Fast Train to Hell

If you've never been sealed into a coffin before your time, I can't recommend it. Like many - all right, most - of my plans, it seemed like a good idea at the time. But as it turned out, waking up in a cheap wooden box bound for hell was about as comfortable as it sounds. When my eyes popped open, I drew in a ragged whoop of air and tried to sit up. My skull collided with the coffin lid, my vision blurred then doubled, and I forced myself to lie still as I pondered my predicament.

The clickety-clack of wheels beneath me and the huffing of an engine alerted me that I was travelling by locomotive, and I frowned thoughtfully. I'm what Roman - my best friend, sometime lover, and partner in crime - calls 'depressingly literal' and I'd taken the stories about crossing into Infierno at face value. Rumour had it that bodies were ferried into the city via river crossing, but I should have known better. Of course the Montague Transportation Company had upgraded to an iron chariot instead of a rickety old ferry when they took over the business of transporting poor, dead unfortunates to the creeps who ruled the city of the dead.

Roman was a rare poetic soul amid the rest of the Montague clan and he would have muttered about respect for the dead if he'd seen them - us - boxed up and freighted along like coal or potatoes. But Roman wasn't there, and as for me...while I could see a certain romance in being rowed across the Rio Estigia, I'd put my trust in a Montague train over some moldy wooden boat any day. Their advertisements assured travellers their trains were safe, modern, and reliable, all of which I knew firsthand to be true.

After all, I'd robbed enough of them in my day.

I fidgeted in the confines of my 3x6 foot prison while I caught my breath and thought about what to do next. I'd come up with this scheme to infiltrate Infierno, but the details after "drink poison to fake my own death" were admittedly vague. I was woman enough to admit now that maybe I should have listened to Roman when he suggested I learn more about what, exactly, the necromancers wanted with our unclaimed dead. But like I always told him, true genius can't be rushed. I'd been sure something would occur to me when the time came.

As it turned out, the time was now and inspiration was in short supply. And the box was starting to feel damned uncomfortable.

Sweat rolled down my forehead into my hairline and I wrinkled my nose. The air inside the coffin was decidedly stale and I smelled like...well, like something dead. My stomach growled painfully, reminding me I hadn't eaten in gods knew how long, and my back was sore from lying on hard, flat wood. Roman hadn't approved of my plan - "cockamamie", he'd called it - but I'd thought he might find a way to slip a blanket or shawl into the coffin to protect my skin from the cheap pine.

The splinter digging into my left butt cheek told me I'd thought wrong.

Still, while it was true that I was dripping sweat, starving, and trapped in a cheap casket, there were some positives about the whole thing. Coming back from the dead felt better than waking up with a hangover, for one. And while the air in the coffin was stale, I didn't seem to be running out of it just yet. There's not much point in being resurrected just to die all over again. Especially if the second time is permanent.

I patted my hips and midsection to see if I had anything useful in my pockets and realized - to my disgust - that I'd been sent to my eternal reward in a dress. Hardly useful attire for sneaking into the weirdest city in the West to steal their most important treasure.

Even worse, I could tell just by feeling the ruffles and scratchy lace that it was an ugly dress.

I'd made up my mind to try to kick my way out of the coffin when the metallic squeal of a car door opening made me freeze. A set of boots clomped its way toward me, followed by a wave of creeping unease, and I knew one of Infierno's priests had accompanied the wearer of the boots into the train car. I breathed as quietly as I could. I'd only crossed paths with a sin eater once before, but even at a distance, his dark stare had left me certain he could see into my heart and read every awful thought I'd ever had, every terrible deed I'd ever done.

Residents of Infierno rarely left the city, but if a family paid dearly enough, a priest would come to eat the sins of the dying, a black-robed vulture with his face painted white and black in a skeletal rictus. They worshiped Tilaxia, a goddess of vice and purification. Supposedly, if one of them accepted your confession before death and ate food served by your own hand - or on your dying body, if necessary - they cleansed your soul of sin.

Male voices rumbled, impossible to make out the words over the sound of the train. The boots stepped closer.

"You want me to open one of 'em?" a male voice grumbled. "The conductor said I was to show you the cargo. He didn't say anything about interferin' with dead bodies."

The priest's response was too quiet to hear, but he seemed to be insisting.

"Whatever you do with 'em when you get to Infierno is your business," the railman said, "but my job is to get 'em from A to B. You have a problem with that, you take it up with the conductor."

The boots clomped away and the car door squealed again, but the awful, crawling feeling of the priest's presence remained. I hunched my shoulders and contracted my stomach, as if I could escape the priest's notice by making myself smaller inside the coffin. My pulse raced and I tried harder than ever to breathe quietly.

I heard rustling, then the lid was pried off with the creak of a prybar against wood and nails. I blinked against the sudden light and gasped in the fresh air like a fish on a line. I squinted at the man who loomed over me. He was tall, a couple inches over six feet. The black robe and face paint made it hard to guess his age and build, but I got a sense of leanness and youth. He might have been in his early to mid-20s, close to Romeo's age. The skin on his neck and hands was a medium brown, several shades darker than my own. His eyes were nearly black.

The priest and I studied each other. I'd never seen the appeal in joining a death cult, but under the face paint, he might not have been the worst looking man I'd ever laid eyes on.

"That's the ugliest dress I've ever seen," he said finally. His voice was low, but it wasn't the evil growl I'd imagined.

