The Borderkind v-2

by Christopher Golden

  “Coming,” Oliver called as he walked to the door.

  He unlocked it, then slid it open, tensed to jump back if attacked. The first thing he saw was the conductor’s hat on the woman’s head. In the passageway, lights dimmed for nighttime travel, he could make out none of the details of the conductor’s face. But it eased his tension a little to see that hat.

  “Sorry. We were napping a bit.”

  “Of course,” said the conductor.

  In the dim light, her grin was Cheshire Cat broad. Oliver heard a strange sound coming from her, a kind of rustling that came from beneath the long blue coat with the railway’s insignia on the shoulder and breast.

  Opening the door had been a terrible mistake.

  She pushed off the conductor’s coat. A terrible rasp came from her body, which was covered with hair so thick it seemed like the yarn on a rag doll’s head. But it twisted and coiled and lashed out and something jabbed Oliver’s left forearm. He cried out and staggered back, and the cablelike tendrils that covered her body thrust out toward him, each of them tipped with a curved stinger.

  His arm ached where she’d stung him and began to feel hot. Some kind of venom was moving through him. Oliver wondered if it was fatal and how many stings it would take to kill him.

  On instinct, he grabbed the door and slid it shut. With all of his weight behind it, he drove it home, crushing several of those tentacles in a small gap between door and frame, but the stingers did not withdraw. They thrust out at his hands as though they could see him. Oliver swore but did not pull away. One of the stingers grazed his left wrist. He opened the door a few inches and slammed it again. A tendril was cut off and fell to the floor, leaking greenish ichor.

  “Help me!” Oliver said through gritted teeth.

  “Step back,” Kitsune commanded, her voice deathly calm.

  “Are you crazy? I’m going to lock the door!”

  A bouquet of stingers erupted through the narrow opening in the door, pressed themselves against the door edge and the frame, and then the handle was torn from his grasp as the stingers forced the door open with such violence that it rattled and slammed and he heard metal tear.

  “Oliver, step back!” Kitsune shouted.

  In fear he threw himself away from the door, falling backward onto the duffel bag as the Hunter swept into the room, stingers stabbing at the air all around her. The tendrils curled like a basket of snakes upon her head. Somewhere in that mass of darting stingers was a face, but all he could see were clear, perfect, blue eyes and that Cheshire grin.

  “So pleased to make your acquaintance,” the Hunter said, and then it laughed, the coldest sound Oliver had ever heard.

  Kitsune tossed him the Sword of Hunyadi, still in its scabbard. He lay on his back on the bench seat and snatched it out of the air. He began to draw it even as Kitsune attacked the woman.

  The fox-woman did not alter her form. Fur cloak rustling around her, she lunged at the Hunter. Stingers darted out, jabbing into the shadows within her cloak. Kitsune whimpered through gritted teeth, and Oliver wondered how many times she would be stung, how many it would take to kill a Borderkind. But the fox-woman was fast. She grabbed the Hunter by the throat and used her free hand to rake the creature’s abdomen with vicious claws.

  Then, Oliver was in motion. He slid the scabbard fully off the sword as he stood. Without a word he moved behind Kitsune and thrust the blade past her and into the mass of angry stingers.

  The Hunter hissed, but the smile remained, as though the pain was a pleasure to her. Some of the stingers wrapped themselves around the blade and Oliver felt them pulling it, trying to tear it from his grasp.

  “Move her!” he snapped.

  Kitsune understood. Fewer stingers were jabbing her now but already there were angry welts rising on her flesh. She gripped the Hunter by the throat and twisted her toward Oliver, who used new leverage to shove the sword deeper, to twist it. The Hunter cried out and the stingers faltered for a moment.

  He caught Kitsune’s eye, saw the fox-woman glance toward the window. Oliver nodded, and together they half lifted, half pushed the Hunter across the compartment. With all of his strength, Oliver used the sword to drive the thing against the glass.

  It cracked.

