The Hunter hissed, but the smile remained, as though the pain was a pleasure to her. Some of the stingers wrapped themselves around the blade and Oliver felt them pulling it, trying to tear it from his grasp.
“Move her!” he snapped.
Kitsune understood. Fewer stingers were jabbing her now but already there were angry welts rising on her flesh. She gripped the Hunter by the throat and twisted her toward Oliver, who used new leverage to shove the sword deeper, to twist it. The Hunter cried out and the stingers faltered for a moment.
He caught Kitsune’s eye, saw the fox-woman glance toward the window. Oliver nodded, and together they half lifted, half pushed the Hunter across the compartment. With all of his strength, Oliver used the sword to drive the thing against the glass.
It cracked.
The stingers began to twist again, darting at his hands, at the sword, and at Kitsune’s fur and hands, at her face.
They hauled back and slammed the Hunter against the glass again, using her skull as a battering ram. The window splintered and the Hunter’s head crashed through, scattering a million tiny diamonds of safety glass out into the night and the wind as the train hurtled through the darkness. But it was made to push out in case of an emergency, and the collision pushed the whole window from the frame. With the Hunter partway through the broken window, they gave one final push as Oliver slid the sword from her body.
With a scream of hatred and pain, the creature tumbled out the window and struck the ground, rolling into a ditch alongside the tracks at a speed that must have snapped bones and torn muscles. The wind screamed into the compartment and Oliver and Kitsune stood and stared out into the night, buffeted by the speed and the wind. Her hair and cloak flew around her. He glanced down at the viscous green blood on his blade.
“What was she?”
“I have no idea.”
Oliver glanced at Kitsune.
She gave him a sharp look. “No one can know every legend.”
But he had already forgotten his question. The welts raised on her cinnamon skin were bright red. There were at least two dozen that he could see, and undoubtedly more on her chest where the stingers had jabbed through her shirt.
Kitsune swayed on her feet. “You don’t look well,” she said.
Oliver smiled. The heat of his own stings burned through him and made his face flush. He felt feverish and there was pain in his hands and arms where the Hunter had stung him, but now a kind of numbness was descending upon him.
“Do you think we’re going to die?”
Kitsune frowned. “I told you, I do not know her legend.”
Shouts came from elsewhere in the train car. Oliver blinked. They had to get out of there. Had to, in fact, get off the train at the next stop. If this Hunter had found them, others must know they were on the train. And though it was a lesser concern, the condition of their compartment would likely summon the police.
“Let’s go,” he said.
He turned and bent to pick up the scabbard. Only as he rose did he realize how slowly he was moving, how sluggish his muscles. His whole body had begun to feel frozen, as though it was fighting against him.
Oliver forced his limbs to move, put the sword back into its scabbard, and dropped it into the duffel. He did not bother to zip it, slipping its strap across his shoulder. The numbness and stiffness of his body was increasing.
Kitsune stood at the ruined door of the compartment, looking out into the hall.
“Anything?” Oliver asked, his words slurring, his mouth leaden.
“Passengers, but they’re scared. Keeping well back,” Kitsune said. Her head bobbed sleepily as she spoke, like she was drunk.
“Go.”
Slowly, Kitsune staggered into the corridor. Oliver followed. How they managed to make it into the next car, and the next beyond, without a conductor stopping them, he didn’t know. Only when he remembered the conductor’s cap and jacket that the Hunter had worn and realized that at least one of them was dead did he understand.
When they found the ruined door and the broken window, they would come looking. He only prayed that he and Kitsune would be off of the train by then. For now, though, they kept moving until the sluggishness in his muscles became too much. Then he started to knock at every compartment door they passed. When he got no answer, he tried the door. Two of them were locked, which meant someone was inside, asleep. But the third one opened.
It was empty.
They staggered into the compartment. Each fraction of a movement was like swimming in wet cement. Oliver collapsed on the floor. Had Kitsune been human, he was certain she would have fallen before him. As it was she had only enough energy to close and lock the door before spilling onto the cushioned bench.
“Paralysis,” Oliver said. Or thought he said. He was not sure his mouth had properly formed the word. It was becoming difficult to breathe.
The Hunter’s sting paralyzed her victims, presumably long enough for her to kill them. Unless the paralysis was only the first stage of the venom’s effect, and death would result momentarily.
Completely immobile, they could only wait.
Kitsune recovered more quickly than Oliver. He was only human after all. Though they needed to reach Vienna for her plan to work, Oliver insisted that they get off as quickly as possible, before any of the train personnel figured out that the compartment they were hiding in was supposed to be empty, and that they had been the ones in the ruined compartment. Neither of them was in any condition to answer questions, or any mood, and Oliver still had no passport.
As she helped him from the train, carrying the duffel bag over her shoulder, they had both been too focused on the task at hand to register the name of the station. Wherever they were, it was no Salzburg. The town had none of the quaint, picturesque charm of that city. It was a dreary place full of garages, warehouses, and old factories.
They needed a car, and a map. Oliver had said they couldn’t be more than an hour or so from Vienna. Kitsune watched the skies and the windows of darkened buildings as they left the train station, wary of further attack. None came. In the train station, Oliver had found a ticket agent who spoke enough English to tell him of the car rental operation two blocks away, but it was a small town, the man had said, and Christmas Eve, and he did not know how late they would be open. There was no airport here, after all.
Now they strode through the dirty street and a freezing rain began to fall, tiny pinpricks of ice. Oliver had something in his hand, held between his fingers like an old conjure-man’s worry stone.
“What’ve you got there?” she asked.
He opened his hand and she saw the fat seed that the Harvest gods had given him.
“Sort of a lucky charm,” he told her.
Kitsune arched an eyebrow. “Not very effective, is it?”
Oliver slid the seed back into his pocket. “We’re alive.”
“There is that.”
Oliver smiled and took the duffel from her, obviously feeling much recovered. The cold made her feel alert and helped to shake off the numbness from her. Kitsune put up her hood, her fur protecting her from the sleet, and reached out for Oliver’s hand. He flinched a bit, then cast an apologetic glance at her and slid his fingers into hers.
“The lights are on,” he said, the hope in his voice the first real energy he’d shown since the creature’s venom had begun to wear off.
They picked up the pace, hurrying up to the little parking lot. The rental agency had a brightly lit orange-and-blue sign, but it was set up in what appeared to be an abandoned gas station. Kitsune did not spend a great deal of time on this side of the Veil, but she knew the world well enough not to like it very much. There were places of great beauty, and there was real magic in the human race-some of them, at least-but there was also despair and filth, and this town reeked of both.