The women didn’t speak, though their tension did. Tess stood beside me, and I could feel her muscles tying themselves into knots. We were all listening, waiting, and anticipating something. I worked my muscles through a series of small motions, keeping my body loose and my mind clear.
The passengers were still recovering from their ordeal. Some of them were crying or sniffling, unsure what came next but understanding at an animalistic level that the possibilities were not good. Others huddled in their seats, jumping at every noise and jolt in the ride. They were traumatized. I hadn’t gone out of my way to harm them. I’d tried hard not to hurt them, but I could only do so much. I supposed it was better than dying at the hands of a vampire, but some of them might not think so for a while yet. None of them looked at me, sensing that while I was not a vampire, I was certainly something else, and therefore, to be feared.
Uruará—and relative safety—was getting closer, but I didn’t have time to think about it. As I’d feared, the train lurched and our ears filled with the shriek of grinding metal. The light of sparks flashed across the stygian walls outside our window, and we began to slow.
Just as I suspected.
We were stopping, and it wasn’t at a planned destination.
Kamila and Daisy both sat up straighter, suddenly more alert. “What’s happening?” Kamila asked. Her big blue eyes darted all around as if she could answer her own question. All around us, passengers started to cry again. This was all they needed—more drama, more problems, more danger.
I set my jaw. “Some brain trust must have pulled the emergency brake, even though that’s the last thing you’re supposed to do in a situation like this.” I got up and grabbed our things from the overhead bin. I passed them out to the others. Who knew how long we were going to have to hoof it? There was no reason to abandon our packs. We had dog food in there, after all.
The women put their packs on, but Zarya looked up at me in confusion. “A fire in one of the cars seems like an emergency situation to me, Jason. You can’t just go around dragging a flaming train coach behind you.”
I sighed. For one thing, the coach wasn’t actually on fire. For another, I kept forgetting not everyone knew this stuff. I’d gone through a bit of a fixation with trains when I was a kid. I think most boys probably do, although they probably don’t get quite as into it as I had. I’d researched the hell out of trains after an accident involving a train and a school bus in the next county. I hadn’t known anyone on it, but some things stuck with me.
And Zarya, like Kamila, predated trains. That was something else I kept forgetting.
“Pulling the emergency brake in a fire is even more dangerous because the cars are likely to derail, trapping people in the burning car. And pulling it when you’re underground is even worse because now you’re trapped and derailed underground, where rescuers can’t get to you. A New York City subway train derailed only last year because someone pulled the emergency brake. It’s only a good idea if the train moving is going to result in a worse outcome than the train coming to a sudden, violent, and possibly fatal stop. Why do you think there’s usually a warning next to those things saying not to use them?” I searched the car for the emergency windows. “The fire isn’t a problem anymore, but the other passengers don’t know that. They’ve just left us completely exposed to—oh, shit. Perfect.”
My eye fell on the man with the bushy mustache. He smiled. It wasn’t a happy smile. His dark eyes glittered like a snake’s, full of malice and ill intent.
I had my suspicions. A fanger, and sitting close enough to listen to every word we’d said.
Recognition must have shown on my face because his smile deepened. He didn’t let go of the emergency cord. The smug bastard wanted me to know.
That told me several things. He had definitely been listening in on our conversation because he was mocking our need to get off the train. And there was something in this tunnel coming for us; something we didn’t want to see.
I grabbed Tess’s arm. “Whatever happens, follow me.”
She narrowed her eyes, but nodded. Even Tess sensed that I wasn’t acting without due cause. I got up and made my way over to the seat with the emergency exit. Fortunately, no one was sitting in it. I think the pool of blood, possibly mine from my earlier fight, had kept them away. I gripped the brackets holding the overhead bin and used it to swing my legs up. One, two, three swings later, I’d kicked the window free. It clattered to the tracks and fell still, the noise echoing away in the blackness.
Leaving the train was a risk. I knew that. We had no idea how many tracks there were in this tunnel and no way to know which tracks were in use. I knew there were monsters waiting in the dark, but playing defense wasn’t going to work. We would take the fight to them, not only for our benefit, but as an attempt to protect the innocents riding in the cars around us.
I dropped to the ground, landing easily despite the distance. I wouldn’t ask a human to do it, and I didn’t know if many could. It was a drop from light and company into solitude, surrounded by inky blackness. The space yawned away from me, silent and dark.
I looked up. Tess was leaning out the window. “Is it safe?” she asked me.
The air down here was impossibly hot and so damp, I could almost use my water powers on it. What did I expect from a tunnel under a river in the tropics? I let my earth sense out, just a little. There were three tracks down here. None were particularly active right now, and if I understood the way trains were controlled, none would be. No one wanted to be trapped in a tunnel with a burning and possibly derailed train. “As safe as it’s going to be.”
I didn’t know if the train had gone off the tracks, and it didn’t really matter. I couldn’t have helped them, even if every car had flipped. I hadn’t heard a crash. I hadn’t felt the kind of jolt I thought should come with a derailment, not that I was any kind of expert. I held my arms up and focused on escape, letting my senses roam wide and free.
