Chapter Five - Ketill
Fangs fly out of the shifter’s mouth as my fist connects with his ugly mug, and he goes down like a dead weight. I pull my hand back, blowing on my cut-up knuckles as the shredded skin knits back together.
Then, for ruining my moment with my soulmate—and just for fun—I bury my foot in the unconscious fucker’s gut, before heading back towards the cabin where I left the love of my life, whistling as I go.
Sure, I’ve only known him for…
I tug up the sleeve of my jacket to check my watch.
Twenty-eight minutes. I’ve known my treasure for twenty-eight minutes.
Smirking, I tuck my hands in my pockets as I stroll.
My treasure might not know why he’s so drawn to me, but the stories of a vampire knowing their soulmate on sight are true.
Now he just needs to speak the famous ‘I know you’ line every vampire’s mate says when coming face to face with Fate and admit his feelings. I doubt I’ll have to wait long.
My older brother, Einarr, told me all about love languages.
He has a soulmate, so he should know. Not that I’m supposed to know about the man he secretly shadows like a hunter would a wolf, if that hunter was an overgrown, lovesick idiot.
But give Einarr a sip of alcohol, and he’ll spill all his secrets.
Saving my treasure from leopards must be an act of service.
The iced tea has to be gift-giving and quality time.
The way he cupped my jaw is physical touch, and in the whole twenty-eight minutes of knowing each other, haven’t I offered nothing but words of affirmation?
Not that it’s difficult when he looks the way he does, always rolling his eyes and scoffing to hide his little smiles and calling me an ‘idiot’ or ‘crazy, instead of just saying ‘I love you’ or ‘you’re handsome’.
Maybe I’ll give Einarr a call for advice. He might not have claimed his soulmate, but I don’t know anyone else with one, and my two other brothers would be useless. Maybe my father, Vidar. But it’s been years since we’ve spoken, and last I heard, he’s busy living as a husk in a rundown mansion.
All thoughts of my family flee when I hear the sounds of a struggle.
I sprint into the dining cabin, finding a shifter with his fist around my soulmate’s neck. Rage like I’ve never experienced engulfs me, consuming my every sense, so I don’t even register I’ve grabbed the shifter by the shoulders until he’s crying out in pain.
Surprised, the shifter releases my soulmate to try to fend me off. But he doesn’t get a chance.
BAM! BAM! BAM!
I slam his face into the marble counter three times, and it’s my second time in so many minutes to see shifter fangs scattering like chipped marbles.
Roaring, I throw the shifter into the table, and it splinters under his weight with a crash. I wait a beat, but the shifter doesn’t get back up.
“Are you okay, treasure?” I demand, spinning back to my soulmate, my blood pumping so hard that all I can see is red.
“Ketill, we gotta go!” he rushes out, scrambling over the slippery counter, wet with shifter blood.
“Did that fucker hurt you?” I take hold of him, helping him down.
I try to check his neck, my heart racing faster than when I was riding atop the train.
Humans are so fragile, and the idea of only having those twenty-eight minutes with him is a dagger to the heart.
But my treasure slaps my fretting hands away.
“We don’t have time! We have to stop the train, it’s heading towards a bloody bridge that they blew up!”
The anger cools, freezes, then shatters. “Shit.”
I don’t question him, just grab his arm and start running out of the dining cabin and towards the front of the train.
“They drugged the water supply, so who knows if the driver is even awake,” he gasps, already out of breath.
I can’t help it, I throw my head back, my laughter bouncing off the walls. “This will be a story for the ages. Aren’t you excited to tell it, treasure?”
“You’re demented!” he shouts back, like he can’t believe he’s doing this and also can’t believe that a part of him is exhilarated. “Thomas. My name is Thomas.”
I grin as our hurried feet beat against the carpeted ground. We’re going to have so much more than those twenty-eight minutes, and what fun it’ll be. “Let’s go, Thomas.”
Luckily, we don’t encounter any more shifters as we bolt toward the front of the train, my lovely Thomas collapsing against the door like he’s run a marathon.
“I…I’m not that athletic,” he admits, breathing hard.
I chuckle and reassure him with a stroke to the back of his sweaty neck. “Good thing I am, aren’t we perfect together.”
Yanking open the sliding door to the operator’s cabin, I feel Thomas’s eyeroll at my back.
Someone has opened the window. Most likely the train operator dressed in sooty dungarees who’s slumped against it, his limp arm hanging outside the half-window, half-door that opens to the outside.
Even with the closed burner, it’s cold in here as specks of rain prickle against my face, and the stink of burning coal is thick.
As is the scent of blood.
I push forward into the vibrating space, the chugging engine and the howling wheels shaking the walls, the operator jostling along with it, like some macabre dance.
Through the windows, steam billows around us like we could be travelling through a storm cloud, and up ahead is a stone bridge held up by thick slabs of rock jutting high above an icy lake.
And at the far end of the bridge is nothing but rubble.
“We need to wake him up,” Thomas insists, moving forward.
“He’s dead, treasure.” I hook my arm around his middle to pull him back from seeing the blood I scented the moment we entered.
But it’s too late. Thomas startles at the sight of the dead driver with a hole punched through his chest, tacky dark-red blood pooling at his feet.
I expect him to freak out. But my Thomas is stronger than I’ve given him credit. He sucks in a surprised breath, squares his shoulders, then throws me a serious look. “Please tell me you know how to stop a train?”
“You’re making me so hard right now.”
Thomas looks at me like I’ve lost my mind. But love is a crazy thing.
Before I can answer, the air shifts.
