“Back where you come from, they aren’t evil.”
“No. They’re just desperate.” She shifted; the wound in her side was hurting a little. “What’s going on? Why does this happen?”
The snow fell as the Mercedes plowed through the storm. Unless the Erl King had gotten Garriet indoors, he’d probably frozen to death by now.
“In the earlier times, when a deformed child was born, the people would say it was a changeling,” Andreas began. “A slow mind, a missing limb … they would say this child was not a human child. Then they would take it into the forest, and leave it.”
“Charming.”
“Their hope was that the faeries would take it back.”
She pursed her lips. “So what are you saying, that the Erl King takes the deformed kids from us and leaves, what? Demons in their place?” She thought a moment.
“Nein. We don’t know why he does it. But he never took the castoffs. And he leaves … what he leaves.”
She took a deep breath. “About what he leaves. They want to go ho—”
The Mercedes pulled to the right, and the engine went off. She looked past Andreas, to see a small white A-frame chalet sitting in the billows of snow, surrounded on three sides by fir trees. Smoke came out of a chimney set in the shingled roof, and empty flower boxes fronted a window beside the wood door, and another one above the door, where there must have been an extra little room.
The building was surrounded by what appeared to be a SWAT team in full body armor and helmets, crouched, holding crossbows. They all had Uzis slung across their chests. The soldier closest to the car looked over his shoulder at them, and made a fist.
Andreas murmured under his breath. She knew he was speaking Latin, and that he was conjuring a spell that would protect them. Energy washed over her in strong, surging waves, making her feel tall and light on her feet, and powerful—but it was a weak sensation compared to what she had felt at the Pale.
The soldier approached and brought Andreas up to speed: the woman was inside with the changeling; she was hysterical, armed, and defiant.
Andreas turned to Meg. She knew he was going to tell her to stay in the car.
“I’m going in with you,” she said in English, although she knew how to say it in German. And in Latin.
What am I doing? What am I, period?
The Wächter—the Guardian—parted his lips as if to deny her request; before he could speak, she pushed, somehow. Her intentions—her thoughts—carried power. She didn’t know exactly what that meant, but she did know she could make him say yes.
Then he blinked, and he told the soldier to form a bodyguard around the two of them. Andreas kept glancing at her, as if he knew something was up, but he didn’t know what. The disorienting, manic high she had first felt at the Pale thrummed through her as they were fitted with vests and Andreas was given a radio. Then he knocked on the door and spoke kindly to the woman, launching into hostage-crisis speak. He was good at it. He was charming her magickally; maybe she knew it and maybe she didn’t. The odor of the wood smoke from the chimney changed, and magick permeated the air.
Then they were in. The house was simply furnished, and a box of disposable diapers sat next to the door. The woman was around Meg’s age—twenty-eight, give or take—and she was holding the silent, unmoving baby against her body, as the Erl King had held little Garriet. Holy shit, she had a Glock in her hand, the weight of which must be wearing her down. It wouldn’t be long before she surrendered.
Her name was Brigitte, and her eyes were bloodshot. Her face was swollen with crying. She ticked her glance from Andreas to Meg and leaned her head against the baby’s head. The baby looked like any normal little baby, with a wisp of strawberry hair and those mirrorlike gray eyes of newborns. Younger than Garriet, then? She could smell the smoky magickal scent of him, like ozone before lightning.
“He doesn’t want to go with you,” the woman said to Andreas. In German, of course.
Andreas began to reply, but Meg spoke first.
“Ich weiss.” I know.
Andreas looked at Meg sharply. She ignored him, focusing all her attention on the woman. Brigitte. Before Meg knew what was happening, her mind filled with the image of the baby in the desert, and of Matty … and of the Erl King, nodding at her.
Had it been so hideous in Mexico that the mother had had to cross? So terrifying in Matty’s hospital room that their mom couldn’t cross?
What lay beyond the Pale?
I crossed the tape in the dungeon, she thought. I don’t think I was supposed to be able to do that.
Meg heard Andreas’s thoughts, echoing in her head: This poor woman is crazy with grief. She’s trying to substitute the little monster for her little boy. Crazy, crazy.
And then Meg thought about the possible desperation of the Erl King. Was he a cunning monster, salting the world with genocidal dictators and serial killers? Or a coyote, finding places for the children of the desperate?
Or something else altogether?
In the house:
It all happened so fast.
Meg reached out her hand to Brigitte. Andreas watched, hand on his radio. She knew dozens of weapons were cocked and ready.
Brigitte held her breath.
Meg nodded her head, once.
Brigitte exhaled and gave Meg the Glock.
“Gut,” Andreas said, grunting his approval as he held out his hand to Meg for the weapon. He said into the radio, “Achtung, hier spricht—”
Then Meg raised it and aimed it point-blank at his face. “Tell them to back away,” she ordered him. “Now.”
But he didn’t. First he tried to reason with her, and then he started to warn the SWAT team. So she knocked him out with the Glock, hard across his temple.
“Was?” Brigitte whispered, thunderstruck.
“Come with me. Now,” Meg ordered her.
Oh, come and go with us …
Silently, she and Brigitte went out the front door, holding the baby. Brigitte began sobbing. The snow was pouring down. The soldiers couldn’t really see what was happening. The first one to approach her asked her if Andreas was coming out.
“Ja,” she told him, sounding unnaturally calm. “He’s securing the interior. Get us to the Mercedes. The woman stays with us.”
The soldier complied. They were halfway to the car when Andreas’s voice crackled over the radio: “Stop them!”
