My anger rises like a living beast inside me. “You knew there were people on that train.”
He looks back over his shoulder. “Yes.”
“You filthy rotter.” Hatred fills me—hatred for him, but for myself, too. If I were not so weak, I could have fought him. I could have stopped this. “You—”
“Didn’t you learn your lesson?” In a flash, he’s on me, grabbing me by the collar, getting in my face. “You shouldn’t care about mortals, princess.”
Snarling, I bare my fangs at him. “I am the dark Fae princess, but I am not heartless. Not like you.”
“Look around.” Smugly, he gestures at the ruination of iron and steel and flesh around us. “You’re exactly like me.”
That rocks me to my core. I yank away.
“Dowse for her, Rouen.”
I shake off his touch, but I can never shake off his Command. One day, though, buddy-boy…
I bow my head. The pat-pit-pat of rain on my leather jacket makes a rhythmic spell. I want not to sense the sleeper-princess. I pray not to sense her. What is wrong with me?
And yet, through the twisted iron, the foul metal’s spell fading like a miasma on the wind, I do. A glimmer of her stirs across my skin, leaving gooseflesh and yearning. A faint hint of vanilla and skin musk. My fangs ache, and my mouth pools with saliva.
I sense her… I taste her on the air. So close…too close!
Slowly I gaze out over the destruction.
One side of the train lies on its side on the asphalt, warped and smashed to smithereens, sliced in half by white flame. Above, the other half lies crushed, a tangle of jagged metal strewn across the viaduct, hanging on by a thread.
There.
Cradled in the broken wreckage above, I sense her power—the power of the fair Fae—barely Awakening, fluttering like a bird with a wounded wing.
I know in my Huntress heart she is there. “Found her.”
“Good.”
I glance at Agravaine. “Did you know she was on the train?” Was he trying to Awaken her? Crashing the train, putting her in mortal danger—a cunning plot, since sleeper-princesses only Awaken when under extreme stress.
His face is unreadable, but I read the truth in his shark-black eyes. He knew.
Somehow, he knew.
“Find her, Rouen.” His Command jolts through me, forcing my obedience. “Bring her to me. Go.”
I do. I’m coming for you, sleeper-princess.
Chapter Nine
Syl
Fae blood calls to Fae blood
- Glamma’s Grimm
I’ve never thought of myself as the swoony romance heroine, but apparently, my body’s got other ideas. Because one second, there’s this sheet of white flame bursting from my hand, and the next? It’s nighty-night for yours truly.
I come around, soaked and gasping on the wet service platform. One wrong move and shooting pain rockets up my right leg, racking me with agony like I’ve never felt. Holy--! My vision gets spotty, nausea waves over me, and for one spinning sec, I think I’m going to yurk my guts out.
Breathe, Syl, breathe…
The stink of charred metal and ozone gag me. I shiver in the spitting rain, wishing I’d listened to the advice Mom always gives when I go out, “Bring a sweater.”
Mom. Tears blur my sight as pain and the aftermath of an adrenaline-fueled escape from death shudders through my body. She doesn’t know where I am…
Wait, where am I?
Gasping, I force myself up on my elbows. Through the haze of pain, I realize I’m still on the service platform, and Fiann is—
Gone. She ditched me again. Only, this is the ultimate ditch.
I’m alive—somehow—but I’m really hurt, in shock. At that realization, I start shaking, all the panic and adrenaline lighting up my system like a Christmas tree.
Gotta get away. Euphoria… She destroyed the train. She’s coming for me!
I try to stand, but screaming pain slices through my leg again like hot knives. I reach down and touch…cold metal slick with blood. Shrapnel. Awesome. Touching it shoots agony through my bones. I grit my teeth over a sobbing scream.
Tearing gasps rock my body, and I look around.
The second I do, I wish I hadn’t.
A field of destruction waves out from the wreckage, the train crumpled up as though it were papier-mâché, a kid’s art project viciously junked. The cars are gutted and scorched black from the lightning and…from that weird white flame.
I look down at my hand, but it’s normal. Totally un-flamey. Did I imagine it?
