Chicks Kick Butt (38 page)

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.

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 BLACK
graduated 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 CHANCE
grew 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 CONRAD
has 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 DOUGLAS
on 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. ELROD
writes 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 HOLDER
is 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 KRINARD
became 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.

New York Times
and
USA Today
bestselling author
CHEYENNE McCRAY
has a passion for writing suspense and urban fantasy novels. Among many other awards, Chey has won the prestigious RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award twice and has had her books nominated four times. A University of Arizona alumnus, Cheyenne McCray has been writing ever since she can remember, back to her kindergarten days, when she penned her first poem. She began to pursue publication seriously after starting her first young adult novel in January 2000. For two years Cheyenne wrote primarily young adult paranormal fiction under a pseudonym. While she loved writing young adult fiction, she found herself wanting to explore adult relationships and started writing paranormal romance and romantic suspense, also branching out to suspense/thrillers and urban fantasy. She has written eleven novels and two novellas for St. Martin’s Press. In 2009 her thrilling new Lexi Steele suspense novels debuted with
The First Sin.
Then
Demons Not Included
kicked off her exciting urban fantasy Night Tracker series. Both series debuted to acclaim by readers and reviewers, and landed on multiple bestseller lists. Be sure to go to http://cheyennemccray.com to sign up for her private book announcement list and to get free, exclusive Cheyenne McCray goodies. Please feel free to e-mail her at [email protected]. She would love to hear from you.

LILITH SAINTCROW
is the author of the Dante Valentine, Jill Kismet, and Strange Angels series. She currently resides in Vancouver, Washington, with her children, cats, and assorted other strays.

JEANNE C. STEIN
is the bestselling author of the urban fantasy series the Anna Strong Vampire Chronicles. Last April, her character, Anna Strong, received an RT Book Reviewers Choice Award for Best Urban Fantasy Protagonist. The sixth in the Anna Strong series,
Chosen,
will be released in August.

ELIZABETH A. VAUGHAN
is the author of The Chronicles of the Warlands series,
Dagger-Star,
and
Destiny’s Star
. She still believes that the only good movies are the ones with gratuitous swords or lasers. Not to mention dragons. At the present, she is owned by two incredibly spoiled cats and lives in the Northwest Territory, on the outskirts of the Black Swamp, along Mad Anthony’s Trail on the banks of the Maumee River.

RACHEL VINCENT
is the author of the urban fantasy series Shifters and the young adult Soul Screamers books. Rachel has a BA in English and an overactive imagination, and consistently finds the latter to be more practical. She shares her workspace with two black cats (Kaci and Nyx) and her number one fan. Rachel is older than she looks—seriously—and younger than she feels, but remains convinced that for every day she spends writing, one more day will be added to her lifespan.