His teeth found her throat. The blood on his tongue sent him into a paroxysm of pleasure, shaking, moaning. He slid his red-smeared face down her shoulder, tore open her clothing, kissed her collarbone. As she flailed at him, Elias plunged his fingers into the spot just below her breastbone, dug in, and spread her chest open with a wet, wrenching crack. He buried his face inside her, teeth rooting deeper, hot sweet red painting his face as he found her heart.
Kill as many as you wish, Root had said.
But when he found himself sated for a moment, and slid his face out of the hole in her torso, he saw what he’d done, and he tumbled away from her. He lay on his side, wide-eyed and numb as it washed over him. Strange, sticky tears that smelled of rot pricked at the corners of his eyes. Down inside, that spark of the man, Elias Wise, screamed to a heaven his voice could no longer reach.
The rain swept over him, rinsed some of the blood away, but nothing could cleanse him of this. Of what Root had made him.
He could kill the creature. Whatever monster he’d become, a dead thing forged of pure hunger, if he had any purpose left to him, surely it must be that. Kill Root.
But as he lay there in the mud and rain and the mother’s blood that pooled around him, the despairing cries and urgent shoutsof survivors seemed to rise in volume, reminding him that they were all around. A scent tickled his nose. Iron and cinnamon.
Elias sat up. Not far away, a big man with a thick mustache lay his coat over the corpse of another passenger and made the sign of the cross. He bowed his head in prayer, heedless of the rain. The man’s hands were covered in blood, as if he’d tried to save the life of one of the wounded and failed.
Elias licked his lips.
He rose and started for the big man.
The wind gusted, and something stopped him. A different scent. Not blood at all. A familiar scent, part perfume and part human musk. He turned toward that scent and saw Root walking toward the upside-down baggage car. They’d moved beyond the wreckage of the three sleeper cars, but now Root had turned back in that direction. There were survivors in his path. They saw the creature and screamed, or scrambled away from it. Some fled. Root ignored them, but two men started to shout at it, blaming it for the crash, turning their fear and pain and confusion upon the creature.
A conductor and a passenger, both young men, tall and strong and panicked. Either of them alone would likely have cowered with the rest, but they fed each other’s fear and anger, and the two men would not step out of his path. The conductor clenched his fists—the largest fists Elias had ever seen—and edged to one side, putting Root between himself and the passenger.
Root laughed at them. Its voice echoed through the rain. The men attacked, and the sound of laughter was replaced by that of bones breaking.
For that moment, Root had been distracted.
Elias started for the ruined baggage car. And the figures he saw in the storm, in the night. The wind buffeted his face, and he caught the scent again, the familiar smell of the woman he’d left behind.
Violet.
Elias’s wife and brother had survived the crash. They were just outside the baggage car, trying to drag the crate of Maggie’s remains out through the upside-down broken window. The crate—Elias’s mother—that had been the cause of all this. Root wanted Maggie’s corpse, and it would surely murder Violet and Malcolm to get it.
Elias started toward them, picking up speed, aware he had only seconds before Root returned its attention to the task at hand. The spark of Elias Wise cared for them, feared for their fate, but as he crushed dead passengers underfoot and bolted through the rain, he knew it was the hunger that drove him. It ached in him, drawn by Violet’s scent.
He wanted her now in a way he never had before.
Bleeding.
21
Malcolm wiped blood from his eyes and kept grim focus on the task at hand. Pain spider-webbed across his back, and his head throbbed. He didn’t remember much about the derailment, but he knew he’d banged his skull pretty good, so he figured he must have been knocked out. The blood seeped from a gash on his forehead, but there was no telling how severe the injury might be. Head wounds always bled like crazy. He was more worried about the ringing in his ears, the dizziness, the nausea. Felt like one hell of a concussion.
“Snap out of it!” Violet shouted.
He blinked. For a moment, he’d been drifting, swaying on his feet, about to drop Maggie’s crate. He pressed his eyes closed and drew in a breath.
“I’m okay,” he lied.
He shifted his stance, and together, they hefted the crate out of the upside-down baggage car. Trunks and traveling cases were everywhere. Some were intact while others had burst open. Busted windows and smashed wine bottles had scattered broken glass on the ceiling, which was now the floor. It occurred to him how fortunate it was that the chickens and other animals had been taken off at the last station, but then the cries of the injured reached him again, and he felt foolish.
“What now?” Violet said, the words clipped and breathless.
He forced himself to focus. Narrow lines of blood streaked Violet’s face—his or hers, he didn’t know. She seemed to be favoringher right leg, but was otherwise intact. The crate was also more or less intact, one side partly staved in, but it held together.
“For God’s sake, Malcolm!” Violet shouted.
Her eyes shone with wild expectation. He was the soldier, after all. He’d been through hell before.
Farther east along the tracks, away from the wreckage, was a road. He could see the railroad crossing signs from here. A road meant homes, somewhere nearby. There was no telling how far, but he needed a moment to clear his head. The pale thing from the train might be dead, but he had to assume it was not. Same with Elias—Ah, fuck, Elias, what did you do, brother?
