Starling

by Lesley Livingston

  He glanced out the window and saw that the train had shunted onto the tracks that led to the long, sweeping approach to the Hell Gate Bridge. The approach ramp gradually elevated for almost two miles before it joined with the bridge proper, and the train wasn’t traveling fast. He couldn’t yet see the bow-curve shape of the bridge where it crossed over the East River, soared above Wards Island, and on into Queens, where Rory would stop the train and wait. The sky overhead was purple and black, shot through with neon-orange and silver jagged forks of lightning. He could even hear the thunder over the noise of the train, it was so loud.

  “Keep an eye on Party Girl,” he said to Tag, who was leering at Heather. “I’m gonna go check on the Mouse trap.”

  He slid the door at the end of the passenger car open and crossed over to the transport container. He didn’t bother fumbling for the light switch. Just felt his way over to the DB5 and, grinning, pounded on the trunk. That should scare the hell out of her, he thought.

  “Hey, Mouse!” he shouted.

  There was no answer.

  “What … no squeaks?” he taunted.

  But then, in the dimness, he saw that Mason’s gear bag was on the floor of the container, its contents strewn about. He ran over and saw that the passenger door was ajar … and that the inside of the DB5’s cockpit was trashed beyond belief. There was a gaping hole leading from the trunk compartment, blood everywhere … and no sign of his damned sister.

  Fury bubbled up in Rory’s chest, and he opened his mouth to scream in rage when something caught his eye. Over in the corner of the car, he saw that the access hatch above the utility ladder was banging up and down, unlatched. Rory snarled an oath and started toward the ladder. Then stopped and ran back to the Aston Martin and opened up the glove compartment, fishing around for something in the dark before he ran back to the ladder to give chase.

  The wind on top of the train hit Mason like a punch to her chest, knocking the breath from her lungs and threatening to send her flying. She couldn’t stand upright, and she thought that any second she would be hurled off the top of the car, where she would tumble and smash to pieces like a broken doll on the tracks. She dropped to her knees and began to crawl, working her way toward the ornate brass luggage rail that ran around the top of the antique train car.

  If it hadn’t all felt so real, Mason could have sworn she was caught in the depths of another one of her nightmares—the worst one ever. Or maybe it all felt so hyperreal because she’d finally, once and for all, lost her grip on reality.

  In that state of mind, she was almost not surprised when she glanced down over the side of the train and saw two speeding Harleys and Anubis—a large black wolf—chasing after the train like a dog chasing a car.

  From inside the opulent confines of the passenger car, Heather watched through the window as the two Harleys roared up beside the train, driving precariously in the narrow lane where a set of decommissioned tracks had been removed and only a strip of weedy gravel ran. Heather pressed her face closer to the window and gasped when she saw something that looked like a lean black wolf running beside them—faster than a normal wolf should have been able to. She saw that one bike carried Roth Starling, but the one in the lead carried two riders. The Fennrys Wolf sat, clinging grimly, on the passenger backseat. The driver wore a helmet, but Heather recognized Cal’s jacket. He steered the bike perilously close to the train as Fennrys tucked first one booted foot and then the other, under him. Heather held her breath as Fennrys stood, poised for an instant in time as if for flight, and then leaped, reaching to grasp some handhold on the side of the train.

  “What the shit are those two lunatics trying to prove?” Tag said from over Heather’s shoulder, his voice suffused with disbelief and something approaching awe. Then he laughed gutturally as the Harley wobbled dangerously underneath Cal.

  Heather gasped and pressed close to the window, her heart in her throat as Calum struggled to bring the bike back under control on the uneven surface of the approach ramp. Heather couldn’t exactly tell from where she was, but she saw Fennrys’s feet and legs disappear out of sight, so that she knew he must have hauled himself up a side ladder to the top of the train. Cal gunned the bike’s engine to keep pace with the train as it swept around the curve that led to the Hell Gate Bridge. The gravel strip alongside the tracks must have been punishing to ride on, and Heather could see the tendons on the backs of his hands tensed like steel cables with the effort of keeping the bike steady as they swept under the massive concrete gates and the bridge girders rose up and closed in on them and they swept on, over the East River.

