Rachel Caine: Chicks Kick Butt

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 down 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.