There are hunks of twisted metal everywhere, broken glass shining like deadly glitter over a wreckage of lost purses and cell phones, laptops, books, newspapers strewn and stuck wetly to stuff. Weird, hunched shapes that are people but somehow not people slump and sprawl out. And the red emergency lights wash everything, even the falling rain, in red.
Shivers prickle up my spine. Is anyone else even alive?
“Hello…?” My voice breaks the freaky quiet, but the pattering of rain is the only sound, other than the wind slowly creaking the wrecked train back and forth.
Pain slices through my leg, and inch by sweaty-gross inch, I unfold it. I’m not gonna lie, I have to bite my tongue not to scream like a baby.
It’s important to be silent. I don’t know why, but I feel eyes on me.
Someone is watching.
Violet lightning flashes in my mind. And her face. Euphoria? She attacked the train…with magic? You’re losing it, Syl.
Might be losing it, but I know one thing. I have to get help—for me and for anyone else who might still be alive.
I dig into my boot. My burner phone comes out in pieces. I didn’t have any more minutes, anyway. I look around, but it’s not like Fiann to drop her phone.
Heck, no. The world could be a total Dumpster fire, and Fiann’d be there, taking selfies with the latest iPhone model in her hot little hand. That being said, it’s unlikely she’s used said phone to, you know, actually call 911 or something useful.
Because if tonight’s taught me one thing, it’s that Fiann Fee only looks out for herself.
Somehow, by some stroke of luck, I manage to get to my feet—well, foot—and hobble along toward what’s left of the train. Someone’s gotta have a working cell phone.
A hand grabs my wrist. I’m spun around, pain stabbing my leg, making me see stars.
Dazed, I look up into sapphire-blue eyes ringed in gold. For a sec, I’m in total shock, the longing in her eyes burning me, lighting all the fuses of my soul. All the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and tingles rush over my body, like I’ve never been aware except in this one moment.
Like somehow I am waking up at her touch.
The pain in my leg fades to a dull roar. My entire body is suddenly alive, every breath burning, pulsing, longing for…
“Euphoria?”
She lifts me up, and I stagger, doing an awkward shuffle-step on my bad leg. Her gaze is super-intense, and her grip is a steel vise, her skin cold where I am burning up.
But somehow, the heat in me calls to the cold in her.
“Th-thanks,” I stammer out. Maybe she’s not so bad after all?
“I’m sorry,” is her only answer.
And then she throws me.
I’m in the air, and then my back smashes against wrecked train car. “Oof!” The wind whooshes out of me as I crumple like an empty potato chip bag. Okay, she’s bad. The worst…
The pain in my leg screams at me, but that’s the least of my problems.
Because Euphoria’s coming after me, and those golden rings in her irises are freaky-glowing in the night. I’m hypnotized like a bird at the mercy of a snake.
But that’s where the comparison ends.
Because she is smoldering, swoon-worthy, heartbreakingly beautiful with those high cheekbones and kissable lips, her inky-black hair a halo about her head. She is a dark angel.
And I am her prey.
> I scramble away and fall on my butt. Good going, Syl. I should lead Euphoria—whatever she is—away from the others. There might be someone else still alive, and clearly, she means no good. I hobble away, the jagged metal in my leg scraping against bone. “Gahhhhhh!”
Euphoria looks over my injury. “Cold iron.”
“Wh-what?”
She steps closer, and then she takes a deep sniff of me.
Whoa, freaky.
A confused look crosses her face. “Are you the sleeper-princess?”
“The…what?” Okay, now I sound like a broken record. Dying while babbling like an idiot wasn’t on my list today.
Euphoria bites her bottom lip. She’s obviously confused or hesitating or something, and I try not to notice how hot she is—or that she has fangs.
This isn’t happening, this isn’t happening. I look at her again. Still fanged-out. Crap. It’s so happening.
“I saw you with several other girls.” She sounds like she’s thinking out loud. “But which of you is the sleeper-princess?” She looks around, sniffing again. “Are you the only survivor?”
“Yes.” It’s a total lie, and I am a bad liar.
She sees it on my face.
