Rachel Caine: Chicks Kick Butt

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.