Infinity Bell: A House Immortal Novel (12 page)

Slip’s shoulder-length hair was dry and sun bleached, his weathered tan skin carved with wrinkles at his forehead and eyes. He wore a sleeveless hoodie and pants with plenty of pockets down the outside of the legs. He also had on a thigh holster, a full quiver and crossbow across his back, and a pinched expression of suspicion on his face.

Ned reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a bottle of pills. “Antibiotics, full strength.”

Gloria’s eyes went wide. I guess she hadn’t realized exactly what Ned had taken off her shelf. Antibiotics were rare and valuable. But, then, the pills were paying for her passage, so maybe she was paying for herself.

Neds tossed the medicine to Slip. He shook the bottle without looking at it.

Voice on the bullhorn outside laughed and cussed. There was only intermittent gunfire, then a lot of silence.

“This isn’t enough,” Slip said. “One of you stays behind.”

“We all travel together.” Left Ned pulled an even bigger bottle out of his other pocket. “Painkillers.” He held it up. “This bottle squares our debt.”

“How many pills?”

Left Ned shook the bottle. It sounded full.

The man curled two fingers in a “give it over” gesture.

“We’re square,” Right Ned repeated, still holding the
bottle. “Full passage for her and for the rest of us. To Kansas.”

Slip opened the bottle in his hand, sniffed the antibiotics, then dumped one out and pressed it against his tongue. He nodded before dropping the pill back in the bottle.

“Along with that”—he nodded at the painkillers in Neds’ hand—“we’re square.”

Neds tossed him the painkillers, and Slip jammed both bottles away in a bag that hung at his belt.

“While I’d like to say I want to know all your names,” Slip said, raising his voice like he’d suddenly become our tour guide, “I don’t. You can call me Slip. If you want a ride on my boat, walk this way.”

He gave us each a quick up and down, as if setting the details of us to memory just in case we became worth turning in for a ransom.

When he looked at me, his eyebrows quirked down just a notch. I didn’t know what he saw in me. I saw in him a man who knew the profit he could make off anything that fell into his hands.

We weren’t people to him. We were cargo.

I didn’t like him. Nor did I trust him.

The door behind us swung open, and I spun toward it.

“Whoo, that’s good times!” A tall, lanky, dark-skinned man with an autotracer cannon slung over his shoulder and a bullhorn in one hand strolled in. “I do love breaking out one of these babies.” He grinned at us, then tossed the bullhorn to Slip.

“This here’s Lucky,” Slip said by way of introduction.

“Is he dead?” I asked Lucky.

“The assassin? Not if he’s a fast runner and can find a
doctor quick. Well, and a bomb technician.” Lucky sauntered across the floor, heading toward the far side of the library. “Might have annoyed him enough for him to call in backup, though.”

Slip followed the other man and gestured for us to do so. “I usually charge extra for taking out an agent of House Black,” Slip said, “but Domek out there is a personal annoyance—”

“Always up our asses,” Lucky said.

“So we are more than happy to kick his shit for free. But a few bullets and toxic gas won’t stop him. We move now.”

Slip pressed his hand into a wall that I didn’t think had a scanner in it. I was wrong.

The wall opened, swinging on silent tracks, and I briefly noted the inside was fitted with shelves that still had books on them.

A tiled staircase with inset lights took us under the library. Slip led the way, and Lucky brought up the back. After a second long flight of stairs, we stood in a tunnel that was about as different from our escape route out of Gloria’s place as I could imagine.

The entire underground station had the look of lost splendor. Ceilings were worked with glass and metal. Spirals of cast iron and stained glass created cathedral arcs that bloomed like petals of stunning flowers down the length of the place. A second-story railing and walkway ringed the station, doors and rooms dark behind that walkway.

The air smelled of salt, oil, and a meaty stagnancy. We appeared to be the only people here, which I supposed made sense if hardly anyone knew about the place.

A lowered rail ran down the length of the tunnel. On it was a train: a round-cornered rectangular, dull silver engine connected to a string of identical cars that gave it the appearance of a blind, subterranean caterpillar.

