It had happened.
The Circle had found them.
Pan barely had time to acknowledge the grinning face at the window before it moved, fast. She saw a hand draw back, something glinting against the distant mountains. The same hand jabbed forward like a snake, puncturing the broken window.
She didn’t understand what happened next, because what happened next was impossible.
The window stretched into the car, the glass bending like it was molten. Where the tip of the knife was it began to change shape, the point morphing into a snout, the glass beneath fracturing into a mouth, edged with gleaming teeth. It was as if a bear were pushing itself through the window. The translucent face uttered a bestial howl and Pan fell back against the seat, her legs no longer strong enough to hold her.
Whatever it was, it kept coming, a hand shattering free, swiping through the air and turning one chair to splinters and foam. It grabbed at another seat, trying to haul itself into the train. The glass formed shoulders, then a torso, ripping itself from the frame and filling the car with wind and thunder.
The drunken men were screaming, falling over themselves as they tried to escape. They weren’t quick enough: the creature—no, say its name, Pan, it’s a demon, how could it be anything else?—opened its jaws impossibly wide and lunged, clamping them shut around one guy’s head. It sounded like somebody crunching an ice cube, and through the glass she saw his skull crushed like porcelain, an explosion of brain and bone. His body fell to the floor, twitching, gushing like a fountain.
“Pan!” It was Marlow, pushing against the tide of men as he tried to get to her. The demon glanced at him, dismissed him with a snort, then twisted its head to her. It had no eyes, and yet she could feel it studying her, trying to work out who she was. But it couldn’t be here, it couldn’t have come for her. She checked her watch. She had time, she still had time.
She lifted her other hand, feeling the electrostatic charge build up in every fiber of her body. The demon screeched, the sound primeval, and it threw itself at her, as big as a tiger, its glass body making it almost invisible as it shredded through chairs and tables.
She braced herself, forced the charge up her arm. Before she had a chance to fire, though, the demon exploded, detonating like it was packed with C-4. Shrapnel tore through the car and she threw up a hand to protect her face, crying out as glass embedded itself in her skin. When she looked again the demon was gone but a teenage girl was vaulting in through the missing window. The wind turned her short, red hair into a tornado, one that half concealed her face. But Pan still knew her.
The girl who’d been in Budapest with Patrick Rebarre, the enemy Engineer. The Circle had kidnapped Charlie, Marlow’s friend, and dragged him to Europe, tried to use him as leverage to get Marlow to talk. And this girl had shot him in cold blood. It had been the beginning of the end—because Charlie had been working with the Circle all along.
The girl grinned.
“Thought you could hide from u—”
Pan opened her fist, the electrostatic charge like an unleashed dog. A fork of lightning crossed the car in a booming flash, hard enough to blow out another two windows. The girl was fast, though, twisting behind a chair. The charge blistered past her and caught the retreating men, lifting them up and tossing them down the car like they were rag dolls. Had Marlow been there, too?
No time to check. The redhead was back on her feet, a blade in one hand, that crap-eating grin plastered over her face.
“That all you got?” she said, then drove the knife into the top of the nearest table.
As soon as she pulled the blade free the table came to life, the surface folding like origami, one section splitting into a gaping maw while the legs wrenched themselves from the wall. It was another demon, made up of the table and a section of the train floor. It shook itself like a wet dog, its noseless face sniffing at the air. The train groaned in protest, the raging tracks visible through the hole the demon had left.
What the hell?
Pan fell back through the sliding door into the darkness between cars. The creature was there in a heartbeat, too big to fit, its snapping jaws loud enough to make her ears ring. Then, just like the last one, it blew apart in a hail of lethal pieces that threw Pan along the floor and into the door of the next car.
She groaned, shaking the blotches of light from her vision. She could hear screams behind her as the rest of the train caught on that something was wrong. The redheaded girl was marching leisurely down the aisle, using the tip of the blade to pick at a fingernail. She looked at Pan and shook her head.
“Finding you was too easy,” she shouted over the howling wind. “Mammon knew exactly where you would be. He wants—”
The girl’s head snapped forward and she dropped to her knees. Marlow was right behind her and he hit her again, driving her into the floor. He scooped her up and tossed her out the window like she was a bag of trash, dusting his hands off. Pan picked herself up, her flesh glinting with flecks of broken glass and steel.
“She won’t be dead,” she said as Marlow reached her. “And she won’t be alone.”
“How’d they find us?” he said, following her through the sliding door. The car was full of frightened faces, and the sight of Pan with her injuries didn’t do much to calm them. She ignored the stares. They needed to get to Truck and Night, needed to get the hell off this train.
“Had to happen eventually,” she said. “It’s the Engine. Can’t have it inside you without kicking out a homing beacon. Mammon probably didn’t even have to look for us. As soon as we landed in Europe it would have been like a siren going off in his skull.”
