Eine Kleine Nacht Maggie (Maggie MacKay Magical Tracker Book 9)

by Kate Danley

  Killian shook his head. "Time bent. You were working on that boundary for hours."

  No wonder I felt like I was ready for a nap. If Killian hadn't been there, I would have been down for a permanent nap. "Man..." I rested my hand on his shoulder gratefully. "Thanks for being around to break me out of that loop."

  "I am always glad for an opportunity to tackle you, Maggie." He took my elbow and helping me to my feet.

  "Gawddamned those bastards who disbanded the World Walkers," I said. I rested my fists on my waist and stared at that boundary. "I don't know how we are going to fix these weaknesses."

  "We shall consult with Xiaoming and your father and Father Killarney. Surely one of them will have knowledge of how to fix this problem."

  "It's like people never thought for a single minute that maybe the World Walkers were doing their job for a reason. Maybe they were around because folks weren't having a good day, as opposed to us forming a glee club to hang out by the company pool."

  "The World Walkers have a company pool?"

  "No." I waved his question away. "There is no company pool. We have no glee club. It wasn't a social organization. We were around because there was a really important job to do and we were there to do it. Gawddammit."

  We hobbled back to the hotel, ready to arm ourselves for battle. I was surprised, though, to find a black plastic bag hanging on our doorknob.

  "What could that be?" I asked.

  Killian reached out with his pointer finger and gently removed it. He looked inside and then smiled. "I believe this is for you."

  Quizzically, I took it. I learned long ago not to go sticking my hand into unknown bags. I waited for Killian to open the door, then walked over and poured the contents onto the bed, ready to stake anything that might need to be killed.

  It appeared my useless beer maid costume was getting itself an upgrade.

  "Well, look at what you've done, Gerta," I said, holding up my new outfit.

  "That appears to be authentic!" Killian exclaimed, reaching out to touch the thick twill. "My! What big pockets you have!"

  "The better to hides stakes within, my dear," I replied. It was a green dress with a black corset top and white apron. It had plenty of coverage and a ton of places to stick weapons. Sure, it wasn't a Kevlar vest, but it was the thought that counted. "Thank you, Gerta."

  I stepped into the bathroom and quickly changed. I tucked stakes to my tube socks and stored a couple throwing stars underneath the corset. I shoved a couple knives down my boot tops, but decided to hide my silver stake down my cleavage, again. Worse come to worse, and it very well could proceed to worst, I needed some weapons where folks might not be looking for them. I strapped on my neckguard and looked in the mirror. This could work.

  I stepped into the room and Killian leaped up from the bed.

  "Hope you didn't catch anything sitting on that thing," I commented.

  "I believe nothing could be worse than what we might face in the tent tonight," he stated.

  "Don't get your lederhosen in a bunch," I replied, waving his concerns away. "Just another day in the life with the M-Team."

  We made our way over to the Oktoberfest tent. Surprisingly, it was actually a little less busy than the nights before. Then again, it was a Sunday, and I suppose there might be some folks who thought starting the work week with a clear head was a good idea.

  But when we stepped into the tent, it was clear that something was already going very wrong.

  A haunting tune came from the oompah band. It wasn't a sound I had ever heard before. It wasn't notes that could be produced by an accordion or tuba. It was eerie and haunting and visceral. I looked around and every human had silently turned to face the stage. They leaned forward in rapt attention. They were still breathing, which was a good sign, but all other indications pointed to "We are fucked." The sound was emerging from the throats of four women who liked to send people to their death for shits and giggles.

  But just when you think it can't get worse...

  Gustav emerged from behind the beer counter. He was so short, he had been completely hidden. He threw a bar towel over his shoulder and slowly walked towards me like a panther stalking his prey.

  Little did he know that beneath this sexy dirndl was a woman armed to the hoohah. Quite literally. I did a quick pat and all of the stakes I had tied around my thighs were all still there.