I thought this train, with boarded-up windows across the twelve boxcars, might have been originally designed to take people to and from work in the city. In about the mid-2100s it would have been part of the cross-country multicity work lines that connected the subrails. Not every line had been completed back then, but it had still been a strong secondary transportation system, though it was a people mover more than a freight mover.

Then the aboveground speed tubes had been tested and built. Since they were four times as fast as anything else over or under land, all the funding for the substations was funneled into the tubes. Freight moved quicker on tube, and so did people.

It was no surprise Gloria thought this system was defunct. Everyone thought it had been defunct for more than a hundred years.

The train that waited on that track appeared clean and well maintained. Bluish light poured out through the open doors.

“I hope you don’t mind tight quarters,” Slip said, walking toward the train. “Well,” he pivoted on his heel, half bent with his hands up, not quite in apology and not quite a bow, “you really don’t have a choice, do you?”

Lucky opened the door to one of the train cars.

Quinten strolled up to it like a rich man inspecting insufficient accommodations. He stepped onto the train, and Gloria followed.

That left Abraham, Neds, and me all standing outside.

Lucky braced his arm across the doorway. It wasn’t enough to stop any of us if we wanted to get on board. Bones were easy to break. But we waited.

Slip’s gaze took me in again, boot to head, stopping just briefly on the bullet wounds in my thigh that hurt like a bitch, and the matching bullet wounds in my arm that hurt like a bitch.

Then he gave Abraham the same inspection. Abraham was bleeding too. Worse than I was.

But Abraham didn’t show that he felt pain, if he did indeed feel it. His feet were spread wide in case he had to fight, arms crossed loosely over his chest as if Slip and Lucky wouldn’t be worth his time to fight. He radiated a “do not fuck with me” attitude, his eyes burning red.

“You didn’t tell me you’d have two stitches with you,” Slip said to Neds.

“What do you care?” Right Ned asked.

“They’re galvanized,” Slip said.

“And you’re the king of the black-market rats. Are you telling me there’s cargo too hot for you?”

“Both their eyes are red.” Slip said.

Our eyes were red? I supposed they might be. When I’d first met Abraham, his eyes had been red with the pain he could not feel from a gut wound. My eyes turned red when I was in pain too, and, like I said, those bullet holes hurt like a bitch.

“So?” Left Ned said.

“You know what they say: ‘Eyes of red, you’ll soon be dead,’” Slip said. “If that’s true, then the ride stops here.”

“I’ll tell you what,” Right Ned said. “I’ll give you a piece of free advice: your life will be a whole lot easier
and much, much longer, if you don’t give these two any reason to find out if that old saying is true.”

“The woman’s bleeding,” he said.

Wow. It had been . . . never since I’d been so completely ignored and dismissed from a conversation.

Abraham had made a point of explaining to me that galvanized did not have human rights, that we were essentially not considered human. But I’d lived out on the farm all my life with my family. I’d never been treated like a thing that couldn’t talk for itself.

“We’ll take care of her,” Right Ned said.

Slip gave me one hungry look.

Lucky chuckled. “I’ll plug her holes for her.”

Abraham moved so fast, I could barely track him. He was beside me, then past me, on top of Lucky and pounding his head, then ribs, so hard, I heard bones crack.

Lucky crumpled like a wet tissue.

And Slip grabbed for his gun.

News is not good. Some think the ferals carry the disease. We have no cure.

—from the diary of E. N. D.

“I
wouldn’t do it, pal,” Left Ned said, his Glock already in his hand. “All those stories about galvanized strength aren’t stories. She’d kill you a hundred times over before you’d ever even hurt her enough to stop her. And your friend there already pissed off the other one.”

Abraham slammed his fist into Lucky’s head one last time, then stood and turned toward Slip, flexing his bloody hands into fists.

“Do you really want both of them angry?” Left Ned continued. “They’ll crush your train like an empty can, pull off the tracks, and beat you to death with them before they’d break a sweat. You saw what they did with that Dumpster out there.”

