And then one of the goons shouted and drew a gun. His first shot skimmed over my left shoulder and into the light behind me.
I ducked beneath the showering glass—at least my silhouette was gone now—and bared teeth in a savage snarl-cum-grin. A snarl, because he’d just pulled a gun and started shooting in front of children. A grin, because he’d just escalated the situation to my level of competency.
The Fae are specialists. There are some who could have walked into the warehouse and spoken with the traffickers and walked out leading all the children skipping in a neat line, with the traffickers clutching a five-dollar bill and pleased with the deal. My bloodline isn’t the kind that’s good with words.
I whipped my slim Walther from its leather holster inside my waistband and shot into the empty floor of the bread truck. I know, it’s illegal—can’t shoot unless it’s life or death, and if you can afford to shoot anywhere else it’s obviously not life or death—but I wanted to scare them off the truck and I wasn’t quite ready to kill them yet.
I was close. I mean, child sex traffickers are kind of like really ugly spiders, only without the ecological benefits. But not quite.
The lead goon jerked backward, because running toward a truck with bullets flying at it is kind of mentally hard to do, and kids were screaming and covering their ears. Two of the men started shooting at me, but the light was gone and I slid back, so they had to shoot the whole pallet of Hella Catty figurines while I crept over to the Hella Catty T-shirts, which would do a better job of stopping bullets anyway.
Gunshots are loud, and echoing in a warehouse makes them worse. I flattened against the T-shirt boxes and shielded my ears, waiting for the idiots below to get bored. The gun felt warm through my jeans in a way that had nothing to do with the shot, and I rotated my arm to hold it away from myself. Polymer firearms are a kindness, but the barrel is still steel.
The third man ran for the office, probably intending to grab incriminating paperwork or computers and get out the front door. I didn’t care; I had his picture, his skeevy partners were still here to rat on him, and I don’t even kill spiders when they’re running away.
The woman knelt in the center of the kids, pulling them close to her. At first I thought she was comforting the scared kids, the hypocritical monster, and then I thought she was just getting low in case of a ricochet. But then I saw her looping their clasped arms over her neck and boosting one little girl—Alexis—onto her shoulders and pulling two boys to her torso, and I realized what she was doing.
Middle-class sex trafficking bitch struggled to her feet, weighted by eight or so terrified little kids clinging to her for security, and started toward the truck, protected by her meat shield of children.
And that’s when I lost my sense of humor. There’s a line, and using children as a bullet shield for your getaway is a few steps past it. I slid along the Hella Catty T-shirts, squeezing the polymer grip of my Walther and pressing my index fingertip hard into the frame.
The two guys below were still aiming high, looking for me. They’d have a clear shot in a moment, but I wouldn’t give them long to take it. Moving shots—at a moving target, or from a moving position—are a lot harder than Hollywood makes them look.
She would reach the truck in another dozen steps. The goons between us were about fifteen yards away. I took a deep, slow breath, wrapped both hands around the Walther, sighted on the first gunman, and jumped.
I fired the first shot just as my legs straightened. He was aiming high, leaving his chest exposed, and I put two rounds where his heart would have been if he’d been in a different profession. More shots boomed across the warehouse as his fellow goon tried for me, but as I was jumping through my downward arc at thirty-six feet per second and his ammunition traveled eight hundred fifty feet per second, he’d need to aim about twenty-three inches ahead for his bullet to have a chance of finding me. And he wasn’t that good.
I was. I switched targets and put a round into the other gunman, enough to take him out of the fight if not out of the world. I landed, rolled, and came up with my sights on the woman. “Drop the kids.”
The kids stared, wide-eyed and too afraid to move. She laughed. She boosted one kid higher in her arms, to more completely shield her face, and so help me, she laughed. It was nervous laughter, but it was still all kinds of wrong.
Headshots, contrary to Hollywood and video game lore, are tricky and unreliable. The skull exists for the sole purpose of deflecting impact away from the brain, and it’s shaped to do exactly that. There are only a couple of points where a bullet will reliably penetrate, and this waste of breath was wearing children like human mufflers.
But she’d left one eye exposed to watch me as she started again for the truck.
Low-velocity hollowpoints don’t make the biggest holes, but they’re a lot less likely to run through the intended target and hit someone on the other side. Kids screamed and tumbled as the woman collapsed where she stood, but none were actually hurt.
Don’t ever try that, by the way. It’s not the kind of thing humans should risk. The Fae are specialists, and even in your post-modern ultra-science reality, your kind still knows it. Every elven ranger in a basement D&D game, every computer-generated battle sequence featuring Legolas trashing orcs is tribute to our ancient and arcane skill. Humans have their own advantages—my aching temple and kidney could testify to that—but when it comes to projectiles, you’ll never quite match the Fae.
The driver must have been watching, because he slammed the truck into gear and pulled out, rear doors swinging. I didn’t do anything about it—there’s no good way to stop a truck, and there were three dozen crying children in front of me. I holstered the gun, knelt, and held out my arms.
