Mori lifts his weapon — heavy with Macto rounds. Its barrel rises toward the five Pride Eaters. They stand on the storm-washed deck. Clawed feet curl up from the solar panels as the material burns them. They’re more solid than the horrors of the Hell Gate at Furze Bank. Less ghost-like. Living demons on the Earth. A shiver of fear climbs his spine. For all the demons’ substance, the world rebels against them more. Air around them warps and twists — tortured by their presence. It makes a ripping sound — a roar above even the howling storm wind. Bone-white and tapered heads all turn. Hollow, light-devouring eyes look past him to focus on Ivan. Claws lift and extend, making gestures toward Asmodeus’s Chosen. Beckoning. Offering flashes of dark magic that swell up in violet strobes between the Pride Eaters’ claws. Ivan’s hands lift. Grasping for what the demons give.
Power — the heroin of Hell.
Behind the Pride Eaters, the Trekke Pa oil platform — turned into a Nightmare mash-up of machine and giant squid — smashes through a nearby wave. It dwarfs Sea Shepherd which rolls and tosses in the shadow cast by its bulk, shrinking beneath smoke rising from the horror’s burning form. The churning ocean around them blackens with pollution gushing from its body. All about, fires light up — dancing across the waves.
Beside Mori, Beatrice’s rapier explodes with the light of a patterned Macto curse. She crouches, ready to spring. Shepherd’s windows take on its silver light. The glass — a frail divider neither demon nor angel seems to notice. Beatrice glances over her shoulder to Sadie, who nods, then snaps her face back to the threat as she lowers into a crouch. Fine dancer’s muscles coil like a spring. “Everyone! Behind us! Ready to abandon ship!” Beatrice shouts.
Finn scampers back, ship’s PA in hand. “Franz! Karl! Get topside!! Now!!” He shouts before letting the microphone slingshot back to the consol. He catches both Glenda and Sadie up in a sweep of his arms. All cluster near the door. Behind them, the well roils with inky water. Oil sloshes up to spatter the rear windows in black. They stare, eyes wide in terror at the Pride Eaters.
Behind Mori, Ivan takes another thudding step toward the demons. Dark light spills out of his wound causing shadows to bend and quiver. We’re losing that fucker again. Shit’s about to get real bad. His weapon stock tucks into his shoulder, the front Pride Eater resolves. He squeezes. The hammer falls. A white-blue bolt streaks from his barrel, smashes through the window. Shards fly outward. All together, the Pride Eaters spring toward the bridge. The front demon jumping into his shot. The Macto-cursed bullet strikes the demon’s head. It explodes in bright sparks that tear through the Pride Eater’s form — burning away like so much flash paper. In a flare, the demon is gone.
The four remaining Pride Eaters crush through the windows, leaving twisted steel and glass shards in their wake, claws rending both wheel house and ship’s consol. Electric sparks flying through the air combine with the flashes of Mori and Beatrice’s magical curses. Mori swings his weapon left, struggling to track the demons’ furious motion. Beatrice thrusts her rapier upwards as she springs toward a massive demon, spinning away from down-slashing claws. Her blade plunges into the demon which bursts in a fireworks flash.
Ivan takes another step forward. His face — hungry. His eyes — glazed. His hands — grasping. Strands of drool drip from his chin. “MmmmmIIIIIiiiiNNNnnnEEEEeee!!!” he shouts as he lunges toward the Pride Eaters. He grabs at the dark sparks of magic flying from the demons’ hands, stuffing each into his mouth like so much diabolical candy. His cheeks bulge. His throat quivers. His belly begins to to swell. Darkness gushes from his wound.
Mori finally draws a bead on his second Pride Eater. Its chest bursts into a spark flower, then the rest of its body flares and strobes out. Beatrice lands on one foot, jumps, flips, crouches upside down on the ceiling, pushes off, then stabs another Pride Eater through the eye. A cyclone of sparks curl out from the strike. Beatrice flips gracefully again to fall with the firelights, landing on the deck once more.
Mori looks sidelong at Ivan’s bulging flesh. At the changes starting to ripple over his skin. They are too late. The already-wounded Ivan need only accept the demonic offerings. No further wound is necessary to trigger his dark transformation. And Ivan has become more than willing, even lustful, at the Pride Eaters’ advances.
“Exorcizamus te!!” Beatrice begins to incant as she levels her blade at Ivan. His girl’s going to have to drive the demons’ influence out of that rat bastard again. Mori squeezes off another Macto round to cover her from the last Pride Eater. It flies wide.
“Nah-ah!” Comes a shout from across the waves. The word carries with it a pulse of diabolical magic that smacks away Beatrice’s spell and briefly leaves her staggered.
Across the water, upon Trekke Pa turned leviathan Nightmare, amongst a coil of twisted metal and pulsing flesh, the Curse Rider stands. Just a couple hundred feet away now, he looks down upon the foundering Sun Shepherd. His black cowboy hat perches on his head, unperturbed by wind or rain. A wry grin twists his features. No humor in that smile. Only dark satisfaction. He lifts his hand. His devil’s lash rises. The souls in his worb scream with pain in answer. Lightning shoots from his lash to spur the Nightmare — urging it on as it lifts its tentacles above Sun Shepherd.
“It was a great hunt! A chase for the ages!” He shouts above the storm-wind. “But all hunts end, as must.”
The Curse Rider then lowers his lash. Devil’s magic flows from it, leaps across the tossed and burning sea, then plunges into Ivan. The changes in his flesh accelerate. His body twists, lurches, bulges. Flickering, his spine elongates as black metal pins shoot from his flesh. His jaws engorge and grow a hedge of teeth. He falls down onto four clawed paws. Barbed spines emerge from his back — each popping out with a loud snap! A tail bearing a mass of these spines rises up behind Ivan — now returning to his terrible combined wolf, demon, porcupine and stegosaurus form. The shape of Asmodeus’s Chosen. His yellow, slitted eyes focus in on Beatrice as she dispatches the remaining Pride Eater with swift, precise blows.
Too late!
Franz and Karl at last burst onto the bridge. They stare wild-eyed at the monster Ivan has become.
Smash! CRASH! CRACK!! Three tentacles slam down onto Sun Shepherd. The vessel shrieks as it is bent and broken by terrible force. The hull splits beneath them. The burning, polluted ocean swarms in.
Praesidia! Sadie shouts as she forms a protective bubble around Finn, Glenda and herself. Beatrice does one of her leaps directly over Ivan just as his jaws snap hard on the empty space she occupied moments before. Landing between Franz and Karl with a watery splash, she shouts Una! Then, casting a spark into Sadie’s protective barrier, she incants Lanuae! Franz, Karl, and Beatrice’s forms all flicker out, then burst into being amidst flowers of sparks inside Sadie’s shield.
“Hey! What about me!?” Mori shouts as water floods in and the ship breaks apart around him. Ocean envelops him and he’s left to hold his breath and swim like hell for Sadie. Luckily, Ivan’s pulled away by a swirl of current. His knife-like spines at a safe distance for the moment. No incantation’s possible beneath the water. Mori can’t vocalize his magical curses. Sadie, Beatrice and the rest don’t sit idle in their protective bubble as he struggles. At the urging of Sadie, they stand and run together. The effect is like a giant hamster ball spinning toward him inefficiently through the water. Mori chokes back a wry laugh and swims harder.
Beneath the pollution floating on the storm-riled surface, the water is clearer. Omnis Scientia, pulled below the waves at a nudge from Beatrice gives an expanded view. Mori can see the Nightmare’s gigantic form — like some burning, oil-spewing, sky-scraper sized squid — floating way too close for comfort. Its tentacles writhe and lash as it tears Sun Shepherd to pieces. The Nightmare as hellified oil platform seems to hold an awful grudge against the solar-electric vessel. Ivan kicks and thrashes in the current. He got rolled pretty hard by a big wave that Mori somehow managed to duck dive under. Surfer’s old instincts doing double duty.
The thought brings a reminder of Myra as a kid at the Cape Hatteras that once was. His kid was a real badass on a boogie board. Good times, those. He grins as he kicks into Praesidia, knifes through the barrier, then pops into the air bubble with a gasping intake of breath. Sadie had shouted Una! Just a moment before from inside the bubble to include him. Otherwise, he’d have bounced off it like a giant beach ball.
The bubble is moving with surprising speed beneath the water. A glance through Omnis Scientia tells Mori that Sadie applied a Mobilis curse to the barrier as the group started doing the hamster-wheel thing. It’s now turning fast and swimming roughly in the direction of Bright Spark. Mori scrambles up to join those jogging in the ball. Beatrice has linked hands with Franz and Glenda — helping everyone coordinate as Sadie’s magic aids their movement. For now, running away from Ivan, the Curse Rider, and the leviathan Nightmare.
“Holy Hell!” Mori gasps as Praesidia pops to the surface, then rolls along through the waves. “We lost Ivan!”
“Not quite yet.” Sadie replies, pointing across the storm-tossed North Sea to where Ivan is doggedly swimming toward them. His great, spiked tail lashes in a wave face about two hundred feet away propelling his massive bulk toward them. His eyes gleam with yellow rage. His mouth gapes with hunger, spilling venom into the already befouled sea. That goddamn bastard’s a devil turned sea wolf. Mori wants to say it out loud. But he doesn’t on account of Glenda. She’s jogging beside him, sobbing quietly, staring in stark disbelief at the monster her father has become. Mori puts a hand on her shoulder. He wants to say something to help her. He knows he ain’t got shit. He just gives her the best reassuring squeeze he can muster.
Mori lifts his rifle which, by some account of gods or providence or just flat luck, he managed to hold the fuck onto. Sighting down the barrel, he draws a bead on Ivan the monster as he swims toward them with surprising speed. Lashing tail churning the black and burning water to thrust the demon-wolf like a missile through the raging sea. Behind Ivan, the machine and flesh bulk of the leviathan Nightmare flails its tentacles then leaps toward them. SMASH! ROAR! It flies hundreds of feet through the air then splashes down in a great spray of foam and fire. The Curse Rider atop the oil platform turned hell beast lifts his head to laugh. The noise of his diabolical glee mixing with the tortured scream of wisps in his worb, the furious roaring of the storm wind, and a piercing wail of a howl that springs from Ivan as he lifts his lupine maw to lend his own monster’s voice to the hunt.
********
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
Beatrice pivots on the balls of her feet. Sun Shepherd swings beneath her. She adjusts her center of gravity against the violent motion. The Nightmare plows toward them. Its mechanical squid-form dwarfing swells as it leaps over churning, hill-sized waves. Each impact of its enormous body on the storm-swept water sending out a blast like thunder. Black, metallic skin roars with flames, tentacles flail the swells. It oozes oil, burns with fire, spills towers of smoke skyward. The sea around it — a burning, black and roiling froth.
Disaster. Heading straight for them. Finn grips the helm. His knuckles showing white. Sun Shepherd slams through another twenty foot wave, crashes down into the trough in a curtain of spray. Finn wrestles the helm, Beatrice pivots to keep balance. With remarkable agility for something so large, the vessel turns. Spray flies in a fan out from its direction of spin. The next wave rises up as Shepherd turns broadside to it, then races down the trough as Finn guns the electric engine. Rooster tails of spray shoot behind them. Sun Shepherd accelerates. The trough between waves is smoother. They race forward. Unobstructed by the towering wall of water that steadily rises to Sun Shepherd’s port side.
“Do it now Sadie!” Beatrice shouts.
Sadie slams a hand down onto the deck. “Praesidia!“ she incants, drawing deep from her stored curse energy. Light ripples out through the deck, takes in the ship. A hazy nimbus grows to envelop Sun Shepherd. It covers her from bow to stern. From the top of her bridge to her keel. A shield of magical force projecting about five feet out from Sun Shepherd and covering her completely. The shield dampens the force of any waves coming through it. Water within the shield grows placid. Sun Shepherd‘s hull plows through a narrow lens of water smooth as glass. All around, the angry sea churns.
The next wave approaches. Sun Shepherd tilts. The wall of water steepens. Praesidia can’t flatten the larger waves. But its becalmed area near Shepherd helps to keep her from rolling. The twenty foot wave tips them up. Finn angles the bow into the wave, cutting diagonally along its face. They pass the wave top. Shepherd corkscrews, flies off the wave top, lands with a smoosh! then takes a gut-wrenching sideways slide down the wave’s back. Shepherd skips. Spray flies high. The vessel reels back and forth even as Praesdia dampens the storm’s violence. Finn keeps the throttle wide open. At last, they are again shooting down a magically smoothed trough. Their respite only lasts a few seconds before the next wave starts to tip them sideways again.
“Whew!” Mori cheers, then glances back and left toward the pursuing Nightmare.
Beatrice gives him a tense grin. Sun Shepherd is crazy-quick and Finn’s got her gunned nearly to full throttle. Running between the swells and toward the lee of Wind Sun Isle, they’ve turned at a right angle away from the Nightmare. Like the waves, the monster’s rushing toward them broadside. It leaps through the air. Splashes down in an explosion of water, black oil, smoke and fire. Boom! Goes the sound of its great body slamming down. The Nightmare lets out a window-rattling shriek that drowns out the roaring ocean. Everyone except Beatrice, Finn, and Mori cover their ears against the shrill cry. The monster leaps again, rises tens of feet above the waves. Slams down. Boom! SSSHHHRRREEEE!!!
