The Collected Christopher Connery (24 page)

“The train,” Nia said softly. She jumped up, still
holding Gail’s arm, which meant Gail had to get clumsily to her feet as well.
The pounding of the train’s wheels –
bull’s hooves –
stabbed into her
head like hot metal spikes, but by breathing deeply and clenching her fists
until her fingers throbbed she managed to stay conscious.

Arthur ran over to them, his leather bag – probably
sorted beyond recognition now – slung over his shoulder. “Is it going to stop?”

“I don’t know,” said Nia. “I don’t know why it would. I
haven’t finished with the –”

The train roared –
the bull bellowed –
into the
station. The noise of it was unbearable. Gail braced herself against the wall
with her free arm and was vaguely aware of Nia squeezing her other hand. If the
noise didn’t stop soon, she thought her head might just explode and splatter
her brains across the wall.

The roar was suddenly joined by a high-pitched metal
screech that obliterated all thought. There was no room for anything in Gail’s
head, but red pain as the bull’s twisted horns scraped across the stone wall
and threw up flashing sparks.

Stop,
she pleaded as the sound tore into her mind.
Stop, stop, stop, stop!

The bull bellowed once more – and stopped.

Nia tore her eyes away from the train and ran to Gail,
who was slumped against the wall, the enchanted scarf slipping through her
fingers.

“Gail, Gail, can you hear me?” Nia pressed a hand to
Gail’s face. The detective’s skin was nearly as cold as the stone she was
leaning against. Nia almost choked on a rush of fear.

“Nia.” Arthur was gripping her shoulder. “Nia.”

Somehow Gail was still standing, knees locked and hands
braced against the wall, but her breath was coming in tight short gasps.
This
has to count as passing out,
Nia thought wildly, already scrambling in her
pocket for a piece of chalk. This was a complex spell and would take some time
to do, but better she start now then –

“Nia!”

“What is – oh.”

The train had stopped fully, its doors sliding open like
a line of waiting mouths.

“That has to be a trap, right?”

“Absolutely,” Nia answered without hesitation. She
couldn’t deny that the open doors, for all their eeriness, tempted her. She
knew if she could only get on the train, there was a chance she could find
Connery and redeem herself in the eyes of the Directors.

But she knew that was what Connery wanted her to think
and she had played into his hands too many times already. “Stay away from it,”
she said to Arthur. “We have to help Gail or –”

Before she could finish voicing her fears, something
knocked her into the wall, jarring the breath from her. She was dimly aware of
Arthur catching her before she fell.

“Are you all right, Nia?”

“I’m fine.” Though that wasn’t entirely true, was it?
Everything was hazy and unreal, like she had just been jolted from a sound
sleep. She had to grip Arthur’s arm tightly to help her focus and it was almost
too late by the time she realized why she felt so strange.

Magic. It was like she had been struck by uncontrolled
magic. Her entire body went cold.

Arthur confirmed her fears a moment later by crying,
“Detective Lin! Gail!”

Nia flung herself forward, but her legs were too unsteady
and she fell, landing painfully on her scraped knee.

Meanwhile, Gail staggered like a drunken woman through
the open doors. For an instant, she turned back to face them, her eyes as empty
as black mirrors.

Then the doors slid shut and the train sped away into the
dark tunnel.

Gail had never doubted her own senses before. In fact,
she had always been proud of her ability to swiftly understand and respond to
situations that left others stupefied. It was part of the reason she had become
a cop; she thought she could use her instincts to do some good. When that had proven
impossible within the constraints of the New Crossbridge police system, she’d
struck out on her own, but her senses had remained as sharp and undoubtable as
ever.

But now everything had gone to hell.

She didn’t remember getting on the train, not really. She
remembered stumbling through the doors, feeling her hand close on a handrails,
but it felt like someone had been pushing her – or pulling her, she didn’t know
which. The next thing she knew, she was lying facedown on the filthy floor,
riding the metal bull through endless dark tunnels. But why had she left Nia
and Arthur? She didn’t know.