  The stingers began to twist again, darting at his hands, at the sword, and at Kitsune’s fur and hands, at her face.

  They hauled back and slammed the Hunter against the glass again, using her skull as a battering ram. The window splintered and the Hunter’s head crashed through, scattering a million tiny diamonds of safety glass out into the night and the wind as the train hurtled through the darkness. But it was made to push out in case of an emergency, and the collision pushed the whole window from the frame. With the Hunter partway through the broken window, they gave one final push as Oliver slid the sword from her body.

  With a scream of hatred and pain, the creature tumbled out the window and struck the ground, rolling into a ditch alongside the tracks at a speed that must have snapped bones and torn muscles. The wind screamed into the compartment and Oliver and Kitsune stood and stared out into the night, buffeted by the speed and the wind. Her hair and cloak flew around her. He glanced down at the viscous green blood on his blade.

  “What was she?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Oliver glanced at Kitsune.

  She gave him a sharp look. “No one can know every legend.”

  But he had already forgotten his question. The welts raised on her cinnamon skin were bright red. There were at least two dozen that he could see, and undoubtedly more on her chest where the stingers had jabbed through her shirt.

  Kitsune swayed on her feet. “You don’t look well,” she said.

  Oliver smiled. The heat of his own stings burned through him and made his face flush. He felt feverish and there was pain in his hands and arms where the Hunter had stung him, but now a kind of numbness was descending upon him.

  “Do you think we’re going to die?”

  Kitsune frowned. “I told you, I do not know her legend.”

  Shouts came from elsewhere in the train car. Oliver blinked. They had to get out of there. Had to, in fact, get off the train at the next stop. If this Hunter had found them, others must know they were on the train. And though it was a lesser concern, the condition of their compartment would likely summon the police.

  “Let’s go,” he said.

  He turned and bent to pick up the scabbard. Only as he rose did he realize how slowly he was moving, how sluggish his muscles. His whole body had begun to feel frozen, as though it was fighting against him.

  Oliver forced his limbs to move, put the sword back into its scabbard, and dropped it into the duffel. He did not bother to zip it, slipping its strap across his shoulder. The numbness and stiffness of his body was increasing.

  Kitsune stood at the ruined door of the compartment, looking out into the hall.

  “Anything?” Oliver asked, his words slurring, his mouth leaden.

  “Passengers, but they’re scared. Keeping well back,” Kitsune said. Her head bobbed sleepily as she spoke, like she was drunk.

  “Go.”

  Slowly, Kitsune staggered into the corridor. Oliver followed. How they managed to make it into the next car, and the next beyond, without a conductor stopping them, he didn’t know. Only when he remembered the conductor’s cap and jacket that the Hunter had worn and realized that at least one of them was dead did he understand.

  When they found the ruined door and the broken window, they would come looking. He only prayed that he and Kitsune would be off of the train by then. For now, though, they kept moving until the sluggishness in his muscles became too much. Then he started to knock at every compartment door they passed. When he got no answer, he tried the door. Two of them were locked, which meant someone was inside, asleep. But the third one opened.

  It was empty.

  They staggered into the compartment. Each fraction of a movement was like swimming in wet c
ement. Oliver collapsed on the floor. Had Kitsune been human, he was certain she would have fallen before him. As it was she had only enough energy to close and lock the door before spilling onto the cushioned bench.

  “Paralysis,” Oliver said. Or thought he said. He was not sure his mouth had properly formed the word. It was becoming difficult to breathe.

  The Hunter’s sting paralyzed her victims, presumably long enough for her to kill them. Unless the paralysis was only the first stage of the venom’s effect, and death would result momentarily.

  Completely immobile, they could only wait.

  Kitsune recovered more quickly than Oliver. He was only human after all. Though they needed to reach Vienna for her plan to work, Oliver insisted that they get off as quickly as possible, before any of the train personnel figured out that the compartment they were hiding in was supposed to be empty, and that they had been the ones in the ruined compartment. Neither of them was in any condition to answer questions, or any mood, and Oliver still had no passport.

