by Devon Monk
“Yes,” he said. “We should.” He finally lowered his face to mine.
His lips pressed against mine with heat and hunger that made me want him even more. He was gentle, catching my bottom lip with a slow stroke of his tongue and sending shivers of pleasure to war with the pain in my body.
I opened my mouth, wanting more of him. He exhaled, slanting his mouth against mine and setting off warm, rolling waves of electricity that radiated from my chest and pooled with a hot weight below my stomach.
I pulled back and he waited there, inches away from me, his eyes roiling with sorrow and need and regret.
“No guns. No murder?” I whispered.
“So far so good,” he said.
“I think we’re going to be okay,” I said, the truth of that, the hope of that, echoing behind my words.
“So do I.”
He gently pressed his mouth over mine again, a promise of comforting things we wanted to give to each other, but knew we couldn’t have.
Things we might never have time for. But we had time for this moment, this kiss.
We finally pulled apart. He leaned back in his chair. I worked on sitting, but twisted my arm a little too much and caught my breath. I paused, then sat the rest of the way, resting my back against the crates behind me.
Quinten glanced over at me, and I gave him a reassuring smile. His gaze ticked to Abraham, and he frowned as if seeing something new in him. Maybe seeing the man I loved.
“If things were different . . . ” Abraham said in what sounded like the beginning of another apology.
I couldn’t handle that. I couldn’t hear how sorry he was for things that were not his fault.
“You know what I’d do differently if I had the chance?” I interrupted him.
He pressed his lips together, and I couldn’t help but watch him bite his bottom lip before releasing it. All I could think of was those lips on mine, and that tongue exploring . . . well, more of me than just my mouth.
When I finally looked back up into his eyes he quirked an eyebrow at me, as if he had caught me thinking dirty thoughts and approved.
Which he had.
“What would you do?” he asked.
“I’d have taken you to my bed when I first had a chance, and never let you go.”
His small smile curved upward. “Now I really wish things had been different. If we were both still working for House Gray, if Oscar wasn’t dead . . .” He looked away for a second, as if finding a place to stash that pain. “Well, wouldn’t that have been something?”
And there it was. We both wanted this. Wanted more. For however long we had left, we’d have each other.
Ned yawned noisily and stretched in his chair. Left Ned took stock of everyone, and Right Ned rubbed at his eyes, still yawning.
“This is it,” Left Ned said. “First stop.”
I hadn’t felt any change in the engine. The only way he would know that a stop was coming up was if he had ridden this line before.
As if on cue, the train’s engine geared down and the forward momentum changed quickly enough that I grabbed hold of the side of the cot so as not to get pushed out of it. Brakes squealed and then the lights flickered.
After what felt like a short forever, the sense of motion slowed, slowed, then stopped completely. It was strange to suddenly be so still. My legs vibrated with memory of the sway and motion.
Neds pushed up off the cot and rolled the kinks out of his shoulders. He paced over to the door, bent, and looked out it. “This is Callaway Station. We won’t be here more than five minutes.”
“Help me up?” I asked Abraham.
He did so, both of us doing what we could to work around our various wounds. Standing wasn’t as painful as I’d expected, though I was still a little light-headed, probably from blood loss and no food.
Quinten stood too, and walked over to me. Gloria stayed where she was.
“How are you feeling?” Quinten asked.
“Good,” I said. “Better. Did you give me a painkiller?”
“Last one. And the jelly should still be working. I’ll want to reapply it on both of you—”
“I’m fine,” Abraham said.
“On both of you,” Quinten repeated in his kind but doctorly voice. “First Gloria and I are going to go out for supplies.”
“Take my duffel,” I said. “Use anything you need for barter.” I brushed my hand over my hair, catching at my braid and throwing it back behind my shoulders. The scarf over my head was gone. “And reload the gun before you go out,” I said, “I think there might be a couple bullets in the bottom of the bag.”
“Already done,” Quinten said.
My brother might not have been a farm boy for the past few years, but he was a born and bred scrapper who had been making his own way, off grid, through life. He knew that when going into unknown situations like this, the presence of a firearm was a necessity.
“What supplies can we find here?” Quinten asked Neds.
“What do you want?” Left Ned asked.
“Water, medicine, bullets,” Gloria said. “In that order, I think.”
“Water’s doable,” Right Ned said. “Medicine will take you too long to find, and there’s no knowing it won’t just be repackaged rat poison. Bullets won’t be easy either.”
“What do you think we should look for here?” she asked.
“Water. Food,” Right Ned said. “Cloth that can be used for bandages. Maybe clothing, so they’re not walking around bloody.” He pointed at Abraham and me.
“Wouldn’t hurt to look for a low-tech walkie-talkie. We could use a way to keep track of each other if we get separated and when we get close enough to the farm.”
“We’ll look for that,” Quinten said. “Good thinking, Mr. Harris.”
What Quinten wasn’t saying was that it was good thinking for someone he knew only as a farmhand. Neds was much more than he appeared to be.
“Anything else we should know?” Quinten asked.
