Persephone's Wolves, page 26
“We have a problem.”
Thirty-Five
The man who stands in the doorway has a clean-shaven head, bright brown eyes and narrow nose, which he scratches as he looks between me and Silas, wiping coal on his face. The man has coal-stained, dark blue dungarees, one of the straps not clipped on his shoulder. Other than that, he is bare chested and wearing heavy-looking black boots, the laces undone.
“Fox, try knocking when you enter this carriage,” Silas growls out.
Fox bows his head, showing his neck, submitting.
“Sorry, Alpha Silas,” he says, his voice deep and gruff. He smells like cherries and rainwater, mixed with coal. “Alpha Valentine sent me. It’s urgent.”
“Show me,” Silas demands and looks at me. “This is Mairin. Mairin, meet one of the triplets running this train. Fox.”
“Nice to meet you,” I tell him, and he playfully grins at me for just a second before we both hear Silas’s low growl. Fox moves quickly, leading the way past the carriages of coal, down a narrow pathway where I have to hold on tight to the bars on either side of me before we get to the main part of the engine.
Valentine stands watching as two nearly identical men shovel coal into the fire. I feel the heat across my body as Valentine turns to me, nodding once before looking over my shoulder. The other two triplets have shoulder-length red hair, the same eyes as Fox, and they are wearing the same dungarees.
“My brothers, Falcon and Finch,” Fox introduces. They both pause for just a second and bow their heads with matching cheeky grins before going back to work.
“What’s going on?” Silas demands, walking to the glass above the controls. He pauses before stepping back. “Well, fuck.”
I rush over and glance out at the view in front of the train, breathing in the familiar scents of both Ragnar and Henderson nearby getting closer to us.
About a mile away, maybe a bit further, where the track is close to the cliff, it is just gone. A part of the cliff has fallen away, taking the track down with it, and there isn’t much left, and we are going too fast to stop now. Plus, judging from the surrounding highlands, we are close to the Scottish lands and the tunnel; our escape is close. The track leading up to the missing part isn’t in good condition either, and I might have never been on a train before, but I can judge that it is going to be a bumpy ride.
“What is going on?” Ragnar demands as a long gust of wind blows over us. The heat from the nearby fire makes it feel warm out here until the wind blows.
Before anyone can answer, I turn around. “A part of the track has been completely eroded away by a cliff edge. We are going to have a big problem. Soon.”
The truth is, there’s no way we could stop the train before hitting that.
Valentine, ever the thinker, makes the command. “We need to go faster. As fast as you can make the train travel. Do it.”
“Yes, alpha,” Fox answers for himself and his brothers. “You might want to hold on to something, Mairin.”
“Go inside,” Henderson half-heartedly commands, touching my arm. I find all of them watching me with varied degrees of concern. We could fly off a cliff with this train, and the chances of us surviving that are slim.
“I’m going to warn our pack,” I tell them. “You make sure we don’t fly off the cliff.”
Ragnar’s eyebrows lift. “Bossy for someone who claims she couldn’t be an alpha female.”
I chuckle as I rush past them and let myself into the train, passing Phim.
“Help me warn the train to hold on to something. And secure the young children,” I ask her. She pauses mid step and looks at me, nodding once before rushing down the train with me. We both shout at anyone we find and tuck children under the seats, telling them to hold on. I run down the train, losing Phim in the madness, shouting to anyone that can hear me to hold on to something, while most of them look at me like I’m completely insane. But they listen. I pass Breelyn in the train with the young pups, five of them now, and she is tucking them under the table before lying as a barrier to hold them in. I help the woman get under the table with the babies before I carry on.
“We have emptied these trains, hearing what you were shouting, but there is one girl missing. She must be in the last two carriages,” a man not much older than me explains as he holds two toddlers.
“Get them safe, and I will find her,” I tell him. I don’t look back to see if he listened as I pull the door open and rush through the carriages, shouting for the girl. I get to the last door when I hear the crashing of the wheels, the high-pitched noise grating on my ears. The train jolts to the side, going off the rails, and a scream gets lodged in my throat as my feet leave the floor, and then I slam back onto it, unable to stop myself. My body slams into the side of the velvet half wall, and I grab onto it, looking up the path just as I hear an ear-splitting scream.
Right above me, the little girl who I was looking for goes flying past me as she falls, and I reach out, barely catching her dress before she slams into the door. She cries as I pull her to me and roll under the table, using the middle leg to balance my weight and hers.
“You’re okay,” I tell her as she holds my neck tighter.
“Fell,” she whispers, but I barely hear her over my own heart thumping, panicking about what is going to happen next. I feel the train jolt forward, howls and screams echoing around us, and then we’re weightless. The train bounces over the gap, and for a split second, everything is peaceful.
Until this last carriage doesn’t make the jump. I grab hold of the table leg as my stomach drops with the carriage, and it slams harshly into the brick wall. The searing sound of wheels on track as the train tries to keep going to pull up fills my ears, and I grit my teeth, holding onto the table leg to stop myself from falling. A table snaps and breaks on the other side, crashing past me and cutting a line down my leg. I hold in a cry from the pain, watching as the table slams into the doors at the bottom, forcing them open with the weight before falling down the cliff, breaking on the rocks way before hitting the sea. But I realize quite quickly they need to cut this train carriage off, otherwise the whole train is going to be lost as it struggles to go forward. I look down at the little girl, her bright brown eyes looking up at me, and kiss her head of brown hair.
