I hopped onto the bridge leading up to the train tracks that run along and above Dundas Street. The bridge was a beaten up piece of old steel that had always looked this way, and as everything else around it changed it never seemed to get fixed.

There was no train on this stretch, and no rumbling from a nearby train. I ran west, over the Humber River and then under Dundas Street on loose gravel between the tracks. I didn’t like how predictable I was on this straight path but there was one good surprise: with the weight of the elderberry and keeping my grandmother’s house unknown now lifted from my mind I barely felt the effects of my earlier sprinting by the churches, and I cut through the air faster than any train, grinning and then laughing into the wind I made, enjoying the rush, not thirsty at all – Dr. Fidyka’s lifeblood was still sloshing around, and my minor bumps from the Movember men were quickly gone. That endurance conditioning in the woods had paid off, and now that I wasn’t all panicky and fidgety I could start to reflect, and try to compare myself to this third student from Belie.

She’d been able to keep pace with a subway, but had fallen back when we were both on foot. My close-passes by church had forced her to pause and regain her senses, and the last church’s tutelary had given her a fight. So her senses and speed were fallible enough to give me a chance.

Trying to pick up the aetheric gossip from the tutelaries as I put kilometers between me and Lambton on the traintracks, any news on the fight at Toronto West Community Church was buried in the moment-to-moment headlines by the ohdows complaining about having to replant the elderberries. The Lambton knight had responded poorly to his earlier chastisement for storming around outside his jurisdiction and was now refusing to react to any tutelary calls for assistance. The Movember man I called ‘Angel Eyes’ popped up to tell his brothers that they were done cooperating with the Mountain doctors, and he had a growing shit-list of tutelaries suspected of being too sympathetic to night-kin: Elder Mother, Mr. Bloor, the nation’s first prime minister, and a long list of other names that told me that it was going to be a wild witchhunt of baseless accusations.

Good. Let them tear their alliances apart, here and abroad.

I was moving into Mississauga, with those curvy Marilyn Monroe towers visible to the northwest on the horizon, the tracks of the Milton train line about to weave under Dundas Street this time, three hundred meters from a store where my family always stopped to buy roasted nuts when we were passing through, when the skin at the back of my head started prickling up.

I had company, incoming fast.

I also noticed a train on these tracks finally – but the long string of boxcars was stationary, not a ride out of here. I’d use it anyway, running along it and then jumping over to the other side, trying to feel how close that hunting presence was.

Hop, hop and hop. I’d jump to the left side of the stopped train cars and feel the hunting presence diminish … then quickly return to its original strength, affecting the nape of my neck and then making a growing chill down my back like a splash of cold water. I jumped to the right side, and it happened again. She was gaining, already past the end of the line of cars, running alongside and switching sides every time I switched. It was almost instant, and it felt a bit playful. Or teasing.

Past the Erindale GO station. There were cars rushing by ahead, a bridge over the rails with a highway.

Use it.

Off the tracks I hurled myself up, not stopping when I landed on the side of the highway, running between pools of darkness between overhead lamps. Even at this hour I didn’t need more than two minutes to get an 18-wheeler with a nice back to ride on. I dug a claw into the roof of the trailer and looked back.

Jam the road.

This was an idea from my more vampiric self, something that my human self caught and turned at the last moment. I only need a bunch of drivers to stop and block all lanes of westbound traffic so my hunter couldn’t ride her own truck. I didn’t need a lethal accident, though I almost cared not a bit about whether the cars braked or crashed.

I looked into the headlights behind me, and meddled with some minds. Simple things that people are prepared to do anyway were easy, like giving a bus ticket at a station without money. This would be more of the same, and there would be no panicking, no swerving.

Brake … brake … brake …

Screaming wheels suddenly slowing … and one faint collision, back out of sight as my truck carried me on. Someone hadn’t been paying full attention to the road.

We need to be more careful with stuff like that – after all, tutelaries might come hunting if you have a high body count.

It was getting harder to resolve to be more careful for the proper reason: not wanting to kill or cripple bystanders. I was thinking more and more easily in terms of consequences coming back to me, long-sighted selfishness threatening to produce the illusion of human compassion. Maybe I’d be more like my old self once this hunter was far behind me.

Wait …

Goosebumps on my body started shivering against each other again, and then quite purposefully shifted from east to northeast and then north … and then northwest, ahead of my truck. And there was an intersection coming up.

This bitch was holding back. She’s quick.