Chapter Thirty-Five
His Partner, Burning

The train had stopped.

Colleen picked herself up from the floor, and winced when she realized there was a shard of glass in her elbow. Bloody toffs and their mirrors. She'd been changing when the world had shuddered and wrenched and thrown her off her feet, into the wall, and down to the carpet; now everything was quiet, and she had to step over shards of perfume bottles and the mirror that had been inlaid into the closet door – seven years bad luck, right there, that is – to crack open the door of the compartment and peer out into the first class corridor. Along the hall, all the doors were opening; curious and complaining passengers sticking their heads right out into the hallway (where they could have been snicked off by an automaton without any effort, idiots) to look back and forth and ask stupid questions like "Has the train stopped?" and "Are we moving?"

Colleen slammed her compartment door shut again, and took a breath before seizing the piece of glass in her elbow and wrenching it out. It was easily the length of her little finger, the thickness of a small book, and blood spattered the floor. Her arm ached. The new dress was pretty much ruined now. Nina would be disappointed. Ignoring the steady throb of her arm, she shimmied out of the skirts and pulled on the trousers she'd snitched from the Lady Toff's trunk while her back had been turned. A torn strip of a petticoat went around her elbow, and she wrapped it as best she could with one hand, pulling the knot tight with her teeth. Then on went the shirt (that she hadn't stolen; it was one of Nina's many insisted-upon gifts, which she really had rather not owned, but there was no helping it now). Her hair was still too short for her to even pull it back into a short braid, but she supposed that was better. After all, a braid was something that could be grabbed. Loose hair was more difficult for people to snatch at. She seized the gun that she'd been given by the Lady Toff's mum and held it loosely in one hand as she slipped out of the compartment and closed the door as quietly as she could behind her.

There had been neither hide nor hair of Elizabeth since she'd asked to speak to the little lordling alone. Colleen was fairly certain that they were either ripping each other's throats out by this point, or doing something entirely different – Elizabeth's expression had been very strange, and who knew what the little lordling was thinking at any time of the day. She passed another compartment, this one with a half open door – a little boy with red hair peered out at her, and his eyes widened a bit when he saw her pistol. Colleen stuck a finger to her lips and forced herself to smile. She wasn't sure that anyone would be brutal enough to turn a kid like that into an automaton, but since he wasn't flying for her face, that meant he was harmless. For now, at least.

Parker's compartment was empty. Big surprise. Damn the bastard. If he wasn't scuttling back to the Director and that fecking clot Cutter, she'd eat her boots. Then she'd make Parker eat a bullet. She felt her lips pull up into a smile, one that bared teeth and promised blood. It was a pleasant thought.

"Miss Murray."

Colleen whirled, and fired her gun. His hand moved preternaturally fast; Black caught the bullet in one hand, a few inches from his heart, and let it fall to the ground, giving her a disapproving look. "You shouldn't waste your resources on me, Miss Murray. After all, this incident is most likely linked to the people we are following, and thus we should be alert for any sort of danger."

"How in the bloody fecking hell do you know my name?" No one had called her by the name Murray since she'd left Ireland. No one. Black's mouth curled up at the corner, but he lifted his shoulders in an elegant shrug.

"It is my business to know such things, Miss Murray."

She hesitated. Then she lowered her gun again, and without a word, offered her hand. He deposited the bullet in it, and she curled her fingers around the scrap of metal. It was still very hot. "What happened?"

"It appears that the conductor and his assistant have both been defenestrated." Colleen gave him a quizzical look, and the butler translated. "Thrown out of the window of the first compartment. If I am not very much mistaken, our quarry has initiated a back-up escape plan. We should move as quickly as we can to prevent them from getting too far away."

This was part of the reason Black drove her mad. He always used such stupidly long words. "Automata?"

"I have disposed of four." For the first time she realized his gloves were soaked through with blood, and her stomach lurched. "I am certain that there are more on board."

"You're certain, hm?"