“We are going to climb like a monkey and get out of here. Okay?” I tell her. “But I need you to climb onto my back and hold my neck tightly. You must not let go.”
She doesn’t use words to reply to me, but I can tell she understands when she carefully climbs around me and attaches herself to my back.
Silas was right. I am weak in my body. I can tell from the second I try to climb out of this train and my arms protest, carrying my body weight and the little girl’s.
“What’s your name?” I ask her, needing a distraction.
“Shailey,” she whispers to me.
“I’m Mairin, or Mai, or Irin. I don’t mind what you call me,” I tell her, pulling us out to the edge. I hear the sea below, the whistling wind, and for a second, I’m back in Alpha Sylvester’s grip, hung over that cliff about to fall. Shailey’s whimper snaps me back into the present, and I pull us into the next seating area.
My muscles strain with every movement, and sweat soon builds on the back of my neck. I need to get to the door and then figure out how to open it.
I keep climbing, a little at a time, trying to ignore the sounds of the sea and the way the carriage is softly swaying. I look up at the doors, relief pouring through me when the door is ripped open and Henderson fills up the doorway. I can hear the crying of wolves and children now, but I don’t look anywhere else except into his eyes.
I can see him assessing the situation, and I make it easier for him. “I can do this.”
“Climb to me,” he commands, outstretching his hand as far as he can. His legs are spread apart on the edge of the doorframe as he leans down and uses just one hand to hold himself up.
“Hold on, Shailey,” I tell her, and with more strength than I thought I possibly had, I get moving up the train, climbing from one seating area to the next. The train wheels grind against the tracks to hold us up, the noise getting louder and louder as it strains.
“Faster, Mai,” Henderson demands, and like his voice gives me strength, I climb as quickly as I can until I’m close enough to reach for him. With everything I’ve got, I push myself off the side and slap my hand into his. And he doesn’t let go. Like I weigh nothing, he lifts me and Shailey out of the carriages and into his arms, placing us both in the other carriage on flat land. Shailey climbs off my back and rushes into the arms of an older woman, who is weeping as she smiles at me.
“Thank you,” she mouths to me before taking Shailey away.
I turn back as Henderson unhooks the last train carriage, and it falls straight down into the space between the cliffs, diving into the sea.
He straightens up, and before he can say anything, I walk up to him and lean up, pressing my lips to his.
He freezes against me, and I pull away.
Gods, I made a mistake. How—
My inner thoughts are cut off as Henderson cups the back of my neck and kisses me passionately, washing away any doubts I had with one kiss. Our first genuine kiss. His lips are firm but tender as he pulls me closer, pressing our bodies against each other. Every bit of me he touches feels alive, like a fire being lit throughout my body. I want him closer, and I want—
Something clashes against the floor, and he pulls back, his eyes wide as we both stare at each other.
“Thank you for saving me once again.”
“What you did was brave, Mai. Saving that girl,” he tells me. “I’m proud.”
I clear my throat. “Is everyone okay?”
“Yes. Valentine and Ragnar are dealing with train repairs, and Silas is helping stitch up some wolves injured,” he explains to me.
“Silas can stitch cuts?”
“He learnt as a kid. His father didn’t have much respect for women and liked hurting his mother,” he tells me. “Silas cleaned up, and when his mother died, my mother challenged his father for Silas. She won.”
My heart hurts for Silas, and I’m starting to understand him a little better.
I change the subject, knowing Silas wouldn’t want us talking about his past. I know Henderson only told me because I asked to know everything bad and good. “How about we have our lesson early? After clearing the train up?”
“Sounds good,” he replies, offering me his hand. His hand seems like more now, thanks to that kiss. A kiss I will never forget and hope there is more of.
I slide my hand into his, and I never look back.
The madness of the state of the train takes us hours to help sort out before we can escape and go back to our carriage. Breelyn is lying in a spot between boxes when I head in, and I nod her way, following Henderson into the bedroom.
He sits on the lower bunk and pats the space opposite him after kicking his boots off. “This is the quietest place on the train right now. We can go somewhere else if you want.”
“No, of course not,” I softly tell him, understanding why he asked in the first place. I sit down opposite him, crossing my legs after taking my own boots off. Henderson pulls out a massive steel box from underneath the bed and opens it up. Inside are books, drawing pads, and lots of paper, and he starts rummaging through it all, clearly looking for something. He pulls out a picture on rough paper and hands it to me. I run my fingers over the oil sketch picture of some sort of disgusting creature I’ve never seen before. It’s almost human, maybe longer, but it has a wolf’s face with gruesome teeth and what looks like slime dripping from the corner of its mouth. Its claws are black and long in place of where hands would be, and on its back are something like wings that drag along the floor.
