Flight

Aeron had just entered our carriage. I turned and crawled in blind terror through the door. Tom followed on my heels, and we leapt down beside the overturned train car, then sprinted to the grove of trees where I’d spotted Ringo and Mary.

“Aeron,” I blurted to Ringo. “Aeron’s here.” My heart slammed in my chest, due in larger part to having just seen Death than to my sprint and general state of terror since the crash.

Both Ringo and Mary gasped. Ringo’s gasp made sense to me. Mary’s did not.

“The man who opened the other door of the carriage? That was Aeron?” Tom said, behind me. I nodded.

Tom blinked. “How do you know Death?”

“Was he tall with dark hair, strong features, the brown skin of a Moor, and the clothing of a gentleman?” asked Mary Shelley quietly.

Prickles raised on the back of my neck as I turned to her with narrowed eyes. “Yes,” I hissed. “You saw him?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not tonight.”

Awesome. “When did you see Death, Mary?”

“The night he came for Bysshe.”

The Roadrunner could have dropped an anvil on my head and I wouldn’t have been more shocked.

“Why did ‘e come for ‘im?” Ringo asked, even more quietly than she had answered.

Mary’s gaze included all three of us. “Because my husband was one of his.”

Ringo’s eyes flicked to mine in the most subtle I told you so in the history of know-it-alls, and maybe because of it I was able to contain the stutter that threatened. Tom couldn’t, and Mary’s eyes found his.

“I don’t know you,” she said.

“Mary Shelley, Tom Landers. He’s with us,” I said curtly. Death was on that train, I reminded myself as I surveyed the overturned cars that were now engulfed with fire. Death was on that train, and Mary Shelley knew him. I was not wild about the coincidence.

Tom’s eyes had widened as he registered Mary’s identity, but I turned my attention to the wreck. Screams and cries of passengers had quieted in the night air, but it didn’t seem as though many people were standing outside the overturned train. And if they weren’t outside of it, they were still inside. “What happened,” I whispered.

“The doors were locked,” answered Ringo. “Who would lock all the doors of a passenger car?”

A memory niggled at the back of my brain. “The man – at the end of the hallway when we got back to our compartment – he was a Monger. I saw his shadow and heard the lock click just before I went to bed.” Ringo looked at me for long enough that I got weirdly defensive. “You were already asleep,” I said.

He blinked. “It couldn’t ‘ave been about us. No one knew we were on that train.”

“I did,” said Mary Shelley.

I turned to face Mary, and the prickles on the back of my neck returned. “Are you a Seer?”

“Distantly.” She held my gaze for a long moment, and I waited, knowing there was more. “Aislin sent me.”

“Gah!” I yelled in frustration.

“Bloody Immortals,” Ringo murmured under his breath.

“What does she want?” I asked Mary. I was near tears, partly from the train crash, and partly from the realization I was in control of exactly nothing.

“I don’t know,” said Mary, and she had the grace to sound apologetic. “She showed me the image of our meeting in the dining compartment and said I’d be able to help you. She also said you were trying to fulfill the Prophecy of the Child.”

There were so many things I wanted to ask, and every question crowded in at once. Ringo didn’t seem to have the same issue.

“‘Ow’d Aislin come to ye, and why did ye do ‘er biddin’?”

Mary nodded. “Both fair questions. Aislin has visited my dreams twice. The first time was just after Bysshe and I were married, the night he was attacked and … turned.” She inhaled sharply. “She showed me where to find him and how to care for him as his body changed.” Mary’s expression looked a little haunted, and whatever anger I’d felt about Aislin’s interference melted away. She continued. “The second time was two nights ago, when she showed me our meeting. I don’t know how I can help, or why you need it, but I felt I owed her a debt for helping me with Bysshe all those years ago.”

“Who turned him?” asked Tom. He had been watching the fire blaze on the train, and flames reflected in his eyes as he asked the question without facing any of us.

“He never knew, and Aislin didn’t show me that.”

Mary looked pale, and Ringo glared at Tom. “We’ll ‘ave this discussion later, after we find shelter and transportation. Mrs. Shelley, in spite of Fate’s ‘and in our meetin’, I invite ye to accompany us to Rome.”

