Shadow Train

by J. Gabriel Gates

  Jack gazed out at the picturesque view of his downtown. That’s how he’d always thought of Middleburg, as his town. It was a beautiful place. And when he was done with it, it would be perfect.

  Tonight would be perfect, too. This would be a Valentine’s Day no one in Middleburg would ever forget.

  * * *

  “Hey.”

  The voice that called to Rick as he stepped out the back door and into the alleyway behind his father’s office was sultry, dark—and familiar. Clarisse emerged from the recessed doorway where she’d been waiting and eyed Rick seductively. She wore tight jeans and a low-cut sweater that revealed just enough. Her dark brown hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail, and her blood-red lips curved in a little pouting smile that started a fever of desire burning in Rick.

  The night Raphael Kain disappeared, after the big fight, Rick had found Clarisse and taken her out to Macomb Lake. He’d been robbed of the revenge that she had promised him, and he was fully prepared to take his frustration out on her. He had all sorts of wicked plans—to drive her out into the middle of nowhere, rough her up a little and leave her there, to take her money, to smash her cell phone—and even darker things, too. Dangerous, exotic things. He’d been in a foul mood when he’d picked her up that night after the fight, but something surprising had happened: the meaner he got, the more she seemed to like it.

  She’d been a little nervous at first—a little shaken—maybe it was seeing her Flats rats buddies getting their butts kicked or seeing that train smash into Raphael. But whatever it was, she seemed to be kind of turned on by the way Rick manhandled her—forceful and demanding, not caring if he hurt her. It was like she took some kind of weird comfort in it. He knew some girls liked it rough—and he liked that she liked it. She’d been following him around ever since, popping up in unexpected places like some kind of stalker. The word filled him with a disdain that bordered on revulsion, but it turned him on, too. The little Flats tramp was stalking him . . .

  Be careful what you wish for, little girl, he thought. Because it just might sneak up on you and grab you by the throat. Visions of what he could do to her flashed through his mind. He was strong enough now. He was strong enough to do whatever he wanted.

  He shook his head, clearing it of the visions. He was having more of them lately—flashes of violence that shot through his brain at unexpected moments—but they no longer bothered him. Now, he almost welcomed them.

  When Clarisse had shown up at Spinnacle after a Topper meeting a few nights after their first encounter, he had been disturbed to find that he was actually happy to see her.

  “I thought you might turn up soon,” he had said, trying to repress the smile that was tempting his lips.

  “I saw your car,” she’d said, gesturing to the silver Audi SUV that was parked in the lot.

  “I told you, I don’t date Flats girls.”

  “I told you, I don’t want to be dated,” she’d replied.

  “Why are you here? Spying for the Flats rats again?”

  She shook her head. “I’m done with them,” she’d whispered. “I’m here to see you.”

  “What do you want?”

  She hadn’t said anything else. She’d only smiled and pulled him into the backseat of his Audi, where they had spent half an hour making out. When his friends started calling his cell phone, looking for him, he’d made her leave. He hadn’t even offered to drive her home. Not even that discouraged her.

  Then, about a week ago, she’d knocked on the door of his house in Hilltop Haven, brazenly unapologetic. She didn’t say a word, not even about how she’d gotten past all the security. She’d just grabbed him and slammed her lips against his.

  And now here she was, waiting outside his dad’s office. The clever little stalker must’ve seen his car in the lot.

  Rick knew that they were both aware of exactly where this was heading. But being mean to her was part of the fun. It was way more of a turn-on than the handholding, slow-dancing crap that Maggie Anderson insisted on. An idea suddenly came to him.

  “My dad just bought the Starlite Theater two doors down from here,” he told her. “The upstairs is vacant—and I snagged the key. You don’t leave me alone, I’m going to drag you over there and teach you a lesson,” he said.

  Her deep brown eyes narrowed with wicked excitement. “So drag me,” she said. “Or is that just an empty promise?”

