“Yes.”
I tried to be cheered by the fact that he had now said at least five words. Maybe leaving would help him see that he did not need to blame himself.
“You don’t need to punish yourself,” I said carefully. He grimaced a little harder. “It was Captain Goode’s fault.” I silently wondered if that would end up being my most oft-repeated phrase. Maybe it would even be engraved on my tombstone.
He ignored me. I sighed and I gripped his hand as we entered the busy station. Two policemen in dark uniforms stood near the door. I turned Sebastian slightly to the right. He ducked his head and leaned closer to me. We wove cautiously through the crowds, Mr. Kent leading the way.
“The train leaves in a few minutes; we shall have to move swiftly.” Catherine turned to us, consulting a watch tucked into her jacket.
“To track three.” Mr. Kent veered left and we followed.
“Do we not need tickets?” I tried to keep pace with him.
“I bought them early this morning,” he said, a little smug, which was greatly annoying.
“With what money?”
“You don’t have emergency funds stashed away in case you accidentally anger the entire city?”
“No, I try to stay on the good side of entire cities.”
“Well, now you know how hard that is.”
Every step forward we took felt heavier. We were leaving Captain Goode here to do God-knows-what with God-knows-whom. I could not conscience it. The need to destroy him was itching me like uncomfortable woolen underthings.
But I didn’t have an argument to persuade the others. Hundreds died because they had the unfortunate luck of being caught between Captain Goode’s rage and us. Because of the selfish decision I had made. And if I had it my way now, it would hurt Rose, Sebastian, and everyone else who wanted to leave.
The great black train belched smoke as we came to the tracks. Shouts and mechanical noises clamored and competed for attention between the shrieking bursts of steam, calls from porters, and loud conversations between companions.
I looked around as surreptitiously as possible, my heart beginning to pound. This was it. We were leaving.
The train gave another loud scream, sounding somehow more final than the others.
Sebastian pulled me up behind him, my shoes slipping a little on the black steps, my nerves buzzing. For just a moment, the grief on his face cleared a bit, and he frowned at me in consternation. “Are you all right?”
That little sign of awareness, his concern for me briefly outweighing his pain, made my heart skip slightly. Of course I was not all right. Neither was he. But we were here.
Together.
“Yes.”
Rose and Catherine led us past the first- and second-class carriages. Sunlight split through the windows, illuminating the little picnics that were being unearthed from hampers, the children jumping around in their cramped compartments. It was a strange place to be given our somber mood.
We found our compartment near the front of the train and everyone climbed inside, shaking out of coats and settling skirts around ankles. The screech and rumble announced our departure. We had made it, but only barely. An awkward silence lingered between all of us.
I settled against the window and peered outside. I watched as the station drifted by and the train’s chugging grew more rapid against my best wishes. I watched as an unlucky couple emerged from the opposite end of the platform and hurried through the crowd to catch the leaving train. I watched as they ran so fast their hats flew off and they managed to leap onto the car in front of ours just before we left the station. The woman paused on the step, looking straight at me through the glass. A shiver tore through me, and the train felt colder all of a sudden. The woman, wrapped in a big blue coat, had a bit of a glow about her. A literal glow that I had seen before.
When she was encasing my feet in blocks of ice, deep belowground in the Society of Aberrations prison.
Chapter Three
I FROZE BEFORE realizing that’s exactly what she would want me to do.
“Mr. Kent,” I strained a whisper through my teeth. “We’re being followed. Please get us to a first-class compartment right now.”
His eyebrows went up. “And how—”
“Full blackmail privileges,” I replied. “Go.”
Like a cat, he slid out of his seat and opened our compartment door, pulling Laura and Emily behind him. Miss Chen, Catherine, and Rose followed him, shooting me looks of concern and confusion.
Sebastian stood up, but waited in the narrow corridor, eyeing me as though he expected me to run off somewhere without him.
I pushed him forward, sending him a faint buzz from my fingertips. “I’m right behind you.”
