Karen Chance - Hunt the Moon

“Unless they don’t have a choice.”

He shot me a look. “You think she’s getting tired.”

“It depends. If this is the same day as the party—”

“It is.”

“How can you be sure?”

“I could smell the alcohol on him when he passed by—the champagne you spilled.”

I always forgot: vampire senses. “Then she’s tired. In fact, she should be passed out cold by now. I don’t know how she’s still able to do anything. Taking someone else through time is exhausting, even if it’s only once. And she’s done it—”

“How tired are you ?”

“I’m fine, not that it matters. It’s not like we can stop for a rest.”

“It matters,” he said, gripping my arm. “Because it determines how aggressive I need to be. I am trying to be cautious and alter this time as little as possible. But if you are nearing the end of your strength—”

“I’m okay,” I told him.

He shot me another look, but I was telling the truth. If this thing was shaping up to be a race to see who ran out of gas first, then the kidnapper was shit out of luck. I would never stop chasing her. I would fall over with a fucking aneurysm before I stopped chasing her.

“I am, ” I insisted.

And I guess it must have been convincing, because Mircea nodded. “When you begin to reach exhaustion—”

“I’ll let you know.” Although I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I kind of didn’t want to know what Mircea’s idea of “aggressive” was. His idea of “cautious” was pissing off enough people, as we pushed, shoved and elbowed our way toward the back of the train.

I had no idea what the mage’s plan was, or even if he had one. But we finally caught sight of him in the second-to-last car, where he was trying to get the connecting door open to the final one. But that wasn’t going so well, thanks to an enraged old woman. A shopping bag lay at her feet, with shards of some kind of porcelain spilling out the top. Which might explain the umbrella he was currently taking upside the head.

I could have kissed her, but didn’t have time. Because my mother was standing to the side, talking to him urgently, although the beating he was taking made it unlikely he was paying much attention or that he had shields up—around either of them.

There were people packed all around her, and no place to shift closer, so I just started pushing forward, climbing or crawling or jumping over anyone in my way. Outraged voices rose all around me, and several people pushed back, but I barely noticed. Mircea had gone for the mage at the same moment, and if he could distract him for just a couple of seconds—

And then the train rocked hard around us, sending people staggering left and then right as it almost left the tracks. I didn’t know what had happened until the back window exploded in a wash of bright red energy. And not just the back one. The metal body of the car must have acted like some kind of conductor, because window after window burst in a long line, like firecrackers on a string.

Glass pelted the screaming crowd, which surged to its feet, people scrambling after bags and umbrellas and jostling me on all sides. Then the lights blew out, plunging the entire train into darkness. And that was it for the passengers, who collectively rushed away from the chaos and toward the only door out.

Which happened to be the one we’d just reached.

I jumped for my mother, but someone stepped on my instep and someone else elbowed me in the ribs, and then I was knocked backward entirely, shoved into the side of the car. My head hit hard enough for me to see stars, but I struggled back to my feet anyway, mainly to avoid being trampled. The people in the last car were pushing into this one, the ones in this one were pushing into the next, and the ones in the next were putting up the kind of fuss you’d expect with three or four hundred crazed passengers trying to stuff themselves into an already overstuffed area.

But the commotion meant that I couldn’t hear Mircea, and the lack of light meant that I couldn’t see him. Or the mage. Or my mother.

Goddamnit, I’d had her! I’d had her. If I didn’t get another chance, I was going to—

Freak out at the sight of a man slithering in the missing window beside me.

An emergency light had come on and was flickering dimly at the front of the car, giving me an intermittent look at his face. But for a moment, I didn’t believe it. Because it wasn’t a face I’d expected to see again.

I had assumed that the Spartoi had ended up underneath the wheels, because there had been nowhere else for them to go. There was almost no clearance around the train, not on top, where the roof almost skinned the ceiling of the tunnel, and not on the sides, where the curved walls were streaming away maybe six to eight inches from the windows. It was physically impossible for a grown man to squeeze into a space that small; hell, I couldn’t have done it, and he had at least seventy pounds on me.

But he was coming in anyway.

I watched, torn between fascination and horror, as his body seemed to shrink, to elongate, to flow with an almost serpentine movement. He could have broken out the rest of the glass in the window, giving himself a bit more space. But he didn’t bother. He just oozed through the small opening like he’d suddenly gone boneless, an amorphous mass of skin and flesh and distorted, running features, including a patch of floating hair with no skull to give it definition anymore, and two round eyeballs swimming in the gelatinous mass of his face.

Eyeballs that were nonetheless looking straight at me.

I made a sound between panic and revulsion and stumbled back, and he oozed the rest of the way through the window. And as soon as he did, he started to solidify, bones and muscles and assorted free-range body parts all snapping back into place, like a balloon inflating. And I suddenly stopped worrying about losing my lunch and started worrying about the rifle he was aiming at the crowd.

Or, more precisely, at the back of my mother’s head. I didn’t know why he was concentrating on her with me standing right there, but at that moment, I didn’t care.

I could see her in the next car, her copper hair gleaming under the emergency lights as she looked around frantically, as if trying to find someone. She started pushing forward, calling out something I couldn’t hear over the sound of the screaming crowd and the rattling train and my own blood rushing in my ears. And then I grabbed the long barrel and forced it down, even as he fired.

I didn’t see if I’d been fast enough. I didn’t see anything, because a vicious blow sent me skidding backward, until my head stopped me by smashing into a metal railing. In the next compartment.

For a moment, I couldn’t move, too stunned to do anything but lie there as the car swam sickeningly around me. Two head blows in quick succession had me trying to decide between passing out and puking up breakfast, or possibly doing both at the same time. I rolled over, glass crunching under my hands, but some old clubbing advice about never passing out on your back got me onto my hands and knees. I looked up, dazed and disoriented.

In time to see the gun leveled at my head.

I stared at it for a split second, my eyes crossing, and then I tried to shift. But my head wasn’t clear enough, and even if it had been, panic makes shifting difficult. And nothing panics me quite so much as staring down the wrong end of a gun. I tried again anyway, but the mage squeezed off a shot at the same moment, and I knew I was dead.

Only for some reason I wasn’t, despite the sound of the shot and the smell of gunpowder in the air. It told me I hadn’t shifted, but I couldn’t figure out how else he’d missed me from all of two yards away. And then I looked up and bumped my head on the suitcase, which was still bobbing about despite having had a smoking chunk carved out of its butt.