  Finally, Rick allowed the grin he’d been holding back to spread across his face.

  * * *

  Nass found himself unceremoniously shoved into the Middleburg police station’s interrogation room.

  “You going to read me my rights?” he asked the secret service–looking dude who was doing the shoving. “Or just—” but the big man was already out the door. It clapped shut behind him.

  “Alrighty, then. Guess I’ll make myself at home,” Nass grumbled. Looking around the room, he realized that wasn’t going to be so easy. It was just four white walls, one of them covered with a mirror—one of those two-way interrogation mirrors, he guessed. There was a tile floor, a single light fixture on the ceiling, and that was it. Not even a table and chairs. Nass sighed and looked down at his watch. It was five minutes after four, an hour and a half before he was supposed to pick Dalton up at Lily Rose’s for their Valentine’s date—and he still had to go home and get ready first.

  With the loss of Raphael, his family’s impending eviction, and all the normal drama and stress of high school, the pure bliss of being with Dalton was the only thing that had gotten him through the last couple of months. If these jack-holes in the suits made him late for his date, he’d really give them a reason to read him his rights, he thought.

  A few uneventful minutes passed, and just as he was about to lie down in a corner and catch a nap, the door swung open. The ugly face it revealed didn’t give him any reassurance, though. The guy looked like a human version of an English bulldog, and his expansive body was covered by a Hawaiian shirt that Benji and Emory could both have worn at once. It was Detective Zalewski.

  Detective Z had never been a friend to the kids from the Flats, but he had been even more of a pain since Raphael went missing. For some reason, Z seemed to take the mystery of Raphael’s unsolved disappearance as a personal affront. He became especially furious whenever any of them tried to tell him about the magical ring or the train or the crazy explosion of Shen power that had happened at the moment Raphael had vanished. It seemed to Nass like he thought the Flats kids were all playing a big practical joke on him and laughing behind his back, and he was determined to get his revenge. It didn’t help that the Flatliners were getting increasingly angry with the police for their failure to make any headway in Raphael’s case. The result was a nasty rivalry between the police and the Flatliners that made living in the Flats harder than it had ever been. The cops had already dragged Nass down to the station twice now for questioning, and the second time he was pretty sure the only reason they let him go was because his mom showed up with Lily Rose, who talked them into releasing him.

  Now, Z glowered at Nass as he unfolded a metal chair he’d brought into the room with him.

  “Aloha,” Nass said, unable to bite back his sarcasm. “What am I in for now, Z? Existing?”

  Zalewski’s jowls quivered into a grin as he settled into the chair. “How about assaulting a federal agent?”

  “Assaulting?” Nass’s voice rose on the word. “I barely touched him! I have witnesses, too. All I did was step in between him and my friend.”

  “Relax,” Z said. He seemed to be enjoying himself. “Nobody’s sending you to the electric chair, all right?”

  “Then what am I here for?” Nass asked.

  “We’re going to revisit what you’ve told me about your friend Raphael Kain,” Z said, and he flipped open a file he’d brought in with him. “In amongst all t
he other BS you tried to feed me, you told me that on the night he disappeared you saw two Asian men in derby hats. Is that right?”

  “Yeah. I told you about them. They were Obies. From the Order of the Black Snake.”

  “You want to describe them again for me?”

  Nass shrugged. “They were Chinese. One was a little shorter than average, the other one was a little taller. They had on black suits and derby hats.”

  “Right,” Z said, rolling his eyes. “These were the guys who had the half-invisible giant cobra with them, right? And they were fighting Oberon Morrow’s son, Orias, who was battling them with some kind of magical ring . . . I remember the story.” He reached into the folder, took out two photos and handed them to Nass. “These the guys?”

  “Sure. I mean, I didn’t get a real good look, but that looks like them. And those are definitely the hats they wear.”

