the rocks below—just as Xerxes had tumbled over the edge, toward the river—but I stayed in the air. The wind pressed itself against my skin, forming a cushion. I couldn’t rise or fall, but hung suspended in the grip of some new horror I had no name for.

  A tingle came, and heat, causing my insides to churn with sudden familiarity. I couldn’t remember the night my brother died, but that moment had imprinted on my subconscious. What happened then was happening now. Burning rain fell around my body on its way to the ground, knocking the infantry off their feet.

  I heard a shrill, terrified screech, and turned my head in time to see a flaming trail bisect the rope ladder from the balloon’s basket. Flames caught the cords, and the ladder fell with Birdie and Jermay still clinging to it. They’d been almost to the top. I could only watch and be thankful for the splash that told me they’d hit water rather than dry ground.