The Undead Pool (45 page)

“They're gone,” David said, hand over his phone.

“I know they're gone!” I shouted. “I just saw it in 3-D in my brain! They took off in a black car, a brown Jeep, and an El Camino with a broken taillight going south! I think they're headed for the train station in Maysville. From there, they can fan out everywhere.” We had to do something. If the mystics got out of Cincinnati, I'd never survive the lawsuits.

“Maysville?” David muttered. “There's nothing in Maysville.”

“There's a train depot.” Trent's brow was furrowed, gaze distant. “The trains don't usually stop there, but since the Cincinnati depot is under quarantine, they've adjusted the schedule.” His eyes met mine. “They're taking them out of Cincinnati by train.”

My gut hurt. Landon and Ayer had fought among themselves. The survivors took the mystics and left. “Where does the Maysville line go?”

Trent's lips pressed tightly and he looked at his watch. “Chicago.”

Better and better.

Ivy listened to her cell phone, lips parting. “Oh.” She ended the call. “Scott, will you get the door?”

The rolling sound of the door echoed, and I flinched when a bunch of mystics pulled from me with a stretchy feeling to play in the sound wave. The door slid open to show Edden standing in the dark in a bulletproof vest with an ACG breaker under it. He was tucking his own phone away, and his cross expression melted into concern upon seeing the three vampires, David, Trent, and myself. Taking his FIB hat off, he threw it into the ditch.

“Get in,” Ivy said tartly, but Edden was still looking us over, eyes widening when Trent gave him a businesslike nod.

David gestured impatiently. “In or out!” he exclaimed, looking at his watch. “Rachel says they're trying to catch the Maysville train.”

“Maysville?” Edden echoed as he scrambled in, then his confusion vanished. “That's right. It stops there now.”

Ivy was already putting the van into drive as Scott slammed the door shut. Sitting down, the squat man's eyes lit up at Nina's arsenal; clearly he wanted to play with the grenades. Jenks's kids arrowed in as we accelerated back onto the road, but no Jenks or Bis. One pixy had a walnut, and I watched him wedge it between the roof and a visor.

I hung my head as the images of cars on the expressway suddenly began to make sense, blinking when Edden touched my knee. “Rachel, are you okay? You look like crap.”

“I feel like crap.” I took a deep breath and sat up. “I'm fine. Just channeling the home world a little too much.”

Trent was on the phone, one finger in his ear to block out the noise. If anyone knew the train schedule, it would be Trent. He owned most of the lines that ran through Cincinnati.

“Where am I going?” Ivy called out as we picked up speed.

“North,” Trent said as he closed his phone. “They're already on the train. It will pass through Cincinnati in about fifteen minutes, and from there they hit Chicago, but I doubt that's their final destination.”

“But where am I going?” she asked again, stress showing in her voice, and he got to his feet, balance shifting as he made his way up to the front. He gave David a look, and the man eased out of the front seat to take the open spot beside me.

“This is kind of unusual for you, Rachel. A group thing?” Edden said as he gave a respectful nod to Scott across from him. The vampire was clearly uneasy with the FIB captain joining our joyride, the man years older and tons more sedentary than everyone else in the van.

“Tell me about it,” I grumped. Everyone wanted to help. Damn it, I felt like Frodo being chaperoned to Mordor, and like Frodo, I was beginning to wonder why I couldn't have just taken the eagles and flown out there by myself and saved everyone a lot of grief. But I suppose everyone wanted to help save the world.

“What happened?” David asked, open phone in hand. “My sources are coming up empty.”

Edden brought his gaze back from Nina's weaponry. “The intel was wrong. We moved early and found the place empty.”

The intel was wrong? Maybe the I.S. was lying to Edden as well and had thrown their own private party before inviting him. “That's not what I saw,” I said, remembering what the mystics had shown me. “There was a fight. At least three singulars, I mean people, died.”

Edden hesitated, feet spread wide to balance himself as we swayed and leaned. “Then they cleaned up after themselves, because it looks clean.” His mustache bunched. “Too clean,” Edden muttered, coming to the same conclusion. “Seems as if Landon and Ayer had a difference in opinion.”

In a rush of wings, Jenks flew in with Bis, the pixy clearly drafting off Bis, the stronger flier. “Thanks for waiting for us, blood bag,” he snarled, panting as he landed on the rearview mirror. “We got everyone?” he asked, and a chorus of tiny, high-pitched yes's came back.

David closed his phone with a snap. Swerving, we tore through an intersection, the traffic lights black and the road empty. “It wasn't my people,” David said as he tucked it away. “But I do have reports of a, and I quote, ‘weird feeling' about sunset.”

