There really was no accounting for how goddamned stupid people could be.
Pan had given up trying to push the other passengers out of the way and now Truck was taking the lead, crunching down the aisle like an icebreaker. People were scrambling to avoid him, but there was still a crowd up ahead as the passengers stampeded away from danger. The train was going faster than ever, each curve in the track making the car snap back and forth like a toy shaken by a kid.
“Move!” roared Truck, brandishing his fire extinguisher. He was right, he didn’t need his powers to be intimidating, he was the toughest guy she knew even outside of the Engine—a lifetime of bareknuckle boxing would do that. But he was flagging already, one trembling hand resting on the top of each seat, the other struggling with the weight of his makeshift weapon. He looked so human.
She glanced back, two dozen more people crammed right up against her, the whites of their eyes like the crests of waves. In the shifting gaps between them she thought she saw the Magpie at the far end of the car but she couldn’t be sure. Truck had stopped and the tide was crushing her, the stink of fear and body odor making her feel like she was drowning in flesh.
“Goddammit, Truck, go!” she yelled.
“Go where?” he replied. “There’s a bottleneck.”
Above the screams she could hear another voice, somebody calling her name. She looked back again, that bloodied face even closer than before, staring at her. She lifted her hand, ripples of light darting between her fingers.
She shunted the person behind her to the side, another couple of people jumping out of the aisle to avoid her. He was right there, a guy a little older than her, every inch of his body tattooed, dressed in the scraps of skin and cloth that was all that remained of whoever he’d leaped into. He flicked his fingers, spraying blood and fingernails, then charged.
Pan opened her hands, both of them, lightning burning out of her with such power that she felt like she was being turned inside out. She had to close her eyes against it, worried that it would burn out her retinas. When she opened them again the aisle was empty, the chairs reduced to sculptures of molten metal and smoldering cloth. The smell of cooked flesh hung in the air and she gagged at what it meant.
Lose a life to save a million, she quoted Herc, blinking away tears. It’s the only way.
And even as she thought it she saw the Magpie appear behind a mangled chair, his skin pocked with burns—that dead man’s grin still there, like he was a painted doll. She tried to will another burst of charge but she’d burned herself out, there was nothing left inside. She clenched her fists, her jaw. Let him come. That was the thing about wishing to travel into somebody else’s body, the contract was so complicated that you couldn’t wish for anything else alongside it. She could take him.
He took a step toward her, the train rocking so hard that for a moment she thought it had come off the tracks. His eyes never left hers. The exhaustion was a chain around her ankles, a noose around her neck. She could barely even raise her finger to goad him on.
“Come on, then,” she said. “What are you waiting for?”
“Uh-uh,” said Truck, planting a massive hand on her shoulder and pulling her out of the way. He stepped past, resting the fire extinguisher on a chair. “I got this. You find a way to stop the train.”
“Truck—”
“Go!”
Pan paused for a moment more, long enough to rest a hand on his back. His skin was so hot, like he had burning coals beneath his shirt. She wasn’t sure if she was trying to collect some of his strength, or just put the last of hers into him. Either way, she couldn’t face the thought of letting go. He glanced at her, winked.
“I got this, kiddo,” he said again. “Go.”
She snatched her hand away and turned, gritting her teeth to keep a scream inside. She could barely see the people in front of her, they were just obstacles to be moved, and she punched and pushed her way through them until she got to the door, squeezing through into the next car. The tide here seemed to have turned, people pushing back the way they’d come.
Great.
It was easy to see why. Or … not see so much as feel. There was something wrong in here, something bad. It hit Pan right in the gut, like somebody had plunged cold, dead fingers into the squirming mass of her intestines and was scratching her spine with dirty nails. Pan gasped for breath, pushing farther into the sickness, into the evil, godforsaken wrongness of the car.
Then she was free of the crowd and the aisle lay ahead of her, suddenly quiet. The last person scampered out of the door and the screams became muted, like they belonged in another world. The car bucked to the side—nothing to do with its speed, everything to do with her failing equilibrium—and she sat on the edge of a seat to catch her breath.
It seemed like forever before she remembered how to stand. She started walking, feeling the air around her grow thick and hot, heavy with the stink of sulfur. Whatever was up there, it smelled like it had crawled right out of hell’s backside.
Turn around, said her head. Find another way out.
But the train had to be going at 150 miles an hour, maybe more. She might survive, Marlow and Night, too—might—but Truck would be reduced to paste. She had to find the engine, had to find the brakes.
Just keep walking.
She did, reaching the end of the car just as the train plunged into a tunnel. Her ears popped with the change in pressure and she flexed her jaws until her hearing returned. Something was different about the train here. Parts of the walls had crumbled away, and in the gaps she thought she could see something pink. She ducked down, taking a closer look.
Bricks.
There was no doubt about it. There were bricks inside the train walls.
The connecting corridor was pitch black, the lights burned out, and she pushed through it into the next car. If the last one had been weird, this one was off the charts. Most of it was made up of bricks, the kind you’d find in a house. The window frames were half metal, half painted wood. Even as she watched, the floor seemed to alter its shape, carpet sinking away into asphalt. The seats were juddering like they didn’t know what to do with themselves, like they wanted to run. The train was shaking even harder, every tremor making her bones ache.
She wanted to stop. Because if hell was a place you could get to only on your own two feet then why on earth would she keep walking?
Her body wasn’t listening, carrying her down the aisle. A strange light seeped in through the next door, yellow and orange and red, and she walked toward it like a fish approaching a lure. Plaster dust was raining down from the ceiling, great cracks appearing there with wooden boards visible behind. Pan had the impression that she was walking through a theatrical set, that the whole thing was about to be pulled down around her.