I kept my head down and my face hidden, hoping our escape went unnoticed. The train car rumbled below my feet as it picked up speed, and I seized the wooden wall paneling for balance. Perplexed heads glanced up at us through the ajar doors of other compartments until we reached the end of the carriage and stepped outside onto the small shelf of metal separating the cars.
The cold, bracing wind and burning fumes hit me at once. Slivers of rooftops passed by in procession to my right. Sebastian took my hand, and I hopped over the gap between the passenger cars as the wheels clattered in warning over the tracks.
We made our way into the second-class carriage, where upholstery and ornate trimming replaced the plain wood of third class. We passed a silent railway guard, who was staring rather slack-jawed at Mr. Kent, and then we were in the dining car, where a few passengers were already comfortably seated and sipping tea. I watched an unobserved cup slowly float away into Emily’s hands and then get offered to Laura. Not even a ghost of a smile hit Laura’s lips.
Finally, we made it through to a first-class carriage. My heart thrummed along with our steps, and I resisted the overwhelming urge to see if the woman was following us. There was another railway guard at the end, but fortunately, he seemed to be distracted by two other passengers. Unfortunately, one of the passengers was holding a poster that looked horribly familiar, while the other peeked into one of the three private compartments.
Mr. Kent spun around, pushing us back the way we came. “You know, I feel much more comfortable in second class all of a sudden. I don’t know what was I thinking—me in first class.”
I turned to open the rear carriage door again when I found it already opening. A chill ran down my spine, and I couldn’t tell if it was dread or her—I was now face-to-face with the ice guard.
“Emily!” I yelled wildly while I could still draw in breath instead of ice.
The door slammed in the woman’s blue-pallored face. It rattled in protest as she tried to open it, but Emily’s power held it firm. I spun back around to find our group looking very lost.
“Maybe those police notices are for someone else,” Mr. Kent said, forcing a smile. He spun around with a decisive clap of his hands to see the two passengers and the railway guard gaping at us.
The bulkier of the two passengers stepped forward, taking up nearly the entire narrow corridor. He stared hard at Sebastian, poster in hand. “This you, then?” His voice was a grating scratch.
“Right,” Mr. Kent said, pulling out his pistol. “Not another step.”
The bulky man took several. He ambled toward us, a clacking, metallic sound chiming with his every step, as if he were wearing a suit of armor.
I opened the third compartment and shoved Catherine, Rose, and Laura inside, ignoring the gasps from the two elderly occupants. “Stay here.”
“We don’t want to start a panic,” Mr. Kent said, aiming straight at the man. “Why don’t we continue this another time?”
The man pulled his hat off and, in his grasp, it slowly transformed from a dull black to a shiny silver, from fabric to metal. “Because Captain Goode wants his revenge now.”
“Maybe … we should set that aside for a moment,” Mr. Kent said. “You see, we recently battled this lady who can control metal, and you would
get along—oh, wait, she probably died at the ball, didn’t she?”
“Yes,” our group responded in unison.
Mr. Kent sighed. “Ah well, it would have been adorable.”
He re-leveled his gun and quickly fired at the man, who covered his face with the former hat and now shield. The bullets barely seemed to have an effect, clanking off his arms, his chest, his knees as he got closer. Shouts and screams came from the closed compartments on our left.
“Blast it,” Miss Chen muttered, peering over Mr. Kent’s shoulder to get a better view.
The man’s metal hat cracked into pieces upon her gaze, revealing an expression of faint surprise. But before Mr. Kent could aim at the man’s head, his previously quiet companion slipped in front, raised his hands, and flooded the entire carriage with smoke.
I could hear Mr. Kent groaning, and my eyes watered as I blinked away the strange smog, finally catching sight of him, trying to aim his gun through the thick, black shroud. Glass and wood shattered around us as Miss Chen tried to clear the smoke out the windows, but it did not dissipate in the least. It stubbornly clung to us, as though it were made of a stickier substance, working its way into our lungs, filling the carriage with hacking coughs. I remembered the fire in Dr. Beck’s laboratory, nearly choking to death even when I had my powers. With Sebastian canceling them out here, everyone in this carriage would have a minute at most.