Abraham, wisely, wasn’t moving in on Slip yet. Wisely, because I didn’t think Abraham needed more bullets in him, and I was pretty sure if we killed Slip we’d have to find new transportation across the country.

Slip snarled, and then his mouth curled into a false smile. “I’m sure we all want the same outcome here,” he said to Neds, though his gaze returned to Abraham again and again, as if expecting him to attack.

“You keep those stitches quiet, out of sight, and the hell away from me,” he said. “If I find either of them loose or rough-handling my employees, I will put a bullet in
your
head.” He smiled again at Neds. “Both of them.”

“We won’t be trouble if you don’t make us trouble,” Right Ned said.

Slip walked over to Lucky and kicked him. “Pick yourself up.”

To my surprise, Lucky moaned and dragged himself up on his feet.

Abraham must have been holding back.

Or too wounded to kill him quick.

“You get us to Kansas,” Right Ned said, “and we’ll be gone.” He gestured for Abraham and me to follow him into the train car. Abraham didn’t look at me, but he shifted as if to cover our retreat, glaring at Slip and Lucky. I followed Neds.

The inside of the train was a lot smaller than I’d hoped. The back half was filled with unmarked crates stacked almost up to the ceiling. I had no idea what was in them. The front half of the car had a couple cots folded and leaning up against the wall, plus two folded chairs and a wooden bench.

It smelled like pears and cedar, which was a lot better than I’d been expecting it to smell.

Abraham finally stepped into the train behind us.

The doors sealed and locked with an electrical whine. Even if we wanted to get out, we couldn’t. Well, we could
try crushing the train like an empty can, but I didn’t think either Abraham or I had that in us right at the moment, no matter what Neds had said.

“He’s an ass,” I observed to no one in particular. The bullets in my thigh, arm, and maybe one in my hip were really starting to hurt now.

Quinten and Gloria were setting up a cot in the back of the car.

“Anyone claiming this chair?” I picked up a chair made mostly of plastic and set it with the back against one wall. That left room for another cot on the side and the rest of the chairs to be set up in the remaining middle space.

I lowered myself into the chair and cussed. “This has been a crappy day.”

“We’re not dead,” Right Ned noted.

“Yet,” Left Ned added.

“Gold star for optimism,” I said.

“Matilda?” Quinten straightened and stepped over to me. “Let me look at your wounds.”

“I’m fine,” I lied.

“Let me make sure of that.”

Abraham moved to the back of the train car, the width of him taking all the spare room of the place as he passed by. He settled onto the cot with a grunt.

“Abraham is much worse—” I started.

“Gloria is tending him.” Quinten knelt in front of me and shrugged out of his duffel. “I’ll check on him after I tend you.” From the very steady, very calm tone of his voice, I could tell he was trying not to sound very worried.

“How much blood am I leaking?”

“Enough,” he said.

I glanced down at my leg.

Wow, that was a lot of blood.

“What do you have in your duffel?” He asked. “Bandages or any other supplies?”

“There’s not much, but you’re welcome to it.” I sat forward to pull the strap off over my head and instantly regretted the decision. That shot arm was really starting to hurt.

“I got it.” Quinten drew the strap over my head. I tried not to be a baby about how much it hurt when he jostled my arm, and bit my bottom lip to keep from making any sound.

“Thigh and arm?” he asked. “Anywhere else?”

“Hip? Unless it’s just sympathy pain.”

He frowned at the side of my hip. “Good news,” he said as he set my duffel on the floor and dug through it. “It’s not sympathy pain.”

In the bag was wool that used to be a scarf my grandmother had knit for me. That scarf had given me the spare seconds I needed to escape, literally, when I pulled the stitches out of it, since Grandma knit it from the wool the pocket sheep on our farm provide—wool that gathers up little bits of spare time.

