Then World War II ended. Resuming the title of Guardian of the House—Wächter—Andreas Ritter, Lukas and Sofie’s grandfather, began the slow process of finding the scattered family members. Their father, Marcus, had been killed in a car crash in 1990—Lukas and Sofie didn’t believe it had been an accident—and the leadership of the Border patrol had fallen to the twins. Through rites and rituals, they continued the search for more personnel.
On the damn desert day that Meg had let down her guard and cried, Lukas had found her. Then he boarded a plane to San Diego to meet her.
To woo her to Germany, he had shown her proof of her magickal Gift—the Gift of Second Sight. Sitting in his room at the Hotel del Coronado, giving her a cracked, weathered leather glove, he lit candles and told her to close her eyes while he whispered strange words. After about thirty minutes, she saw visions of Ritter midnight rides, and a redheaded man who could have been her own twin, gazing at her from centuries ago and nodding encouragement. Despite herself, she was drawn in, pulled hard; she knew him, deep in her soul; blood sang to blood.
But when she’d snapped out of the trance she’d turned down Lukas’s invitation, insisting he had drugged her again, and pointing out that she had a life in San Diego, and her own border to protect.
“You have more boundaries than that,” Lukas had drawled. “More walls.”
She took offense, even though he was right.
Lukas had suggested she come with him to Germany just to see. To visit. Then to train, just a bit. Take six months to be fair. And now, tonight, to ride with them for the first time.
What an epic fail.
She stared up at the Ritter coat of arms, barely visible in the storm: a shield bisected into fields of blue and white, superimposed by a tree trunk sawed nearly down to the roots. The Erl King’s name had been mistranslated; to some, he was known as the Alder King, alder being a kind of wood. But he was King of the Other Side—the elves and goblins, the baby thieves.
Sofie downshifted and the van climbed the hill on which the castle was perched. Moving gingerly, Meg pulled her cell phone out of a Velcro pocket in her pants. The face remained black. Crap, had it fried?
“It’s only two a.m.,” Lukas informed her. They had gone on duty at ten p.m., and gotten the call about the child abduction at midnight. It seemed like much longer to her.
The van stopped and Lukas pulled back the door. He unfolded himself and reached out a hand to Meg. It was warm. The wound at her side was warm, too.
She moved from the door and crowded beneath an umbrella that Eddie snapped open. Lukas looked at the two of them as if they were exotic creatures, then turned and joined Sofie at the back of the van. Heath followed. Breath rising like steam, they began unpacking the weaponry, passing out the crossbows and Uzis. The horses would be seen to and trailered back to the castle barn by stable hands.
“You don’t have to carry your gear,” Lukas said, but Meg gave him a look and slung the strap to the Uzi over her head, then her crossbow quiver, still loaded with bolts, and the crossbow itself. There were several metal containers of ammo; she hoisted one up, grunting under her breath at the pull in her side, and headed for the castle. Two bundled Ritter security guards stood at attention before the large ornate wooden door, which had once borne a carving of knights in pursuit of the Erl King. It was worn nearly away, and everyone used a smaller door cut into the old one.
The five filed inside, Lukas and Sofie leading. Meg was in the middle, then Heath, and finally Eddie. The entrance to the castle glowed with firelight and golden magick; it was warm if not cozy, as the cavernous ceiling stretched up into the front turret.
Wächter Andreas Ritter, the Guardian of the Haus, strode toward them as staff approached and took their weapons and ammo. Tall, gangly, with a shock of white hair and gray eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, he was dressed in a black turtleneck sweater, black wool trousers, and boots. With his salt-and-pepper beard, he looked like an intellectual—some kind of college professor. It was hard to believe that he was over 165 years old. It was said that his great-grandfather had tried to parley a truce with the Erl King. No one could tell Meg if that was true.
The lithe older man spoke to the group in German, and everyone was galvanized by his attention. He was their resident sorcerer and guru. Sofie and Lukas spoke earnestly, and attention turned to Meg.