A chiming of voices in me said that was the singulars ending their incongruent thoughts, but before I could say anything, Ivy exploded with a sharp, “Are you insane?”

I jerked until I realized she was talking to Trent, still in the front seat. “And just how do you propose to get on the train?” she asked. “Those things go almost eighty miles an hour.”

“Trust me.” Trent leaned back, clearly miffed she was questioning him. “Get us on Rail Drive, and it will happen.”

Ivy sighed and made a sharp turn.

“You know, maybe I'm not understanding what the mystics are trying to tell me,” I said as I caught my balance in the wildly shifting van.

But Jenks was shaking his head, a blue-edged dust slipping from him as he hovered in the middle of the van. “No, you're right,” he said. “We got the intel, Bis and me and my kids. According to the pixies across the street, a bunch of elves put three dead people in the back of the El Camino and headed south. There weren't any I.S. vehicles around at the time. Something spooked them, and they ran.”

I looked sorrowfully at Trent, watching his expression become grim. Landon had cut the Free Vampires loose and taken the mystics for himself. His people were behaving badly, and there was nothing Trent could do to stop them except with muscle and magic.

“They went to the train station,” Scott said, bracing himself when Ivy took a sharp turn.

“Either Landon or Ayer or both have been scooping mystics up like cotton candy on a stick ever since you got the Goddess riled up,” Jenks said, a still spot of wings and dust in the careening van. “They took a dozen little boxes, and if they get to Chicago, they'll be coast to coast in a matter of days.”

“Call ahead. Stop them,” Scott said, and Edden nodded, surprising the young vampire.

Trent, though, shook his head. “They would know we're onto them and will disappear. We either stop them on the track where we have a chance of catching them, or nothing.”

I remembered how Trent's father and mother had escaped the West Coast by hopping trains in a plague-torn United States, making it all the way to Cincinnati during the Turn. He was right. We had to catch them unawares or they'd be gone cross-country.

“If we can't head them off, we'll have only a day to find each individual cell before the vampires start to sleep,” Jenks said, the van suddenly silent but for Ivy pushing the old engine into a faster pace. “Their new agenda is to shut the vampires down, coast to coast.” His dust shifted to a dull orange as he looked at Trent as if he could do something. “And when that's done, there's nothing to stop them from turning their eyes on the Weres and witches.”

Damn it all to the Turn and back. Between the elves' quest for superiority and the Free Vampires' holy mission, they were going to throw all of us back in the pre-Turn dark ages.

“That's not going to happen,” Edden said, his thick hands opening from tight fists, and Scott looked at him as if he'd never seen a human before. “The I.S. in Chicago can catch them.”

Ivy met his eyes through the rearview mirror. “I'm not trusting anything to those yahoos,” she said, and Trent glumly nodded. “We have to stop that train.”

“Blow it up,” Scott said. “I know a guy in the Hollows—”

“We are not blowing it up,” Trent interrupted, and I watched, intrigued when he stared Scott down. David met my gaze knowingly as if to say,
See?

“There are people on it,” Trent said, almost as if embarrassed.

“A hundred die to save millions,” Scott protested, and David shook his head in warning.

“No.” Trent sat sideways to see everyone as we raced along. “A large slice of the world's species are represented here with all our talents and ingenuity. If we can't stop a train without killing innocents, then we don't deserve the freedom we have.” He hesitated. “No one gets a phone call in the morning that changes their life,” he said softly. “Not if I can help it.”

The van went silent, and I couldn't help but wonder how many of those calls he'd gotten himself. Two at least, from when his parents died. Another when he found out he was a father and would have to fight for his child. I was sure there was more. You can't keep your calm when all around you are losing theirs if you don't know what's truly real and what doesn't matter.

“That they're moving is a good thing,” Trent said, his voice holding an unexpected confidence. “Rachel's mystic intel says the containment systems are on battery. We can procure them, move them safely to the Loveland line, and release them in an orderly, safe fashion.” His gaze never went to me, but I knew his relief was enormous. “Ivy, did you bring your laptop? I need to pull up a map. If I remember right, there's a paved bike path that runs parallel to the line outside of Cincinnati. The timing might be perfect for a transfer.”

Transfer?
“It's under the seat,” she said, but Bis had already dropped down to it, everyone watching as the gargoyle flipped it open and settled it on his crossed legs.

“How do we get across the river?” Nina asked, her mouth dropping open when Bis casually typed in Ivy's password.

“Hey!” Ivy cried out, cheeks red as she jerked her gaze from the road to him, and back again. “You! You're the one leaving crumbs on my keyboard!”