“So what do we do?”
She thumped past an old guy gesticulating at her and spouting French, walked through the next set of doors to see Truck right ahead. The big guy did the perfect double take when he saw her, hauling his massive bulk up from the seat.
“Ah, crap,” he said. “Already?”
“Already,” she replied. “Night, wake up.”
Truck reached down and shook the girl gently until her head emerged from the coat, dark eyes blinking.
“Already?” she said in her Spanish accent.
“Yeah,” said Pan. “That bitch from Budapest.”
“Any others?” Night said as she hopped off the chair, as graceful as ever.
“Yeah,” Pan said.
“What are we going to do?” Marlow asked, looking back, then out the window, then at her. “We’ve beaten them before, we can do it again.”
Maybe, but something told her that Mammon wouldn’t underestimate them twice.
“We crush ass,” said Truck, slamming a fist into his palm with a dull slap. He frowned, stared at his hands. “Oh,” he said.
“What?” Pan asked, but she already knew. Now that she was paying attention she saw that Truck looked different. Smaller, somehow. His skin looked healthier, more color in his eyes. “No, Truck. Don’t you dare.”
He thumped the window with his fist, grunting in pain. Then he looked down at Pan with an expression that belonged to a lost child.
“Circle cracked my contract,” he said.
So he was the first. They could crack only one contract at a time, and each one might take days. It made sense to take Truck out of the game. His strength was legendary, and he was an experienced soldier, too. Pan swore beneath her breath. This was bad. Without his powers, Truck was about as useful against the Circle as a baby hippo against armed poachers. He’d be as vulnerable as any of the normals on the train.
“No,” said Night, throwing herself on him, her arms not even making it halfway around his gut.
“Hide,” Pan said. “They’ll be coming for you, Truck. They’ll know you won’t be able to fight back.”
“No way,” he said. “I’m not leaving you guys, I’m not running. Can still knock some teeth out.”
“Truck,” said Night, letting go of him. “Don’t argue. You can’t win this one.”
“Listen to her,” Pan said.
“Screw you both,” he said. “You’re forgetting my other powers.”
He lifted both hands and proceeded to extend his middle fingers, waggling them in front of Pan’s face.
“Boom. Now what’s the plan? We fight?”
She shook her head and opened her mouth to speak, only to be cut off as the sliding door opened and a crowd of people appeared in a surge of panic.
“Come on,” she said. She didn’t want to find out what they were running from. She squeezed a burst of crackling electricity up to the ceiling, holding the crowd by the door, then led the way down the aisle and into the next car. It was the restaurant car, half a dozen people eating a late dinner.
“You have to be kidding me,” said Truck, aiming a scowl at Marlow. “You couldn’t find the goddamned café in the next car down?”
“I went the wrong way!” Marlow protested.
“Not the time,” Pan said. She spotted what she was looking for, pulling the emergency brake lever on the wall.
Nothing.
She tried again. Whatever happened next, it would be safer for everyone if the train wasn’t moving. But the lever was useless. If anything, she thought, they seemed to be going even faster, plates and glasses juddering across tables and spilling to the floor. The diners were growing concerned, standing, crying out. Pan cursed again, pushing through the car until she reached the next emergency alarm. She pulled it hard enough to snap it free. Still nothing.
“They’ve got control of the train,” she said.
“You serious?” asked Truck. He reached down and grabbed a handful of fries from an old man’s plate. “It’s an emergency,” he spat as an explanation.
“Why?” asked Marlow, looking at her. He answered his own question. “They’re going to crash it.”
“What better way to kill a handful of Engineers?” she replied, setting off again. “We need to get to the driver.”
She shouldered her way past the diners, all of whom were on their feet. One of them grabbed at her arm and she turned to see a middle-aged guy in an expensive suit. A younger woman—who could have been a Sports Illustrated swimsuit model—stood beside him, looking just about as sick with fear as anyone Pan had ever seen.
“Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” the man asked, his fingers gouging trenches in her flesh. She tugged loose, practically hissing at him.
The woman by his side doubled over, gagging, and the man turned his attention to her. All Pan wanted to do was keep walking but something about the woman rooted her to the spot. She sounded like she was choking, and when she straightened up again there was a baseball-sized lump in her throat.
“Peekaboo.”
The voice came from the woman, but not from her mouth. It sounded like it was being spoken from deep inside her throat, like a ventriloquist. She made a noise like a cat trying to cough up a hair ball. Her whole face was bulging, like something was pushing against it from inside. Beads of blood were forming on her ballooning lips. The man in the suit staggered away, falling on his ass, and the woman lurched from the booth. More muffled words came from her ballooning throat: “I found you.”
“Ah, jeez,” said Pan, feeling the pins and needles in her arm as she prepared to unleash another charge. “This is gonna be bad.”
Understatement of the century.