The kids should have been terrified of me, after seeing me jump out of nowhere and shoot three people. But maybe they knew something was wrong about their captors, or maybe they recognized something in me, or maybe it was just any friendly adult in a storm of distress, because they came to me and hugged me and each other, some crying, some unnaturally quiet.
I just sat there, their warmth and youth and life all around me, and wept.
Jimmy came in and hugged some kids, too. He stood and went to the open loading door when the police arrived, waving them in. They had a full team, even counselors to collect the kids. I stood slowly, hands spread to show I meant no threat.
They took the kids outside, away from their prison and the bodies, and bundled the injured goon into an ambulance. Then they started on the dead man and woman. I described most of what had happened, pointing out the shattered light, my bruising face, the dent where a swinging truck door had struck the loading door’s track as it raced away.
The officers listening to me were having trouble keeping up. Maybe I was talking a little fast and not quite calmly. “Hold on one sec, sir,” said one. “I need to get this more slowly.”
His partner gave him a pained look and turned back to me. “Sorry, ma’am.” He paused, now uncertain. “Er, what’s your name, please?”
I gave a tight little smile. “Robin Archer.”
I could see by their faces that the name didn’t help. Well, sorry. Best I can do.
“Can we have some ID? Including your permit?”
I shook my head. “I don’t have my wallet with me, left it at home. Didn’t exactly know I was going to happen into all this. I can show it later.”
Jimmy knew the drill—he didn’t really know me, I ate at the Steer & Beer sometimes but that was it, he just happened to be near when I told him there were kids in danger. Interrogating him about me wouldn’t get them far. And I really would show my ID later—if there were a later. I’m legal, but we kind of don’t like getting tangled up with human authority.
“Look, I really want to go to the bathroom.” They would understand that. “There’ll be one in the office area. Can I go?”
The officers exchanged glances and nodded. “He’ll just stand outside,” one said, “where he
can see the door, okay?”
I nodded.
If the officer who followed me was hoping to see which gender I chose, he was out of luck, because it was a single unisex restroom. Ah, well, one more thing for him to puzzle over, along with why I wouldn’t be there whenever he finally forced the door. Portals to the Twilight Lands are much harder than scrying and not to be made lightly, but I’d rather be in bed for a week than sorting details with the police for far longer, and they pretty much have to detain someone who shoots a woman in the face, no matter how much she deserved it.
I pushed back the unlatched door and waved to the waiting officer. “I’ll be out in a minute.” Not exactly a lie, as I would be out of the room. Just not this way.
I was startled by the boy curled into the corner of the bathroom, squeezed between the toilet and the wall, maybe ten years old. He looked at me with dull, frightened eyes, like a street dog who half-expects to be kicked and isn’t certain if it’s worth trying to avoid it.
I held a finger to my lips and squatted before the toilet. I whispered. “You didn’t go to the truck.”
He shook his head.
“You knew what they were?”
“Guessed enough.” His voice was flat.
I should have sent him out to the officer, but his eyes were too lifeless. “You were going to run home?”
He shook his head, as I knew he would.
I nodded toward the warehouse and the swarming authorities. “Is anyone looking for you?”
One shoulder twitched, hardly a movement. “Not sure. Left th’ foster home. Sixth.”
There would be a report for him somewhere, but he was deep in the system. It was a system which tried its best, but it dealt with tough situations, and it couldn’t save every kid.
Sometimes, in the old days….
I held out a hand. “Come away, human child?”
He looked at me, curious with the first flicker of emotion. “Where?”
“The wood, the water, the wild.”
He was old to be taken, but he had little holding him. He looked at me a moment, and then he reached for my hand.
~*~
Laura VanArendonk Baugh was born at a very early age and never looked back. She overcame childhood deficiencies of having been born without teeth or developed motor skills, and by the time she matured into a recognizable adult she had become a behavior analyst, an internationally-recognized and award-winning animal trainer, a popular costumer/cosplayer, a chocolate addict, and of course a writer. Now she has letters after her name and writes best-selling non-fiction as well as fiction in various flavors of historical and fantasy. Find her at www.LauraVanArendonkBaugh.com or on Twitter at @Laura_VAB.
~*~
Seven Years Fleeting
Lor Graham
I first saw her watching me from the hillock where the garden became the beach. Mam didn’t let us go down there alone. I just saw the flash of red curls, and then those huge brown eyes swallowed me whole.
I was seven years old, and I had just fallen in love for the first time.
It took me three days to say hello.
She was better at hopscotch than my little sister, and better at skimming stones into the sea than me. She joined us when Mam took us down to the beach for picnics, and charmed her without trying.
I was seven, and I was in love.
On the days the rain battered the bothy, and that happened a lot that summer, she would turn up at the door, water streaming from her curls. We dried her out by the fire, peeling vegetables for Mam to make soup.
Those were happy days.
When we sat on the shore, in the quiet moments broken only by the skreel of the gulls, she would stare out at the sea, as though desperate to return. Yet she never joined us swimming, preferring to sit on the rocks and smirk at our attempts at the strokes.
