“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.)

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

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