By the time I’d snatched a revolver from my bag and followed, he was disappearing through the door at the end of passageway. I tucked the revolver into my coat pocket and raced off in pursuit. Xavier was well-known to be a dangerous sociopath, so I was taking a risk in chasing after him willy-nilly, but if I couldn’t stop him, he’d get word to the Countess that Enzo and I were not dead, and the element of surprise would be lost.<\/p>\n
I stepped out of the car, into the open air with the tracks rushing below me, just in time to see the door to the next car closing. I followed, and saw him half-way down the aisle of another sleeper car. He was raising a weapon of some kind, and I threw myself into the nearest compartment as he fired.<\/p>\n
I fell through the curtain within and, despite the lack of light it was fairly clear that the person I landed atop was a woman, even before she started shrieking and flailing at me. Unfortunately, it took me a considerable amount of time to get free of the bed and curtain with all her thrashing about, and I fear I inadvertently grabbed hold a great many things I shouldn’t have in my struggle to rise.<\/p>\n
Even more unfortunate, from my point of view, was that whatever Xavier had fired, it had been silent, possibly a magnetic a thaumaturgical weapon (he was known to dabble in dark arts, so this latter would hardly be surprising). Had he fired a normal gunpowder weapon, I may have been able to convince the lady that my abrupt entry into her compartment, and indeed bunk, had been warranted, but as it was I fear she did not believe my stammered explanations (not that I was particularly articulate under the circumstances). When another woman emerged from the compartment\u2019s other bunk and began laying into me with some sort of metal object, I decided to dispense with an attempt to defend my actions and simply leave.<\/p>\n
It seemed prudent to poke my head into the aisle and make sure Xavier was not lying in wait for me, perhaps prepared to shoot me when I emerged, but the women were having none of this, and when I peeked out I found myself propelled into the corridor with enough force that I rebounded off the opposite wall and nearly compounded my embarrassment by falling back into one bed or the other.<\/p>\n
Fortunately, Xavier was not in evidence, although as I picked myself up I realized that his flight presented me with a new problem, that of tracking him down after the unfortunate delay. I quickly determined that my best course of action was to continue down the path Xavier had been following when he’d paused to shoot at me, and in a few moments I had left the outraged shrieks and unladylike cursing behind and plunged through the door. It was a foolish thing to do, given that Xavier had already ambushed me once, but the urgency I felt to get through the door before anyone could get a clear look at me saved my life.<\/p>\n
I heard the clang as another projectile hit the platform directly behind me, and looked up to see Xavier’s form ducking away from the edge of the car roof above me. I threw myself at the ladder, truly caught up in the pursuit now, and clambered up it. This time I was wise enough to duck as I came over the edge of the roof, and I felt another shot go just clear of my ear.<\/p>\n
It was dark now, but as I heaved myself up onto the roof there was enough moonlight for me to see Xavier flailing at the weapon he carried. After a moment, he cursed in Belgian and threw it aside. It had either jammed or run out of ammunition, it seemed.<\/p>\n
He made a peculiar motion with his arm and something dropped from his sleeve into his hand. Another flick of his wrist, and a long, gleaming blade telescoped out of it. I laughed as I stood there, the wind of our travel whipping at my clothes.<\/p>\n
“So, Xavier,” I said as I reached into my coat pocket. “It seems you’ve brought a sword to a gun…”<\/p>\n
I trailed off as I realized that the revolver had fallen from my pocket during the struggles in the bunk. Xavier grinned in the moonlight and stepped forward.<\/p>\n
Copyright \u00a9 2011 SM Williams<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By the time I’d snatched a revolver from my bag and followed, he was disappearing through the door at the end of passageway. I tucked the revolver into my coat pocket and raced off in pursuit. Xavier was well-known to be a dangerous sociopath, so I was taking a risk in chasing after him willy-nilly, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-serials"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluecandlesociety.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}