She was strange, and I loved her for it.
We laughed a lot that summer, at each other, at and with my sister, and at the sheep in their field. To us, the bothy with its flock of sheep, the garden left to grow over since Father had left and the beach beyond were the entirety of our world. To us it was enormous, a fitting home for our expanding imaginations.
We were pirates, storming up from the beach to take the fort made of branches in the middle of the garden. Removing the splinters that evening was painful.
We were soldiers, re-enacting the Normandy landings on the beach, being brave like Father, all the time hoping he would return to us soon. Mam watched these games with wet eyes and a sad smile.
We took the dog out one day, and attempted to round up the sheep. My sister, only four at the time, ruined the fun by breaking her leg, and getting us banned from the field altogether.
All of this time we never thought to ask where she came from, or why she would only talk to me.
I was in love, so to me none of it mattered. To me, her being there, joining in my games, was the best thing in the world. I decided she only spoke to me because she was in love with me too.
And then summer began to wane, bringing with it a chill in the breeze, and the talk of returning to school. To me this was a disaster, the removal of my time with her every day was the end of my world. She giggled when I told her this, and raced me to climb the apple tree in the garden to take my mind off of it.
She never mentioned going to school, and I never questioned it. In my world, she existed for adventure.
The first morning back at school arrived, with the earlier than usual start for the two mile walk to the school house. I watched for her all morning, for she would have to walk the same road I did, but there was no sign of her bright red curls, or her brown woolen dress.
She wasn’t in my class, and there was no hint of her in the playground. That afternoon, I ran most of the way home, glad my little sister was still at home with her broken leg, as that way she couldn’t slow me down.
Mam hadn’t seen her, and I spent the rest of my afternoon sitting in the apple tree, watching for any sign of her approach.
It was a week before I resigned myself to the fact that she was gone.
I was seven years old, and I was heartbroken for the first time.
~*~
I was twenty-one, and I was bored.
I knew I had only gotten this scholarship because of my good grades, and that I should be grateful for the opportunity to study further, but I hated the city, and I hated the people in my classes. They were from the wealthy families, and had made it clear from the start that I was an outsider.
I embraced it.
On Saturdays I took the train out to the coast, and spent my days fishing in the sea. I knew I could get to this place as we’d been here on a field trip, to see the new bridges they were building. I knew I was never going to apply my engineering knowledge to building bridges, but they were interesting nonetheless.
This place was better without my classmates.
I didn’t hear her approaching, despite us being the only two people on the cliffs. One moment I was alone, the next she was sitting next to me, red curls twirling in the wind, bare pale feet poking out from below her dress as she sat cross-legged.
I didn’t know what to say for the longest time.
She began to sing, a beautifully sad song of the sea. I knew then that I was right, that the things I had read in the library were true. I asked her of her nature, and she merely smiled in return. I found I didn’t care, I was lost in her large brown eyes.
I was twenty-one, and I was in love with her all over again.
I began to skip classes in order to go to the shore and see her. I knew from experience she wouldn’t be around for long, and I wanted to spend every minute possible with her. I was young and impulsive, and in love. It was a dangerous combination. I didn’t care about eating, about sleeping, I just wanted to be with her, to lie with her, to give myself to her.
I fell ill, and the day I was admitted to the hospital was the day she disappeared. I know, because my hospital room overlooked the cliffs whe
re I fished, and I watched them all day every day. I never once glimpsed her long red curls, her brown woollen dress, nor did I hear her sad song of the sea.
I recovered, slowly. The doctor said I had contracted pneumonia, a result of spending so much time by the sea this late in the year. He warned me I had to rest and I had to stay warm, and then he let me leave.
I took one last look at the shoreline as I left my room, but I knew in my heart I wouldn’t see her again. Her time here was only brief, and in making the most of it I had made myself ill. I promised myself I would never be so foolish over a girl again, and headed to the station to get the train back into the city.
I was twenty-one, and I had had my heart broken for the second time.
~*~
I was thirty-five, and I was tied down.
I sat at a table outside of the café on the promenade, pushing the baby’s pram back and forward gently, trying to lull my son to sleep. We had come to the seaside as a family, but late in the season as it was the only time I could afford the room and board.
My wife had been struck down by a cold after our time on the beach the day before, and I had offered to take the lad out to allow her to get some rest. The poor mite was at the end of colic, so sleep was sparse for him too.
People often commented that I had left it late to have a family, that I ought to have been married much earlier, but I just told them that I hadn’t found the right woman until I was that bit older.
Truth was, I hadn’t been able to let go of the fantasy that I might be able to keep her with me until I had grown up a bit.
The thought seemed to summon her, because I looked up from my crossword and there she was, smiling across the little table at me. Despite everything, my heart leapt at the sight of her.
She cooed over the baby, slipping a coin under his blanket, and commented on how he had my eyes, as everyone did. All the while she had that smile across her face.
I was thirty-five, and I hated her.
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