Shadow Train

by J. Gabriel Gates

  * * *

  Savana looked up from her scattered belongings and saw her reflection in the mirror on the back of the door. She looked sad, miserable . . . and pathetic.

  She could almost hear Raphael chastising her. It’s bad enough to deceive everyone around you, including your new husband. It’s worse to lie to yourself.

  Then she remembered what Lily Rose had told her. Ain’t no medicine like truth, sugar. Remember that. There aren’t too many problems it can’t fix, even those that seem unfixable.

  She stared at herself in the mirror for a moment, and before she knew she’d intended to speak, she was shouting.

  “JACK!” In the echo chamber of the bathroom, it sounded like someone yelling from inside a tomb. A moment passed and then she heard his footsteps returning.

  “What is it?” he asked from the other side of the door.

  “Jack,” Savana said, her voice tremulous. “I need to talk to you.”

  “Yeah. You want to come out? You want me to come in?”

  “No,” she said quickly, then added, “It’s bad luck.”

  The truth was, she was afraid. Afraid she’d look into his eyes and lose her nerve. Afraid of what his reaction would be—and knowing that it would be the end of their relationship.

  “Okay, then,” he said, annoyed. “So talk.”

  “I have to tell you something. About the baby,” she said.

  “Yes?” Jack said slowly, with exaggerated patience.

  She took the deepest breath she could. “Jack, the baby is—” she stopped abruptly and winced.

  “The baby is what?” Jack said, his patience eroding at last.

  Savana’s mouth was open, but no sound was coming out. Finally, a strangled groan escaped her, and she fell to her knees, holding her belly with both hands.

  “The baby is . . . coming,” she managed to say.

  “Lily Rose!” she heard Jack shout. She heard the door opening, and then everything fell away from her, like the ending of a movie, fading to black.

  Moments later, she found herself blinking up at the ceiling, cradled in Lily Rose’s arms. Aimee and Dalton were standing in the doorway, watching her with concern.

  “Am I . . . is the baby . . . ?” Savana whispered, confused.

  “You’re fine, and so is the baby,” Lily Rose said patiently. “And don’t worry—he’s not coming quite yet. I’ll bet my hat it was just false labor brought on by the stress of the day.”

  Savana glanced up at Lily Rose’s hat. It was a jaunty little lavender number covered with fake flowers—daisies and baby’s breath—and it had an organza frill accent. As much as Lily Rose loved her hats, Savana knew, there was no way she would bet one if it wasn’t a sure thing. Feeling better, she sat up, but it took a huge effort. It really felt like the baby was doubling in size every day.

  She looked up at Lily Rose and the two frightened girls in the doorway. “I’m getting married today,” she said softly.

  The girls probably thought it was just an affirmation of the obvious, but Savana knew Lily Rose understood what she meant.

  “We all got our path to walk, don’t we?” Lily Rose said. “Come on, girls, help me get her on her feet and let’s get her makeup done.”

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, Aimee stood on the courthouse steps, hand in hand with Orias, as her dad and Mrs. Kain faced each other and the justice of the peace started the ceremony.

  “We’re gathered here today to join Jack Banfield and Savana Kain together as man and wife . . .”

  It was a small party. The only people there were herself and Orias, a mildly disgruntled Rick, the Shaos, Dalton, and Lily Rose. Aimee wasn’t surprised that Maggie hadn’t shown up. She didn’t think her former best friend had much interest in Rick anymore.

  “I do,” said Savana.

  But more important than the people who were there, Aimee thought as the justice’s voice droned on, were the people who were not there. Emily Banfield and . . . someone else. Someone Aimee had once cared about very much. Since she’d been staying at her dad’s, she’d started getting quick little memory flashes of things she used to do with her friends . . . that boy Tyler, who had died . . . and another boy, after Tyler. Someone she had really liked. Her mind grappled for more information during those brief flashes, trying to remember, and just as she almost had it, it faded away. The one recollection that stayed with her now was her burning need to find her mother and bring her home. Somehow, she’d gotten so comfortable in her life with Orias that she had forgotten.

