Onyx Gryphon: A Paranormal Shifter Romance (Gryphons vs Dragons Book 4) Page 14

  “I won’t promise that,” the old man growled.

  “We need him!” The train rocked for emphasis.

  James approached warily. Blood still fauceted down his dark face, and his eyes were pools of white. “What?”

  I shook the keys in his face. “Which is the right one?”

  “Umm.” He stared at them. “It was gold, I think. Or brass? All I remember is it wasn’t silver.”

  That narrowed it down well; there were only five or six brass keys on the ring.

  “Ohh…” James moaned, pointing with his bound wrists.

  I looked out the window. The tracks curved gently far ahead, allowing us to see the next mile or so. There was a rectangular building next to the tracks, with a large overhang and dozens of twinkling police lights.

  The next station. And judging from the look of the overhang, our damaged observation car would smash into it.

  “Fuck,” I said, fumbling with the keys. “Fuck!”

  The first brass key didn’t work, nor the second, or the third. I was about to question James’s memory when the fourth one slid into the slot with perfect harmony, and when I twisted I heard the lock disengage.

  “Yes!” the old man grunted.

  Through the partition, and then we were in the engine car itself. Everything was louder here, with the engine so close. I moved through a narrow hallway with compartment doors on either side, and into the engine room itself. There were two captain’s chairs in front of a large bank of computers and instruments; it reminded me of an airplane cockpit, but with an order of magnitude fewer buttons. Above that were the two square windows tilted toward us aerodynamically, giving a few of the tracks and terrain whizzing by.

  On the ground behind the chairs were two men tied together with their hands bound behind their backs. Their heads were slumped against their chests, and one of them had tried blood on his scalp.

  I knelt in front of one and gently shook his arm. “Hey. Are you conscious? Hello?” He moaned, but didn’t bother moving his head. “James,” I yelled, “slow the train down!”

  “Do what? I dunno how! I just guarded the door!”

  The old man was squinting at the controls like they were written in Chinese.

  I gritted my teeth and got back to my feet—which sent new pain up my poor feet. I leaned over the dashboard and examined everything: even if it wasn’t as complex as an airplane, it was still overwhelming. My eyes locked onto a lever that looked like it could be throttle… but next to it was another one, and then a third next to it, and on the right wall was an entire bank of levers in various positions.

  “Uhh…”

  On the dashboard was a dial that looked like a speedometer, and when I leaned in I saw that it was around 55. If that was miles per hour then we were in business; all I had to do was try levers until I found one that made the speed go down.

  One of the middle levers was already pushed halfway forward, so I wrapped my fingers around it and then pulled back gently. The engine noise increased in pitch rapidly, so I panicked and pushed it the other way, but the speed never flickered.

  Okay. Maybe this was more complex than driving a car.

  “Man, hurry up!” James yelled. The old man turned around from helping the engineers and aimed the butt of the gun, which made James take a few steps back with arms raised.

  “How do we slow it down?” the old man asked the unconscious men. “Wake up!”

  Ahead of us, the station was growing rapidly. How long did it take a train to slow to a stop? Probably more than we had.

  I grabbed another lever and moved it; this time the speedometer dropped to 45, and I felt the train lurch gently in response. “Yes!” I shouted, steadily pulling the lever. But even when it was all the way back, the speed stayed at 45 and dropped no further.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Just pull ‘em all!” James shouted.

  I threw aside caution and did just that. I pulled the next two levers at the same time, and nothing happened except a bunch of red lights flashed on the dashboard angrily. I turned a dial that said, “Internal pressure,” to zero, and the speedometer flickered and began dropping one slow millimeter at a time. James came forward and used his tied hands to do the same, sometimes reversing a switch I had just thrown, but I was too flustered to care. I pushed buttons and flipped switched that said anything close to what might be needed to stop the train, but we continued racing toward the inevitable crash.

