Mark Teppo - Heartland

More importantly, he dropped the rod.

Falling onto my side, I reached for it, getting a finger on its handle. The Chorus bound the stick to me, and I poured my own magick into its shaft. Ignis .

Charles was bent over, cradling his wrist. Violet streamers were running along his shoulders and down his right arm. Armor magick. He didn't have time to rebuild the bones, but he could lock them into place so the injury wouldn't stop him. I cracked him on the cheekbone with the rod, and as he reared back, I drove the point into the base of his throat.

My spell was different, and he knew it as soon as the metal tip burned his flesh.

Gagging and flailing, he fell back against the edge of the bench seat behind him. I put as much pressure as I could manage against the rod, and he bent back along the bench, trying to get away from the smoldering tip of the metal wand.

Henri's spell split the light in the train car, fire splashing off the molded plastic and metal struts. The overhead lights exploded like tiny firecrackers, and the car was filled with smoke and flame. Charles was screaming and rolling, trying to put out the flames crawling all over his coat and head.

I lay still for a moment, still protected by the extended peacock tail of the Chorus. They had reacted before I had known the spell was coming, and as I struggled to sit up and pull myself toward the front of the car, I felt them extending the etheric nets. Harvesting energy from the chaotic spume of fire still howling around the car. I took in the light and heat of the fire, transformed it into a wind, and blew it out again. Fanning the flames, stirring the smoke.

The Chorus used the rest of the energy to break the deadening spell on my limbs. My arm and legs burned as the nerve endings woke up in a rush. I could stand, but barely, and working the heavy door between cars was almost more than I could do. I braced myself and, with one leg feeling like a piece of charred and smoldering oak and the other like a frozen steak, I heaved the door open. Gracelessly, I fell through the doorway, and stumbled against the outer door of the next car. When the door clicked shut behind me, I closed my eyes for a second and breathed air not tainted with the acrid taste of burned hair and melted plastic.

I could see the track racing by beneath my feet. The space between cars was a narrow platform, suspended inside an accordion of plastic and rubber. There were gaps and openings along the bottom, and I could see, in addition to the track, a variety of hoses and cables. There was probably an elegant way to separate the cars, but I didn't have time to figure it out. I had to keep moving. Fighting the neurological entropic lethargy that magick couldn't vanquish, I muscled the other door open and fell down in the next car. My numb leg-the one that felt like a burning piece of wood-didn't quite clear the threshold and the door banged against my ankle.

The Chorus swarmed again as Henri appeared in the window to the other car. His eyes blazed with violet light, and a storm of energy crackled and spat about his head. He had an open connection to the ley of the train track, and was marshaling energy as quickly as he could imagine his need. He blinked and the glass shattered in his door.

Pushing against the floor, I scuttled back, dragging my foot free of the doorway. The metal door closed, and recalling a protection seal, I threw the Chorus at the portal. Confundantur qui me persequuntur . . The Fourth Pentacle of the Moon, one of Solomon's old seals. The Chorus spun around the rim of an imaginary circle, activating the magick, and binding the door shut. A barrier now, between me and Henri. Pavascant illi, et non ego .

Henri threw his Will forward and his spell devoured the atmosphere between us. My protection spell wasn't all that strong, and it wouldn't hold up to a concerted beating. Henri had more than enough power at his command to chew through my spell, but it would take a little while. He didn't want to wait, opting for the brute-force solution.

I felt the backlash at the base of my skull, a psychic stab that was going to turn into a raging headache. But it was better than the alternative. My shield cracked, and for a second, it held. Lightning snarled and stormed in the interstitial space between the cars. Henri's Will couldn't go forward, so it splintered in a compass rose against the flat plane of my shield.

The end of the car jerked and light flared out from either side of the train. A screeching noise of metal against metal rose over the regular rhythm of the train against the track, and the back end of the car became bent and twisted. As if a giant hand had reached out and crushed it like a beer can.

Henri and the other cars were gone.

No points for elegance; functional works. My shield had held long enough for all of Henri's energy to be diverted in every other direction. The couplings and the accordion between the train cars had been vaporized, separating me and Marielle from Henri and the others. Their car and the ones behind them were no longer attached, and without the engine pulling them along, the back portion of the train was slowing down, succumbing to friction and gravity.

Bracing myself on a nearby bench seat, I dragged myself upright, and realized the front part of the train was slowing down too. I had thought we'd be moving faster without the extra weight, but we weren't. The suburban landscape was rushing by slowly enough to read the graffiti sprayed along a stone wall adjacent to the track. High-rise apartment buildings, ugly remnants of utilitarian architecture banned from Paris proper, sprouted from the landscape beyond the wall.

Marielle pushed open the forward door of the car. "We're stopping," she said.

"Why?"

Her gaze lingered on the damage and lack of more cars behind me. "They've killed the power from the central switch. We're not going any further than Villepinte. We need to get off before we reach the station." Something like a smile touched the corners of her mouth as she turned her attention to the side doors of the train. "Can you walk?"

"Well enough," I said, leveraging myself to my feet and limping in her direction.

She invoked her opening spell again, and the wind rushed into the car as the doors slid back. She looked back at me, the wind throwing her hair across her face. "How about jumping?" And then she was gone.

"Shit."

From one threshold to another. No time to consider the possibilities. I limped to the doorway as fast as I could, and jumped after her.

I was committed now.

I landed badly, my right leg not up to supporting my full weight, and I tumbled across the rough ground. My palms were scraped raw, and a particularly sharp rock collided with my shoulder as I rolled. When I was done sliding across the ground, I lay still, staring up at the sky for a minute. Happy to be motionless.

Marielle's boot touched my shoulder, gently rocking me. "Get up, wolf," she said. "It isn't time to rest yet."

I squinted up at her, moving my head slightly so that I was in her shadow. The sun bled around her frame, lighting her up. Or maybe it was the glow of magick. I couldn't quite tell. Adrenaline and the flush of the Chorus were still ping-ponging through my bloodstream.

Wolf .

There was only one other person who referred to me by that term. Piotr Grieavik, a fortune teller based in Seattle, who had used it to remind me of the hunger that had driven me to his corner of the Pacific Northwest. Before that, it had been five years since the New Year's morning when Marielle and I had said goodbye. When she had last used that word to name me.

The morning of the duel beneath the bridge on the Seine. The morning I had supposedly died, falling into the Seine and vanishing from the Watcher fold, vanishing from her sight.