  “I do,” said her father.

  “Do you have the rings?”

  Aimee’s mind wandered throughout the ceremony, jarred back to reality only by the sound of applause as the justice said, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”

  And that was it. They were really married. The truth was Aimee had expected something to stop it—some grand catastrophe, maybe, or someone speaking up to object to the proceedings. But no—it was done. She and Orias followed as Jack and Savana descended the courthouse steps, smiling while the Shaos showered them with handfuls of rice. Her dad was shaking Orias’s hand and then hugging Rick. Savana was giving out hugs, too, first to Lily Rose, then Dalton, and then scooping Aimee into an awkward embrace.

  She watched in bemusement as her father helped her new stepmother down the steps to the waiting white limousine, and then the car took off, on its way to the nicest hotel in Topeka for a mini honeymoon. Jack had promised Savana the real thing in an exotic location after the baby was born. Just like that, they were gone. The whole ceremony had taken less than fifteen minutes.

  A fat, cold raindrop plunked down on Aimee’s face, then another and another, and suddenly she felt the insistent swell of an encroaching panic attack. With it came the overwhelming need to be someplace else. Before could stop herself, she slipped.

  Almost instantly she was standing in front of the perpetually burning fire in Orias’s living room hearth. She moved closer and warmed her hands, allowing the heat to evaporate the rain from her skin and her hair. She watched the flames quiver and intertwine for several minutes before she heard Orias come in.

  “What the hell was that?” he asked angrily.

  “I had to get out of there. I couldn’t breathe.”

  “We’ve been over this, Aimee,” Orias admonished. “You can’t slip in front of others—you know the problems it could cause. Lily Rose is pretty savvy, but most humans are not advanced enough to understand your gift.”

  Her eyes locked onto his, and she felt the sting of tears. She fought to hold them back.

  “I know,” she said. “But during that farce of a wedding, it hit me.”

  “What?” His tone was warmer now, less angry.

  “Don’t get me wrong,” she said. “I’ve loved spending all this time with you. I loved it so much that I forgot about some other things I want to do. I forgot how badly I need to find my mom. All this time—we were supposed to be looking for her. How could I just forget about that?”

  “You’re not ready,” he said.

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Did you remember anything else—staying at your dad’s?” he asked quietly.

  “Just . . . I don’t know. Some disjointed things I can’t quite put together. But I remembered the most important thing—I’ve got to go and get my mom.”

  “You can’t go alone—”

  “I’ll be fine,” she said. “If anything gets too weird, I’ll just slip. Anyway, I won’t go unprepared. This time I’m taking supplies. A flashlight, for one thing, and—you’re going to help me, right?”

  Orias put his hands on her shoulders, and she loved the strength she felt in them. “This has to wait, Aimee—just a little while. There are other factors at work now,” he said. “I can’t stay in Middleburg any long
er, not even eighteen-seventy-seven Middleburg. I have to leave—maybe forever—and I want you to come with me.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked. “Why? What’s happened?”

  He sighed, a darkness she hadn’t seen in a while returning to his eyes. “I’ve explained to you the relationship—or lack thereof—between Nephilim and the fallen angels?” he said.

  “Yes. No love lost. Enemies for centuries and all that. I got it—and?”

  “And it seems I’ve somehow offended a very angry—and very powerful—fallen angel named Azaziel.”

  “How?”

  “Who knows?” he said, shrugging slightly and giving her a little smile. “Maybe I got too rich.” He leaned over and lightly pressed his lips to hers. “Or maybe I became too happy. With a Nephilim there doesn’t have to be a reason. They despise us.”

  “But what’s the problem?” she asked. “If you can’t die, how can he hurt you?”

  “He can make the rest of my existence—many thousand more years—a living hell. He wants to arrest me and take me to trial in the Dark Territory.”

