“Why didn’t you just ask?”
“We couldn’t ask. That’s not our way. Now be quiet. I broke cover tonight—and I’m going to pay bloody hell for it—for a reason. Those demons back there aren’t the only problem you have.”
Simon leaned into Leah again as she sped up and started passing the train.
“Simon,” Wertham said.
Glancing at the train, Simon saw Wertham sitting atop the car with his sword and a Blaze Pistol naked in his fists. Simon also saw the frightened faces in the shattered windows of the passenger cars. With all the damage there, he didn’t know how there couldn’t have been casualties. He turned his thoughts away from that.
“I’m all right,” Simon said.
“Who are you with?”
“Leah Creasey.”
“The woman you brought with you?”
“Yes.”
“What’s she doing here?”
“She claims she’s helping.”
Wertham cursed. “Is she?”
“She may have saved my life back there.”
“Well, that’s a start. And it’s not like we’re going to be picky about who helps us here tonight.”
Leah pulled in front of the train, feathering the throttle to jump the rail and land in the center of the track. She sped up, the motor roaring loudly.
“You said there was another problem,” Simon said.
“There is.” Leah leaned again, making the exchange at the Oxford Circus tube station and roaring on toward Charing Cross. “A demon named Merihim has set up an ambush for your train on the Hungerford Bridge.”
That immediately caught Simon’s attention. All rail lines crossed the River Thames over the Hungerford Bridge. There was no other way by train to reach South London. The Bakerloo tube line ran under the river, but they didn’t have access to those rail lines.
If what Leah was saying was right, the demon stood in the path of their escape.
Fifty
W arren clung to the Blood Angel as it pursued the train whizzing through the Underground tubes. Other Blood Angels joined the one he rode. Like a mass of bats, they screamed through the tube after the train.
Thinking furiously, Warren guessed that the train would head for Charing Cross Rail Station, and from there across the Hungerford Bridge into southern London. When it came out of Charing Cross and raced across the bridge, the train would be vulnerable.
All it would take was a few moments to overtake the train. Then, if the Blood Angels could overcome the engineers in the control compartment, the train could be shut down. He felt certain the Templar he was after would come back to help.
Warren felt badly about the people that would be hurt. He didn’t want to injure them. But if his life hung in the balance against theirs—and he knew that it did—then they would have to die.
No one in London had ever cared about him. Now, with his life on the line, he wasn’t about to be foolish enough to care about them.
Patience, he mind-whispered to the Blood Angels. We’ll soon have our chance.
Leah halted the motorcycle inside the Charring Cross Station. Behind her, Simon shifted and peered out at Hungerford Bridge. Elevated from the station, the bridge spanned the River Thames. Dusk, not true night, colored the gray sky. Snowflakes came down steadily, obscuring his vision.
But the thermographic vision in his HUD allowed him to see the bright orange figure standing in the middle of the bridge.
“Is that him?” Simon asked. He knew they were only minutes ahead of the train. “Merihim?”
“Yes.”
“How did you learn about—”
Leah turned the blank mask she wore to look at him with her goggle eyes. “Simon, we don’t have time for a Q&A. Not if you want to save that train. Those demons you met back there aren’t going to give up. If the train stops, they’ll catch up and those people will still die. Even then they’ll have to beat out other demons that will be drawn to this. Do you understand?”
“Yes.” Resentment vibrated through Simon. She sounded so professional, so sure of herself. And he…well, things weren’t turning out the way he’d thought at all. The rescue attempt was turning out to be a mess. He’d planned hard and worked hard, went sleepless for days. And all for what? To lose at the end? By inches?
“We’ve been observing Merihim,” Leah said.
Simon resisted the impulse to ask who we was.
“There’s been a shift in the demon hierarchy since they arrived,” Leah went on. “Merihim is a late arrival, but he’s staging a power play among the demons as far as we can tell. We had a…someone in a Cabalist organization when Merihim came through into this world. Merihim’s playing his own game. Tonight he intends to make your rescue attempt part of his scheme.”
“How?”
“He’s going to blow up the bridge while the train passes and send everyone in it into the river to drown.”
“Why?”
“As part of a sacrifice to satisfy some blood ritual. That’s all we’ve been able to gather. We don’t understand as much about the demons as the Templar do.”
“Even we don’t understand everything,” Simon admitted. He watched the orange figure waiting on the bridge. “How is he going to blow up the bridge? Explosives?”
“We don’t know. We tracked one of the Cabalists—like the guy riding the flying demon back there—”
“It’s a Blood Angel,” Simon said automatically.
“—who’s managed to spy on Merihim.” Leah shook her head. “They’re foolish and pathetic, all of them. Children playing with unknown monsters that can devour them all.”
Simon didn’t quite agree with her assessment. He thought the Cabalists were just too smart for their own good. Smart enough to get themselves in trouble. Or dead.
“When we questioned the Cabalist we had in custody under heavy drugs, the man told us what he knew. Unfortunately, what he knew was limited. So now is the time you choose whether you want to fight the demons back in the tube, or you figure out some way to break Merihim’s threat.”
Simon only thought about it for a moment. That was all the time he had anyway. The train was bearing