"Colleen." The voice came from behind her. Elizabeth. The little lordling was right behind her. Black relaxed just a bit at the sight of him, and was instantly by Phantomhive's side, asking something in a low voice. The lady had her swords drawn, hanging in both hands, and her pistol had been thrust through the waistband of her skirt. Well, Colleen had always known that the Lady Toff had had a bit of a brain. "What happened?"

"The train stopped."

The Lady Toff was very pale, quite white around the mouth; she looked faint, to be honest, but she could still send killer glares. Elizabeth scowled. "Well, clearly. Where's Theodore?"

"Dunno." Colleen let her lip curl. "Prob'ly with his robot mates."

That hit her hard. Colleen could see the remaining blood vanish in Elizabeth's face, the way her head jerked to the side, as though she hadn't expected betrayal, hadn't thought about it every second since they dragged Theodore Fecking Parker into all of this in the first place. For some idiotic reason, her gut twisted in sympathy. After all, Elizabeth Middleford was nothing if not trusting. She'd trusted Colleen right at the start, hadn't she? Even in the middle of the night and faced with a tricksy fiancé, she'd still let Colleen stay.

Colleen shook her head sternly. Stop thinking about it.

Black had probably explained things, because the lordling looked over at Elizabeth, and there was a strange flickering in his eyes that Colleen had never seen him show before. Whatever had happened in the compartment, it didn't look like they wanted to kill each other anymore. The lordling coughed, and then put on his I Am The Queen's Bloody Watchdog And Don't Do Well With Anyone Questioning My Orders voice. "Clearly our plans have now changed. Our first priority is to ascertain the location of the Director and his assistants. The automata are secondary. We will dispose of them when we find them, but we should not seek them out. It would only exhaust us and make us primary targets."

"We need to protect the passengers," Elizabeth added, and she gave the little lordling a sideways glance before coloring and looking very quickly away. He didn't seem to notice, but he did clear his throat. Colleen couldn't help it; she smirked. They are definitely getting along now. She could think of any number of ways that that could have occurred, but most of them would have taken a lot longer than ten minutes in a train compartment, unless they were both very, very inexperienced. Colleen tilted her head to the side, and decided that they were both too childish for something like that. It would have to have been something simple.

"And the passengers."

"The passengers, my lord?" Black sounded curious. "With our current numbers, it will be difficult to do all of these things at once."

"Then we'll do the best we can. I doubt the Queen wants an international incident on her conscience."

Black tilted his head, and gave the Lady Toff a considering look before bowing to his master. "Yes, my lord."

"What about Parker?" Colleen asked, and both Elizabeth and the little lordling turned and blinked at her, as though they'd forgotten she was there. "Do we kill him if we see him?"

"Somehow I highly doubt he'll let himself be seen," said the lordling, and his mouth twisted, just a bit. "If you do manage to catch him, disable him. We still might be able to use him to our advantage."

Lady Toff shifted uncomfortably. She made no objection.

"We'll have to split up." The lordling glances up at Black, considering. "I'll go with Sebastian and examine the conductor's compartment again, see what we can find. Elizabeth and Colleen will go the opposite direction. See if you can get people to stay in their compartments. We want as many humans out of the way as possible."

"There's no fecking way any of those lot will listen to us," Colleen said. She had more than enough experience with snotty brats like the people on this train to know that much. "We'll go up front, you lot go deal with the passengers."

"I'm not about to let the sanctity of my investigation be violated by sloppy workmanship and inexperienced bumblers."

"Ciel," said Elizabeth. Her voice was cold. The lordling looked at her for a moment before glancing at Black. "She's right, you know she is. There are loads of people back there that won't give us a jot of their attention because of who we are, even if we held them at swordpoint. You have a better chance of getting them back into their compartments and keeping them out of the way than we do."

"Elizabeth—"

"Forgive me, my lord, but she is correct." The lordling glared at Black, but his mouth clicked shut. "After all, we have a better chance of determining the automata through the crowd."

The lordling rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. Then he looked at Colleen. "If you ruin this, I will personally fillet you and have you fried and fed to my dogs."