  Working my way around the dashboard, I came to a lever that was partially obscured underneath the desk. It was flush against the metal surface, with a round black ball on the end of the lever. There were three settings etched into the metal behind the ball: RELEASE (the current setting,) FULL SERVICE, and EMERGENCY.

  This was as much an emergency as anything, so I grabbed the round end of the lever and shoved it to that position.

  After trying all the other controls with no success, I wasn’t prepared for it this one to work. Still hunched over, I was thrown forward into the dashboard, head smacking into one of the computer screens so hard my vision went white as I fell to the ground. I heard the old man and James cry out beside me. A deafening hissing sound filled the air, with the deeper sound of metal screeching against metal. Everything vibrated: the air, the controls dashboard, the ground. Getting to my feet was like trying to stand up in a cement mixer.

  Somehow I managed, leaning on the dashboard to steady myself.

  “Oh dear,” the old man said, eyes wide as he stared out the window. “Oh my…”

  The station was rapidly approaching. We were close enough to make out details: lights flashed from police cruisers around the tracks, and on the platform itself tape had been strung up to keep civilians from getting too close, with police spaced along the length.

  One thing was terrifyingly obvious: there was no way the train would stop in time.

  “Get away!” I screamed, waving my hand at the window as if they could magically hear me. “Get back!”

  “Oh God,” James prayed behind me. “Oh sweet Jesus, I’m sorry…”

  The old man lowered himself into one of the captain’s chair and fastened the harness over his chest; I mimicked him because it was a much better idea than standing. James followed suit in a third chair up against the back wall.

  I twisted in my chair and gestured at the two unconscious engineers. “Hold their heads. Don’t let them bang around.”

  James maneuvered his legs to create a cushion for them, and then held their head in place with his bound hands.

  The screeching wheels were painfully loud; I pictured orange sparks flying in all directions underneath us. People on the station platform realized what was happening and began fleeing; first in an organized shuffle, but then with the frenzy of panicked souls. The police on the platform backed away slowly, unsure of what to do, hands on the holsters of their guns. One of them gave in and turned around to run.

  Above the tracks, the station overhang loomed. It was made with thick beams of steel, I could now see. I imagined the peeled-open top of the observation car striking it like a sword swung at a lamppost, and in my imagination the sword didn’t survive.

  Okay, I thought to myself. This is it.

  The train had slowed considerably by the time it reached the platform, but it was still too fast by far. The platform and police whizzed by in our narrow view, and I prepared for the moment of impact, hands gripping the arms of the chair so tight I expected the plastic leather to tear.

  I waited, and waited, and waited, cringing the entire time.

  The sensation was like rear-ending someone on the highway; I was thrown forward against the straps of my chair, my head whiplashing forward and down. The sound was terrible: metal crunching and warping unnaturally, the groans of iron giants devastated by the massive industrial engines of mankind. I felt someone smack against the back of my chair and hoped it wasn’t the engineers, or that at the very least they didn’t get hurt too bad. After the initial
lurch came a new trembling, side-to-side, and with a sudden bump our view through the window twisted sideways away from the platform as we finally derailed. I couldn’t stop myself from screaming as we hopped our tracks and straddled the adjacent rail, the entire engine car bucking like a bronco, throwing us out of our seats for quick, weightless instants. I clenched my eyes shut against the impossible trauma I was experiencing, hoping that if I could block it from my eyes it might go away entirely.

  I couldn’t tell when we stopped, but eventually I opened my eyes and realized that we had.

  The view through the window was diagonal away from the platform. Everything was wonderfully still. I twisted to look at the old man, and he looked back at me with surprise, then happiness.

  “Holy Toledo!” he said, awestruck.

  I unbuckled my harness with shaky fingers and then rose. James still sat in his seat, his eyes wide and his chest heaving as if he were having a panic attack. The two engineers had indeed fallen forward against my chair.

  “He hit his shoulder,” James said in a monotone voice. “But I think they’re alright. I think.” He blinked rapidly. “Are we alright?”

