by Fox, Piper
It wasn’t a pleasant process, but no one part of it would kill all the ghoul germs. And it was better than losing a limb.
I had a scar on one thigh from treating a ghoul bite.
And if MaddieAnne was a Bronze by blood, the ghouls would follow her until she taught them better.
“Besides, she’s not going to like it when the Call catches her trying to leave a job undone.” I’d had that happen a time or two. It was like the worst flu ever. With extra nausea.
I still didn’t want to go inside the station, or even stick around too close to it, so we got back in the van and I drove sedately out of the parking lot. I didn’t pull over again until I had made several turns and was certain no one followed me. We stopped at a coffee shop. I got two lattes—an unusual treat, but I figured we deserved it after having to deal with Miss Scarlett O’Hara back there—and checked our money supply.
“Okay. We’ve got enough cash to do this run, and then I’ll have to get a job somewhere, probably,” I announced.
I tried to think what Daddy would do about MaddieAnne — or more likely, what he would tell me to do if I asked him. I could almost hear his voice. Blaize, you need to get that prissy little girl and drag her back to Texas to finish the job.
And even the imaginary version of Daddy was right.
So I sat in the driver’s seat in my van and looked up the route for the train she’d boarded. She was headed west, so the true misery wouldn’t start until she got close to Los Angeles—or whenever the curse figured out she didn’t plan to complete the mission it had assigned to her.
I assumed LA was where she was headed. There was nothing else among the train’s stops that someone like her might be interested in, as far as I could tell.
I mapped out my logic for Wolf, who nodded.
“But we are going to have to stop at every damned station along the way that the train stops at, just to make sure she doesn’t get off and try to go somewhere else.” I heaved out a giant sigh. “I guess we’re going to have to be there to catch her when she falls.”
Wolf huffed out a laugh.
“Laugh it up, fuzzball,” I said, quoting our favorite movie—one of the few Wolf would hang around to watch with me when I turned on my old combo DVD player/TV some nights. I put the van and drive and headed back west. “But I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Chapter 8
MaddieAnne
After the Sunset Limited pulled out of El Paso, I’d slept for hours across New Mexico. It wasn’t a pleasant sleep, like I surely deserved, but it was tortured, filled with dreams of headless zombies, and lunging hairy monsters.
I woke as the sun rose over the deserts of New Mexico, and I’d looked out the windows while most of the other passengers slept and, for the first time since we’d left New Orleans, I was able to simply look out of the window and appreciate the landscape outside the window.
When the train woke, the day was filled with announcements over the PA system. Most of them were from Uncle Roy, the lecherous old man who ran the ala carte dining car, and they set my teeth on edge. If he’d ever studied grammar, it certainly didn’t show.
I passed the time dreaming about how wonderful a hot shower was going to feel, and how much fun I was going to have shopping on Rodeo Drive with Daddy’s American Express Black.
In Lordsburg, New Mexico, we’d had a bit of a break, and I’d traded my blood-stained shoes for a pair of cowboy boots. When in Rome and all that. Just before I boarded the westbound train, there was a man selling used paperbacks, and I bought the five on top of his stack. While I had been sick of reading before, I was now totally invested in a series of books by an author I’d never heard of before I’d opened the first one. Now, I was hooked, reading my way through an alternative universe that existed on the night time streets of Baltimore. There were vampires and werewolves and one bad-ass crew of women keeping them all in check, and for some reason, the books were the most compelling thing I’d read in ages.
They sure beat all the self-help tomes shoved in the bottom of my valise.
We rolled into Yuma a couple of minutes ahead of schedule. Half past eleven at night, and our next stop would be in Palm Springs, California.
Cali-fucking-fornia. Finally. I sighed with relief.
New year, new you, I thought to myself, but I hated the sing-song rhythm of it and decided to can the whole idea of self-improvement until I’d had a couple of bottles wine, a pedicure and some time to think, preferably on high thread count Egyptian cotton sheets.
I checked the train schedule and realized I had enough time to stretch my legs before the train departed again. Grabbing only my purse, I stepped down onto the platform and breathed in the cool night air. Arizona smelled different than New Mexico or Texas had, and I found my shoulders relaxing a bit. There was no station, only a platform. I walked the length of it several times, staring at the blanket of stars above me. Out here, with nothing to impede my view, and hardly any moonlight, the sky was so much bigger than I’d ever realized.
Besides me, there were only a couple of other people who’d gotten off the train and being nearly alone made the desert and the sky seem all that much bigger. I felt better than I’d felt since I’d left North Carolina, and part of me wished I had a couple of days to spend in the town. Not only was there a famous prison to explore but Return of the Jedi had been shot here.
What in the hell is wrong with me? I hate the desert, I hate the Southwest, and I don’t like Star Wars or prisons.
I shook my head and wrote the crazy thoughts off of as the products of disappointment and lack of decent sleep.
According to my phone, the train would be leaving in just a few minutes. I took one last look at the sky and walked back toward my car. I was nearly there when severe nausea swept over me in giant waves, and I was afraid I wasn’t going to be able to hold down the grilled cheese sandwich I’d gotten in the food car.