  "I was informed you were not here for your second shift," said Gustav. He motioned to all of the humans, still as statues, standing in the tent. "All of these people... they were waiting for fun and entertainment, but you left last night. You left last night and then indicated you wanted to tell the authorities how we celebrate here, among our own kind."

  "I thought we moved past that this morning," I reminded him.

  "Your manager says you are a terrible beer maid."

  "It was my first day!" I pointed out, eyeing the crowd nervously. "You gotta cut me some slack."

  "Never fear," he said. His smile, however, said I had a whole lot I should be scared about. "We don't fire employees here."

  "You don't? Oh... good. I'd be more than happy to resign," I offered.

  "We merely reassign them. We have reassigned you to dinner duty."

  I heard a hiss and I turned around. I was surrounded by vampires.

  "Welcome to the pit," said Gustav, a smile on his face and a glint of cruelty in his eyes. "Your job is to survive."

  "On it," I replied, pulling out my silver throwing stars. I glanced up at the bandstand and groaned. As they say in actual Germany and not some two-bit, wannabe, faerie annex in Torrance, Scheisse.

  While Gustav had kept me talking, the sirens had lured Killian to their arms. Their long, sea-blue locks drifted around their faces and their gossamer green gowns floated like they were underwater. Standing next to them was Mortimer, who clasped at their arms and pled.

  "Please, don't!" said Mortimer. "He is a friend of mine."

  His sisters spoke as one. "What is his name?"

  Mortimer squinted his eyes and thought really hard. "I have such a terrible time connected names and faces out of context. But we were friends. We did some rather nice things together on a boat."

  The last thing we needed was some nutty male siren spouting off at the mouth about a blonde haired semi-elf hanging out with a brown haired female World Walker in Los Angeles.

  "Kevin!" I lied. "His name is Kevin."

  "Ah! Now I remember! Kevin! That's right!" Mortimer lied back, except I think he thought he was telling the truth.

  "This Kevin shall only live if you play," his sisters said.

  "Now, wait," said Mortimer, putting his foot down. "I played all of last night and I will only play when I feel like it."

  "You disappeared and did not return in time."

  "I was procuring a cowbell. You cannot expect an artist to create a masterpiece without the proper tools?"

  "You will play at your appointed time or this mortal will die."

  Mortimer looked anxiously at them and then back to me and then back to them and then me again. "I am so sorry about all this," he apologized. "My sisters have absolutely no manners. They feel as if any man is theirs to use as their tool. And it wasn't your friend's fault. Their voices have that effect on men. He could not have fought it."

  And that's probably true. Killian in this current state of affairs would not have been able to fight it. I just hoped that they didn't do anything that would require him to fight in the future.

  Gustav began to laugh. "Your partner will watch you die, Maude. We will make him watch so that he remembers his proper place. He shall know our power and that rebellion will be terminated!" He swept his hand towards the vampires and that was the signal they were waiting for.

  They sprang towards me.

  I crouched in the middle. It was like a mosh pit, except deadly. I tried to keep my center of gravity low so I could keep them from knocking me over. I knew the moment I was on the ground, it would be over. I used
my stance to flip them over my head when I could. But damnit, there were so many fucking vampires. Too many vampires. I was using all the stakes I had, but I was losing more of them than I was recovering.

  The sirens had loosened their spell on Killian so that he could fully experience the sight. He struggled. His eyes were pleading and helpless, but we both knew the truth of the matter.

  I was going to die.

  This was where it was all going to end.

  I could rip a hole through the boundary to the Other Side and disappear, but that'd leave Killian to face a tent full of hungry vampires. I preferred he didn't die for personal reasons, but on top of that, if they figured out all they had to do was rip that amulet off and kill him to build an expressway to the elfin queen's heart, well... That secret was something worth dying to protect.

  And I was okay with it. Listen, you can only get your ass handed to you so many times before you are kind of over it.

  The vampires were slicing me like seven-year-old tax returns through a paper shredder. I felt fangs against my neckguard and I swung around to punch that vamp through the chest while I mule kicked the other one coming at me the other direction.