  “Maybe a trial would be good,” she ventured. “I mean, if you didn’t do anything. Maybe it’s an opportunity for us to find out how to save your mortal soul.”

  “Half soul,” he reminded her. “Even if there was a way and Azaziel knew it, he wouldn’t tell me. And he doesn’t have the authority to grant anyone’s redemption. He’s a cold, jealous Irin who hates all humans and all Nephilim.”

  “Why does he hate humans?” she asked.

  “Jealousy. Because Irin are banished from the light of the All, and humans are not,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

  She thought about that for a moment. “Okay,” she said. “All the more reason to go and find my mom. I don’t think I ever told you but she studied angels for years—read everything she could get her hands on. She’ll know what to do.”

  “Aimee,” he was pleading now. “You have to listen to me. It’s wonderful that you want to help me—but Azaziel is coming, and I cannot stay here. Don’t you want to be with me, as we planned?”

  “Of course I do,” she said—and she did. She didn’t remember ever being as happy as Orias had made her. “Just call or text me when you get to wherever you’re going, and I’ll come to you. In the meantime, I’m going back to 1877 Middleburg and bringing my mother home.”

  “No,” he said softly. “You’re coming with me.” He took her in his arms and kissed her then, and his kiss was full of longing. So full, in fact, that she knew if she didn’t get out of there she would give in to him.

  * * *

  And suddenly, Orias was holding only empty air. Aimee was gone.

  He uttered a curse and sank into the easy chair to stare again into the dancing flames in his fireplace. He had to find her—but it would have to wait until after he had arranged his departure. And he would have to go soon. It wasn’t death that frightened him. It was the kind of judgment Azaziel would pass on him.

  Azaziel could add eons to his Nephilim curse. He could torture and mutilate Orias, make him so repulsive that no one would want to look at him, so that he would go through all those lifetimes completely and utterly alone. He could throw Orias into the Pit and keep him there indefinitely while Aimee grew old—and then release him on the eve of her death.

  Orias knew he had to take evasive action. He had to stay a few steps ahead of Azaziel, to escape and hide until the Lord of the Prefects moved on to other business and forgot about him for a while.

  There was only one thing he could do. An explosion would distract anyone who might be looking for him as he made his getaway. It had worked for him before, a couple of times. Orias had everything he needed to make the bomb—he’d been gathering it for a while, just in case, and he knew how to build it. It wouldn’t kill Oberon, Azaziel or their minions, but if he was lucky it might slow them down a little and give him the precious time he needed to escape.

  After he had placed it and set the timer, he would find Aimee and convince her to come away with him.

  * * *

  On Saturday morning, Agent Hackett lounged in a chair inside his room at the Solomon Motel on the outskirts of Middleburg, chewing on a plastic coffee stirring stick—a bad habit he’d picked up since he quit smoking. The remains of a fast-food lunch were scattered on the bed and his feet were propped up there too, atop a luridly colored duvet made from some kind of stiff synthetic fabric. Judge Judy was on TV, berating some young kid for failing to pay his child support. Hackett chuckled. No one could eviscerate people like ol’ Judy.

  His phone chirped then, and he was still grinning when he answered it. It took him a second or two to recognize the voice on the other end—it was the Darling kid.

  “Weston. I thought you’d fallen off the face of the earth. What have you got for me?”

  What he had, he said, was a piece of the ring. Finally.

  “Good work,” Hackett said. “Sit tight. I’ll send a car for you.”

  He rallied his team, and on the way to the police station, he felt more energized than he had in days. When he was first assigned this mission, the prospect of bringing in a high-level target like Feng Xu had him salivating, and the particulars of the case were interesting. Hell—Feng Xu wasn’t just high level, he was almost legendary in the counterespionage field.