“Where’s your friend?” She stalks toward me, drawing a crazy-sharp-looking blade, all black-handled and wicked.
“Holy… That is a big knife.” I’m suddenly rethinking my love of slasher flicks. “Where’s what friend?”
She points at the ground. Fiann’s backpack. Crap. I know the word guilty is written all over my face.
“If you tell me which of you is the sleeper-princess, I won’t have to hurt all of you.”
“Sleeper-what?” My mouth is as dry as the Mojave Desert. I swallow a lump of dust and blood. I have no idea what she’s talking about, but one thing’s for certain—she’s going to hurt whoever this sleeper-princess person is.
And this is where I do something dumb. I stand as straight as I can. “It’s me.”
Faster than I can blink, she’s on me, all flashing blue eyes and glinting blade.
By some miracle, I duck her slash, the blade shaving off one of my red curls. It flutters to the wrecked tracks. “What in the—?”
She attacks again, and I get up a sloppy block, that one self-defense class I took at the Y last summer saving my butt. Her strike leaves my arm numb. Her strength is incredible.
In seconds, I’m out of gas and panting.
She hits me again, and I go tuckus over teakettle, landing in a heap of limbs.
“If you truly are her, all you must do is Awaken.” Regret flinches across her face as she comes toward me. The pain in her eyes is real, and for some reason, I feel for her.
Stupid, Syl.
“Why are you doing this?” I back away, pushing with my good leg. “What are you, some kind of domestic terrorist?”
“No.”
“Really? Because I feel pretty terrorized.”
“I…I don’t have a choice.” Conflict darkens those intense blue eyes. “I didn’t want it to be you.” Then she gets all predatory. “Are you sure it’s you?”
Crap. If she thinks I’m not this “sleeper-princess,” she might go after Fiann or one of the other passengers, if any are left alive.
Can’t let that happen.
“It’s me. I’m her, I mean.”
She lunges again, and I scramble, all awkward arms and legs. The knife nicks my shoulder, and blood runs cold down my arm. The sirens in the night seem a world away. She comes on again, and it’s all I can do to dodge and not get killed.
“Prove you’re her, then. Awaken.”
“I’m awake already!” I dodge back, but something about her words rings in my mind. Awaken. My every nerve ending is tingling, my every sense is on high alert, the thrill of the fight shooting adrenaline and heat through me like sparks rocketing through my blood.
Something about being near her, all tall and beautiful and dangerous and—
“Gosh, you’re hot,” I blurt out. Wait, what?
But whatever. It works. Because she stands there, kind of stunned.
Desperately, I throw a punch and hit her right in the face. Now my hand and my leg are a matched pair of throbby agony. “Holy—owwwww!” It’s like hitting stone. Fangs, hard as steel. Please tell me I’m imagining this because a vampire goth-rock star? That’d be so cliché.
“I know what you are,” I tell her, hoping to buy some time.
“What’s that?”
“Fangs, glowing eyes.” This is my worst stall tactic ever, but I go for it. “You’re a vampire.”
“Wha—no.” She looks insulted, maybe a little amused. “Vampires aren’t real. I’m a dark Fae.” She steps closer now, lowering the blade. “And…you can see me?”
Seriously? “You’re kicking my butt. Of course I can see you.” My mind reels as I try to call up everything I’ve ever read about dark Fae in Glamma’s Grimmoire. But injured, exhausted, and freaking-out scared, I come up with a big, fat zero.
Zilch. Nada.
“You can see through my Glamoury.” Regret shines in her eyes. “It would make sense if you were her, but that’s…that’s impossible. You were standing right there. You touched me… I should have sensed you.” It sounds like she’s grasping at straws, only to have them all slip from her fingers. “Tell me it’s not you.”
“I’d love to.” Because, really? My adrenaline’s starting to fade, and my body’s had enough panic and pain for a day. “But I don’t know what you’re talking about.” My vision greys. “You’re special, Syl.” I’m starting to black out. The stress, the crash, my injuries. I’m going to pass out. Oh, crap. “I…”
I stagger forward, and she catches me. She brushes a lock of sweaty red hair from my forehead. Her touch feels so good, so wonderfully cool and soft, though her fingers are callused from her violin strings.