  Z took the pictures back and stuck them in the folder, then gave a pointed glance at the mirror that was built into the wall. Without another word, he left the room. A few minutes passed and then the door swung open again. This time, Agent Hackett entered and took the chair Z had just vacated.

  “Order of the Black Snake. What do you know about them?” Hackett asked, his tone calm and matter-of-fact.

  “Not much. They’re this mystical Chinese gang or something. Dangerous guys. My friend Raphael told me about them,” Nass said.

  Hackett flipped open a file and glanced down at a sheet of paper. “Raphael Kain, sixteen years old, disappeared two and a half months ago. What really happened to him?”

  For probably the fiftieth time in the last two months, Nass recited the story of what happened the night Raphael disappeared. He told the truth, going through every detail just as it had really happened.

  With every word, the events of that night played through his mind again. The night had been cold, shrouded in a swirling blizzard. The Flatliners and Toppers were locked in another of their duels down by the tracks when the Obies had shown up with the giant cobra that was their god. They had tried to take the crystal ring of power from Orias. Instead, Aimee Banfield had ended up with it, but when Raphael stepped in to protect her from the giant snake god, he took the ring. Then, a mysterious black locomotive had thundered out of the tunnel and struck him, and there was an explosion powerful enough to knock down dozens of trees in the surrounding forest. It knocked the Toppers and Flatliners down, too, and when they got up and looked around, there was no sign of the train, or of Raphael. They were simply gone.

  He had only gotten a few sentences out when Hackett stopped him. “Listen, Ignacio. From what I hear your life is tough enough already, so I don’t want to make it any tougher, all right? But if you’re not straight with me, I will. And believe me when I say I can make it much, much tougher.”

  “I’m telling the truth,” Nass said. “I want to get my friend back and I didn’t do anything wrong, so why would I lie? Besides—” What he was about to say next made him think of Raphael, and the sudden swell of emotion cut the words off in his throat.

  “Besides?” Hackett prompted.

  “Besides, kids from my neighborhood are called Flatliners—”

  “Yes, your little gang,” Hackett interrupted with a derisive chuckle. “Way out here in the boonies . . .”

  Nass ignored the insult. “We have a law we live by,” he went on. “The Wu-De. We’re not supposed to lie.”

  Hackett eyed him shrewdly. “Okay—that makes my job a lot easier,” he said. “Tell me about your interaction with the guys you call the Obies.”

  “They were looking for something. A treasure that was hidden in Middleburg. It was this big crystal ring about the size of a dinner plate. But it got destroyed—it exploded—when Raphael disappeared. I mean, at the exact moment he disappeared.”

  “And have you seen the two Chinese men since that night?”

  Nass shook his head. Hackett reached into a manila folder, pulled out another photo, and held it out to him.

  “You recognize this man?”

  Nass stared at the picture. It was a Chinese man, about sixty years old. His neck looked thick, muscular. He had short, slicked-back hair, a pencil-thin moustache, a small goatee that had been slicked into a knifelike point, and pale eyes that Nass could only describe as scary. Even in a photo, the man’s piercing gaze was enough to make him shiver.

  “No, I never saw him before,” Nass said. “Who is he?”

  Hackett sniffed and snatched the photograph from Nass’s hand.

  “I’ll ask the questions,” he said brusquely. He stuck the picture back in his folder, stood, and headed for the door.

  “You’re letting me go now, right?” Nass said hopefully.

  Hackett turned back to him with a slow, smug smile.

  “I think we’ll let you hang out in here for a while and think about whether or not you have anything else to tell me that might be helpful. I’m sure your girlfriend won’t mind. What’s her name again?” He glanced in his folder. “Oh yes, Dalton.” As he closed the folder, the picture of the sinister looking Asian man slipped out and fluttered to the floor, face down, at Nass’s feet. As he stooped to pick it up, Nass saw that there was writing on the back:

  Name: Feng Xu, Deputy Director of China’s Ministry of State Security Leader, Order of the Black Snake

  Last Suspected Location: Middleburg, Kansas

  Nass picked up the photo and as Hackett approached he quickly offered it to him. Wordlessly, Hackett took the photo and headed back to the door. As he left, he shut off the lights, leaving Nass locked away in complete darkness.

