Chapter Eleven
Eleven
Irace down the aisles in a mad dash to return to the car that has my bag. Now it’s more obvious than ever who’s a soul and who’s a monster. The souls don’t register my movement, but others—some of whom look deceivingly human—glance at me with startled or annoyed expressions.
When a hand wraps around my arm, I’m expecting it this time. I wrench out of the grip, but the woman stands, slipping into my path with a speed that squashes what little inkling I had left that maybe her human facade isn’t a ruse.
“Thought about my deal, sad one?” she implores. I lean back to put distance between myself and the lilting pull of her voice. Her face is already transforming, becoming eerily familiar. “Ready to succumb to a lifetime free of pain and suffering?”
“A short lifetime,” I correct her, needing to hear it out loud. It’s too easy to fall into her melodic voice that pulls me in, blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Luke can’t save me this time. Maybe he’s already dead, pushed off the caboose and lying on the tracks in a pool of blood.
The thought is sobering and a good reminder I will always need to save myself.
“Let me go,” I snarl. Stay angry. It might literally be life or death to keep holding on to something that keeps me rooted. Even if it’s the worst part of me.
“I’d be doing you a favor,” she purrs. Her finger comes up to touch my face.
I jerk back before she can make contact, remembering how when her hands touched mine, I lost all thought.
Whatever power she has feels like the tide trying to drag me out to sea.
I fist my hands at my sides, my nails biting into my palms to give my head clarity.
“Word on the street is that your favors have a price.”
The compassionate smile on her face doesn’t shift, but her eyes harden, flickering from brown to black.
“That man that was with you. He convinced you I’m a liar, didn’t he?
I can assure you, he’s the liar you should beware of.
Just like your pain, I can see his. And it’s the pain of someone hiding something disastrous. ”
Her words unsettle me. I know nothing about Luke, and I’ve rationalized that by not letting him know much about me. I thought it was protecting me, but maybe I’m hurting myself.
“If you don’t let me pass, I’ll have no choice but to stab you,” I warn, wrapping my fingers around the hilt of the dagger strapped to my thigh.
She reaches for my face again. “I’m your friend, sad one. Not your ene—”
When the warm tips of her fingers brush my chin, I whip the knife out and plunge it into her stomach.
She gasps, eyes wide. I gasp, too. I’ve never stabbed anyone before.
I expected more resistance, more time for thought.
But the dagger slides in to the hilt, a sound a little too close to squelching filling the air.
“Unfortunately,” I say, twisting the knife, “I have to assume everyone’s my enemy here.”
I rip it out, stumbling back as black and purple shadows race up her body, wrapping around her. Only her face has yet to be consumed. The face of my mother. Me. But that shifts, too. Her eyes shine with a visceral hatred, purely black again.
“You are going to die here, mortal!” she screams, her voice too loud for the tin can surrounding us. “Mark! My! Words!”
The end of “words” sounds like steam, held out in a boiling hiss as the shadows climb inside her open mouth. And then, just like with Beliar in my apartment, she’s gone. Nothing but wisps of dissipating smoke in her place.
A breath shakes out of me as I clutch the back of the nearest seat to stop my legs from crumbling beneath me.
I just killed someone. Maybe a demon—obviously a demon—but that doesn’t thwart my horror.
Nor the self-loathing at the realization that I don’t regret it at all.
I don’t feel bad, or conflicted, or scared. None of that. It feels good.
What did Luke say about being here? The longer we stay, the more our beings will adapt. Is this me adapting? Losing my humanity piece by piece? Or is this just me being grateful to be alive? Reassuring myself I did the right thing?
“Oh my devil, she killed Melinda.”
I spin to take in the passengers blinking back at me.
Passengers who are very obviously not mortal.
And not souls, either. These passengers are of all shapes and sizes and skin colors that include shades of cornflower blue, grass green, and brick red.
Some have horns and others have pointed teeth like Flannel and Denim.
A few peer at me with eyes that are eerily human, while others are so not I can’t even guess what they might resemble.
Demon isn’t the word to describe everyone who stares back at me, though I’m sure a few must be. These are monsters. The kinds children fear lurk under their beds. The kinds that low-budget horror movies are made about. The kinds that shouldn’t be real.
