The Vampire Files Anthology

by P. N. Elrod

  We travel light, or we die.

  * * *

  When she awakened, she was lying on the floor of Haus Ritter’s dark blue van, and her armor was off. She was bare to the waist with a heavy blanket covering her, and she felt loopy, drugged, and supremely pissed off. Bathed in snowfall moonlight, Lukas knelt beside her, his hands resting one on top of the other, beneath the blanket, molded against her left side. His eyes were closed, his dark eyebrows furrowed as he whispered under his breath. Warmth spread from his skin to hers; he was performing a healing spell.

  She studied his face. Lying jerk. The first time she’d met him, in San Diego, she had allowed herself to be mesmerized by his movie-star looks. Craggy jaw, oceanic blue eyes fringed with heavy lashes, deep hollows in his cheeks tinged with perpetual dark brown beard stubble.

  She and Jack had just spoken to a class of students at UC San Diego about the rights of undocumented workers. How “illegal immigration” boiled down to sneaking across the Mexican border to El Norte—the North, the U.S.—paradise, fairyland—to get raped, robbed, murdered, to die —and she had stared at all those idealistic, liberal kids who stared at her as if she were the Great Satan, hearing nothing of what she was saying—the agents, killed in the line of duty—and decided to tell them the story of the dead baby in the desert. Not to help them understand, but to punish them.

  “So how again do you define illegal immigration as a victimless crime?” she concluded in a flat voice brimming with venom.

  It was too much; she’d been too brutal. Jack had intervened by passing out a stack of the public affairs officer’s business cards. Then he’d driven straight to the Elephant Bar. To unwind, he said. Trouble was, his divorce would be final in nine days; and after a few Dos Equis and tequila shots, they both started crossing over into that fairyland of their own, which involved intimacies they shouldn’t take and confessions that were mostly lies, but kind lies, designed to comfort and tempt each other.

  But any love that was made there would definitely die. Meg had realized they were crossing the line sooner than Jack did. She’d excused herself to go to the bathroom and whipped out her cell phone, about to call herself a cab, when Lukas had appeared at the other end of the dimly lit hall, like a desperado calling her out at high noon.

  “You’re awake,” Lukas murmured now, lifting his hands from her chest and pulling the blanket up to her chin. Tenderly, gently.

  “Did we—?”

  “Nein.” Blue eyes in a face puffy with cold and despair. “No.”

  She clenched her fists to keep from exploding. “The whole thing was bullshit,” she said. “I couldn’t see. And you made Eddie shoot me.”

  “To stop you from killing yourself,” he replied. “Crossing the Pale is like stepping on a livewire. I told you that.”

  Oh, come and go—

  “How did I end up on point? I couldn’t see !”

  “Something affected your Sight,” he agreed.

  “Maybe the Erl King did it,” Eddie said, looking over his shoulder at them. Mid-twenties, he was very sculpted, with a hooked nose and deep hollows in his cheeks. Her distant relative, carrying magickal DNA or “auric vibrations,” as Lukas referred to them. So they’d been told.

  “How?” Meg asked.

  “Who can say?” Sofie said.

  Lukas glanced toward his sister, his expression hooded. “Well, it’s never happened before.”

  “And her parents didn’t manifest any Gifts,” Sofie added.

  “I was not adopted.” She scowled at the back of Sofie’s head as Lukas handed her a large gray sweater. She pulled it on over her head. They’d been over this. If magick could have saved Matty, someone in the family would have used it.

  “Sometimes it’s dormant,” Lukas reminded them both. “It’s not exactly genetic. Auric vibrations are like magick bloodlines.”

  “Then maybe magick forces we don’t yet understand have affected her Ritter vibrations,” Sofie interjected. “We need to find out if we can count on Meg’s Gift.”

  God, did she blind me? Meg wondered. Maybe Sophie liked being the queen bee of the patrol unit. There was definitely no love lost between the two of them, but would she actually sabotage someone on a life-and-death mission?

  “We’ll do a thorough investigation,” Lukas assured her.

  There was a lull. Everyone looked tired and glum. They’d been on a high before the mission. Eddie and Heath had known about their special powers, but they hadn’t realized there was a worldwide confederation of magickal groups—hundreds of thousands of people—who were “different.” Gifted, in their parlance.

  The van trundled over ancient cobblestones. Snow piled on skyscrapers of glass and steel, and on Victorian heaps whose roofs were skewered with chimneys and satellite dishes. It smacked at an angle against “perpendicular” whitewash-and-wood beams of Renaissance architecture, most of it decidedly “faux,” and all of it reminding Meg of Legoland back in California.

  Heath, who looked to be around thirty-five, sat facing her on the floor, wrapped in a dark blue blanket, looking cold, tired, and frustrated. His face was ruddy from the cold and his crazy blond Rasta braids were soaked with either sweat or snow or a combination. Sofie was driving, and Eddie was riding shotgun, tipping his head back against the seat.

  “How’s Teufel?” Meg asked.

  Lukas grimaced. “Feeling guilty. You need to have a chat with him and let him know he didn’t do anything wrong.”

