Chapter 34 - The Cabin of Mirrors
Darkness swallowed the Alpine Express.
Inside the luxury observation lounge, Dominique froze, her champagne flute hovering inches from her lips. "Gomez? Report."
Only the static of the radio receiver responded.
Then, from the darkness of the narrow corridor connecting the sleeper cars, a low, smooth voice purred:
"Gomez won't be joining us for drinks, sister."
Dominique didn't flinch. Slowly, deliberately, she set her crystal flute onto the mahogany table. "Vanessa. You really are like a cockroach. No matter how much pesticide I spray, you just keep scuttling back into the penthouse."
"I was born in the penthouse, Dominique," Vanessa’s voice echoed, disorienting, bouncing off the polished mirrors of the dining car. "You were raised in a kennel. And it shows."
A muzzle flash tore through the shadows.
Dominique fired two blind shots down the hallway, the deafening cracks shattering several decorative mirrors into a rain of silver shards. But before she could re-aim, a shadow lunged from the opposite side.
Claire hit Dominique low, wrapping her arms around her waist and driving her hard into the long dining table. Crystal decanters, silver platters, and vintage wine crashed to the carpeted floor. Dominique gasped as the air was forced from her lungs, but her counterattack was instantaneous and lethal.
A sharp elbow drove viciously into Claire’s injured shoulder.
Claire cried out, her grip loosening as white-hot agony blinded her. Dominique spun, pinning Claire against the broken glass on the table, her gloved fingers wrapping around Claire’s throat with hydraulic strength.
"You really thought you were special, didn't you, little maid?" Dominique sneered, pressing down until Claire’s windpipe began to crush. "Mother discarded you because you were soft. Weak. You have her eyes, but none of her spine!"
Claire choked, her hands clawing at Dominique’s wrists. Her vision began to tunnel, black spots dancing across her eyes.
"She didn't discard me..." Claire wheezed, her hand slipping down to the table surface, searching desperately through the debris. "...she hid me... to protect me from monsters like you!"
Claire’s fingers closed around a heavy, broken crystal decanter neck.
With the last ounce of strength in her fading body, Claire drove the jagged crystal straight into Dominique’s thigh.
Dominique shrieked in primal fury, staggering backward, clutching her leg as dark blood welled through her trousers.
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At that exact moment, the train lurched violently forward. The emergency brakes disengaged, the steel wheels screeching against the frozen tracks as the locomotive began its rapid descent down the perilous alpine cliffside.
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