Page 10

ALIX

“ O oph!”

I let out an involuntary cry as Daemon slams me against the metal wall of the train car.

I’d just stood from my seat seconds before, and now my back aches from the impact as he pins me against the window, his body pressed tightly against mine.

Is he protecting me, or trying to smother me?

I open my mouth to demand he let me go, but the words die in my throat. Without meaning to, I breathe in his deliciously masculine scent and my traitorous body reacts. Warm tingles erupt all over me and my heartbeat grows loud in my ears.

The train lurches again, jolting me out of my daze.

This time, the rattling is accompanied by a deafening screech of metal wheels against the tracks, and the ominous sound of cracking wood. I lose my balance and stumble, gripping Daemon’s muscled shoulder for support.

“What the fuck is happening?” he growls.

“I was hoping you knew!”

Now that I’m paying attention, I can’t believe how long it took me to realize that we’re going fast. Like really fucking fast. It feels like I’m on the subway, not a leisurely vintage pleasure train, and we seem to be getting faster with every passing second.

What if we crash? The Fae will probably be fine, and Odessa can take care of herself. But me? I’m fucked. Forget magical creatures and faerie kings, I could easily bump my head too hard on the window and it would be lights out for me just as easily as if I were run over by the train. “What happens if we derail?”

Daemon grimaces, his face still mere inches from mine. “At this height? I wouldn’t think about it if I were you.”

Height?

I twist around and clear another patch of condensation on the window to look outside. The landscape is blurry by the dark, rainy sky, but it’s clear we’re traveling on raised tracks, built high on pillars, suspending the train over the rolling hills and thorny thickets of roses.

“How high are we?” I ask.

Daemon ignores me, but his mouth morphs into an even thinner line.

Got it. That means we’re really fucking high.

Daemon pushes himself off me, and grabs my hand, enveloping it in his much larger fingers. “We need to see what’s going on.”

I don’t bother to protest as he tugs me roughly out of the train car and into the narrow, dimly lit hallway.

Kastian and Odessa are already outside, and I’m grateful to see that Odessa is clutching Sushi tightly in both arms as he howls, screaming to be freed from his carrier. I glance to the right and spot Jett and Fox making their way toward us from down the corridor. Overhead, lanterns swing wildly back and forth like strobe lights. Other passengers poke their heads out of their compartments to yell their confusion at one another. Clearly, this isn’t normal, even for the Fae.

“Who’s driving this damn thing?” Jett yells.

“I don’t think anyone is driving,” Kastian mutters. “Where are we in relation to the locomotive?”

“We’re only a few cars from the front,” Daemon replies, his expression grim. “Come on. If the driver of this train isn’t dead already, I’m going to kill him myself.”

Daemon takes the lead and drags me along with him as he marches toward the small door connecting us to the next train car. He reaches for the door handle and tries to wrench it open, only to find it locked. My heart sinks, but then a split second later, the lock clicks and he shoves the door open.

“How did you do that?”

“Take a wild guess, Peaches.”

Holy shit, he just used magic. Like actual magic. That’s crazy and also somehow makes so many other things make sense. I knew I locked the door to Nana’s house. This asshole used his weird Fae powers to break into my Nana’s house!

I guess that’s the least of my problems right now, but still. The audacity of this man .

Dragging me helplessly by the hand, Daemon practically runs down the corridor of the next car, which looks nearly identical to ours with a slim carpeted hallway and glass-walled compartments on either side. The ground shakes beneath us, the entire car rocking back and forth like it could tip over at any second.

At the end of the hall, we reach another door, connecting to the next car. I’m expecting to see a third long hallway, but instead, he tugs me through the door and into what must be the luggage car. It’s dark except for the light coming from the open door, and I have to squint to make out the stacks of trunks and suitcases stretching all the way from floor to ceiling.

The train shakes again, and I shriek and duck as something comes flying toward my face. After a second, the impact doesn’t come and I open my eyes to find Daemon holding a suitcase in one hand, inches from my face. “You’re welcome.” He smirks.

Cocky asshole.

Behind me, Kastian, Jett, and Fox force their way inside and immediately begin tossing luggage out into the hall behind us, clearing a path for all six of us to stand in.

Daemon drops my hand. “The locomotive is only one car ahead of us. Wait here.”

I rub my fingers where he’d been holding them, suddenly feeling far more anxious than I was mere moments before.

Daemon pushes more luggage out of the way as he moves toward the door on the opposite side of the car. Trunks burst open as they get strewn around, and all manner of clothing, papers, and trinkets spill onto the floor. A glass vase wrapped tightly in tissue paper falls out of a carpetbag and smashes into a thousand pieces. My chest pangs with sympathy. It looks like people have packed their entire lives away into trunks, and now even if the train doesn’t crash, their things will still be lost forever.

