Fate's Edge

needed a weapon. A crossbow hung on the wall of the cabin. Audrey lunged for it and saw a rifle. Even better.
    “Audrey,” Kaldar said.
    She ripped the rifle off the wall, flipped the safety off, chambered a round, took aim at the tattooed asshole standing on the cliff, and fired, all in the space of two breaths. The recoil punched her shoulder.
    A screen of white lightning burst from the blond woman. The bullet exploded against it. The tattooed man grinned at her, muscles bulging on his frame like body armor.
    “Damn it.”
    Audrey chambered another round. If only the repulsive magic would leave her alone for one second, she would make this one count.
    Kaldar’s hand clamped on the rifle. “You’re wasting your bullets. That’s a blueblood. She can stop a shell from a bazooka with her flash shield.”
    Audrey let go of the rifle. Anger filled her so hot and intense, she had to scream, or she would’ve exploded. The Hand’s magic, still burrowing into her flesh, only made her fury hotter. “What kind of a sick fuck throws a severed head? What the hell are those people?”
    “That’s what the Hand does.” Kaldar shrugged.
    “And you! You don’t seem surprised by any of this!”
    A man shouldered his way into the cabin, his hair a glossy black curtain. The man sat next to Jack and George in the corner, and she saw his face: powerful jaw, strong line, slightly slanted eyes of pale silvery gray. Slabbed with thick muscle, he looked strong enough to wrestle a bear, but the eyes were young. He couldn’t have been more than twenty. The man smiled, displaying serrated teeth. “This ought to be good.”
    A small separate part of Audrey realized she ought to be shocked, but right now Kaldar was more important.
    “I’ve told you, I’ve dealt with the Hand before,” Kaldar said.
    “No, there is more to it than that. It’s like you knew that they would be coming. You even sent the kids to keep watch.” She pointed to where George and Jack sat. A new thought occurred to her. “You sent the kids to keep watch!”
    “I think we’ve established that,” Kaldar said.
    “You knew that the Hand was coming, the Hand who murders people, then throws their heads at their friends, and you sent children as lookouts right into their jaws?”
    “Um.” Kaldar took a small step back.
    “Are you insane? Did your mother drop you on your head when you were a baby? What were you thinking?”
    “I think it’s a very reasonable question,” the black-haired man said. “What were you thinking, Uncle?”
    Kaldar pointed at him. “You stay out of this.”
    “And what if the kids didn’t get a chance to escape? That blond bitch would’ve cut them into tiny bite-sized pieces, and we would be picking up their heads now instead of Gnome’s.” Audrey shuddered. “I can still feel their magic. It’s crawling all over me. It feels like someone doused me in lighter fluid and set me on fire.”
    Kaldar stepped toward her. “The Hand’s magic causes an allergic reaction. If you hold still—”
    “I don’t want to hold still!” she barked. “Don’t touch me!”
    Kaldar stepped back with his hands raised. “It will go away, Audrey. Everybody gets it the first time. You have to wait it out.”
    “How did you know the Hand would be coming?”
    “I didn’t know,” Kaldar said. “I suspected.”
    Oh, please. “I don’t believe you. You lie all the time.”
    “No, I don’t.”
    “You kind of do,” George murmured.
    She pointed at the boy. “See!”
    Kaldar growled under his breath. “Now you listen to me. The Hand is following the same trail of crumbs I did. We can’t find your father, which leaves you or your brother as a target. The only way to make sure that the Hand didn’t get to you would have been to kill your brother. I could’ve done it, but I didn’t. I just gave him some drugs.”
    “You gave an addict in rehab drugs, and you want credit for it?”
    “Of course it sounds bad when you put it that way.”
    “It sounds bad whichever way you put it. I know Alex. Drugs fried his brain, and he thinks the whole world owes him. He would’ve tried to bargain with the Hand.” She stopped. “My brother is dead, isn’t he?”
    “Yes,” Kaldar said.
    Two people had been murdered because she had been too weak to say no to her dad. Alex had it coming. But Gnome was just a neighbor. He could be mean sometimes, and he was an ornery old bastard, but he had always helped her. Now his head, with