15
CASSANDRA
I screamed when the man struck Orlando, knocking him against the wall and slumping down behind the table where I couldn’t see.
The three men strode into the car—I recognized them by their pants and jackets as the band members who’d been carrying the equipment onto the train. The two with guns also wore black ski masks that covered everything but their eyes, but the third man had his face revealed: he was white, and had feathery brown hair and a matching door-knocker beard around his lips and jaw. The hair along his temples was streaked white, like someone had run a paint brush across it a few times, and from behind a strong nose his eyes took everything in within seconds.
“Good afternoon,” he announced in an Italian accent. “Do not be alarmed. Our demands…”
RUN!
The thought was powerful in my mind, and it wasn’t my own. It came from Orlando, and the totem, and then mys own thoughts echoing it in agreement.
I needed to run.
“…simply need to search each car,” the leader was saying. His eyes passed over me, paused, and snapped back to lock onto mine.
I turned and fled.
It hurt me to leave Orlando, but I had no choice. I ran down the aisle and punched the button to open the connector doors, and then I was in the observation car.
“GUNS!” I screamed at the people inside. “There are men with guns! They’re taking over the train!”
I kept moving, because that was what my fight-or-flight instinct made me do. Some passengers got to their feet in alarm, but most simply stared as if I were a crazy person. What was wrong with them?
A man stepped into the aisle and held out a hand. “Hey now, lady. Why don’t we all just…”
He cut off as he looked behind me, eyes widening.
The narrow stairwell to the convenience section below was too my left, and I slid into it as the passengers began to scream with greater frenzy at what I presumed was the sight of the gunmen. I rounded the stairs and landed hard on the bottom floor. The convenience stand was empty, and I leaned over the counter to look inside the small compartment, but nobody was there.
“Anyone?” I yelled, feeling worthless. “Can anyone help?”
The shouting upstairs added urgency to my feet; I hurried to the opposite end of the car from the convenience stand but the door there was locked. I went back and hopped the counter into the convenience stand, which had another door leading into the next car. Also locked.
“Fuck!” I said.
I collapsed to the ground and put my back against the wall, and pulled out my phone. The train rumbling along the tracks vibrated through the floor into my back as I dialed the numbers, 9-1-1, fingers trembling as I tried. I held the phone up to my ear but nothing happened. I looked at the screen and realized why:
NO SIGNAL.
How the hell could there be no signal? We were practically still inside Chicago!
I opened my text messages and tried sending one to the first contact in my list. The bar scrolled across the screen, paused, and then gave me an error message.
I froze. Were those footsteps? It was tough to hear over the CLACK-clack-clack-CLACK-clack-clack of the train on the tracks, and—
Yep, those were footsteps coming down the stairs.
Desperate, I tried placing another call. I switched it into airplane mode and back again, praying that it would give me at least one bar. Something.
The footsteps were slow and heavy, like the ticking of an enormous clock. I clutched my phone and squeezed against the wall underneath the convenience counter, making myself as small as possible, hoping my meager hiding place would keep me concealed.
It didn’t.
The footsteps neared, then stopped. For an agonizingly long moment there was only the sound of the train, and I dared to hope he would leave. Then his masked face slid into view in the air above the counter, and he immediately looked down.
“Tag! You’re it!” he said in an Italian accent. He reached down and grabbed me by the hair, and I yelped with pain as he yanked me to my feet and forced me to choose between crawling over the counter or having my hair ripped out.
I fell to the ground in front of him. The cold metal barrel of a gun touched my head almost gently.
“Know any gryphons, honey?”
The word triggered emotions and scenes in my head. Feelings for Orlando, somewhere in the dining car in pain, and the image of him transforming on the roof of that hotel two nights ago, wings spreading like some great amazing angel.
The masked man pulled me to my feet and examined me with bloodshot eyes, and I knew he’d be able to tell the truth from the look on my face alone.
