Commence freaking out in three…
The train flashes past her, a massive metal whale showing its vulnerable underbelly. She raises bow to violin, and the night crackles with electricity. Beneath her feet, the tracks light up as if glowing circuitry rushes through them, all purple and bruised. I taste ozone, sulfur, burning asphalt.
Two.
“Syl!” Fiann shoves me back in my seat so she can clamber over me. I push her off and press my face to the window, craning my neck as the train rocks on. Fiann’s practically screaming. “Is that—”
It is. One.
Zzzaaaaap! Electricity lashes from the girl’s bow, lighting up the night.
Instinct throws me back from the window a second before the purple lightning slams into the train, the sound like a thousand nails on a thousand chalkboards—and then comes the crumping whump of metal.
The train screeches, sparks flying, and we’re all chucked back against our seats. I slip, fall to the floor of the train car, the leather thong around my neck snapping.
Glamma’s iron nail goes flying into the darkness.
I don’t have time to chase it. I jerk up, sweaty, my red curls in my face. The whole train is shuddering, shaking, the squeal of the brakes so loud it’s painful.
I catch Fiann’s eyes, eating up her face. “Oh my God, Syl. We’re crashing.”
The train pitches, a tin can, and we are all inside.
Chapter Six
Rouen
Black-magic Moribund,
From the depths of Dark Faerie
Our darkest history
My punishment, enslaving me to him
Keeping me from you
- “Darker, Darker, Darkest,” Euphoria
My world is dark circuitry and lightning. I stand amidst it all on the service platform. I am a shadowy goddess sawing away on a glass violin.
I don’t want to be.
I saw her face in the window. The cute redhead from the club is on that train.
I shouldn’t care.
My bow falters.
“Keep playing!” Agravaine’s Command rings through the night, his face lit in ghoulish glee as I unleash the fell power of the Moribund at the onrushing train. Violet lightning slashes the night, illuminating frightened faces in train-car windows.
I shouldn’t care. But I do.
And still, I destroy.
Violet lightning sears across the train, a deadly chain burning through the steel, carving up the cars. Dread and sick amusement turns my stomach. The part of me that is all dark Fae princess-assassin, paragon of the Winter Court, revels in the destruction I wreak. But a small part of me, the quiet, secret part that the red-haired girl touched, fears I will scream, vomit, lose my mind at the idea of harming her.
Gritting my fangs, I yank my bow off the strings.
The lightning tapers off, the wave of circuitry at my feet ebbing, a dark ocean receding at low tide.
Agravaine’s sharky eyes glint evilly. “I said, play on.”
I have no choice. The Contract binds me, body and blood, even though my heart, my soul cries out against it. Captive to his will, I play on, my violin screaming with discord, searing the night with eldritch bolts. One whip-cracks down on the tracks. They shudder and heave, reins snapped by an angry hand. In a great wave, the rails rise, throwing train cars into the air like a child’s toy—all glittering glass and chrome.
For a long, teetering moment, the train hangs midair like a massive mobile.
And then gravity sucks it back down.
Train and tracks welter down, smashing into the viaduct. The frontmost cars buckle, collapsing in like soda cans crushed by a massive, invisible hand. The stink of cold iron and rust thickens in the air, choking me with its poison. With a hideous shriek, railroad ties shatter, supports groan and tilt. Bolts fly free, and the night is alive with screams and flying iron.
A railroad tie crosses my cheek, burning cold iron—the pain is exquisite. I would lose my concentration if it were my own.
But he uses my body to destroy.
The dark part of me exults at watching the Moribund twist my gramarye into a weapon of destruction. But as sheets of violet lightning take the train, the people, their lives, a flash comes to me—of the redhead, her touch, her storm-grey eyes, the way I felt when she looked at me.
Like I could be a good person. Like I could make up for all my sins.
And the small, secret part of me finds the strength to fight back Agravaine’s Command, to change the grip on my violin and bow—and turn my power from ruin to mercy.
I can’t save her, but I can at least make her death painless.
