“That bastard took my train away,” Bethany said, her face twisted in a silent snarl, the rings in her nose glistening. “He’s not getting back into daylight alive.”
“Anger is good. Keep being angry.”
“I can get the emergency lights on anyway,” Bethany said. “They’re just battery-powered.” She flipped open a panel on the wall and clicked a few switches. Faint red light emanated from recessed panels around the ceiling and floor of the train car. It was like being in a submarine in a movie.
Marla glanced around. “How many ways are there for him to get onto this train?”
“Not many, while it’s moving.”
As if Bethany’s words were a signal, the train slowed. “Huh,” Marla said. “I think we’re about to be boarded, hon. Get yourself prepared. The guy’s a blur, but I can slow him down. When he comes in, wherever he comes in, I’ll hit him, and while he’s distracted, work some mojo. I know this train must have a lot of power stored up in it, spinning like a prayer wheel all this time, and you’re going to need to tap into that. Hold him like a bug in amber, put ice crystals in his muscle mass, break every bone in his body, blow off his kneecaps, I don’t care, but drop him. And keep him alive.”
“Not a problem,” Bethany said.
Marla held herself at the ready as the train slowed to a halt. She was prepared to reverse her cloak—there was no other option, not if Mutex was still moving so fast—though she greatly feared the consequences of using the cloak twice in one day. A period of inhumanity was preferable to death, but only just.
The train stopped. The doors hissed open without any instruction from Bethany, which made her snarl. Marla tensed.
No one tried to enter the train. The platform beyond was dark. In the faint red light from the train, and with her night-eyes using every available speck of brightness, Marla could make out something covering the floor of the platform, a silent, undulant mass of—
“Frogs,” she said. “Shit.” The platform was inhabited by hundreds of tiny golden yellow poison dart frogs, though in the red light they glowed witch-light orange. Marla considered her options. She could probably generate a fireball or a sheet of flame to scour the frogs. She’d have to suck the energy for the fireball from Bethany, though, which would put her out of commission. Marla couldn’t take the thermal energy from the frogs themselves. They were amphibians, only as warm as their environment, and down here, underground, it was cold, which might explain why they seemed less inclined to hop and caper than they had on the surface. It was just as well. Conjuring flames in a confined underground space wasn’t a good idea, especially since magical fire didn’t much care if there was no immediate source of fuel—it would burn anyway, for somewhat unpredictable amount of times, and that could make this place an oven. But she had to do something. If the frogs were here in their lethal hundreds, a whole army of them, then their general, Mutex, must be nearby, too.
Something alerted Marla—the distant hum of a generator, a static crackle, something—and she squinted her eyes an instant before the floodlights on the platform came on. As she squinted, she registered movement and twisted, throwing her leg up and out in a side-kick. Mutex, moving almost too fast for the eye to track—but far slower, Marla noted, than he’d moved at Dalton’s, which was heartening—slammed his solar plexus into the bottom of her heavy boot. The shock of impact vibrated up her leg painfully, but her bones were laced with trace amounts of cold iron and almost unbreakable, and she’d cast an inertia-enhancing spell on her boots, so she didn’t lose her footing or slide back. Mutex bounced, the inevitable result of an almost irresistible force hitting an even more immovable object. He landed flat on his back, scattering his near-torpid poison frogs beneath him, doubtless squishing a few. He still wore his cape—which Marla now realized was made of insect wings somehow intricately woven together. It was fitting raiment for the king of frogs, she supposed. His never-ending-frogs basket hung on a strap on his back. She wanted to attack him now, while he was down, but the frogs all around him were too dangerous. But if Bethany could wound him, or knock him unconscious, then the two of them together could probably levitate him up onto the train, safely away from the frogs. Mutex started to sit up, touching the spot beneath his rib cage, though his face betrayed no discomfort, which meant he probably was using the frogs’ batrachotoxins to block pain. Marla hoped she’d cracked a few of his ribs.