The Echoes of Sin (The Kinless Trilogy Book 3)

by Philbrook, Chris

  “Yeah?” Mal asked back loudly.

  “Are you both okay?” she yelled.

  “See?” Mal said to Chelsea, and she hit him again. “Yeah we’re okay. Lantern is burning bright and hot, for now.”

  “Good! How much oil is left?” Umaryn yelled. From the other side of the engine compartment James stuck his head out into the passing wind. His face had soot all over it cut with lines of sweat running down, but he had a delirious smile nonetheless. Survival did that to people.

  Mal shook the lantern gently and listened to the tiny sound of the splashing oil in the base. There couldn’t be more than half an ounce of the precious fire-making fluid remaining. “Next to nothing. We’ve burnt half of what was in it already. I wager we have two minutes of light, no more.” It was a guess, and an optimistic one at that.

  The look on Umaryn’s face told Mal and Chelsea exactly how she felt. “I can’t squeeze anything else out of this beast. She’s redlined on almost everything. She was meant for hauling short distances. Built for power, not for speed.”

  “How long until we get back to the village center?” Chelsea hollered.

  Umaryn looked ahead and back again. “Three or four minutes. Five maybe?”

  James spoke up. “They’re going to make another run at us as soon as that lantern goes dark. I propose when we arrive, we jump. Leap off the train and over the stone into the consecrated area. It might be our only chance.”

  “I’m all for that,” Umaryn said, and she ducked back inside the engine.

  Chelsea and Mal turned their attention to the thick forest whizzing by and tried to find shapes moving in the darkness beyond the reach of the magically white lantern light. Chelsea could see them. Ten paces into the edge of the woodland wall dark human shapes leapt from the shade behind a tree to the next, covering their exposed flesh with handfuls of leaves, rocks, sheets of bark, and branches.

  “They’re shadowing us,” she said to Mal.

  “Yeah. It’s not them I’m worried about,” he said back, grimness to his voice.

  She faced him. “What are you worried about?”

  “I counted at least five dozen surrounding us before I got this lit. How many did you just see over there?”

  She looked back and did the math in her head. “Ten?”

  “That’s generous for what I saw. Where did the other thirty go? I don’t think they’re the types to give up. I’m worried about where they went.”

  “Do you think they could get ahead of us? Meet us at the village after the lantern dies?”

  Mal shook his head. “I don’t know how fast they could run if they weren’t trying to climb up the train, but I can’t imagine they can run all that fast. They have no idea the lantern is low on fuel either. They can outrun this train, sure, but we’d see them running ahead. They’re up to something. Aleksi is a conniving bastard, that much is clear to me.”

  “I’d fuck with the tracks,” Chelsea said.

  A moment later the sound of thunder struck, except it wasn’t thunder at all.

  “Rip it! Tear it!” Aleksi said, spitting out a mouthful of raw wood pulp. He and ten other of his precious vampires were on their hands and knees in the forest, only a few hundred yards ahead of the approaching train. They slashed and chewed at the trees, ripping out shards of wood the size of arms and spitting them out in hasty attempts to fell trees across the line. The protective dead had taken on the spirit of the simple woodland beaver, and what they wanted to build would serve as a dam for sure. Several small trees were already leaning towards the tracks, and the largest tree—the thick, ancient oak he himself tore at—was starting to buckle under its own massive weight. Chips and shards of wood covered the mossy forest floor in every direction.

  With a chorus of grunts and hisses the vampires desperately ripped at the large tree as one of the smaller ones tipped. It was going down, and Aleksi couldn’t bear the idea of losing the element of surprise to a sapling. He channeled the blood of the horse he killed and drained the night earlier and stabbed his long, bony fingers into the center of the tree several inches. With a rumbling growl he latched on and ripped two handfuls or organic matter right out of the tree, and that was enough. It started to tilt at him, and he scrambled out of the way on all fours.

  “Yes! Elmoryn protects itself!” He laughed as the train headed towards a collision no one aboard knew fell from above.

