Cheating Death

by April White

  She regarded me for a long moment. “You speak in an unfamiliar way, but I appreciate what you say.” She included Ringo in her gaze. “What you both have said.”

  Mary stood, and Ringo rushed to pull her chair back. “I find that the rigors of travel have caught up with me, and I believe I shall retire.” She held her hand out to shake mine, and then Ringo’s. “It was an absolute pleasure to meet you both, and I do hope we’ll have a chance to speak further as this journey progresses.”

  “May I walk you back to your compartment?” Ringo asked gallantly. I stood up too and put her book back into my bag.

  “That’s very kind of you, but it’s an imposition,” she said.

  “We’re leaving anyway, so we’ll either follow you out or walk with you,” I said.

  She smiled. “Then walk with me, and I shall be glad for your company.”

  Ringo held the door for both of us, and I think he might even have bowed slightly as Mary went through. Mary’s private sleeper was actually only two doors away from ours, and as we said goodbye, we agreed to meet again in the dining car later.

  There was a tall, fair-skinned man in the shadows at the end of the hall, smoking at the window. The smoke that didn’t disperse out the window was sweet, kind of like pipe smoke, or like the clove cigarettes people smoke outside dance clubs at home, and as we got closer, I was struck by a case of Monger-gut.

  The man turned away and stepped out of the carriage door before I got a proper look at him, and the Monger-gut faded with his departure. I let out a small sigh of relief as we entered our compartment.

  We didn’t even try to be quiet in our tiny private room. Tom was out cold, and he had commandeered the bottom bunk, which meant I might have to accidentally step on him as I climbed up to mine, just for being selfish.

  I was brushing my teeth at the tiny corner sink when a shadow and the sound of a click, and another wave of Monger-gut, made me look up. Someone had stopped outside our door, but the feeling faded as he moved on. Ringo was already stretched out on the couchette still wearing his clothes, his booted feet crossed at the ankles and his arms draped over his chest.

  “Did you hear that?” I whispered.

  There was no answer. How was it even possible to fall asleep that fast? It must be a special talent guys have, or at least the ones who hung out with me. I went to the curtained window and peeked out. The hall was empty, and I was too exhausted to worry about imaginary threats, so I unlaced my boots and left them on the floor by Tom’s head. I probably needed to check my passive aggression where he was concerned, so as a gesture of goodwill, I didn’t try to step on him as I heaved myself up to my bed. The sound of the train clacking on the tracks finally drowned out the thoughts of Archer that spun around my brain every time I closed my eyes, and I was lulled to sleep.

  I was violently hurled from my bunk and hit the floor so hard I lost every bit of breath in my body. The sound of metal shredding metal erased any thought of indulging in the pain of the impact, and I struggled to stand.

  “Saira! Yer feet!” Ringo yelled at me from somewhere near the couchette.

  The bunk wall was at a crazy angle over my head, and I was standing on the window in my socks, surrounded by broken glass.

  “Don’t move! I’ll get ye.”

  I shook my head to clear my vision and orient myself. Night had fallen so the compartment was dark, and the horrific sounds of impact had faded, but they were gradually being replaced by screams of passengers down the hall. Ringo picked his way over twisted metal and grabbed my face in both his hands.

  “Are ye all right?” he demanded.

  I didn’t bother to take stock. I knew my shoulder had taken most of the hit, and I briefly wondered if it might be dislocated, but I nodded anyway. “Fine. Where’s Tom?” My voice rasped with an edge of panic I fought to push away.

  “Here,” Tom said from somewhere over my head. I looked up to find him wedged into his bunk, staring down with wide, frightened eyes.

  “You okay?” He nodded, and I hadn’t seen him look so much like himself since we buried Léon.

  “Climb on my back,” Ringo said to me. “I’ll get ye out of the glass.”

  I did what he said, and he piggy-backed me over to his couchette, which was perched at a crazy angle. “Where’s yer torch? We need to find yer boots.”

