Rachel Caine: Chicks Kick Butt

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.

L. A. BANKS(aka Leslie Esdaile Banks) is a native of Philadelphia and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Wharton undergraduate program, and holds a masters in fine arts from Temple University’s School of Film and Media Arts. After a ten-year career as a corporate marketing executive for several Fortune 100 high-tech firms, Banks changed careers in 1991 to pursue a private consulting career—which ultimately led to fiction and film writing. Now, with over twenty-eight novels plus twelve anthology contributions in an extraordinary breadth of genres, and many awards to her credit, Banks writes full-time and resides in Philadelphia. Look for her Vampire Huntress Legends series and a full listing of her published works at: www.vampire-huntress.com or www.LeslieEsdaileBanks.com .

JENNA BLACKgraduated from Duke University with a degree in physical anthropology and French. Once upon a time, she dreamed she would be the next Jane Goodall, camping in the bush and making fascinating discoveries about primate behavior. Then during her senior year at Duke, she did some actual research in the field, and her fascinating discovery was this: primates spend most of their time doing such exciting things as eating and sleeping. Concluding that this discovery was her life’s work in the field of primatology, she then moved on to such varied pastimes as grooming dogs and writing technical documentation. She is now a full-time writer of fantasy, romance, and young adult fiction.

KAREN CHANCEgrew up in Orlando, Florida, the home of make-believe, which probably explains a lot. She has since resided in several cities around the world, mostly goofing off, but occasionally writing novels in her Cassandra Palmer and Midnight Daughter series. Her short fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Inked , On the Prowl , and Wolfsbane and Mistletoe . She is currently back in Florida, where she plans to continue writing while dodging hurricanes.

ROXANNE CONRADhas published more than thirty novels, including (as Rachel Caine) the New York Times and USA Today bestselling Morganville Vampires series, as well as the popular Weather Warden and Outcast Season series. She is also a contributor to several bestselling anthologies. She lives in Fort Worth, Texas, with her husband, fantasy artist R. Cat Conrad.

“Wimpy” Gothic novel heroines sent CAROLE NELSON DOUGLASon a sixty-novel mission of creating strong women protagonists in genres from science fiction and fantasy to historical and contemporary-set mystery and romance. “The first woman” in several journalism areas while reporting for the St. Paul Pioneer Press, she became the first author to use a woman from the Sherlock Holmes stories as a protagonist, with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year Good Night, Mr. Holmes. Whether her woman characters have paranormal powers like Delilah Street, or run on brains and nerve like Irene Adler, they all enjoy being girls and showing the boys how it’s done. Publishers Weekly starred reviews for Dancing with Werewolves and Brimstone Kiss launched the Delilah Street noir urban fantasy series, which is set in an apocalyptic Las Vegas vastly different from the contemporary Vegas of Douglas’s long-running Midnight Louie feline PI cozy-noir series.

P. N. ELRODwrites and edits, and is best known for The Vampire Files, where Bobbi Smythe hangs out with her undead boyfriend, vampire PI Jack Fleming. Elrod is a hopeless chocolate addict and cheerfully refuses all efforts at intervention. More about her toothy titles may be found at www.vampwriter.com .

NANCY HOLDERis the New York Times bestselling author of the Wicked series (with coauthor Debbie Viguie). Crusade: Damned, the second book in their new series, Crusade, will be out in August 2011. The first book of their new series, Unleashed: The Wolf Springs Chronicles, will debut in January of 2012. She is also the author of the young adult horror series, Possessions. The Screaming Season, third in the series, hit the shelves in March 2011. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, and their corgis, Panda and Tater, and two very hairy cats named David and Kittnen Snow Vampire.

Trained as an artist with a BFA in illustration from the California College of Arts and Crafts, SUSAN KRINARDbecame a writer in 1992 when a friend read a short story she’d written and suggested she try writing a romance novel. A longtime fan of science fiction and fantasy, Susan began reading romance—and realized what she wanted to do was combine the two genres. Prince of Wolves, her first romance novel and one of the earliest to feature a werewolf hero, was the result. Within a year Susan had sold the manuscript to Bantam as part of a three-book contract, and the novel went on to make several bestseller lists. Since then, she’s written and published over fourteen paranormal and fantasy novels, and written stories for a number of anthologies, both fantasy and romance. Both the anthology Out of This World (which included Susan’s “Kinsman”) and the novel Lord of the Beasts appeared on the New York Times bestseller list. Susan makes her home in New Mexico, the “Land of Enchantment,” with her husband, Serge; their dogs Freya, Nahla, and Cagney; and their cat, Jefferson. In addition to writing, Susan’s interests include music of almost every kind, old movies, reading, nature, baking, and collecting unique handmade jewelry and decorative crafts.