I stumbled on the wooden platform and tried to calm my stomach by taking deep breaths and reassuring myself that I was almost to California. I swallowed hard and took a couple of steps toward the train, but everything was spinning faster and faster until it felt like the ground and the sky were switching places.
“Ma’am?” I heard the porter’s voice as if he were miles away instead of standing right beside me.
When I turned to answer him, I saw it, and I screamed.
Chapter 9
Blaize
The farther we traveled, the more a miserable anxiety over MaddieAnne ate away at the pit of my stomach. I’m not saying I would miss her if she didn’t survive her trip out West. But protecting people from monsters is kind of my thing.
That’s why I’d feel bad if she died, I told myself.
So we kept traveling, hitting every pissant town along the train’s route to make sure she hadn’t gotten off the train. But she didn’t.
At a bathroom stop, I rummaged in the back of my van in a hidden compartment where I kept a number of long swords and other items that might cause policemen to ask questions if they were discovered during routine traffic stop.
I’d had a bronze dagger back here somewhere. Ghouls weren’t all that hard to take out, as long as you got them in the heart—or, as I had recently discovered, smashed them in the face with a bronze plaque.
I hadn’t paid attention to what had happened to that plaque after we finished using it to test MaddieAnne’s reactivity to the metal. I racked my brain to remember. I had dropped it next to her on the bed, and she had shifted away from it almost unconsciously.
“Is it still there?” I slammed the compartment shut and covered it up again with the van’s carpet-remnant flooring. Which, looking at it up close, could probably stand to be replaced.
Dammit. That snooty Southern bitch isn’t even here, and she’s making me feel inferior because I live in a van.
She hadn’t even had to say anything. All she had to do was curl her lip a little as she glanced around at my home. That, and pull into herse
lf, as if trying not to touch anything while she was here.
“Bitch,” I muttered aloud.
Wolf whined a question.
“Nothing. Help me find that bronze plaque my lovely new cousin ripped off the wall?”
He sniffed it out for me—it had ended up under my blanket—and I grabbed it. “I have a feeling we’re going to need this.”
We got to the Yuma train station—really, just a platform—just as the train arrived. There wasn’t even anywhere to park, just a vacant, dirt lot.
The Call pulled me hard, demanding I hurry as I gathered up my weapons, including the bronze plaque.
We stepped out into the gorgeous night, and I had to fight an urge to pause and breathe in the wide-open spaces.
Girl, all you get are wide-open spaces. Get a move on. Daddy’s voice again. Nothing like parental training to fuck with your head.
Wolf growled low in his throat and sprinted up the stairs ahead of me. I followed him, and when I reached the top of the stairs, I saw MaddieAnne several yards away, bent over and clutching her stomach.
I knew she’d get sick.
I shushed the petty voice inside my head and opened my mouth to shout her name.
But I didn’t have a chance to before she looked up at the ghoul headed toward her and let out a banshee-worthy screech.
It would get to her before I could, no matter how fast I ran.
“Grab it, Wolf,” I shouted. I put on as much speed as I could drag out of myself and prayed all the way there that Wolf could hold the ghoul in place until I could smash its face in with El Paso’s train-station plaque.
Chapter 10
MaddieAnne
I never thought I’d be so relieved to see that damn wolf-dog again. He came charging down the platform, teeth showing, drool oozing, towards me just as the ghoul closed in on me and reached for my arm. I jerked it back and took two steps backward, trying to decide if I was going to have to land a hit or two before the animal reached me.
My purse was tiny—a Salvatore Ferragamo mini clutch in Macadamia—and it wouldn’t pack nearly the punch my valise had, but I had to do something. And soon.
“Wolf,” Blaize yelled. “I’m right behind you.” She thundered toward us, her boots shaking the wooden slats that made up the platform. Blaize might not be the most graceful woman I’ve ever met, but she was hard to beat in a fight for one’s life.
With their help, I might just have a chance at killing the ghoul’s creepy ass after all.
Wolf lunged at the ghoul, launching himself all the way up to its neck and grabbing hold. They tumbled to the ground in a whirl of fur and screams. He held her down, his teeth mauling her neck, growling all the while. With her on the ground, I had the advantage.
“I thought we got rid of you back in El Paso,” I said to the thing. Instead of answering, it writhed and groaned desperate to get away from Wolf. “I guess some people need to be told twice.”
I kicked her as hard as I could in the right knee with the toe of my Lucchese boot and smiled when the bone moved far to the side with a loud pop. No wonder people loved cowboy boots so much.
Blaize rushed to my side, out of breath, and panting like a dog.
Did she honestly think we were actually related?
“Move,” she said, pushing me to the side. “There’s only one thing that will stop this bitch once and for all.”
In her hands, she held the disc I’d ripped off the wall in the El Paso train station. She knelt, trusting Wolf to maintain control of the ghoul, and moved the bronze plaque toward the forehead of the ghoul. The closer she got, the more the thing twisted and tried to wrench itself free, but Wolf held tight and Blaize placed the disc squarely on the head of the demon, which instantly started smoking just like my fingertips had.
