He lifted the gun and shot the first person he saw—Mr. Shard LeFel, who stood bathing in an unholy light coming up from the floor of the car. The shot caught Shard LeFel in the shoulder and knocked him flat on his back.
Cedar cocked the gun, fired again, this time aiming for the tall, skeletal figure of Mr. Shunt. He missed.
And then, just as sure as a watch running down, Cedar was no longer a man. He was a wolf again. He lunged for Mr. Shunt, jaws, claws, and rage. Mr. Shunt was made of blades and hooks, razors and pain—too fast to catch his throat, too slick to snap his bones. Cedar tore at flesh that tasted of rotted blood, but could do no true damage to the Strange.
“Mr. Shunt,” Shard LeFel yelled as he regained his feet and strode back up to the doorway. “Kill them. Spill their blood now!” Shard LeFel used the bladed cane to help him stand on the edge of the opening doorway beneath him, one boot at the threshold.
Mr. Shunt skittered away from Cedar’s hold and flicked a lever on the device at the top of the doorway. The device lit up.
Screams of agony filled the room.
Cedar could not kill the three Strange creatures in time to save Mae, Elbert, and Wil, and he had no time to choose between them. Little of a man’s reasoning filtered through the pain now. His mind was all wolf, and the wolf would kill the one Strange in front of him.
Cedar jumped over the door, past Shard LeFel, crashing down on Mr. Shunt before he could trigger another lever in the device.
Cedar snapped at Shunt’s face, caught scarf and a hank of hair. Mr. Shunt unhinged and slipped free, then pulled up the gun that had fallen from Cedar’s hand. Mr. Shunt aimed that gun at Cedar’s head.
Then the train car exploded—walls bashed apart as if a boulder had torn through them.
“LeFel!” A great, hoarse bellow shook through the night.
Jeb Lindson had come calling.
Another wall shuddered from the impact of the huge matics Jeb swung like a child swings a stick.
Mr. Shunt turned the gun on Jeb Lindson. And squeezed the trigger.
The shot took Jeb straight through the middle of his head, leaving a trail of smoke spiraling up out of the hole.
Jeb smiled, bloody, charred, torn apart, and shredded so that he barely resembled the man he once was. He picked up one of the huge ball tickers and pounded it into Mr. Shunt, knocking him flat before turning toward his true goal, Mr. Shard LeFel.
Shard LeFel raised his cane. “You will not stand in the way of my revenge! You will not stop me!” He lunged. The silver blade pierced Jeb’s ribs, clean out his back.
And the big man let out a huge wet chortle.
Shard LeFel’s eyes went wide with horror.
“Can’t kill a man more’n three times, devil,” Jeb Lindson said. “Said it yourself. You plain can’t kill me no more.”
Mr. Shunt seemed just as shocked as Shard LeFel and stood, weighing his options. Cedar barreled into Mr. Shunt and tore into his neck, shaking and breaking it. Then Cedar ripped Mr. Shunt apart, limb from limb, stringing bone and guts and metal out of him like pulling the meat out of a crab, until Mr. Shunt stopped moving, stopped twitching, stopped ticking.
It took no more than a minute before Mr. Shunt was reduced to a mess of cracked bits. It took a few seconds more before Cedar could reclaim enough of his mind to realize Wil, Mae, and Elbert were still trapped. Trapped by the Strangeworks.
Cedar attacked the first Strange, sinking teeth into its head and throwing himself backward, twisting off the head with the strength of his jaw.
The Strange wriggled and shrieked and sprang open like a popped seed. From that bloody mess, the little child Elbert tumbled out onto the floor.
Cedar paused just long enough to be sure the child was breathing, then ran to the next Strangework.
“No!” Shard LeFel screamed. “Release me. Fall to the ground and worship me.”
Cedar glanced at him. The door was closing, and Shard LeFel was not walking through it. Jeb Lindson was there instead, big hand wrapped around Shard LeFel’s throat, holding him one-handed in midair above the door. With a vicious smile, Jeb Lindson lowered Shard LeFel just enough, the tips of his boots slipped into the door, before he yanked him up again.
“Only gonna do one thing, devil,” Jeb said. “Gonna kill you, me and this dead iron. And it’s only gonna take me the one time.”
Jeb used one hand to smash the ball matic into the Holder at the head of the doorway.
The Holder exploded in a roll of thunder and a blast of lightning. Seven distinct bits of the device flew straight up into the night and then whisked across the starry sky faster than anything on this earth.
Cedar was on the next Strangework, biting, killing, twisting, destroying, until it disgorged his brother, Wil, who was broken, bloody. But he still breathed.
Cedar Hunt wasn’t done killing yet.
He threw himself at the last Strange. And this time, it was Mae who fell from the monstrous creature, Mae who took a hard, shuddering breath, pulling the gag from her mouth and the barbed wire from her throat.
Jeb Lindson lifted Shard LeFel away from the closed doorway in the floor, his huge hand crushing LeFel’s windpipe. Jeb Lindson laughed and laughed, his ruined face drooping with the effort to smile as he dragged Shard LeFel behind him over the rubble of the train car and down to the ground outside.
Shard LeFel scrabbled, reaching for the door, reaching for the stairs, trying to scream through a throat that could do no more than gurgle.
And then Jeb stopped laughing. “For Mae,” he breathed. “My Mae.”
Jeb pounded LeFel’s face methodically with his fists, breaking his beautiful features, snapping his elegant neck, cracking his graceful back, then every other bone in his body, before crushing his skull and digging his brain out with his knuckles. Just for good measure, he pounded the bloody scraps of Shard LeFel with the metal ticker, until all that remained of him was pulverized into a fine mash.
“Mr. Hunt?”
Cedar looked away from the bloody spectacle.
Rose Small stood on what was left of the platform, her rifle smoking, her goggles pushed up, little Elbert hugged close against her hip. She was dirty, singed, a little bloody. He didn’t think he’d ever seen her smile so brightly.
Rose assessed the damage to the railcar. “Don’t know if you can jump down, and I wouldn’t advise you to drop too close to Mr. Lindson. He’s of a powerful single purpose right now. Can you make it here to the platform next to me?”
Cedar took a step, looked back at Mae, who had somehow pulled herself up on her feet and was walking, a bit dazed, toward Rose. Cedar nudged Wil until his brother gained his feet and blindly followed him. The door in the floor was closed, the white light gone. Cedar knew he’d need to break that door, maybe burn it down, but could not summon the effort, nor could he begin to think of the method to do so.
He was suddenly very tired, very much in pain, and very hot. All he wanted to do was lie down and lose himself to the soft, luxurious promise of sleep. What was wrong with him?
He glanced at the sky behind Rose Small. It was no longer dark and star-caught, but instead blushing with pink. How had dawn come so soon? Rose was helping Mae to sit, and looking over both Mae’s and Elbert’s injuries.
Dawn was on its way.
Rose glanced over her shoulder and smiled. “That’s good, Mr. Hunt. You’re almost there. Mae and Elbert are torn up pretty bad, but they’re mostly whole. A fair bit better than I reckon they should expect to be.”
The slide of dawn and the grip of pain blurred Rose’s words and made her seem far away. He wanted to go to Mae, to touch her and know she was safe, but he could not move. So he listened to Rose Small’s words and knew they meant safety and tending. Cedar lay down to rest. Then the moon drained away, taking the wolf with it and leaving him free to be a man once again.