by Mac Flynn
“Then you don’t think it was an accident?” Luke interrupted.
The old man scoffed. “No accident ever started with a bang like Ah heard.”
Luke and Alistair glanced at each other, and I didn’t like the looks on their faces. They knew something they didn’t want to say aloud. Luke turned back to the engineer. “Has another train been called?”
“Aye. It should get here in an hour,” he replied.
“Good. I’ll tell the other passengers.” Luke turned to Alistair and jerked his head toward the rails in front of the engine. Alistair nodded and went to inspect them. Then Luke glanced to me, and looked over my cuts and bruises. “You’re the worse for wear,” he teased.
“That’s what I get for hanging around with a psychopath. Hurt,” I quipped. He reached up and brushed his hand against a nice bruise on my forehead. I winced and batted his hand away. “Stop helping the injuries. Believe me, they don’t need it,” I scolded him.
“With some rest and food those should heal in a few hours. Why don’t we go sit with everyone else?” he suggested.
“About time you said something sensible,” I replied. My words were mean, but I was grateful for the offer to sit down. My legs still felt like vibrating rubber and my muscles ached from the jostling and strain of the shock.
Luke guided me over to the upper hill where sat everyone else and set me down on a nice, comfortable boulder. He knelt down and perused my person. “No broken bones? No severe internal bleeding?” he asked me.
I snorted. “Isn’t it a little late to be asking that?”
“Better late than never.”
“I’d say now would be too late to be asking some of those things.”
“You can’t blame me for fussing over you-”
“I can blame you for a lot of things, and none of them good,” I pointed out. “Besides, you don’t need to fuss over me like an old hen. I feel fine, just tired.”
He smiled. “A Maker does tend to become an old hen around their progeny.”
“A what?”
“A Maker. One who makes another of their kind, in this case a werewolf.”
I cringed. “You just had to remind me about that terrifying fact, didn’t you?”
“Is it so terrifying when you see how it helps people?” He swept his hand over the other passengers. They were unharmed, and some were already laughing about their ordeal. “This would’ve been much worse if they weren’t werewolves.”
I sighed and wrapped my arms around myself. “I still won’t trust you,” I stubbornly replied.
He smiled and patted me on the knee. “You’ll learn, but could you do something for me?”
My eyes narrowed. “What’s that?” I asked him.
“Stay.”
“Come again?”
“Stay here. It’s my duty to make sure everyone else is all right so I can’t be watching you all the time,” he explained to me.
I frowned, but hunkered down on my rock. “I guess, but don’t expect this old dog to learn a new trick every day.”
He chuckled. “A fitting analogy, but thank you.”
Luke stood and went over to the pockets of people along the hillside. He updated them on the coming train and made sure there were no serious injuries. A few of the train crew managed to salvage food from the wreck and that was passed around to everyone. I got a plate of biscuits speckled with gravel, but after the scare I was famished and ate them without complaint.
Time crept by for the passengers, but the crew and Luke took the risk of rummaging through the wreck to retrieve belongings. Alistair finished his perusal of the tracks and helped with the game of hide-and-seek. Luke rejoined me at my rock, and dumped an armful of luggage and himself on the ground beside me. He looked as tired as I felt, and I had some pity on him. “You eat anything?” I asked him. He shook his head and ran a hand through his messy hair. I held out what remained of my meal. “Here. No sense having you survive the wreck just to starve to death.”
Luke smiled and took a gravel-seasoned biscuit. He’d just bitten down on the crunchy goodness when a cry went up from one of the people beside us, and we glanced to where they pointed. A new train chugged up to us from the direction of our destination, and it stopped a few dozen yards down the track. A half dozen people with leather bags and stretchers in hand jumped out. They paused at the engineer, spoke to him for a few moments, and one remained to patch up the engineer while the others hurried over to us. From the stethoscopes around a few of their necks I guessed they were doctors and nurses. “Is anyone seriously injured?” the lead man asked us.