“Rouen…” Agravaine sees what I mean to do. He opens his mouth to Command me.
The snarl that comes from my throat stops him cold. “Careful, buddy-boy. Lightning can be very unpredictable. You wouldn’t want my hand to slip…”
“Fine,” he says through a sharp smile. “Your mercy won’t mean anything anyway. They’ll still all die.”
Perhaps, but I have to do something.
I play from discord to harmony. Where it had howled, my violin now sings sweetly, its dulcet tones embracing the mortals. I cast the web of my euphoric gramarye over the destruction as it ripples outward. Most are dead before they know it, my sultry strains singing them to a blissful darkness as their bodies are torn apart. The night is alive with lightning and smoky ozone, the wind whipping my black hair into my face.
My eyes sting with unshed tears, but still I work my instrument. I never meant for this to happen. I should never have promised her “after.” I never should have promised her anything.
Let her feel no pain, I whisper to the notes as they come. Let her feel only euphoria. Let them all…
For a single, glittering moment, everything quiets in the wake of my music as it brings the mortals on the commuter rail a blissful, painless end.
And then…
“Finish it.” The Command sears across my body. My fingers tense on the bow, and I bear down on the strings, making my violin howl and scream.
My violet lightning shoots in forked bolts, carving up the train, twisting and tearing up the tracks like spades digging into a grave. The entire train warps, metal and chrome screaming, safety glass shattering. Half the cars careen off the viaduct, tearing the tracks along behind, so that train cars, tracks, twisted metal smashes into the asphalt so hard the ground quakes beneath my feet.
It takes several long minutes for the wreckage to stop pitching and shuddering, metal shrapnel falling in a deadly rain.
The entire time, my heart seizes, throbbing painfully into the night, my breath caught in my throat.
“Enough.” Agravaine releases me.
Finally, I stop, my whole body aching and bone-weary. I just want to crawl into bed and sleep for a thousand years.
But the hunt has only just begun.
His eyes glitter as he scans the ruination. “The circle of iron is shattered. The railway spell is broken.”
Like the “after” I promised the red-haired girl.
But I must forget her. The sleeper-princess awaits.
The thought has barely registered when I scent hints on the breeze: vanilla, skin musk, heady opoponax. The scents of the sleeper-princess.
She’s…here?
I can’t keep the shock from my face, and before I can lock down my expression, Agravaine growls in sinister pleasure. “I sense her, too, Rouen.” He runs his tongue over his fangs. “How delicious.”
Blast and bloody bones! Was she on the train? And how did she survive? Wild thoughts crash in my mind: find her, warn her, help her.
But no. Agravaine is too quick.
“Bring her to me.” That is what he Commands, and so that is what I must do.
I sling my bow over my shoulder and close down my aching heart.
Chapter Seven
Syl
Once the circle of train tracks is broken,
And the spell of iron shattered
The dark Fae shall
come for you, sleeper-princess
To hunt you to the ends of the Earth
- Glamma’s Grimm
I’ve always hated roller coasters. The high-speed corners, the pukey stomach drops, the totally barf-inducing loop-de-loops.
This is a million times worse.
Screaming, we’re hurled up out of our seats—dozens of people suddenly in free-fall. My stomach drops sickly as the train lurches into the air. Flailing like a baby seal, I catch hold of the oh-crap handle. Fiann grabs on to me. Next to us, Jane snatches a safety rail, Charlotte clawing at her, all wild-eyed. My shoulders shriek in pain, but I hold on for dear life, knocked around like a lost kite caught in high winds.
We’re slammed back as the car comes crashing down.
My feet touch the floor just as the windows shiver, then shatter. “Look out!” I turn my back to it, protecting me and Fiann. Safety glass, thank God.
Screams blare in my ears—Fiann, my squad, the other people all freaking out hard—but higher still comes the shrill screech of… a violin?
It can’t be. But it is.
Like a murder of dark angels swooping down with violins, the music soars through the train car, and some of the screams become sighs of relief. I don’t look. I can’t look. All these people…blissful about their own deaths. Euphoric. Just like in the club. My stomach twists into knots, my thoughts running all wild and willy-nilly.
