Chapter 23

The silver bullet train raced through the night, its reflective skin glowing with green and blue slivers of light as the aurora danced high above. Its passage, unlike trains of earlier centuries, was marked only by the whistle of the wind as it rushed along, a few centimeters above the magnetic rail that guided the speeding projectile. Far ahead, the Alpine mountains stretched across the horizon, their ghostly presence lit by the blue-green sheets of light in the sky. Once, those mountains had been topped with ice and snow, but now, with the devastating climatic changes, only bare rock, some white to emulate the long-vanished snow, remained.

Inside the dining car, a party was going on; the well-lit space filled with both men and women, some of whom were only partially dressed. Marlena was among the girls, her coven instructed to escort the Milan witch school students to Bonn. She was enjoying herself, getting to know witch girls she’d not met before and hearing about their introduction to witch-fire. Each girl’s death ritual was unique to each individual, but after several hours, all the stories were sounding the same – lots of cumming and perforating and dying, then being guided to discover the life energy emanating from all living things and learning to control it sufficiently to prevent one’s death.

Truth be told, discovering one’s immortality is always exciting, and that revelation answered all sorts of questions about life and death and the reason for it all – well, maybe not so much that last part; Marlena had no idea of the why of it, and almost everyone she talked to seemed to have made up their minds concerning their own relevance in the world – their own purpose, as a member of a coven, or individually.

And that was the problem; Marlena’s problem, anyway. She didn’t know what she was supposed to do with this life energy, except to help other girls learn how to use it (and in the last ten years, she’d gotten lots of practice doing that). As near as she could figure out, life was about self-gratification – and helping other girls who wanted to kill themselves or who deliberately put themselves into situations where their life expectancy became very limited. Personally, she didn’t have much use for this witch-fire that flowed through her veins, except that it kept her in a state of near-constant arousal, along with the added benefit of not aging noticeably.

As a coven member, she did her bit with helping people – the ‘normals’ – with the occasional injuries that occurred among the populace, but all too often, Marlena and her coven sisters were gazed upon with suspicion, even as they were performing their healings. Whispers about why some of the witch girls were allowed special ‘powers’ while everything else in the world was so terrible were causing dissention almost everywhere, and the covens were envied, as well, for the ease with which food and accommodations came to them because of their services, never mind the fact that those ‘witches’ often created their own food so as not to deplete what little remained for everyone else.

Moving through the press of people in the dining car, Marlena squeezed through toward the sleepers, smiling and nodding and chatting her way through the witch girls, the normal girls and the men who happened to be traveling from Italy to Germany along with them. Because of the side effect of having witch-fire in their blood, witch girls were notorious for their ‘loose’ morals, and several males in the dining car were insistently wooing several girls once it was determined they were witches.

Marlena reached out to slide open the door separating the dining car from the sleeping car assigned to her coven when a heavy hand slapped down on her shoulder and she was forcibly spun around to see a half-drunken man leering at her, his beer breath burning her eyes and causing her to turn away so she could breathe.

“Hey, Missie,” the man breathed into her face. “You a witch girl – I can see the blue in your eyes, Missie.” The eyes of some of the more powerful witch girls had a faint blue glow due to the universal energy coursing through their blood, and sometimes, normal humans noticed. It was part of the ‘They’re not normal’ separatist attitude that was becoming more prevalent amongst humans, these days.

“Excuse me,” Marlena murmured, “I was heading to the restroom,” and snaked one arm behind her to gouge her elbow against the door release so it would slide open. Her intended escape was flawed, she realized, when the door panel she’d been pressed against by her unwanted suitor suddenly failed to support her, and she fell back to spin around, nearly falling as her back slammed against the door to the sleeper. Her unwanted suitor had fallen against her, and now the door she’d just opened slid closed behind him, blocking out the raucous noise of the dining car and accentuating the white-noise whoosh of air racing along the skin of the bullet train.

Catching his balance, the half-drunken man looked around at his surroundings, then grinned and said, “Good. I see you appreciate a little privacy for us to get acquainted.”