Mary met our eyes with straight shoulders. “I should be very honored to accompany you. A friend of mine lives outside Rome, and I’ve sent her a message that I’d like to visit.”

Ringo and I looked at each other and silently acknowledged that Aislin was having her way with us, but since we had no better plan, it seemed futile to resist. Ringo nodded at me as if that settled everything, then slung his bag across his shoulder and looked in both directions down the track. “Anyone have an idea where the nearest village is?” he asked.

Mary surveyed the terrain. “I believe south is the appropriate direction.” She turned south and began walking toward the tracks. Ringo and I shared exactly one second of a surprised look before we followed her, with Tom at the rear.

Mary approached a man in a uniform with a soot-smeared face who was directing the few injured passengers we’d seen away from the tracks. She asked him something in rapid French, then, when he looked blankly at her, switched to Italian. He answered in a voice that spoke of his sheer exhaustion, and indicated the direction we’d been heading. Mary patted his arm softly in thanks, and I could see how much her gesture meant to him as he swallowed hard. Then he called out to another uniformed man, excused himself, and hurried away.

The air was full of smoke and burning coal, but underneath the acrid smells I caught the sweet scent of clove. I turned toward it sharply and scanned the people along the tracks. There were passengers in formal traveling clothes, some with blood on them, and all looked tired and dirty from the soot. Some people helped the rail workers, while others sat and stared blankly at the flames. One man stood apart from the group and watched silently as he smoked his hand-rolled cigarette. His face was in deep shadows, but the scent of cloves came from him, and I detected a hint of Monger-gut with it.

I touched Ringo’s sleeve and tried to be as casual as possible about not looking at the man. “The man with the clove cigarette. That’s the Monger,” I said under my breath.

The man flicked the still-burning cigarette at a small child who stood nearby wailing pitiably for his mother. The child’s cries choked off in surprise as he stared at the man, and before I could move in his direction, the little one took off running. Voices among the people nearby rose in anger, and two men stood up and squared off. The older one of the two threw a punch, and the clove man grinned under his hat.

“Bastard,” Ringo said under his breath, and the clove man looked up as if he’d heard Ringo speak. We both recognized him at the same instant.

I froze, and Ringo exhaled sharply. “Duncan,” I whispered.

The Immortal War stood about twenty feet down the track from where we were. He wore a light-colored suit and a hat with a brim that hid his face, but somehow his eyes were the most visible part of him. Duncan seemed to watch us for a long moment while the passengers in the nearby group shouted encouragement at the fighters. Monger-gut had stolen all my breath, and I felt utterly sick until finally his gaze slid away from our group. After another moment, he strode off into the trees.

The shouts from the nearby people began to quiet, and the fighters dropped their fists and looked at each other in bewilderment. Mary and Tom had stopped walking to watch us, and when Duncan finally left, we both relaxed visibly. “‘E doesn’t know us,” shuddered Ringo.

“How do you know? I think he locked us in, and I think maybe Aeron was coming to finish us off.” I sounded paranoid, even to myself.

“Remember, everyone was locked in,” said Ringo. “It wasn’t just us.”

“Who was that?” asked Mary.

“That was War.”

Tom started in surprise, and nearly turned to follow Duncan’s path into the woods. I narrowed my eyes at him. “You really want to go after Duncan?”

“No,” he said sullenly.

I held his gaze until he looked away uncomfortably. Then I turned back to Ringo and Mary. “We need to get out of here.”

They nodded, and Ringo took Mary’s valise so she could lift the front of her skirts with both hands and stride swiftly down the tracks, away from the burning train wreck.

We walked for about twenty minutes in silence, until finally the signs of human habitation began to point us in the direction of a village. Mary fell back next to me from her position at the front of the group. “As I said before, the Seer line in my family is several generations removed, and though my mother did tell me of our heritage, she didn’t have a tremendous amount of information to share about the other Families. Therefore it is merely my guess that you are a Descendant of Time?”

I nodded vaguely. My brain had been spinning on any possible reason for Death and War to show up at a train wreck in France in 1842, and I’d come up with exactly nothing that made any sense. Were they there because of us? How did they know we’d be there? Had Aislin told them? My thoughts were spinning out of control, and I forced my attention back to Mary. “What gave me away, my clothes?”

“Your ease.”