“Sorry,” he said, blushing deep black as Jenks snickered. “Is this it?”

Trent slipped out of the front seat to sit where he could see the screen. David and Edden were already there, and the light from it lit the four of them in an unreal glow. “Good,” Trent said, eyes pinched. “Ivy, stay the way you're going. The wheel span on this vehicle is adequate to run across the trestle. Once on the track, we can drive across the river, then get on the bike path, and—”

“At eighty miles an hour!” David protested as he dropped back, eyes wide.

“Dude,” Jenks said with a chuckle. “I've got wings, and I still think that's a dumb idea.”

“And pace them until we can get a team across the gap,” Trent finished. “If we're lucky, we can get a call to the engine and they'll stop the train for us once we're there to take control of the situation. Edden, do you have a clean line to the FIB? I don't want a hint of this leaked to the press or the I.S. until the train is stopped and they're contained.”

“I've got Rose's cell. That woman can do anything,” Edden said as he peered under his glasses at his glowing cell.

It sounded good, but the reality was a little more dicey. Ivy clenched her jaw, eyes fixed to the road. Around me, everyone became quiet as they estimated their chances, comparing their strengths and reflexes to the probable fallout if they failed to even try. We were talking about jumping to a train under full steam, but everyone's culture, not to mention every vampire's second life, was in the balance.

I was getting a bad feeling. Bis and Jenks had wings. No one else did. Trent slowly closed the laptop and slid it back under the seat. “This is great!” I said sarcastically, dropping my head into my hands and swaying with the van's motion. “I like this plan! I'm excited.”

“Let me get my dad,” Bis said, and before I could say anything, he'd launched himself out the back broken window. I watched his dark shape vanish into the wider blackness, thinking that this much help was going to get all of us killed.

Twenty-Five

W
e were going just over fifty miles per hour according to the van's speedometer, but with the sliding door open and the narrowness of the paved bike path we were careening down, it felt like more. Jenks was tangled somewhere in my hair, hiding from the wind ripping through the van and out the broken windows. Forty feet away, the train raced. Watching it, I felt as if it were the industrial revolution given life, a monster of power, oblivious as it raced through the darkness in one direction and its own destruction, powered by the death of a million plants and animals a million years ago.

But it
was
going fifty, not the usual eighty. The engine had indeed been hijacked, but the engineer was backing off on the speed, probably unaware that we were here but trying to alert the next station there was trouble. Bis's dad, Etude, was ferrying us across. The adult gargoyle was about the size of a small elephant, but as light as a pony and variable as a kite. He'd helped me before when his son had been in danger, and I still felt guilty about the scars he now had on his pebbly gray skin. Scott had wanted to jump, but the only good handholds were the windows, and we were trying to stay unnoticed, hence our position at the back of the train.

It still felt too chancy for me, and I nervously tried to explain “a dark smear on a white wall” to the mystics. They knew their kin were close, which made them hard to hold on to, but if they left me now, they'd be pulled away and lost until they could catch up.

The drive out here had gone fast, especially when Nina took the wheel at the trestle. I'd thought it a bad move, but Nina was a better driver than Ivy, if that could be believed, her squeal of delight at the first tricky part filling the van and making Scott all but rip the seats out in his effort not to jump her jugular. Edden just hung his head, muttering about grounding his son for doing the same thing fifteen years ago. The I.S. vampires manning the tracks to keep people off them had let us through just to see if we could do it. The thousand bucks Trent had dropped into their hats at both ends had helped, too, I'm sure.

My grip on the edge of the door tightened, and I looked at Trent past the strands of my hair plastered to my face from the wind. His expression was grim as Scott made a crouched landing on the roof of the last car. Etude's black wings shifted and he fell back out of sight. It would take him a moment to catch up.

Trent touched his pocket and turned to me. “Your turn.”

“Me?” I stammered, pulling the hair out of my mouth as Etude landed on the roof of the van with a light thump. “Ivy can go next.”

“We have only five miles of road,” he said, pushing me forward as Etude looked over the edge at us and extended a clawed foot for me to sort of . . . step into. Past it, the ground raced, grass and rocks a blur. My mind was telling me his foot was safer than a harness, but I'd seen what happened when the huge gargoyle let go of the van.

“Come on, Rache!” Jenks prodded, pulling the hair behind my ear. “Scott did it.”

Scott has a second life to look forward to,
I thought, and the mystics in me buzzed about it, wondering how that made a difference.
It doesn't,
I told them, scared as I glanced through the front window to be sure there was no turn coming, and then . . . stepped into Etude's grip.

“You sure you know what you're doing?” I shouted up at Etude's craggy face, and Bis, his son, went spinning by, enjoying the wind.