  As she helped him from the train, carrying the duffel bag over her shoulder, they had both been too focused on the task at hand to register the name of the station. Wherever they were, it was no Salzburg. The town had none of the quaint, picturesque charm of that city. It was a dreary place full of garages, warehouses, and old factories.

  They needed a car, and a map. Oliver had said they couldn’t be more than an hour or so from Vienna. Kitsune watched the skies and the windows of darkened buildings as they left the train station, wary of further attack. None came. In the train station, Oliver had found a ticket agent who spoke enough English to tell him of the car rental operation two blocks away, but it was a small town, the man had said, and Christmas Eve, and he did not know how late they would be open. There was no airport here, after all.

  Now they strode through the dirty street and a freezing rain began to fall, tiny pinpricks of ice. Oliver had something in his hand, held between his fingers like an old conjure-man’s worry stone.

  “What’ve you got there?” she asked.

  He opened his hand and she saw the fat seed that the Harvest gods had given him.

  “Sort of a lucky charm,” he told her.

  Kitsune arched an eyebrow. “Not very effective, is it?”

  Oliver slid the seed back into his pocket. “We’re alive.”

  “There is that.”

  Oliver smiled and took the duffel from her, obviously feeling much recovered. The cold made her feel alert and helped to shake off the numbness from her. Kitsune put up her hood, her fur protecting her from the sleet, and reached out for Oliver’s hand. He flinched a bit, then cast an apologetic glance at her and slid his fingers into hers.

  “The lights are on,” he said, the hope in his voice the first real energy he’d shown since the creature’s venom had begun to wear off.

  They picked up the pace, hurrying up to the little parking lot. The rental agency had a brightly lit orange-and-blue sign, but it was set up in what appeared to be an abandoned gas station. Kitsune did not spend a great deal of time on this side of the Veil, but she knew the world well enough not to like it very much. There were places of great beauty, and there was real magic in the human race-some of them, at least-but there was also despair and filth, and this town reeked of both.

  Inside the squat little rental car building, a thick-necked, red-faced man sat behind a counter smoking unfiltered Turkish cigarettes whose herb-redolent stench choked the air. Kitsune hung back away from the counter, feeling the shroud of smoke covering her fur, and wrinkled her nose in distaste. The middle-aged bull of a man took a long draw from his cigarette and watched her with a gleam of cruel lust in his eyes. Only when Oliver had made several attempts to speak with him did he at last pay attention and then a horrible distaste curled his lip, as though they had come into his place of business covered in offal.

  The man held up his hands in surrender. “No English.”

  Oliver shifted the duffel bag to his other shoulder and glanced at Kitsune. “And I don’t speak German.” Again he focused on the man behind the counter as he reached into his back pocket and withdrew his wallet. He slid his American Express card out and snapped it down onto the counter.

  “You don’t need to speak English to understand me. Car. Vienna. One night. One, ” and now he held up a finger, “ nacht.”

  He tapped the American Express card.

  The man behind the counter continued to regard Oliver as though he were some sort of leper, for at least a count of ten before finally reaching out and picking up the credit card and studying it. Then he looked up.

  “I.D.”

  “See,” Oliver said. “What language barrier?”

  He handed the man a pair of cards, one of which was the international driver’s license he’d gotten in London. Kitsune felt sure the man would demand a passport, but after glancing at the license he picked up the credit card again, placed it beside his computer, and began typing, eyes on the monitor. The tak-tak-tak of the keyboard made her head hurt. The welts where the Hunter had stung her were little more than blemishes now, but they ached fiercely.

  The man finished inputting information into his computer, then sat back and watched the screen, waiting for something. Approval, perhaps.

  Then the man blinked and all trace of the hostility he had shown vanished. When he glanced at Oliver, it had been replaced by a kind of wary deference. He held up a finger to indicate that they should wait, and picked up the phone.