“Still looking for restroom,” Marlena growled, her eyes getting a little brighter. She abhorred the idea of using life-energy to hurt a living creature, but she knew how to do it. Right now, though, she was bluffing; she wouldn’t use witch-fire against another person unless she was being murdered, and – maybe not even then, depending on how much she was enjoying it. Retaliating against someone trying to kill her wasn’t really valid; she couldn’t help but survive, no matter the amount of effort used to snuff her.

‘At least, I’m not depressed anymore, ‘ she thought as she gazed at him. ‘I’m pissed!’ She shoved her hands against the man’s chest, but it didn’t have much effect.

The man grabbed her, both his hands on her upper arms and then bent forward, leveling his gaze with hers. “Here’s how it’s gonna go, Missie,” he breathed into her face. “You’re gonna get fucked, and I’m the one what’s gonna fuck you.”

“Sounds like ... well, boring,” Marlena murmured just loud enough for him to hear, but she couldn’t help but rub her crotch against that heavy leg that was pressing her pelvis back so she couldn’t move. Plus, there was something else that she discovered was rubbing against her belly as they dry humped each other. With a smirk, she asked, “Did you really bring a gun to a witch fight?”

“That ain’t no gun, Missie,” he told her. “You know what it is, and I know you know what to do with it. Am I right?”

Her accoster was speaking English, rather than Italian or German, both of which she knew well, but when she was learning English, her language instructor had made her listen to centuries-old disks of comedy routines, mostly so she could pick up American dialects and language idioms – not that it made any difference now that there wasn’t much left in the United States, but a line from a lady comic’s routine was suddenly in her mind, and it made her laugh.

“I’m not afraid of dying – of murderers or serial rapists – but I am terrified of hillbillies. A rapist – he’ll just rape and kill you. A hillbilly will rape you, too. But then – he’ll keep you. Probably tied out back with his dogs.”

Understanding that had taken a bit of study, learning about ‘serial’, then trying to understand what a ‘hillbilly’ was, as well as odd colloquialisms like ‘out back’ and the fact that hillbillies liked dogs. Mostly for hunting, sometimes for chasing down girls.

“Yeah, that looks better,” the man leered into her face as she chuckled. “Startin’ to warm up to the idea, huh?”

“You’re a hillbilly,” she told him, still grinning.

“Don’t matter,” he replied, grinning back at her. “You’re still gettin’ fucked.”

“You’re gonna hav’ta bathe first,” Marlena informed him, mimicking his Southern American accent. “You’re dirty and you smell.”

“You got a bath back there?” he asked, real interest showing on his face for the first time since he accosted her.

Marlena laughed, then turned sideways to unlatch the door behind her, almost turning back as she realized she missed the press of that cock in his pants pressing against her stomach.

The man followed her to the far end of the sleeper car, where the entire end of the car was walled off into a bath and shower section – barely large enough to accommodate two or three coven girls at a time. He whistled in awe at the tinny opulence afforded the witch girls, then, must less drunk than he had appeared earlier, he pushed past Marlena and began shedding his clothes, which were covered in oil and dirt.

Marlena watched as the man stripped naked and stepped into the 4x4-foot shower stall. The man tensed as he turned on the water and stood directly in the meager stream while it quickly became warmer.

“Ah, Jesus!” he exclaimed as he rubbed his fingers briskly through his hair and over his face. When he reached his arms, chest and underarms, he noticed Marlena watching and asked, “Wanna join me?”

Marlena shook her head. “I have a double-wide in my room. Rather do it there, if’n you don’t mind.”

“Mah name’s Anton,” he told her, finally finding the nozzle that dispensed liquid soap. “What’s yours, Missie?”

“Marlena,” she told him, “not Missy,” then she smirked and opened a panel to pull out a plush towel for him to dry with after his shower – mostly so she couldn’t see as Anton began soaping up his hairy privates. She hung the towel on a peg, then left.

Moments after she left ‘Anton’, if that was his real name, and she’d felt the pulse of a lie when he’d said it, Marlena was stripped down and lying naked on her double-wide bed, simply listening to the sounds of life coming from the swaying, racing train. In another room nearby, her coven leader was having sex with someone, and they both were being a bit vocal about how much enjoyment they were having. Anton had left the shower almost before she’d managed to put her head on her pillow, and doors were being opened and closed in a methodic manner, almost as though someone was searching for something – or someone.