“You really tried it?” Andreas asked her in English. “To cross the Pale?”
She nodded, and he shook his head. “I’d like to talk to you about that. Could you come to my office in a little while? Shall we say at nine?”
“Okay,” she replied.
Then Andreas turned to Sofie and spoke in rapid German: “This is your team, yours and your brother’s. Can you not control your people?”
Meg’s voice tingled with shock. She understood every word.
“Not her,” Sofie replied, and Lukas shook his head.
“She’s new. She’s trying.”
“She’s dangerous,” Sofie put in.
“Did you get the changeling?” Lukas asked Andreas, changing the subject.
“The extraction team hasn’t reported in yet.”
Damn. Suddenly German was no longer a language barrier.
“Hey,” Meg began; then a wave of weariness crashed over her. She was too tired to go into it now. Too heartsick.
And not trusting enough.
“Yes?” Andreas prompted.
“I’ll see you at nine,” she said.
He dismissed them. The Border patrol units were elite squads with their own luxurious rooms and bathrooms. Located in a turret, hers was a large half circle, the stone floor covered with dark blue mohair carpets emblazoned with the Ritter crest, matching hangings warming the imposing heavily carved canopy bed. Medieval-looking gilt antiques—scooped chairs with leather slings, a table inlaid with a mosaic of a saint—and a real coat of armor finished off the decorations. It was so unlike her messy but pleasant condo. Her cell phone was working; she set the alarm for eight thirty. Shakily, she stripped out of her kicker boots, cat suit, and the sweater.
Naked, she shuffled into the bath and showered, luxuriating in the hot, hot water. In her mind, she replayed the mission; saw herself objectively, as if at a distance. Saw the Erl King. He bowed his head to me. He knew me. And I knew him.
There was no way she was going to rest if she lay down. Her busy brain was too fully engaged. So she dressed in jeans, cowboy boots, and a white turtleneck sweater. She braided her wet hair and left her room. Her boots clacked as she walked down a stone corridor illuminated with overhanging mosaic lanterns powered by fluorescent bulbs.
I saw a demon king, she thought. And real goblins. They took a baby. And I couldn’t do shit. And now I can understand German and I’m hung up about who likes me and who trusts me and what the hell is wrong with me?
I nearly crossed into another dimension.
Her legs buckled and she held herself up against the wall. Her breath came in quick gasps; she was shaking, hard; then she slipped to the floor and pushed her back against the stone, bringing her knees to her chest and burying her head.
This is crazy, so crazy, she thought. She could remember having this same conversation with Lukas, back in California: Fifty years ago, people who saw your Border Patrol surveillance system would have thought it was magick. What’s to say that we aren’t simply using some other kind of technology?
All his rationalizations. All hers.
Maybe the Erl King was a man in a costume. The goblins, too. It’s an urban legend and these guys buy into it or perpetuate it, and I’m on a reality show. Or it’s some elaborate practical joke Jack cooked up. Speakers in the trees, special lighting.
Except … I speak German. And I was going to cross over. I couldn’t stop myself.
She rested her head on her knees.
Struck-by-lightning stories: August Hellman of Arkansas was struck twice and lived to tell the tale. No permanent injuries. No brain damage. Each time he was
hit, he smelled ozone and felt “a terrible sense of foreboding” seconds before.
That monster took a baby. Why? What do they do to them?
No one could tell her. No one knew.
Someone was coming; she got to her feet and wiped her face, averting her head. Living in the castle was like living in a big office building, with people coming and going at all hours, busy, busy, busy. Guarding the Pale was only one of the duties of Haus Ritter. Apparently there were vampires called Blutsauger. And gnomes. A lot of guarding.
Hysterical laughter welled up inside her. She thought about calling Jack. Guess what. I’m living in an Underworld movie.