Sometime during the awful lurching journey, she had
managed to drag herself up on to the plastic seats, which were marginally
cleaner than the floor. She lay there, clinging to the edge of the seats and to
consciousness with everything she had, but her grip on both kept slipping. She
would surface from a river of darkness and pain to find that she had moved
around the car. It never seemed to be for any good reason; she would just find
herself sprawled on a different set of seats or slumped against a pair of
doors.

But that didn’t make it any less terrifying. Worse still
were the vague half-formed visions that haunted her brief moments of lucidity.
She was seeing things that she couldn’t possibly be seeing. She would open her
eyes and see Connery standing over her, his head and arms gone.

Well, of course they’re gone,
she thought with a
mad chuckle.
They’re under Nia’s bed.

Other times she would see blood running through the
subway doors, as if the train was hurtling through an ocean of blood and the
seals couldn’t hold. Soon the doors would burst open and the blood would drown
her as she lay there half-dead with pain. Then the blood became water and that
was worse, because she couldn’t tell if it was real or not.

One wave of pain hit her so hard that she thought it
would kill her. Her head felt like it was being crushed under the heavy hoof of
an angry bull and through her darkening vision, she thought she saw drops of
blood on the back of her hand.

I’m dying.

The train raced on, huffing and bellowing as it carried
her deeper and deeper into the dark.

Left behind, Nia and Arthur sat the edge of the platform,
staring into the darkness.

“Why did she do that?” Arthur asked after the train had
roared away.

“She didn’t,” Nia answered, still a little stunned. “The
magic did. It’s worse than I thought. It’s –” She covered her face with her
hands, needing a moment to herself. The uncomfortable tingle left behind by the
unbound magic was still running up and down her side. Worse, she swore she
could still feel Gail’s hand against her face. Oh, why was all of this
happening
now?
It was too much to cope with at once.

But she had no choice. She was an Illuminator of the
Academy and she couldn’t fall apart, not with Gail in danger and Arthur needing
her protection. Taking a deep breath, she straightened up, scanning the tunnel
from left to right. The roar and clatter of the train had already faded, but it
had passed this way twice already, it might very well return.

“What do we do, Nia?”

Nia’s first instinct was to dash after the train on foot,
but that was foolish. First of all, they would never catch it and second of
all, perhaps that was exactly what Connery hoped and as soon as they got close
enough, the train would slam into reverse, leaving her and Arthur as bloody
streaks on the dark tracks. No, leaving the platform would be suicide.

“I need to finish this.” She walked back to her
half-finished circle. “Then we can force it to stop.”

“But why did it stop before?”

“I don’t know,” Nia admitted, picking up her dropped
chalk. “But we can’t count on it happening again.” She dropped to her knees and
began to draw with even more urgency than before.

Arthur sat down beside her and patted her knee lightly.
“Let me see your leg.”

“It’s fine, Arthur. We don’t have time –”

“It’s not fine, you ripped the bandages and now you’re
getting chalk and grit in the scrape. I can deal with it while you’re working,
so stick it over here.”

Nia huffed irritably, but her leg
was
beginning to
burn a little. She shifted until she was sitting with her uninjured leg folded
in front of her and the other extended toward Arthur. It made it slightly more
difficult to bend over the spell, but she was nearly done.

I’m nearly done, detective,
she thought as hard as
she could, hoping Gail could somehow hear her.

Arthur carefully cleaned the scrape on Nia’s leg a second
time. It stung, but she bit her lip and continued drawing.

“Damn, Nia,” he said, shaking his head as he worked. “You
sure did a job on yourself here.”

“I hardly noticed it.”

Arthur raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything,
choosing to continue silently with his work. By the time he was finished, Nia’s
left leg was again wrapped knee to ankle in bandages. Drawing the leg back
under her, she reached out and added the last touches to the center of the
circle.

“Can I tell you something?” Arthur said.

“Hm?” Just a few more lines now.

“You have the absolute worst timing.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do you know how long I was sitting over there pretending
to count bandages?”

“Pretending to –” Nia’s face flamed. “How did you –”

Arthur silenced her with an eyebrow. “How did I know?
Mostly because I’m not blind and deaf, Nia.”

