The Last Girl on the Rails - The Traitor’s Gambit
Pine sap was leaking from a fresh gouge in the ceiling timber above Room 202, dripping onto the frayed hemp rug with the slow, greasy persistence of engine oil. Finch sat on the edge of the lower bunk, his shirt still hanging open in two jagged halves, rubbing the raw red ligature marks on his wrists where Mirela’s hemp ropes had bitten down to the subcutaneous layer. His skin was damp with a cold, sour sweat that smelled of stale panic and the sweet, cloying musk of the incense she’d burned in that downstairs brothel of a slaughterhouse.
“Look at this shit,” Finch muttered, his voice catching in his throat before dropping into a harsh, sandpaper rasp. “Skin’s peeled right off the bone. Bitch didn’t even use soft cord. It’s baling twine. Three-ply industrial baling twine.”
Gavin Ortiz didn’t look up from the floorboards. He was down on both knees with an eight-inch steel cold-chisel and a flat machinist’s hammer, tapping a pair of wedge-shaped pine shims into the seam around the secret trapdoor hatch to jam the counterweight mechanism from above. Every strike of the hammer was muted, delivered with a muffled thud-clack that vibrated through the floor joists without carrying down the hallway.
“Stop rubbing it,” Gavin grunted through his teeth, adjusting the leather guard on his left forearm. “You rub raw skin in a swamp settlement, you get blood poisoning by Tuesday. Tess gave you that cell-growth gel. Put two drops on the wrists and shut your mouth.”
Tess stood by the door, her ear pressed flat against the unplaned grain of the center panel.
Her breathing was shallow, rhythmic, timed to match the ambient creak of the tavern’s exterior log framing. Beneath the floorboards, through the narrow ventilation gaps behind the river-rock chimney stack, the muffled sounds of the ground floor drifted upward.
A chair scraped across the taproom floorboards. Then came the heavy, unhurried tread of boots pacing back and forth behind the reception counter, followed by the dry rustle of parchment ledger sheets being turned one by one.
Mirela was awake.
The blow Tess had delivered with the eighteen-inch hickory club had been enough to crack a human parietal bone, but werewolf physiology was dense, calcified skull plates reinforced with thick layers of vascular muscle. The woman had been out for forty-five minutes, maybe fifty at most, and now she was down there piecing together the timeline with the slow, methodical irritation of a predator that had lost a rabbit from its snare.
“She’s checking the registry,” Tess whispered into the room, not turning around. “Counting the keys. Checking which doors are bolted from the inside.”
Across the corridor, in Room 204, a floorboard gave a loud, agonizingly clear groan.
Tess pulled her head back from the door panel.
Caspian Drake was awake.
The sound of his leather loafers shuffling across the cedar shavings was unmistakable, clumsy, hesitant, the gait of a man who spent his life walking on manicured lawns and nightclub carpets rather than timber floorboards. A second later, the iron latch of Room 204 lifted with a sharp, metallic clink.
Finch scrambled to his feet, grabbing his threaded rebar from the cot. “Who’s that? That the guy you checked in with?”
“The meat shield,” Tess said, slipping her hand through the lanyard loop of The Crescent Cleaver. “He’s panicked. When a grifter gets cornered, he doesn’t fight and he doesn’t run, he looks for an authority figure to sell out to so he can negotiate a personal exemption.”
She cracked the door of Room 202 an eighth of an inch.
Through the slit, she watched Caspian tiptoe down the dim hallway. His navy blazer was buttoned crooked, the silk lapels stained with grease, but he was still trying to maintain that ridiculous, stiff-backed posture of an executive walking into an arbitration meeting. He glanced once toward Room 204, saw the empty blankets, assumed Tess had abandoned him to the monsters, and bolted straight for the stairs with a frantic, pigeon-toed trot.
“Let him go,” Gavin muttered, rising from the floor and resting the high-carbon arming sword across his shoulder. “Good riddance. One less idiot to trip over in the dark.”