Meg burst into action, clocking the soldier on her right with the Glock, grabbing his Uzi, aiming it at the solider on Brigitte’s left. He backed away, yelling. She swept a circle, shooting blam blam blam; the Uzi was her weapon. She covered Brigitte as the woman sprinted to the vehicle.
Meg heard Andreas’s thoughts: Gone mad when she hit the Pale; she’s under his control; what’s happening; will we have to kill her?
Now the soldiers were opening fire, but something surged around her, protecting the three of them as she charged to the driver’s side, yanked open the door, and dragged him out. Jerking him toward herself, she kneed him; as he crumpled, she aimed her elbow at his Adam’s apple. He fell backward far enough for her to leap in, slam the door, and peel out.
What would they do? Pursue? Kill an innocent civilian and a Ritter—one of their own? She didn’t know how to drive in snow; she kept swerving. She flew along the road, with no thought but to save the baby from the dungeon. Death in a U-Haul, in a cell beneath a castle. Brigitte was screaming. The baby was silent.
Oh, come and go with us …
Down a lane, up into the forest. Horns were blaring; sirens. Gunfire erupted.
“What are you doing? What’s happening?” Brigitte shrieked.
She felt another surge, like a mania, and kept driving, sliding all over the icy road.
Where death never touches us.
Vertigo washed over her, and she reeled. Lights pinwheeled across the windshield. Part of her wondered just how this had happened; the other part of her believed it was all connected, inevitable. Even do
wn to Matty.
Suddenly she was thrown forward, hard, then backward. The car stopped moving. They’d hit something. Light flared around her; she couldn’t see out.
“Are you all right? Is the baby all right?” she shouted in German, but Brigitte was still screaming.
Meg fumbled for the Glock. The rear window shattered. She couldn’t hear anything as she flattened herself against the seat and searched for the gun. Her surroundings slid into white light, white noise. Despite the danger and the stakes—or maybe because of them—excitement tripled her heart rate.
There. She wrapped her hand around the weapon, then cracked the door and rolled out. A bullet zinged past her cheek. She dove into the snow, making herself harder to hit as she tried to take aim in the darkness. Pine boughs bobbed overhead; she’d slammed the car into a tree.
Light shimmered and whirled. Light shot up to the sky, in geysers, and silver songs exploded all round her. Her heartbeat went off the charts; her euphoria skyrocketed. She had to fight to stop shaking the Glock, double-fisting it, panting.
Where death never touches us.
She took aim, took pause, and tried to think about what she was really doing.
Saving him.
She fired off a round. How many did she have left?
Nearly blind—again—she was able to see that something had dropped in the snow. A soldier. She had hit a man. And he had been aiming his crossbow at her, not his Uzi. As if she were magick.
On her elbows, she scrabbled forward, reaching for the weapon.
The lights dampened; the silvery songs faded. She turned around and saw the glowing green light behind her, and the Great Hunt roared into focus. The goblins, the horses, the dogs … and the Erl King. His black mask gazed at her; his antlers burned at the tips. He was holding a swaddled baby in one arm, against his chest. Did the baby move? Meg couldn’t tell.
Oh, come and go with us.
Brigitte was still in the car, shrieking and crazed. Meg didn’t know if she could see the Great Hunt.
“No bullets can touch me,” Meg decreed, in German, and Latin. English, and Spanish. “Nothing can touch me.”
Meg reached into the car and yanked the changeling out of Brigitte’s hands. He was so light. He smelled like smoke.
The car fell deeper into the snow as bullets shot out the tires. She raced back across the Pale, assaulted on all sides by the colors, the singing—a kaleidoscope. Behind her, Brigitte ran yelling; a soldier came up beside her and threw himself protectively over her.
Flailing, Meg staggered forward, holding out the baby. She lifted the crossbow, to show the Erl King that she had it. No bolts, she realized belatedly, but she wasn’t about to let him know.
“Trade!” she yelled.
The goblins put spurs to their horses, heading toward her; the hellish dogs snarled and snapped. The Erl King held up his hand. The human baby in his arms squirmed.
Armor clanked.
Horses chuffed.
The ratatatat of the firefight died away.
In the silence, vibrant, multihued light formed a wall behind the Great Hunt. Then it undulated and wove together, descending, resting on Meg’s shoulders like a cloak of many colors. It was warm, almost too hot, and it wrapped around her like body armor.
The Erl King walked his charger forward and lowered his hand toward her. He leaned down in his saddle, extending his arm.
Oh, come and go with us.
He looked at her hard through his blank black mask. And she understood—not all of it—but she knew that there were lines he, too, could not cross.
Lines that she could cross.
At the moment, precisely why, or how, or what that meant, didn’t matter. So she took his hand, and he hoisted her up behind himself in the saddle, magickally, so that the baby in her arms was never disturbed. Then somehow, she was holding both babies, feather light, and as they squirmed, they opened their eyes and looked at her. The changeling baby trilled, and the human baby cooed.
As she settled in behind the Erl King, the colors and lights were nothing compared to his radiance, and the heat of his body as she gripped the horse’s flanks with her thighs and held the babies for dear life.
Oh, come and go with us.
Where death never touches us.
For dear life.
“Giddyap,” she said, and the Erl King’s horse shot into a full gallop. Then it broke into a run, hooves sparking against the snowy ground. The hellhounds belled and bayed, spewing flames. The goblins capered and gibbered; and they laughed.
Maybe someday she could save Matty, too.
The Great Hunt soared through the night, far beyond the Pale.
Chicks Kick Butt - Rachel Caine, Kerrie Hughes (ed) Page 34