All That Lives Must Die - Eric Nylund [152]
“What did you see?” she asked.
“A right person,” he whispered, “. . . for me.”
She knew what he was talking about, because she’d been thinking the same thing: She and Mitch fit together. Two puzzle pieces, ones she’d thought were different shapes and colors, and never in a million years supposed to be put together, but when she’d turned them this way and that, suddenly they aligned, and she realized they were supposed to be together all this time.
Mitch leaned back against a wall, and his hand found hers.
Fiona snuggled up against him, warmed by his body, not wanting to be anyplace else in the entire universe at that moment.
They held each other and watched the stars until the sky warmed in the east.
42. Although translocation (aka teleportation: an object moving instantaneously across a distance while not crossing the intervening space) has been attempted and pretended by mystics and stage magicians for millennia, there are no documented accounts of the phenomenon ever occurring among mortals. The infamous Dr. Faustus (Johan Georg Faust) did appear in two places at once, but it is hypothesized that he was cloned or doubled (with the aid of his Infernal sponsor, Mephistopheles) and did not translocate. The ability is also unknown among Immortals (although some have mastered the trick of bending space to travel across the world in astonishingly short times). True and instantaneous translocation, as yet, seems to be the sole purview of select gifted Infernal clans. Gods of the First and Twenty-first Century, Volume 13, Infernal Forces. Zypheron Press Ltd., Eighth Edition.
44
INFILTRATION
The Night Train entered the tunnel. The chugging screams from the engine echoed undiminished. Standing on the rear platform, Eliot choked on the brimstone-laden smoke that swirled in the train’s wake.
He cupped his hand to see through the window into the last train car.
The gas lamps on the wall were turned down to flickers, but there was enough light to see no one else was inside. Perfect.
He entered the car and eased the door shut.
It smelled of rose water and cigar smoke. It was quiet, too; the only suggestion of the train’s thunderous passage were faint clacks under his feet.
Eliot fumbled for the valve on the lights and turned them up.
There were tables with green felt tops and trays of poker chips. Black velvet wallpaper covered the walls, and intricate mahogany curls framed a fresco on the ceiling: a cloud-fringed view of Heaven . . . with an exodus of angels leaving their friends behind. Many angels left behind wept or beckoned to those leaving, but the departing ones had their backs turned to them in disgusted indignation.43
Eliot swallowed, looking for his father in the painting.
Something else caught his attention, though: in the train car ahead—the lights brightened.
Eliot turned down the lights and retreated to the back door. He slipped onto the rear platform, holding his breath.
Outside, the train continued to screech through the dark of the tunnel, but there were things in the darkness answering that screeching now.
Eliot reluctantly closed the door and crouched to hide.
The lights in the last car turned up again, and Eliot saw it was the same old man who’d helped Jezebel board. The man was bent with age. He had a black cap and uniform with gold braids on the shoulders. He wore white gloves, and on his belt was a tiny brass clockwork mechanism.
Eliot had misjudged the size of the man. He was not hunched over from age, but because his head would otherwise have bumped the ceiling.
The man cast about, mumbling. He sniffed the air, looked behind a table, then turned—only just remembering to turn down the lights as he left.
Eliot exhaled with relief (and because he was running out of air). He waited until the lights in the second and third cars also dimmed, and then he crept back inside.
That had been close.
Eliot collapsed into an upholstered chair at a poker table.
He had to find Jezebel and talk to