Huntress

“When I read the valiant knight prophecy, I got hung up on the idea that you were the knight,” she explained. “It seemed to make so much sense that it would be talking about you and your family, especially given your uncle’s role in all this. I had no reason to look at it any other way. But then Samael kept urging me to kill you and I knew I couldn’t do that. Not only could I never bring myself to hurt you, but there was a small part of me that feared you might be right and he was trying to turn you into the second sacrifice for the apocalypse. And that’s when you brought up the fell swoop.”

Lilli paused for breath and sighed with relief when she realized that the pain in her side had lessened to a dull throb as the wound knit itself back together. She didn’t have to look at it to know that was what was happening; she could feel it. Plus, she knew she’d be dying again if a wound that serious stayed open.

“It was like a bolt of inspiration,” she continued. “All at once, I remembered what you said about the way to avert the apocalypse being for a righteous demon to spill human and devil blood in one blow and I realized that I was the only person in this situation who could do that. My blood is both human and devil, because of my parents, and while I’m not going to claim to be a saint or anything, I thought there was a pretty good chance that I could qualify as a ‘righteous child of Hell.’ I mean, I try not to hurt anyone who doesn’t deserve it.”

Aaron squeezed her gently. “Oh, so I deserved to have my heart broken, did I?”

Lilli stilled and watched him intently. “Did I break your heart?”

He nodded. “But you’re doing a pretty good job of putting it back together now, so I suppose I’ll be able to forgive you.”

She felt happiness warm her like an internal sun and let him see it in her beaming grin. “I appreciate that.” There was a short pause while she tried to remember what she’d been saying. “Oh, yeah. Anyway, when I realized that I could fulfill all the requirements for averting the apocalypse, I started to think that maybe the valiant knight in the dragon prophecy wasn’t you after all. Maybe it was me.”

Aaron looked stunned for a moment, then his expression turned thoughtful as he mulled that over. “You have a brilliant mind?”

“No, you do. And I got the book from you, in between falling ass-over-elbows in love with you. I think you just have to look at the words from a different perspective.”

“I think you should forget my question. Your mind is definitely brilliant.”

Lilli grinned. “So then it just seemed to make sense. If I paid the appropriate price, I might die, but Samael would be banished. And even if I was wrong about the valiant knight prophecy, my sacrifice could still prevent the apocalypse. It seemed worth it to me.”

“Well, next time ask me before you decide on that kind of thing.” His voice was fierce as he issued the order. “You might have thought it was worth it, but it was a hell of a lot higher than the price I was willing to pay. I’m crazy-assed in love with you, no matter how long we’ve known each other. That means that the idea of living the rest of my life without you, believing that you killed yourself to avoid having to kill me, is not on the list of noble gestures that I can afford.”

Lifting her hand, Lilli laid her palm against his cheek and smiled. “I think I’m in love with you, too,” she murmured. “In fact, I’m pretty sure I must be, since I think that’s what fulfilled the final part of the knight prophecy.”

“What do you mean?”

“ ‘The magic’s in the seed,’ ” she quoted, grinning.

He scowled, then sighed and gave her a raised eyebrow of inquiry.

She repeated the entire line. “ ‘A knight is fall’n, a prince is fled, the magic’s in the seed.’ The fallen knight was me, clearly, having just stabbed myself and quite literally fallen, I assume. The fleeing prince was Samael. The payment of the price meant that he was banished back to Hell, at least temporarily. And the magic …”

Lilli broke off to feather a kiss across Aaron’s lips, smiling when he returned the gesture with interest. It took several breathless minutes before she managed to tear her mouth away from his and another couple to catch her breath.

“The magic,” she repeated, her voice husky with tenderness, “was what brought me back to you and healed my wound.”

She watched as Aaron verified that for himself. He shoved her shirt up under her arms until he could see the round pink mark where Lilli’s misericorde had punctured her fair skin. It was the only remaining sign of her injury.

“You know, my uncle once told me that love was the greatest magic in all the world.” Finally relaxing, Aaron cuddled Lilli close and asked about the final aspect of the prophecy. “But where was the seed?”

“Right here.” Lilli pressed her palm against his chest, right above his heart, feeling its strong steady beat beneath her fingers.

“And here.” Taking his hand in hers, she mirrored the gesture and laid his palm over her own steadily beating heart.

“The magic was in the seed of the brand new feelings we have for each other.” She grinned. “It was pretty nice of the prophet to word it that way, actually. If he’d said we had to be fully, deeply in love, things might have gotten hairy. After all, we barely know each other.”

In the dim light of the candles and the first faint traces of dawn that peeked into the basement from the open door at the top of the stairs, Lilli and Aaron gazed into each other’s eyes and knew that the seed they shared had already sent up a beautiful, leafy bloom. The prophets could say whatever they wanted; in the end, it was love that called the shots.

“Right, that reminds me,” Aaron said, reaching up to tuck a stray lock of hair back behind her ear. “I know we’ve only known each other a few hours now, but what would you say if I asked you to go out with me? I know a place nearby that makes really killer waffles. We could head over there and have some breakfast. My treat. How does that sound?”

Lilli laughed and threw her arms around his neck, hugging him with a burst of returning strength. “I’d say that sounds like one hell of a bargain!”

