Alpha Blood Box Set(12)

I didn’t know how anyone could have survived that mess, but they were pulling people out of the rubble. Most of them even looked unscathed with not even a scratch across their cheeks. Abby grasped my hand and her little eyes searched the faces of the survivors. Her face lit up when Mr. and Mrs. Stewart were helped from the remains of their car, and she tugged hard on my arm as she jumped up and down. “Mama and Papa are all right!” she cried out in joy.

“Of course they are,” Luke calmly replied.

For my part I was shocked. I thought I’d been holding the hand of an orphan. “How did they make it?” I wondered.

“There are benefits to being a monster,” Luke calmly replied. He glanced around us. “We should get off the car,” he reminded us.

I nodded and lifted Abby into my arms. The ascending slope meant the drop to the ground wasn’t too far, so I hopped down and followed Alistair over to the group of forward-car survivors. Unlike my wonderful assortment of minor cuts and bruises they were just in shock. The other survivors were helped up the hill, and Abby broke from me and raced over to her shaken but healthy parents. “Mama! Papa!”

“Abby!” her mother cried out. They raced into each others’ arms and there were smiles all around.

I glanced up at Luke and noticed he, too, wore a smile. “You like happy endings, too?” I teased him.

Luke shook himself from his good humor and straightened his filthy pajama top. “A good deed is it’s own reward, but celebrations should be for another time and place.”

“You mean because we need to get out of here?” I guessed.

He looked to the engine and where Alistair spoke with the engineer. “Because I don’t think this had anything to do with a good deed.” Luke took a step toward them, but we were detained for a moment longer by the arrival of Abby and her parents.

“Becky, look! Mama and Papa are all right!” Abby yelled at me.

“Of course we are, Abby. A little train wreck wouldn’t kill us,” Mrs. Stewart scolded. I’d hate to see a big train wreck.

Mr. Stewart stepped forward and eagerly shook both Luke and my hands. “Thank you so much for keeping her safe in your car. I don’t think Abby would have got through the wreck as well as us.”

“Probably not, and we were grateful to have her company,” Luke politely replied.

“If there’s anything we can do for you just name it,” Mr. Stewart insisted.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Luke promised. “But if you’ll excuse us.” He turned away and to the engine, and I waved goodbye to Abby and followed him.

“I’ll see you at Sanctuary!” Abby called over my shoulder.

I followed Luke over to his servant and the scraggly old engineer. “What happened?” Luke asked them.

The engineer’s face was covered in cuts and he had a dour expression. His clothes were torn from the shrapnel of the tracks, but he was otherwise healthy. “Ah don’t know, me lord. We was going on as smooth as can be and I heard a small explosion. Then the whole track burst out from under us and the engine tipped over.” He glanced over to the flaming engine and growled. The noise was distinctly wolfish. “If Ah ever get a hold of the rascal who done this-”

“Then you don’t think it was an accident?” Luke interrupted.

The old man scoffed. “No accident ever started with a bang like Ah heard.”

Luke and Alistair glanced at each other, and I didn’t like the looks on their faces. They knew something they didn’t want to say aloud. Luke turned back to the engineer. “Has another train been called?”

“Aye. It should get here in an hour,” he replied.

“Good. I’ll tell the other passengers.” Luke turned to Alistair and jerked his head toward the rails in front of the engine. Alistair nodded and went to inspect them. Then Luke glanced to me, and looked over my cuts and bruises. “You’re the worse for wear,” he teased.

“That’s what I get for hanging around with a psychopath. Hurt,” I quipped. He reached up and brushed his hand against a nice bruise on my forehead. I winced and batted his hand away. “Stop helping the injuries. Believe me, they don’t need it,” I scolded him.

“With some rest and food those should heal in a few hours. Why don’t we go sit with everyone else?” he suggested.

“About time you said something sensible,” I replied. My words were mean, but I was grateful for the offer to sit down. My legs still felt like vibrating rubber and my muscles ached from the jostling and strain of the shock.