The older gargoyle smiled. His thick grip on my waist shifted, the thick pads pressing almost painfully as he gave me a jiggle until my back rested against his leg. “Easy as cake!” he shouted, and with that being my single warning, he spread his wings. The wind snapped them open, and I gasped, my hands clenching the thick claw encircling me as we were yanked into almost a standstill.

“Ow . . .” I breathed. My lower chest hurt, but we weren't as far back as I had feared. Etude tucked me under him, his huge wings beating as he closed the gap. Ahead in the moonlight, the track ran straight into oblivion, but the bike path veered away.
Ivy. Trent,
I thought. There wasn't enough time.

“I'll get you as close as I can. Scott will catch you,” Etude said, surprising me when he lowered his great head to break the wind. “Ready?”

Oh God . . .
I thought, then nodded. Letting go of his gnarled foot was the hardest thing I'd ever done. Just a few feet below me, the train rocked side to side. Scott reached up to touch my feet, then my knees, and finally my waist just under Etude's claw.

“What happens when you let go?” I shouted.

“Let go?” Etude called.

“Wait!” But it was too late, and Scott's grip on me tightened as Etude's fell away. Our balance was off. I clutched at the vampire, my chest hitting his face as he went down on a knee.

“Got you,” he said, voice muffled as the wind whipped over us and the train rocked.

I hadn't known you could be scared and embarrassed at the same time, and as the roof of the car hit my knees, I forced myself to let go of his shirt. “Sorry.”

“Not at all,” he said, grinning.

I was just in time to see Trent ripped away from the van, his exclamation muffled by wind and the sudden distance. Pulling the hair from my eyes, I looked ahead at the ribbon of gray road. Ivy stood at the door, her expression clear in the dim light, David and Edden beside her. There wasn't enough time left for her to make it, much less the two men. Etude might not be able to catch up once the van veered off. Ivy knew it as well as I.

“Catch me!” she shouted through her cupped hands, then ducked inside.

“Is she nuts?” Jenks shrilled in my ear, and Scott became three shades lighter.

The van accelerated, and Ivy reappeared at the door, looking back at us. “Ivy, no!” I yelled. “Etude can do it!”

But she was climbing onto the roof as David and Edden protested, the wind ripping her topknot to a long streamer of black. My heart pounded. Trent hadn't caught up yet, and I wedged my foot under a handhold, slowly standing up against the wind. Scott blocked a tiny slice of the wind, and I looked past him. The bike path was going to turn. She wasn't going to make it.

Lips set, Ivy inched to the front of the van, turned, and ran for the back.

“Hold on, Jenks!” I screamed, watching, then blinked as a layer of mystics seem to peel off my awareness, swirling thickly within the space of my aura as Ivy propelled herself right off the end of the van, feet still going as she leaped into space.

“Ivy!” I shouted, leaning into the wind, grasping. She was going to make it. She was going to make it!
She had to.

“Got you!” Scott exclaimed as she fell into us. We dropped in a sliding tangle. My ankle twinged, and I gasped as my foothold caught and pain stabbed through it. The force of the wind vanished, but still it roared. My hands burned with wild magic.
Don't let go. Don't let go!
Eyes shut, I clenched her arm. We slowly slipped, and then . . . settled. Ivy was safe.

She just had to jump,
I thought sourly, then thanked the mystics. I wasn't sure what they'd done, but I knew they'd been there. “Jenks, you okay?” I called out, hearing his swearing and knowing he was fine. I squinted up to find Etude blocking the wind. Bis was on his dad's shoulder, his tail wrapped around his dad's neck and literally white with fear. Trent was sandwiched facedown between Etude's massive foot and the top of the car. Etude's other foot was halfway through the outer skin of the roof, and his tail was wrapped around Scott's leg to keep him from sliding off. Ivy was in the vampire's arms. Slowly I let go of her wrist, and she looked up, thin bands of brown around her irises. Crap on toast, Nina was going to get her killed with all this risk taking. She never would've jumped otherwise. Not my careful, precise Ivy.

Shaken, I looked behind us. The road was gone. “You idiot!” I shouted as I untangled myself and sat up. “You could have been killed! Why didn't you wait for Etude!”

Ivy smiled at me over Scott's shoulder as she gave him a thankful hug. “He needs to save his strength,” she said, hair streaming in the wind. “Is Jenks okay?”

“I'm fine!” he yelled, but I don't think she heard him, and I nodded.

Etude's foot lifted suddenly when Trent wiggled, still facedown on the roof of the car. Almost dancing, the big gargoyle shifted back. The man looked shaken but okay, and he grimaced as he felt his midsection carefully as he sat up. Turning to the road, his anger eased when he saw it was gone.
Thank you, Nina.