  He probably means that literally , she thought. What would have happened to Teufel if she had crossed the Pale? In the heat of the moment, she hadn’t given it a moment’s thought. Her San Diego mount, Mesa, was a great quarter horse, and Meg felt affection for her, but she belonged to the Border Patrol and as such, was ridden by other agents. Meg had worked hard not to develop too close an attachment to her.

  Here, things were different. Each rider was assigned his or her own horse, and no one else rode it. It was expected that some sort of magickal bonding would take place. Meg had been riding Teufel since she arrived, and if that was happening, she didn’t have the Gift to know it.

  Moving stiffly, she elbowed herself to a sitting position, giving her head a quick shake when Lukas moved to help her. At the same time, Heath reached over to the left and showed Meg a thermos.

  “Tea?” he offered.

  When she didn’t move, Lukas took it and unscrewed the black matte plastic cap. He poured steaming brown tea into the cap and held it out to her. She wasn’t going to drink any of it, but she opened her mouth and the scalding, astringent liquid dribbled onto her tongue.

  “It wasn’t a good time for any of us,” Heath said to her. “But at least we know it’s real. The Hunt.” His voice reeked with awe.

  “Yeah, swell,” she retorted, to hide her freak-out. This was all a little too real for her comfort. “ You didn’t get shot.”

  Eddie turned around, looked down at Meg, and grimaced.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It was just a little…” He waggled his fingers. He had a special little Gift in addition to Second Sight—he could hurl blasts of debilitating energy from his hands. Sort of like hitting someone with just a little bit of lightning.

  “I’m okay,” she told him, remembering her euphoria, wondering if that was why she was crashing so hard now. Nothing else would have stopped her. She’d been seized by madness, designed to lure her across the Pale, so she would die.

  “We weren’t fast enough. We’ll get better,” Heath put in.

  I was fast enough , Meg thought.

  The van fell into another silence. Heath said, “We debriefed while you were out.” He smiled faintly. “Lukas told Eddie it was quite common to wet your pants the first few times.”

  “ Guete ou. Lucky for you,” Eddie shot back, but Heath didn’t even acknowledge his salvo.

  It was very different back home, even after deaths and murders and some moron’s intestines exploding because they were filled with bags of heroin. Her compadres
at the Border Patrol pulled crazy practical jokes on each other, drank together. That was why Jack had been so shaky when she had broken down crying over the baby.

  Six months’ leave of absence. That left all kinds of doors open. Jack would probably be in the middle of his first rebound.

  “We’re home,” Lukas announced, almost as if he could read her mind, and she needed reminding that Germany was home now.

  The crowning jewel of Ritterberg was the castle, Schloss Ritter, only half of which stood intact. Wars and time had pulled it down. Meg didn’t understand why they didn’t repair it—they could use magick, couldn’t they? It was like a distressed version of Disneyland, fairy-tale chic: circular turrets, crenellated walls; it was truly spectacular. The vast refurbished rooms, updated kitchens, and bathrooms were the official home to the 357 members of Haus Ritter, one of the hundreds of houses that composed the world of the Gifted—people who could use magick.

  What kind of magick? she’d demanded, throwing back more tequila and eating the nachos Lukas had ordered for her. Magick to read minds; to read memories off objects; to become invisible; to travel through time; to conjure and wound and kill. Magick to hurl fireballs and bursts of energy; magick to protect. Different Gifted possessed different Gifts. In Meg’s veins ran the blood of Haus Ritter—the German House of the Knights, sworn to guard the Bavarian section of Germany from all the supernatural elements that roamed within. She was a Border guard, maintaining a line watch of the Pale as it traced its route through the Black Forest, where the Erl King rode with the Great Hunt. There were four such units, and hers had been created a year ago, when Lukas and Sofie had found Eddie.

  It was a world Meg had never dreamed existed until Lukas came up to her in the hallway of the Elephant Bar. It probably helped his case that he was very handsome and that she was drunk, and he got her drunker. He confessed later that he’d also used a bit of charm on her, plopping herbs in her drink that would make her listen. Drugging her, in other words.

  It had taken her longer to believe him than he’d thought it would—nearly a month—during which he awakened her Second Sight and showed her the specters of their shared history: the ghosts of fallen knights whose last name was Zecherle, like hers; and Ritter, which was his.

  In the Middle Ages, Ritter simply meant “knight” in German—any nobleman with a coat of arms who protected his lands and his folk. But Haus Ritter was another matter—a secretive, dedicated family of Gifted warriors, who were unaware that the world over, there were other magick-using families dedicated to other causes—in some cases good but in many, many others, evil.

  That changed with World War II, and the Nazis’ fascination with the occult. Just as the Houses began to contact each other, fear of discovery by the Ungifted sent them underground. As Germans, Haus Ritter suffered terrible losses—conscripted into armies; shipped to the death camps; fleeing Europe. The Erl King was busy in those days, riding boldly across the Pale and stealing Bavarian children—Aryan, Jewish, Gypsy, Mediterranean, and African children—while the Nazis were blamed; and the weakened Ritters seemed powerless to stop him.

  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.