Luke handed back the biscuit and stood. Many of the other passengers gathered around us. “Nothing serious. Most of us are just shaken.”
“So there weren’t any humans aboard?” the head medic wondered.
Luke shook his head. “None, thankfully, or you would have work.”
The medic and his team visibly relaxed, and a few of them even smiled. “That’s a relief.” He turned to the engine. The fire was out, but the machine was totaled. “What exactly happened?”
“We’re not sure, but we’d like to get away from here as soon as possible,” Luke replied.
“Oh, of course. This train can take you all the way to Wolverton,” the man told us.
A cheer went up from the crowd, and we carried ourselves and our luggage over to the new train. The train crew hopped out and helped us inside to soft, comfortable seats and warm food. There were two rows of two seats with an aisle between them, and Luke guided me to the center of the car. He took the seat beside me and gave me the window view, and Alistair took a position in front of us. Abby waved wildly to me from the front of the car until her mother made her sit down. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I shut my eyes for a quick rest that stretched out into most of the day.
11
The jostle of the train woke me up, and I glanced outside to see we had left the woods and entered a bustling town. The buildings here were taller and more packed together, and many of them were built in a more modern, blocky fashion. One in particular stood above the rest for its ten floors and extreme gaudiness. The builders tried to imitate the old-fashioned clapboard look, but with fake materials that made the whole thing look tacky.
Behind the buildings, silhouetted against the sky, were some of the tallest mountains I’d ever seen. They towered above the valley in which was settled the small town, and they cast their long shadows over the buildings. Their peaks were capped with white snow and the sides were heavily forested, with only a hint here and there of civilization in the form of selective logging. The trees crept up behind the buildings that stood on the extreme edges of the town and stood there as though waiting for everything to come to ruin and they would take over the land.
The sun and my watch told me it was late afternoon, and I glanced over to find Luke staring at me. “Sleep well?” he teased.
I stretched my back and winced when it went off like a string of fireworks. “Sort of,” I admitted. I frowned when I felt a strange unsettling sensation shift inside of me.
“An aching feeling?” he asked me.
I shrugged. “A train wreck does that to you. Well, if you’re still human,” I replied.
“We have overnight reservations at the inn in the next town, but I’m afraid you won’t get much sleep tonight,” Luke told me.
“Yeah, I don’t sleep well after taking a nap,” I agreed.
He shook his head. “Not that. There’s a full moon tonight, and your change will take place.”
I frowned. “Maybe it’ll just have to wait until the next full moon. Surviving a track wreck takes a lot out of a girl.”
“I’m afraid it can’t wait, but you’ll learn soon enough about that,” he secretively replied.
I opened my mouth to give him a good yelling, but our train slipped into the new city’s train station. The station was in built in the same style as the previous one, but much larger. There were two platforms on either side o
f a pair of tracks that led off behind us and in front of us. A large crowd met us at our platform, and we passengers were helped off the train and into a bus just off the platform.
I was prepared to go out into the welcoming crowd, but Luke pulled one of his arms over me and stopped me from standing. “Not yet.” He stood and leaned over me, and his eyes searched the crowd.
Alistair did the same, and after a moment he pointed at a man who stood off from the crowd of welcomers. “There, sir.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked him. Everyone else was already off the train, and I wanted to stretch my legs.
“Just a precaution,” he assured me. I wasn’t comforted.
“Precaution for what? Is this train going to derail in the station?” I quipped. The look he cast me froze my blood. His expression told me that, at least to him, the scenario wasn’t entirely impossible. I nodded out the windows to the bus beside the platform. The other passengers were being loaded into it. “Why can’t we just go with them?”
“I would rather we take a separate car,” he insisted.
I frowned. “You’re not telling me something. What is it?”
“I’ll tell you when we reach the inn. For now you have to trust me,” Luke replied.