“Don’t move,” he said, stabbing the gun into my ribs for emphasis. His other hand moved over my body, starting at my armpit and sliding over my breasts, then down my hips, and I cringed as he slid in between my legs but the man was all business, searching for a weapon or something else, and only when he was done did I start breathing again.
His bloodshot eyes narrowed with disappointment. “Guess not.” He looked back at the concession stand and grabbed a bag of chips, then gestured at the stairs. “Up you go, gorgeous.”
I obeyed, because that’s what you do when a man with a gun tells you to do something.
The passengers in the observation car were all twisted to face one end of the car, where the unmasked ringleader was speaking. He had a long knife in one hand, and was gesturing with it as he spoke.
“Our demands are simple and do not involve harming anyone,” he said. “We simply need to search each car, and then when we have what we came for we will be on our way, and everyone can return to their relaxing train ride.” He looked around the car amiably. “Now doesn’t that sound like a pleasant deal?”
“Sounds like a picnic,” said one of the masked henchmen.
The leader’s eyes locked onto me again.
I felt a lot of things within his gaze. No matter how jovial he pretended to be with what were now his hostages, his dark eyes held a lifetime of misery. A thousand lifetimes. Pain laced with anger for so long there was no distinguishing between the two. No amount of jokes or smiles could hide what was inside.
“You,” he said to me, “look like someone who might have what we want.”
The man who’d ushered me back upstairs pulled aside his ski mask to reveal his mouth, then poured the bag of Cheetos inside. He used his sleeve to wipe orange powder from his mouth and said, “Already searched her, boss. Nada.”
But the ringleader wasn’t convinced. “I’m getting a feeling.” He pointed the knife in my direction as he neared. It was eight inches long, and curved wickedly, with points along one edge that were more artistic than functional. It looked like a shiny bat wing, with a thick black grip.
He stopped when the point was several inches from my face, then slowly tucked it behind his back. The train car was so silent I heard the SLING sound of metal on leather, and a soft click of a button holding it inside an unseen sheath.
“Can you sense it?” the masked henchman asked. “I thought you said it’s been too long…”
“It’s a lingering smell,” the ringleader whispered, a response to the question but directed at me. “Like perfume. Foul, rotten perfume.”
He reached for me with both hands, starting at my pits the way his henchman had. And although there was nothing sexual about the way he ran his fingers over my body, I shivered at his touch. Even through my clothes his fingers felt cold, like individual reptiles slithering over my skin. I closed my eyes and suffered the violation as he went down my hips, then back up the inside of my legs, then finally up my back before stopping at my neck.
He lingered while he was close, and his breath smelled as foul as rotten eggs.
His eyes narrowed. He’d expected to find something, and was clearly surprised. He regarded me a moment, and his mouth opened as he began to ask me a question.
He was cut off by the door opening behind me. “Sebastian?”
The leader pulled his eyes away from me. “What is it?”
“The device. It’s all set up, and seems to be working, but it’s throwing this error on the screen…”
Sebastian shoved me out of the way. “I told you any error code besides 141 can be ignored!”
“Yeah, I know, but I wanted you to look just in case…”
Sebastian stopped at the door to turn back to the other henchman. “Finish searching the women.”
“Last one now, boss.” The man was patting down a terrified old lady who was shaking so bad she might as well have been nude in a blizzard. The masked man finished with a shrug, followed his boss—Sebastian—through the door to the passenger cars, and then we were alone.
The passengers exploded into a dozen different conversations of panic and despair, but I barely heard them. Simply standing required too much effort as the weight of what had happened crashed over me, and I collapsed into the chair next to me. I held my head in my hands and shivered at the memory of his fingers sliding over my body. Searching for something.
But that wasn’t even the worst part, I knew.
What truly terrified me was that no matter their searches, no matter that they hadn’t seemed to find anything on my person, deep down I knew what they were looking for.
These men were looking for me.