THE ROBBER BRIDE Marjorie M. Liu

ONE

Maggie was too young to remember life before the Big Death, but she had a brain for books, access to books, a great deal of uninterrupted time on her hands with which to enjoy those books—and so had, over the years, pieced together a history of the world that she knew was, in part, fiction—but that, like most good lies, rang true. Not that anyone else was privy to her secret history: Maggie knew better than to draw attention to her eccentricities. It was enough that she ran the junkyard for Olo Enclave, and lived alone, and was twenty years old without a husband or prospect.

She had been on her own for years. Her junkyard lay on the outskirts of Olo, which bordered what had been, and still was, the Ohio River. It was settlement number six on the government grid—six out of several thousand, scattered across the former United States—located smack-dab in the new territory of Inohkyten, an acronym of the states thrown together after the Big Death: Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. Other territories had their own odd collective names, but when folks in Olo talked about the rest of the country, they just called those places what they had become: South, North, East, or West, with the Rockies, the Dakotas, and Alaska thrown in, all on their own.

It was spring when the motorcycle man came looking for Maggie. Blue sky morning, with the dew glittering like diamond drops on the tips of the green grass, and the cardinals and magpies lilting full-throated on the naked branches of the oaks and maples, which threatened any day now to burst bud-first with leaves. Maggie, in the old barn workshop, had a clear view of the meadow. Junkyard business stayed on the other side of the building, but when Maggie worked the foundry and tinkered with her machines, she liked a bit of the world in front of her: the old world, the world she figured had almost reclaimed itself less than two decades past; a world that undoubtedly would swallow humanity, again.

That very morning, Maggie was experimenting with clay flowerpots, which she had found years ago while scavenging for scrap in the burned-out garage of a home less than ten miles south. Up until now she had used the pots—in vain—to grow miniature roses and small pepper plants. But as no seed she touched ever seemed to reach the sprout stage, there was no loss in finding other ways to take advantage of the unique shape and material of a flowerpot—such as turning it into a furnace for smelting brass.

So far, success. Just some brick to stand the pot upon, a long copper pipe fitted through the hole in the bottom—at the end of which Maggie tied the balloon of an old turkey baster to make the draught—and voilà (a word that she had appropriated from the tattered pages of her dictionary, and that seemed to fit her mood, most days). Charcoal was burning, the heat was intense, and the scrap of brass pipe she had tossed inside was quite obviously melting.

I am, she thought cheerfully, a clever girl.

Outside, the gate bell jingled. Maggie thought about not answering—brass was much more interesting than flesh and blood—but out here, folks would come inside anyway and start poking around until they found her. She never liked that much. Her grandfather hadn’t, either. Territory was a precious thing, especially now. And word of mouth carried far. You had to keep reminding people of what was yours, until the knowing went so deep that it twined and twisted into the fabric of a place. Until it became part of your identity. Something no person could ever steal.

The bell rang again. Maggie maneuvered an old steel lid on top of the flowerpot foundry, caging the raging heat, and walked quickly through the barn. She shed her gloves, goggles, and a heavy leather apron along the way, running her fingers through her short-cropped hair, and picked up one of the old sledgehammers hanging neatly against the wall. She slung the tool over her shoulder, and ambled out of the barn into the yard.

A man stood just inside the gate, fingering the string of steel bells hanging from the barbed wire wound around the old wooden rails. Maggie stopped in her tracks when she saw him, and not simply because he was a stranger. He was big and lean, dressed in black dusty leather that matched his eyes and long hair. He wore no shirt beneath his open jacket, and his skin was impossibly pale. Colder than ice, she thought. Cold as the winter sun, or the river at dawn. His presence cut her senses, and for one moment Maggie knew him, in the same way that she had known her grandfather was dead before ever seeing his body: with certainty, and dread, and vast terrible loneliness.

The man looked at her sideways, tilting his head just so, away from the bells; an odd, graceful movement that affected only his head, so that the rest of him remained perfectly still. He had a piercing gaze, sharper than anyone Maggie had ever met; sharp like a hook in her gut, drawing her toward him. She wanted to take a step, more than anything, almost as much as breathing. But she was good at holding her breath, and did so now as she forced herself to stay rooted in one spot, sweat trickling between her shoulder blades and down her breasts. Her eyes burned from holding his gaze. She felt naked. But after a moment, the strange compulsion to walk toward the stranger eased, and she allowed herself to breathe again.

The man frowned. “You are the fixer?”

“You have something broken?” Maggie asked, surprised at how calm her voice sounded. Her hand felt broken, fiercely aching from squeezing the handle of the sledgehammer.

His frown deepened. “On the road, yes.”

Maggie hesitated. “Show me.”

He had to think about it, which only made her more uncomfortable. She imagined her sledgehammer swinging toward his perfect face; her heels dug in and she was ready, ready, ready for anything. Maggie had not yet found cause to kill a man, but she had scared away several of them since her grandfather’s death. She had a feeling that this one would not take a fright all that easily.

But work was work, and when strangers showed up on her doorstep needing a fixing, it never seemed right to tell them to go away. The nearest Enclave was over a day’s walk to the south, across the river. This was the only junkyard in the region to service all those folks looking for spare and rare parts—and she could not, in good conscience, tell anyone desperate enough to make the