I scoffed. “Trust you? You’re my kidnapper, remember? The guy who held me prisoner in a white room and-”
“-and I know what I’m doing. Everyone else trusts me as a good man. You should, too,” he insisted. I wanted to argue with him on both the ‘good’ and ‘man’ parts, but he yanked on my arm and pulled me to my feet. “Alistair, you first.”
“Yes, sir.” The servant strode out of the car with us close behind him. Alistair led us to the stranger at the edge of the platform.
Luke stopped us a yard from him. “Are you from Mr. Burnbaum’s inn?” he asked the stranger.
“Yes, sir. Mr. Burnbaum thought you might want a private means of getting to the inn,” the man replied. The man reached into his coat, and I felt Luke stiffen by my side. The stranger only pulled out a slip of paper and held it out. “My credentials, sir.”
Alistair took it and read over the contents. “He speaks the truth,” Alistair confirmed.
“Very well, let’s get going,” Luke replied.
The stranger led us off the side of the platform by means of a short flight of wooden steps and over to a black car. He opened the door for us, and Luke herded me to into the backseat. Alistair took the front passenger seat while the stranger donned a driver’s black cap and got into the driver’s seat. We shot out of the station in record time, but I managed a glance back. A man in a dark coat and wide-brimmed hat stood at the end of the platform and watched us leave. “Don’t stare too long,” Luke advised me.
I turned to him with a raised eyebrow. “You knew he was there?” I asked him.
Luke nodded. “He was one of the reasons we couldn’t leave on the bus.”
“One of the reasons?”
“There was more than just him.”
“Uh, mind telling me why my life just went from a horror movie to a James Bond flick?” I wondered.
“Would it be enough for me to say I’ve made some enemies over my long years?” he asked me.
“I’d like an answer with a few more specifics.”
Luke sighed and pursed his lips together. “I suppose you have a right to know what I’m dragging you into.”
“It would help me know whether I need to panic or not.”
“My enemies are rival werewolf clans-”
“Naturally,” I quipped.
“-and they’d like to reverse our roles with humans.”
“I’m guessing this isn’t like job swapping?”
“Werewolves hide in the shadows or live in small communities of trusted humans, as you saw at Townsend and here at Wolverton,” Luke explained to me. “Some of the leaders would rather we exist in the open and have the humans live in fear and subordination to us.”
“So they want to do to humans what you’ve done to me?” I shot back. Luke gave me such a glare that I cringed. “Sorry.”
His voice was low and held a tremor of anger. “If you want to meet a true monster than look in the faces of my enemies. They have no mercy for humans, and not much more for werewolves who disagree with them.”
“We’re here, sir,” Alistair spoke up.
Luke turned away from me, but I still felt the oppressive weight of his words on me. He’d been angry with me before, but not like that. My comparing him to his enemies had hit a personal nerve, and I wondered if maybe I hadn’t gone too far in accusing him of being a monster. He had helped all those people at the wreck site.
The car stopped, and I turned my attention to my surroundings. We were parked in a circular drive in front of a two-story building made from hewn logs. The cracked and weathered wood exuded a great age. On the left side of the building was an old coach house that had been transformed into an enclosed garage. A pair of thick wood doors at the front of the main building were open and led to a large lobby with a decor that hearkened back a few centuries to when women wore billowing dresses and men sported hats and long, pulled-back hair. Tapestries hung down and covered the wooden walls and old lamps hung between them. Their glass casings once held candles, but now were filled with fluorescent bulbs.
A short, hefty man with a wild black beard stood beneath a wooden frame that covered the entrance. He wore a pair of black dress pants with a white blouse, none of which matched the wild appearance of his hair that stuck out in odd angles from beneath a beaver hat. We got out of the car, and he smiled and hurried forward to us. His stomach bounced up and down like a bowl of jello. “Good evening, my good friends,” he greeted us in a thick Russian accent. He clasped Luke’s hands in his own while Alistair gathered our luggage.