Holy cats, the rumors about Euphoria are true. But what the heck is she—angel or demon?
The train car tilts and shudders like crazy. Fiann’s nails dig into my shoulders so hard she’s going to leave bruises.
If we survive this.
I can’t see our squad at all. They’re lost in the crush and pile of bodies. Everything is a chaos of screaming, sighing, metal twisting, glass crunching and shattering as we’re tossed like the train is a kid’s toy. The world goes upside down, right side up, upside down, faster than even those giant coasters at Busch Gardens. The gross stink of ozone clogs the air until I choke.
And then…finally…everything goes still, the wreckage rocking to a stop.
The emergency lights flicker on, flooding us bloody—it’s just me and Fiann left, hanging like frazzled kittens from the oh-crap handle—but the streetlights blare brighter, blinding me, a white beacon.
Impossible. They’re all smashed, Syl.
Still, everything is washed in white, bright as a baseball field.
A sudden heat blossoms in my hands, in my heart, and my head feels all muzzy like I’m going to pass out, my vision going weird and spotty.
“Syl…Syl!” Fiann shakes me, and I come around.
“Wh-what?”
She’s staring at me, her last words, “You’re special, Syl” ringing all nonsensical in my head.
Why is she staring?
“You…” She pants, choking it out. “You’re burning. Your hands, Syl!”
“What?” As soon as I look, the white light snuffs out, candle-in-the-wind style. And there’s no time. With a shearing screech, the train car tilts crazily on its side, metal rippling. I’m still holding on, my legs swinging out into space. Don’t look down, don’t look down…
Of course I do.
Out the window, below us, only black river and wet asphalt. And the wreckage of the front of the train, smashed and crushed.
The car pitches, throwing Fiann against me. “Arrrrghhh!” My shoulder feels like the Hulk is trying to use it as a pool noodle, but I grit my teeth and hold on. Glamma always said I was too stubborn for my own good sometimes.
Case in point.
“Syl!” Fiann’s heart rabbits against mine. Her eyes are wide, terrified.
Somehow, we are still alive. At least, me and Fiann are.
“Where is everyone?” I look around frantically, but everything’s a mess of glass and torn-up seats and twisted metal. “Fiann, we’ve got to find th—Oooooohhhh, craaaaaaap!”
The train tilts back the other way, crashing back to the viaduct. The wheels squeal, and the grinding crunk of metal against metal sounds so very Not Good. I hold on for all I’m worth as the trains slides sideways, coming totally off the rails and teetering like the world’s biggest seesaw over a hundred foot drop straight down, down, down…
River or asphalt—we’ll smash into one or the other.
Drown or get crushed. Not the best choices.
“Syl!” From the wobbly tone of Fiann’s voice, I can tell she’s somewhere between panic and a total psychotic break.
Maybe that’s why I’m able to stay calm—because freaking out with Fiann is not the way I want to go out.
I look for something, anything to save us. I’m not dying here with my fake BFF hanging onto me. There! Another service platform, on the adjacent tracks. We’ll have to jump. And pray Euphoria doesn’t see us.
Last time I checked, I was definitely not lightning-proof.
But a sucky plan’s better than no plan at all.
“We have to get out!” I brace against Fiann and kick at the broken safety glass. It crinkles and crumples beneath my Docs. I snatch up a stray hoodie, trying not to think of who it used to belong to, and sweep the glass away, counting on the thick fabric to keep me from getting cut.
In my mind’s eye, I see Euphoria lifting her bow to her strings. Crap, crap, crappity, crap. I push Fiann toward the gaping hole. “Go, go, go!”
All Jekyll and Hyde, she’s all of a sudden weirdly calm, her green eyes shining. What the…? But she goes, disappearing into the darkness. A second later, I hear the metal pang of her landing on the platform.
Our train car tilts toward the river. A good stiff breeze’ll push it over.
Too long. We’re taking too long.
