The train steamed through the Austrian countryside and Oliver gazed out the window, breathless at the beauty of the place. Only dim lights glowed in the compartment and he did not bother to turn on anything brighter. Perhaps there was romance in that glow, but he focused on the ambience of Christmas that he saw in each town and village the train passed.
They stopped at a station and there were lights and ribbons everywhere. People on the train platform smiled at one another. He saw two conductors sipping coffee or something even more merry.
Kitsune’s scent filled him. Oliver glanced down and saw that their hands were entwined, and was not at all sure how long they had been this way. She smiled playfully at him, and arched an inquisitive eyebrow, as if to ask “What’s next?” His pulse raced even as he gave a shake of his head and chuckled softly. He chose to take her flirtation as more mischief. If it was more than that, he could not acknowledge it. That would lead to awkwardness, and perhaps a conversation he did not wish to have.
Beside him, Kitsune purred.
Once again, Oliver laughed. Her eyes sparking with that same playful glint, she joined in. They shared that moment of amusement as though the whole thing was a game between them, but they both knew that it was not. Oliver was grateful that Kitsune did not push the game to the next level. He could not help but be aroused by her, but it could never go further than that.
With a lurch, the train lumbered out of the station, picking up speed.
The door to the compartment rattled with a chill December wind that whipped through the train. The lights flickered. Eyes closed, Kitsune burrowed closer to Oliver and he did not pull away. He let her mold herself to him, but fought the temptation to put his arms around her.
Kitsune settled comfortably there, the trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Her eyes remained closed.
Merry Christmas, he thought to himself.
The train rattled through the darkness toward Vienna. Again, the lights flickered. There came a thump against the compartment door.
Kitsune stiffened in his arms, not sleeping at all. Her eyes snapped open. Oliver stared at the door. Had someone knocked, or just bumped against the door while walking through the car? The train rocked back and forth. Someone might easily have lost their balance and been thrown against the door.
A second thump shook the door, followed by a scratching sound, as though steel wool were being scraped along its outside.
“What the hell?” Oliver whispered.
Kitsune sat up and Oliver let her go. The two of them were very still, straining to understand the nature of the sounds outside the door. So that when the knock came-an ordinary sort of knock, three raps in quick succession-they both started in surprise.
Cautious, Kitsune rose and started toward the door.
“Yes?” Oliver called.
A voice replied in German, and then in English. “Passports, please.”
He let out a breath, only then realizing how quickly his pulse was racing. A dozen possibilities suggested themselves to explain the sounds they had heard, including something as typical as two people trying to get by one another in the narrow passageway outside the compartment. Living in constant danger had made him paranoid.
Kitsune glanced at him, jade-green eyes gleaming, her features tense. Oliver shook his head and gestured for her to step back. She went to the seat opposite the one they had been sharing and unzipped the duffel bag, reaching inside.
If it truly was the conductor outside the door, Oliver and Kitsune had already discussed the pantomime that would ensue as they searched for their suddenly misplaced passports. At worst, they would be left off the train at the next stop.
But the sounds they’d heard against the door concerned him. He glanced again at Kitsune and saw her sliding the Sword of Hunyadi from the duffel. Clearly, the sounds worried her as well. There was no telling what might be beyond that door.
“Passports, please,” the voice demanded, with another rap on the door. “Open, now.”
A ripple of unease went through him. The voice did not sound right. It was not simply the matter of a foreign accent. The words seemed muffled.
“Open it,” Kitsune whispered from behind him.
Oliver turned toward her. She sat beside the duffel, holding the sword down behind it, hidden from view.
He hated to do it, but she was right. On the chance it really was the conductor, they would be ejected from the train for certain if the crew had to force the door open.
“Coming,” Oliver called as he walked to the door.
He unlocked it, then slid it open, tensed to jump back if attacked. The first thing he saw was the conductor’s hat on the woman’s head. In the passageway, lights dimmed for nighttime travel, he could make out none of the details of the conductor’s face. But it eased his tension a little to see that hat.
“Sorry. We were napping a bit.”
“Of course,” said the conductor.
In the dim light, her grin was Cheshire Cat broad. Oliver heard a strange sound coming from her, a kind of rustling that came from beneath the long blue coat with the railway’s insignia on the shoulder and breast.
Opening the door had been a terrible mistake.
She pushed off the conductor’s coat. A terrible rasp came from her body, which was covered with hair so thick it seemed like the yarn on a rag doll’s head. But it twisted and coiled and lashed out and something jabbed Oliver’s left forearm. He cried out and staggered back, and the cablelike tendrils that covered her body thrust out toward him, each of them tipped with a curved stinger.
His arm ached where she’d stung him and began to feel hot. Some kind of venom was moving through him. Oliver wondered if it was fatal and how many stings it would take to kill him.
On instinct, he grabbed the door and slid it shut. With all of his weight behind it, he drove it home, crushing several of those tentacles in a small gap between door and frame, but the stingers did not withdraw. They thrust out at his hands as though they could see him. Oliver swore but did not pull away. One of the stingers grazed his left wrist. He opened the door a few inches and slammed it again. A tendril was cut off and fell to the floor, leaking greenish ichor.
“Help me!” Oliver said through gritted teeth.
“Step back,” Kitsune commanded, her voice deathly calm.
“Are you crazy? I’m going to lock the door!”
A bouquet of stingers erupted through the narrow opening in the door, pressed themselves against the door edge and the frame, and then the handle was torn from his grasp as the stingers forced the door open with such violence that it rattled and slammed and he heard metal tear.
“Oliver, step back!” Kitsune shouted.
In fear he threw himself away from the door, falling backward onto the duffel bag as the Hunter swept into the room, stingers stabbing at the air all around her. The tendrils curled like a basket of snakes upon her head. Somewhere in that mass of darting stingers was a face, but all he could see were clear, perfect, blue eyes and that Cheshire grin.
“So pleased to make your acquaintance,” the Hunter said, and then it laughed, the coldest sound Oliver had ever heard.
Kitsune tossed him the Sword of Hunyadi, still in its scabbard. He lay on his back on the bench seat and snatched it out of the air. He began to draw it even as Kitsune attacked the woman.
The fox-woman did not alter her form. Fur cloak rustling around her, she lunged at the Hunter. Stingers darted out, jabbing into the shadows within her cloak. Kitsune whimpered through gritted teeth, and Oliver wondered how many times she would be stung, how many it would take to kill a Borderkind. But the fox-woman was fast. She grabbed the Hunter by the throat and used her free hand to rake the creature’s abdomen with vicious claws.
Then, Oliver was in motion. He slid the scabbard fully off the sword as he stood. Without a word he moved behind Kitsune and thrust the blade past her and into the mass of angry stingers.