  My boots, which I’d so vindictively put by the head of Tom’s bunk. Right. At least I’d slept in my clothes, so my mini Maglite was still in a pocket sewn into the leg of my trousers. I took it out and shone it around the wrecked compartment. A sigh with a “Bleedin’ ‘ell,” escaped Ringo as we surveyed the damage. We spotted Ringo’s satchel first, then my own, then finally my boots, which had been flung across the compartment and were wedged under the window frame where I’d stood.

  “What happened?” Tom’s voice held the same barely suppressed panic mine had.

  “The train derailed and it’s on its side,” I said. The screams had gotten louder, and a waft of smoke seemed to seep through the cracks in the walls. I stared at Ringo and his wide eyes told me he knew.

  “Fire.”

  The door was still closed, and was at about a seventy-degree angle over our heads. “Tom, can you reach the door from where you are?” I tried not to screech, but panic was edging out whatever calm I had left.

  Ringo thrust my boots at me. “Here, put these on. I’ll go.”

  He didn’t wait for a response from either Tom or me and paused only to sling his bag over one shoulder before hoisting himself onto the upended couchette to reach the door. It was a sliding door, of the variety that was still used a hundred and fifty years later, and it wouldn’t budge.

  “It’s locked.” The first shade of panic crept into Ringo’s voice as he yanked harder and harder on the door.

  “Break the window!” I said, trying very hard not to completely freak out.

  “With what?” Ringo had flipped his grip on the couchette and was trying to kick the window out, but the panes were too small and thick.

  Tom had climbed out of his bunk and braced himself against the side of it to kick at the door. It wasn’t moving.

  I’d gotten my boots on and looked around for something hard we could use. The frame of the window had bent away from the ground it lay on. I wrapped my hand in my sleeve and ripped the metal away from the wall.

  The smell of smoke was getting stronger now, and the screams had turned to shrieks that filled the space around us. I handed the metal up to Ringo. “Here, try to pop the lock with this.”

  The screech of metal scraped my already raw nerves, and then the door slid open.

  “Lady and gent, ye need to get yerselves up ‘ere and out. The train is most definitely burnin’.” An anxious edge was back in Ringo’s voice, and I flung the strap of my bag over my shoulder and met Tom’s eyes.

  “Let’s go.”

  Tom boosted me up to the top of the couchette, and from there I could reach the open door and climb out to the hallway. Ringo was already down the hall at Mary Shelley’s door. He had the metal window frame wedged into the seam between the door and its frame, and a moment later he had popped that lock too. He tossed me the metal piece.

  “‘Ere, go to work on the other doors,” he said as he climbed down into Mary’s room.

  Tom helped me push against the locks, and we’d gotten four other doors open by the time Mary pulled herself out of her compartment with a push from underneath. We had called down to the frightened people inside their rooms and told them to climb out, but only a few seemed to have the presence of mind to climb the couchette like we’d done.

  Mary had a small cut on her forehead but seemed otherwise unharmed. Ringo heaved a small valise out of her room before climbing out himself. He grabbed my arm.

  “We ‘ave to go. The fire’s too close.”

  “Just three more—” I started to say, but Ringo yanked my arm.

  “No, Saira – now!” He grabbed the metal piece from my hand and rammed it int
o the crack in the door at the end of the carriage. He used it to lever the door open, and smoke poured into the hallway. “Let’s go!”

  I was mad, but it was the kind of mad that comes from being very, very afraid. Ringo was right. The sky outside the train car was glowing bright orange, and a shower of sparks shot into it as I watched.

  Ringo and Mary were already through the door, and Tom and I had nearly reached it when I heard the sound of the door at the other end of the carriage being wrenched open. I turned instinctively, and I nearly stopped in my tracks as Death came in.

  Flight

  Aeron had just entered our carriage. I turned and crawled in blind terror through the door. Tom followed on my heels, and we leapt down beside the overturned train car, then sprinted to the grove of trees where I’d spotted Ringo and Mary.

  “Aeron,” I blurted to Ringo. “Aeron’s here.” My heart slammed in my chest, due in larger part to having just seen Death than to my sprint and general state of terror since the crash.

  Both Ringo and Mary gasped. Ringo’s gasp made sense to me. Mary’s did not.

