by Baen Books
"Fuck you." She snarled out between her clenched teeth.
He snorted. "Doubtful. That spell works like a taser on humans. You're not going to be doing anything until I allow it." He glanced about for his rifle. "What the hell are you doing out here in the middle of the night?"
"Going—to stop—you—from killing—Windwolf." Law forced out. Hopefully he might think she had a whole army at her back and flee.
"A little river rat like you?" A laugh slipped out before he frowned at her with worry. "How do you know what we plan? Whom have you told?"
Law thought of Widget sitting with her foot up in the air and all the children at Usagi's. "Fuck you."
He pulled out a slip of paper with a spell inscribed on it. "Who knows?"
"Everyone! Andre Brousseau. Everyone knows what you are."
He knelt to slap the paper against her cheek and spoke an Elvish word.
Pain like a hot dagger shot through her face. She screamed.
He leaned close. "Who knows?"
There was the warning rattle of Brisbane's tail. The porcupine might be slow and stubborn but he wasn't stupid. He knew that Law was being hurt. Law cried louder out to cover the noise.
Motion warned the elf again. Andre glanced up as Brisbane's spiked butt swung through the air, backed by sixty pounds of muscle. It caught Andre full in the face, driving a hundred of the long barbed quills deep into his flesh. Andre screamed. He jerked off of Law and scrambled backwards with Brisbane in pursuit. The slow moving porcupine had no hope of catching the male, but Brisbane was at least chasing him away from Law.
"Get'em, Brizzy! Sic'em." Law clawed at the spell on her chest, her body still jerking and writhing. Her hand finally obeyed her enough to rip the paper off. The spasms stopped but all her muscles continued to tremble.
She fumbled with her baseball bat, trying to get to her feet. Her hands wanted to stay tight fists. Her legs didn't want to hold her up. Andre's face was full of quills, making him look like he had a massive starched beard, but somehow Brisbane had missed his eyes. Andre backed up to the SUV and then half-fell into it.
If he picked up one of the many guns inside, she was screwed. She abandoned her attempts to pick up the baseball bat and stumbled toward the SUV as fast as she could make her wobbly legs move.
Andre fumbled in the truck's dark interior. He shouted something over and over again. On the fourth shout, she realized it was an Elvish name. He was calling for backup. He found a rifle, swung it up, aimed and pulled the trigger. The click of the hammer landing on an empty chamber was the loudest noise that Law ever heard.
He swore, snatched up a magazine, and loaded the rifle. He lifted it again.
Law slammed shut the hatch onto his legs.
He screamed and pulled the trigger. The muzzle flash brightened the interior of the SUV. The bullet smashed out the back window and grazed Law's upper arm. It felt like someone hit her in the shoulder with a lead pipe. She lifted the hatch and slammed it down on his legs again, throwing all her weight against the panel. There a muffled scream from within the Explorer and four more shots fired. Bullets whined over her head. Then there was stillness and the scent of blood filled the air.
What the hell?
Law risked glancing through the hatch's shattered window.
One of the bullets had ricocheted and tore through Andre's throat. Blood had sprayed the inside of the Explorer.
"Oh god, what a mess." She'd put men in the hospital, but she had never killed a man before. Technically she hadn't killed him; she'd just beat the snot out of him before he shot himself. She wasn't sure if the police would see it that way.
A shout and the sound of running boot steps made her realize that was the least of her worries. Andre's backup was arriving. They were going to be pissed when they saw his quill-filled dead body. There were four of them, lean and dark, racing toward like a pack of wolves.
"We're so dead, Brizzy." Law heaved the Explorer's hatch door open and pulled the assault rifle from Andre's dead fingers. Her hands were still shaking from the effects of the spell. Blood was pouring down her left arm from where the bullet cut thru her, making the rifle slick.
The lead elf suddenly went down as if clotheslined. The others jerked to a halt, weapons raised.
"It's the Death Wind!" One of them shouted. The remaining three drew swords and put their backs together. Law couldn't risk shooting until she knew where Bare Snow was.