“And did Melinda say…mortal?” a second voice asks, an edge of what I can only pin as delight in it.
I frantically search the faces before coming upon one of the green-skinned beings.
He has a large, crooked nose and larger ears that come to points behind him.
He’s huge, and his growing grin shows a mouthful of jagged yellow teeth. “What are you doing on this train?”
His question is punctuated by a type of glee that unsettles me all the more as a black tongue darts out to lick his lips. Is everyone in hell a cannibal?
The train’s whistle blows as if in a resounding yes.
“I have a ticket.” I pat my pockets. I have no clue where the ticket even is. It’s gone. “But actually, I’m on my way off. Here’s my stop.”
I break for it, sprinting down the aisle and catapulting myself toward the door at the end.
A stampede of footsteps follows me as I burst into the car Luke and I were sitting in.
It’s quieter, full of souls still saying their prayers.
No monsters, but that doesn’t stop the ones on my tail.
I’m only halfway to my seat when the door opens behind me, a clamor of voices disturbing the peace.
“Stop her!”
They rumble after me, but are slowed by pushing and shoving each other to make it down the narrow aisle.
I finally reach our row just as the train whistle goes off again.
Hauling my duffel from the luggage rack Luke slung it on, I turn toward the doors to the next car as the green-skinned monster reaches a spindly finger toward me.
And gets flung back.
The train screeches along the track as it brakes, hurling us to the floor. I fall on my duffel, softening the impact. The monsters lurch backward, tumbling over each other.
“Brie!”
I jerk up at Luke’s voice. He stands in the open doorway I was nearly through, but the force of the fall has thrown me back several rows. His eyes are bright with panic as he reaches for his dagger.
Mine is still in my hand. I leap to my feet and spin, coming face-to-face with a wall of monsters rushing me full bull-at-red-flag style. My dagger might take out one, maybe two, but there’s no way I can destroy them all. Luke’s panicked expression is entirely warranted.
I test my luck on making it to Luke, but my foot catches, tripping me. With my duffel slung over my shoulder, its weight propels me to the ground and I flip onto my back in time to see the monsters barreling toward me. Luke’s too far away.
My eyes slam closed against the impending assault. A few seconds drag by and a huff of anger makes me open them.
“Move!” a being with mottled blue skin snarls, fangs descending from his upper jaw. “Get out of our way!”
Over me stands the soul I was sitting beside.
His head still hangs and Italian prayers tumble from his lips, but he acts as a barrier between the monstrous assault and where I’m sprawled on the ground.
He’s joined by more souls, people who walk over me with their incorporeal forms. I wince as a bare foot goes straight through my stomach, though I don’t feel anything aside from an icy swoosh.
The same laws don’t seem to apply for my assailants. They push and snarl and swipe against the thickening wall of souls, but the souls hold firm. They’re protecting me.
A swell of emotion rises at the realization. “Come on,” Luke says, hauling me to my feet.
I step into the vestibule just in time for the door leading to the platform outside to slide closed. “No!” I yell, throwing myself against it. The platform blurs by as the train pulls away from the station.
“Move,” Luke orders. He digs his fingers between the space where the door meets the wall. The worn leather of his jacket pulls taut across his shoulders as, with a grunt, he pries the door open. “We have to jump!”
“Are you crazy?” I yell, wind whipping my hair into my mouth. “It’s going too fast!”
“Not yet it isn’t. We have to jump now!”
He pulls me to the edge with him. The ground swims before me. All I see is the spray of blood from Denim’s body hitting the tracks. I wonder if Flannel joined him, since Luke’s here and he isn’t.
“Ready?” he yells.
“What kind of question is—”
“Now!”
His hand is in mine, so I have no choice but to leap with him. The feeling of soaring through the air is one I could not possibly despise more. The weightlessness of it, the panic, the absurdity.
And then—the inevitable crash.
At some point we unlink, so when I hit the ground, I have no clue where Luke is. It’s just me, the grass, and the pain that explodes through my body upon impact. I roll and roll, losing my duffel in the process, until I finally come to a stop on my back with a mouthful of hair.
The train whistles away, literally leaving us in its dust. A groan slips past my lips as the breath sticks in my lungs, the force of the fall washing me in terror that something important is broken. I’m too scared to move and find out.