  The small tree that fell first alarmed Umaryn. With wide eyes she leaned forward in the cabin and watched as it crossed the right track, then the left track, and settled down with a vibration. Leaves went everywhere into the tall grass. The trunk on the rails was only a few inches wide, and the train would roll right over it and cut it apart.

  Then the sound of a terrible breaking came to her from the nearby forest. Louder than anything she’d heard outside of a thunderstorm, the crunching crack was chased by the sound of wind being split by a fast moving object, and other tree branches failing to withstand a great weight falling on them.

  An oak tree came down on the front of the locomotive, and its mass and girth slammed the train completely off the track, rolling it. The great machine from Elmoryn’s history cried out to the world but only Umaryn’s attuned ears could hear the bellow of fear. The anticipation of pain. The sadness.

  The world tilted, and Umaryn screamed. James grabbed onto anything steel or sturdy as the train began to roll counter clockwise off the tracks at breakneck speed. As the great beast of iron and steel began to smash into the berm the tracks were laid upon, the frame of the train shook and jolted savagely, knocking Umaryn into the wall and almost throwing her out the window and under the rolling train. Her body rolled with James’ onto the ceiling as she watched the green earth rushing by through the window give way to brown, then to black as the metal tore it up. Only a spot of gray sunlight came in through the side window on the right side of the train that now served as the top. The train groaned, creaked and hissed as it came to a complete stop.

  Inside her helm, Umaryn realized that her face hurt, and the vision in one eye began to turn red.

  Chelsea had no sooner made her statement when the small tree came down across the tracks just ahead of the speeding locomotive.

  “Oh shit,” she muttered, and a moment later the gargantuan oak tree came to the ground, thundering the sky and ground in every direction.

  The blossoming top of the tree shook above the forest and for a moment Mal thought the vampires had somehow roused an ancient spirit of the land to fight on their behalf. Fortunately his thought was wrong, and all they had done was somehow bring down the largest tree for miles around.

  The enormous crown of the tree smashed into the very front of the engine as it hustled down the tracks. The mass of the heavy trunk slammed the side hard and tipped the locomotive, twisting it, sending it careening off the right wheels and tipping it over and down the berm. The grinding screech of twisting metal mixed with the thunderous cracks and whooshes of the tree branches breaking.

  Mal and Chelsea watched as the locomotive rolled and the passenger car they were on began to follow suit. They had a second to react, no more.

  “Jump!” Chelsea yelled, already running to the far side of the car as it heaved up and twisted.

  Mal stole a glance at the Illuminator of Truth in his hand and followed her example without thought. Both sprinted as the roof tipped up on their heels, threatening to ruin their attempt at an escape. The lovers grabbed hands somehow and propelled themselves towards the rear of the train and over the edge, hoping to the ancestors that the train’s forward momentum would send the rolling car past where they landed.

  Mal hit the earth first after the twelve foot drop, the hand holding Chelsea’s having come free to protect the precious lantern and the circle of safety it projected. He cradled its warmth against his chest, and smashed into the ground, trying to roll to disperse and absorb the impact. He heard Chelsea cry out in pain as she landed on something hard.

  Mal swore he heard some
thing inside her break, but that had to be his imagination.

  It had to be.

  Then she screamed.

  Inside the now still locomotive James gathered his wits. He’d fallen to what had been the left side of the locomotive compartment, but now served as the bottom. The apostle had slammed into the hard steel wall and shortly after that the softer ground in the window opening. Against his back he could feel Umaryn and her bright red armor. He listened, and over the hiss of steam and the sounds of the logs burning in the firebox, he couldn’t hear anything approaching. Perhaps the lantern was still lit, buying them space and time.

  He shook his head and rolled to face her. He had pains in every part of his body but a cursory pat down told him he wasn’t bleeding, or broken any worse than before. “Umaryn are you alright?” Her helmet shook in the negative and James saw a coating of blood running down her neck. She made a noise that sounded to him like the essence of pain. It wracked his heart to think she suffered. “Take off your helm. You’re hurt.”

