Then it gave a little shiver, like it was cold, like it had just felt a chill, and it lifted its face and looked directly at her. Its eyes were black, absolutely black. Obsidian and shining and inhuman.
She didn’t hesitate. She pulled the trigger, again and again. But the chambers were empty. She turned it to use as a club and slowly, grimly, she backed up until she had her shoulder blades against the wall. She was looking for something, anything, to use as a weapon.
Walter got to his feet, his long teeth clicking softly.
He smiled.
* * *
Alice, frozen, watched as Coulton ran right into the darkness that was Jacob Marber.
And all at once it was as if whatever fear had held her fast just released its grip, and she seized little Marlowe under one arm, lifting him to her, his face turned away, and she threw open the rear door onto the roaring wind and climbed across the gap to the next platform. Charlie Ovid was right behind her, shutting the door, fumbling with it in the roar, looking for some kind of lock. There wouldn’t be one, she knew. Already her head was clearing. The tracks hurtled past under her feet. Son of a bitch, she thought. If Coulton couldn’t stop him, Jacob Marber would hunt them carriage by carriage down the entire length of the train.
She steadied her feet and spun the chamber and emptied the cartridges and reloaded as quick as she could. She couldn’t hear anything from the third-class carriage. She started to go through to the next coach and then she stopped. She looked up. There were rungs bolted to the siding and all at once she lifted Marlowe back across and climbed with him up to the roof of the carriage.
All was sky and dazzling light. The wind knocked the breath from her lungs. Her long coat swept out behind her, tangling in her legs. She was on her hands and knees, Marlowe small and sheltered under her. Charlie was creeping up beside her, his mouth open in the wind.
“The engine!” she shouted. “We need to get forward to the engine! We need to stop the train!”
Charlie nodded.
The roof was wooden and nailed and sloped crazily. Alice hadn’t gone more than a few feet when the little boy froze up.
They were crossing a river by then. The water glinted like silver far below on both sides and the way the light played off the surface made her head spin. There was the brown smudge of a city, off to the east. The boy had his eyes creased shut and he lay curled around Alice’s arm so that she couldn’t move.
“Marlowe!” she cried into his ear. “We need to keep going!”
She thought she heard the door bang open below. She glanced back in dread but saw nothing. Maybe it was Coulton, she thought.
Charlie was some ten feet ahead of them by then, clinging to the roof, his head down as if against a driving rain. Very slowly, with great effort, she nudged Marlowe forward an inch, two inches. Coulton would be hunting for them down in the carriages behind, by now. Coulton, or Jacob Marber. She nudged Marlowe forward, a little more. When she raised her face and squinted she saw they were maybe in the middle of the carriage. There were two other carriages ahead of them, and then the coal car and locomotive.
“Come on,” she whispered.
And then she glanced back again. What made her turn? She glanced back and what she saw made her suddenly go still, wrap a protective arm around the boy.
It was Jacob Marber. He’d clambered up onto the wrong carriage and stood balanced on one knee in his slippery shoes, just across the gap, his black coat crackling all around him, his face and beard turned low against the wind. He was leaning forward into it, arms out for balance. Smoke ribboned away from him. Alice stared in horror. There was nothing in the man’s eyes that she could see, nothing at all, not malevolence, not fury, nothing. Just twin pools of darkness, devouring the light, reflecting no shine.
He kneeled there, hatless, watching her, unhurried.
And she knew: Coulton was dead.
No one was coming to help them.
* * *
At the edge of the mail coach roof, Brynt slid sharply, started to go over. She just caught her fingers on the rail, pulled herself back up. Her bonnet was gone. There was a tear in her kidskin gloves. Her voluminous skirts were all wild in the wind. She paused before dropping down into the coupling platform between the carriages, and at that moment she saw the door of the mail coach slide back, and someone—some thing—leaped out.
What was it? Shirtless, pale, covered in blood. Its fingers looked too long for its body. She couldn’t see its face clearly until it twisted its weight to throw open the door of the next carriage, and then she glimpsed the hatchet-like cheekbones, the dark eyes. There was blood all over its lips and chin and down the front of its trousers.