“This isn’t like the station in San Diego,” Left Ned said. “Lots of people here, which means lots of eyes in this place. Lots of ears listening in. So don’t talk more than you need to, don’t use each other’s names, and don’t do anything to draw attention to yourself. If anyone asks, say you’re on a trip to visit your aunt in Schenectady.”
“Schenectady?” Gloria asked.
“It’s code for none of your damn business,” Left Ned said.
The train door opened and Slip stuck his head in the room. “You’ve got four minutes.”
Quinten and Gloria shouldered the duffels and pushed past Slip into what sounded like a crowded, echoing station.
I needed to get out there too, to tap into the network and see if I could get any kind of bead on Grandma’s journal. But like Neds had pointed out, I was covered in blood. I figured even in an “aunt in Schenectady” kind of crowd, I’d stand out.
“You,” Slip said to Neds. “I have a proposition for you.”
“Blow off,” Right Ned said. “You got your fare.”
Slip leaned toward Ned, but slid a look over at me and Abraham. “Did myself some reading. And seeing as how there’s money on the table—a lot of money—I want you to know I can set up an arrangement that would be very beneficial to both of us.”
Yep. He’d just so much as said he would split the ransom on our heads if Neds would let him turn us in. Jackass.
Before Neds could say anything, Abraham strolled their way. The man was six foot four and had the shoulders of an ox. He turned on Slip and cracked his blood-caked knuckles in a fist against his palm, first one hand, then the other.
He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. He loomed over Slip, every inch of him a threat.
Slip worked the odds on his chances of surviving a fight with the grim and bloodstained galvanized who didn’t look like he had a lot to lose. Then Slip’s smile was back, even though his eyes narrowed with anger.
“Do you have a problem with me, stitch?” he asked Abr
aham.
“Bad move, Slip,” Right Ned said calmly.
Abraham shrugged one shoulder. Then grabbed Slip by the neck so fast, even I jerked.
He pounded Slip up against the nearest wall and leaned on him a little, his face inches away from the other man’s.
“Do you know what I was before House Gray took me in, little man?” Abraham asked.
Slip had enough sense in his head to save what breath he was getting past Abraham’s hand for filling his lungs, not words.
“A killer,” Abraham said. “Hundreds of years. Oceans of blood. Now there is no House to claim me. To tell me how civilized I should pretend to be. And I’m asking myself how, exactly, I want to behave. You are making my decision dangerously easy. If you want to stay alive, do not cross me.”
He pushed off Slip’s neck and leaned away.
Slip coughed and choked, his hand sliding up to his neck, his face red. “Off. Get off my train!” he yelled hoarsely.
“Not happening,” Right Ned said. “We’re paid and clear. If you toss us now, I’ll go straight to Sallyo.”
If he had looked angry just a moment ago, now all the color slicked out of his face.
“I’m sure she’d love to know what happened to that load of narcotics you said you never received,” Left Ned said.
Slip stared at Neds for an extended moment, swallowing against the pain in his throat. “I don’t know what you’re accusing me of.”
“Yes,” Right Ned said, “you do. Skimming off the top of House Silver shipments can’t go unnoticed forever.”
“So let’s boil this pot dry,” Left Ned said. “Sallyo is expecting us in Kansas and will come looking for us if we don’t show. We ride your rails, we get off in Kansas, and we get out of your way. You won’t make any convenient deals concerning our welfare, and I won’t tip off a woman who’d be happy to blast this little train line of yours to smithereens and spit on your corpse. Agreed?”
Slip gave us all one last look, then stormed out of the car.
16
Everyone’s angry. There are more rumors about the Houses plotting war. I’m afraid of what will happen if the rumors are true.
—from the diary of E. N. D.
“You just run with the nicest people, don’t you, Ned?” I asked.
“I’ve made it a point to know how to swim in any river,” Right Ned said.
I supposed that spoke to the practical nature of living in this world as a man who wasn’t put together like most other men. A man whose worth might be used or discarded at a whim and whose physical difference could tag him as an oddity or make him completely invisible as a human being.
“Give me your link,” I said.
Right Ned looked over at Abraham, who leaned one shoulder on the metal pole that reached ceiling to floor near the open door.
“We have—what—three minutes?” I said. “I need to check in.”
“Check in on what?” Abraham asked.
“I’m hacking into some private files.”
“Hush. Away from the door,” Right Ned said.
I moved farther back into the train car, and he followed, pulling out the screen and unlocking it before handing it to me.
Left Ned just sighed and shook his head.
“Whose private files?” Abraham asked as he shifted his position so he could keep watch out the door.
“Robert Twelfth’s.”
“What?” Right Ned said.
Abraham was silent, but the look he threw my way was anger and pain. “Why?” he asked.
My fingers were already flying over the screen. If the last crawler I’d sent out hadn’t found a way into the records, I’d try another route. We needed that journal.
“Because I think Slater Orange is the kind of man who plans everything. He planned his own death. He planned for Quinten to implant him into Robert Twelfth’s body. He planned to frame you for murder. And I think he planned to keep as much leverage as possible over people who would be useful to him.”
“You think your brother’s useful to him?” Right Ned asked.