Tess lowered herself out the window, and I caught her, then Katya lowered Daisy and followed. Kamila treated me to a kiss when she landed, and I indulged for just a few seconds. Then I held my hands up to catch Zarya.
I thought about killing Mustache Guy, but I decided to keep my eyes on the prize. I didn’t have time to get involved with that, and I had to be careful. I wanted milling and panicking people. If I climbed back up and toasted Mustache Guy, or went looking for the other vampire, I’d attract the entirely wrong kind of attention. People would certainly remember the face of the man who turned another person into ashes. It wasn’t worth the risk.
Instead, we ran down the track—not back the way we’d come, but forward into the darkness at a steady trot. It seems counterintuitive, but I was betting on our ability to avoid any vampires up there in the tunnel. The enemy was equally likely to be waiting for us behind, and to get to the next point on our journey, we had to be on the other side of this river anyway.
With the endless tunnel walls around us, we ran, wondering if each step would be our last.
11
Behind us, glass shattered as other passengers broke through emergency windows in their cars. The sound was almost festive, but I knew it was anything but. I sped up, keeping my eyes on the tracks as much as I could. The train gave off just enough light to see by, and I didn’t want to mess up my vision by switching to thermal. Eventually, I would need to make the switch, but for now, regular human vision would have to be enough.
People shouted in a whole host of different languages, and no one seemed to know where they were going. They jumped from the train windows, cutting their hands on broken glass where they hadn’t been able to open the window. Some passengers got into fights as they disagreed about the best way to escape or who owned which bag. Everywhere, chaos reigned.
It was exactly what I wanted.
With so many people running around and shouting, the women and I would be able to disappear into the mix and become anonymous. Individual vampires would be able to follow ou
r scents if they already knew what to sniff out, but they’d have to fight their way through 2000 panicked people to do it.
Vampires were bloodhounds, but even their superior senses had limitations, a fact that I intended to exploit. Humans were ingenious creatures, and Ferin were augmented people without the amoral lust for blood and death. Thinking fast, I made sure I brushed up against every person I encountered as I ran past them. After the first couple of people I brushed up against yelled at me, the women saw what I was doing and did the same. People objected, but we did it anyway.
We looked drunk. At that point, I didn’t care about optics. I just wanted to make sure our scents got everywhere, and we got little bits of everyone else’s scent on us. In moments, we created a storm of conflicting scent trails. It was perfect.
We didn’t have to use the chaos to spread our scent around, either. I saw a woman trying to pass her baby out the window of a car that had been damaged by a slight derailment, but there wasn’t anyone for her to pass the baby to. I helped her by passing the baby off to Kamila and then helping the woman herself. I couldn’t understand anything she said to me, and I didn’t stick around for a translation. All I cared about was getting the poor woman and her baby out of the train car and getting my scent onto her and the child.
And not necessarily in that order. The vampires didn’t want the woman or her baby. They wanted us. Our scent. Our blood. To them, we smelled like vengeance.
Soon enough, though, we passed beyond the engine and into the darkness. It was a judgement call as to which way we would go; forward toward Uruará, or back the other way. I decided to go forward in the hopes of getting out of this damned tunnel faster, but there were risks. There were always risks. The farther we passed out of the light from the train, the sooner we would be out of luck. The vampires would have a much easier time finding us in the darkness ahead of us.
The passengers were our only defense, and the vampires chasing us didn’t seem to be slowed down much by them. I sifted my mind, trying to find one thing to do that would keep the vampires at bay. Only one idea sprang to mind, and it wasn’t necessarily the kindest.
The train passengers were starting to calm down now. I wouldn’t say they were entirely with it, but a few of them were starting to corral the others and trying to work out a plan to get out. The good Samaritan in me wanted to urge them to come with us. After all, the shorter distance had to be better than waiting around in the dark, right?
But organizing and calming these crazed, terrified people wasn’t going to rid me of these vampires. They were pushing and shoving their way through the scared people, who were starting to get annoyed instead of just flailing in confusion. What I was about to do wouldn’t help the humans at all.
It would, however, help us to escape. And that was what we needed most.
I hung back just enough so the women ran ahead of me. They were only ahead of me by a matter of inches, but it was those inches that counted. I opened up a spring of water just behind me, flooding the area where the vampires were with fast-moving water.
At any other time, I would have called this irresponsible. The vampires might or might not be affected. The humans on the other hand were thrown into a whole new state of panic by the sudden disaster, which they couldn’t begin to understand. As far as they knew, the water was from a failure in the tunnel system.
Appealing to a human’s sense of imminent destruction was always a good way to make them panic, and this situation was no different from any other.
They screamed and sobbed. Many of them stood there in the middle of the stream, shrieking like the world was ending. Some prayed. Some shouted. I couldn’t take the time to look, but the cacophony echoed down the tunnel.
A strong, icy hand gripped my shoulder. “You’ll pay for that,” growled a voice I didn’t recognize.
I didn’t ask questions. I created another of those spinning flame discs and sent it ripping through his body. This guy—a fanger who reeked of blood—froze in place and arched his back. The flaming disc acted like a saw slicing through him. He stood shocked for a few seconds, then collapsed into the water.