She didn’t recognize the man ambling toward her, apparently texting, head down, fingers flying. He wore jeans and a dark brown sweatshirt with the Ritter crest silk-screened in black.
“Abend,” he said casually. Evening.
“Guten abend,” she replied.
I should tell someone about all this. I shouldn’t wait until nine.
She continued on down the corridor of stone, knowing that Andreas’s office was on the fifth story of the castle and that she had to make two lefts before she reached the birdcage elevator, a Victorian contraption that scared her to death—
She heard a low, deep moan, and stopped walking. It was almost sub-audible, as if it were originating from underneath her. She looked around. There was nothing.
She walked on.
The moan came again.
Cocking her head, she turned down a passageway lined with oil paintings of Ritter knights, maybe Renaissance. At a T-intersection, she shrugged and forked right, turning around, wondering if she’d imagined it. It could be the water pressure in the pipes. A movie.
Except … she felt compelled to find it.
More woo woo, she thought.
Another moan.
Slowing, she spotted two wooden doors flush with the wall, very plain, with brass doorknobs. She tried the first one. It was locked. But the second swung open, into a dimly lit stairwell.
An ornate brass stair railing curved both up and down, and a faint light glowed from below.
Cocking her head again, she started down the stone stairs, worn and uneven but clean. She didn’t know why she didn’t summon someone to investigate. Why she didn’t sound the alarm. It seemed the right thing to do.
She reached the landing.
Another moan.
Another floor down.
She kept going.
And going.
Then the stairs stopped. On the wall was a faded sign that read EINTRITT VERBOTEN. No entry. It was so dark she had trouble reading it. But no trouble at all translating it, apparently.
Passing the sign, she looped around and started down the next flight of the staircase. About halfway down, a terrible stench wafted beneath the scent of her shampoo and body splash. She knew that smell—people crowded in too tightly; sick and neglected people.
She coughed into her fist. The sound echoed. There was a rustling as if in response, and a gasp. And another moan.
She descended one more flight. The smell grew worse, sickening her; making her remember the baby in the desert, and the baby on horseback.
At the bottom of the next landing, a strip of luminous tape had been attached to the stone floor. It gave off white light, like the Pale.
I should get the hell out of here, she thought. I’m not supposed to be here.
Then the moan became strange sounds, like wind chimes:
“****.”
Twinkling silvery.
“****.”
And she knew they meant “home.”
“Hello?” she whispered, staring at the tape. EINTRITT VERBOTEN.
“****.”
Home.
“Do you need assistance?” she asked in a louder voice.
Silence. And … weeping, and then a kind of gasping, like strangling. And another voice, higher-pitched:
“********.”
Help.
Meg sucked in her breath and made a semijump over the tape, bracing herself for a shock, or pain, but nothing happened. Her boots echoed. Rustling, scrabbling sounds came from the space in front of her, which was filled with vague, shadowy box shapes. As she walked forward, her eyes began to adjust.
She was standing at one end of a double row of cubes or boxes. They stretched far into the darkness, into some vast section of the castle she couldn’t picture; an open space this wide, with no supporting beams or columns for the weight of the building above it, shouldn’t be possible. Magick, she realized, and walked to the closest box, about three feet from the line of luminous tape.
The front was barred; she couldn’t tell if there was an additional barrier—Plexiglas, regular glass—but something sat inside, on the floor, with long shins perpendicular to the floor, and feet that appeared to be pulled from gray clay. Long, nubby fingers were wrapped around the shins, and a bald head rested on the knees. Meg stared at it, transfixed.
What the hell?
With a hiss, it whipped its head up and glared at her, its features deep and plain, very human, its eyes filled with hatred so deep that she took an involuntary step backward.
It was a holding cell. And the thing inside it was imprisoned.
It glared, and then it slowly shut its eyes. It remained that way, head raised, eyes closed, as Meg stared at it.
Jesus, she thought.