But there are other survivors, aren’t there? I look back. In the bloody emergency light, my eyes see people strewn across seats, fallen onto the floor, limbs twisted, bodies broken. My eyes see, but my brain short-circuits.
Dead, dead. They’re all dead.
Are they, really? I should check.
Before I can, Fiann leans through the broken window and yanks me hard. “Come on!” The car jolts, and I’m pulled/thrown out of the train. Panic zaps through me, my heart trying to Bruce Lee its way out of my chest as I free-fall.
The violin’s scream shatters the night.
Euphoria! I crash down on the service platform as lightning zorches over my head, slamming into the train, heaving it up over me, a gigantic coiling dragon of twisted steel. Fiann grabs me as we lie on the service platform, frozen in terror.
The shadow of the train falls, and then the train itself comes crashing down at us.
I raise my hand, the one Euphoria touched. Pins and needles prickle my skin, my fingers, a pain that’s strange and somehow exciting.
In this moment, my heart is pounding, and my mind whirls with what Fiann said. “You’re special, Syl.”
But all I can think of is Euphoria and the “after” she promised.
We’re two seconds from being crushed…
In a brilliant blare, a sheet of pure white flame leaps from my hand.
Euphoria!
Chapter Eight
Rouen
Sleeper-princess
When you Awaken,
Your light will shine like a burning beacon
No dark Fae will withstand
Your power
-“Sleeper-Princess,” Euphoria
Pure white radiance slices the night like a scythe, severing the falling train in half, a blade through butter. One side smashes to the asphalt, the other to the viaduct, rocking the entire thing on its foundation and raining glass and burning metal. The wreckage shimmers in the white light, sinister but beautiful—a metal dragon, gutted, strewn across the viaduct and scattered on the blacktop below.
White flame. A bolt of visceral fear grips my guts.
So much power… Is that what a fully Awakened sleeper-princess can do?
Next to me, Agravaine steps behind a support girder, shielding his eyes ev
en as the white flames die down. “She’s here,” he growls.
“Thank you, Captain Obvious.” My voice is steady, but my heart’s racing, dialed up to eleven with the knob broken off.
Actual thunder rumbles the night sky, and the real rains come now, bursting the summer’s heat and deluging down on us, the torn-up tracks, the wreckage, water mixing with oil and ozone and death.
It’ll never wash the blood from my hands.
I lower my violin, my ears ringing with the fading notes. The white light is gone now, fading away as quickly as it came.
Beneath the rolling thunder comes the howl of sirens. The humans coming to pick up the pieces of their own. I tense like the hound and Huntress I am. “We should leave.” If we do, maybe the sleeper-princess will get away. Maybe she’ll find safety, hide herself again.
It’s a wild, foolish hope.
That shatters instantly when Agravaine stays me with a hand on my shoulder. He lifts his head to the rain. “We have time. Come.”
He leaps down to the wreckage strewn out on the asphalt.
I pull up my hood, sling my violin, tuck my bow beneath my arm. All around me, the tracks are bent upward like the broken ribs of a huge, gutted beast. I leap, my boots crunching glass when I land.
The spell of iron is undone, but at what cost? How many mortals had to die?
The red-haired girl… She must be dead, too.
The thorn in my heart twists, cutting me up inside.
Agravaine stealths carefully through the tangled heaps of metal and fallen tracks.
The sleeper-princess could be anywhere. With all the bright light and white flame, it’s nearly impossible to pinpoint her. The scent of vanilla and skin musk is blotted out by the stench of blood and ozone, iron and rain.
Looks like we’re doing this the old-fashioned way.
I follow, picking my way through the wreckage. My boot turns on a cell phone, its face shattered. There, a tattered book, still smoking. Crumpled figures slump in the rain. Beneath a tortured hunk of metal, I glimpse splintered fingers and look away. I weave my way through the devastation. A laptop, the screen cracked and black. A set of keys, twisted, useless. A wallet. A pair of shattered glasses.
Derailed: A Prequel Novella Page 6
