Natasha Volga peeked out from underneath the layers of fabric, her back pressed against the wall of the railcar. She looked a lot like Vinnie, with dark brown hair, blue eyes, and a pretty, round face that hadn't quite lost that last bit of baby fat yet. She looked ... well, I didn't know exactly how old she looked. It wasn't like I'd spent any time around kids. I remembered Roslyn saying that she was eight, or maybe ten. I also wondered if she had the same kind of Ice elemental magic as her father, but now wasn't the time to ask.
I dropped to my knees in front of her, and Natasha shrank back even more from me, as though she wanted to melt into the metal of the railcar just to get away from me. Couldn't blame the kid for that. I could only imagine how scary I looked in my black clothes, with the ski mask still covering my face. But I didn't dare take it off, not even for her.
I could also feel the warm blood that coated my torso like a crimson shroud. Still more of the sticky substance dripped off the point of my knife onto the floor of the car. It also speckled my hands as though I'd been painting with it. I dropped the weapon down by my leg, but I didn't put it away. Not when another giant could poke his head inside at any second.
"Hi, sweetheart," I murmured in a soft, soothing voice. "Sorry to scare you, but I'm here to take you home to your father."
Natasha was calmer than I'd thought she'd be. Or maybe she'd been through so much already in the last twenty-four hours that she was just in shock about it all. Instead of screaming and trying to get away from me, she sat still and thought about my words.
"My-my daddy sent you? Really?" Her voice was no more than the barest whisper, and I had to strain to hear her.
I nodded. "He sure did, sweetheart. Now, let's get you out of here before more of those bad men come this way. I need you to be a good girl for me and not make a sound. Okay? If you do that, we'll both be fine, and you'll be back with your daddy real soon. I promise you that, and I always keep my promises."
Natasha stared at me for another minute before slowly nodding. I was mildly surprised that she was willing to go with me so easily, but people always said kids were smarter than you thought. Maybe Natasha realized she didn't have a lot of options. Or maybe she'd heard LaFleur and the others talk about exactly what they had in store for her.
Either way, I didn't hesitate. I got to my feet and held out my blood-spattered hand. After another moment of staring at me, Natasha reached out with her own cold, pale, trembling fingers and took mine. I pulled the little girl to her feet, and the blankets fell away from her body.
To my surprise, she still had on clothes-a pair of long-sleeved blue flannel pajamas. Whoever had taken her had stopped long enough to let her put a pair of slippers on her feet. The fluffy foam shoes were shaped like green frogs, of all things.
I examined what I could see of the girl's body. She had a puffy bruise on one cheek and some nicks and scrapes on her hands, but otherwise seemed to be in good shape.
"Natasha, has anyone ... hurt you while you've been here?" I asked in the kindest voice that I could.
I needed to know if maybe she was bleeding somewhere that I couldn't see, if she had other injuries I hadn't noticed. Injuries that might slow us down, that might mean the difference between our getting out of here or not.
"No," she whispered. "They were waiting until the lady with the flower tattoo told them that it was okay. Some of them-touched me, though."
That was horrible enough, but at least she'd been spared the horrors of being raped by Mab's minions.
"I'm so sorry for that," I said, pulling her over to the broken window. "More than you'll ever know. But I need you to not think about that right now, okay? Just concentrate on me and do exactly what I tell you, all right?"
Natasha stared at me with her blue eyes. "Okay."
There wasn't any time to waste, so I climbed out through the broken window, reached back inside, and helped Natasha do the same. Her blue pajamas were far too light for the kind of shadow skulking that I'd had in mind, but I'd just have to make do. I always did.
Slowly, oh so slowly, I led Natasha away from the railcar. It seemed as if even more men had arrived while I'd been killing the girl's two captors, and the rail yard was swarming with people. They huddled around the depot, moved in between the railcars, and walked back and forth with supplies like busy little worker bees all scurrying to keep their demanding queen happy.
Which, of course, made it all the more difficult for the two of us to slip out of the train yard undetected. Several times I had to push the girl flat on the ground and cover her light pajamas with my black, bloody clothes, in hopes that the giants walking by would just see another shadow pooling on the gravel and not the two people trying to hide in it. But it worked, because the men walked on by and went about their business.
And Natasha was a trooper. I didn't know if she was in shock or completely traumatized or just one extremely brave little girl, because she never screamed, not even when I pushed her down onto the hard gravel that shredded her soft pajamas and dug into her hands and face. We'd made it about halfway across the yard when she looked down and saw the rust-colored stains on her pajamas-blood from the giants that had transferred from my clothes to her. She let out a little whimper then, but I grabbed her hand and pulled her along before she could think too much about the blood, where it had come from and the fact that she'd seen me kill the men it had once belonged to.
Finally, after about twenty nerve-racking minutes, I reached the railcar that was Finn's perch. I let out a soft whistle, our long-standing, prearranged signal. About five seconds later, a black shadow dropped to the ground in front of us. Finn straightened, and Natasha jerked back at his sudden appearance.
"It's okay," I whispered, squeezing her cold hand. "This is Finn. He's with me. He knows your daddy too, and he's going to help me take you to him."
Finn's eyes swept over the girl, and he gave me a questioning look.
"She's in good shape, all things considered," I said in a low voice. "It's not nearly as bad as it could have been. Now, let's get the hell out of here before they find the two giants that I just killed-"
Shouts rang up through the night. Fuck. All I'd needed had been five more minutes, but luck had decided not to smile on me tonight.
I looked over my shoulder. Sure enough, someone had discovered the two dead giants in the railcar. The door was fully open now, and more and more men circled around that area, like bloodhounds treeing a raccoon. It wouldn't be long before they started looking for whoever had killed their buddies. Already I could see heads swiveling around in this direction.