“Good evening, Burnbaum. How goes the business?” Luke replied with his own grin.
“Very good, very good, but I hear of trouble for you. Everything is all right now?” he wondered. His voice told me he didn’t think the trouble was over.
“I’m afraid not, but I’d rather talk about this inside,” Luke insisted.
“Of course. I have your rooms prepared for you.” He led the three of us inside while the driver drove the car to the garage.
To our right stood a large room with a few dozen square wooden tables scattered about the floor. Guests sat at the table dining on a wide assortment of dead things, and I wasn’t meaning vegetables. I recognized the usual fowl and hoofed animals, and noticed several pieces of meat that weren’t familiar. To our left was the large front desk and a hallway that led back to the employee-only section of the inn, including to the garage. In front of us was a wide wooden flight of stairs that led upstairs to the rooms. That was the largest set of stairs I’d ever seen. The banisters alone were hewn from five-inch wide trees, and the steps themselves were carved out of a dozen four-foot thick logs. To the right and behind the stairs were a pair of doors that were shut tight, but I heard music drift out from between their cracks. Overall the place was beautiful, and a nightmare for an environmentalist.
Burnbaum led us to the front desk, slid a large ledger toward Luke, and picked up an old-fashioned quill pen. “If you would sign in we can talk.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “Why not before?” he asked him.
“It is by orders of the Council. They want to know everyone who comes to stay,” Burnbaum replied. His eyes showed a bit of mischief in them and he wagged his bushy eyebrows. “Sign here with name that pleases you. I mean, if it pleases you to sign name,” he corrected himself.
Luke grinned, took the pen, and wrote down a few names in the ledger. I glanced over his shoulder and saw he wrote Mr. and Mrs. Smith. He dropped the pen on the desk and turned to the busy dining hall. “Where’s a quiet spot to speak?” he asked our host.
“It is this way, in your room,” he told us.
12
Burnbaum led us upstairs and straight down the long hall that reached to the end of the deep
building. Halfway down was a hall that ran perpendicular to the main hall and spanned the width of the inn. There were dozens of rooms, and each of them had thick wooden doors. I had no doubt they all had very thick walls, too. We were led left along the perpendicular hall to the very end. A window sat at the end of the hall and looked out onto the wooden-shingled roof of the old carriage house.
Burnbaum opened a door on the right, stepped aside, and gestured for us to enter. Luke led the way with Alistair close behind him, but I hung back. “You will like it, I promise you,” Burnbaum spoke up.
“It’s not that,” I replied. I glanced down at the other rooms. “Don’t I have my own room?”
Burnbaum chuckled, and it was mesmerizing watching his belly bounce up and down. “My Lord takes only one, and all others are full.”
My face drooped and I sighed. “Just my luck. . .” I grumbled.
Luke stepped out of the room and glanced between us. “Is there a problem?” he wondered.
“No problem. The lady here just asks about rooms,” Burnbaum replied. “How you like yours?”
Luke smiled. “Perfect as always, but now we need to talk about business.” He turned to me and nodded toward the room. “Wouldn’t you like to see the room?”
“Our room?” I guessed.
“The bed is large enough for three, but yes, our room,” he told me.
I sighed and stalked past him. The room was in the same elegant barbarism as the rest of the inn, complete with a four-post bed made of small logs and thick boards. To the right Alistair was busy putting away our clothes in a wooden dresser, and beyond him lay a door to what I assumed was the bathroom. I checked it. Yep, definitely a bathroom, and done up in the modern plastic style rather than the wood decor.
Burnbaum was the last inside, and he closed the door behind himself. Luke’s face lost what little humor it had and he turned to our host with an impatient air. “What can you tell us about the train wreck?”
Burnbaum pursed his lips together and shook his head. “Very little. Lance and Christian passed through two days ago, and some of their men stayed here. I do not know when they left, but I heard they went along the tracks toward Townsend on their own train and come back the next day.”