  “The man who opened the other door of the carriage? That was Aeron?” Tom said, behind me. I nodded.

  Tom blinked. “How do you know Death?”

  “Was he tall with dark hair, strong features, the brown skin of a Moor, and the clothing of a gentleman?” asked Mary Shelley quietly.

  Prickles raised on the back of my neck as I turned to her with narrowed eyes. “Yes,” I hissed. “You saw him?”

  She shook her head slowly. “Not tonight.”

  Awesome. “When did you see Death, Mary?”

  “The night he came for Bysshe.”

  The Roadrunner could have dropped an anvil on my head and I wouldn’t have been more shocked.

  “Why did ‘e come for ‘im?” Ringo asked, even more quietly than she had answered.

  Mary’s gaze included all three of us. “Because my husband was one of his.”

  Ringo’s eyes flicked to mine in the most subtle I told you so in the history of know-it-alls, and maybe because of it I was able to contain the stutter that threatened. Tom couldn’t, and Mary’s eyes found his.

  “I don’t know you,” she said.

  “Mary Shelley, Tom Landers. He’s with us,” I said curtly. Death was on that train, I reminded myself as I surveyed the overturned cars that were now engulfed with fire. Death was on that train, and Mary Shelley knew him. I was not wild about the coincidence.

  Tom’s eyes had widened as he registered Mary’s identity, but I turned my attention to the wreck. Screams and cries of passengers had quieted in the night air, but it didn’t seem as though many people were standing outside the overturned train. And if they weren’t outside of it, they were still inside. “What happened,” I whispered.

  “The doors were locked,” answered Ringo. “Who would lock all the doors of a passenger car?”

  A memory niggled at the back of my brain. “The man – at the end of the hallway when we got back to our compartment – he was a Monger. I saw his shadow and heard the lock click just before I went to bed.” Ringo looked at me for long enough that I got weirdly defensive. “You were already asleep,” I said.

  He blinked. “It couldn’t ‘ave been about us. No one knew we were on that train.”

  “I did,” said Mary Shelley.

  I turned to face Mary, and the prickles on the back of my neck returned. “Are you a Seer?”

  “Distantly.” She held my gaze for a long moment, and I waited, knowing there was more. “Aislin sent me.”

  “Gah!” I yelled in frustration.

  “Bloody Immortals,” Ringo murmured under his breath.

  “What does she want?” I asked Mary. I was near tears, partly from the train crash, and partly from the realization I was in control of exactly nothing.

  “I don’t know,” said Mary, and she had the grace to sound apologetic. “She showed me the image of our meeting in the dining compartment and said I’d be able to help you. She also said you were trying to fulfill the Prophecy of the Child.”

  There were so many things I wanted to ask, and every question crowded in at once. Ringo didn’t seem to have the same issue.

  “‘Ow’d Aislin come to ye, and why did ye do ‘er biddin’?”

  Mary nodded. “Both fair questions. Aislin has visited my dreams twice. The first time was just after Bysshe and I were married, the night he was attacked and … turned.” She inhaled sharply. “She showed me where to find him and how to care for him as his body changed.” Mary’s expression looked a little haunted, and whatever anger I’d felt about Aislin’s interference melted away. She continued. “The second time was two nights ago, when she showed me our meeting. I don’t know how I can help, or why you need it, but I felt I owed her a debt for helping me with Bysshe all those years ago.”

  “Who turned him?” asked Tom. He had been watching the fire blaze on the train, and flames reflected in his eyes as he asked the question without facing any of us.

  “He never knew, and Aislin didn’t show me that.”

  Mary looked pale, and Ringo glared at Tom. “We’ll ‘ave this discussion later, after we find shelter and transportation. Mrs. Shelley, in spite of Fate’s ‘and in our meetin’, I invite ye to accompany us to Rome.”

  Mary met our eyes with straight shoulders. “I should be very honored to accompany you. A friend of mine lives outside Rome, and I’ve sent her a message that I’d like to visit.”