I ran to catch up with the others. I knew others were following, pale or vicious faces flat with intent as they tried to get through the massive crowd. The more panic spread through the crowd of humans, though, the harder it was for the vampires to get through.
We didn’t take a break. All of us could run for miles, if need be, to get away. We were running uphill, which was a grind, but we were all in shape, and we had plenty of incentive. We had no idea what we would find in the dark once we got there. I could only hope the vampires had gotten on board the train from behind, sneaking from the farthermost parts of the train once they’d gotten into the tunnel.
Every sound alarmed, but I couldn’t let it show. I was still carrying a few cracked ribs from my recent fights, so, out of all of us, I was the one sucking the most wind. I didn’t have time to get hysterical. The sooner we got out of this tunnel, the better. We needed daylight and freedom to plan our next move—which I decided would be offense, not defense.
While the tunnel hadn’t been carved from nature and, in fact, had giant railroad ties cutting through it, I could feel the earth down here almost as well as I could feel my own skin. I had to fight against it. I didn’t need a repeat of what had happened on that beach in Mexico, when I’d reshaped the landscape into a nice, comforting living room set. I was willing to use the passengers to get in the vampires’ way. I wasn’t willing to kill them outright, or worse, wall them in with an angry vampire.
I pushed all thoughts of the earth out of my head, but I could still feel it. Maybe if I made a hole behind us. Would it be wrong? I moved the earth behind me, creating a seven-foot sinkhole. It wasn’t so deep a person couldn’t get out if they had a rope, but it would at least trip the vampires up, buying us precious seconds.
We kept running as far and as fast as we could. Kamila let out a burst of flame, sending light and heat into the endless night before us. We heard a few night creatures skitter but nothing as big as a human. That meant rodents. I could live with rodents, though they might not want to live with me.
We emerged into the station at Uruará breathing hard, carrying our packs. People up here were panicking too. The sun was just starting to heat the day, and I was thankful for every golden moment of it.
A policeman grabbed me and stared into my eyes. He asked me a question very intensely.
Zarya shouldered her way back to us and translated. “He wants to know what’s happening in there. They know someone pulled the emergency brake, and then something happened with the radio not long after that.”
Something had happened with the radio? I hadn’t done that. At least, I didn’t think I had. I didn’t have electrical powers.
“I don’t know,” I said as Zarya translated. “All I know was the train stopped very suddenly. There was a thud. I suppose some of the cars went off the rails. I don’t know. Then there was screaming, and everyone got out of the train. Some of the cars were supposedly on fire, but I didn’t see any of it. Then the tunnel seems to have sprung a leak?”
The policeman’s eyes bulged. “My God. How bad is the flooding?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. We just ran. I hope no one tried to follow. A sinkhole opened up just behind us. I almost fell in, but my friends pulled me out.”
“You’re very lucky.” The policeman shook his head, and then he started shouting out orders to a bunch of people who looked like they worked for the railroad.
Zarya grabbed my arm, and we ran out of the train station and up into the streets of Uruará. The sun was high, and for the moment, we were safe, bathed in the cleansing light of a fire for which the vampires had no defense.
12
We ran through the small town as quickly as we could, feet pounding the pavement as we scrambled to get to safety. Once the sun was safely over the horizon, we slowed down. The vampires couldn’t come after us in the sunlight
. We were tired, and we needed to find someplace to regroup. I hated the idea of stopping, but since I was the one with injuries, I needed to accept it. My breath was ragged, my bones ached, and I had lingering flashes of color in my vision that told me I’d pushed my Ferin body beyond the limit. It was time to rest.
We found a small, safe-looking hotel with lots of big windows and checked in. The room turned out to be a good-sized space, with two king-sized beds, a nice-sized round table, and a private bath. I’d learned quickly during our travels that a private bathroom wasn’t always a given in some of the more remote areas, and I found myself grateful for the small commodities in life.
Kamila fed Daisy and headed downstairs to get food for all of us. I wasn’t positive we needed it just yet, but the ladies overruled me. We needed to take care of ourselves, and if we were going to rest and recuperate, we had no reason not to feed ourselves too.
I could see the logic of their preference. I just couldn’t make myself relax enough to feel comfortable showing our faces out of the room. “We’re vulnerable here,” I reminded them. “We’re in the same town—only a mile or so from a tunnel filled with vampires who want to kill us.”
“I know.” Tess stroked my hair. “That’s what makes it perfect.” She smiled up at Kamila as the redhead returned with supplies for us. “They’ll be positive we’ve moved on, especially if we’ve got a full day to do so. And honestly, since they’ve got to know we’ve got the map, they’ll be expecting us to go toward Patagonia.”
I drummed my fingertips on the table. “Or they’ll just walk right in and grab us, but I see your logic. The vamps would be inclined to use their speed, too. It’s in their nature.”
Zarya sighed. “If they think we’ve gone farther, they’ll keep looking for us further along the map. If they know we’re here in Uruará, then they were expecting us. That would mean the map was authentic.”
Forever Young - Book 3 Page 6