“Oh, shut up.” Impossibly, Nia felt a smile tugging at
her lips. She glanced back at Arthur as she finished the last of the shading.
“Was I terribly obvious?”

“Terribly,” Arthur answered with a smile. “But it looks
like it worked out in the end.”

Again, Nia was struck by the memory of Gail’s hand
against her cheek. The blush drained from her face as her stomach tightened in
a cold knot.

Arthur touched her arm. “We’ll find her, Ni.”

“I know we will.” Nia drew a final line through the
center of the circle. “And this is how.”

“What should I do?” asked Arthur as he scrambled to his
feet.

“Stand back. There’s a chance I might have to enter the
train to get her back. If that happens –”

“No.”

“Arthur –”

“No.” Arthur scowled at her with that immovable
stubbornness Mother had always complained of them sharing. “If we have to get
on the train, then we get on the train, but we go together. What good am I here
by myself? I can’t get out, I can’t go down the tunnels without getting flattened,
I can’t do any magic.” He crossed his arms. “All I can do is go with you.”

He’s right.
“Very well. We go together. Are you
ready?”

Arthur gripped his bag tightly. “I’m ready.”

“Good.” Nia held out her hand. “Then can you lend me a
few dollars? I didn’t bring any money with me.”

Arthur stared at her as he dug uncertainly into his
pocket, coming up with a crumpled bill and a few coins. “This is all I have.
Why do you…?”

“Because,” said Nia with a grim smile, triggering the
spell with a scuff of her shoe as she walked toward the edge of the platform.
The chalk lines began to glow with greenish light as she threw the money down
on to the tracks. “We have to pay our fare.”

The bull was angry. Gail, lying weak as watersickness in
its belly, could hear the rage in its huffing breath, in the shriek of its
hooves against the ground. She didn’t know why it was angry and it didn’t
matter. All she cared about was the distraction its rage provided.

For a long time – days, weeks, years? – she hadn’t been
able to think through the pain. The flashes of clarity were vastly outnumbered
by long periods of blackness, and whenever she woke up, she was somewhere
different. After a while, she realized she was moving up the bull’s many
stomachs, crawling through them one by one while her mind fled the pain in her
body. This revelation came about when she woke from another trip down the well
of agony and found herself hanging between two of the stomachs, the darkness
shrieking past her head like a thousand angry ghosts. The bull felt her then
and tried to buck her off. If she had fallen in any direction besides forward,
she would have been crushed against the tunnel wall, but she’d been lucky.

But from then on, the bull seemed more aware of her
presence. It had swallowed her without a thought, but now it seemed to feel her
crawling in its guts. Often, the doors in its stomach –
Doors? How can it
have doors in its stomach?
– would fly open and the screaming darkness
would try to drag her out.

She held on, but she didn’t dare continue to the bull’s
brain. Yes, that’s where she was going, she knew that now. If she could just
reach the beast’s brain, she could stop it, but now she was too clumsy with
pain. If she tried to crawl to another stomach now, the bull would throw her
down and trample her. Unless…

Unless she could make use of its anger. Roaring, it raced
toward whatever had angered it. Thinking too hard on what had incensed the
beast threatened to knock her into blackness again, so she gave up on thought
for simple movement.

I don’t have much time.

She could feel her life buzzing inside her like a
mosquito caught under a glass. For now she was filled with desperate vitality,
but soon, very soon, she would be little more than a lifeless bag of flesh
crumpled in a screaming metal tomb.

But she would get to the brain first.

When Nia heard the distant rumble of the train again, she
took Arthur’s hand, lacing their fingers together. “Whatever happens, we stay
together, all right?”

Arthur’s jaw was clenched tightly, perhaps with
determination, perhaps with fear, but he nodded and tightened his grip on Nia’s
hand.

The scream of the train’s wheels sounded slightly
different as it raced toward them.

It knows,
Nia thought immediately. Whatever
consciousness Connery had imbued this magic with – and all magic was
necessarily imbued with some level of consciousness – could clearly feel Nia’s
spells pulling at it, dragging it onward against its will. That was one thing,
perhaps the only thing, they had in their favor. Connery was a genius at
designing these kind of traps, but he couldn’t make them unbeatable, not if he
wished to be found and restored to life. There had to be an off-switch, no
matter how well hidden.