  Heather kept her gaze fastened on Cal, as if she could pour her strength out through the window glass and into Cal’s limbs. She knew that he was there to help Fennrys save Mason, not her. It didn’t matter. She saw him hunch forward, helmeted head down....

  And then, as Heather watched, Cal twisted his head to one side, as if something had suddenly caught his attention. He shook his head, raising one hand to the side of the helmet, as if he was trying to cover his ear. He looked like he was in pain. Heather saw his shoulders ripple as the bike began to drift toward the outer railing of the bridge. Cal’s head whipped violently from side to side, and he pounded on the side of his helmet. The front wheel of the bike slewed wildly left to right as he lost control, and the back of the Harley pitched forward. Heather screamed in horror as Cal was catapulted into the air. He pinwheeled wildly through the night, and the bike slammed into one of the rust-red, arching girders of the bridge, ricocheting into the path of Roth Starling, who jammed his bike into a screeching slide. Cal’s body arced through the air, plummeting over the side of the bridge, falling toward the raging river far below.

  Heather watched him fall, the scream dying in her throat. She slid down the window to slump senseless on the leather banquette, horror giving way to sudden, icy-cold shock. Beside her, Tag Overlea swore under his breath and drew back from the window, wide-eyed and shaken, his features stark with disbelief. The motorcycle tumbled along beside the train for a moment, then disappeared from view.

  And Calum Aristarchos … was gone.

  XXIII

  Fennrys threw his leg over the top of the train car, almost kicking Mason’s feet out from under her. She gasped and threw herself wildly back away from him. Her black hair whipped around her head like an inky tornado; her sapphire eyes were wide and rolled white like a terrified animal’s. They were empty of recognition. Fennrys clambered to his feet, crouching to keep from getting knocked off the top of the train by the wind, and held out a hand to her, but she shrank from him. He looked at her face and saw that she was caught in the depths of a profound, mind-fogging panic.

  What did Rory do to her? he wondered with frantic bitterness.

  There was blood streaking Mason’s face and arms, staining the fabric of the sweatshirt she wore. Fennrys saw the Gosforth school crest, and the image of the old woman in the Laundromat punched through his mind—the tumbling red water in the washer, the same crest slapping against the glass, soaked in blood....

  He shook his head sharply to dispel the horror he felt.

  “Mason!” he called out to her, the wind snatching the sound of his words and hurling them behind him. “It’s me!” He reached out a hand. “Come take my hand. It’s going to be all right, Mase....”

  She wanted to believe that. She truly did.

  But she was caught in a nightmare.

  And in her nightmares, Fennrys always told her to run.

  So she ran. She turned and lurched, stumbling and falling to her hands and knees, crawling, staggering back up and leaning into the teeth of the wind as she struggled toward the front edge of the train car. Fennrys shouted for her to stop. Massive iron girders, soaring in a graceful arching curve between two monolithic concrete gates, wavered like a mirage before Mason’s eyes as the train pounded up the rising track.

  She heard Fennrys call her name and turned around in time to see Rory suddenly burst out of the ladder
hatch in the roof of the transport car, between her and Fennrys. He looked back and forth between the two of them, and a purely wicked grin spread across his face.

  “Well!” he shouted over the wind, struggling to find his balance as he climbed out to stand in the middle of the train-car roof. “This is convenient!”

  Mason couldn’t believe her eyes—he had a pistol clutched in one fist. What the hell was her brother doing with a gun? She could barely make out what he was saying as the gale snatched the words from his mouth.

  “I was gonna have fun messing with Mouse, but …”

  Fennrys surged forward a step and Rory whipped up his arm, pointing the muzzle of the pistol at him.

  “Stay right there, hero!” Rory glared at him. “Fun’s just starting …”

  He thrust his other hand into his pocket and pulled out something small and round. Mason couldn’t tell what it was, but Rory started murmuring words she couldn’t hear, and whatever it was, it started to glow.