The moan sounded again. She moved past the box—the cage—and was about to pass another one when she froze. There was a naked child inside, a towhead, with big blue eyes and a quivering lower lip. It was a little girl, and when she saw Meg, she shrieked and threw herself backward, much as Meg had done at the first cage.
“Hey, it’s okay. I won’t hurt you,” Meg said.
The moan again:
“********.”
She raised a hand to the terrified toddler—I’ll be back—and hurried on, past more cages with more children in them. Most of them were fair-haired and blue-eyed, very German. An imprisoned mini Aryan nation. A few of the prisoners were like the first one, almost claylike, but most were like the little towhead.
Then she came to a cage inhabited by what appeared to be a child half carved from wood, but unfinished—arms that ended in stumps, one leg, the torso an approximation of a chest. No sex organs. No eyes.
“********.”
It was the thing that was moaning.
She looked around, pretending to be suspicious that this was all a joke, but the sick thudding of her heart belied her actions. She was believing this.
More moans joined the first. Home. Help.
Their eyes were huge and sorrowful. They were lonely, and homesick, and miserable.
She understood: they were the changeling children, from beyond the Pale. They were the babies who had been put in the beds of the human children taken by the Erl King. The fruits of the Ritter extraction teams.
She thought of the Mexican baby; and Matt; and the child who had been taken tonight. Garriet. What was going on? What was this about? Why was it that these … children could survive on this side of the Pale, but she couldn’t cross it?
She wandered among the cages and cells, seeing more misery and despair, and deep hatred. Her cell phone alarm went off: eight thirty. Sliding it off, she hurried back up the stairs, fully intending to confront Andreas.
As she headed for the birdcage elevator, she saw him striding toward the castle entrance, bundled up in a black overcoat and a white fur hat. She hurried after him; he turned his head, took note of her, and said in English, “Emergency. We’ll have to postpone the meeting.”
“What’s going on?” she asked, not expecting him to tell her.
He frowned, shrugged. “It’s the damnedest thing. Garriet’s mother refused to give our extraction team the changeling. It’s a mess. She’s hysterical.”
“Let me come with you,” Meg said, striding along beside him.
He raised his brows. “You’re a Border guard. This is not anything to do wi
th you.”
“I want to go.”
“You should rest. It was a hard night.”
“Bitte,” she said in German, and he smiled at her quizzically.
“You Americans are so pushy.”
“Assertive,” she corrected him.
He pursed his lips and made an eye sweep of her appearance. “There’s an extra coat in the car. Come on, then.”
* * *
It was nearly four, and still black out. The Erl King rode only at night. They rolled in a Mercedes through the snowy streets, followed by another navy blue van. Their driver was the texter Meg had passed in the hall.
A single pedestrian fighting against the snow took the time to wave. That there were goblins and ghosties had been accepted by the locals; and that the Ritters were the ones to go to for help was appreciated. Meg was boggled. Why had she never read about any of this? Wasn’t this groundbreaking, earthshaking?
Andreas was in cell phone communication with the leader of the extraction team. Since she could understand German now, she listened carefully. The house was isolated, deep in the forest. The woman was alone with the changeling. She had a gun.
“No, it’s not imperative that the Dämonkind survive,” he said. “But the woman … that would cause an incident. Ja…”
After a while, he flicked off the phone and sighed, looking out the window. She studied his profile.
“Are you going to put the baby in that dungeon downstairs?” she asked him.
He turned his head and looked at her.
“Where you keep all the others?” she added.
He frowned. “How do you know about that? That’s classified.”
Classified. Did Sofie and Lukas know about it?
“You know, where I come from, we just ship them back across the border,” she said.
He raised a brow. She could feel energy moving off him in waves; a thrill of fear centered in her back. Eddie had knocked her out with the flick of his hand. What could this guy do?
Chicks Kick Butt - Rachel Caine, Kerrie Hughes (ed) Page 33