It seemed Mr. Kent had the same thought. “Mr. Braddock! Your assistance, please!” he shouted around a cough. His hands popped out of the smoke, wrenched Sebastian away from me, and threw him at the source.
All right. Perhaps not exactly the same thought.
But sure enough, the smoke started to clear. I squeezed past the others to Sebastian, who was scrambling up from the ground, climbing desperately off the smoker he had wrestled into unconsciousness. I pulled him back next to Emily, who was still managing to keep the rear carriage door tightly shut. The last bit of smoke disappeared, leaving the terrified railway guard fumbling with the half-broken carriage door at the front and the metal man vulnerable, his clothes ripping and the armor underneath cracking and falling in thick shreds of metal. Mr. Kent cocked and aimed his pistol as the carriage door opened behind his target and the railway guard was shoved to the floor.
The ice guard. She must have climbed across the top.
Before Mr. Kent could fire, she spat out an ice shard, piercing his hand. He dropped the gun and followed it to the floor, lunging with his left hand. The metal man grabbed Mr. Kent’s hand first in a steel grip, and Mr. Kent screamed like I’d never heard before. His hand seemed to harden, metal taking over his arm inch by inch, climbing terrifyingly fast toward the rest of his body. I leaped forward to do something, but Emily pulled the metal man away with her telekinesis.
“Stop it!” she cried, slamming him into the ice guard. When he tried to reach out for something to anchor himself, she flung him to our end, forcing us to duck to avoid his body, and threw him against the corridor walls, punctuating her every word with another vicious slam.
“Stop! Hurting! Us!”
Miss Chen supplied the punctuation on the last word as she blew the side of the carriage apart in an eruption of wood and metal. The man was hurled out of the train and down into the London streets.
Before we even had a moment to catch our breath, a scream brought our attention back to the front. The ice guard pulled a young woman out of the first compartment and held her captive with an ice shard by her neck. She stared at us, daring us to move.
“Please…” the woman stammered.
“Are you really going to hurt her?” Mr. Kent asked.
“No,” the ice guard replied, but she was smiling. “No need.”
The rear carriage door slammed behind me. Oh no.
We were afforded the briefest glimpse of our new enemy, gray-haired, sinewy, his right eye covered by a white kerchief wrapped around his head. He lifted the fabric, setting his eye upon us, and I was struck with an excruciating pain. Everyone around me cried out in agony as it brought us writhing to the ground. It was like every bit of pain I’d ever experienced combined and yet unlike anything I’d ever felt before. It was every burn, every cut, every break, every ache, striking a match against every nerve. It was every body on the ground at the Belgrave Ball, every life I couldn’t save, every shred of guilt, horror, devastation burning like a tattoo on my brain. It was torture in every possible form, random and relentless.
“Captain Goode wanted you to know he picked this pain personally,” the torturer said above me.
My breath left me. I choked and coughed and gasped for air, but there was never enough. The tight passage seemed to close in even tighter. It was like being smothered, suffocated, drowned, and then given just enough air to experience it again.
“Who first, Miss Quinn?” Through the blur of panic, I could only make out the torturer’s boots approaching.
“The healer,” the ice guard said. “I get the one with the big mouth.”
I felt my head lifted up and my neck bared, somewhere distant between all the pain. Tears streamed down my face and my body twitched uncontrollably. I wondered if this would, at least, put an end to my torture.
And then I heard Rose’s voice. “Evelyn!”
Startled, our torturer looked up at my sister emerging from her compartment. She cried out in pain from his attack and collapsed to the ground next to me.
“Oh no, no, I’m sorry.”
Did I say that?
No, the torturer had. All of a sudden I could think clearly again. The pain had stopped.