  The golden light seeped like rays of sunlight through Rory’s fingers, casting a widening, brightening nimbus of light all around them. The locomotive passed through the western arch of the Hell Gate, and suddenly the whole of the bridge began to shimmer. The iron struts and girders began to sparkle and dance with cascading light and color, and the entire structure began to telescope, elongating in front of them and behind … stretching out to bridge the gap between the mortal realm and the beyond. Mason clapped her hands over her ears at the cacophony of buzzing and tinkling, like thousands of wind chimes caught in a hurricane, assaulting her senses. The noise built until it sounded like the pounding of hammers on harp strings. It split the air around them as the prismatic light show exploded into whiplash streamers of rainbows, billowing up, up into the night sky. Even numbed as she was, wrapped in the vestiges of her claustrophobic panic, Mason felt a kind of distant awe sweeping over her.

  This was Bifrost. The rainbow bridge to Asgard.

  She turned and saw, at the very center of the bridge, a shimmering curtain of diamond-white light. She had an overwhelming urge to reach it, to part the curtain and see what was on the other side. She glanced ahead at the train engine, pounding away on its eight spark-churning wheels, and suddenly she didn’t see a machine. She saw a horse. A coal-black giant of a war horse, thundering over the bridge on eight legs.

  Mason skittered back from the edge, turning in time to see Fennrys rush her brother. In the split second Rory was distracted by the blinding brilliance of the Bifrost’s manifestation, Fenn surged forward and tackled Rory around the middle, slamming him hard onto the ridged metal roof. Mason watched in horror as he drove his fist into her brother’s face while Rory writhed underneath him. Rory twisted around and kicked Fennrys in the side of the head, sending him rolling toward the edge of the car roof. Mason screamed, but Fennrys caught himself before he went over on the rail, just as Rory aimed another kick at him. This time Fennrys caught him and, with a heave, threw Rory back down. The look in Fenn’s eyes was one of pure savagery. He drove his fist into Rory’s face again and slammed down on his wrist over and over, trying to get him to drop the wildly waving gun.

  Mason saw Rory’s arm break. His face was bloodied. Fenn kept punching even as Rory slumped away from him. Shaken out of her stupor, Mason staggered forward and grabbed Fenn’s arm before he could land another blow.

  “Stop!” she cried. “Stop! You’re going to kill him!”

  Fennrys struggled against her for an instant, and then his expression cleared and he pulled her close. “Mason …” He glanced over her shoulder. The train was almost at the midpoint of the bridge now. The light of the shimmering curtain had grown unbearably bright. “Come on …”

  He pulled her to a crouching stand and helped her toward the back end of the train-car roof. There was a porter’s ladder there that led from the luggage rail down the outside of the train car.

  “We have to get off the train, Mase,” Fenn said. “You can’t go across the bridge. Bad things will happen. Do you understand?”

  She nodded numbly. Bad things …

  “Climb down as low as you can. I’ll be right there with you. We’ll jump together—off to the side where there are no tracks. Tuck yourself as close in to me as you can, and I’ll protect you when we hit the ground. Just keep your arms in tight, okay?”

  He went to lift the strap of her sword hanger over her head. She couldn’t jump with that on. But before he could, there was a sound like a car backfiring—only louder. Mason heard it over the roaring of the train and the howling of the wind.

  Another explosion of color, this one crimson and dark, burst from Fennrys’s shoulder. Fenn spun around, away from Mason, a look of dull surprise in his ice-blue eyes. Mason glanced back over her shoulder to see Rory hunched against the gale, a look of pure, mindless malice on his face. His right arm hung useless at his side, but he clutched the pistol in his left hand.

  Mason turned back to Fennrys … but he was falling away from her, drifting in slow motion as she screamed and reached for him. As if taken by the wind, he tumbled off the back of the train. Mason stood there, statue still as the train kept thundering on, carrying her forward without him.

  The brightness of the bridge all around her grew to blinding, the colors of the rainbow boiling together into a glacial-white froth that stole away the sight of the world and replaced it with sudden, shocking darkness.

