He gave me a glancing blow on the temple, but I stubbornly held on, as the rattling around us grew worse and the horn sounded again, deafeningly close, and my hand finally closed over one of my mother’s. For a second, I stared at her and she stared back, her wide blue eyes reflecting the approaching light. But while I could feel the fingers under mine, could trace the bones of her hand, could grasp her wrist, I couldn’t actually touch her. A thin membrane of the shield still separated us, and as long as it did, I couldn’t shift—
And then I couldn’t anyway because something smacked into us with the force of a Mack truck.
We went shooting down the tunnel like we’d been fired out of a gun, bounced off a wall, hit the floor and then went tumbling head over heels over head. I had the mage’s shield in a death grip and I didn’t let go, even as it careened around the small space like a Ping-Pong ball on acid. It absorbed some of the damage, and Mircea absorbed most of the rest, throwing his body over mine until something scooped us up and carried us along like a—
Well, like a speeding train.
The train must have been pretty much automated. Because the driver had been tipped back in his seat, reading a magazine and enjoying a cup of tea. The latter was now all over his natty blue uniform as he stared in wide-eyed disbelief at the knot of yelling, fighting and kicking people rolling around in the air just outside his front window.
And then Mircea grabbed the kidnapper, getting a hand around his neck despite the shield that still encased him. I tried to remember what Mircea had said about how long it took to drain someone through a shield. But my brain was a little busy and I couldn’t remember, and then it didn’t matter anyway, because the next thing I knew, they were gone.
I ended up with my butt half on, half off some type of levitating luggage and my face smashed against the train’s front window. It gave me a perfect view of the mage dragging my mother through the narrow cabin and into the next compartment. Damn it!
I grabbed for the door leading into the driver’s cabin, but my hand slid off something hard and glasslike. It took me a second to realize that the mage had flung a shield over the front of the train, and then another second to bypass it, shifting into the cabin right on his heels. Only to have the door he’d flung open slam back and hit me in the face.
That turned out to be kind of lucky, because I staggered back against the front window, and a glance up reminded me that I’d forgotten something. Namely Mircea, who was pelting down the tunnel just ahead of the barreling locomotive. I didn’t see the Spartoi, who I really hoped were the train version of roadkill by now, but he was using vampire speed to stay out in front.
Sort of. It actually looked like he might be losing ground, which would explain the expression on his face when he turned to look at me over his shoulder. Cassandra, he mouthed, and, okay, I deserved that one.
Sorry! I mouthed back, staring frantically at the buttons and dials and thingamajigs on the driver’s console.
There were a lot of them, but none that were all lit up in red and conveniently marked STOP. And I couldn’t just shift back outside and grab him without my added weight sending both of us plunging to the tracks. I grabbed the driver instead.
“How do I stop this thing?” I demanded, only to have him turn that blank stare on me.
I shook him as Mircea slowed down or we sped up, and he slipped within inches of oblivion. But shaking didn’t do any good. So I slapped the man, which turned out to be the wrong move, because it broke his paralysis, but then he started shrieking like a little girl. I cursed inventively and stared around, out of time and ideas both, and caught sight of the lightly bobbing suitcase.
It had shifted inside with me, maybe because I’d been sitting on it at the time. It was old and worn and vaguely trunklike, like something out of another era. But the spell the mage had cast was obviously still in decent working order, making it the closest thing to a life preserver in sight.
I grabbed it under one arm, shifted outside and grabbed Mircea with the other. And after a terrifying few seconds flailing around a hairsbreadth in front of a few hundred tons of speeding metal, we landed back inside in a heap of arms and legs. And as a bonus, we managed to trip up the driver, who had been about to run into the compartment behind us.
Mircea snaked up an arm and grabbed him, jerking the guy down to eye level with less than his usual calm. “Forget,” he told him harshly, and the man suddenly stopped hyperventilating. He docilely sat back in his seat, looking bemusedly into his empty teacup, as we scrambled unsteadily to our feet.
“Sorry,” I told Mircea again, only to have him smile grimly.
“We’ll discuss it later,” he told me, somewhat ominously. “For now, where are they?”
“That way,” I said, and we ran.
Chapter Thirty-six
It should have been easy enough to spot them, but it was the holiday rush, and there had to be a couple hundred people wedged into the next car, along with bags and boxes and a guy hugging a full-sized Christmas tree. It had the whole car smelling like pine, which would have been great if the damn stuff didn’t give me hay fever. I searched the crowd for my mother, shoving branches out of my face and sneezing my head off.
“Did they shift again?” Mircea asked, as we plowed our way down the car, through the connecting doorway and into the next one. Some people were looking at us like we were crazy, because the space between sections of the train was pretty open.
I felt like telling them to try the front seat for a while.
“No.” I shook my head. “I’d have felt it.”
“You’re sure? If they shifted in the middle of all that—”
“I’m sure.” The main reason I’d left him hanging was that every nerve, every sense I had, was focused on that tenuous link with my mother. I had it in a mental death grip, prioritized ahead of everything else. There was no way she’d shift an inch and I wouldn’t know.
“But why haven’t they?” Mircea demanded. “Staying in a limited, enclosed space when they know they’re being pursued makes little sense—”
“Unless they don’t have a choice.”
He shot me a look. “You think she’s getting tired.”
“It depends. If this is the same day as the party—”
“It is.”
“How can you be sure?”
“I could smell the alcohol on him when he passed by—the champagne you spilled.”
I always forgot: vampire senses. “Then she’s tired. In fact, she should be passed out cold by now. I don’t know how she’s still able to do anything. Taking someone else through time is exhausting, even if it’s only once. And she’s done it—”
“How tired are you?”
“I’m fine, not that it matters. It’s not like we can stop for a rest.”
“It matters,” he said, gripping my arm. “Because it determines how aggressive I need to be. I am trying to be cautious and alter this time as little as possible. But if you are nearing the end of your strength—”
“I’m okay,” I told him.
He shot me another look, but I was telling the truth. If this thing was shaping up to be a race to see who ran out of gas first, then the kidnapper was shit out of luck. I would never stop chasing her. I would fall over with a fucking aneurysm before I stopped chasing her.
“I am,” I insisted.
And I guess it must have been convincing, because Mircea nodded. “When you begin to reach exhaustion—”
“I’ll let you know.” Although I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that. I kind of didn’t want to know what Mircea’s idea of “aggressive” was. His idea of “cautious” was pissing off enough people, as we pushed, shoved and elbowed our way toward the back of the train.