Heartland-The Second Book of the Codex of Souls Read Online Free Page B

well. No point in revealing what our plan was to anyone close enough to hear us shouting. "If they haven't already. We need transportation."
    "The train," she Whispered back.
    "It won't be running," I countered. "They'll have shut it down."
    She glanced at me, a tight smile on her shining face. "I hope so. That'll make it easy."
     
    She was right. Getting the train moving was the easy part.
    The RER-B train was in its bay beneath the central terminal, and though we had to force our way downstairs through a throng of confused people—the panic caused by the fire alarm was only now spreading to the other terminals—we managed to reach the landing beside the smooth bullet shape of the train.
    The doors were closed, and the interior lights were dimmed; no one was in the front blister of the cockpit. De Gaulle security was already reacting to the fire alarm and the psychic confusion of our spells as if the airport was being subjected to a terrorist attack.
    Marielle whispered a tiny invocation as she ran her fingers across the access panel beside the doors. With a sigh of compressed air, they slid open. Once I was inside, she pinched the loop of her magick, and the doors closed again with a tiny pop.
    She went forward to get the train moving, and I stayed in the back to watch for the others. Shortly thereafter, the lights brightened and the train jerked forward a few feet. This aborted leap became a shuddering crawl that shook the whole car, and as the train picked up speed, the vibrations lessened. Archways and marbled partitions flashed past, followed by longer stretches of open sky as we left the terminal.
    A nearby display showed the system map for this line. De Gaulle, past Parc des Expositions, Le Blanc-Mesnil, Le Bourget and Gare du Nord, to the central hub of Châtelet/Les Halles—Paris' nexus of subway lines. From there we could get a connection to anywhere else in the city. The crowds would help us again. A confusion of lights would make us impossible to track.
    Of course, we'd be coming in on an empty train. One that had been hijacked from the airport. Somehow, I didn't think we'd make it that far before other forces than the Watchers would be surrounding us. We had to get off earlier. Somewhere in the suburbs.
    As I started forward, I heard the rattling sound of a door being opened. The Chorus reacted as a spell ignited, spinning open into a rigid fan behind me. The air in the car crackled, and the windows on either side of the car blew out in a cough of shattered glass. My shoulder glanced off one of the upright metal bars of the seats as I was knocked forward, falling on my side and sliding across the floor. There was a black ring of scorched paint where I had been standing a moment before, and beyond, framed in the narrow door between cars, Charles and Henri.
    Charles didn't hesitate this time. As he charged up the aisle, his right hand snapped down, telescoping out the metal wand in his fist. Violet light limned the shaft and a tiny spark flickered at the tip. I scrambled into a crouch, and dodged his first swing. He caught me on the side of the head with his left fist, and as I shook that hit off, he delivered a short backhand to my right knee with the stick.
    My leg collapsed, nerves deadened and muscles short-circuited by the magickal discharge of his wand. I bounced off the hard plastic of the nearby seat, and barely rolled out of the way of another jab with the stick. I tried to connect with my left foot, but Charles swept the blow aside and I felt my foot go numb from contact with the wand.
    Bad, getting worse. He was just going to keep whacking me with the stick, each shot taking out another body part. With one leg out of commission and the other one as functional as a peg-leg, I was already too slow to avoid him long. Piecemeal attrition. He was going to take me down.
    Charles knew it too. His next swing was slow and clumsy. He didn't have to try too hard. What was I going to do?
    Vis. I grabbed the end