  "Not the fucking neck!" I shouted as the vampire dropped.

  I then swung my other leg and managed a roundhouse to another vampire's head. But kicks and punches were just slowing down the inevitable and I was getting tired. I might have some superhuman strength, but I wasn't that superhuman.

  There was a break in the onslaught and I had about five seconds to catch my breath. I turned and realized that twenty vampires had lined up like the offensive line on an NFL team. And by offensive, I mean really and truly offensive. In every sense of the word, they offended every ounce of my being.

  I was most definitely going to be playing defense. I widened my stance and smiled.

  So be it.

  They hit me like a freight train and slammed me to the ground. I felt their fangs rip at me. I'm pretty sure their fangs ripped at each other, too. It was like being in a pool of piranhas. They wriggled and bit and I was poking and kicking and biting and trying to take out as many of them as I could before they finally took me down.

  And then, suddenly, there was a roar. I felt the bodies lighten. I suddenly saw the light. And then there was Killian's face. He reached in and grabbed my arm, even as the vampires jumped on his back to take him down, and he yanked me to my feet.

  And as glad as I was to see him, I realized what that meant.

  He had taken off the amulet and was now tapped into the power of the elfin people.

  We were fucked.

  But we were fucked before, so on a scale of total annihilation, things hadn't really gotten any worse. As they say, you can only be killed once. Okay, unless you're a vampire. Or a zombie. But for us mortal types, the choice facing us was vampires or elfin queens and I think Killian chose wisely to go out punching.

  Two against the world. THIS we could do.

  I lost count how many we staked. The sirens were singing and bringing in new vampires for all the ones we got rid of. It was an unending tidal wave of undead creatures. But we kept at it. I realized that without Killian's dumb amulet, I was feeling a whole heck of a lot more chipper, too. Okay, maybe it was psychosomatic, but it felt awfully good to have my partner back with me and in fighting form.

  "KILL THEM!" the siren sang above the voices of her sisters. "The time of the Harvest Moon is upon us! Prepare the way for the King of Faerie!"

  And that was when the flap to the tent opened and I heard a new voice shout, "NO!"

  I was able to grab a glance in between stabbing and realized it was Fritz! But then my brain clunked through the thought process and I remembered him saying that he wasn't able to leave his shop.

  If he left his shop...

  "Killian, RUN!" I shouted.

  "What?" he replied.

  "RUN!" I pushed him towards the exit.

  The fact we weren't staying to continue our violent little dance with the undead seemed to confuse the vampires. They had no idea what was coming. And that's the way it was meant to be.

  For through the entrance to the tent, in marched Fritz's army of nutcrackers. Each of them six and a half feet tall, armed with stakes and silver bullets, each impenetrable and pissed off as hell that someone was looking to kill their boss.

  We ran into the courtyard and there was the little Russian church. It was a welcome sight. There was a little garden planted in the concrete around it. Plantings and gardens are good. Plants don't like dead zones. The soil sucks where suckers have sown evil.

  "Shall we test to see how holy the ground happens to be?" I asked Killian.

  "It seems a little closer than our hotel. And seeing as we may not be able to pay our bill for the foreseeable future, it might behoove us to find new accommodations."

  A vampire suddenly launched and landed on my back. I flipped him over my head and stabbed him in the chest. "What? Thought you'd be a fucking hero?? Fuck you, dude!"

  We needed in that church and fast. I ran up to the little chapel and grabbed the handle. I gave it a jiggle, but it was locked. I knew that if I busted the lock, there'd be no lock to keep anyone else out. But hopefully, we could move the benches inside or something and prop them against the door. Or better yet, here's hoping it was holy ground! And the energy would keep them out no problemo!

  Killian solved the dilemma for me. He lifted his size eleven boot and smashed the door open.

  "I could have done that..." I said to him as we ran inside.

  "Merely protecting your modesty, fair lady. Dirndls do not afford the same coverage of the nether regions as lederhosen."

