Brave the Tempest (Cassandra Palmer #9) - Karen Chance Page 0,187

bouncing as train car piled on top of train car, cushioned somewhat by Pritkin’s spell, but the best shields in the world won’t fully absorb the impact of thousands of pounds of iron hitting at top speed. It seemed to go on forever—how many damned cars were there?—before finally settling down into a jumbled wreck of billowing steam, splintered wood, and people who weren’t even screaming anymore but just clinging to whatever they could find, looking shell-shocked.

At least, those in our car were. I could hear other screams from outside, but dimly. I wasn’t sure if that was because people were caught beneath the wreckage, muffling the sound, or because of what felt like every warning siren ever going off inside my head.

Pritkin had me in a death grip, but I wriggled free, climbed over a seat, and pushed my head out of a missing window.

It didn’t help.

I couldn’t see past the smoke.

I also couldn’t exit through the doors at either end of the car, which looked like they’d been welded to the carriage by the impact.

“Move back,” Pritkin told me, coming up alongside.

And the next thing I knew, there was a new door in the side of the car, where a section had been blown out and flung who-knew-where. I didn’t care. I was scrambling through it and out into a jumbled-up mess of black iron and shattered glass and drifting smoke—

And an area of clear floor up ahead that I shifted onto in a crouch, only to stare around in horror.

Smoke was billowing everywhere, and the scattered coals from the engine had started fires here and there, whenever they encountered something flammable. But the cars looked mostly intact, and there were stupefied faces starting to peek out of the mostly missing windows. I didn’t know how Pritkin had done it, but he’d held the shield long enough to make the disaster at least survivable.

But not right, I thought, looking around at a faux Old West town filled with shops and cafés, souvenir stands, and yard-long beers. And a taco-selling donkey cart that shouldn’t be here—none of this should—because it had all been a casualty of the war!

Before I could figure out what was going on, I was pushed to the side by hotel security, who had arrived in force and were trying to hold back crowds of screaming tourists and get to the others who were scattered across the ground. Because they hadn’t had shielding, had they? The drag looked like a battlefield—again—which is what I guessed it was, but I couldn’t seem to concentrate on it. I couldn’t seem to concentrate on anything.

Until I spotted a used paper cup in the mess by an overturned trash can.

People were jostling, security was yelling, and—somewhere—Pritkin was calling my name. I barely heard. Because I’d zeroed in on that cup like a spriggan on a meat spear, and nothing was keeping me from fighting my way through the crowd and grabbing it.

And then just standing there in the midst of the huge, unruly mob, being jostled this way and that while an alarm bell rang inside my head. Which went up a couple hundred decibels when I turned the cup over and read the name printed in cheerful, leaping flames on the side: “Welcome to Diablo’s Hotel and Casino. Have a devilish good time!”

I staggered back and abruptly sat down.

Oh, I thought.

Holy shit.

Chapter Forty-three

Four hours later, I hit a wall.

Or, to be more accurate, I hit two.

I’d just shifted into the old Pythian Court in London with a couple more displaced train passengers. Getting everybody back where they belonged was stage one in repairing the timeline, but it was easier said than done. A lot easier.

I’d already decided that this was going to be my last trip of the day, even though I’d barely made a dent in the several hundred people the train had been carrying. But the leaps had been getting harder and harder, with this last one feeling like I was wading through cold molasses. I groaned with effort when we finally pushed past the last sticky filaments holding us back—

And popped into one of the parlors on the ground floor of the old Georgian mansion the court had once called home.

It was a small, cramped room where supplicants usually kicked their heels waiting for the current Pythia to see them. And since she had more visitors than she wanted, she hadn’t bothered to make it too pleasant: the dark, heavy furniture looked uncomfortable, and the