Cedar clamped down on the hand and twisted it, jerking back. Mr. Shunt screamed as his arm dislocated with a grinding pop. Cedar pulled harder and tore it the rest of the way off. Severed from the Strange, the arm still ticked and twitched, the gears and bones forcing the hand to open and close.
But that did not stop Mr. Shunt. He dashed backward so quickly, Cedar could not track his movement. Mr. Shunt stood several feet away and lifted a gun from his pocket. He pointed it at Cedar.
“Killer,” he hissed. “You will not stop us.”
Cedar growled and lunged.
Mr. Shunt’s lips split in a blackened grin filled with serrated teeth. He squeezed the trigger.
The impact threw Cedar backward. The bullet dug deep through his lung, taking the breath out of him and leaving behind pain. He landed hard, blacked out, and came to again, barely able to hold on to conscious thought. The bullet was still moving, digging through him like a beetle burrowing between his bones.
Cedar howled, anger and rage colliding in his mind and bringing him to his feet.
Mr. Shunt was gone. Shard LeFel and Mae were gone, locked up tight in the car.
He heard the middle train car door open. Water hissed over hot coals, and chains clattered from inside the car. Mr. Shunt must have been releasing the matics and tickers to protect the rail.
Cedar started toward the railcar, each step agony. He had to stop Mr. Shunt. He had to save Wil, Elbert, and Mae.
The night air punctured with the inhuman cry of rage and twisting metal that was coming up the track.
Cedar limped to the shadows near the train car, as half a dozen metal beasts, some as large as a bison, others small as fox, lumbered out of that car, puffing white and black plumes of steam into the air.
They were made of steel, iron, leather, wood, brass. They were made for pounding, tearing, cutting, stabbing, breaking. They were made to kill.
“Kill the Madders,” Mr. Shunt commanded from where he stood on the platform by the car door. “And every living thing with them.” The menagerie of matics ran, rolled, pounded down the rail, along the rail, running fast toward whatever bellowing creature was coming this way.
And then Mr. Shunt strode through the car to the last in line. Cedar pushed himself to follow, still clinging to the shadows. The bullet hadn’t exited his body. It rubbed and dug with every movement, every breath. But pain meant nothing.
Kill, the beast within him urged. Kill the Strange.
Behind Cedar in the car that held his brother, the child, and Mae, something moved. If he took the time to hunt Mr. Shunt, Shard LeFel might kill Wil, Elbert, and the beautiful Mae Lindson.
Cedar Hunt was not a man who hesitated in making decisions. And yet he paused, torn between the choice of killing or saving, the mind of man and the urge of beast locked in stalemate.
A gunshot rang out, breaking through his thoughts. He glanced over at the rail where bullets pinged and sparked and rattled off the matics, peppering the metal monsters to no effect.
The Madder brothers’ laughter filled the silence between the shots, their guns roaring like cannon blasts, each concussion illuminating the night and clouds of smoke from their guns with flashes of lightning and fire. Over all that, he heard Rose Small call his name.
“Cedar Hunt!”
Cedar saw her, amber hair stirring wild from beneath a bonnet, goggles over her eyes reflecting the spark and fire of the gun in her hands. A gun she fired at the matics, and the railmen who had roused out of their tents, and come running down the line to face the demons in the night.
“Find Mae!” Rose yelled, her aim taking three shots in a man’s heart at seven hundred yards. “Save Mae Lindson!”
She was calm as a sharpshooter, taking careful aim at a matic’s head. She shot out an eye, then reloaded and aimed at a valve line as the ground shook.
“Find Mae!” Rose Small shouted again.
Mae. Cedar knew where she was—in the train car. With Shard LeFel. With Wil and Elbert.
Mr. Shunt was nowhere to be seen.
But down the track, walking forward as if dragging a mountain behind him, was a man.
Big, dark, bloody, and charred, Jeb Lindson walked down the railway, two huge chains strapped to his wrists. On those chains were two round matics taller than the man himself, screeching and squealing as he dragged their dead metal husks over the rail. Every step loosened bolts, pried spikes and ties, and forced the rail to rise up like a giant, twisted snake behind him, broken free of the earth, broken free of the binds that held it down.
Smoke rose up from the rail. And the tick, tick of blood and sweat falling off the big man’s fists sent a pockmark of plumes up off the metal like two tiny engines following behind his steps.
The wind shifted and brought Cedar new scents. And he knew that man, that creature, tearing apart the rails was not alive, nor was he dead. He did not know what could power a man to keep moving, keep walking, pounding forward.
Jeb yelled out, a single call of pain, anger, and longing wrapped around one word: “Mae!”
Cedar’s heart beat painfully, his blood too hot, his wounds agony as he ran. To find Mae. To save Mae. To get to Mae before Jeb Lindson.
No, to save his brother. To save the child. Yes, and to save Mae.
Cedar leaped up onto the platform of the middle train car where the door hung open. He needed into the first car, and that door was shut.
The door slammed open.
Mr. Shunt stood in the threshold, oil pouring slick from his empty sleeve. Mr. Shard LeFel and Mae Lindson stood behind him.
Cedar snarled. He leaped.
Mr. Shunt raised his remaining hand from within his coat, and fired the gun again.
The world tipped sideways, filled with explosions and noise. And all Cedar could do was fight to breathe as waves of pain crashed through him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Shard LeFel tightened his grip on the Holder he held tight to his chest as if it were a babe made of glass. In his other hand was a spiked chain looped around the witch’s neck. The same chain noosed the necks of the wolf and the boy.
“Well done, Mr. Shunt,” Shard LeFel said, watching the other wolf twitch and bleed at his feet.
Mr. Shunt bowed slightly, and then bent toward the wolf who struggled to breathe. He splayed his spiked fingers, itching to dig out the wolf’s heart.
“Leave him,” Shard LeFel said. “He will be dead soon. I’ll not have this interruption stop my return.”
Mr. Shunt hissed, then seemed to compose himself. He straightened. “Yes, Lord LeFel.”
Shard LeFel handed the chain to Mr. Shunt and walked through the open door into the car his collection of matics had once filled. Empty now. But he could hear them out on the battlefield, the magnificent screech and hiss and thump of the devices killing the Madders. Music. Sweet and fitting for his last grand night in this mortal world. Fitting to send him back to his own lands and immortality.
An explosion rang out and then a ragged howl of a voice lifted above it: “Mae!”
Shard LeFel paused between one step and the next. “Could it be?” He glanced over his shoulder at the witch, whose eyes were wide in fear, her voice silenced by the leather gag in her mouth and the barbed-wire chain that left beads of blood around her throat every time she swallowed.
“I believe that is your husband, Mrs. Lindson, come back from the grave. Such a pity he is too late to save you.”
He continued through that car and to the next. The door opened before him and one of the Strangework bowed, and stepped aside to allow his entrance.
Shard LeFel strolled over to the center of the room, where the door lay like a coffin on a pedestal.