Chapter 6: Repel Boarders
The knock had come at 10:30.
Mariel was in the middle of a conversation on trigonometry—where Jeremy did most of the talking. The early use for trigonometry was navigation before Global Positioning Systems existed—even before the idea of electricity was a glimmer in someone’s eye.
Again, someone from the Swiss Guard who had taken the kids under their wing had explained how it worked. Lena and Jeremy were both using it to calculate their exact position on the Earth based on last night’s star pattern—at least that was on the Internet.
In the middle of the calculations, Lena’s head shot up, and her back went ramrod straight. “Someone’s at the door.”
Mariel got up first. Her first move was habitual—she straightened her T-shirt at the small of her back. Her handgun made it awkward sometimes.
She headed for the door before the bell rang. She reached the door, and the first thing was to look through the peephole.
It was the creature from CPS—Shamika Meadowsweet. The massive turd in a pantsuit was flanked by two police officers.
The uniformed officers were no one Mariel knew. They had come from outside of the local precinct. There was only one reason she could think of for CPS to do that.
They had come for Lena.
It wasn’t hard for Mariel to make a decision. These guys would have to just pound sand. The only question was whether or not she should even open the door.
The front door was sturdy—it was nearly two inches of solid wood, with a Yale lock. The front of the door was made of aluminum. If someone wanted in, they would need several minutes with an ax or a SWAT team with a battering ram. It might take a few shotgun shells.
That was after they got through the storm door.
If she put off the confrontation, Tommy would end up walking into it eventually. He wouldn’t be able to stay away from home forever. He would then be obligated to let these people into the house, if only out of courtesy for the uniforms.
Mariel was a different story. Instead of forcing her hand, she would force theirs.
Mariel opened the wooden door and stepped forward, locking the storm door before anyone grabbed it.
“Yes? Can I help you?” she asked calmly.
Meadowsweet smiled with sweet acid and croaked, “We’ve come for your children.”
Mariel only cocked her head slowly and studied her like a new species of insect. “I don’t think you need cops to talk to my kids.”
The evil smile widened further. “No talking. We’ve come to take them. We’re going to take them all.”
Mariel’s face went flat, and her voice matched. Behind the screen door, her fist clenched, ready to punch through the screen door. “All?”
Meadowsweet reached into her jacket pocket and pulled out a notebook. She licked her thumb like it was an ice cream cone and started flipping through it.
“Your husband wandered off to Europe and then brought himself back a young, good looking, underage blonde child from Eastern Europe. Don’t think you’ve fooled me for a moment.” She eyed Mariel. “Or is she a plaything for you, too? Maybe the other kid?”
Mariel’s brow darkened. “You couldn’t prove that if you wired me, Tommy, and Lena for sound.”
Meadowsweet licked her lips. “I’ll frisk her later just for that. But you also have guns in the house. So many guns. Rifles? Shotguns? A handgun or two?”
Mariel restrained herself from smiling. Meadowsweet’s database hadn’t been updated. But then, Mariel never did tell the city about the extra guns they had picked up while in Tennessee.
Thankfully, Meadowsweet also didn’t know that Jeremy had been shooting for years.
Meadowsweet continued. “And you’re raising them in an atmosphere of hate.” She flipped to another page. “Your new daughter believes that there are only two genders. She thinks that the transgendered are insane and that marriage is only between a man and a woman. Your son wore a T-shirt that was anti-Muslim. And they both think that abortion is evil.”
Mariel’s eyes narrowed. “Where’s your warrant?”
Meadowsweet grinned. “I don’t need one. I have them.” She pointed over her shoulder at the two cops.
The first time MS-13 came to the house, Mariel ran to the second floor and came back with the house shotgun.
When a death cult came and kidnapped our son, Mariel had personally Sparta kicked the woman responsible into a fire pit so she could burn alive.
When an army of demons raised Tiamat, Mariel spent the entire encounter sniping the demons from a ledge.
These idiots were merely human. And they wanted to take our kids. She had to restrain herself from drawing down on them and shooting all three in the face.
Instead, Mariel proclaimed, “Over my dead body.”
The door closed before Meadowsweet could even get a word out.
Mariel turned to get the children, but they were already walking onto the porch. Each of them had their duffel go-bags packed and ready to go. Lena had Grace already strapped to her chest in the papoose. Jeremy had an additional case slung over his back meant for long guns.