  I looked down at Killian's short pants. "I’m not sure that is entirely accurate."

  It was so quiet in the church. So blessedly, blessedly quiet. And I don't know if the quiet was actually blessed or just that I was so flipping grateful for a moment to catch my breath. Killian and I grabbed one of the benches and jammed it up against the door.

  I rested my hands on my waist. "You got rid of your amulet," I said.

  "I still have it in my pocket," he replied.

  We stood and looked at each other in silence. "Are you going to put it back on?" I asked him. The unspoken question was if it felt so good to be an elf again, was it worth going back to the queen or what.

  But he shook his head. "As soon as we are safe, I shall restore it around my neck."

  "You sure?" I asked, making sure he was really sure.

  Killian nodded as he stared at the door. "If we live to face the morning and her Shadow Elves wake me from my bed, I shall tell her you made me do it."

  I reached out and socked him in the arm.

  "Ow!" he said.

  "Baby."

  The chapel looked the same as it had before. It was such a strange little place. While listed as a wedding chapel, I was going to assume that as a central building in a magical community, it had been installed as sort of an air raid bomb shelter of sorts from the kind of creatures who could do more damage than a bomb.

  The little altar in front was definitely Russian Orthodox. There were mosaics of saints and illuminated paintings. There were rows of prayer candles and I decided now was the perfect time to light every single last one of them. We needed all the prayers we could get. The offering box said that each tea light was $2 to set on fire. I figured if nothing set us on fire before this night was won, I'd come back and pay the fee from the money I took out of Gustav's till.

  There was a chanting noise coming from outside and an eerie, keening song.

  "Why didn't they stay in the tent?" I asked Killian. "Why did they follow us out here?"

  He very calmly asked, "Am I ascertaining correctly that you would like us to remove the bench so you may see what is going on in the courtyard?"

  I looked at the bench and died a little inside. "We really should move it, shouldn't we..."

  "Must we?"

  "I really don't want to move it."

&nbs
p; "I do not, either."

  We stood in silence for a little more.

  "Perhaps there is a window we could crack..." Killian offered.

  "All the windows are stained glass and fixed permanently in place."

  "Perhaps there is a window we could break..."

  I sighed again. "We have to move the bench, Killian. Just a little. Just enough to peek out the front door and make sure they're not about to set us on fire. Fire in a small space like this would be very bad."

  "I hate you sometimes, Maggie."

  "I hate me, too. It really, really sucks to be my partner."

  "About all of those apologies I gave about putting you in harm's way for my sake?" he mentioned as he grabbed the end of the bench.

  I grabbed the other. "Yes?"

  "I would like to take them all back. Every one of them. I am not sorry at all."

  "Fair enough," I replied as we scooched the bench to the side.

  "We should begin a chart about how many times my actions place you in trouble vs. all the times your actions place us in trouble," he said. "Just to keep track of things."

  "Um... I think this whole Little Bavaria thing was your idea."

  "You were the one who received the job from Trovac to secure a cuckoo clock we cannot possibly secure."

  "That cuckoo and his clock totally saved our ass in that tent."

  "We could have left as soon as we saw the size of the clock and that it was an impossible task. We could have left after you broke that Hummel and your mother brought us bags full of neckguards and clean undergarments."

  "Touché. One point for Killian."

  I opened the door just a crack and crouched down to look. Killian claimed the upper half of the door.

  The entire chapel was surrounded by faerie folk. And not the nice ones like the ones who hang out around us. The ones that had been banished to the Faerie dimension because no one wanted to deal with their crazy ass selves.

  There were the sirens, whom I was really growing to hate, truth be told. There were sort of half demony-half faerie creatures who were low and spindly. Their limbs and elbows reminded me of thorn bushes. There were nasty pixies that had turned gray and colorless. Their hair was tied in faerie knots and the pixie's usually friendly smiles had been replaced by sharp teeth. There were hobgoblins and warthooks, which are like warthogs except they are a soldier race of porcine who stand on two legs and carry barbed weaponry.