“Domek wasn’t asking for anyone else to come out with his hands up,” I said. “My guess? Slater was behind the assassin, not House Black. But even if I’m wrong about that, someone wants my brother alive.”
“Which of Robert’s files are you looking for?” Abraham asked.
“A copy of my grandmother’s journal. Quinten thinks it has the formula we need in it so we can alter the Wings of Mercury experiment. Which, if he’s correct, means you and I don’t die.”
That sat in the silence between us for a moment. Hope was a strange thing, often more phoenix than butterfly.
“Do you think Robert—I mean, Slater—knows how important that journal is?” Right Ned asked.
“You think he made a copy,” Abraham said, putting it together.
“Yes,” I answered both of them. “How much time do I have left?”
“About a minute and a half,” Left Ned said.
The crawler had run into a roadblock that was slowing it down and making it impossible to navigate the routes I’d sent it on. I tagged into some secondary access routes. Robert’s files must have a weakness. And I was going to find it.
The crawler chewed through data, exploiting every angle.
Then the screen froze.
“Shit,” I said.
“What?” Right Ned asked.
Quinten stepped through the door with Gloria on his heels. “What are you doing?”
“I’m screwed.” My heart was pounding hard and sweat that had nothing to do with pain washed over me. I’d been caught.
“How screwed?” Left Ned asked.
“Someone froze my search,” I said, madly tapping through abort options.
“What?” Left Ned said.
“I thought you said this thing was so secure no one in the world could hack it,” I said, panic raising my voice.
“Shhh. It is.” Neds stepped over to me.
I was doing what I could to abort the search, to back out, to bail completely. But nothing was working. Someone had their sights on me, and there was nothing I could do to hide.
“You’re hacking?” Quinten asked. “What are you hacking into?”
“Does it have our location?” Gloria asked. “Should we throw the screen out the door before they get a lock?”
“No,” Right and Left Ned said at the same time. “Doesn’t matter if it’s with us or not—whoever wanted to find us just did.”
“Shit,” Gloria breathed, echoing my thoughts.
“They’re uploading a file,” I said.
“Can you tell what it is?” Quinten asked.
“Or who sent it?” Right Ned asked.
The train engines fired up, a deep roar of combustion and gears. The door sealed and the engine rumbled up to an even louder growl.
“No,” I said. “There’s nothing . . . wait. Crap.” I turned the screen so they could see it.
The screen had gone a flat yellow, with a circle of what looked like runes in the center.
“Is that’s House Yellow’s seal?” Gloria asked.
I glanced over at Abraham, who was holding on to the bar above his head, and adjusted the screen so he could see it better.
“Is it?” I asked him.
The train jerked, brakes releasing. We were under way again, the clacking, rocking motion a little too much for my standing abilities. I sat on the cot, and everyone else, including Abraham, pulled a chair close.
He held out his hand and I gave him the screen.
“Well?” I asked.
Abraham studied the screen. “It is House Yellow’s seal,” he said. “I see two outcomes.”
“What?” Quinten asked, pulling open his duffel.
“This is from Welton Yellow and it will be a secure communication.”
“Or?” I asked.
“Or it’s triggered so that when I enter a code, our location will be sent to every satellite and tower in range.”
“Or that ass Slip could have set up a bomb and that’s the trigger,” Left Ned offered.
“A third possibility,” Abraham agreed.
We all stared at the thin rectangular screen propped on Abraham’s knee. No one moved to touch it.
“Maybe we should take a moment and think on it,” Quinten said. “We brought food.”
After another pause, Left Ned spoke up. “I never did want to die on an empty stomach. Hand over the grub.”
Before any of us could argue, Gloria pulled out three soft canteens of water, and I realized just how thirsty I was. We passed those around while Quinten retrieved a cloth-wrapped bundle.
“Sandwiches.” He handed us all flat bread stuffed with meat, cheese, and grilled vegetables. They smelled delicious, and I suddenly felt like I hadn’t eaten in days, not just hours.
“This looks good.” I gave back the water to Gloria and held out my hand for a sandwich.
We each took our share. Abraham left the screen on his knee while we ate. We tried not to stare at it, but it was clear we all wanted to know what that message held.
I finished the last bite of my food and wiped my fingers on the least-bloody part of the hem of my shirt. I hoped Quinten and Gloria had found some clothing for us, but right now, being bloody wasn’t what I was worried about.
“Whatever it is,” I said, “I think we should just face it. Deal with it now.”
Abraham nodded, and so did Gloria.
“Neds?” I asked.
“I say we open it. Find out who’s gonna be in our way,” Left Ned said.
Abraham wiped his hand over the scruff on his chin and scratched at the edge of his jaw.
Then he pressed his thumb into the corner of the device and drew a line between the runes, creating a secondary, ghostly symbol.
The screen instantly lit up. Abraham’s eyes flickered over the information playing out there, then tapped something into it. Another pause, and he finally looked away from it to the rest of us.
“It appears to be secure. Compliments of Welton Yellow. It’s a recorded message.”
I held out my palm and he gave me the screen. I propped my good arm along my knee, screen faceup and angled so all of us could get a clear view.
I pressed the little play icon. Welton Yellow appeared on the screen.