Its motion reminds Beatrice of a killer whale. The creature, however, is no whale. But an orca in the true sense. “Belonging to Orcus. Belonging to the Kingdom of the Dead.” A demon mash-up of giant squid and warped oil platform machinery. A Cthulhu-esque horror — belching smoke, oil, fire. As they race between the waves, it turns to pursue. Despite their speed, the demon gains. It grows in size. Soon, Beatrice can make out smaller shapes clinging to the creature. Too far away to see clearly. But Beatrice’s magically sensitive eyes instantly detect separate tell-tales of a Curse Rider and of Pride Eaters clinging to the Nightmare.
The storm seems to pause. The rain slackens, draws back like a curtain. Steadily, Beatrice can see further. The ragged waves grow more jagged without the rain. Their roiling white tops — like glacial mountain tips beneath the glooming sky. Out ahead, a shadow clustered in flickering lights begins to take shape. Wind Sun Isle. Rock breakwaters. Tall and majestic white towers with wind turbine blades locked against the storm wind’s force. Row after row of solar panels — their reflective surfaces dark now beneath cloud and deepening dusk. Spray flies from the breakwater to their front where Beatrice can see an opening. A channel cutting into the man-made isle forming a sheltering bay. Within that channel is another glistening, solar-panel covered shape. It looks just like Sun Shepherd. Beatrice points.
“There! What’s that?”
Finn squints through the storm. “Bright Spark or Ray Wind! One of Sun Shepherd’s sister ships! Impossible to tell which at this distance! They’re coming out to help us. Crazy bastards!”
Beatrice closes her eyes, shifts her sight through omnis scientia. The magical sensor projects her vision across the waves. The letters Bright Spark stand out on the approaching vessel’s bow as it pierces a roller, then runs out into the angry North Sea.
“Bright Spark!” Beatrice replies. “About five miles away!” Spinning the sensor, her enhanced sight returns to the Nightmare just in time to see it breach, fly through the air, then plunge beneath the ocean surface. Waters light up with a red glow as it passes below the waves. Running straight toward them, tentacles tucking together, a form the size of an undersea sky scraper and moving at terrifying velocity. The waves to either side of it hollow out like a canyon as it displaces an extraordinary volume of water. In front, a fifty foot high bow wave builds. Trailing behind — a mile long and hundred foot wide path of smoke and fire. “The Nightmare! It’s two miles off and coming in quick!”
Finn responds by giving Sun Shepherd full power. They speed up, running away from the Nightmare. Toward Bright Spark. Toward Wind-Sun Isle. The sickening cork-screw motion of the vessel only broken by brief periods of going airborne over the wave tops followed by pounding slams. After about a minute and a half of this frantic flight, even nimble Beatrice’s feet feel bruised from the constant pounding. Her legs and knees aching from the strain.
From The Destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum. John Martin. Commons.
The Nightmare grows in size. Its fires spread wide behind, casting flickering light and shadows across Sun Shepherd, tainting the waves red. Waves begin to look like mountains of blood. Bright Spark is coursing through a V of spray just two miles ahead.
“What are they thinking? How could they possibly help us?” Beatrice whispers as she watches Spark’s valiant progress.
Sadie seems to hear. Her only response — a half smile and a knowing nod.
Another surprise Sadie’s set up? How could she know? How could she plan for this?
Less than a mile away, the Nightmare breaches. Its massive form rises into the air. Its tentacles spread wide. For a moment, it hangs in the air. Tentacles point. Flames across it flicker out as they are sucked inside. The dark, metallic body pulses red. One-by-one, fires light up on tentacle tips. From these fires, ten beams shoot out — two for the longer arms, eight for the tentacles. They angle in toward a space in front of the Nightmare’s wedge-shaped head, fuse together. A ball of intense red light grows in front of the Nightmare. It expands. Then pulses. A single, lava-like beam bursts forth. WWWOOOOMMM!!! The beam blasts out, ten feet wide, toward Sun Shepherd. The entire storm afire in its Hellish glow.
“Clypeus!” Beatrice shouts, throwing up a shield in front of Sun Shepherd.
“Clypeus!” Mori incants as he adds his own protective energy.
The shields form overlapping white caps across Sadie’s hazy Praesidiabarrier on Sun Shepherd’s port side.
Glenda and Sadie brace. Franz tucks into a protective ball. Ivan, seeming entranced, lifts a hand toward the black and red light. “Sssshhhiiiitttt!” Karl cries out as the molten flood of Nightmare energy opens like an evil sun on their left. It vaporizes a hundred feet of wave-section rising toward them, carving a deep furrow through the waters as it envelopes Sun Shepherd. The extreme burst of energy melts through Mori’s shield in an instant. Beatrice’s barrier sheds some of the beam’s force before weakening. Red holes open through its white substance — consuming it in moments. Sadie’s Praesidia takes the remainder, breaking the larger beam into a ten smaller ones. Shards of red light cleave in all directions. Some fragments of the blast shoot through. One, deflected aft, rips a long seam in Sun Shepherd’s port side along the waterline and near the engines. The vessel groans and leans far to the right, then slams down into the hole made by the blast. Walls of sea close around them as Shepherd is covered. Again, Beatrice sees blue water through the bridge windows. Completely submerged. With a loud roar, water begins to pour into Shepherd’s lower decks through the blast hole.
After releasing its great blast, the Nightmare slams back down onto the sea surface with an immense BBBOOOOMMMM!!! that vibrates Sun Shepherd from bow to stern. Its red light spills through the water as it resumes its predatory plunge.
Glenda opens her eyes. “We’re sinking!” She shouts.
“Not yet!” Finn replies as he flicks a series of switches on the helm console.
Beatrice shoots him a questioning glance.
“Electronic hatches! I just shut all the doors on the starboard side!” The vessel groans, comes to rights. Then, ponderously like a weighted cork, pushes up to the surface. Water runs away from the bridge windows, sheds from its beleaguered deck. “Franz! Karl! Down below! I want you to check on flooding and ensure the seals are holding!”
Franz and Karl unstrap, run to a hatch, then scramble down into the lower decks. Sun Shepherd sways, sitting low in the water, and yet makes headway against the raging seas. One electric drive still dutifully pushing the vessel onward. The other drive is silent — knocked out by the Nightmare’s devastating strike. To their left, the monster looms. Its massive, burning nose plowing through a wave four sets back. Its great tentacles, each nearly as wide as Sun Shepherd, flail like a swarm of burning tornadoes. Fires rage across it, in the water around it — casting flickering shadows throughout the bridge.
“Fuck!” Mori exclaims.
“It’s coming. Make ready.” Beatrice says. Her voice sounds far calmer than she feels. The vessel, moving slower now, sitting lower in the water, seems oddly quiet. With one smooth motion, she draws her rapier. The marks containing stored curses running down its blade flash in the growing red light. One is dim. Three remain. The vessel, now struggling in the water after the hit, wallows as a wave crashes over its deck. Less than a mile off, Bright Spark leaps over a wave top, slams down into a trough. Beatrice feels a ridiculous urge to laugh at its confident advance toward them. Compared to the Nightmare, it is puny. Toy-like. I hope they’ve got some kind of surprise ready. I’m about out.
Beatrice turns toward the Nightmare. From its skin, five forms leap into the air. They arise in flame. Spread clawed hands wide. Each hand — the shape of a spider. Storm winds and smoke swirl around them, bear them aloft. Their hollow gaze casts down upon Sun Shepherd as their lanky forms descend. CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! CRACK! They slam in staccato bursts onto the deck. Metal buckles, solar panels shatter from the impact. They rise up. Fire and black smoke licks from their bodies. They open their hands, each finger tipped in a two foot long claw like a knife. Five pairs of hollow eyes gaze upon the bridge. All stare straight at Ivan.
Ivan is standing. His harness unbuckled. His own beady eyes meet with their hollow ones. Beatrice can see the flare of diabolical magic burning beneath his clothes. His wound — the one the Pride Eater gave him at Furze Bank — is lighting up in the demons’ presence. His spirit, already selfish, cynical, corrupt gives little resistance. Beatrice watches the dark magic spring out of the wound to grasp him like a claw.
“Mori!” Beatrice shouts. He’s already in motion. He stands, presses the red button on his case. His magical firearm unfolds, seeming to leap into his hands.
Glenda reaches a hand out to her father. She sees the Pride Eaters. Everyone sees them. All but Franz and Karl who’re still below. Tears run down Glenda’s face. “Father! No. Don’t. You’re not for them. You’re a person. You should be!”
Ivan shrinks in a shudder of pain. But he does not turn. He does not acknowledge his daughter. He does not see her. He is a man wholly possessed by the Pride Eaters. He takes another step toward the monsters.
“Hells to the no!” Mori shouts. With one quick motion he chambers a Macto round, then leaps to stand between Ivan and the Pride Eaters.
Beatrice crouches, ready to spring.
********
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
The zodiac’s motor whirs. A gust flings spray off the Brons — splashing Beatrice’s face. Smoke stench from the fires fades as they speed toward flooded marshlands. Swells grow. The zodiac bobs and rolls. She huddles close to her companions — Mori, Sadie, dour Ivan, a surprisingly chipper Finn — in the bobbing boat. Above and ahead are towering masses of cloud. Fingers of lightning flicker at their dark bases. She can’t yet make out the North Sea. It’s blocked by low islands covered in grasses and scrubby trees. The marsh churns in chop and foam.
A wave bumps her face into her hand as the boat skips into the marsh. The soft scent of horse upon her skin — a momentary comfort. Ivan thought her calming the gentle creatures was curse magic. Only the craft of long years spent observing, learning their subtle gestures, how to cant her body and voice to project compassion. To earn their trust. It came easy. For she loved them in all their beauty and innocence. She had decades and decades more experience at it than any human. A practice in empathy. No curses required.
The zodiac plows into the marsh, lifting and dipping through swells and chop. It handles rough water surprisingly well, lifted up on a wave formed by its forward motion. Nonetheless, spray splashes in. Soon they’re all wet. Mori has a mad grin on his face. It makes her laugh. She’s pretty sure he’s trying to bleed off tension.
Finn points to an outlet emerging before them. The water broadens. It roils with chop and rising waves. A tumultuous confluence opening to an angry North Sea. Out there, massive rollers drop tails of white spray as they tumble before the storm. Jagged gray and white teeth pointing toward an angry cloud deck above. “There she is!” he shouts into the rising gale. “Our good Sun Shepherd.”
Beatrice follows the line of his finger. Tossed about in the confluence is a vessel about 100 feet long and covered from stem-to-stern in glistening solar panels.
Mori turns to her. Excitement flicks across his wet face. He’s such a geek for these things. “Badass! It’s one of those new electric boats. Skateboard battery laid through the keel. Super-efficient motors. Covered in solar panels, it’s got a practically unlimited range.” She grins back at him. His excitement is infectious.
“Wonderful! Can it handle the storm?” Beatrice asks as the zodiac flies over a large swell, catches air for a moment, then slams down into the trough. Spray flies everywhere. They’re all double-drenched now. The little craft is powering out through the choppy confluence. Her teeth clack together as they slam into another swell. Her hands, white-knuckled cling to a rope looped along the gunnel. Beatrice feels like she’s riding a child’s toy boat getting tossed around in a bathtub by a capricious toddler. Sadie’s holding on, gritting her teeth, closing her eyes against the spray. Ivan’s curled up in the zodiac’s bottom. His face taking on an unhealthy, green tint.
“Our little Sun Shepherd’s a fast one,” Finn says in answer. He’s stooped down on his knees. One hand on the motor handle, another gripping a cleat. “Her top speed’s a hundred and twenty! She won’t be so fast in this mess. But she’ll get us to Wind-Sun Isle in about a couple hours.” He points out toward a dark base of cloud rushing toward them. “We should miss the worst of it. Though I think we’ll take that gust-front head-on.”
The zodiac flies through the air, lands, then pitches. A breaker barrels over the little craft, flooding it in about four inches of water. Pumps kick in — spitting spray out behind the small boat as it barrels toward a majestic Sun Shepherd. Coming up alongside it, Beatrice takes stock of its size. At twenty-two feet wide and a hundred feet long, she dwarfs their zodiac. Massive waves, looming like hills behind, made her look surprisingly vulnerable as the larger vessel turns to shelter them from the onslaught churning out of the North Sea. Two crewmen toss lines overboard. Mori catches one. They haul the boat in, then swing a boom over the side to fasten the craft. Finn points to a ladder. One-by-one they clamber up — emerging onto a pitching deck with all the dignity of soaked cats. Beatrice times the swell, springs, shoots past the ladder and lands gracefully on the deck amidst a rain of spray. She blows her wet hair aside, relieved to be free of the tiny zodiac.