  “Okay,” she said from the middle of a bad dream. He shaking hands lifted with weariness and pulled off her helm.

  James took a sharp breath when he saw her wound. He smiled in thanks that she was incoherent and missed his reaction. Somehow in the crash she’d hit her head, and the helmet had been driven into her face sharply, splitting her previously beautiful nose and forehead in half down to the ivory bone beneath. Her eyes were glazed over, and stared downward, unable to lift to James’ face. “You’ve got a bit of a cut. Stay still. You may yet avoid a scar.”

  “Okay,” she mumbled.

  “May the dead of this town and forest mend your flesh. Give us the power of your blood, and heal this deserving woman,” James said in a voice that matched the mauled woman’s tone.

  A soft blue glow emanated from the tips of his fingers, and he knew his spell had drawn the support of the spirits. He reached out and ran his glowing fingers across her brow, and down the ridge of her split nose, one finger on each side of the gulf in her face, leaving mended bone and flesh in his wake. Umaryn’s eyes slowly lost their glaze, arranging straight again and blinking. Showing signs of coherence, and less pain. After a few seconds of caressing her cheeks and temples the glow faded, and the spell had done all it could. All that remained was a faint scar running from the line of her black hair down to the tip of her long and regal nose. In a few months even that would fade.

  “What happened to us? Will I be okay?” she asked in a far more organized way.

  “The vampires felled a great tree onto the train and tossed us off the tracks. I think you hit your face on something. You’ve a scar, but it’s not bad. This shouldn’t be a surprise but your beauty is the least of our concerns. Your brother and Chelsea were on top of the train and we’ve tipped. I can’t hear the undead but they are sure to be on us if we don’t move quickly,” James said, getting to his feet in the lopsided world of the train’s inside.

  The mention of her brother set a fire under her, and she sprang to her feet—will regained—shoving the helmet she made with her own hands back on her head. “We gotta get out there. Help me up,” she said as she picked up her hammer from its resting place on the wall of the train. James cupped his hand and she stepped in it. With strong arms she pulled herself up and out of the train, crouching and looking around before leaving. “It’s clear. Give me your hand,” she said, reaching down.

  James grabbed her hand and he stepped on a lever that strained under his weight. Umaryn’s strength was incredible: she lifted him almost all on her own without any effort on his own part. Within a second he was at the level of the window and pulling his way out into the humid gloom of the paused storm. A rebirth from disaster.

  By the time he got his feet under him Umaryn had already jumped off of the train and ran to where her brother sat holding the artifact lantern, and where Chelsea lay in obvious pain. The sight of suffering spurred the apostle, and he started the process of climbing down the wrecked locomotive. He wasn’t as reckless as Umaryn but he got down quick enough just the same.

  The sputtering white light emanating from the lantern Mal held aloft kept the undead at bay, but as James limped his way across the grass to the murmuring Chelsea he could hear movement in the forest, and approaching sounds on the other side of the flipped train, where the white light was casting a powerful shadow.

  “James you got to help her. Her leg...” Mal sputtered one hand on her shoulder, one hand on her thigh. His eyes were red and wet.

  Chelsea had come down on her left leg straight onto a flat stone that hid in the tall grass. Her lower leg had buckled and snapped, and her booted foot sat at the bottom of her leg at a twisted, unnatural angle. Her heavy breathing made the shattered limb shake and bob in a way it shouldn’t have. Sweat ran down her pale face in sheets. Her pain must have been epic.

  “Stay still my dear,” James said as he looked around for threats. He gently pushed Mal to let her go and give her room. “Mal, Umaryn, protect us so I can heal her.” The twins were galvanized by his calm request, and they took to their weapons. Mal held the dimming lantern high and drew his sword as he headed towards the tree line near the tracks and dying locomotive.

  “Can you fix this?” Chelsea asked through tight lips and gritted teeth.