The train roared into the station at such speed that
Nia’s hair was blown across her face and for a breathless instant, she was
afraid it wouldn’t stop, but then, with clear reluctance, it screamed to a
halt. By the time it had stopped entirely, only its back half remained in the station.
After another moment, its doors creaked partway open.

“Now, Arthur!” 

“What do you mean ‘now?’”

Deciding he wasn’t actually expecting an answer, Nia
raced toward the train, turning sideways to shimmy through the partly opened
doors. When she made it through, she stumbled and fell on the dirty floor,
losing her grip on Arthur’s hand. Grimacing, she got up, wiping ineffectually
at the dust on her skirt and jacket. The lights flickered threateningly and the
train began to vibrate beneath her feet.

“Nia!”

Turning, she saw Arthur trying to fight his way through
the doors. After Nia had stumbled through, they had closed slightly and his
jacket buttons had gotten caught. As the train lurched into motion again, he
nearly slid backwards onto the tracks, but Nia grabbed his arm and yanked him
into the train. Two buttons tore loose from his jacket and bounced violently
off of the floor and wall. Then the doors slammed with such violence that if
Arthur had still been standing between them, he would have been cut in half.

“I don’t think it wants us here,” Arthur said, lying on
the floor, chest heaving.

“No.” Nia held out her hands to Arthur and he took them,
getting clumsily to his feet and grabbing one of the handrails as soon as he
was upright.

“I don’t see Gail.”

“No, she must be in a car farther ahead.” The train
turned sharply and she fell back against the edge of the seats. The plastic dug
hard into the back of her legs. “We’re in nearly the last car.”

“Then how are we going to find her?”

That’s a very good question.
“Do you know any way
of stopping the train manually?”

Arthur shook his head, wincing when another turned jarred
him violently sideways. “Not from here. We would have to get to the first car.”

Nia held on tightly to the edge of the seat as the train
shuddered again. “Fortunately, the train only seems to be nine or ten cars
long. We can make it.”

Arthur stared at her. “You want to jump from car to car?”

“There’s no other way.” Now it felt like the train was
shaking with laughter at her expense. “There are spells I use to slow it down,
but the layered spells won’t allow me to stop it completely until we have
Connery in hand.”

The train gave another violent lurch and for a moment,
Nia was afraid Arthur would be sick, which would have done nothing to improve
the already unpleasant smell of the car, but then he took a deep breath and
said, “Fine, but let’s go quickly before I lose my nerve.”

Nodding, Nia pulled out her notebook and quickly sketched
the spells she needed. She had never been more grateful for her years of
training. Though the train lurched and bucked beneath her like a living thing,
she was able to keep her hand steady, drawing the spells with short sharp
lines. The only interruption came when a particularly violent lurch knocked her
face against one of the metal poles. She rubbed her cheek, hoping she hadn’t
gotten a black eye and returned to drawing.

The lights flickered wildly. Taking a quick break from
the slowing spells, she pulled a piece of chalk from her cuff and drew a circle
on the seat beside her. Slowly, as though they objected to exerting the effort,
the lights stopped flickering and shone with a dim but constant light. She
could feel Connery’s magic gathering hatefully around her, resenting her
intrusion, and she smiled grimly.

Beside her, Arthur had chosen the floor as the safest
place to be, clinging to the seats behind him to keep from sliding down the
aisle. “Are you ready?”

“Yes.” She drew one final line with the pencil, then
gathered up the spells. She gazed down the aisle at the door to the next car.
It seemed to glower back at her, daring her to try and pass. “Gail needs our
help.”

Arthur didn’t reply immediately, but there was a great
deal of shuffling, scraping, and cursing behind her as he battled gravity.
Then, finally, “Let’s go find her then.” He took her hand and together the two
of them fought to the front of the car one step at a time.

We’re coming, detective,
Nia thought as she
grabbed another handrail.
Please hold on a little longer.