The Undead Pool

“Well, Rache?” Jenks said as he stood on the keypad and wedged his sword behind a button just so. “What does your crystal ball say?”

I looked through the door. “There they are. Look for yourself.”

It was getting harder to focus through the anger the mystics were filling me with. Overwhelmed, I leaned against the rocking train and waved Trent off. He hesitated, and at Jenks’s whistle, he turned to the window. I already knew what they’d find.

Up at the front, six men were celebrating loudly and keeping the first-class attendant busy. The woman was harried, and the few other first-class passengers looked miffed, forced to listen to their noise as they sat as far back from them as they could comfortably get without being squished together in an obvious pile. I didn’t see Ayer. Landon was drinking, but even through the mystics I could tell that he wasn’t drunk. Little black boxes under their seats held an uncountable misery that was beginning to impinge on me. Twelve boxes, for twelve cities. They could impact eighty percent of the country’s population within three days—eighty percent of the United States floundering as Cincy now was, the tenuous balance between Inderland and human crumbling as the undead starved and died.

Trent cracked the door for Jenks, returning from his own intel.

“They stink like gunpowder and wild magic,” he said, wings invisible with motion though he stood on Trent’s palm. “Some have been wounded but treated with first aid. I didn’t see Ayer, and these guys aren’t vampires.” He looked at Trent. “They’re all elves. Rache, we can’t let them take those five people hostage.”

This had been Landon’s plan all along. He had used the Free Vampires, fully intending on making them the scapegoat. He’d tricked Bancroft into talking to the insane splinter to remove his voice and clear his path. He was going to use wild magic to destroy the vampire society from the inside out, eliminating an entire species to further his own. And he’d used me to take Trent’s voice from the enclave, the only one who would have stood up to say no.

No wonder the demons didn’t like them.

My stomach hurt, and I gave Trent’s hand a squeeze. He looked ticked, a hard anger slowly fanning to life in his eyes. I thought of Ivy and Etude up at the engine. The sporadic messages from there gave me nothing, and the rocking pace of the train hadn’t eased at all. Feeling overfull and slightly out of control, I looked at Trent. “You get them out. People like you.”

Trent took a breath, hesitated, then pulled the shade on the window behind me. “They’ve got glamour glasses and Landon knows what I look like,” he said, but then his brow eased. “Jenks, slick your hair back. You’re the newest member of the line’s elite security team.”

“I am?”

The pixy rose up, and Trent rummaged in his belt pack until he found a pen and a fifty. It was probably the smallest bill he had. “You are.” Trent slapped it on the rocking wall and began to write on it. “You’re the line’s latest endeavor to police the trains during this time of crisis, so secret even the attendants weren’t told.”

“I am!” Hands on his hips, Jenks hovered a few inches from the bill.

“Give this to the attendant. She can get them moving to the back, and we can get them into the next car.” Tucking the pen away, Trent folded the bill up. He held it out to Jenks, then hesitated. “No swearing. Public servants don’t swear.”

“Damn right they don’t.”

Again we cracked the door, and I saw a little light go red at the attendant’s station. Concerned, she tapped the panel, satisfied when it went out when the door shut behind him. I never saw Jenks make his way to the front, but I did see a glitter of dust in her work space and the woman start. She vanished behind a half-pulled curtain. Her face was white when she peeked out. Trent waved, and she ducked back.

“She’s not going for it,” he said, and I put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

“Wait,” I said, and together we peered through the foggy plastic as the woman went from shock to fear and finally to bravery as she pulled her shoulders up and tugged her apron straight. Jenks was on her shoulder. Her hands shook as she prepared a tray of ice water, but her steps were even as she made her way to the back, pausing briefly to tell first one, then another to leave everything and make their way to the back and out of the car.

“See?” I said, and Trent leaned into me, shocking me with the scent of green and growing things among the harsh oil and diesel we rocked within. “She’s got shelf loads of courage.”

“Maybe,” he said as he opened the door for the first woman and her preteen son. “But she’s moving them out too fast.”