"Understood." She glared right back at him. "And if you find Cutter, don't touch him. He's mine."

"Violent little thing, aren't you?"

"Colleen." Elizabeth stepped up beside her. "We should go. If this turns out to be nothing, then we need to get back into our compartments, and if it turns out to be something—"

"It needs to be dealt with," Colleen finished. "I know. C'mon, Lady Toff."

She gave Ciel one last glare as they walked away. He didn't pay attention. He was watching Elizabeth, all the way back up the corridor.

If she had had time to consider the situation, Elizabeth would have been buzzing with the thought of what she had just done. What had just happened. Ciel had kissed her. She had kissed Ciel. It was the height of impropriety, and she didn't care, not one jot, because it brought a delicious flush to her skin to even consider it. She wondered if Colleen had noticed anything. The Irish girl kept giving her strange looks, as though she was trying to understand something. She was quite certain Sebastian knew; there was no other reason for why he'd given her such a knowing look before whisking Ciel off in the opposite direction. The thought made her ears go hot. She didn't want anyone else to know about it; she wanted it to be just between them, a secret in the dark.

She shook her head furiously, and walked faster. Of course, she didn't have time to really think about it.

She was still buzzing as she marched with Colleen down the corridor of the first class cabin, her swords weighing heavy in her hands, her wrists torqueing as she held the tips of the blades up off of the carpeted floor. A few people poked their heads out of their compartments, but when they saw Colleen's pistol (Elizabeth didn't know where she'd picked it up, but she seemed to be holding it properly, at least) and Elizabeth's swords, they pulled their heads right back into their rooms and locked the door.

It made no sense. They weren't even halfway to Strasbourg yet. They were nowhere near any sensible place that she could think of; right before the train had stopped and she'd crashed into Ciel, she'd looked out the window and she hadn't even seen a farmhouse. So what was the point? Why throw the conductor and his assistant out the window (she hated to think if they were even alive now) if they were nowhere near their goal, and not even close to civilization?

They want to finish this. It was the only explanation. They must have known that she, Ciel, and the others had come on board. They must have seen something, or must have been told something. She couldn't prove it, but that didn't make her any less certain that it was true. Unless the train stopping and the loss of the conductor had absolutely nothing to do with their mission (unlikely) this was all because of the Zodiac.

The Zodiac. Theodore. Her throat tightened, and she coughed. Whatever you're doing, Theodore, you'd better hope that it's not something I'll kill you for.

Because she wasn't even certain she'd be able to hold a blade on him, let alone kill him.

Abruptly, she wished her parents were here. That Edward was here. The last time she'd been caught in a situation like this one, with all of these civilians about, had been the Campania. She would have felt reassured knowing her family was here to defend the innocent while she helped Ciel pursue the guilty.

Elizabeth shook her head again, and her bangs bounced against her face. They want a battle? They'll damn well get one.

The outside world was eerily silent as they opened the door to the passage between the first class compartments and the first class dining car. There weren't even crickets chirping. Elizabeth went first, and peered through the marbled glass, trying to see inside. There was a dark red spatter across the window that looked unsettlingly like blood. She steeled herself, tightening her hands around her blades. Then she gestured to Colleen. "Open it."

Colleen responded immediately. "You open it."

Elizabeth held up her blades. Two swords needed two hands. "Open it and then get out of the way."

That seemed to work out well enough for Colleen. She drew a deep breath, turned the knob to the side, and let the door swing inward, scooting around to the other side of the door frame. She held her gun in both hands. Elizabeth closed her eyes for a moment, leaned her head back against the wall of the train car, and wondered if it was possible for one's heart to beat its way out of one's chest. The last time she had smelled this much blood had been when she'd pulled the trigger on Vladimir Petrovsky. She could still feel the ache in her hands from the recoil of the gun, see the shock on his face as the bullet blasted through his body. Breathe, Lizzy. Breathe.

She swallowed hard, and then slipped into the darkened dining car.