“No,” Finch hissed, his protruding rabbit-eyes widening as a strange, feral spark lit up his narrow face. “You don’t get it, Ortiz. A guy like that goes down there and starts squealing, he tells her everything. He tells her Chuckles is running a fake marriage scam, he tells her which room we’re in, he tells her we’ve got gold. You let a snake like that talk to the boss-lady, and she’s up here with three timber wolves before we can get our boots tied.”
Finch wiped his nose on his sleeve, his mouth pulling into a sharp, lopsided grin that showed two crooked front teeth.
“I know this breed,” Finch whispered, grabbing his torn jacket. “Dealt with fifty of ’em back in the Toledo auto yards. They think with their dicks and their wallets, in that exact order. Give me three minutes. I’ll make sure that pretty boy doesn’t just keep his mouth shut, I’ll make him jump straight into her stew pot with a smile on his face.”
Tess looked at Finch. His ribs were still bruised from the ropes, but the streetwise cunning in his eyes was cold and steady.
“Three minutes,” she said. “If you get grabbed again, I’m not burning another invisibility charge to pull you out.”
“Don’t need one,” Finch grunted, slipping out into the darkened corridor like an oiled ferret.
Downstairs, the argument had already started.
Tess and Gavin crept to the top of the stairwell, staying low against the log banister where the shadows pooled deepest.
Mirela was standing smack in the middle of the taproom, a heavy iron cleaver resting flat in her right palm, her auburn hair loose over her shoulders. The gray fur on her neck had receded, but her eyes still held that dangerous, yellow-tinted predatory sheen under the tallow lamps.
Caspian was standing five feet from her, his hands raised in a placating, double-palmed gesture, his voice vibrating with desperate sincerity.
“—you have to listen to me, Mirela!” Caspian was stammering, leaning forward over the bar counter. “That girl… she’s not my wife! We aren’t together! She’s an operator from the lower carriages, a professional confidence artist! She used my reputation to get past your gatekeeper because she knew you wouldn’t grant a private room to an unattached female traveler! She’s hoarding gold bullion, dozens of ounces, hidden in her inventory!”
Mirela tilted her head, her tongue flicking across the sharp point of her upper canine. Her gaze swept over Caspian’s tailored blazer, lingering on the snug line of his hips and the terrified, sweat-sheened curve of his throat.
“Is that so, darling?” Mirela purred, taking a slow, rolling step toward him. The cleaver in her hand tilted, catching the red firelight. “She used you? A big, strong gentleman like yourself, tricked by a little slip of a girl?”
“She took advantage of my chivalry!” Caspian insisted, taking a half-step closer, mistaking her predatory interest for feminine sympathy. “I’m the victim here! Look, I know how settlement commerce works. I managed accounts for high-net-worth individuals in Philadelphia. I can manage your tavern books. I can handle your trade logistics with the arriving trains. All I need is sanctuary. Permanent protection. A partner like me could double your coin yield in a single quarter!”
Mirela reached out, her long, manicured fingers, still bearing the faint, black keratin tint at the nail beds, settling against Caspian’s cheek. She stroked his jawline slowly, her thumb pressing into the soft hollow beneath his ear where the carotid artery was hammering like a trapped bird.
“You talk so beautifully, Caspian,” she whispered, her voice going to a thick, hypnotic murmur. “A gentleman with numbers in his head and such lovely, soft skin… why should a man of your caliber sleep on a straw cot upstairs with the rabble?”
Caspian a long, shuddering breath escaped gasp of pure relief, his shoulders slumping as if fifty pounds of lead had been lifted from his chest. “You understand… I knew you would… a woman of your sophistication…”
“Come behind the desk,” Mirela smiled, her red lips parting to reveal the full, gleaming row of predatory teeth. “Let’s discuss your… management contract. In my private quarters.”
She hooked her index finger into his silk necktie and pulled him gently toward the back door. Caspian followed like a prize sheep on a golden lead, his chest puffed out, not even looking back at the dark taproom.
The heavy oak door to her bedroom clicked shut.
Twenty minutes passed.
From behind the thick logs came the rhythmic, unmistakable sounds of heavy bedding shifting, interspersed with Caspian’s breathy, sycophantic laughter and Mirela’s deep, throaty chuckles.
Then the bedroom door opened again.