I scowled as I gripped the sides of the coffin and heaved myself to a standing position. My legs had fallen asleep and the rocking of the train made it hard to stay upright.

"I didn't pick it out. Obviously." I assumed some church-going do-gooder was responsible for the monstrosity I wore. The owner of the general store had probably paid them for the favour of taking the damn thing off his hands.

"I should throw you off the train here and now," he said, "but I admit I'm curious about how you got nailed into that box. And what you were planning to do when you got to Infierno."

I arranged my features into what I hoped was an expression of innocent distress. "Please, have mercy! This is all a terrible mistake. The last thing I remember is falling ill...The doctor who declared me dead was probably drunk. You know how it is in the small border towns."

I pressed a hand to my forehead and swayed slightly, as if I might swoon at any moment. My hair had been braided and wrapped around my head like a crown, a far cry from how I usually wore the long, chestnut mass of it - tied into a messy bun and tucked under a hat. For the first time, I was glad to be wearing the ugly dress. With this dress and hairstyle, I wasn't Jules Cabot, the notorious bank robber wanted in five states. I was Juliet Capulet, a rich man's daughter who existed only to pour tea and marry richer.

The priest frowned at me. "You're a Capulet?"

My eyes widened and I took a step back. Could he read my mind?

"Whatever you did to find your way onto this train, you were close enough to death to allow me some insight into your thoughts." He paused. "It is...interesting to have such a connection to a living person. I've heard of such things, but have never experienced it myself."

"Well, you can keep your connection to yourself." I scowled. The last thing I wanted was a freak with a death fetish poking around in my head.

"It's not a fetish," he said mildly.

"Stop that!"

"I thought the Capulet girl was still in her teens."

"I'm nineteen, almost twenty." I scowled at him. "Not that it's any of your business."

"You're awfully young for an outlaw."

"Yeah, well, you're kind of old for playing dress-up." I eyed his robe and face paint. "Besides, would you say that to a man?"

My age was a sore spot. I could list half a dozen other outlaws who'd gotten their start at 15 or 16 like I had, and no one ever questioned whether they knew what they were doing. I could ride, shoot, and crack a safe as well as any man, but whenever folks found out I was female, my gender and my age were all they noticed about me.

I kicked the lid of the coffin and immediately regretted it. "Gods damn it!" The stupid, ladylike boots on my feet were a far sight thinner than the riding boots I usually wore. It would be just my luck if I'd broken my toe.

Not that it would matter if I couldn't find some way out of the jam I was in. Hell's priests weren't known for their forgiveness toward those who meddled in their affairs.

"So what now?" I asked the priest standing in front of me. "I don't suppose you'll let me go if I promise not to try anything like this again."

"You know I can't do that," he said gravely. "Tilaxia requires a sacrifice to even the scales."

I swallowed hard and tried to look braver than I felt. "I didn't actually commit any crimes," I pointed out.

Only because he'd discovered me first, but still.

"Intention matters as much as deeds," he said. "But there are those in Infierno whose crimes are worse than yours. I will spare you if you help me bring them to light."

"Why me?"

"Because you're here," he said simply. "You have skills that may be useful, but outsiders do not come to Infierno. Only believers are allowed inside our walls. You will question what you see and hear rather than following blindly, like the others."

"How will you get me in?" I glanced back at the coffin. I didn't relish being sealed back inside.

He waited until I looked back at him. "There are two ways you may enter the city. In a box or by my side."

"You mean...as your consort."

He nodded.

Gods help me, I was considering it. "What if they don't believe us? It seems a little far-fetched that you'd have had time to meet and convert me while you were overseeing the transportation of all this...cargo."

I looked around and suppressed a shiver. Being surrounded by a bunch of dead people hadn't bothered me when I was pretending to be one, but now that I was being offered a front-row seat to whatever would happen to them next, I wondered how they would have felt about being sold to the city of the dead.

"You will be tested, as all converts are," the priest said. "It will not be easy."

"What kind of test?" I asked nervously.

He shook his head. "I cannot say. That is between you and Tilaxia."

"And you'll let me take what I came for if I help you?"

"I will." His tone was grave. I looked into his eyes and saw a promise in them. He knew what I had come to steal and was sworn to protect it, but he believed in his mission to purify the cult. Even if his goddess damned him for it, he would do what he felt he must.

"Ok." I took a deep breath. "Let's do it."

I held out a hand to shake on it, but he grabbed my wrist and pulled a knife from a forearm sheath hidden by the sleeve of his robes. Before I could protest or pull my arm away, he sliced the knife across my palm. A bright red ribbon of blood welled up in the cut. Then he turned the knife around and offered it to me hilt-first. My hand shook slightly as I sliced his palm. It wasn't the first time I'd used a knife on human flesh, but it was the first time I'd sworn a blood oath to a goddess of death.

I met the priest's gaze as we clasped hands and mingled our blood. "I suppose I'd better know your name if we're going to convince people I'm your consort."

"You can call me Paris."

"But that's not your real name?"

"It is forbidden to tell you my goddess-given name. Names have power." His eyes grew even darker. "Juliet."

His voice was a caress and I shivered again, for an altogether different reason this time.

"Call me Jules." My own voice was rough. I looked away and cleared my throat. Roman had been right. I'd had no idea what I was getting myself into.

The train to hell kept rolling.