  Mounting his head in my trophy room, Hackett had thought, will make my career. He would be able to write a ticket to whatever cushy, high-level job he wanted. But as the Middleburg mission wore on, he grew increasingly frustrated. He’d kept the recon team on point—they had half the town wired up for surveillance by now—but the surveillance had turned up nothing. He had some ideas for flushing Feng Xu out of hiding, but every time he called his superior in Washington, his orders were the same. Be patient. Sit tight and wait. Let the target make the first move. Well, Hackett was getting sick of waiting. There was only so much fast food and daytime TV a man could endure.

  Today, however, all that had changed. The Darling kid had finally turned something up. And he learned when he got to the station, there had been another development.

  “Agent Hackett, you need to see this,” the desk officer on duty said as he handed Hackett a file.

  “Thanks, Johnny.” Hackett scanned the documents inside and then looked up at the officer. “Anyone check this out?”

  “I did,” Johnny said. “There wasn’t much to see except a broken window, but look at the description of the perps—two Asian men with black hats and daggers.”

  Hackett was already nodding,

  “And the only thing missing was the ring shards. These are our guys,” Johnny finished.

  Hackett gave the report back to Johnny. “Make copies of this for everyone on the team. Is there any surveillance footage for that area for the time frame?”

  “Already looking into it, sir,” Johnny assured him.

  “Good. The snake has slithered out of his hole. It’s time to find it.”

  That’s when Weston Darling entered, with his cute little Chinese girlfriend at his side. Hackett glared at Li, then at Weston.

  “This is how you keep a mission secret? You bring your girlfriend along?” he demanded.

  “But I never would have gotten the shard without her help,” Weston protested.

  Hackett cursed and grumbled for a moment before finally letting the matter drop. The younger Darling would never be half the man his father was, but that wasn’t Hackett’s concern. All that mattered was the glistening piece of crystal the boy was now pulling out of his pants pocket.

  Hackett put a thick rubber glove on before examining the ring fragment. If it generated as much power as everyone claimed, there was no way in hell he was going to touch it bare-handed. God only knew what kind of radiation might be coming off the thing.

  When he wa
s finished he called in his science officer, Rom Blipton, who placed it in a lead-lined box and walked away with it.

  “Where’s he taking it?” Weston asked.

  “We’ve got a mobile lab set up out back,” Hackett said dismissively. “Come on, let’s sit down over here. I want to go over this list with you one more time.”

  He led the kids into a back room and sat down with them. He took a document out of the file and handed it to Weston. “This is the list you gave me—of people who might have a piece of that crystal ring.”

  “Yeah?” Weston said.

  “Take another look. Is there anyone else you can get to? To try to find pieces?”

  Weston scanned the list. “I don’t think so,” he said. “We got lucky with this one. We just happened to be in the right place at the right time. We don’t have many opportunities to go wandering around in other people’s houses, you know.”

  “I guess that’s true.” A plan was fast taking shape in Hackett’s mind, and he wanted to make sure he had his facts straight before he took any action. If the Order of the Black Snake was planning to go around breaking into houses and collecting ring shards, he might be able to work it so that they would play right into his hands.

  The plan was simple: Hackett and his men would collect the ring shards from all the kids who lived in the Flats. If they resisted, his men would ransack their homes until they found what they were looking for. That was one of the perks of being a Black-Ops agent—normal rules didn’t apply. Once Hackett had all the shards from the Flats kids, the Snakes’ only option would be to get the rest from the kids in Hilltop Haven—and that was where Hackett would catch them. It was gated, guarded, and already outfitted with a top-of-the-line video surveillance system, and he’d already found a vacant house where he could set up his command center. The minute the Snakes set foot in Hilltop Haven, he’d clamp down on them like a bear trap. All he had to do was catch one of their foot soldiers. Hackett was confident he could make him spill his guts about where Feng Xu was hiding. That was another perk of being off the books. He didn’t have to worry about pesky things like human rights violations. And torture was a tactic that Agent Hackett rather enjoyed.