Other than that, I thought the duffel had a couple spools of
Filum Vitae—
thread we’d almost used up patching Abraham—plus whatever was left of the scale jelly that helped wounded stitched people and critters, some needles, a shirt or two, and the remaining cloth and jewels from that dress I’d worn at the gathering.

“Oh.” He paused in his digging, something in his hand, but his hand was still in the duffel so I couldn’t see what he’d found.

“Need any help?” Gloria stood next to him.

Quinten didn’t seem to hear her.

“Hey, bro,” I said, nudging his bent knee with my good foot. “Something wrong?” I would have gotten more worked up and worried about his current nonreaction, but blood loss was making me sleepy. “Stab yourself on my pocketknife?”

“No,” he said. “No. It’s fine.”

I thought I heard the very soft chiming of bells as he removed his hand from the duffel. Maybe it was my imagination. Or that blood-loss thing that was going on.

“You need to get out of your pants,” Quinten said.

Well, that woke me up.

“And your jacket. Shirt too, if it’s long-sleeved.”

“Just how naked do you need me to be?”

“It’s not like I haven’t seen you before,” he said, threading the
Filum
Vitae
through a hooked darning needle.

“Sure, when we were kids,” I said.

“You don’t have to be naked,” he said. Was he smiling?
He’d better not be smiling.
“I just need to get to your wounds. Drop your drawers.”

I gave him a look and a sigh, but neither had any effect on him. Gloria also wasn’t on my side. She was busy laying out what we had that they could use for mending. A scalpel, a bottle of powder, and a pair of needle-nose pliers.

Oh, this was going to be just a bucket of fun.

And I was going to do it mostly naked.

Neat.

The run-and-almost-die sweat I’d worked up was drying now, a salty, cool layer that made me shiver at any shift in the car’s stale air.

Or maybe it was just that my body was suddenly aware that I was shot and hurting.

“Want me to give you a hand?” Quinten asked. “With the buttons and . . . stuff?”

“No, I got it. Just give me some room.”

He moved the supplies out of the way, and Gloria stood on one side of me. I grabbed hold of the floor-to-ceiling metal pole with my good right hand, then hauled up onto my feet.

Pain shot through me. Everything went white for a second, and then hot razors flayed my thigh up to my butt, back, and shoulder.

Shit and shinola.
I should never have sat down. Standing hurt.

My hands were shaking pretty hard and I was full-body sweating again. I worked the button on my pants with my functioning hand and tucked my thumb into my waistband, pushing my pants down. Well, pushing half of my pants down halfway. I reached across to do the same on my left hip.

But Gloria was in front of me now. I thought she might even be talking to me, though I wasn’t hearing anything but my own breathing and the thumping in my head.

How much blood was too much to lose?

She put her cool hand over the back of mine, and it was such a marvelous, comforting sensation. “Let me help. It will be quicker.”

Her pretty brown eyes crinkled at the corners with a smile. “Us girls have to stick together,” she said.

I stared over her shoulder at the others in the car. Neds had his back turned, his arms crossed over his chest
as he leaned one hip and shoulder against the side of the car. Abraham sat on the cot, his head against the crates behind him, his eyes burning red. He was staring at me with unspoken anger. Or at least I thought it was anger. It was certainly pointed and hot.

He blinked his eyes slowly, watching me, intense with a different kind of heat.

Okay, maybe not anger.

Quinten stood near Gloria and me, the jar of scale jelly already open in his hand. I knew how much that jelly would numb the wounds, and suddenly couldn’t get out of my clothes fast enough.

“Here.” Gloria took my hand and placed it back on the pole. “Hold on.”

I held on. She shucked my pants down around my ankles, leaving me in my panties and boots. I groaned as the material ripped away from the bullet wounds. It hurt more on the back of my thigh than the front because the exit wound was a bigger mess.

I stared straight ahead, which meant I was looking at Abraham. Neither of us broke eye contact for several heartbeats. There was a lot we had to say to each other in that gaze. Some of it was along the lines of
Why the hell did you run into the gunfire for me?
And the answer, from both of us, was,
I’d do it again.