“My ease?” I scoffed. “I feel far from easy right now. In fact I can’t remember the last time I felt easy about anything. A lifetime ago, or maybe two.”

Mary’s expression was wistful. “Ah yes, I understand that feeling. I didn’t marry Bysshe until years after I ran away with him. I was sixteen when I left my father’s house, and twenty-three when Bysshe died. I lived an entire lifetime during those seven years, and another one since.”

My throat suddenly slammed closed, and my heart threw itself against my ribcage. All questions about Death and War fled my brain, and my inability to breathe must have shown on my face because Mary’s expression grew concerned. “Are you all right, Saira?”

I nodded silently, and then shook my head when my eyes filled with tears. I wiped them away angrily before they could fall and took a deep shuddering breath to get myself back under control. I felt a sudden kinship with this woman, and the words came almost without thought.

“I met my husband when I was seventeen, and I watched him die the week after we were married. He’s not really dead, at least I don’t think he is. But I can’t get to him …” My voice trailed off uselessly, unable to express any words that mattered.

Mary stopped me and took my hands in hers. “Oh my dear, I’m so sorry!” Her voice was hushed, but the force of her sympathy reminded me so strongly of my mother that I literally burst into tears.

I’d never done that before – burst out crying – around anyone but my mom. It was disconcerting and uncomfortable, and I had absolutely no choice but to give in to it. And then Mary did the one thing I was powerless against while I was in the middle of a snot-fest – she held her arms open.

I hurled myself into them.

I was vaguely aware of Tom and Ringo standing far enough away from us that they wouldn’t get hit by flying emotion, but I pretty much lost myself to the feeling, just for a moment, that everything would be all right. Somehow, inside mothering arms there were no problems to deal with, no bad guys to vanquish, no heartbreak to endure. I missed my mom with all the missing I had in me, and I let myself pretend Mary Shelley’s arms were hers, that the murmured words of comfort came from her voice, and the fading scent of roses was her perfume.

Gradually, the gush of tears subsided, and I pulled back with a grimace to wipe my face. Mary brushed the hair back from my face and searched my eyes. “The strongest people of my acquaintance are the ones who allow the steam to escape before the pressure builds to explosive levels.”

I barked a humorless laugh. “That seemed pretty explosive to me.”

She smiled gently. “Merely steam. You’ll feel better now.”

I returned her smile. “When I can see through my puffy eyes again, maybe. I’m sorry about that.”

“My dear, it’s what a mother’s arms are for.”

I straightened my jacket and re-tucked my shirt into the buckskin trousers, which had, miraculously, survived our escape from the train relatively unscathed. “I didn’t know you had children,” I said to Mary. I realized I knew nothing about Mary Shelley beyond the fact that she’d been married to Percy Bysshe Shelley and had written Frankenstein.

“Of my four children, only Percy Florence grew to adulthood,” she said. “He’s at Cambridge, and is set to inherit his grandfather’s baronetcy.”

“Three died?” I was struggling with having temporarily misplaced Archer. The idea of losing a child, much less three, was unthinkable.

“Our first daughter came early. I was so young, and she was so small, it was a wonder she even lived two weeks. It was long enough to love her though, and once I’d felt that love, I couldn’t imagine a life without it.”

Her eyes were clear, but her serene voice caught on the words. She smiled to see the distress in my expression. “William came soon after, and Clara was born a year after that. Little Clara died of dysentery three days after her first birthday. William was two-and-a-half when malaria took him. He and his father are both buried in Rome, which is one of the reasons I chose to heed Aislin’s vision. It is long past time for a visit.”

“I’m so sorry,” I whispered. It was amazing she could still stand after having endured all that tragedy.

She must have known my thoughts, because she looked me right in the eye. “One does what one must to survive. Life is the only possible antidote to death, and living fully is the only way to counter the senselessness of loss.”

I was overwhelmed by her words, and I held my hand out to her. She squeezed it in a moment of pure understanding, then she let go and we turned to face the guys.

Ringo was close enough to have overheard our conversation, but Tom had wandered off toward the trees. I caught Ringo’s eyes, and he gave me a small, sad smile. I straightened my spine, took a step forward, and then another step. I supposed that’s how a person got through the things that stopped them in their tracks. Take the first step, and then the next, and eventually, momentum would pick up where will had left off.