Daemon reaches the far door and presses his face to a round window in the center. Cursing under his breath, he glances back. “Brace yourselves.”

“Wh—”

Before I can even ask what he means, Daemon yanks the door open. The train shudders violently as a powerful gust of wind and rain blasts inside, dousing us all with icy droplets. Behind me, Odessa lets out a little shriek and Sushi hisses angrily.

Apparently, the locomotive isn’t connected to the rest of the train. It wasn’t cold before we left, but with the speed we’re going and the continued downpour, I wrap my arms around myself to keep from shivering.

My heart lurches as Daemon leans his head outside the speeding train, his hair whipping back from his face. “I’m going to see what’s wrong with the engine.”

Daemon disappears into the darkness outside. I want to protest, but then I remember that he can fly. I glance around, wondering if everyone else is hiding wings too. I hope so, because I’m starting to worry we’ll have to jump.

I feel a hand on my shoulder and step aside as Kastian moves past me to stand in Daemon’s vacant spot in the doorway. He doesn’t seem bothered by the cold. In fact, none of the men do.

I hold my breath nervously, waiting for Daemon’s shout, or better yet, the sound of breaks. After a second, Odessa makes her way toward me and stands at my shoulder in the middle of the car. She smiles. “It will be fine.”

I grimace. “For you all, maybe. I can’t fly.”

“Don’t worry, Daemon won’t?—”

Her words are abruptly cut off by another screech of metal.

For a split second, I think it’s the brakes—that Daemon has managed to stop the train—but then it jerks again.

Odessa screams, scrambling to brace herself against the wall.

The deafening screech of metal fills the air, and I whip my head around, realizing the sound isn’t coming from the locomotive—it’s coming from the passenger cars.

Fox is standing just inside the luggage compartment, while Jett is still in the hallway of the passenger car. They’d been passing suitcase after suitcase out of our car, clearly trying to give us as much room as possible.

Suddenly, wood snaps, and I see the door to our compartment straining against its hinges. The bolts connecting the cars are clearly under too much strain, and in a moment, the passenger car is going to break off.

“Get in here,” Fox barks at Jett.

Jett is already scrambling to reach the doorway, leaping over the suitcases that he himself just piled in his path. Fox leans between the cars, his hand stretched out to his friend.

There’s another creaking and cracking of wood, and the train bucks like a roller coaster. The cars disconnect just as Fox grabs Jett’s hand and pulls him inside.

Jett collapses in a heap on the ground, panting. “Shit,” he breathes, somehow still smiling after all that. “That was close.”

Before anyone can react or say anything, Daemon swings back into the car on the opposite side. “There’s no conductor.”

“How is that possible?” Odessa asks.

“I don’t fucking know, but I’m not going to waste my time trying to figure it out.”

“You couldn’t just stop the train yourself? Or use magic?” I ask, a little desperately.

Daemon blows out an annoyed breath. “I have no fucking idea how a train works. I can’t just command it to stop. The best I could do is blow up the engine. So unless anyone here can walk me through how this shit works…”

Everyone glances around, as if hoping that one of us has forgotten to mention they’re an expert on train engines.

I turn back to the gaping hole where the door to the passenger car used to be. In the distance, the rest of the train shrinks, pulling farther away. An idea hits me then. “We have to disconnect from the front,” I say. “Without the locomotive pulling our car, we can just coast until we slow down or can find a safe point to jump.”

Daemon brightens immediately. “Good idea, Peaches.” He turns to Kastian. “Want to help me?”

“I will,” Fox rumbles, pushing his way toward the other end of the car.

Daemon glances at Fox, taking in his enormous muscles, before nodding. The two of them climb out onto the metal bars connecting the luggage car to the locomotive pulling it and begin trying to break it.

“Can’t they just break it with magic?” I ask.

“It’s made of iron,” Odessa explains. “Iron is resistant to magic, which is why hardware like that is forged from it in the first place. It has to be resistant to tampering.”

“Isn’t that fucking convenient.”

“Find us something heavy to break the tow!” Daemon yells.

Inside, Kastian, Jett, Odessa and I immediately rip open suitcases. The contents of all the bags that haven’t already burst open on their own get thrown around the car like the wreckage of a tornado. I paw through bag after bag of clothing, then throw open a large wooden trunk. Immediately, my heart leaps.

The trunk is packed tightly with what looks like the contents of someone’s kitchen. I feel bad that whoever was leaving their home to start over somewhere new will have to do it without their things, but at least the train didn’t crash and they’re probably going to be fine.

I toss a couple of dishes, a feather duster, and an old-fashioned desk clock out of the trunk, before finding what I’m looking for. “Here!” I cry, brandishing a heavy iron skillet like a sword. “Use this.”