  Ringo and I looked at each other and silently acknowledged that Aislin was having her way with us, but since we had no better plan, it seemed futile to resist. Ringo nodded at me as if that settled everything, then slung his bag across his shoulder and looked in both directions down the track. “Anyone have an idea where the nearest village is?” he asked.

  Mary surveyed the terrain. “I believe south is the appropriate direction.” She turned south and began walking toward the tracks. Ringo and I shared exactly one second of a surprised look before we followed her, with Tom at the rear.

  Mary approached a man in a uniform with a soot-smeared face who was directing the few injured passengers we’d seen away from the tracks. She asked him something in rapid French, then, when he looked blankly at her, switched to Italian. He answered in a voice that spoke of his sheer exhaustion, and indicated the direction we’d been heading. Mary patted his arm softly in thanks, and I could see how much her gesture meant to him as he swallowed hard. Then he called out to another uniformed man, excused himself, and hurried away.

  The air was full of smoke and burning coal, but underneath the acrid smells I caught the sweet scent of clove. I turned toward it sharply and scanned the people along the tracks. There were passengers in formal traveling clothes, some with blood on them, and all looked tired and dirty from the soot. Some people helped the rail workers, while others sat and stared blankly at the flames. One man stood apart from the group and watched silently as he smoked his hand-rolled cigarette. His face was in deep shadows, but the scent of cloves came from him, and I detected a hint of Monger-gut with it.

  I touched Ringo’s sleeve and tried to be as casual as possible about not looking at the man. “The man with the clove cigarette. That’s the Monger,” I said under my breath.

  The man flicked the still-burning cigarette at a small child who stood nearby wailing pitiably for his mother. The child’s cries choked off in surprise as he stared at the man, and before I could move in his direction, the little one took off running. Voices among the people nearby rose in anger, and two men stood up and squared off. The older one of the two threw a punch, and the clove man grinned under his hat.

  “Bastard,” Ringo said under his breath, and the clove man looked up as if he’d heard Ringo speak. We both recognized him at the same instant.

  I froze, and Ringo exhaled sharply. “Duncan,” I whispered.

  The Immortal War stood about twenty feet down the track from where we were. He wore a light-colored suit and a hat with a brim th
at hid his face, but somehow his eyes were the most visible part of him. Duncan seemed to watch us for a long moment while the passengers in the nearby group shouted encouragement at the fighters. Monger-gut had stolen all my breath, and I felt utterly sick until finally his gaze slid away from our group. After another moment, he strode off into the trees.

  The shouts from the nearby people began to quiet, and the fighters dropped their fists and looked at each other in bewilderment. Mary and Tom had stopped walking to watch us, and when Duncan finally left, we both relaxed visibly. “‘E doesn’t know us,” shuddered Ringo.

  “How do you know? I think he locked us in, and I think maybe Aeron was coming to finish us off.” I sounded paranoid, even to myself.

  “Remember, everyone was locked in,” said Ringo. “It wasn’t just us.”

  “Who was that?” asked Mary.

  “That was War.”

  Tom started in surprise, and nearly turned to follow Duncan’s path into the woods. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You really want to go after Duncan?”

  “No,” he said sullenly.

  I held his gaze until he looked away uncomfortably. Then I turned back to Ringo and Mary. “We need to get out of here.”

  They nodded, and Ringo took Mary’s valise so she could lift the front of her skirts with both hands and stride swiftly down the tracks, away from the burning train wreck.

  We walked for about twenty minutes in silence, until finally the signs of human habitation began to point us in the direction of a village. Mary fell back next to me from her position at the front of the group. “As I said before, the Seer line in my family is several generations removed, and though my mother did tell me of our heritage, she didn’t have a tremendous amount of information to share about the other Families. Therefore it is merely my guess that you are a Descendant of Time?”

  I nodded vaguely. My brain had been spinning on any possible reason for Death and War to show up at a train wreck in France in 1842, and I’d come up with exactly nothing that made any sense. Were they there because of us? How did they know we’d be there? Had Aislin told them? My thoughts were spinning out of control, and I forced my attention back to Mary. “What gave me away, my clothes?”