“Show-off,” Mori quips as he staggers up beside her, clutching his briefcase in one hand, gripping a hand-hold with the other. Every surface on the sleek vessel except for a narrow wooden walkway is covered in solar panels or solar film. It makes Beatrice think of a great black whale. Ivan is leaning over the railing, making foul noises. Sadie sways as she clenches a crew member’s offered hand. Finn scampers down to the first well deck at the vessel’s rear, he motions for them to follow. Beatrice lets a crewman — Karl — guide her companions back to the well as she assists another crew member — Franz — in attaching the zodiac to a pair of ropes, then hoisting it up using metal booms. With her help, it takes only a minute.
“You do ship work?” Franz asks in halting English, not aware she has omnis scientia drifting close by for translation.
“Yes. Back home,” Beatrice says simply. What she doesn’t say is her home world, Merrin, is almost entirely covered by water. Ships there are far different from those plying Earth’s own increasingly dangerous seas. Some principles of seacraft, though, are universal.
Franz makes a sound that could be an impressed grunt as they fasten the zodiac to a berth on Sun Shepherd’s roof. The noise is drowned out by the roaring sea. He pops a panel, then motions for her to help him fold a hard shell over the boat. She works with him to pull the sections out, fighting gusts as Sun Shepherd turns her nose into the waves. The shell comes in three parts. Each is covered with solar film. They snap sections together, attach electrical plugs to some internal wiring, and then are drenched by spray as the bow cleaves through what must be a fifteen foot wave. The wave’s force momentarily hurls them into the air. Beatrice turns instinctively, grabs a cleat, then with her trailing hand snags Franz by the hood of his rain slicker. They slam back down onto the deck. Franz scrambles up. Blinks at her in surprise and gratitude. Then gives a matter of fact nod. “Good!” He shouts. “Now best get below!” The roar of waves and wind nearly drowns out his voice.
Beatrice smiles at his affirmation. She nods toward the well, indicating he should go first. Franz curses something about how he should be helping her. She flicks his prideful outburst away with a glance, then watches on protectively as he struggles to reach the well across a pitching deck. She comes to her feet. In little bounds, she springs behind, riding the deck like a surfboard. Franz doesn’t look back. But Beatrice can see Mori keeping eyes on her through the bridge’s glass. He, Sadie, and a young woman are watching her escort Franz back to the well. The young woman — she must be Glenda Goodfuture — is staring with naked awe as the harsh elements force the large and muscled Franz to lurch and stagger even as Beatrice rides through it all with the grace of dancer.
At last, they reach the well. Franz lunges toward the door as Sun Shepherd pitches through a massive roller. Walls of foam surge on either side. He lurches through, nearly falling, still managing to hold the door open for her. She waits for the wave to pitch the stern upward, then uses its momentum to leap through, flying past him. Her boots squishing on a dry cockpit floor — the only sound she makes.
She’s greeted immediately by a beaming Glenda Goodfuture. “Bravo! Excellent!” she exclaims as she claps, then hands her a towel. “I was scared for you. But you make fighting through a storm look like body art.” She puts out her hand. “I’m Glenda.”
Now it’s Beatrice’s turn to be impressed. Here before her was the pint-sized climate activist who’d taken the world by storm — forcing so many to reconsider their place on Earth and what they were doing to protect it for future generations. She nods a gracious thank you for the towel, then extends her hand. “Honored to finally meet you,” she says.
Glenda takes her hand, pumping it with a surprisingly firm grip for one so small. Beatrice at 5′ 4″ looks down at 5′ tall Glenda. She’s thin, early twenties, long sandy-blonde hair pulled back into a pony tail. Her T-shirt reads the now widespread youth climate message — #ClimateStrike #FridaysForFuture. A tiny form for quite a force. “Given your outfit, I figured you must be Erroll Flynn’s girlfriend. But he says you’re married.” She gives Mori, who looks every part the drowned crow, a disapproving frown.
Mori staggers forward, propelled back and forth by the Shepherd pitching as it struggles through the seas, hugs Beatrice, clears his throat awkwardly. “I definitely got the better end of that bargain.”
“Yee-ah,” Glenda says with an eye roll, then turns toward her father, her mouth scrunched up into a pensive frown. Ivan’s finally recovered. He looks green. His expression hang-dog. The bruises on his head are turning into ugly shiners. His burned hand is wrapped up in a gauze someone must’ve scrounged up while Beatrice was on deck securing the zodiac.
“Valyria, should’ve never left,” Ivan says to her in Russian. Omnis scientia, trailing behind Beatrice and patterned with interpretor, dutifully translates. “Your home was forsaken.”
Glenda drops Beatrice’s hand, giving it a pat as she releases it, then turns in anger toward her father. “Nonsense! I had to!” Glenda shouts in English, her brows lowered in sudden fury. “You! You left! You! Too selfish to do what’s right! You tried to force me! To be like you!” Glenda’s face is red at her brief but intense outburst. “I did what I must! What you wouldn’t!”
Ivan’s face flushes. Her use of English in front of everyone is like a slap in the face. “Valyria…” Ivan starts, his mouth working. “To be an adult…” he continues in Russian.
“Is not easy?” she interrupts in English. “You always say that. I did the harder thing. I took responsibility. That makes me the adult!”
Ivan clamps his mouth shut. His eyes cut side-to-side. Everyone on the bridge is silent. Mori’s stupid grin is back. Outside the waves rage higher. The wind howls. Lightning strikes a wave-top about a half mile away. “I missed you…” He says lamely through the roaring thunder.
“And I you. Ever since you went to work for that stupid bank. Ever since age 12 when I lost my father!” Glenda shouts, her face red, she hops on her toes, tears of rage fall from her eyes. “This!” She points at the mages, at the raging storm, at the Sun Shepherd. “This is the result! Devils! Terrorists! You’re a fucking shapechanger!” She glances at Sadie, but does not relent. “A devil’s fish hook’s in your heart! This is my intervention. Your last fucking chance to be a fucking human!”
On the bridge consul, a red light begins to flash and an alarm sounds. Finn, who’d taken the helm as soon as he entered the bridge picks up a hand mike, keys the tab. “Attention! Crew and passengers! Brace! Brace! Brace! Large wave inbound!”
Beatrice, spins, flicks omnis scientia out the front window. Ahead, a massive blue and white wall rises — easily towering forty feet above the sea surface. Its top rolls. She grabs hold of a handle. The others scramble to brace themselves. Glenda is caught unawares. Ivan freezes. Finn guns the engine — pushing Sun Shepherd up the wave face and toward its axe-shaped peak. Beatrice makes a decision. “Hit the deck!” she shouts, then jumps from her place of safety, grabbing both Glenda and Ivan, she pushes them to the floor. The wave crashes. The outer deck roils under a wall of whitewater. It slams over the window. For a moment, the bridge is submerged. Blue water swirls around omnis scientia where it hovers just over the deck. Behind them, windows reveal a maelstrom of white. Beatrice, Ivan and Glenda are lifted bodily, then flung in a tangle onto a nearby couch. The Sea Shepherd gathers itself beneath the wave, powerful electric engines making a space-ship sound. Then, with a rush and an explosion of spray, the vessel bursts through the wave’s back — resurfacing like a submarine.
Sea Shepherd bobs for a few seconds behind the wave, rights itself, then swiftly plows onward. Electric drives pushing a tail of water behind. Finn turns around. “Everyone OK? Thumbs up! Let me see them.” he shouts over the roaring wind and sea. They managed to brace. All except Beatrice, Glenda and Ivan who’re busy untangling themselves. Everyone gives the thumbs up. “Good!” Finn says. “Now, better buckle in. This monster storm has quite the bite!”
Beatrice helps Glenda fasten a seatbelt in the couch, then makes sure Ivan’s buckled in beside her. Whatever else she may think of Ivan, he’s still Glenda’s father. Despite everything, Glenda clearly still loves him. Beatrice, at last satisfied both he and Glenda are safe, begins to snap her own buckle.
“Not you,” Finn says back to her. “You’ve got the best sea legs I’ve ever seen. And Sadie told me… Well, I know about your talent. You have your special sight active?”
“It’s called omnis scientia. And yes. It’s floating just above the deck near the prow.”
“I may need you to use it to help navigate this mess. Up here!” He pats a co-pilot’s seat next to him. Beatrice springs up to it. In one smooth motion, she buckles in. She scans the array of indicators and screens. Depth finders, wave height measures, level of battery charge (eighty three percent), various outside cameras mostly blurred out by rain and waves, lidar and radar, the red collision warning light that just blinked out.
She turns and gives a little two-figured salute to Finn. “Aye, captain!” she replies, then flicks omnis scientia on ahead. It lifts off the prow, flits over raging wave-tops. “I’ve moved omnis scientia out to 300 feet in front of the vessel.”
“Good! Let me know if there’s another large wave coming. Something about double the size of regular swells.” He hesitates, takes in the raging sea-state. “Or larger… Describe it to me. That –” he points to the red collision warning indicator, now dim, “is just a dummy light.”
Beatrice gives the thumbs up.
“The rest of you, pipe down,” Finn continues. “We’re in for a rough ride out to Wind-Sun. You can settle your differences when you get there. Let’s make sure you do!”
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
The solar train barrels on. Bruised, beaten. Yet whole.
A crack yawns in a forward car’s roof. Scorch marks from the Nightmare’s attempt to possess the vehicle cover its length. Melted plastic, seared-off paint, shattered windows — all bear mute testimony to a devil’s assault. The train’s glowing caboose bucks and jolts as the devil — trapped inside by Sadie’s angelic magic — rages against its bindings. Clouds rising to the north shade a falling sun. Winds whip through dry and overheated lands. Leaves fallen, too soon, from unnatural heat swirl around the train as it rushes north toward the growing storm. The whole scene — cast in red-grey.
Throughout the train, passengers are peeking out from hiding places. Taking stock. Trying to make sense of the madness they just witnessed. Some cower back in fear as the caboose bucks or as ghostly, Nightmare faces half-form on the interior train wall — only to be wiped away by Sadie’s protective magic. Other passengers creep out, embrace loved ones, or dial on their cells with trembling hands. The remaining security force scampers about in confusion, trying to make sense of the destruction left by Gibbons Crane and his Nightmare. Disturbing news crackles on the police radio. Reports of roving armed bands. Clusters of Berserkers approach the train tracks ahead. There’s little the officers can do but ask for more help.
In the Sleipnir’s locomative, the engineer monitors frantic radio traffic. He doesn’t know what the hell’s going on. Reports coming in don’t make any damn sense. What he does know is his train’s been hit by something. Warning lights flash all over his board. If this were just a malfunction, he’d stop the train here and wait for repairs. Too risky to go on. But with the terrorist threat — that’s what they were calling it anyway — protocol is to keep moving. Police are setting up a cordon around Esbjerg and pushing south. Meanwhile, all kinds off assets are en-route to protect the track even as more of those damn Berserker extremists gather. What a goddamn mess! He sure as hell didn’t sign up for this shit when he took the job.
Some cars back from the locomotive, Mori stands, takes stock. He’s about halfway down on his ammo. His energetic vessel’s a quarter full. His eyes flick to Beatrice. Except for a few patterned curses left in her clothes and rapier, his girl’s tapped out. Sadie’s a different story. He doesn’t know squat about her present state. But he bets she’s also starting to run low — after all the serious magic she just pulled off. He rolls his hand into a fist bump, extends it to Sadie. “Beatrice did face down that Curse Rider. But you were the brains behind this whole stunt. Major props.”
Sadie returns his fist bump. “Not out of the woods, yet, my good Mori,” she replies.
“Huh. You can say that again.”
Beatrice flicks the cigarette stink and ash of devil’s magic off her rapier, then sheathes it. Taking a breath, she turns to the passengers. An elderly lady struggles on the ground. Beatrice stoops to lift her. Helps her back to her seat. Checks her for broken bones — all while speaking in soothing tones. Ivan’s gathered himself into a ball in a nearby empty seat. His eyes flare with barely checked rage. Sadie produces a water bottle, hands it to him. Ivan reaches out mechanically. Grasps the bottle. Lifts it to his lips, shoots Mori a baleful glance. Mori’s not going to engage with the guy. Jackass got what he deserved. Still can’t believe we’re doing everything to get this guy into Heaven.
Mori joins Beatrice in helping the passengers. Hot wind whirls in through the open hole overhead. Sweat sticks to the back of his neck. He wonders how Myra’s coping in Hell’s Infernia. Heat here is damned unpleasant, even a little dangerous. It’s a fast-killing inferno she’s facing off against down there. Far behind, bangs and thumps from the Curse Rider’s tireless attempts to escape continue. Over the train car walls, Mori can see Nightmare ghosts all a-flicker. Both are testing Sadie’s traps. No success for either yet. He glances over at Sadie. Beads of sweat glisten on her face as she strains to shore up her curses. His eyes swirl with magical detection as he picks up the energy bleeding off her. Rejuvenating her bindings over both devil and Nightmare. That kind of exertion can’t last forever, Mori worries.
He reaches over to Sadie. “Hey. Don’t suffer is silence. If you need help…”
“I’ve got this,” Sadie interupts. “You refresh what magic you can. We’re going to need it for the crossing.”