Why, yes, the family did have a plan for almost anything to go wrong. Though our idea of prepping involved reading urban fantasy novels, in addition to having specially packed go-bags.
“5D,” she said.
The plan was simple and rehearsed more than a few times. Behind the house was a fence that ran along the back property ... and the property of every house on the block. On the other side of the fence was an apartment complex. Between the fence and the complex was about a foot of room. It was more than enough for a single-file escape.
Jeremy typed out the text message on his phone while Mariel got her own go-bag. By the time she came down, the text had been sent out.
The three of them slipped out the back door, then headed for the rear of the house. Jeremy went first, jumping on top of the fence and parkour running along it.
Lena leaned over just enough to see the cop car parked at the edge of the driveway. She focused on it for a moment, ripping at the tires’ air nozzles with her mind.
The four tires blowing out at once sounded like a bomb going off.
They got to the end of the block and hung a right, moving farther away from the house and closer to the heavily-trafficked Jamaica Avenue.
Waiting for them was a friend of the family, Father Richard Freeman. Once all three were safely in the car, Mariel called Tommy and started, “They’re after the children!”
In all fairness it could have been worse.
Just think about it. Lena was now sixteen. Jeremy was fifteen. She was telekinetic. He had a black belt in Krav Maga that he’d finished earning during his time working with Swiss Guards. And she, he, and Mariel all had guns.
In hindsight, we were lucky that it didn’t end in yet another collection of body parts on the front yard.
That didn’t help as Alex and I sprinted for the car, then turned on the lights and siren via our little bubble gum machine we kept in the rear footwell.
We blew down 222nd Street, past my house, and went straight for the precinct. We swung into the parking spot on the sidewalk in front of the building. Like everyone else, we parked at right angles to the curb. I leaped out, ran past the two-foot call statue of Jesus on the front lawn, and into the front doors.
The desk sergeant didn’t even look up from his desk. He just pointed for the stairs and said, “Third floor.”
I charged up the stairs and burst out onto the third floor. I nearly ran into them.
I wrapped my arms around Mariel, who was holding Gracie. Jeremy and Lena leaped into a group hug.
“Tell me everything.”
Mariel told me everything that went down. She concluded with Father Freeman, dropping them off at the precinct—where all the cops loved her for her weekly delivery of cookies (which never survived past the first hour. I swear cops are part locust).
When Mariel finished, I opened my mouth to comment. There was going to be a torrent of oaths and vile obscenities that would have greatly improved my reputation around the precinct.
So it was a good thing Lena cut me off.
“There was something else,” she said, her accent only marring her words a little. I thought it gave a charming musical lilt to her voice.
My anger gave way to curiosity. My mood shifted so fast, no one noticed. Not even Lena.
Which explains why no one thinks I have a temper.
I nodded to Lena so she would continue.
“I saw something in her mind. It was very much like what I felt around Jayden. It was ...” Lena made a face like she would be ill. “Sick. Slimy. Like a snake.”
The bottom fell out of my stomach.
“Which one was Jayden again?” Mariel asked. “I don’t think I had the pleasure.”
I winced at the thought of that creature and pleasure in the same sentence. She was the first thing that I had needed my power armor for—as a full-blown, multi-story mech. The battle with Jayden trashed most of an estate in a German countryside village. When it was all over, I literally sent her straight to Hell.
“Succubus,” I muttered. “Germany. Turned into a dragon?”
Mariel nodded. “Ah. Dragon. That I remember.” She touched Lena on the arm. “Do you think Meadowsweet is a demon?”
Lena shook her head. “I don’t know. She could be one. She could have one. She could just think like one.”
I frowned. “And she’s leading a state-sanctioned attempt to kidnap the both of you. Just what we needed.”
Before I focused on the problem at hand, a disturbing thought troubled me. How did I not smell the evil on Meadowsweet before? What is going wrong here? I hadn’t caught a whiff of evil for a while. Do I not have the ability anymore? Were these gifts that God had taken away?
In that case, God giveth and God taketh away. Blessed be the name of The Lord. In this case, as literally as possible.
I sighed, then switched tacks. “First call is to Carlton. We need to get a legal handle on it. If we can take the legs out from under Meadowsweet, we can get clear of all of this. I—”
My phone rang just then. I frowned at the interruption, assuming it was yet another bot robocaller. Then I realized that the ringtone was the theme to the original Perry Mason TV show.