  “What is it?” Kitsune asked.

  Oliver shrugged. “Probably has to get phone verification on the charge or something. Nothing to worry about.”

  The fox-woman pulled her cloak closely around herself, not at all convinced. The man’s demeanor had changed, his body language too, and though in the miasma of Turkish cigarette stench it was difficult to be sure, she thought his scent was also different.

  In the short, hard-edged language of his countrymen, the rental agent spoke to someone on the phone. When he hung up, he showed them a placating smile whose falseness was inarguable.

  “Oliver,” Kitsune cautioned.

  He nodded, as if to reassure her. The man held up a finger again, indicating that they should wait, and then he went back to typing information into the computer. Every few moments he would frown as though what he read on-screen was not to his liking.

  “What’s the problem?” Oliver asked.

  “No,” the man said, smiling again. “No problem.”

  He understood that much. Pulling himself away from the computer he looked out through the dirty glass of his little building and studied the cars in his parking lot, then ran his fingers across rows of keys hanging on hooks on the wall. The man continued to puff on that horrid cigarette and the smoke choked Kitsune’s lungs.

  “I cannot breathe in here,” she said. “I’m going to wait outside.”

  A bell dinged above the door as she left. Odd that she hadn’t noticed it when they entered. On the concrete curb in front of the rental office she stood and glanced out across the small fleet of rental cars at the town beyond. There was nothing left here of nature or magic, only the worst that humanity brought to the world. Pavement and metal and brick, smoke and garbage and cars spewing dark exhaust. Whatever magic there was in the season of this holiday of Oliver’s, it did not show itself here.

  Several times she glanced back inside. Oliver stood tensely by the counter, glaring impatiently at the rental agent. The thick-necked man seemed nervous, and more than once she saw him peering out through the dirty glass at her, at the cars.

  No. That was wrong. He was looking to the street.

  Kitsune’s heart clenched. She spun, peered into the darkness of the town, and saw blue lights flashing in the distance. Her travels through man’s world had crossed centuries. Though they had been infrequent of late, she had been here often enough to know what those lights meant.

  She pushed through the door with such force that the glass shattered. The man shou
ted as though he’d been shot. Oliver turned, staring at her as though she’d gone mad.

  “He’s called the police.”

  Oliver blinked. “What? Why?”

  Kitsune shook her head. “I don’t know, but there will be time to discover that later. We must hurry if you want to get to Vienna tonight.”

  She left unspoken the fact that if they did not reach Vienna soon, the plan would have to wait until the following night, and that would be another entire day’s delay before they could reach Collette.

  Anger flared upon Oliver’s face. The rental agent was a big man, broad across the shoulders, with enormous hands, but when Oliver slammed his hand on the counter the man backed away instantly.

  “Why?” Oliver shouted.

  The man began to curse at him in German, throwing up his hands. Spittle flew from his mouth and his red face turned purple. Oliver swore, swept up his I.D. and credit card, then reached over to snatch a ring of keys from the wall, the heavy duffel bag banging the front of the counter as it swung forward.

  The man tried to grab him but Oliver was too quick.

  “Hurry!” Kitsune called.

  They ran out of the little building. In the low thrum of city noises there were no sirens, but the lights had grown brighter. Down the darkened street, slicked with freezing rain, the police car was coming.

  “How do we-” she began.

  Oliver held up the keys, touched a button, and one of the cars chirped, its taillights flashing. They ran to it. The blue lights swept closer.

  “Just get in and get down,” Oliver said.

  The car was in the second row, third in from the end. Oliver pushed the duffel in and they tumbled inside, shutting the doors in the very same moment that the police car pulled into the car rental lot. They sat in the darkness, both of them breathing hard, as the police car stopped right in front of the little building.

  A single policeman climbed out, glanced around once, and walked to the door. He stared at the broken glass and then entered.

  Oliver put the keys in the ignition.

  “Wait,” Kitsune said.