Mori casts his eyes to the window — glancing out at the gathering storm. “Yeah. You’re in charge of this part and all. But did we really have to pick the North Sea?”
Sadie laughs. Somehow she finds his question funny.
Mori grins back. At least they still have humor. Police style humor. Laughing at horrific stuff because that’s all you got left.
The Sleipnir train, wounded, holding Curse Rider and Nightmare bound within its angel-magicked form, barrels onward. Fields and woods rush by. They pass into a lowland interspersed by rivers — their banks buttressed by dikes. To their left is a marshland — drowning in the relentless flood of a North Sea swollen by melting glaciers hundreds to thousands of miles distant. Wind turbines spin mighty blades in the gusts. Drinking deep of the rising storm’s energy and feeding it back into a continent-spanning web of electrical connections. Part of Europe’s effort to face down a raging climate. Only half answered in the States and China. An olive branch scorched in Hellish fossil fuel fires by reactionaries and those seeking safety under brutal strong-men. White caps roll across the marsh. Churning down reeds and drowning unprotected woods. Some of the lower dikes have spray over-topping them. Floods are a common occurrence here in the lowlands now. Pumps continuously push the sea back. Without something akin to a miracle, it’s just a matter of time before the whole place drowns. Mori doesn’t want to think about what the North Sea looks like.
Minutes pass. Passengers drift into a kind of fear-fugue as ghosts flicker across the train — its caboose shrieking in agony at the Curse Rider’s relentless pounding. Miles tic down. At last, Sadie stands. “Time to get ready,” she says. “Up on the roof.”
Beatrice gets up, helps a grumbling Ivan rise. “Worst train ride of life. Better be worth it,” he mutters.
“Hush you old curmudgeon,” Beatrice says. Trying to lighten the mood and failing.
Standing on the backs of seats, they clamber up to the train’s roof. “We’re approaching the Brons River,” Sadie says. “We should see it in a handful of miles. After we pass through this wood. We’ll jump when we get there.” Scrambling atop the moving train, Mori ignores the loud blows coming from the caboose and turns to face the wind. Peering ahead, he sees a large, dense wood. Rising up from it is a cloud of black smoke. Lit underneath by wicked flames, the smoke boils — grabbing at the afternoon sky like a twisted hand. Fire roars in the fanning wind. It hungrily engulfs dry fuel — trees, shrubs, brush. All left desiccated after months of extreme heat.
Flicking his senses to omnis scientia, Mori looks out over the fire and through the forest. Flames extend along a three quarter mile swath crossing the train tracks and swiftly jumping from tree-to-tree. Beneath omnis scientia, a tree explodes into a pyre. His vision wavers. He pushes the sensor through a black bulge of smoke. Darkness envelopes it for about thirty seconds. Finally, it crosses into clear air. Behind the fires are Berserkers. Riding their bikes off-road and along trails, they hurl Molotov cocktails — spurring the flames still higher. About twenty in all range through the burning wood. Behind them the Brons sparkles green-blue. Even its sheltered strand is capped in white.
“Oh shit!” Mori says. He turns to Beatrice. “You seeing this?”
Her mouth forms a grim line as she nods. “They’re firebombing the woods! Curse Rider must have some way to send word to his thralls. Even trapped in Sadie’s cage.”
“We’ll need to go around,” Sadie says, staring straight into the inferno. “Looks like we’re jumping train a bit sooner than expected.”
Ivan groans.
Then, the mighty Sleipnir train begins to break. The flames are too dense. Too intense for the damaged train to safely pass through. Wheels squeal and spark. They come to a halt after about a mile of forward motion. Fields surround them. Ahead, the woods rage with fire. In the distance, police lights flash. Some approach the train. Others cut around the woods — angling toward the Berserkers.
Pluma!Una! Sadie incants, then grabs Ivan’s hand. They jump, landing lightly on the ground. Mori extends his hand to Beatrice, using some of his precious remaining curse energy on the magic that bears them safely to ground. Behind them, the ailing train lets out a groan. The caboose emits another shriek and then lurches as the Curse Rider strikes it. Damn devil is tossing around its sixty ton bulk like a toy. Smell of smoke fills the air. All around are piles of half-eaten hay. Beatrice cracks a grin as she rushes to a wooden fence then gracefully bounds over.
Live stream of Fire and Escape. Originally streamed on Twitch here.
Mori cracks a wry grin. Sadie turns to him. “What’s she doing?”
“Oh you just wait. My girl, well, she has this thing…” He trails off relishing the surprise.
Beatrice streaks over a hill. She’s moving faster than any of them are able to. Could probably outrun an Olympic sprinter if it came to that. But Beatrice’s haste is bound up both in their present urgency and in her momentary joy. In the distance, Mori hears a loud, low raspberry-type sound. Then, a rhythmic pounding. Suddenly Beatrice emerges over the hilltop astride a tall white mare with two other horses — a chestnut mare and a black stallion — in tow. She’s got this crazy grin painting her face.
“Yeah,” Mori continues. “As I was saying, Beatrice has this thing for horses.”
Beatrice trots the horses over to them. “They were just on the other side of that rise,” Beatrice says. “Hunkered down, poor things. Terrified by fire and noise. But I’ve calmed them. They say they’ll help us get where we need to go.”
“You can speak to horse?” Ivan says, incredulous.
“They’re better conversationalists than many people I know.”
Ivan scoffs.
Sadie puts her hands together and grins. “Best thing to happen in all of this Hellish day!”
Behind them, the train groans again under the titanic weight of another Curse Rider blow. The horses shy. Beatrice swiftly soothes them. “Time to mount up!” Mori says, looking over his shoulder at the ailing train.
It takes some work, as both Sadie and Ivan have little experience with horses. But after about a minute all four are mounted — Beatrice on the white, Mori on the black, and Sadie and Ivan on the mare. They’re all bare-back. None have time to go to the far-off barn to look for bit, bridle, or saddle.
Beatrice hangs back close to the chestnut — keeping her calm despite Ivan’s jostling and Sadie’s tentative motions. “Poor beast,” Beatrice says. But she’s not looking at the mare. She’s staring directly at the solar train. “Farewell, good mount. You were valiant. We thank you,” she says to the Sleipnir. Then, turning, she guides them off over the ranch’s lands, angling toward the fire’s southern edge. Behind them, the ailing Sleipnir continues to protest under the Curse Rider’s abuse. Three police cars screech to a halt beside the train. Doors pop open. Officers flood out then swiftly board. A police captain stands outside, scratching his head as he watches devil light play up and down the train’s length.
“Pretty sure Sadie’s ingenious trap won’t last too much longer,” Mori says, glancing back. “Best make tracks.”
Beatrice picks up speed in response, bringing the horses to a swift walk. Sadie and Ivan cling to their horse in terror. Good thing the chestnut’s both calm and mild mannered. Mori doubts a different horse would tolerate Ivan’s pinching grip or Sadie’s startled lurches. Despite Beatrice holding the horses back, they make good time. Mori bleeds some curse energy into ignarus even as he shifts omnis scientia overhead. The Berserkers have lost the Curse Rider’s direct aid. But Mori doesn’t want to take chances. The day’s coughed up too many nasty surprises already.
Fire on their right provides a screen as they move south and west. At least three Berserkers are prowling near the river. No-one bothers them as they exit the ranch, then continue on past the fire by following nature trails. Sadie’s on her phone, calling someone named Finn. Apparently, he’s the boat driver.
“Yes, Finn?” Sadie says. “We’ve had some more trouble… Yes. A fire! Yes. Please meet us before the highway.” She lurches on her horse, almost toppling over.
They pass a highway, angle into a wooded area. About a half mile off, they can hear the loud rumble of motor cycles. Combustion engines designed to make a racket now give away Berserkers’ positions making them easy for Beatrice to avoid. Emerging from the woods, they trot by a hotel. Some residents are standing outside gawping at the fire — now about a half-mile distant. The energy Mori’s bled into ignarus is so strong they don’t cast a second glance at the motley gang of riders. At last, they come to the river Brons. Once a narrow river, the Brons during recent years swelled due to sea level rise and spilled over its banks. It’s now doubled to forty feet and is hemmed in by numerous dikes. They climb the dike to find a zodiac-style boat with an electric motor waiting for them. A smiling man topped by a mop of blonde hair greets them.
“Hallo!” he says, giving a warm smile. “I’m Finn! Your boat captain. I hear you had quite the train ride?”
“You could say we had a devil of a time,” Mori quips.
Finn grins at the play on words. “Well, better get a move-on. Place is crawling with that nasty biker gang. Come now. Climb aboard!”
Beatrice dismounts, then helps Sadie and Ivan off their mare. Mori slides off his black stallion. It was a quick ride. But he’d grown to like the fella. He pats him in farewell, wishing he had an apple or a sugar cube to leave as thanks. Beatrice gathers the horses together, whispers some words in their ears, then urges them off. They begin a circular route — tracking well away from the fire. Shuffling down the dike’s embankment, Mori, Beatrice, Sadie and Ivan clamber onto the zodiac. Once they’re all settled, Finn pushes a button on his electric out-board motor and the little craft speeds quietly down the Brons. Spray, driven by the strong wind, splashes over the boat’s nose. River’s far too small for much chop. But out ahead, the flooded marsh churns angrily. Mori grabs the gunnel and gets ready for a wild ride.
“Hope there’s a much bigger boat before the end of this ride,” he says.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
“The Nightmare’s in the frigging train!” Mori shouts.
Beatrice spins, facing front. There’s a lurch, a shriek of wheels. The train contorts, jumping on its tracks, throwing passengers back and forth. Ghostly light strobes along the walls. People crouch and cower near her. Terrified murmurs surround her. What do I do? My energetic vessel’s almost empty. The Curse Rider’s arrival in terrible glory has left her stunned. Breathless.Fear threads through her — trying to freeze her to the floor. She spins, leaps up beside Mori.
“What now?” He says, his jaw line clenching in tension.
“We figure out some way to fight him,” She replies. To her ears, she sounds far more confident than she feels. “To exorcise the Nightmare.”
Sadie stands up. Puts a hand on Beatrice’s arm. “Wait. We’ve chosen our ground well. Look carefully.”
Beatrice lifts her eyes to the wall, watches the Nightmare’s ghostly spirit rushing back and forth through the train. Metal shudders. Plastic smolders. Wheels squeal and grind. But the train’s form does not change. There is no diabolical transformation.
“You see now? We picked a solar train for good reason. They don’t call it fueled by Heaven for nothing.” Then, Sadie lifts her hand, touches the train’s wall and incants “Ligamen Malum!” Blue-white light pulses out. A series of white rings expands from her point of contact. The rings ripple through the train — creating an interlocking chain of binding circles. The Nightmare spirit shrieks, fades, then melts back in silence. Smooth forward motion resumes. Beatrice’s eyes swirl with magical detection. The Nightmare thrashes. But it cannot escape from Sadie’s binding. Stuck in a substance anathema to its nature. Bound by a chain of celestial magic drawing strength from the solar train’s innate benevolence. For now, the demon is locked down, unable to move.
“You trapped it!” Beatrice exclaims in surprise and relief. “You chose the train for this reason didn’t you? You knew.”
Sadie taps the train’s deck with her foot, a sheepish grin spreading over her face. “What does Myra call this sort of conveyance? I heard her say it once?”
“Mobile holy ground, Highlander!” Mori says. “Damn, what a move! I saw you touch the wall and concentrate earlier. Didn’t know it was to work a heavy-weight curse!”
Beatrice wipes away a tear that forms, unbidden, at mention of her daughter. “The idea to set this trap came from something Myra said?”
“That’s as crazy as it is cool,” Mori actually laughs.
“No time to celebrate,” Sadie says. “We’ve knocked out one of his main weapons. But we still have a Curse Rider to deal with.”
“What’s the plan?” Beatrice asks.
“I’m drawing a blank too,” Mori says. He shares a glance with Beatrice, worry plain in his expression. “We’re both about tapped out.”
Ivan groans, clutches his belly, then barfs on the floor. Sadie grabs his collar, hoists him up. “We know what the Curse Rider wants.” She motions to Ivan. “Don’t we? For certainty, he hunts you to take your wisps. But he’s also here for Ivan. And as complicated as our Russian friend here makes things for us, he’s also splitting the Curse Rider’s focus.” Sadie pats Ivan on the back, then starts guiding him to the rear of the car.
“It’s a delay tactic,” Mori says.
Beatrice nods. “We move the quarries. Keep him guessing.” Flicking her sense through omnis scientia, she can see the Curse Rider raging on the train’s roof. His Nightmare trapped, his once-cool demeanor is now melting into a rictus of ugly rage. His eyes follow the magical lines running from the sensor back to Beatrice and Mori. With great leaps that seem impossible for such a whip-thin body, he begins bounding toward them. Where his feet touch the sanctified train, angry sparks lash out at him, burning him. He pays no mind as boots and cloths are blasted away. As human flesh sears to black and red scales, his feet taking on the shape of talons. “He’s coming! Let’s move!”