She wiped the back of her hand over her nose, pressed on. The door wasn’t a sliding one anymore—or at least half of it wasn’t. The rest was wooden, and painted. She grabbed the handle, pushing until it opened fully. Beyond was something that simply couldn’t be, but was. A street, the width of the train. The train car’s ceiling had crumbled away in places, and through it fell a fine mist of rain. At the far end, where the door should be, was the bottom story of a building.
His building.
And Pan actually laughed with the relief of it. It was the building from her dream, the building in Queens where she had killed Christoph, the man who’d tried to take her as his own when she was thirteen. Which meant she was still asleep. Which meant that they hadn’t been found.
She opened her mouth and laughed until tears streamed down her cheeks. She laughed even when she saw a man through the red door of the building, even when he opened it and stepped into the car. It wasn’t Christoph this time.
It was Mammon.
The sight of him, even in this thing that had to be a dream, made her want to scream, made her want to throw herself into the night, into death. But it couldn’t be. Not even he could warp reality like this, could he?
This isn’t a dream, he said without opening his mouth. His eyes were closed, too, like he was sleepwalking.
“Sure,” she said. “The train just turned into a building. Just like that.”
So what was that worm of discomfort that had burrowed into her stomach? The train was still moving fast but it sounded like it was struggling. Through the sash windows she could see sparks flying up from every wheel, like there was a fireworks show out there. And she realized that it was the weight of the building, the train couldn’t cope with it.
“This isn’t real,” she said.
You’re wrong, was his answer, spoken right into the middle of her skull. You are wrong about so much.
“No,” she replied, putting her hands to her ears. Above him, the building was growing. Bricks splintering out of nothing, stretching into the sky like plants. A neon sign was sprouting from the luggage rack, flickering wildly. The noise the train was making was like an erupting volcano. How long before the car crumpled under its own momentum, before they were all crushed?
Things could have been so different. They still can.
“No!” she said again. “You bastard, you’ve got what you wanted. You have both the Engines. Why are you here? Just leave us, the world’s gonna end soon enough, right? Just leave us be.”
No. Not until you see the truth.
She shook her head, the sobs hauling themselves out of her so hard that her whole body was shaking. It was going to end here, she knew that much. Right here, on a New York City street that had appeared on a train in the middle of Europe. She didn’t even know which country she was in. It was all going to end, every second of her life leading up to this point.
And then what? Then they would come for her. She was under contract and the demons would come, they would open up the ground beneath her feet and drag her into the fire. That would be her home until the end of time.
“Just do it,” she said, or didn’t say, her voice so faint it might have just been a breath.
You could have joined me.
“Why?” she said, wiping the tears away, furious with herself for crumbling. “Why would I do that? Why would anyone do that?”
Because things would be so much easier, he said. So much better. You’re wrong about everything.
“Wrong about you breaking through the Red Door, about you killing everyone?” She spat out a bitter laugh. “How did that feel? Huh? Seth, he was an old man. How did it feel to kill him?”
Take one life to save a million, he said, like he had pulled the thought right out of her head. They were wrong and they would not listen.
“Not to you,” she said. “Not in a million years. And I won’t either.”
She jabbed a finger at the man who couldn’t really be there. Fear burned in every single cell of her being—so much of it that it had seared a hole right through her, had left her hollow. She was too frightened to feel afraid.
“Just do your worst, Mammon,” she said, almost choking on his name. “Just do it. You know what? I don’t care. Open the doors, let them in, watch the world burn. Make the most of it, because you know what? You know what, you son of a bitch? Someone will find a way. Not now, maybe not for a hundred years, but sooner or later somebody will kick your scrawny ass right back to where it came from, right back to hell. And I’ll be there, Mammon. I’ll be there waiting for you.”
She laughed, a sound that belonged inside a madhouse, a sound that scared her. She felt like her body was a grenade, pin pulled, that any second now it would blast into a million parts. Only her anger was holding her together and she clung to it, clenched every muscle and just clung to it.
“I’ll be waiting.”
Mammon smiled. A soft, gentle smile, like somebody dreaming. Then his eyes opened, and it was as if a spotlight was shining through them, light pouring into the car like liquid, pooling on the floor. The sudden, shocking force of it made her stagger back, a hand to her face.
I see you, said Mammon.
The light burned brighter, hotter, louder. It was too much, too much.
I see the truth of you, came that voice again, like he was whispering into her ear. So lost. So wrong. It isn’t too late, Amelia.
“No,” she managed.
It isn’t too late to change your mind, to come with me.
“No.”
They are lying to you. It isn’t too late to see how wrong you were, Amelia.
“Never.”
Look at me, Amelia.
She shook her head, the light carving its way into her brain even through her closed eyelids, even through the flesh of her arm.
Amelia.
“Don’t call me that!” She wasn’t that girl anymore. She wasn’t frightened little Amelia anymore.
Amelia.
So bright, so loud. She wasn’t even sure that she still had a body. The force of him might have disintegrated her altogether, might have reduced her to dust and ash, scattered her to every corner of the Earth. He’d killed her, he’d ended her, he’d taken everything that she was.
Just like Christoph had, all those years ago.
“No,” she said again. She reached deep down inside, into that sudden emptiness, and found a spark.
Amelia, all you have to do is listen to me, and trust me. It is not too late.
“I’m not Amelia, you asshole,” she said.
She pulled her arm away from her face, opened her fingers, stared right at the abomination that stood before her.
“My name is Pan.”
I know, Mammon said. And I came here to help you.