  James nodded. “Yes, if you are alive still I can fix you, but it’s going to hurt like you’ve never hurt before.” James reached to his belt and pulled out his small knife. It had seen life as a cooking tool, and as something to bite down on. It had never drawn blood in anger. He had the handle made with nice, soft leather for a reason. “Bite down on this. The spell won’t take long but it’ll feel like forever.”

  She bit down on the dagger’s handle, and nodded to the apostle. Tears ran down her face but she kept strong.

  “Spirits of the world come to this woman’s aid. I beg of you to mend what has broken, to fix what is not right, and to ease her suffering so that she may serve life,” James said quicker than he usually would’ve, and then he wrenched on her shattered and dislocated foot.

  Chelsea grunted in pain briefly, biting down on the knife but the pain overtook her and she slumped into the thick grass, unconscious. James’s fingertips were once again skinned in a mellow blue light and he used the power of the dead to aid him in shifting the broken leg back to the position it belonged in. He felt the broken nubs of bone inside her calf grind against each other initially, then grip tight and begin to mend. He pulsed his fingers, massaging the blue light into her flesh, willing it down to the center of the busted leg where the fractured and broken bones were. It took maybe ten seconds, but the energy the apostle channeled into Chelsea repaired her leg well enough for her to stand, and possibly walk.

  James looked to where Mal stood, angrily holding his dying lantern. “Malwynn, come. Chelsea will need to be carried for a bit and I’m not strong enough. The two healing spells have left me with little if we are attacked.”

  “I got her. Mal you and James keep us safe while we walk,” Umaryn said, hanging her hammer on her belt with the leather loop and hook she’d devised. The strong female Everwalk strode over to where Chelsea lay and scooped her up as if she weighed no more than a tiny sheaf of hay. The unconscious warrior’s head swayed about, and Umaryn shuffled her body until Chelsea’s head rested against her shoulder.

  “Will she be okay?” Mal asked as James approached.

  James picked up his knife and put it back in the soft leather sheath on his belt. “She’ll be fine. The spell worked. Fortunate she blacked out. She won’t remember how much pain I put her in, and then hold that against me for the rest of our lives.”

  Mal moved in and embraced the apostle, startling James. Malwynn stepped back after a moment, grateful. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  “You don’t need to thank me at all. If you do anything, help me protect us as we head back. I suspect the next ten minutes will be the worst of our lives.”

  He was right.

  Only two hundr
ed yards separated the village clearing from the train wreck. With Umaryn carrying Chelsea they could only limp along at a tragic pace and the lantern’s meager remaining oil could not last the short trip.

  Mal held it higher and higher as the sounds in the forest grew hungrier and hungrier. With each passing step it seemed like the trees closed in tighter on them, and every inch he could hold the magical lantern higher bought them another few seconds of precious safe passage. The group had reached the halfway point when Mal could no longer feel any oil moving around inside the lantern’s reservoir.

  “We will be in the dark very soon,” he said in a haggard whisper to James.

  James nodded in the smothering heat and humidity caused by the lantern’s otherworldly light. “I have enough... to get us there. Umaryn?”

  “Yes, James?” she grunted, carrying the dead weight of Chelsea and all her gear.

  “Can you run a bit? We are about to suffer the worst of it if we cannot pick up speed.”

  Under her helm the two men heard her snort. “Do I have a choice in the matter?”

  “No,” the weary apostle said.

  She responded by hefting up Chelsea’s body and adding another step to her pace. Soon she caught up to Mal and James, and they were speeding up to match her.

  The darkness crept in for a moment as the lantern flicked out and restarted again. A shrill round of thirsty screams came from the depths of the nearby tree line and the group of living people somehow shrank from the noise.

  “Your sorcery fades!” they heard Aleksi scream in a joyous, maniacal way in the distance. “Your journey ends now, and it is for the best that it is so!”

  “Go drink piss!” Malwynn taunted back as the lantern flashed out for a moment again. They had but a few more seconds of serenity in the cast light. He turned to James. “If you can work some kind of spell to buy us time, now would be a good time to get it ready.”