As they stand, Officer Winkler finally recovers from her shock at the madness caused by what she thinks is a mass phone hacking. She’s close, overhearing their conversation. Though some of it’s not processing for her, the magical parts mostly, she grasps the gist of their plan. Then, her police radio blares with a confusing report of a helicopter landing on the roof and depositing a likely hijacker. She stands, pulls her firearm. “Good idea! Get to the train’s rear! We’ll do what we can to protect your dignitary!” Winkler rushes into the next car, joins two other officers, then uses the emergency access to get to the roof.
Beatrice lifts a hand, then incants praesidia! The blue light of her protection curse shoots toward the officers, enveloping them in a momentary flare. She ties off the energy, watching sparks trail them as they climb onto the roof. It’ll last about ten minutes. Hopefully enough. Probing her energetic vessel she finds she’s got maybe one strong curse left. She doesn’t regret it. Those officers are good people going into a situation they don’t understand. One where they’re completely outclassed.
The Curse Rider is ten cars back and coming on fast. They turn and rush headlong toward the train’s rear. Running itself isn’t a strategy. It buys them time. And not much. Cunning Sadie must have another trick card in her deck.
Sadie grabs her by the shirt. “I know you’re almost out! Save your last magic until I tell you to use it! Going to need your special talent!”
Beatrice nods back, mouth forming a grim line. “Aye, my captain!” she replies, then rushes onward, checking her speed to make sure her companions can keep up. Most mages have specializations. Sadie’s are healing, binding, protection and traps. Mori’s involve information gathering, detection, stealth, obfuscation, and weapon-enhanced ranged combat. She has a few areas of magical specialization, but she bets Sadie will draw something from her wide-ranging, mobility-enabling quiver.
They pass through one train car. Another. Passengers stare in obvious shock from the phone disturbance, the jolting train, the diabolical light show. Warnings about a possible unauthorized boarder blare through the speakers. Ivan stumbles. Mori hit him pretty hard. Can’t say I blame him. Asmodeus’s Prophet is also cradling a burned hand, suffers from many bruises. The wound in his back and wisp from the Pride-Eater’s talon clearly troubles him as he lurches back and forth in a daze of pain. Beatrice hooks a hand under his arm, helping Sadie propel him onward.
Through omnis scientia, Beatrice watches as the officers climb onto the train’s roof. They shout, pointing at the Curse Rider who’s now become a horrific mash of devil and cowboy — running on taloned feet as divine energy sparks angrily around him. White light flares, rising from Sadie’s chain of binding circles. A Macto effect Sadie layered into her spell’s structure. The sparks are ripping holes in his human flesh. A superficial garment, some of it sags off in tatters — revealing more of the mottled black and red scales. A baleful black eye with a white pin-prick for its pupil scans them as the devil cowboy rushes forward, holding its black hat to its head with one hand.
“Halt!” the officers shout, weapons drawn. The interpretation from German ringing in her ears through the shared sensor.
Quicker than a cobra-strike, the devil cowboy draws his firearm. A massive six-shooter leaps into his hand. He fires. A black round erupts. It seems to expand, devouring light as it races toward its targets. The officers, pistols already out, return fire. A few bullets strike the Curse Rider. May as well be stinging gnats for all the damage they inflict. The black round shoots between the officers, contracts with a ‘wump!’ then explodes in a dark shockwave. Darkness tinged with fire bursts out, engulfing the officers and tearing a hole in the train roof. Blue light ripples, protecting them from the impact. Still, the officers are flung off like toys in warped bubbles. Two tumble away to the left. One to the right. Beatrice sees Winkler fall into bushes along the train tracks, blue light still shielding her. Safe if shook-up. The other two officers hurtle out of sight. The Curse Rider takes one leap, jumps through the hole opened by his black bullet, lands in a flare of sparks among screaming passengers, then continues his onrush from within the train.
Beatrice looks over her shoulder. She can’t see him yet. But she does see passengers cowering, diving under seats, or pressing themselves against walls. In the distance, through a series of doors, she can see material swirling around like confetti. “He’s in the train!” she shouts.
Sadie looks back at her, catches her eye. “Good,” she says.
Beatrice turns, facing the train’s rear. They sprint — slamming through doors and jumping over passengers, Ivan in tow. From behind them, the sounds of screams and crashes grows louder. Beatrice feels panic rise into her throat. Pricks run up her spine. She feels she’ll be snatched away and rent to pieces at any instant. They’re moving too fast now to look back. But the noise behind grows louder and louder.
Finally, they come to the caboose car’s entrance. Sadie lifts a hand. Beatrice spins to a halt. Mori stops, takes a knee. Ivan collapses. Toward the engine, not three cars away, the Curse Rider strides through a shower of sparks carrying Macto curses that blast into him in gory staccato. Bits of his human shell fly off — spraying over cowering and screaming passengers. He ignores them. Clawed feet hammer as he rushes toward them. Legs pistoning with terrible force that evokes both the machine and the reptilian. Eyes — twin white lights in orbs of darkness — fix on them like gun sights. His flesh and clothes are now tatters. Most of what made him look human is ripped away. His diabolical features — mottled black and bood-red scales, twin horns sprouting from his skull, long claws replacing toes and finger nails — take on most of his form now. Beatrice draws breath, in awe of what Sadie’s done with her magic. She turned the train into a gauntlet of destruction for the Curse Rider. It’s still no-where near enough. The thing she sees stands strong, barely phased by the terrible punishment coming in from all sides. The devil cowboy — it still wears its ridiculous hat — explodes into a dividing doorway. The door is thrown off its hinges with a shriek of steel. The Curse Rider bursts through. Now just two cars away.
“I hope you know what you’re doing!” Mori shouts to Sadie.
“He sees us! Good!” She shouts. “Now run! To the end of the train!”
They rush headlong. It’s a real race now and they’re losing fast. Beatrice has no idea what Sadie has in mind. But it better be good. They’re at the train’s end. All that stands between them and rushing tracks — a door of steel and glass. About a hundred feet away and opposite the door, the Curse Rider hurtles toward them. They’re trapped. Out of options.
“Mori! Shoot out the door!” Sadie shouts.
Mori, who was busy sighting down the Curse Rider, swings his weapon around, ejects the Macto magazine into his hand, switches it swiftly with a black magazine from his pocket, then aims at the door. Beatrice’s eyes widen as she recognizes the ammo. These are tungsten anti-material rounds! Mori shoots four times in succession, blasting away the hinges. The door flies off into space behind the train — tumbling like a leaf.
Sadie waves to the few passengers clustering near the caboose’s rear. “Too dangerous here! Run to the front now!” The passengers stand, scamper toward the car’s front. “Now hide! Something bad’s coming!” Sadie’s voice is laden with suggero spurring them to move despite their terror.
Not missing a beat, Sadie turns to Beatrice. “We’re going up top. Draw your sword. Use your defenses. Get its attention. Then follow my lead.” Sadie grabs Mori and Ivan. “Salire!” she incants. Together, they leap up — propelled in a swooping arc by Sadie’s curse magic. Then they’re on the roof, scampering toward the car’s front. Beatrice is now alone. She draws her curse-patterned rapier. Sparks fall from its tip. The tattoos on her feet and hands flare with magic as she prepares what remains in her energetic vessel. With her thumb, she taps the blue-white gem in her rapier’s pommel. A patterned praesidia curse triggers — enveloping her blade in a bubble of protective light. She’s deliberately bleeding a heavy amount of patterned lux into her name curse. Showing off both her nature as an angel and as a mage. A combination any devil worth its worb would lust for. In front of her, the door rips off — pinning two passengers as the Curse Rider tears it like a sheet of paper from a notebook, then casually casts it aside. She crouches. The Curse Rider’s white laser eyes in swirling darkness fall on her. She aims her sword at them. The Curse Rider hesitates for a moment, seems surprised she’s alone, glances about for her companions. The pause is only momentary. Her angelic, magical form, its vital wisp-energy fluttering within, is too spectacular a pull for a devil to resist. It tips its hat in seeming salute, lowers a hand toward the pistol on its belt, then leaps toward her.
“Sadie!!!” Beatrice shouts.
“Una!” Sadie replies. “Una!” she hears Mori speak in turn as he bridges the link between Sadie, Beatrice, himself, and Ivan. Una forms a bridge that flows like a river of magic between them. It then extends in a blue-green arc over the train, connecting them to their magical sensor — omnis scientia — hundreds of feet ahead. Beatrice’s senses are transported along the bridge to the sensor’s far-off focus. Its view is just above the hole created by the Curse Rider’s first black bullet when it exploded among the police officers minutes before.
In her real sight, she can see the Curse Rider tearing through the train’s floor with its clawed feet. “When I cast my curse use lanuae on the sensor!” Sadie shouts. The Curse Rider’s six shooter whips up. Beatrice’s sense of time dilates. The barrel seems to slowly rise. “QAUE MALA!” Sadie incants, using the binding circle curse to seal the caboose with a ward against evil.
Beatrice spins her rapier. The gun’s barrel lines up. Sparks swirl in the air. She can see the barrel through her circle of sparks like a gaping maw. The five black bullets still housed in its cylinder — each a bulge of devil’s magic waiting for launch. She grabs one spark. The gun’s hammer falls. She hurls the spark. It disappears as it passes into the magical link made by una and flares swiftly through the blue-green bridge above the train. The black bullet hurtles toward her, shadow tendrils swarm out from it. Her rapier blazes. The light of a star briefly blossoms in the caboose as praesidia forms its bubble around her. Shadow tendrils coil and swell from the black bullet. Around Beatrice, seats are ripped off their mountings and thrown from the train, windows shatter, metal bulges and cracks.
Beatrice is ejected out behind the train in this clash of forces. Tendrils blooming around the swelling black bullet core through her protective light. If they touch her, they will tear her wisp away. The black bullet will then capture it for the Curse Rider to enslave. Hundreds of feet ahead, in the train that is now leaving her behind, her spark finally crosses una’s bridge and shoots out of the magical sensor. It lands in the train roof’s hole. The black bullet begins to engulf her. Tendrils just inches away as she dips toward impact on the tracks. Tucking into a ball, she shouts “LANUAE!” The explosive magic of teleportation enfolds her — lighting up three more times to engulf her companions on the train car roof ahead and above. The black bullet cores through the explosion where she hung in mid-air a moment before.
Beatrice emerges along with Sadie, Mori, and Ivan. Each leaping up out of their own explosive spark-shower. They fall about 8 feet, then land in a chorus of thumps in the ruined train car. A few hundred feet away, within the caboose, the Curse Rider howls in rage. Sadie’s magic has formed an iridescent field around the damaged car. Reinforced by the train’s holy ground, it contains the Curse Rider even as he vents his fury. Pounding and shooting the magical containment in furious effort to find release. The remaining passengers, not similarly bound by Sadie’s magic and gathered near the exit forward, flee to safety in the next train car. For the moment, the Curse Rider is too distracted by his capture to pay them mind. He aims his might at breaking the bottle, he deforms the magical containment — causing the caboose to jump. Its walls are quickly tattered with dents and cracks. But, for now, the mighty Curse Rider is held even as Macto curses continue to rain down on it.
Beatrice slumps to the floor, still shaking from the intensity of a few moments before. “Whew!” she says. “Well, Sadie, you did it. Trapped a Curse Rider. But I don’t know for how long. I’ll take my miracles.”
“It’s bought us time. Hopefully enough to get where we need to go,” Sadie replies.
“Tonder?” Mori asks.
“Brons,” Sadie replies. “I’ve arranged a boat. We jump train there. If all goes as planned. Glenda will be on board.”
Beatrice looks at them, puts her shaking hand on her head. “Are you both going to let me know what you’ve cooked up? Do I have to guess at your charades? I did just… What would Myra call it? I think the term is tank. Yes. I did just tank that Curse Rider for you guys. A little explanation as gratitude would be appreciated.”
“Sweetheart,” Mori replies, catching her up in a reassuring embrace. “You tanked beautifully! And yes, I suppose we both missed a lot of Sadie’s subtlety here. So to fill you in, we’re going to jump off the train at Brons, then take a boat down the Brons River and out to our Heaven’s gate in the North Sea. Providence willing, the cage Sadie made for our Curse Rider will hold until then and for some time after.”
“Glorious!” Beatrice says in an outburst, trying to blow her shakes off into the word. “How much longer ’til Brons?”
“About fifty minutes,” Mori says.
“Seems like a long time given present circumstances.”
“It seems like forever.”
Ivan whimpers.
Beatrice stands, assesses her blessings. She’s still breathing — thanks in no small part to Sadie. This whole affair is too desperate. But she didn’t know what else to do. With Myra in Hell, they’re committed to this crazy path. And that was that.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
Mori watches the train slowly board, glances at their police escort, then squeezes Beatrice’s arm. The contact — as much for his own comfort as hers. Finely muscled angelic flesh warms his hand. Sets it to tingling in ways a normal human touch might not. Or so he imagines. Maybe it’s just because he’s still batshit crazy in love with her. At this point, he’ll take even the imagined comfort, or the halo effect, or the real comfort caused by her angelic nature. Whatever the source, he sure as Hell needed it now.