“Here now.” She’s awkward, too. It would probably be super-endearing if she weren’t trying to murder me. She supports me, and I lean into her quiet strength, taking it into myself. I feel her let out a shaky breath.
She’s trembling, and yeah, this is all sorts of weird.
She destroyed the train with some kind of woojy-woo and tried to kill me. Now she’s…comforting me? What in the heck is going on?
I look up and our gazes meet. I see the same hurt in her eyes that aches inside me. In a flash it all comes together—her hesitation, the way she’s holding me, comforting me.
She doesn’t want to do this.
My brain’s going all fuzzy. I reach up through the haze and touch her cheek. She flinches but allows me, leans in to me, and that crazy-weird feeling comes again, of the cold in her calling to the heat in me.
“What’s happening?” I blurt out.
Her expression is blank, but her eyes are swimming with uncertainty. “I…I don’t know.”
“This isn’t exactly the ‘after’ I was thinking about,” I joke unhappily, barely hanging on to my sanity and consciousness.
“No,” she says gently. “Me neither.”
“Rouen!”
A voice carries over the wreckage, killing our moment dead as a doornail.
She shoves me away. “I can’t.”
A guy in a motorcycle jacket comes out of the darkness, hobnail boots pang, pang, panging on the tracks. He’s male-model handsome, all wild white hair and perfect pale skin, but his eyes are black as a shark’s. Soulless. And there are weird black tribal tattoos spiraling across the left side of his chest. Weirder still, his presence somehow warps the air. I see it around him, a halo of bruised inky indigo like a cloak of darkness. It’s beautiful and terrifying—a void shifting, swirling.
He steps in, grabs Euphoria, and yanks her away.
I try to fight back—“Hey!”—and he backhands me, sending me flying like I’m a stunt double in a Marvel movie.
I smash into the wrecked train car again. It rocks, and I hear a shrill “Eeep!”
“Ughhh…owww…” I roll over, my wh
ole body lit up in pain, and that’s when I see her. Fiann, all hunkered down and hiding. “Fiann?”
“Shhhh!” She waves frantically at me, making shoo fingers.
“Gee, thanks.”
“What have we here?” A dark shadow falls over me.
Now I’m the one who meeps.
Motorcycle Guy looms over me. I scramble back to where Fiann is, every single instinct telling me to get as far away as I can.
Fiann grabs me, shaking. “What’s going on?”
“I don’t know.”
“Go on, Rouen.” Motorcycle Guy steps back. “Take her.”
Euphoria gives him the total stink-eye. “Which one, genius?”
Those shark-black eyes fix on me then Fiann. He’s trying to puzzle something out, but he can’t. “Interesting…”
“Is it?” I can’t help my smart-aleck retort. All I know is that something’s building up inside me, all heat and fire and brightness hot as the sun. It happened the second I touched Euphoria, and now it’s huge and overpowering. I feel it stretch in my chest—too big to carry, too big to swallow, that ache stretching me open, threatening to tear me in two.
“Take them both,” he commands her, his voice this weird subvocal tone that shivers across my skin.
It freaks Euphoria out, too. She gets an odd look on her face, like she’s fighting to disobey him. Then she moves forward, unslinging her violin and bow.
Panic crawls through my guts. Fiann cringes beside me, her hand up like she can stave off the lightning. She saw what Euphoria did with that violin. Even now, tiny licks of violet buzz and snap around Euphoria’s right hand, and the air does that weird warpy thing…
My vision doubles, and I see the truth—her hand is laced with bizarre black circuits.
Whoa… I lift my own hand, as though I can ward off our destruction.
The heat inside me grows painfully, igniting and tingling beneath my skin, a bright fire that builds, rushing to my fingertips, white-hot and surging.
“I’m sorry.” Euphoria bears down, bow on strings, and violet lightning lashes out.
The feeling inside me bursts, and the floodgates open within me.
“No!” White-hot fire blares out, and I’m blinded.
The world lights up as violet lightning battles white flame.
Derailed: A Prequel Novella Page 7