I run over to the door and hand the skillet to Fox. He raises it like a mallet and begins hacking away at the metal bars. We hold our breath, waiting, until with a heavy clang, the tow connecting us to the runaway locomotive finally breaks.

Odessa cheers, but I just sigh in relief and move to the right of the door so Fox can leap inside. For a long second, I expect Daemon to follow, but he doesn’t.

I crane my neck to see better, and my heart lurches into my throat when I finally see Daemon. He’s perched precariously on a rain-slicked metal bar above the train tracks, his foot slipping dangerously close to the edge.

Acting on instinct, I grab his hand, pulling him inside, sending us both tumbling to the ground in a heap. I let out an “oomph” as he lands on top of me, knocking the breath from my lungs.

Daemon pushes himself on his hands until he’s hovering over me in a push-up position. “What was that for?”

His hair flops into his eyes and drips water droplets all over my face. I suck in an involuntary breath, taking in his heady scent. “You were about to fall,” I gasp. “You’re welcome.”

He scoffs, arrogance written in every line of his face. “I was fine. And even if I wasn’t, I’m not thanking you, Peaches. Without you, I wouldn’t be on this train.”

“And without you, I wouldn’t be in this world, so whose fault is it really?”

He grins, looking like he’s almost enjoying himself despite our near-death experience. “Tell you what, if we all live through this, you can take all the credit you want.”

I scowl and shove him off me with both hands. “Remind me never to save your life again. Next time, I’m just going to let you get run over.”

“Hate to interrupt, but I don’t think we’re at the sexually charged banter portion of the show!” Jett yells.

Daemon and I turn to look at him in unison.

“What are you talking about?” Daemon asks.

Jett’s eyes widen and he points over our heads. “Look!”

I squint through the rain ahead.

It seems my plan worked, because the locomotive is already nearly out of sight ahead of us and we’re obviously slowing down. In the distance, the train is barreling toward a bridge that looks far too fragile to handle a train moving at that speed. Sure enough, we all watch as the wooden beams groan and snap, and the bridge crumbles under the weight of the speeding locomotive. So fast it almost doesn’t seem real, the train falls, hurdling toward the ground with a sickening crash. Any relief I felt seconds before disappears, and terror washes over me.

“Fuck!” Daemon swears, jumping to his feet.

In the time it takes me to blink, his enormous feathery wings unfurl.

I gape at him, dazed. The wings are so large they’re crushed by the walls of the train car, unable to fully extend. How the fuck does he keep those hidden? Are they magic? They must be, but?—

My panicked questions are interrupted when Daemon grabs me, hauling me to my feet. He spins me around and pushes me toward the rear door of the train—or what used to be a door before it was literally torn from its hinges.

I blink in renewed shock when I see that everyone else has wings too. Kastian’s wings are black like Daemon’s but instead of red feathers, his are green like an oil slick. Fox’s wings are entirely white, like an actual fucking angel, while Jett’s are a dark purplish blue.

“Woah,” I say. “If you can do that, why didn’t you just fly out of here to begin with?”

I’m not entirely surprised that Daemon ignores my question, or that everyone else seems completely okay with this situation. Well, everyone except Odessa who also looks a bit alarmed to be suddenly stuck in a crowded car full of feathers.

“Kas, take Odessa!” Daemon barks.

Odessa shrieks, trying to scramble out of the way of Kastian’s outstretched arm. “Do not touch me!”

Kastian grabs her and yanks the basket with a still screaming Sushi out of her arms. He shoves the cat at Jett, before throwing a struggling Odessa over his shoulder and leaping out of the train.

“Holy shit!” I blurt out as Jett jumps after them, followed by Fox.

“Let’s go, Peaches,” Daemon says, reaching for me.

“Are you crazy?” I yell over the wind. “I’d rather take my chances here.”

“You’ll have to if you don’t fucking move,” he growls, reaching for me.

“I have never wanted to try skydiving!” I scream. “I don’t even like the high jump at the public pool!”

Daemon’s face twists in frustration as he grabs me around the waist and launches both of us outside.

I scream for a long breathless second as we fall through the open air. My stomach swoops like I’m caught on an endless rollercoaster, and the wind rushes past my face, tangling my hair and making tears stream from my eyes.

Then, suddenly, it’s like opening a parachute. Daemon’s wings stretch out and we stop falling.

My heart thunders in my chest, and I struggle to catch my breath as we swoop in a circle over the train tracks. I look down just in time to see our train car plummet off the broken bridge and burst into a thousand splinters of wood.

“You’re welcome,” Daemon says in my ear, a hint of humor in his tone. “Looks like I get the credit, after all.”

“I-I fucking hate you!” I gasp. “Don’t you dare let me go.”

He smiles against my ear. “Remind me never to save your life again.”