The Elementals : The Dawn of Darkness

Chapter 36 - Is It Breaking And Entering If You're Using A Secret Passage?

Dear train drivers. Listen, I know you have a very stressful job, especially if you're on the night shift, after all, I do know the pain of an all-nighter. However, even if you're completely silent through the rest of the day and are happy to trundle along your tracks without a care in the world just know this. If you feel whatever strange, sadistic human need to blare your horn at full blast while roaring through a station when it's still dark, I think there's a special circle of hell reserved just for you.

I was already composing the various torture methods in my head the moment the long, toneless honk finally cut out as the two carriage passenger train sped out of the station and wound its way into the nearby hills. I stretched and yawned, the crick in my neck snapping with an audible pop. All in all, not the worst night's sleep of my life.

"What time is it?" I asked failing to stifle another yawn.

Shadow stirred in the passenger seat, uncurled his long legs into the footwell and glanced, bleary-eyed at the clock in the dashboard. "Oh-five-thirty-two," he replied.

I didn't need to ask what that was in English, all I needed to hear was that even in the height of summer the morning sun had yet to creep over the horizon. Ugh, it's too early for this. I looked over my shoulder to the back seats. The Land Rover, while not being particularly spacious or luxurious, was warm and dry and at the end of the day was better than the cold floor. Shadow and I had taken the front seats while Sheira, the only one of us who was small enough to comfortably fit, was still curled up with the threadbare blanket tossed over her. She too had just woken up and was rubbing sleep from her eyes.

"Morning!" I said cheerfully.

"Get lost," came the reply.

Fair enough, I thought as I opened the door and spilt out into the rather cold highland air. Even with my internal combustion engine, there were goosebumps rising on my skin and puffs of steam shot from my mouth and nose. There were a few other people milling around the train station, men and women in business suits, students with bulging backpacks, families with dozing kids in one arm and an enormous suitcase in the other, all of whom seemed slightly alarmed as Shadow popped open his door too and Sheira's head drifted into view.

God knows what they thought we'd all been up too and while the temptation of saying something like, 'Well that was fun, you guys were great,' was almost impossible to resist, the last thing we needed today was to draw attention to ourselves. We were getting closer to the city and Molly could have easily stationed spy's anywhere so it went without saying that we needed a low profile.

Perhaps another reason for their wrinkled noses was the fact that I hadn't had a bath in about a week, Sheira hadn't either, and as for Shadow? God knows. I held my hand up to my face, breathed on it, sniffed and grimaced. My dentist was going to have a field day when I next saw him.

"You know what I need?" I announced to whoever was paying attention.

"What?" Sheira groggily replied.

"Toothpaste, deodorant and clean clothes," I listed. I had become very much acclimatised to my own smell, the population of Edinburgh could probably do without me honking up their great city.

Sheira snorted from the car in agreement but Shadow didn't make a sound. Instead, he stood up, snapped his fingers, generating clouds of black smoke, and waved something under my nose.

"I can assist with two of those issues," he said as I squirted a large slug of spearmint toothpaste onto a brush and scrubbed at my teeth with a vicious ferocity never seen before by yours truly. Sheira followed suit and was soon followed by Shadow.

"Can you transfer any item like that?" I asked curiously after I spat into a drain.

He shrugged. "Only small ones and I have to know where they are."