I seized the moment of hesitation, taking advantage of his guilt from hurting Rose. I charged straight at him. The pain hit me again, but I had the momentum. I tackled him, low and hard, straight out the hole in the side of the train.
We fell for a brief, breathless second and then more pain struck me, every imaginable type from the torturer along with an extra dash of bruising and cutting as we slammed and bounced and rolled across a brick roof just below the train tracks. The edge was so close, perhaps this really was death—perhaps I would not heal from this fall.
And then a great tethering sensation yanked me back upward, my stomach flipping, the streets and the torturer falling away from me in a dizzying rush, and I was pulled into the train, landing on the floor beside Emily.
I gulped down a heavy breath. “Thank you,” I managed to groan to her as Sebastian helped me up.
With Laura’s help, Emily climbed to her feet by the hole and gave me a shaky nod, still wincing over the pain she just experienced. In fact, everyone seemed to be rather slow and shaken, save for Mr. Kent.
He had his still-metal hand over Miss Quinn’s mouth and was bombarding her with questions.
“So this metal won’t go away on its own?” he asked.
“Nmph” was her muffled reply.
“Can Captain Goode remove it?”
“Nmph,” she said again, shaking her head.
“Is there another man or woman with this poorly thought-out power who can reverse it?”
“Nmph.”
“My hand will be metal forever?”
“Mmph.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” Mr. Kent said. He turned to the rest of us. “Is everyone all right?”
“No” was the unanimous response.
“Well, you all responded, so I will say that’s a victory. Miss Wyndham, do you heal … metallic afflictions?”
“I don’t know. I promise to try later,” I said, hobbling over to them, ignoring the dull pain in my limbs. “Is anyone else hurt?”
Everyone shook their heads. Despite the horrible pain, there had been no real injuries. The two witnesses, however, were petrified. The railway guard kept one eye on us and one eye on the carriage door he shakily managed to open. He leaped over the rail into the next carriage, shouting for help. The ice guard’s hostage, meanwhile, had crawled back into her compartment and was huddled against her terrified mother.
&
nbsp; “Stay in there. It’s still dangerous out here,” I told them, shutting the compartment door.
“We should find a way off,” Catherine said. “We’re lucky no one else saw us.”
“We will,” I said. “But first, Mr. Kent, ask her where the tracker is.”
Mr. Kent removed his hand and aimed her in the direction of a broken window, away from us. “What tracker?”
“The one from the Society,” I answered.
“The man who led us to you,” Miss Quinn helpfully corroborated.
“Ah, thank you, yes, where is that specific tracker?” he asked.
“Second-class compartment,” she answered, huffing out mist and squirming against Mr. Kent’s hold.
“Good,” I said. “Put her on the next carriage quickly, and Miss Chen, can you sever the line?”
Miss Chen helped Mr. Kent move the ice guard to the other end. “She could still damage our carriage from there.”
“I’ll ask her a question with a very long answer,” Mr. Kent said.
With Emily’s help, they lifted Miss Quinn over the gap and threw her back into the next car. Miss Chen eyed the connectors for a moment until they snapped and exploded apart.
“In order, what are my most attractive features and qualities?” Mr. Kent shouted over to Miss Quinn.
With fury in her gaze, she answered. “Cleverness. Your eyes. The sharpness of your jaw. Your confidence.”
Her voice faded as our half of the train pulled away with a burst of speed.
Mr. Kent tut-tutted to himself. “Perhaps that was too harsh. She’s going to spend the rest of her life answering that.”
“Would have been a mercy to throw her off,” Miss Chen muttered.
Rose clutched my arm as I turned around. “Ev, what are we doing?”
“I don’t know,” I said, pulling her along with me. “But they are going to keep finding us if we don’t attend to this tracker.”
I led the way back into the second-class carriage, where another railway guard stopped us, demanding to know what happened.
“There … was a row and a … a man with a gun,” I stammered. “Please help us. I just want to get my sister somewhere safe.”
These Vengeful Souls Page 3