St. John's church bells started to ring in midnight. They were seconds to Shutdown. Pittsburgh would return to Earth that had no magic. Bare Snow's invisibility spell would fail; she was about to become visible. The female elf probably didn't even know what the ringing bells meant.
Law shouldered the rifle and trained it on the males as she counted the chimes of the bell. One. Two. At twelve, she'd be able to fire.
Three. Four. Five.
It nearly seemed like time stopped as the bell rang. The swordsmen stood tense, waiting, knowing what would happen next. Their calmness infuriated Law. They had planned to murder Windwolf—perhaps already succeeded—and had lured Bare Snow halfway around the world to pin the killing on her. They were going to stand there as time ran out until Bare Snow was left helpless. They knew they had all the time in the world.
Six. Seven. Eight.
Somewhere toward the airport, someone was setting off fireworks. The distant thunder of the explosives was rolling up the river valley.
Nine.
The dogs howled a block away. Windwolf hadn't made the Rim. A maze of a large junkyard was between him and the McKees Rocks Bridge.
Ten.
One of the swordsmen suddenly fell as his legs had been swept out from under him. The other two leapt to defend him, furiously hacking at thin air. Law saw the distortion of air that was Bare Snow. The female was lying on the ground. Had she been hit by a sword? Law pulled the trigger. The bullet caught the tallest male in the chest.
A moment later, the other two were on the ground, bleeding, possibly dead from Bare Snow's knives.
Which was a good thing as Law's vision started to blur at the edges from blood loss.
Brisbane waddled over to her, sniffed at the blood dripping on the ground and then stood on his back legs to press his front paws against her hip.
"It's okay, Brizzy." She leaned against the SUV. "Bad guys all dead. I'm going to fall down now." She slid down the side of the Explorer to sit hard on the ground.
Next thing she knew, Bare Snow was kneeling beside her, talking to her about something while bandaging Law's arm. She struggled to pinpoint something very important that they should be doing.
"Windwolf!" Law cried when she remembered. "You should go, find him, and make sure he's okay."
Bare Snow pulled her to her feet. "I will go once you're not out in the open, where you can be easily found. You've lost a lot of blood and there is no magic for a healing spell. You're going into shock. You need to lie down and be warm."
Being in shock was kind of like being drunk but not as pleasant. There was a time of dark non-remembering and then she was lying on a floor in a dark building with no idea where and how she gotten there. At least she didn't need to vomit.
The gray of predawn was filtering through a massive multi-paned window. Brisbane crouched at her feet, muttering happily as he ate something yummy. By scent, Law guessed it was the saenori fruit from the Explorer.
As she sat up, Bare Snow ghosted out of the darkness. She was wearing the blue sundress and cowboy boots, looking too beautiful for words.
"Law! You're awake. Oh good, I was so worried."
"What happened with Windwolf?"
"He was wounded by the dogs, but he was saved by a very brave and clever young female. She's a Wood Sprite; they are very moral and resourceful."
Law scanned the auditorium-sized filthy, empty room and realized that they were in one of the empty factory buildings in the Bottoms. They were probably less than a hundred feet from where the fight taken place. Who the hell
did Windwolf stumble into out in this desolated area? "You spoke with her?"
"Oh no! I was careful to keep out of sight. I kept watch until I was sure she was taking good care of him. Much better than anyone else could since we're on Earth. She lives in this little metal house with broken automobiles all stacked on top of each other."
She meant the junkyard. Now that Law thought hard, she remembered that the owner was a young woman and her older brother or cousin or something. They were said to be eccentric but good, honest people. In Law's book, eccentric was a good thing.
Bare Snow settled beside Law with a squeal. "Oh, it was wonderful! I wish you could have seen it." She clasped her hands over her heart and sighed deeply. "You should see the way that he looks at her. He sees her—all of her—and accepts her as she is. He's falling in love; I am sure of it. I wonder if he will ask her to be his domi. Wouldn't that be wonderful?"
It did sound wonderful. To be accepted as she was instead of pressured to change until she was a reflection of someone else's idea of right. Only that reflection wouldn't be her. Law would have been erased. There would be some empty shell of a person in her place.
