Kim Harrison - The Undead Pool

Malcontent lay under the seats in little black boxes. I could feel the trapped mystics, angry and frustrated as they circled endlessly, never growing or becoming. Wild magic glowed from them, making me dizzy. Jenks had left the attendant, standing with Trent to dart back and forth to slash fingers and blind eyes. Trent shielded him best he could, his thrown spells raking through my soul with the ripping feel of wild magic.

Way at the front, the attendant huddled. She’d never make it through without becoming a hostage. I looked behind me as the computer guy vanished into the pass-through. They were still vulnerable. I had to break the linkage. Ivy was up at the engine with Etude, but we’d lose Scott.

“Sorry, Scott,” I whispered as I crawled to the door. The cars swayed, and I stood in the pass-through, flinging an access panel up. It looked just like the movies, but there was no way I could move it without using magic.

Taking a deep breath, I grabbed a handhold and tapped the line. Ley line energy poured in, the scintillating core of wild magic now clear and obvious to me. I’d been blind before, but with the mystics reflecting and exalting in it, strength spiraled through me, lifting the mystics like a heated updraft. They swirled, adding their own force until I could hardly breathe.

“Hold it, hold it . . .” I panted, trying to focus. I couldn’t think, and panic trickled through me until I found the spell I wanted. “Apredee!” I shouted, then yelped when it burst from me in a pained pulse.

Every free mystic in a hundred-foot radius arrowed to me. I staggered, my grip on the handhold going slack as they hummed in the spaces between me, looking for danger, for something to attack. I cowered, berated by the most complex mystics that it would have hurt if I hadn’t tried to harness my wishes with a clunky spell, but just willed it to happen. Dizzy, I watched the fabric and steel cover begin to tear as the cars separated. The wind roared in, and I fell back to the tiny platform. A cluster of faces watched me from the retreating car. The first-class door had shut behind me. I didn’t think I could open it quite yet.

There is nothing to attack! I demanded, but their combined voices wouldn’t listen, and I couldn’t breathe. There was danger, or I wouldn’t have called. Go away!

The wind roared, becoming the sound of blood in my ears. The track was a mind-numbing blur, mesmerizing, and I felt my grip falter. It would be so easy to just . . . let go.

“Rachel!”

A sharp pain pinched my arm. A quick yank and my shoulder slammed into the rocking wall of the car. Ivy! I realized, her eyes black with fear as she stood over me between me and the numbing track. And still the mystics sang, demanding I do something wicked, something permanent.

“How’s the engineer?” I slurred, and she pulled me farther from the edge.

“Hurt. Landon has control of the train. He knows we’re here. Hell, everyone knows we’re here. They’ve got a news helicopter and everything. But you did good. Everyone is safe.”

An explosion shook the first-class car, red and yellow flames bursting out the windows and pulled away by the wind. Well, almost everyone was safe.

The acidic scent of sulfur shocked through me, clearing my head. Shut up! I screamed into my thoughts, and the mystics scattered. Damn, I should have done that ages ago.

But then a soul-ripping silence descended, broken by the wind and the rocking of the car. Scared, I looked at Ivy.

“Morgan!” Landon shouted, voice coming through the broken windows. “Get in here!”

I pushed Ivy’s hands off me and yanked open the door. My God, it looked like the set of a ring movie, everyone blond and beautiful and oozing magic. My jaw clenched, and I took three steps into the windy, demolished car. Seats were in twisted piles, the carpet burned and emergency lights glowing. The attendant was in a huddle, a weapon pointed at her. Trent was kneeling in what once was the aisle, facing me with his hands behind his head and another one of those overcompensating guns touching the back of his skull. Landon was holding it. Fear slammed into me, stopping me cold.

“What did you think you were going to accomplish with this?” he mocked, and I looked for Jenks, not seeing him and wondering if he’d been ripped away by the wind. “You seriously think you can stop me? Elves have always been stronger than demons. You’re under our heel, and you don’t even know it.”

“Yeah?” I said, terrified at the gun at Trent’s head. Mystics were screaming at me, and I shoved them to the back of my thoughts. The gun at Trent’s head was the only thing that mattered.

“Drop the line, or he’s dead,” Landon said, shoving the butt of the weapon into Trent, his head bowed and clearly dazed.

“Don’t,” I said, hand outstretched as I did what he said. But still the wild magic flowed. It was pure mystic energy that was making my hair float and my skin tingle. “Please. It’s not a line.”

“Drop it!” he screamed at me, face contorted, and I almost passed out.

“It’s not a line!” I shouted, panicking. “It’s the mystics! Please!”

Trent’s eyes met mine, his fear for me, not himself. Oh God, was I going to lose him just when I found out what he meant to me?

“Landon?” one of the men interrupted, a handheld scanner in his hand. “She’s right. It’s free-ranging mystics.” He swallowed as he looked up at me, suddenly pale. “Sir?”

Landon smiled, probably unaware that he had pulled back from Trent almost half an inch. I took a breath, shoving the voices in my head down. “Splendid. You found a way to control them. That will be handy over the next couple of months. Even better. Turn around, Morgan. Kneel. Hands on head. Keep to that order or Kalamack dies.”

If I let him have the mystics, the world would be thrown into chaos. If I attacked him, Trent would die. Indecision rocked me, and my head felt as if it was going to explode.

Become! the mystics in me were screaming. Let us become!

“Become?” I whispered, heart pounding. “I don’t know how.”

You don’t become, one said. We do. Just listen.

Landon’s eyes narrowed. “Morgan . . .” he threatened, shoving the pistol into Trent’s skull a little more.

Listen, more said, and in desperation, I finally did.

My breath hissed in as I suddenly understood. The mystics who’d been swimming in my neural net the past two days had been slowly adapting to how I saw the world and how to work within it. What had once been confusing had cleared without me realizing. What had once taken minutes to understand had become second nature. Looking back, I could see the tracings of their gentle progression like a path through the woods. All I had to do was step out into the sun.

So I listened, and with the ease of blowing a bubble, I knew everything they saw: the frightened engineer tending to his shot partner as a man stood over them with a gun and his desperate plan to sacrifice himself to save untold millions, Ivy standing behind me with her hands in fists in frustration. I could see Nina, crying for Ivy as she raced ahead to where the next road crossed the tracks, hoping to stop the train even if it meant her death. I felt the stirring energy of the Weres massing in Chicago, rival gangs uniting to storm the station and overrun the train. Even the excitement in the news helicopter and Jenks holding on to Bis as he crawled to the front to find his dad. So many people willing to sacrifice—but none of it needed to happen. The mystics had evolved, become. And Trent would not die today.