Hunted.
The word buzzes in his mind like an alarm. His skin tingles with primordial fear response. Mori feels the impulse to kill, to run like Hell, or both. A Curse Rider? We knew it would probably come. But now… Gods, we are so fucked.
Mages as a subset of humankind had nearly gone extinct numerous times over the last millennia and a half. The cause — goddamn Curse Riders. Devils armed and trained by Asmodeus himself to slay mages and to take their powerful wisps. They were an innovation of the Dark Ages. A far more lethal scythe to shear through the ranks of his people than even the devils who came before. All devils lusted after mages’ souls. Much of Hell was dedicated to the entrapment of mage wisps by whatever means necessary. But before the Curse Riders, devils had to use the normal lures. Tempting or tricking the mage into Hell or by jumping any mage foolish enough to enter Hell willingly on their own. Curse Riders were a great advancement into wholesale carnage. Able to exploit Asmodeus’s in-roads to Earth to take form, they could now directly hunt and slay. Taking mage wisps by the devil-preferred method that is violence and slaughter. A feat which wasn’t possible before.
At first, the losses were mammoth. Only the most powerful mages — able to resist the overwhelming power of a Curse Rider long enough to flee — and the most cunning survived. New methods were devised to keep hidden. To keep safe. By modern times, mage numbers were again slowly rising. Though never so plentiful as before the Curse Riders.
I guess my fear’s kinda instinctive.Makes senseafter concocting such a bone-headed plan and following through with it. They’d sent their only daughter into Hell and to distract Asmodeus. They’d deliberately taken Ivan Volkov, the Arch Devil’s chosen prophet on Earth. I suppose I hoped we’d avoid a Curse Rider. But that was stupid. Like kicking a hornets’ nest and expecting the hornets not to swarming out and sting the fuck out of you.
Now we’re in a serious bind. A Curse Rider, and a very nasty one by the look of it, is breathing down our necks. He’s summoned up a posse of the worst devil sympathizers in Europe. It’s an honest to goddamn witch hunt.
The officer tabs her radio, speaks a few words in German. Interpretor gives him the words in English. Train’s almost finished boarding. They’re departing in four minutes. There’s a gathering of extremists just north of town near the tracks. But police units are already breaking them up. Mori’s too keyed up and knows way too much to feel relief. Instead, he moves on to the next worry.
Across the table, Sadie is on the phone with Glenda. “No, dear. It’s too dangerous to meet us at the train station. No, it’s also too dangerous to go to the restaurant. We’ll need you to go to the docks. Now. Yes. Yes. I’ll be calling ahead for the water transport. Of course I have a contingency.”
Ivan reaches out, tries to grab the phone. Sparks erupt from his hand. He shakes it in pain. “Tell her not come,” he growls.
Sadie doesn’t miss a beat. “Of course your father’s here, dear. I’m certain he’ll be glad to see you. Yes, yes. The trouble is… after him too. Stay safe dear. And remember. The docks! Take every precaution and have our friends help if need-be. Lots of love and see you soon. Bye now dear.”
Sadie puts down the phone, takes a deep breath, then lays a hand on the train car’s interior wall. She closers her eyes, whispering. Taking a moment to study herself. Mori can’t hear what she’s saying. He’d want to pray too, though. If he were the praying type. What Mori doesn’t notice is the flash of divine curse energy running through Sadie’s palm and into the train.
Mori’s nervously glancing at his watch — it’s 12:03. They should be leaving soon. He pulls out his phone, thumbing through his text messages. He had Stefan follow the train in his Tesla just in case. But he’s more than an hour behind them. By the time they reach Esbjerg, if they reach Esberg, that lag will stretch past two hours. A lot can happen in two hours. Stefan will almost certainly be too far away to help. He glances sidelong at Beatrice, notes she’s keeping track of Ivan and the officer all while monitoring their still-active omnis scientia. Good, she’s on top of her game. Did I ever doubt?
Mori drums on the table in front of him with his fingers, trying to bleed off the anxiety with pointless motion. Why aren’t they moving yet? He glances over his shoulder at the officer a couple rows away. She’s also on her phone. He leans across the table. “Sadie, tell me about your contacts in Esbjerg,” he asks in a low voice. “You have someone who can meet us a bit past midway? Possibly near Tonder?”
Sadie blinks at him, removing her hand from the train’s interior wall. “I heard your little plan from earlier. It’s probably a good one. But it’ll take some doing.” She picks up her phone and holds up a finger, indicating he wait. Good, she’s on it. Sadie’s about as resourceful as they come. If she’s already up on his jump-train plan, then she’s probably arranging a contact at a good jump point.
The train makes a whooshing sound as it departs. Frigging finally! Powerful electric motors humming, the one hundred percent clean energy, five thousand ton Sleipnir launches from the platform. A half-smile creeps onto his face. He’ll never get used to the delicious acceleration electrics could pump out. Hamburg’s urban region blurs by and they are, once again, rocketing through open country. Hot, dry farms and woodlands replace the gray and white city buildings of Hamburg. The train seems to be moving faster this time. Good. Mori glances at the officer, wondering if its speed has something to do with the recent attack by goddamn Berserkers. Probably. When they left the platform, their first train was crawling with law enforcement. Media’s gonna have a friggin heyday with this stuff, Furze Bank, and the plane crash.
They cross a road intersection. In the distance, Mori can see a police roadblock. Behind it is a cluster of motor cycles. Some of their riders lift one-finger salutes at the passing train. Beatrice’s eyes swirl with magical energy as she engages omnis scientia.
“More Berserkers,” she says, pointing the magical sensor at the bikers. He nods, not wanting to expend precious magical energy to see the spectacle more closely for himself. The train is already past the intersection. “There are about fourteen. Cops are having a tough time with them.”
Mori gives a wry smirk. “I bet.”
“Oh,” Beatrice gasps.
“What is it, babe?” He can still see her eyes swirling. She must’ve picked up something new out there.
“It’s… a helicopter. You’ve go to see this.” She grabs hold of his shoulder.
“OK,” he replies, blinking his eyes and tapping his energetic vessel to connect him with omnis scientia. He’s momentarily dizzy as his senses shift. He adjusts quickly. Scanning his new, much wider, field of vision, he notes the Berserkers and Police rapidly falling away behind them. Spinning the sensor north, he scans for Beatrice’s helicopter. No such luck, but the hot northwestern sky is littered with massive thunderheads. A titanic, if far-distant, white-gray line of overshooting tops. Its tell-tale, anvil-shaped white blur about two hundred and fifty miles off. Gonna get really stormy this afternoon. And they’re heading out into the North Sea. Great. Mori keeps spinning the sensor, turning it eastward. Then he sees it. A black and red MD 902 Explorer that could best be described as highly stylized spews black clouds of smoke behind and to the right.
The helicopter is clearly shadowing them. To his sensitive mage sight, its abnormalities are obvious. Diabolical magic drips away and behind it as worb energy flares in its engines. Even to a casual observer its bulging glass cockpit eyes, landing struts sporting downward turning talons, the bat-like shape of tail fins, and red flames shooting from exhaust ports would seem out of place except at a derby race made for monster helicopters.
“Yep. Definitely a Nightmare,” he announces, shifting his senses back to the train cabin. Beatrice shoots him a look that says ‘duh’ but in a more refined way he doesn’t articulate. “Keep eyes on it sweetheart. I’ll see if our new friends can do something to delay it.”
Mori stands, walks over to the police officer, then crouches down. “Uh, mam, I think you might want to take a look at this.” He glances at her name plate. It’s Officer Winkler.
“What is it?”
“Over here by the window.” Mori guides her to an open seat with a window space on the train’s right side. He lifts his finger, points at the helicopter. “See that? I’m betting it’s not authorized to fly so close to our train.” The helicopter’s about a thousand feet up. It’s slowly descending toward them.
“Schiesse!” Winkler exclaims. “That thing is ugly.”
“Yeah, looks like some magical monster out of a fantasy movie, right?”
“Ja!” She replies, then tabs her radio. After a flurried conversation, she looks at Mori with upraised eyebrows. “Good spot. It’s not showing up on radar.” Her own words seem to puzzle her. “What kind of helicopter looks like that but doesn’t show up on radar?”
The Nightmare kind, Mori thinks to himself but doesn’t reply. Instead he just shrugs his shoulders and turns up his hands in a ‘you got me, police lady’ gesture.
Winkler blows a raspberry, sharing in his befuddlement. “They’re sending a chopper to intercept. Closest one’s out of Kiel. Won’t be here for another 15-20 minutes. And that’s fast response.”
“Central’s gotta be freaked,” Mori falls into cop-speak easy, his normal person background kicking in. He scratches his head, thinking about a police helicopter and a Nightmare facing off among the clouds… “Hey, maybe it’s not such a good idea…” He trails off not knowing how exactly to explain how a supposed civilian helicopter is going to give a police ‘copter trouble. But that probably wasn’t going to happen. 15-20 minutes wasn’t going to be fast enough. Mori’s mind races, trying to come up with another plan.
“They’re all over the place with everything that’s happened,” Officer Winkler continues. “That keeps happening. And to top it all off, there’s a big gale front sweeping in from the North Sea. Thunderstorms, hurricane force winds, there’s even a tornado watch.”
“Don’t say?” Mori already saw the storm clouds. The forecast confirms it. As he talks, his tactical brain is kicking in. He’s wondering how to get a clear shot at the Nightmare ‘copter. He glances back to his rifle-briefcase. Yeah. Might need that soon. “Lately weather’s been wrecked as all Hell,” Mori continues. It was part of the whole problem, wasn’t it? Damn devils teaming up with corrupt and influential humans to do stuff like fuck up the weather for all the other humans. Today’s Hellified forecast included an actual devil invader flying in a goddamn helicopter made from an unholy mash-up of machine, demon, and diabolical magic.
“Ja, for the past decade at least. It’s the hot air running into ocean water chilled by Greenland melt.”
Now it’s Mori’s turn to blow a raspberry. “Tell me about it, right?” So officer Winkler was an amateur climate buff? Well, it was certainly something worth his respect. “Climate change’s playing havok with everything.”
She’s nodding and formulating a reply. Mori can tell they’d touched on a subject of passionate interest for Winkler — who seemed to be, all-in-all, a rather decent human being. Mori’s edging away to get back to his briefcase when, suddenly, all the freaking cell phones in their train car start ringing.
“Oh fucking shit!”
Winkler looks up at him in surprise. Her phone is ringing too.
“Oh shit, did I say that out loud? Don’t answer that call! Gotta go!” He’s running off, grabbing his phone. A glance is all he needs to see the red tendrils of diabolical influence heavy with suggestive magic oozing off it. He tabs the answer key, puts it on speaker, and holds it well away from his face as he jumps, then slides back to their seats. He’s got magical protections set up to deal with devils’ suggestive magic. But it never hurts to be careful.
“Lookin’ for Ivan,” a cigarette-smoke voice rasps on the other end. Mori can hear twenty other phones saying the same thing throughout the train car. “Not hard to miss,” the voice continues. “He’s a little squirt of a Russian. Kinda looks like Vladimir Putin. I’d be obliged if you could hand me off to him.”
About ten people stand up all at once — holding their phones out to Ivan. Mori shoves four of them away. Beatrice and Sadie are already on their feet. Sadie shouting confractus! multiple times. The diabolical magic in five nearby phones unravels.
“Please, no! This is all a misunderstanding!” Beatrice says, her voice laden with an-already applied suggero curse. Confused passengers sit back down as the devil continues to spout garbage into their ears. Even as some seem to hear Beatrice, succumb to her magic, and sit down, more passengers further back in the car are standing, moving toward them, holding phones with diabolical magic tendrils flailing.
“Aww, come-on Ivan. I know you’re there buddy, pick up,” the diabolical cowboy voice crackles through at least thirty phones, filling the train with its helter-skelter suggestive magic. One of the zombie-like crowd, a breathless teen with a confused look on his face, breaks through, then kneels to offer up his Cthulhu phone. Mori is struck by the absurdity of the gesture. But doesn’t have time to think about it. He’s too busy shoving off the mass of bedeviled humanity.
Ivan hears the voice. He stands slowly, as if drawn up on marionette strings. His hand lifts toward the teen’s phone. It begins to spark with Sadie’s telephone blocking curse. Ivan grasps the phone. It catches fire — burning Ivan. Mori can smell the sweet scent of frying skin. Ivan is unphased. The Pride Eater wound in his back is flaring with diabolical magic. Taking control. Mori focuses omnis scientia down and through the train. He can see the possession stabbing through the Russian like a thorn dug too deep to be removed. Ivan picks up the phone. Tendrils quest toward him from the receiver only to be burned off like mist in morning sunlight by Sadie’s curse. The phone sparks, catches flame, then melts in Ivan’s hand.
The voice on the other line is still audible as a tinny, warbling tone. “bAd conNeCtiOn,” the devil cowboy says before the audio cuts out.
