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 omnis scienta, 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.)

(Looking for another chapter? Find it in the Helkey Table of Contents.)