  “We’re alright.” I knelt to the engineer and cradled his head; everything looked okay, though I wasn’t medically trained. I lowered him gently and hoped they hadn’t injured their necks.

  Suddenly, James threw off his harness and bolted to his feet. He got halfway down the hall before the old man stood and yelled, “FREEZE, PUNK!”

  James slid to a stop, then put his tied hands over his head. The old man giggled.

  “I always wanted to say that. I feel like Dick Tracy!”

  Shouts drifted outside the train; men giving orders. “You might want to put the gun down,” I said, “before the cops board the train. They might get the wrong idea.”

  The smile was wiped off his face in the blink of an eye; he made an O shape with his mouth and quickly dropped the gun like it was a hot pan. “Oh dear…” He kept Sebastian’s curved dagger tucked into his belt, though.

  James took the opportunity to resume fleeing. He got as far as the door before it opened and police entered with guns drawn.

  I used my foot to kick the Uzi forward toward the cops—which was a painful reminder that my foot was more blood than skin—and then put my hands in the air along with the old man. The police officer came down the hall slowly, her pistol still pointed ahead of her.

  “Thank God you’re here,” I said. “Can I hug you? I really want to hug you.”

  “MA’AM, PLEASE STAY BACK.”

  “Yeah, sure, okay, no problem!” I squeaked.

  “We were able to gain entry to the engine and stop the train,” the old man told her. “We found the engineers tied up and unconscious. That man,” he pointed with his chin at James down the hall, “was one of the four hijackers. Two more are somewhere at the rear of the train.”

  “And the fourth?”

  “He’s, well… He’s gone,” I said.

  “Gone as in dead? Or gone as in escaped?”

  The old man and I looked at each other. “The truth is going to sound really crazy.”

  “What, like he turned into a dragon and flew away?”

  I blinked at the cop with my jaw open. She’d said it without any hint of sarcasm or mocking.

  “Half of Chicago is on fire,” she explained, then shook her head. “This whole day feels like one bad dream. Please exit the train with your hands in the air.” She began relaying our information into her shoulder-radio.

  We obeyed, pressing ourselves against the hallway wall to allow a medic to get past us. Then we were at the partition, which had torn apart by the crash and was being used by police to enter the front of the train. Two officers helped us down to the tracks, then another guided us up a ladder and onto the station platform itself. I winced with each step but didn’t call out for help; there were probably passengers more injured than me.

  I got my first good look at the train: the cars had come off the tracks in a zig-zag pattern, each one pointing in a different direction, while somehow still remaining connected. The peeled-open roof of the observation car had smashed into the station overhang; it was now bent backwards with the end still touching the underside of the overhang.

  “My grandchildren are never going to believe this,” the old man said.

  Overwhelmed with emotion in the aftermath of everything, I turned and wrapped him in a big hug. It felt good to feel the touch of another human, even though I was shivering from the adrenaline wearing off.

  “Oh dear!” he said, pulling away but keeping his hands on my arms. He rubbed them up and down. “You’re freezing cold!”

  I began to shrug it off, but stopped myself. There was something strange about this feeling: it was like I had been dipped in ice water from the legs-up.

  Realization crashed into me harder than the train into the station.

  Orlando!

  30

  ORLANDO

  The dragon and I crashed into the passenger yacht in a tangle of wings and feathers and scales.

  And then I finally surrendered.

  The fist keeping me in gryphon form released its grip. As we tumbled across the deck I shifted back into a human: talons fattening into fleshy fingers, sharp beak returning to a jaw of bone and tooth. Like molded clay I was destroyed and remade, born anew into the true body in which I belonged.

  It was like letting out the longest exhale in the world.

  The dragon was all around me: a slashing claw to my left, the soft scales of his belly against my back, his snake-like neck whipping through the air above. My view alternated between deck and sky and dragon rapidly, and then my back slammed into the cold metal of a railing. I flipped end-over-end into the open air, a view of the beautiful sky above, before crashing into the water.