Caspian stepped back into the taproom, his blazer completely unbuttoned, his shirt rumpled, his face flushed a triumphant, glowing pink. He was walking with a wide, swaggering roll in his hips, holding up a heavy iron ring loaded with fifteen large brass skeleton keys, the master key-set for the entire second floor of The Red Flock Tavern.
He turned toward the stairs, heading up to collect his belongings.
Finch stepped out of the shadow of the pantry archway right at the base of the staircase, leaning casually against the post with his arms crossed, chewing on a dried pine splinter.
“Well, well,” Finch said, keeping his voice low and confidential, like two bookies sharing an inside tip at the track. “Look at the big man. Stepped in shit and came out smelling like lavender.”
Caspian stopped, startled, then looked down at Finch’s skinny frame with a sneer of absolute, unearned superiority. He jingled the master keys in front of Finch’s nose with a loud, metallic clatter.
“Jealous, kid?” Caspian smirked, smoothing his greasy fringe. “Mirela put me in charge of the floor accounts. I’ve got the run of the place. You and that little bitch Chuckles better pack your scrap and clear out by morning, or I might just decide your room rates need a three-hundred-percent increase.”
Finch didn’t flinch. He leaned in close, his rabbit-eyes darting left and right with theatrical paranoia, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper.
“Hey, keep it down, man,” Finch muttered, tapping Caspian’s chest with two fingers. “I’m trying to do you a favor here. You think you’re the only guy she’s made that pitch to?”
Caspian’s smirk flickered. “What are you talking about?”
“Two hours ago, before you woke up,” Finch lied with the smooth, greasy fluidity of a professional grifter, “she had me down in that exact same room. Tied me to the bed with silk cords. Told me I had the best shoulders she’d seen since the last supply train. Said she was gonna make me her head bartender and kick every other player out into the woods.”
Caspian’s face went stiff, the triumphant pink draining from his cheeks, replaced by a dark, ugly blotch of territorial insecurity. He looked down at Finch’s scrawny neck, then back toward the bedroom door.
“You?” Caspian scoffed, though his voice cracked on the vowel. “She told you that? You look like a starved ferret!
She wouldn’t look twice at you!”
“Hey, don’t shoot the messenger, brother,” Finch shrugged, turning to head back up the steps. “I’m just saying, she likes variety. She told me she was only using that blazer-wearing clown for his gold bracelet, and the second she got the combination to his carriage locker, she was gonna lock him in the cellar and bring me back down for round two. But hey, maybe you’re special. Maybe you’re the one guy who can really hold her interest.”
Finch gave a mocking little salute and hurried up the stairs.
Caspian stood frozen at the base of the staircase for five seconds, his jaw working frantically, his knuckles white around the iron keyring.
“Using me?” Caspian muttered to himself, his voice trembling with wounded narcissism. “A ferret like that over me? We’ll see about that. We’ll see who owns this tavern by morning.”
He spun on his heel, abandoned his plan to fetch his bags from Room 204, and marched straight back into Mirela’s private bedroom, slamming the heavy oak door behind him with a desperate, territorial bang.
Up on the landing, Finch rejoined Tess and Gavin, giving them a double thumbs-up.
“Hook, line, and sinker,” Finch grinned, wiping a bead of nervous sweat from his temple. “He’s back in the bedroom fighting for his life to prove he’s the alpha male. That door won’t open again until sunrise.” Tess unclipped The Crescent Cleaver from its travel harness, checking the time on her wrist.
11:15 PM.
Forty-five minutes until the midnight blood-moon ritual.
“Gavin, Finch, take the rear window,” Tess instructed in a whisper. “Drop into the woodpile behind the kitchen, skirt the western palisade, and wait for me at the stone marker where the logging road forks. Don’t light a torch until you’re two hundred yards deep in the pine scrub.”
Gavin nodded, his broad face serious as slate. “What about you?”
Tess looked toward the eastern ridge rising above the black canopy, where the faint, rhythmic pounding of ceremonial drums had begun to echo across the valley.
“I’m going up to the summit,” she said, her voice dropping cold and steady. “Let’s see what these dogs are offering on their stones.”