‘What’s he looking for?’ Marlena idly wondered. ‘I showed him which room was mine... ‘

Whoever was going from room to room was taking his or her time; it was almost a minute, sometimes two, between the entering and exiting of each room. Finally, there were only two rooms left; hers and Rebecca’s, her coven leader.

Anton appeared in her doorway, naked except for the towel she’d left for him wrapped around his waist. ‘Well, at least he wasn’t stealing from us – there’s no place to put any contraband.’

“Damn,” he murmured, almost whispering as his gaze took in her naked, glowing body stretched languidly across the bed. “If wishes were coins...”

“What do you mean, ‘if’?” Marlena grinned. “I’m right here.”

But Anton shook his head. “Sorry, Missie, but there’s something more important I gotta do.” His odd accent was completely gone, and he didn’t appear to be drunk at all.

Missie – Marlena – cocked her head as she gazed at him, completely comfortable being naked in front of this man who was obviously rejecting her for some reason, and waited for an answer. She wasn’t smiling, but she didn’t appear to be angry, either.

“I’m Stanton,” he told her. “Agent Westley Stanton. ISS.”

Marlena’s eyebrows went up slightly, questioning.

“Italian Secret Service,” he explained. “I’ve been through this train from back to front, and then underneath it, checking the rockers from front to back and I can’t find it.”

“Find what?” Marlena asked, mildly curious. Despite the fact that the man was standing naked (except for a towel) and staring at her (also naked), he didn’t seem very aroused or excited. That didn’t mean, though, that she didn’t want to fuck him. So she’d play along ... for now. Crawling around through the rockers (whatever those were) beneath a racing train could easily account for the state of his now discarded clothes and all that smelly sweat. ‘He must have doused himself in beer before he accosted me so he could get into this last car on the train.’

“We received a bomb threat,” Anton – no, Westley – explained. “And I’ll be damned if I can find it.”

Marlena smiled, though that ‘bomb’ word had caused her heart to jump for a second. “Maybe there isn’t one.”

“Maybe,” Westley admitted, “but there’s still one thing I can do – that we can do – to make certain.”

“You may be in ‘Intelligence’,” Marlena cooed as she sat up. “But to me, you’re still the ‘civilian’. You sound as though there’s something I can do. And most ‘civilians’ don’t know about certain aspects of our abilities. What do you have in mind?”

“I need to merge with you,” he said, simply, and dropped his towel as he crossed the room toward her bed.

Marlena laughed nervously and scooted back, putting most of the bed between her and him. “You want to fuck me, just to get in my mind?”

“I would fuck you every time I have an opportunity,” Westley confessed. “But – yes. I need to use your mind. It’s important.”

“You sound as if you’ve done this before,” Marlena suggested, almost accusing him of mind raping some poor innocent witch girl.

“Two years ago I broke up with my girlfriend,” he told her. “She suicided – well, she joined the coven in Milan. And then she came back – to tell me she forgave me. We got back together for a while and I helped her explore her newfound ‘powers’.”

“Did she let you experience her death ritual?” Marlena asked, finding this Westley fellow more and more interesting.

He nodded. “She poisoned herself.”

“Huh! Poison is difficult to counteract,” Marlena told him, and realized he already knew that when he nodded in agreement. She continued anyway; “Physical wounds are easier to repair with witch-fire. With poison, almost every cell in the body needs to be rebuilt to expunge the toxin.”

“It took her several weeks to repair all the nerve damage once her coven sisters had her out of danger,” Westley admitted. “I don’t know why they didn’t finish fixing her when they had the opportunity.”

“A death ritual is a very personal event,” Marlena explained, running her hands over his freshly washed chest. “Her teacher kept her from dying, and showed her how to heal the damage she’d done to herself. The rest was, as is with all of us, up to her. She had to take responsibility for what she did – which is probably why she came back and ‘forgave’ you. Her decision to suicide likely stemmed from a desire to punish you for leaving her.”

“Well, she succeeded,” Westley laughed, somehow sounding sad. “After I fell in love with the ‘new’ her, she dumped me.”