“I don't think I'll fit in the car,” Etude said, taking Bis from his shoulder and setting him on the rocking roof. “Bis, let me know if you need me.” His smile widened until his black teeth showed. “My world breaker.”

Bis flushed a pleased black, but I was uneasy as I looked at them: Ivy, Bis, Trent, Scott, and Jenks tangled in my hair. If any of them died or hurt themselves, I'd never let it go. “Let's move!” I shouted, and Scott nodded. Staying low and never entirely letting go of the roof, he inched his way to the connecting bridge. It was covered to facilitate moving from car to car when necessary, and the moon glinted on the edge of steel as he cut a flap in the thick plastic and gestured us forward.

Are they here?
mystics asked as they compared the real force of the wind to the memory of it of long ago. Apparently the air had thickened since they last had to plow through it with a solid body in tow.

Why don't you go find out?
I directed, suggesting that they go through the calmer air within the train so they didn't risk being ripped away. A shudder raked through my soul as almost half of them streamed from me, some going through the hole Ivy was now snaking down, some through the skin of the train itself, some going through the soles of my feet. The mystics content to stay with me seemed to roll through my aura and settle in like a cat enjoys the sun. Promises to return eddied about me with the soft, binding force of a plant tendril, unexpected and worrisome.

Return to me, or their confederates still lodged in my soul? I wondered, then almost panicked when a twining of voices said it was the same thing.
You are not mine!
I shouted, trying to make my one voice louder than theirs combined.
You are going back to the Goddess! That's the entire point to this. We find the ones they stole, and you all go back!

But they didn't seem to care, which scared the crap out of me. What if they didn't want to go back? I couldn't live my life as a mystic magnet.

“Rachel!” Trent shouted, and I blinked, looking down at his pale face and realizing that it was just Scott, Etude, and me up here. “Let's go!”

He held out a hand, and I felt his strength as I slipped mine into it. I tried to pay attention, but a growing negativity swelled in me. It was the returning mystics with news of what lay below. The captives were not in the last car, nor in the hold below it.

Worried, I carefully maneuvered myself into the tight space between the rocking cars. The returning mystics were getting uncomfortably better at sorting themselves as they arrived, binding their myriad thoughts into one in such a way that I could understand them. Sure, it was unclear at first, with multiple perspectives making it a nauseating slurry of confusion, but by the time I'd gotten myself out of the wind, enough had returned to bring it into focus. They were adapting to me on an exponential curve, and whereas yesterday I'd been struggling to keep them from destroying my friends, now I could send them on a task and have them work together to find an answer—and it was scaring the hell out of me.

My feet hit the shifting surface as the returning mystics brought back with them a wave of free mystics, escapees that had lingered close to the captive splinter. They soaked into me, pulled by their kin and attracted to my aura. In a cascading wave, their confusion at the unfamiliar thought patterns and concepts curled like smoke and vanished. Where understanding and adjustment had once taken days, now it took seconds.

I had to get them back to her, and fast.

Jenks tugged at my hair, swearing at Tink, the stars, and the moon all in one breath as he fought with the snarls. I felt him give up and cut his way free, his angry red dust spilling down my front with the strands of my hair. Ivy was between me and the first car, and Trent beside me. The car behind us was mostly empty from a quick look through the milky glass. I was getting a better image from the mystics, dropping off their intel and leaving for more, their disappointment growing at their missing kin.

Trent leaned close to me in the small space, the scent of cinnamon and wine mixing with iron and oil. “Are you okay?” he asked as we rocked, and I nodded as I held his arm for balance.

“Neither Landon or Ayer are in the last car,” I said, then went over the memory again, concentrating on the faces since the mystics weren't as keen on them. “This second car doesn't look good either, but they haven't searched it as diligently.”

Trent's eyes widened, and Jenks—now on Trent's shoulder—looked up from cleaning his sword. “Ah, you got that from the mystics?” Jenks asked, and I nodded, grimacing when I realized the mystics had probably done more in fifteen seconds than he could've with his first run through the train.

Realizing it, too, Trent looked over my shoulder at Ivy, something unsaid passing between them before he looked up at Scott. The vampire was still lying on the roof since there wasn't much room between the cars. “Okay. We'll assume they're forward,” Trent said resolutely. “Scott, you and Etude have our back door.”

“Check,” he said as he pulled back, and I heard the ripping of duct tape over the wind.

A surge of adrenaline went through me. People. There were too many people. “Maybe we should disconnect the cars as we go through them.”