  * * *

  At seven that evening, a stretch limousine pulled up in front of the Kain’s apartment building and the driver honked its horn twice. Savana Kain, still putting one earring on, hurried from the bathroom vanity to look out the window. Despite the misery that weighed her down ever since her son, Raphael, had disappeared, the sight of the limo made her smile.

  “Oh, Jack,” she said. Then, grabbing her coat off the back of her couch, she hurried out the door. He had called to let her know he was sending a car, but she hadn’t expected anything so lavish.

  Instead of taking her to Spinnacle, the nicest restaurant in town, or to Jack Banfield’s house, the limo driver surprised Savana by stopping downtown, just outside the front entrance of Jack’s office building. Even though the driver opened her door for her and helped her out of the car, her distended belly almost caused her to lose her balance. She was still a couple of months from her due date, but the pregnancy seemed to be wearing on forever, and she felt as big as the Goodyear Blimp and twice as unstable. The baby was kicking and moving often now; he was so active she often thought of him as her little Olympic gymnast.

  The joke just made her sad, though, because the person who would have laughed the most, the person she normally shared her jokes with, was gone. Every time she thought of Raphael, her firstborn, she felt like someone had twisted a length of barbed wire around her heart and was squeezing it tighter and tighter. Raph had been doing so well, too. He had lots of friends, and a girlfriend. He was even starting to accept the idea of Jack and the baby. Well, at least the baby. It didn’t make sense that he had just up and run away—and the explanations his friends offered made even less sense.

  No, she thought as she pushed through the glass doors and into the opulent lobby of Jack’s building. She was not going to allow herself to get all morose again and ruin the night. She had to be strong. The police were doing everything they could to find her son, and she had to believe that they would and that Raph would be okay. She knew he wasn’t dead. She was as sure of that as she was sure of the strong, new life she was carrying. She had to stay positive. Jack reminded her of that every day, and he’d even talked about hiring a private detective if the police didn’t turn up something soon.

  She
took the elevator up to the top floor, and when it opened she found a trail of red rose petals on the carpet, leading to a stairwell on the far side of the office. She waddled up it as best she could, feeling the growing weight of her baby even more, and pushed her way out the exit door she found there. It opened onto the rooftop. Violin music greeted her instantly, and she found Jack sitting at a small, candlelit table, wearing a charming grin and one of his customary charcoal-gray suits. There was a string quartet set up behind him, playing a soft, romantic melody. The night was unseasonably mild, but Jack even had a portable heater set up near the table, just in case.

  She cupped her hands over her mouth, amazed. “Jack! Oh my God!” she exclaimed, as a server in a white tuxedo approached and escorted her to the table. Jack rose, kissed her, and held her chair for her as she sat.

  “This is too much, really. You didn’t have to do all this,” she chided.

  “Oh, I’ve done way more than this, sweetheart. I told you I’d move heaven and earth for you, didn’t I?” He reached under the table, brought out a black lacquered box and placed it on the table. On top of it, he set another box, a smaller one. A ring box.

  Savana felt her eyes filling with tears.

  “Pedro, pop the champagne,” Jack commanded the waiter, then turned his attention back to Savana. “Don’t worry; it’s just sparkling grape juice,” he said with a wink.

  She laughed. In all the time she’d known him, she’d never seen him so happy and playful. He gestured down to the gifts on the table. “Go ahead, baby. Open it.”

  With trembling hands, she picked up the smaller box. Inside, she found exactly what she’d been hoping for—and dreading. The ring was stunning, perfect. She was no diamond expert, but she was pretty sure a rock like this could buy a whole block of the Flats. When she looked up from the sparkling stone, she found Jack on his knees before her, a tender smile gracing his handsome features.