Its lack of eyes is the creepiest part. Where eyes should be, there is nothing but empty pits of darkness, and I get the feeling it wasn’t drawn wrong. “What is this?” I ask.
“The Leviathan. Or Levi for short,” he explains, taking the picture back. “And they live in almost all of the earth now, except for the walled area courts. The wolves’ pack courts escaped them because of the wall.”
He pauses, seeing my wide eyes no doubt, and he goes back to searching in the box. He finally pulls out a yellow paper map of the world.
“Why does it say Lapetus instead of Earth?”
“Another change the ever so mighty angel king has made out there,” he sarcastically explains. “He reshaped the world. Why would he not rename it?”
“The more I hear about this king, the more I equally fear and hate him,” I mutter, but my words dry up as I really look at the map in front of me. I recognise parts of the world from maps I have seen, but this is barely a wisp of what it was. I trace my finger over the wolves’ pack courts, surrounded by the wall. But that’s all I really recognise. The main continent is completely reshaped now and split into four sections, named courts which must be their territories. The courts are marked with names I don’t recognise, and outside of that, there’s America, which is still missing massive chunks of it; it seems like it is mostly the north of America left. What I think is Australia is still there, but it’s called the black land now.
“I have so many questions,” I say. “I’m starting with how the hell is the land a different shape. How?”
“The angels can control earth, ground, dirt. That’s how they destroyed the world, but their power is nearly gone. He used it up to make the world as he wanted,” he gently explains.
Ah, this king no one wants to tell me about.
“And the Leviathan? What are they?”
“No one really knows what caused them. They started appearing around the war, killing off anyone in their way until the angels used them against the humans. Angels can fight, just like wolves, but humans held no weapon strong enough to stop one. Guns were their best bet but the Levi move quick, too quick for the human eye to slow down. Their armies were gone, thanks to the angels by that point. It was a slaughter. What humans are left either live in the America territory or they are slaves. I’m afraid the courts all hold human slaves, and it will be something you see,” he tells me. “Angels see humans as food. Nothing more.”
Disgust curls in the pit of my stomach.
“Your book said that they drink blood. Would they drink ours?”
“No, we are poison to them. Our blood is,” he tells me. “Back to the Levi. They don’t fly, and they travel in packs. They only hunt at night, and we will be keeping the train off and silent at night. I’ve never seen one alone. You must never let them scratch you, they’re like an infestation. They scratch you and sometimes you turn into one of them. I’ve seen it happen. Even with wolves.”
“Are we safe outside the wolves’ pack at all then?”
“It’s only a matter of time before they get in here. The wall is old and not impenetrable,” he states. “This place is a ticking time bomb.”
All I think of is Jesper. I look down at my hands, and he pauses.
“Talk to me, Mai.”
“Jesper,” I quietly say. “He is family to me, and I left him there with...”
“You had no choice, and as far as Phim explained to us, Jesper is more than a ward for that pack. He is protected by them because he could be a powerful wolf one day.”
Henderson reaches over, taking my hand gently in his. I feel nothing but warmth and understanding coming from him. “We’ve always known that the wall will fall, but trust me, when it does, we will offer them help. Where we’re going is safe. You will understand it all soon.”
“I hope so,” I admit.
“The Fenrir Court is just a stepping stone on our way to the Galatea Court, where we are heading.” He shows me by tracing his finger over the map. “This is the main court, the Neso Court, and their capital city is in the gap in the mountains. The Sycx Court is one we hope to avoid.”
“So who is the Galatea Court run by?”
“Officially, no one. The Galatea Court is considered empty land, nothing left but stray human settlements, runaway angels and traitors. There have been angels who tried to rule there and soon died or failed. The king, from our spies’ knowledge, doesn’t care about it. Never has done,” he explains. “The king lives in the Neso Court, in a palace that towers above the busy city of millions.”
“Seeing as I’m smart enough not to ask too many questions about this king, I want to know about the court we are heading to. Who are these people we trust?”
He sighs, closing the box and shoving it under the bed. “Viscount Deimos and his consort, Indra. They are angels, ruthless, and you need to be on your guard around them at all times. Deimos slaughtered hundreds in a battle to the death for his title. And regularly fights challengers for sport.”
“Why in the name of wolves would we trust them with our lives?”
Henderson leans back. “When our pack fell, and we were running, we met Deimos. He was gravely injured, his mate dead in his arms. We saved his life, healed him to health, and buried his mate with him. Then, for two years, he trained us and hid us from the war. He might be ruthless and brutal, but we saved his life and gave his mate peace. Those debts bound us, and his word can be trusted, as can his silence.”
“And Indra?”
“I have not met her yet, but if she is at his side as consort, she will be a strong-willed woman to handle him,” he warns. “Maybe not as strong as you, Mai.”
“Sometimes I don’t feel strong,” I admit. “But being around you, this pack, my alphas, it makes me feel like I am.”
“You are, with or without us,” he tells me.
I shake my head. “Look what I became when I was kidnapped.”
“That was different. You weren’t given the chance to be strong, and you were captured by a man who—” He pauses, anger hitching his voice up and making me shiver. “That bastard tried his hardest to break you, and you are here, alive and happy. You won.”