"We can go home now?" Bare Snow whispered.
"What about those men? Those males." Elf males weren't men; assuming that all Brousseau's people were ancient elves like himself. "The ones we killed. Are they still lying out on the road?"
"I disposed of the bodies," Bare Snow whispered even softer.
"Oh." Law waited for the guilty feeling to set in and it didn't. The bastards were out for blood; they deserved it. "Good."
"So," Bare Snow barely spoke. Her hands were clenched into tight fists. "Can we go home now?"
Home. Together. Law's mind jumped to naughty thoughts and she blushed. A heartbeat later, Law realized why Bare Snow was so quiet. The female was really asking Law if she could move in with her. As much as Law felt she was alone in the world, it was nothing compared to Bare Snow's isolation. The elf was utterly and completely alone. Worse, she had bared all her secrets to Law. The tattoos. Her magical knives. Her assassin training. Everything her name hinted at. The name that made every elf that heard it turn her away. The name that made Bare Snow's grandparents disown her.
And the poor kid was afraid that now Law knew everything, that she would turn Bare Snow away too.
Law reached out for Bare Snow's hand. Part of her felt like she should warn the female about the barn and the Tarzan swing and the roof that leaked like a sieve and the winters in the cave-like milk house. But really, the ugliest, scariest part of Law's life was her inner avenging angel that liked to track down men and beat the snot out of them. Bare Snow met her and wasn't frightened by her. Crazy Lady might have randomly dialed phone numbers until Law answered, but she'd found two soul mates.
Besides, Law was fairly sure that Bare Snow was going to love the Tarzan swing.
"Yeah. We can go home."
Bait and Switch
by Ryk E. Spoor
Chapter 1: Decked in the Halls
"I should've made the front door bigger," I grunted as I tried gently bending a few of the tree's branches while still trying to support it. In gratitude for my care, one of the branches whipped out of my grasp and smacked me in the face, leaving a stinging sensation and a smell of pine.
"I told you to carry it around back," Syl said in her most reasonable tone, "where the double doors are, but you insisted we could get it through the front door. And so now we have to."
I chuckled, even as I tried for a better grip on the trunk. "Yeah, Syl, you were right. As usual. But now we're ... stuck with my choice, I guess we could say."
She snorted at the pun, and shoved hard from her side; I was on the inside, holding the heavier end of the Christmas tree and pulling.
The tree suddenly gave up the fight, which almost caused me to end up on the floor under it. I'm still not quite sure how I managed to stay up, but somehow I did, as Syl came leaping over the threshold — not at all off-balance, as though she'd anticipated that event. Which, given her peculiar talent, she probably had.
Now that we were inside, it only took a few minutes to lug the tree to the living room, where I'd already set up the tree stand and the green blanket which would catch most of the needles that the tree would, inevitably, try to shed all over the room. I got it set in the stand and stood back to admire it. Syl came up next to me; I slid an arm around her slender waist and hugged her close. "Does look pretty, doesn't it?"
"And it'll be even prettier after we decorate it," she agreed. "But that's something for tomorrow. I'm exhausted after fighting that thing."
"Me too. But it's worth it, for our first Christmas in our own house."
We'd been married a little more than a year now, but our first married Christmas had been spent at Verne's, as our house was still being built then. It was a bit odd to spend Christmas at the house of a half-million year old priest of a nature goddess, but Verne was nothing if not adaptable; the traditions of any civilization were something he could accept if they didn't somehow violate one of his basic beliefs.
"You've invited Verne already, right?"
"Verne, Jeri Winthrope since she's got no family in the area, Raikafan and his family, any of Verne's household who want to come — I especially invited Hitoshi because that way he can have someone else cook for him for a change — the Plunketts, your parents, and my parents." Seeing my eyebrows climbing, she grinned. "Now, your parents and mine are almost certainly not coming; they're doing the snowbird vacation and celebrating Christmas in warmer climates. I think Raiakafan and family will be down in Washington with the Senator. I don't know if the Plunketts will come yet. I'm betting that it'll be Verne, Jeri, and some of Verne's people, like Morgan, Meta, Hitoshi, and Camillus."