Nothing. No movement. It stank of copper and rust. She stepped over a shattered plate, turning as she went, trying very hard to keep her eyes constantly moving. There was a body slumped over the nearest table, head nearly severed from its spine; wires and metal stuck out of the torn flesh of the neck, broken and crackling. She could smell ozone in the air. Electricity. These had been automata. There was another body sprawled across the floor, a plate driven deep into her body, a hole in her back where her heart had been torn out. It had been left on the floor beside her, a mess of steel and blood. Elizabeth went very still, and waited, trying very hard not to breathe in the blood. There was no sign of life in this car. Everything was broken. Even the curtains were torn to shreds, as if by some gigantic animal. Finally, she lowered her swords. "Colleen."

Colleen stepped in, and her whole face twisted with disgust. "Automata?"

"Mm." Elizabeth tapped the mechanical woman with the point of her sword. No movement. Her green glass eyes stared blankly into nothing. "Sebastian must have come through here."

"What do you think?" said Colleen tartly, and she stepped over the body to head for the opposite door.

There was a wild shriek. For a second Elizabeth couldn't tell where it was coming from. Then she realized Colleen had been wrenched to the ground, and that the body of the third automaton – a man, late forties, pudgy, his eyeballs missing from his skull – had seized her by the ankles and pulled her off balance, hugging her close. There was a gunshot, and something hot blazed by Elizabeth's cheek; she snapped into action. Elizabeth lunged, the sword clunking against metal and then piercing the floor; Colleen screamed again, and so did the automata, a high whining clunking noise that grated against her ears. Then everything went quiet again. Colleen scooted backwards on the floor, her eyes wide and her chest heaving. There was a smear of blood around her ankle. "D'anam don diabhal."

"Just about." Elizabeth pulled her sword free of the automaton and wiped it on the cushion of a nearby chair, getting the blood off as best she could. There was a terrible scratch up the center of the blade now, a mark from the metal skeleton she knew was inside. Something clenched inside her chest. It was a miracle her swords hadn't sustained heavier damage by now, she knew, but at the same time, she'd rather thought they were invincible. Always gleaming. A constant. Now they were…not. "We should keep moving. If there's one still alive, there's probably more."

Colleen nodded, and this time when Elizabeth stepped over the body, the Irish girl was very close behind.

They had to get down out of the train in order to circle the coal car and get into the conductor's compartment, and the door had jammed. Elizabeth and Colleen had to slam their shoulders into it together, once, twice, three times, before it finally unstuck, and Colleen seized Lizzy by the back of her skirt before she could tumble forward into shards of glass. The compartment was empty. The brake – or what Lizzy assumed was the brake, thanks to the fact that the train had stopped and that the lever was pulled nearly out of its socket – had been wrenched forward, and then tilted at an unnatural angle, the handle pointed nearly at the floor. She could taste coal and blood on the back of her throat, and it made her want to choke. There was another smear of red, this time on the broken window on the side of the compartment; it looked as though the entire pane of glass had been shattered and spread across the floor. Pieces crackled under their feet as they stepped inside, and Colleen crept closer, her fingers tightening on her pistol. "It's hot in here."

"The boiler." It was still glowing red through the slatted iron door. "Don't touch it. You'll get burned."

"Right."

There was an oil lamp lying on its side in the center of the compartment. Elizabeth crouched, and then sorted through the broken glass. The candle was still good, long enough to give them some light; when she stuck the wick through the slats of the coal burner, it caught almost instantly, and she molded the wax at the base to be pressed into a nearby shard of glass. It didn't offer much light, but it was enough. There was more blood, splattered over the side of the compartment. Clearly, the conductor and his assistant had not gone quietly at all.

"It looks like Sebastian was right." She couldn't see anything out of the ordinary for the situation Sebastian had described, anyway. There was a pocket-watch gleaming on the floor; she picked it up, letting it twirl through the air. It was heavy, and blood dripped off the chain. "This must have belonged to the conductor."

Colleen stepped back, and leaned out the door of the compartment. "Bad way to die."