  The impact of the bullet punched through Fennrys’s body. He clutched at nothingness and fell through the air, slamming onto the bridge decking below and tumbling over railway ties. Half conscious—half dead almost—he lifted his head and saw the train blasting toward the wall of shimmering light that fell like a veil in the dead center of the rainbow bridge. He saw Mason’s form silhouetted on top of the train car, the sword hilt at her side gleaming, her hair lifted in the wind like a winged helmet and her sapphire eyes staring back at him in terror and anguish....

  There was a thunderclap and a flare of lightning that split the night … and then darkness. The train rumbled through the shimmering curtain and on over the Hell Gate Bridge, chugging off into the distance on the other side of the river. Fennrys could see the hunched shape of Mason’s brother Rory still clinging to the top of the train car.

  But Mason was gone.

  Fennrys’s head dropped onto his forearms, and his bruised and battered ribs heaved in a desperate sob. A moment of silence in the wake of the chaos spun out all around him, and then Rafe was there, at his side. The werewolf god’s shape shifted from beast to man, and he knelt and got a shoulder under Fennrys’s right arm. He helped him gently to stand and led him, dazed and battered, toward the towering concrete gate, even as Fennrys tried to pull away, mumbling in protest that he had to cross the bridge. He had to follow Mason and try to get her back.

  “I’m the only one who can …”

  “You’re not going anywhere,” Rafe said firmly. “I don’t know what happens if you actually die when you’re in the nether realms, and I’m not so sure I want to find out. I don’t think you do either. And the way you’re leaking blood from that hole, you might just do that if you go charging off after her.”

  “But Mason …”

  “You’ll find her. Patience. The bridge isn’t going anywhere.”

  They were almost to the concrete gate when they felt a rumbling beneath their feet. Fennrys turned, half expecting to see a train roaring down on them from the other direction. But as the vibration built, it became clear that the sound wasn’t from another locomotive. A series of concussive booms built in a crescendo until the whole of the Hell Gate structure heaved wildly, and the center of the bridge truss exploded outward in an ear-bursting screech and howl of ruptured metal and shattering concrete.

  Rafe tackled Fennrys, shoving him behind one of the arch pillars, and they crouched there, covering their heads as smoke and sparks swept over them and debris rained down. When the chaos subsided, Fennrys lurched to his feet and thrust himself out away from the shelte
r of the gate arch. The Hell Gate Bridge still stood before him … some of it.

  But there in the middle was a gaping, empty space. The steel girders from either side of the bridge still reached across, like the gnarled, twisted fingers of hands, desperate to clasp each other but no longer reaching. Fennrys could smell the acrid tang of explosives drifting on the breeze. Something—someone—had intentionally blown the hell, quite literally, out of the Hell Gate Bridge. There would be no crossing the bridge now. Not the Hell Gate … nor Bifrost. No crossing over into Asgard.

  Smoke spiraled up into the night.

  The wail of distant sirens floated on the air.

  Fennrys stood gazing in despair at the ruined bridge, knowing that Mason Starling was somewhere on the other side … and there was now no way on earth for him to reach her.

  He felt something inside him crumple and the last of his strength went out of his legs. He started to collapse, but Rafe gripped him by the arm and kept him standing.

  “What did I tell you, Fennrys Wolf?”

  Fennrys turned to him, numb.

  “I told you ‘to hell with Destiny’ and I meant it,” Rafe said fiercely. “There is always a way. A loophole. Always. You just have to find it. And you’d better start looking, because your girl is going to need that now. And so are we, if we’re going to have any chance at all of getting her back.”

  XXXIV

  The blinding white brilliance faded slowly from behind Mason’s eyes.

  The wind was gone. Fennrys was gone.

  The rumble of the train, silenced …

  Slowly she opened her eyes and gazed around. An endless twilight-tinted vista rolled to the horizon—unending, desolate plains … ringed around on all sides by thunderheads piled thick and ominous, blotting out the margins of the sky. Mason saw flashes of purple lightning licking the edges of the barren wasteland. Thunder, so distant it sounded like a tremor deep in the earth—something more felt than heard. She turned a complete circle and came face-to-face with a cloaked and hooded figure that hadn’t been there a moment before.