It was my musical choice for Manhattan Assistant District Attorney William Carlton.
Carlton and I had met during the case of possessed serial killer Christopher Curran. Even though he was Manhattan’s ADA, and I was in Queens, the politics of the case forced our paths to cross.
The fact that he was calling me should have disturbed me more than it did.
I told my family who it was, then answered the phone. “ADA Carlton, good to hear from you. You’re on speaker with the entire family.”
“Oh, am I?” Carlton asked. As always, he spoke in clipped words so fast that even Alex needed to focus to keep up. “Your partner was just on the phone with me. I went to get details on your issue with CPS. There aren’t any details. CPS is keeping this close to the vest. And by close, either they’re keeping everyone out of the loop, or this particular CPS witch isn’t filing anything. I had to tap into the secretary network to get anything out of them. Somehow, this Meadowsweet person has gone through all of this trouble without once mentioning that you are a police officer. Which is a cute trick. Also probably illegal.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but I misjudged the rhythm of his speech. He was always one to talk in paragraphs and amicus briefs. I missed my window to get a word in sideways.
“She cited all of your guns as a massive red flag. Not on your case file, on you, personally.”
I was taken aback. Red flag laws were supposedly about potential mental health issues and gun ownership. Since she was trying to get me and my house flagged, Meadowsweet would wreck my entire career—by labeling a cop too mentally ill to carry a gun.
I only had seconds to process all of that before Carlton continued. “You’re apparently also a— wait, I have a list—a white supremacist. You hate Muslims. You’re a ‘fundamentalist whackjob’— this is a clinical diagnosis, I’m certain. You’re raising children in a fanatical environment that is transphobic, homophobic, racist, and probably sexist, since your wife is a stay-at-home mother who’s homeschooling the children. Oh, and lest I forget, probably a child molester. Though I’m told that the new girl from Poland isn’t really a child anymore.”
Lena leaned forward towards my phone. “New girl from Poland is on the conversation.”
That made Carlton pause. “Oh. You did say the entire family. Apologies. I didn’t count the new addition. We’re going to have to meet so I remember you.”
Mariel held up a hand to keep Lena from answering. She didn’t want to be sidetracked. “Meadowsweet can do all of this? Doesn’t she have real threats to children she can harass?”
Carlton scoffed. “Do you ever wonder why certain people will attack Christians as evil and violent but never talk about Islamic psychopaths who literally cut people’s heads off? It’s because they know that one group won’t actually threaten them, while the latter will, again, literally cut their heads off. So what’s safer? Labeling a non-violent opponent as a psychopath, knowing they won’t swing back? Or calling out a violent psychopath on their violent psychopathy?
“Same here,” Carlton said. “Meadowsweet could be fighting a drunken wife-beater who would throw her down a flight of stairs, or she could go after you and win political points with certain people who don’t like you.”
I frowned. There was no need to ask who the “certain people” would be. It was an open secret in political circles that I had taken out the mayor—a deranged warlock with an eye for taking total control over the city. And Mariel had been giving the department of education a headache because she had been homeschooling the kids.
I still had problems wrapping my brain around this.
I asked him, “So your diagnosis is she’s being lazy and politically ambitious?”
“I’m saying she likes to pick easy fights with people she believes she can step on. That’s the best guess for right now. Obviously, she doesn’t know you that well. Or she overestimates her own abilities.”
Mariel smiled evilly. “Both are true.”
“I don’t doubt it. I’m going to see what happens on my end. You’ll have to keep on your toes. If this woman is persistent, she could cause trouble.”
I ground my teeth. Of course, she would. Because nothing is easy. Welcome to working for the Lord. I guess we’re at the point where blowback is a thing. And people wonder why early folks in the Bible were concerned about being contacted by God.
Oh well. If it were easy, everyone would do it.
I considered sharing the good news that Meadowsweet was possibly a demon, but I didn’t want to get ahead of myself. “Got any more good news?”
“Now that Mariel got away from CPS, Meadowsweet has reported it as a kidnapping.”
I blinked then shook my head to clear it. Parental kidnapping wasn’t uncommon, but that was usually over a custody rights dispute between parents. Unless ...
I flinched. “Wait. Meadowsweet is declaring Mariel a fugitive because she’s declared that our kids are property of CPS?”
“Of course. Because insanity is the default position of city government.”