“Just making sure,” Blaize said, in an eerily calm voice. She turned to me. “Help Wolf hold the ghoul down.”
I didn’t want to touch the disgusting thing, but I followed her instructions, anyway. She’d saved me from being bitten twice now, after all.
But then, she picked up the plaque, held it high above her head, and slammed it edge-first into the ghoul’s head, where it stuck. I swear I heard the thing’s skull crack.
“Oh, I’m going to be sick,” I said.
“No you won’t. We don’t have time for that. Come on.” She stood up and grabbed me by the upper arm.
“What are you doing?” I demanded. “Unhand me.”
“I’m getting you out of the fire zone,” she said.
When we were several feet away, I looked back, discovering that the ghoul had burst into flames. The fire was weirdly contained.
I glanced over at the conductor, who had watched everything without saying a word.
Would he call the police on us?
Instead, he just shook his head and said, “Too many damned monsters out here. We’ll be leaving in five.” Then he disappeared back into the train.
I turned to Blaize. “Thanks for helping me take care of that.”
“Helping you?” Blaize asked.
“Your sarcasm is unwarranted, and you really need to consider wearing something other than black occasionally. It’s a little morbid.”
“I wear plaid sometimes,” Blaize said.
“Great Lord. With those hips? That’s even worse.”
Blaize’s eyes narrowed. “You need some training in how to fight these things.”
“What I need is a bottle of wine, a tray of chocolate covered strawberries, and a binge of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.”
“I saw a gas station not too far back. You could get wine and chocolate there, I guess. But you’re on your own for the snooty shows.”
“I am not snooty. I’m discerning. And to that point, I’m quite sure the Beverly Hills Hotel will have wine and chocolate far superior to that of the Stop N Go, so I’m boarding this train and the next time it stops, I will be in Palm Springs. Best of luck to you and Wolf.”
He was sitting beside her, leaning his shaggy weight onto one of her legs. I could’ve sworn he understood every word I said.
“Tootles.”
I’d just turned to wave to them, one foot on the step, and one still on the platform when the wave of nausea hit me again, but this time I was sure I wasn’t going to be able to hold down the grilled cheese I’d eaten just east of Yuma. I ran to the other side of the platform, where the tracks were empty, and vomited all over the ground. My stomach clenched, and I was sick again, and again.
I felt someone’s palm on my shoulder and Blaize knelt beside me. “I’ll hold your hair. It’s going to be a while before I can get you to a shower.”
How humiliating.
But I let her hold my hair anyway.
Chapter 11
Blaize
I watched MaddieAnne heave up whatever she’d eaten last, shaking my head, patting her back, and holding her hair out of the way. I’d been there. I knew how bad it was.
The train conductor in the doorway, the one who’d watched the ghoul self-combust without blinking an eye, leaned out.
“We’re pulling out soon, Miss.”
I nodded, but MaddieAnne paused in her retching long enough to wave her hand and whisper, “My valise. I need my valise.”
“Can you get it for her?” I asked.
He nodded and dashed into the train. Seconds later, he was out again, carrying the leather bag, now looking worse for wear.
Beating up ghouls with fine luggage will do that.
“Maybe I could…” She didn’t get any more out than that before she was retching over the platform side again, though she had puked up the last of what was in her stomach long before.
“Just wait,” I said. “It’ll pass as soon as the train leaves.”
I hoped I was right about what was causing this, anyway.
When the train wheels screeched against the tracks and began rolling, the dry-heaves slowed. By the time the train was out of sight, MaddieAnne was sitting on the platform with
her knees drawn up to her chest.
“What the hell was that?” she asked, her voice shaking.
I sat down next to her. “That’s what happens when we try to buck the curse.”
“I still don’t believe there’s a curse.”
I waved a hand dismissively. “Fine. Call it a destiny. Or a calling. Or whatever you want to. We have to fight monsters in the Southwest. And if you try to get out of it in any way, you end up vomiting your guts up on the train tracks beside the smoking remains of a ghoul.”
“That seems awfully specific.” Her voice held a touch of humor for the first time since I’d met her.
“Or something equally miserable.”
She frowned. “So let’s just assume for the moment that you’re telling the truth. What am I supposed to do?”
“I wasn’t just deflecting your hips comment earlier, you know. You really do need training.”
“Who trained you?”
“My father.”
She eyed me up and down. “Oh, dear God in Heaven. Absolutely not.”
I looked at her expensive boots, her fancy luggage, her nice clothes. “No. You’re probably right. That’s a terrible idea.”
We both burst out laughing.
After she’d wiped tears from her eyes, she said, “If I accept this as my destiny—or whatever—how will I even know what I’m supposed to be doing? Surely it’s not all vomiting when I go the wrong way.”
I laughed again. “No. You’ll feel the Call. I suggest you get some hand-to-hand lessons, maybe learn to shoot a gun, hold a knife. That sort of thing.”
“Sugar, I grew up in North Carolina. I have been shooting since I was five years old.”
“That’s a good start, then. If you get stuck, you could always reach out to me. I can give you my number.”