I free Thomas, spinning on my heel to shove the door closed just as four stalking shifters in human form lunge for the cabin, their presence hidden beneath the screaming train and overpowering scents.
One of them shoots forward before the door can seal shut, yowling as the edge slams into his arm.
“Fuck!” Thomas yells, frantically searching the cramped space. “There has to be a manual somewhere!”
I fight to keep the rattling door closed, gritting my teeth as bodies slam against it. The nails on the trapped shifter’s hand elongate into deadly, hooked claws. I spit out a curse, unable to avoid them raking across my shoulder—splitting my coat and slicing into the meat of my forearm.
“You fucker,” I snarl.
But shifters aren’t the only things with fangs and claws.
My canines sharpen into points, and I bite out a chunk of disgusting shifter flesh. A pained scream erupts from the other side of the door as his arm jerks free, blood splattering across my face. I seize the moment to slam the door shut.
“Not to rush you, treasure.” The shifters continue to throw themselves against the door, the pounding against metal painful as it beats into me on each fresh blow. “But have you found anything yet?”
My soulmate is looking at me with huge eyes.
I remember my fangs are still out—that I just bit someone and his blood is dripping down my chin.
I must look like a monster.
“I can’t find anything,” Thomas announces as if nothing has changed. “But I’ve got a new plan.” Thomas pushes the driver off the chair, wincing when the body hits the ground and mumbling a sorry.
I fight back a bloody smile. Fate chose well for me, and once this is all over, I’ll prove to Thomas that Fate chose well for him, too.
Without a care for the blood, Thomas drops into the seat and takes his phone out, chewing on his lip as he types for a moment.
“You think there’ll be a manual online?” I ask, grunting as the hammering intensifies. “Yeah, yeah, you want in, fuckers. Well, it ain’t happening!”
“There really is a tutorial for everything!” Thomas exclaims, placing his phone upright on the controls to show a YouTube video titled ‘Train 101 - How To Make An Emergency Stop’.
“I could kiss you right now!”
“Save it for after I stop this thing,” he shoots back, all business, which only makes me want to kiss him more.
I have to physically hold myself back from going to my soulmate. Mostly because the door crashes open in that moment, and I’m pushed to the ground.
‘Hello and welcome to my channel, Training 101.’
“Looks like you proved me wrong, fuckers!” With all my strength and speed, I shove the door up and use it to force back the shifters.
“C’mon, c’mon!” Thomas yells at the video.
‘First, I’d like to thank the sponsor of this episode, Hello Fre—’
“Fucking hell, why is this intro so long!” my treasure shouts and skips ahead.
I’m forced back a few steps. A clawed hand sneaks around to scratch at me. Through gritted teeth, I use the door like a shield and push the shifters back into the corridor.
‘On this episode, we’ll be going over how to find the emergency stop.’
Something solid bashes into one side of my makeshift shield. Thrown off balance, I drop the door, and it clatters into the empty seat opposite Thomas.
I stare down three shifters. The fourth one is slumped and bleeding out against a wall further down the corridor.
“Give us the damn egg, Ketill!” The one on my left side orders.
“How about fuck you?” I duck just as the one who shouted throws a punch. My own fist meets his jaw as I bolt upright. There’s a nasty crunch, and the shifter topples into his friend behind him, both of them falling like bowling pins.
‘And as you can imagine, you’d only need this in a high-stress situation.’
“Finally!” Thomas shouts.
‘So, because of that, I’d like to thank my next sponsor of this video, BetterHel—’
“Are you kidding me?!” Thomas screeches.
The shifter at my right tackles me into the controls, knocking the wind out of me. He hisses, his spittle splatting onto my face.
“Gross.” I bring my knee up between his legs. He cries out, his whole face turning a pale green, and I shove him off me just before he vomits.
Out the window, the Scottish countryside whizzes past as we head onto the bridge rising from the frozen lake and towards a deadly drop.
Spinning, my foot sinks into the gut of one of the shifters just as he comes for me. My thoughts are no longer on the fight, how to stop the train or even on the dragon egg—I need to get out of here with Thomas alive.
“Treasure, we’re running out of time.” My fist swings into the face of the last conscious shifter.
If every life on this damned train has to end for Thomas, then so be it.
Once I’ve confirmed that no other shifter is going to get up, I whip around to Thomas so I can grab him and chance it out the window, but just as the train is about to race towards the broken end, it lurches and comes to a screaming halt.
I stumble, grabbing hold of Thomas’s chair for support, and narrowly miss the back of his head meeting my nose as he shoots up.
“We did it!” he shouts, smiling big and bright with tears in his eyes.
“All you, treasure,” I chuckle, breathing hard. “That was all fucking you.”
Thomas throws his arms around me. I pull him close, filling my lungs—my body—with his thrumming scent. We’re safe, he’s safe. I pull back a hair’s breadth to stare into the shining eyes of this amazing man that Fate, for some reason, thought I was worthy of.
“You are just…” I breathe, shaking my head like I’m waking from a dream. How could he be real and mine? And I’m his, and will be for so much longer than twenty-eight fucking minutes. “Wonderful. You are just so wonderful.”
“Ketill…” His excited heart pounds against my chest, his fingers dig into the collar of my jacket. His lips parting, inviting. Thomas did promise me a kiss, after all.
Then my soulmate is jerked away from me, dragged to the now wide-open door leading to the outside, the bruised and battered shifter with the claw tattoo on his cheek hanging from it.
“You won’t get away this time, Ketill,” the tattooed shifter snarls.
A bolt of blinding white panic slices through my entire body as the shifter hurls a shocked Thomas out of the window, to plunge towards the frozen lake.