When I thought I could actually breathe evenly, Abraham’s gaze slid down to my bust, my stomach, my thighs, and my boots, then slowly retraced the path. When he looked back up at my eyes, he raised his eyebrow in a “you look good out of your pants” sort of expression.

Much to my surprise, low on blood and hurting like a brawler, I could still blush.

“. . . going to take off your jacket now,” Gloria said. “I’ll do it quick, but it’s going to hurt.”

I just locked the knee that was working best and held on to the pole.

Pain rattled through me, and I was not quiet about it. A whimper ripped out of my throat and I squeezed my eyes tight, trying to get my breathing under control as Quinten worked to clean and stitch my wounds.

I wasn’t usually so noisy about being hurt, but these wounds
hurt.
What was taking Quinten so long? It felt like he had been poking and prodding for hours.

Hands reached out from behind me, wide and hot. Heated arms wrapped around my ribs, and that same heat pressed against my back, anchoring me, holding me. Strong.

“It’s almost over,” Abraham said. “They’re almost done. Just breathe.”

Abraham’s voice in my ear. Low and soft like a lover reading poetry. His words held me up, becoming air for my lungs, peace for my mind. A lifeline I could hold on to while the pain of Quinten digging in my wounds, cleaning and sewing and binding, rolled over me.

I was aware of the pain. But I was also aware of Abraham’s arms around me, steady and unyielding. The pushing beat of his heart on my back, his words soothing. I didn’t want him to let go of me, and had to fight the desire to just turn in his arms and hold him.

It had been a really bad past few days. He’d almost died. More than once.

I hadn’t had a chance to tell him I’d thought I was going to lose him, and what that had done to me.

“That’s it,” Quinten said. “Let’s get her to the cot.”

Cot? I’d be happy if they let me sit.

“Do you need help?” Quinten asked.

“I’ve got her,” Abraham said.

“Me,” I said, but it came out a whisper. I cleared my throat. “I’ve got me,” I said, only marginally louder.

They weren’t listening.

“Just lean if you need to,” Abraham said. Funny, hadn’t I been the one telling him that just a few . . . what was it . . . hours ago?

He shifted his grip, hands replacing his arms, and I made a small, disappointed sound when he pulled his body fully away from me, letting the cold wash between us.

I didn’t dare let go of the pole to wipe the sweat out of my eyes. I was in bad enough shape, the entire room seemed to be rocking.

Abraham took a step and I did too, but the floor wasn’t where I expected it to be and my foot came down wrong.

Abraham caught me up before I stumbled. I opted to take him up on the leaning offer and pressed the side of my face into his chest, inhaling the copper and smoke and leather scent of him. We walked the rest of the way to the cot, and then he helped lower me onto it. I didn’t moan or cry, because the worst of the pain was gone.

My cot was rocking too. Just how bad a shape did a couple of bullets leave me in?

“Now,” Quinten said, easing past Abraham so he could pull a chair up by my cot. He settled into the chair just like he had for months when I’d been little and dying. “I need you to listen to me, Til. The bullets went all the way through, which is better than being lodged in there. We cauterized the wounds and slathered them
with jelly. I’ve sewn them up and wrapped your thigh and dressed your hip. Your arm is in worse shape than your leg. It’s in a sling for now. That sparkly gray dress of yours is really coming in handy.”

“The room’s rocking,” I said.

“We’re on a train,” he said. “A moving train. We have about three hours before our first stop. I want you to sleep. I’ll be right here if you need anything.”

I wanted water, but I knew we didn’t have any. Quinten brushed stray strands of hair away from my face, a familiar gesture.

Maybe it wasn’t the best sibling bond, him tending to me when I was wounded, but it was comforting. I knew if there was anything at all that could be done to make me feel better, Quinten would do it. And if he said sleep was the best idea right now, then I believed him.

Abraham had been coaxed over to the other cot, where Gloria convinced him to lie back so she could finish looking over his wounds.

Looked like we were both going to get some sleep.