At last Ivan seems to wake up. He screams, shakes the burning phone out of his hand, then kneels to cradle his wounded digits. His eyebrows are upturned. He looks both with terror and with longing as another of the devil-zombified, this one dressed as an office professional, offers up another unholy phone. The wound in Ivan’s back pulses again — shooting a signal laden both with power and command. In Ivan’s eyes, Mori can see the ecstasy of longing for power ignite into a red glow. Ivan’s mouth works, his jaws clamping and unclamping, slaver drools down from his mouth as he literally salivates for power. Ivan’s link to that power — a friggin cell phone held before his face by a duped thrall with a devil on the other end.
Ivan’s hand lifts, closes on the cell phone. Once more, Sadie’s protective curse activates. But this time, the damn Curse Rider somehow fights back. The tendrils multiply and, as one, shoot in a cloud — rocketing toward Ivan’s wound.
Mori’s hand closes on his briefcase. Pushes the red button. The rifle blurs into form. With automatic, precise movements, he removes a yellow confractus bullet. Aims for the phone. Shoots. The phone disintegrates in a flash. Tendrils immediately fade out. Ivan looks down at the phone in anguish, then back up at Mori in rage. The Russian hurls himself at Mori. Mori doesn’t have time to fuck around. He smashes the stock of his weapon into Ivan’s chest, slamming him back down into the seat. Ivan is momentarily stunned. This gives Mori the opportunity to spin and link a hand with Beatrice. They exchange a glance.
“Una!” he shouts, joining his magic with Beatrice’s. “Suggero!”
Beatrice smiles in grim approval. They speak together in concert. Their voices amplified by the shotgun effect of Una. “SIT! DOWN!” The magical force blasts through the train car in a shockwave. Though just suggestion, they’re both digging deep into their reserves. If Ivan is forcibly transformed here and now, then the whole mission to Denmark is almost certainly done for. No time to hold back. The raw outburst of curse magic carrying suggero knocks people off their feet, sends bags and snack containers flying, and cracks two windows. Everyone in the train except Beatrice, Sadie, and Mori sit down. Then, in the time it takes for Beatrice and Mori to draw breath again, they incant CONFRACTUS! Sending a second wave of curse energy to drive the devil’s magic out of the cell phones.
At last, the train car is silent. Free of the cajoling voice of the cowboy Curse Rider.
Up front, there’s a loud thump as something large lands on the train’s roof. The sound of helicopter blades, coming closer and closer throughout the struggle, is now directly overhead. It’s right atop the train’s electric engine. Beatrice and Mori exchange a horrified glance.
“Shit!” Mori exclaims as he transitions back to omnis scientia. Turning the sensor toward the train’s front, Mori sees it. The goddamn Nightmare helicopter has landed on the frigging roof. Beside it is the dark, whip-thin figure of the devil cowboy. A cigarette smolders in his mouth as he lays a hand upon the Nightmare machine, then whispers a few words as a rider might to a horse. The helicopter form melts, forms a red-black pool of something toxic, then sinks down into the body of the train. Mori’s stomach does a nose-dive. The Curse Rider turns, looks over his shoulder at the sensor, then the fucker actually waves.
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
The train rockets through urban Berlin. To Beatrice, it feels like flying. Her excitement to ride this solar bullet is shadowed in apprehension. They’re venturing off to a magical gate somewhere in the North Sea to deliver one of Earth’s most corrupt persons into the arms of Heaven. All-the-while, her daughter is alone, in Hell, on a mad quest so secret she dare not even think of its goals. Ivan — Asmodeus’ chosen wolf-as-prophet — sits a few feet away from her. He glances up over his crossword, taking in Mori, Beatrice, and Sadie with a pensive expression. He reminds her of an evil spy from some James Bond movie.
Looks deceive, providing only hints at something far worse. He’s a literal devil-wolf in Russian clothing. All around, passengers sit relaxed. They chat, stare out the window, or watch media on their devices. Unsuspecting as Ivan, who twice transformed into a monster, sits among them. She picks another pistachio out of the snack-pack Mori brought, squeezes her husband’s shoulder as much to reassure herself as to give him comfort, plops it into her mouth, and turns her attention to the window. In it, she can still see Ivan’s reflection. Can still monitor him. But it takes the edge off as her focus shifts to buildings rushing by, steadily blending into countryside.
The train takes a dip. Its track lowers onto a mound of gravel running through forested land. Trees are dry. Leaves yellow from heat and drought extending for months and months. At least this region is fire-free — unlike areas east of Berlin. Looking southward and behind, she can see the gigantic plumes rising gray and white in the morning sun. At their dark bases, pink-orange fire glows and lightning sparks.
Beatrice tucks her knees up to her chest. Turning away from the far-off conflagration, she descends into a sleep-like fugue as over-heating lands rush by. Her angel’s body recharging, revitalizing, healing areas still stiff and stinging from the residual of Ivan’s poison bite. Sadie’s magic removed the worst of it. Beatrice senses she’ll need all her potential, every edge, to deal with what’s coming. Ivan’s howl-as-call to the devils last night atop Fuze Bank echoes in her mind. She can hear it still — raging through worlds. Whatever terrible thing he called, it’s coming. Soon. Foolish not to prepare herself. So she rests — focusing on getting her body into top form even as she fills her energetic vessel.
After about an hour, Beatrice jolts to alertness. The train is slowing down. Up ahead is a road intersection. The train lets out a ghostly wail as it breaks in approach to the crossing. Curious, she cranes her head to peer out. On the road she sees an odd collection of black and chrome motorcycles. About twenty in all — clustering around a larger central bike. The machines are outrageous collections of pipes and pistons. Each brush-painted with various hate iconography — stylized swastikas and worse. The center bike is a unique spectacle. Though parked, its twin rows of exhaust pipes exhale clouds of black smoke. A cyclops headlight glows red. Flames painted along its sides and over its fenders seem to dance and flicker. Her sensitive eyes pick up streaks of wisp energy flashing through it. Those are souls. Devil’s own slave magic. This is no earthly conveyance.
Each machine bears a dark rider. Black-leather bedecked and bristling with weapons. The riders dismount. They approach the crossing. One grabs the gate’s bar as it swings down. Then, whip-quick, he jumps atop it. The motion is somehow crooked to Beatrice’s eye. A dissonant movement evoking fascination and fear. Her skin pricks with goose-flesh. She presses her face against the window — puzzling at hinted dark secrets. Don’t be a fool, Beatrice. You know what it is.
Unable to tear her eyes away, she continues to watch, captivated. Her hand moves to her rapier hilt — gripping it hard. The figure’s clothes are as incongruent as his motion. He wears cowboy boots, jeans, and black leather riding chaps. A belt with a buckle styled as fire-breathing bull glitters on his hips. Two six-guns droop into holsters. His button-down shirt is crisscrossed with bullet baldrics. Despite the heat, he wears a trench coat. Atop his head perches a black, wide-brimmed hat.
He motions to the bikers. They climb onto the gate. Beatrice can see why the train slowed. The driver must be concerned they’ll approach the tracks. The engine blares again. Four bikers now stand atop the gate bar beside the dark cowboy. They’re tall, thick-muscled, coarse. They tower over the cowboy and yet his presence — dripping with malignancy — dwarfs them. At the horn’s sound, they lift their hands in devil’s sign, snarling obscenities. She is close enough now to see their tattoos. To read the word “Berserker” on the front of their black T-shirts. To make out the bloody-battle-axe artwork on the back of leather jackets. Their train car is now almost parallel with this satanic biker squad.
She grabs Mori’s hand, pulling him to the window. “Is that…?” she begins to ask. Don’t be so foolish, she chides herself again. You know! But she doesn’t want to know. She regrets ever taking part in this mad quest — hurling her family into such danger. Oh! How I wish I never came to face this hunter! Then the bikers are upon them. The dark cowboy’s eyes rise to meet hers. They swirl with hate and fire. He lifts his hand, makes a flicking motion. A still-burning cigarette swirls through the air — trailing sparks as it plinks against the window. Hitting the outside glass before her face, then falling away.
Time slows to a steady count of heartbeats — her danger response. Now she sees in instants. The cowboy laughs. His wicked voice scrapes through glass and steel. He raises both arms to shoulder-height, hands splay like a conductor signaling a crescendo. Wisp energy swirls like fire from him, flaring in ghost-light from deep traps — worbs — on his right shoulder, engulfing the Berserkers. He feeds them each scores of wisps, ties them off, then fixes all four with a diabolical sigil cast onto the forehead. Then the Berserkers — filled with raging wisps and made mad by the devil’s sign burning on their skulls — jump. There are ‘pop!’‘pop!’‘pop!’‘pop!’ bursts of air as arms of spectral fire shoot from their shoulders. The arms swell to the size of trees. Coiling down in loops of fire, they grip the bar with smoldering fists. Then they push off in puffs of smoke — hurling each Berserker onto the train’s roof in an impossible bound. Four corresponding thuds resound from above.
“Holy Hell!” Mori exclaims, watching as ten foot arms of flame propel the Berserkers onto the roof.
Beatrice is already standing. “That’s a Curse Rider!” she shouts, at last able to speak her fear. Bounding over Mori, she does a full somersault midair then lands gracefully on her toes in the isle. “We are hunted!” The passengers, transfixed by the spectacle of the devil cowboy and his Berserker biker squad, gasp at her sudden and otherworldly movement.
“Damn you Ivan!” Mori growls. He knew this was probably coming — since at least last night when Ivan as wolf sent his call. He’d known it was a risk for years now. Seeing the Curse Rider casting his slave wisps, glaring hate and throwing sparks at his wife on the other side of a frigging mere pane of glass made it all too real. “Goddam it, we are so screwed!”
“Curse Ride?!” Ivan’s voice betrays more than a little fear. He only caught a glimpse of the biker gang and its diabolical leader. But what he saw both pains and excites. His Pride Eater wound throbs. His heart quickening in response to the cowboy’s black magic.
Beatrice launches herself down the isle, keen ears picking up thuds and shouts from the roof above. Mori follows — nowhere near so quick or graceful. But with military precision and a smooth efficiency of motion. Sadie puts a hand on Ivan’s shoulder. “Be calm. Mori and Beatrice will handle it. I’ll stay close for safety.” Sadie’s voice is articulate, commanding. Her tone betraying none of the fear she surely feels. A glance back shows Beatrice Sadie has the Russian in hand. Beatrice turns her eyes to the ceiling. “Omnis scienta,” she incants, drawing her rapier. With a flick of her blade, she sends her sensor flitting through the ceiling and up onto the roof.
Beatrice’s eyes swirl with magical sensing even as she continues to move. The train speeds up. Its driver seeming oblivious to the invaders. Her magical vision resolves. The Berserkers have split into two groups. One pair is moving toward the car’s front, the other toward its back. Producing knives, hand axes, a gun, they approach the gaps on either end of the train car. Each gap is covered by a curtain and connected to the next car by a closed walkway. Weapons ready, ghostly arms swirl and bulge from their shoulders. Red hands the size of trashcan lids — clawed in fire — tear at the air.
“They’re going to rip and cut their way in!” she shouts back to Mori, incanting “Una!” to share her senses. Mori blinks as the perception transfers, causing his eyes to swirl with light, then points her toward the front gap as he makes his way to the back. Depressing a button on his case, he triggers its transformation. A rifle barrel swings out, a stock unfolds, pistol grip handle and multi-phasal scope snap into place. A magazine of yellow-tipped ammo appears in his hand. He slams it into the receiver, pulls the charging handle, racks the slide.
Neither Beatrice nor Mori expend extra curse energy on ignarus. They’re facing down a Curse Rider’s thralls. Both instinctively conserve their magic. Neglecting ignarus results in general terror as the passengers see everything. Screams rise at the diabolical glow and strange noises from the roof, at the mages racing through the cabin, flaring with magic, improbable weapons in hand.
Beatrice prowls toward the front, rapier before her. Omnis scienta shows the first Berserker is sawing through the gap’s curtain with his knife, spectral hands ripping at the opening. The second Berserker holds a handgun. Mori’s pair — Berserker three and four — hacks and tears at the rear gap with abandon. One with his giant knife. Another with a pair of hand axes. Spectral hands with fingers the size of rolling pins pour in, widening the gap, causing the material to smolder and scorch. Beatrice positions herself near the door, pausing for an opportunity.
“Keep calm! Stay low and out of reach!” she shouts with as much confidence as she can muster into the cabin. “We’ll protect you! We’re trained to handle such …” she pauses for the right word “… events!” Her bearing, luminous magic, and projected confidence seem to work, at least for the moment, as passengers focus on ducking below their seats. Keep them safe, she sends her intention out, hoping the universe responds in kind. The rips above her widen. Sparks fall. Smell of burning wafts down. Behind her, Mori is unloading his yellow bullets, each patterned with a lesser confractus curse, into the rip above him.
She coils. Gathers her magic for a single, potent strike. Then springs. “Confractus!” she shouts. Magical energy builds around her rapier’s tip — forming a bow shock. Relying on omnis scienta to guide her strike, she plunges through the gap aiming for one of the arms. Burning material falls around her as she shoots up. Her blade plunges through, strikes the arm of wisp-energy, delivers her disrupting curse. Magic explodes from her rapier tip — blowing a hole in the arm. It flails back like a giant piece of spaghettis — leaking wisps. Their ruddy sparks swiftly recede into the distance.