"Still, a fair turnout for a first Christmas. But hey, I've got a big kitchen, time to really give it a workout, I guess. Now —"
The phone rang. I thought about letting it go to the answering machine, but then I saw Syl's face and ran to grab it. "Jason Wood."
"Sorry to call you this late, Jason," came the voice of Jeri Winthrope.
"Not just late, it's Saturday." Of course, Jeri — who was working for the local police as her undercover assignment to watch me and Morgantown for ISIS — didn't exactly get days off.
She also wouldn't call me like this if it wasn't important. "So what's up?"
"Murder's up," she answered. "But this isn't your garden-variety shooting. You know Hansen Guildermere?"
"How could I not?" I couldn't keep the half-fond, half-exasperated tone from my voice. "He's paid for six consults with me in the last six months, all of them very intense interviews to help him properly set up that Outward Outreach of his."
"Yeah, well, you won't have to worry about any more interviews. He's dead."
"What? Who the hell would want to kill that nice old guy? Even if he was a little nuts."
"Not who," she said grimly. "What. He was done in by a Werewolf."
That got my attention — for more than one reason. First, someone like Hansen had CryWolf sensors which should keep him from being ambushed by a Werewolf. But more importantly, I knew that no werewolf should be killing anyone here at all. The arrangement I'd made with Carruthers and, by tacit agreement, Virigar, should have seen to that. "Are you sure?"
"Damn sure, since the killer didn't get away. Old Guildermere had more up his sleeve than his arm."
Crap. I looked at Syl, who sighed and nodded. So much for a nice evening together, planning our Christmas. "All right, Jeri. Did this happen at his house?"
"No, in the Outward Outreach offices."
"I'll be there in ten minutes. Don't let anyone mess with anything until I get a look."
"Do my best. See you."
I hung up. "Sorry, Syl."
"It's all right, Jason." She had already gotten my coat back out. "This one will be ugly."
"Yeah, I already figured that. Jeri hasn't, I don't think."
It wasn't surprising; aft
er all, Jeri and her whole organization were basically there to protect humanity.
But I'd gone and risked my reputation, and my life, to make sure it wasn't just humanity being protected.
And that meant that I wasn't going to the scene of one person's death. I was going to the scene of two people's deaths, and I was the only one who might possibly give a damn about the second.
This was going to suck.
Chapter 2: Scene of a Crime
"You know what to expect, right?" Jeri asked before letting me pass the yellow tape.
"Remember how we met. Yes, I know."
I steeled myself for the sight I knew was waiting for me inside, then walked past her into the entrance hall for Outward Outreach. A box had been set up just inside the door for people to take off their boots, which made sense; no need to be tracking mud and snow into the crime scene. I pulled on a pair of the provided hospital-slipper type replacements and moved on.
I'd been here twice before, so I surveyed the hallway with an eye to what might be different; aside from the police, I didn't see anything. The CryWolf sensor was in its usual place just outside the door. Remembering my encounter with the Werewolf calling herself "Angela McIntyre", I called over one of the techs. "I'd like to check that unit out, make sure it's functioning right. Okay?"
"Let me check." After verifying that any official tests and photos had been completed, he gave me the go-ahead.
That put off the inevitable viewing by a few minutes. I borrowed a stepstool from one of the other rooms, and opened the case. It didn't take too long to verify that this unit was functioning exactly as intended. Any Werewolf walking by this thing — except for the very few great elder Wolves — would glow with a pattern like a cobweb of fire, and set off a screaming alarm unless the owner had shut it off.
That's just plain weird. No one would spend thousands of dollars on a CryWolf unit just to turn it off, and the CryWolf devices were selective. There were a couple of things besides a Werewolf that might trigger them, but all of them were the kind of thing you didn't want getting close to you. So how the hell had this Wolf gotten close enough to poor Hansen Guildermere to kill him without setting off half a dozen alarms?