  It was so cold it knocked all the air from my lungs, a frigid punch directly to my gut. The force of falling 30 feet plunged me deep into the murky water, giving me a terrifying moment of complete darkness. My chest heaved with the desire to inhale; I needed to get to the surface, and away from the dragon.

  Something below caught my eye: the tiniest flicker of light against a smooth and shiny surface.

  The totem!

  The realization that I no longer possessed it terrified me. All of this was a failure if I lost it, or let it fall into the dragon’s possession.

  Already pointed toward the lake floor, I kicked my legs and pumped my arms to swim after the totem. Good God, I was exhausted. The muscles in my back were numb and unresponsive, every contraction a tremendous effort. Yet the need to recover the totem commandeered my brain, pushing aside any other action.

  I would get the totem or drown in the process. There was no in-between.

  I felt the dragon behind me right before he struck. I tensed in expectation of jaws to clamp onto my weak human body, but it was a hand with fingers that snatched my left ankle. He yanked on my leg, and I kicked back against him, trying to break free of his iron grip. Then he was close enough to grab my right wrist at the back-end of a swim stroke, whirling me around to face him.

  Even in the dark water I could make out his clenched teeth and eyes full of fury.

  I punched him in the face, but the thick water softened the blow. He moved his grip to my neck, one hand and then the other, squeezing so hard I felt my eyes bulge. Trying to choke me underwater was ridiculous; it’s not as if it accomplished anything. But then the dragon opened his mouth and exhaled, the bubbles drifting across both cheeks to get back to the surface.

  With his lungs empty, we began to sink.

  Fresh panic bombarded me once I knew what he intended. My lungs heaved in false-breaths as I desperately tried to get him off me, punching him in the ribs, kicking up into his nude crotch. A wicked smile spread on his face while I fought pitifully; he didn’t care if he died too. Somehow, in all of this, that was a win for him.

  Killing one of the gryphons was worth dying.

  I thrashed a
nd twisted in the water while the dragon’s grip tightened. Flecks of light shot across my vision. No matter how hard I fought he was impossibly strong, even after our flight across the city. I could see the determination in his eyes and feel it in his dark, twisted soul.

  I was going to die.

  My failure was not only my own, but my brothers’ as well. The other gryphons would have to continue their fight without me, and they would be weaker for it. Maybe too weak to succeed in the end, whatever that was.

  The ache of failing them hurt more than anything.

  As my vision narrowed until only the dragon’s face remained, I thought of Cassie. I’d failed her too. How would my death affect her, physically and emotionally? I didn’t know how our totem bond worked. I hoped it wouldn’t be too painful.

  I’m sorry, I thought, and closed my eyes for the last time.

  ORLANDO!

  My mate’s thought jabbed me in the spine, forcing my eyes back open. For a heartbeat she was with me, here underneath the freezing water. It was as if I’d received an injection of adrenaline, warmth spreading up my spine and along my bones and then to my muscles, renewed strength taking over me, one last gasp of resistance against the dragons who wanted to destroy this world.

  I pulled my knee up to my chin, put my foot against his chest, and kicked with all my might.

  It was more than just a kick: it was a convulsion of my entire body, arching my back and exploding every fiber of my quads. The dragon’s grip on my neck slipped and then released, shock replacing the smug smile of victory on his face.

  My back hit the soft lake bed.

  I reached behind me, knowing exactly where the totem was without needing to look. With the last fraction of energy I still possessed I rotated until my legs were underneath me, coiled like a snake, and launched off the floor.

  The dragon swiped a hand toward me, but I was already beyond him. I held my arms at my side to move swiftly through the water; I didn’t have the strength to even hold them out for a single stroke. I tilted my head back. My vision was narrowing rapidly, and soon the approaching surface was nothing more than a blurry circle slightly brighter than the surrounding darkness. I brushed against the underside of the huge yacht, scraping along the side in my ascent.