She’s through, rising above the train roof, floating in mid-air between her foes. They recoil in surprise. Her momentum reverses. She starts to land, aiming for the train roof near the gap. Behind her, Mori’s rifle reports. Yellow bursts erupt on the spectral arms of Berserker three and four tearing at the other gap. The arms shrink and wobble, hissing as they lose consistency. Mori’s confractus-patterned bullets aren’t potent enough to rupture the arms. But the ghost-hulks deflate under his barrage. There’s a pause, then a hail of purple bullets streaks up. He’s switching to somnos bullets — aiming directly at the Berserkers to incapacitate them. A bullet impacts on Berserker three’s shoulder. Purple energy pulses, the Berserker swoons, then growls as he fights off the sleep-curse. Both Berserkers lurch back from the opening. Driven away by the ferocity of Mori’s assault.
She’s still in mid-air when Berserker one’s able ghost-arm swings around. A ghost-fist the size of a trashcan engulfs her in a burst of fire. Patterned curses on her clothes kick in, protecting her from flames and heat. Yet she’s caught. It squeezes. More curses crackle in response, buffering against the force. These reactive curses cushion her. But some punishment gets through — causing ribs to grind as air is forced from her lungs. Frustrated in its attempt to crush her, the hand shakes her violently back and forth. Lifting her high above the train, it hurls her toward the trees.
Released, Beatrice draws a painful breath, flicking her gaze through reference points as she hurtles and spins. She gains control of her body after only a heartbeat. Flipping in mid-air, she points her feet away from the train. “Lanuae!” she shouts. Spinning her rapier like a paint-brush, she opens a rift of sparks beneath her feet. Lifting one spark from the swirl with her rapier-tip, she flings it back to the train. It shoots through the air like a firework — streaking away from her to land on the train roof behind the Berserkers. The sparks at her feet explode in a shower of light and smoke. She vanishes a moment before slamming into a tree. In the same instant, the spark on the train roof expands in a flowery burst from which Beatrice reappears and rises. Both Berserkers scream in fury, blinded by the flash of her magical travel.
Before her, the first Berserker lifts his knife. He’s lost one of his ghost arms to confractus. Its wisps trail above and behind the train in a thread running back toward the Curse Rider. She can’t see the dark cowboy form anymore. The train is plunging through woods — already a mile or more beyond the crossing. But she can hear wisps crying in anguish as the Curse Rider re-captures each. The second Berserker is raising his handgun. Three ghostly arms quest toward her, their remaining wisps scream with murderous force.
“Salire!” she hears Mori shout from behind. His feet thump onto the roof. His weapon flings out the purple somnos bullets. Some streak up and away over her head. Through omnisscienta, she sees his opponents circling, trying to get an angle. Berserker four hurls his axes. Mori ducks the first, knocks the second away with the butt of his rifle. The Berserker draws two more. Berserker three, his chest glowing purple from two somnos strikes lurches toward Mori with his knife. Mori’s fight, his danger focuses her. She lets out a breath, then resumes her battle dance.
“Vexare verberare!” she shouts, pointing her sword at the second Berserker. A barrage of five blue-glowing magical projectiles explodes from her sword-tip. Racing toward him, two target each arm, one his handgun. She leaps, flying in behind her missiles and over him. “Clypeus!” she incants just as his weapon rises and fires. The bullet streaks out, smashes into her barrier, and shatters into glowing fragments that fly off and away from the train. Her first missile strikes the Berserker’s gun shearing the front end off and exploding the hand in a puff of blood. He shrieks in pain. Staccato bursts from the other missiles blow holes in the wisp arms, briefly rendering them useless. She lands behind him, transitions into a run, then rushes the first Berserker. He strikes at her legs with his blade even as his massive ghost fist pounds down on her. Clypeus is still flickering with life. The fist’s first blow deflects to the side. She gets under the Berserker’s knife-strike and punches his wrist. Small bones crack. “Confractus!” she shouts, exploding a hole in his remaining wisp-arm with a stab of her curse-laden blade. Bringing her elbow around, she dispatches him with a last blow to the side of his head.
She spins only to be caught by the onrush of the second Berserker. He pushes into her, ghost arms sputtering with fire as they rise and reform, driving her toward the train roof edge. She pivots smoothly, wrenches his shattered hand and does a fireman’s throw of his heavy bulk above and past her. He flies through the air, his still-thin ghost arms noodling as they attempt to cushion his fall. She watches fire burst around him as he lands among dry brush. The train speeds on and away, leaving him behind.
Spinning, she angles her rapier toward Mori’s remaining foe. Berserker three is at last asleep, burning arms drifting behind him like flaming fronds of kelp. Berserker four swings his axe at a prone Mori. Beatrice jumps, allows the train’s forward motion to speed her flight, then smashes her rapier’s guard into the back of his head. Somersaulting over both the Berserker and Mori, she lands on her feet behind them even as the Berserker’s massive, unconscious body thuds down atop Mori.
“Ugh!” Mori grunts.
“Confractus! Confractus! Confractus! Confractus!” Beatrice shouts as she runs a circuit around their unconscious foes. With each curse-infused rapier strike she banishes the devil-ghost arms. Wisps rise up from the Berserkers — each wailing its anguish as it flies back to its enslaver. The Curse Rider who is now, thankfully, miles behind. Beatrice takes air, breathes it out.
“Some help here, hon?” Mori says.
She laughs, banishing tension as she stoops down to roll the massive biker off Mori. He stands, musses his hair self-consciously. “Holy damn fuck!” Mori exclaims in relief. “Well, at least we didn’t have to fight the cowboy and the rest of them.”
“Yet,” Beatrice replies, wiping at a cut on Mori’s face. Then, she leans in and gives him a big hug. Relieved they’re both still standing and breathing. For now.
“Yeah, yet.” Mori hugs her back, making her wince a bit as the places where the ghost-hand crushed her sting and throb. She relishes it regardless.
A head topped by a peaked cap pokes up through the smoldering hole in the gap curtain behind them. “Einfrieren!” an officer shouts as he stumbles onto the roof, pointing a handgun.
Beatrice and Mori separate. Mori lets his rifle fall, tapping the button with his foot. It smoothly transforms back into a briefcase. The officer stares at it. Beatrice uses the distraction to sheathe her rapier and raise her hands — bleeding a bit more curse energy into ignarus. Her energetic vessel is still more than half full. She can spare a little magic to smooth things over now.
“Schon Gut,” Beatrice replies. “English?” she asks. The officer nods. “These bikers attacked the train with fire bombs and weapons. They tried to gain access to the cabin.” It was basically true. Except, of course, the fire bombs were arms made of enslaved souls and devil’s magic. But she wasn’t going to explain it. The officer wouldn’t have believed anyway.
The officer looks at the three bodies sprawled across the train roof, takes in the white supremacist symbols on their clothes. “Terrorists?”
“We don’t know,” Mori says. “May I show you my badge?”
The officer jogs his head. Ignarus is interfering with his memory of Mori’s rifle and is occluding Beatrice’s rapier. “Gut. OK,” he says. Mori slowly pulls out his wallet and flashes his DOJ, Special Investigator, Climate Crimes Division badge. The officer examines it. Seems satisfied. Puts his firearm away. “Investigator Hansen, is this related to a case you’re working on?”
“Right now, we’re facilitating a meeting between high profile, high risk persons. Ivan Volkov and his daughter Glenda Goodfuture, the climate activist. We had reason to believe extremists would attempt to abduct one or both. We did not think they’d go so far as try a snatch and grab on a train.” Beatrice smirks. Mori’s explanation is also basically correct. The Berserkers were a right wing extremist group. Just the kind who’d easily fall to the diabolical influence of a Curse Rider.
“Schiesse!” the officer replies. “You should have mentioned something when you boarded.
“Confidentiality was considered to be, ah, more important. That was probably a bad move.”
“You know we’re going to have to take a statement,” the officer says, relaxing into ritualistic protocol. He shouts down into the gap, letting the two officers below know that everything’s in hand. They clamber up and begin to collect the Berserkers.
“I’d be careful about them. They seemed to be jumped up on something,” Mori says as the officers cuff, then drag the Berserkers off the train roof. Beatrice’s post-trauma grin widens. Yes, jumped up on being Curse Rider thralls. One of the most potent and dangerous drugs around.
The officer nods, taking in their weapons, the burn marks on their shoulders, the smoldering and broken clothes, the burn pattern like wings on areas of exposed back. “Fanatiker,” the officer mutters.
Mori accompanies them down through the hole, Beatrice follows. They pass a few cars down to a small compartment that doubles as an office to make their statement. The questions are tedious, taking most of the rest of the train ride. Beatrice is too worried about being hunted to pay too much attention. Her focus, instead, drifts outward. Keeping hold of omnis scienta, she guides it to a location high above the train. It provides a clear view of the train, long sections of track in front and behind, and a wide area around. Beatrice tenses as she notices clusters of bikers shadowing the train in its approach to Hamburg Station. They’re pointing, speaking on cell phones, reporting on the train’s movement. Her sensor flickers as it registers diabolical influence over the bikers. A confirmation she doesn’t really need. The Berserker shirts and racist symbols are more than enough to identify them.
Mori handles the questions with professional calm. She’s glad for his cool alertness. He also keeps his connection to omnis scienta, occasionally trading looks with her as the sensor picks up another cluster of Berserkers.
Though tedious, the officer’s report is useful. Law enforcement authorities are aroused to the violent action by the Berserker right wing extremist group — one of many listed as potential threats by German police and security agencies. Forces begin to deploy. Beatrice hopes they’ll help, doubts they’ll be anywhere near enough to deal with the Curse Rider.
Finally, finished, Beatrice and Mori rejoin with Ivan and Sadie. An officer sits calmly nearby, keeping watch on their ‘special person’ — Ivan. If she only knew the other half of it.That would wipe the casual look off her face. The train glides to a halt, Ivan and Sadie stand. The officer gets up and approaches.
“Transport security would like me to escort you to your next connection,” the officer says.
“Thanks,” Mori replies. Though it’s mundane help, Beatrice will take anything at this point. Ivan is pursing his mouth. Sadie brushes close to Beatrice and Mori, providing subtle aid through whispered invocations of sana carnes. Beatrice relishes the healing relief as it mends bruised ribs and crushed flesh. Their escort guides them out of the train and through the terminal. Police presence is clearly beefed up. Beatrice is reassured to see no Berserkers inside. Outside, omnis scienta tells a different story. Two clusters of bikers keep watch on trains from nearby street corners. They disperse at the approach of any police vehicle — only to reform minutes later.
At last, they arrive at the Esbjerg train. Their officer allows them to board early, ahead of other passengers still waiting on the platform. She ushers them to their seats around another table, then goes to the refreshment car to get them coffee.
They all exchange glances as the officer heads off. Mori slams his hands down on the table. “Holy hell! A Curse Rider! We’re going to have to fight our way through a goddamn Hunt!”
“We must warn Glenda,” Sadie replies. “Set an alternate meeting place.”
“No. Call off. You put Valeriya in danger,” Ivan says, his beady eyes flicking back and forth in anger.
“Ah, buddy, you put her in danger. You summoned that guy. That dark cowboy on the rail gate? Yeah. He’s a frigging devil. And his posse are those Berserker dudes,” Mori says.
“Who do they hunt?” Ivan says it evenly. “Surely not all of us.”
Beatrice looks at Ivan. His smirk is too smug. Too self-satisfied. He knows. He called the Curse Rider. To hunt and take us. At some level he must know. Mori turns away. Ivan seems even more satisfied at his discomfort.
“They may as well be hunting us all,” Sadie says to Ivan. “Without Mori and Beatrice, you would already be a monster. We all make it through the Heaven-Gate together. Or none of us make it. And we need Glenda to open the gate.”
Ivan’s eyebrows raise at the notion of his daughter opening a gateway to Heaven.
“Didn’t think of that when you summoned a fiend of Hell, did you, you wolf-bastard,” Mori says to Ivan.
Sadie lifts a hand. “Please, recriminations at this point are worthless.”
Beatrice looks around the table. “So what do we do? Clearly this hunt has only begun. They know our path. And we can’t rely on the train’s speed to keep us ahead of a Curse Rider and his Nightmare.” She flashes a look at Mori. “You saw the bike. It’s an infernal conveyance,” she says to him. “The kind that can take any form — winged, wheeled, tracked, or hooved. But that’s not half the problem. The countryside is crawling with extremists vulnerable to a devil’s influence. He can summon them and use them as easy as you or I walk and breathe.”
Mori spreads his hands. “Then we’ve gotta do something unexpected to throw them off.”
“What do you have in mind?” Sadie asks.
“Simple. We jump off the train.”
(New to the Helkey multiverse? Haven’t yet read the first chapter? You can find it here: Helkey 1 — The Memory Draught.)
Scribbler’s Fantastical Workshop 