Luke guided me over to the upper hill where sat everyone else and set me down on a nice, comfortable boulder. He knelt down and perused my person. “No broken bones? No severe internal bleeding?” he asked me.

I snorted. “Isn’t it a little late to be asking that?”

“Better late than never.”

“I’d say now would be too late to be asking some of those things.”

“You can’t blame me for fussing over you-”

“I can blame you for a lot of things, and none of them good,” I pointed out. “Besides, you don’t need to fuss over me like an old hen. I feel fine, just tired.”

He smiled. “A Maker does tend to become an old hen around their progeny.”

“A what?”

“A Maker. One who makes another of their kind, in this case a werewolf.”

I cringed. “You just had to remind me about that terrifying fact, didn’t you?”

“Is it so terrifying when you see how it helps people?” He swept his hand over the other passengers. They were unharmed, and some were already laughing about their ordeal. “This would’ve been much worse if they weren’t werewolves.”

I sighed and wrapped my arms around myself. “I still won’t trust you,” I stubbornly replied.

He smiled and patted me on the knee. “You’ll learn, but could you do something for me?”

My eyes narrowed. “What’s that?” I asked him.

“Stay.”

“Come again?”

“Stay here. It’s my duty to make sure everyone else is all right so I can’t be watching you all the time,” he explained to me.

I frowned, but hunkered down on my rock. “I guess, but don’t expect this old dog to learn a new trick every day.”

He chuckled. “A fitting analogy, but thank you.”

Luke stood and went over to the pockets of people along the hillside. He updated them on the coming train and made sure there were no serious injuries. A few of the train crew managed to salvage food from the wreck and that was passed around to everyone. I got a plate of biscuits speckled with gravel, but after the scare I was famished and ate them without complaint.

Time crept by for the passengers, but the crew and Luke took the risk of rummaging through the wreck to retrieve belongings. Alistair finished his perusal of the tracks and helped with the game of hide-and-seek. Luke rejoined me at my rock, and dumped an armful of luggage and himself on the ground beside me. He looked as tired as I felt, and I had some pity on him. “You eat anything?” I asked him. He shook his head and ran a hand through his messy hair. I held out what remained of my meal. “Here. No sense having you survive the wreck just to starve to death.”

Luke smiled and took a gravel-seasoned biscuit. He’d just bitten down on the crunchy goodness when a cry went up from one of the people beside us, and we glanced to where they pointed. A new train chugged up to us from the direction of our destination, and it stopped a few dozen yards down the track. A half dozen people with leather bags and stretchers in hand jumped out. They paused at the engineer, spoke to him for a few moments, and one remained to patch up the engineer while the others hurried over to us. From the stethoscopes around a few of their necks I guessed they were doctors and nurses. “Is anyone seriously injured?” the lead man asked us.

Luke handed back the biscuit and stood. Many of the other passengers gathered around us. “Nothing serious. Most of us are just shaken.”

“So there weren’t any humans aboard?” the head medic wondered.

Luke shook his head. “None, thankfully, or you would have work.”

The medic and his team visibly relaxed, and a few of them even smiled. “That’s a relief.” He turned to the engine. The fire was out, but the machine was totaled. “What exactly happened?”

“We’re not sure, but we’d like to get away from here as soon as possible,” Luke replied.

“Oh, of course. This train can take you all the way to Wolverton,” the man told us.

A cheer went up from the crowd, and we carried ourselves and our luggage over to the new train. The train crew hopped out and helped us inside to soft, comfortable seats and warm food. There were two rows of two seats with an aisle between them, and Luke guided me to the center of the car. He took the seat beside me and gave me the window view, and Alistair took a position in front of us. Abby waved wildly to me from the front of the car until her mother made her sit down. I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I shut my eyes for a quick rest that stretched out into most of the day.





11





The jostle of the train woke me up, and I glanced outside to see we had left the woods and entered a bustling town. The buildings here were taller and more packed together, and many of them were built in a more modern, blocky fashion. One in particular stood above the rest for its ten floors and extreme gaudiness. The builders tried to imitate the old-fashioned clapboard look, but with fake materials that made the whole thing look tacky.