Lizzy didn't want to think about it. Her heart clenched in her chest. Poor men. She was quite certain that whoever the conductors had been, they didn't deserve this sort of death.

"There's not much to see here," said Colleen, as Elizabeth stood and slipped the watch into the deep pocket of her skirt. The blood smeared on her fingers, and she scrubbed it away. "What else can we even really do?"

Not much, was the answer. Still. Elizabeth glanced at the window, and then picked up the shard of glass she'd wedged the candle on. It had a flat base, and as long as she was careful, she could carry the thing like a candelabra and not cut herself. The watch weighed heavy in her pocket. "Let's check around outside."

They'd stopped in farmland, or near enough to it. She could smell rich earth and growing plants as she lifted the candle higher, trying to see. The moon was almost full, and there was a copse of trees about a hundred feet away from the railroad tracks, the branches sticking up into the night sky like fingers. It reminded her very suddenly of the wreckage of the first Phantomhive manor, which she'd ridden through so long ago on Beatrice. Beatrice. She'd kill for her horse right now. Elizabeth turned and looked back down the train. There were lights on all the way down to the end, far in the distance; a few curious heads stuck out into the night sky, and a few more people had managed to climb out, and were wandering around in an attempt to figure out what had happened and where they were going. A handful of them were coming towards the conductor's cabin, moving silently and purposefully in the dark.

Elizabeth bit her tongue. Damn it. "Colleen."

"What?" Colleen poked her head out of the cabin and went still at the sight of the four figures running at them in the dark. Without a word, she slipped back inside, and Elizabeth blew out the candle and hid between the coal car and the conductor's compartment, holding her swords tightly in both hands. The element of surprise is more valuable than anything else I can ever teach you, Elizabeth. Learn how to use it.

She waited until the absolute last moment – until she saw the shadow of the automata dappling the entrance to the conductor's car, and heard the whirring click of its gears – before she lunged out and pierced it through the throat.

After that it was a whirl of movement, of blades and flashing moonlight. A hooked claw caught her on the shoulder, tearing at the sensitive skin. She screamed, and wrenched away, ripping a new scar in her already pockmarked shoulder. She heard another gunshot, and the head of the automaton with hooked hands exploded, sending machine parts and bone spattering across her face and bodice. The second automaton, a woman, a girl maybe sixteen, cocked her head to the side and almost seemed to float across the grass towards her, some grotesque mockery of a ghost in a long white dress. There was another gunshot, and blood blossomed on the woman's shoulder before Colleen fired again and hit the heart. Five shots. She had one more at most. Elizabeth turned and plunged her blade to the hilt through the heart of the fourth automaton, and hoped to God that this would be the end of it.

Then she heard the shot.

It was a different gun, she knew that much. A different gun, a different caliber, a different direction. The bullet clipped the edge of the coal car and rebounded, whistling off into the French night. There was another shot, and the automata that could still move scattered to the four winds, vanishing over the top of the train, and Elizabeth felt the blood running down her shoulder and spattering against her wrist as she lunged back into the hiding spot between the two cars, struggling to breathe. There was another shot, and then a shout. "Come out of there, you scheming bitch! Come out here and I'll rip your throat out!"

Cutter. It was Cutter. She'd never heard him scream before, but it was Cutter. It had to be. There was a crackle of broken glass and then Colleen was out and running before Lizzy could catch her, and the bullets whistled through the air like falling stars as she lunged after her, trying to grab her, failing. "Colleen!" She didn't just shout it; she shrieked it, until it tore at her throat and left her mouth to rip through the night sky. "Colleen!"

But Colleen was gone, and she was left standing in the nook between the coal car and the front of the train, her swords bloody to the hilt, and then there was a dark figure before her, standing with hands in pockets and head tilted just so to the side.

It was then that Elizabeth knew that she was going to die.

"Hello, darling," said the Director. He smiled. "It's been a while."

A/N:

So glad all of you liked the last chapter! :D I really enjoyed writing it, and I'm sorry it took me so long to get this one up.

I'll hopefully be back with another chapter soon!