[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight (35 page)

Our bodies seemed to breathe in, and as we did, our glows all went dark, so that for an instant the room was in utter darkness. Then it was as if the entire world let out a collective breath that was warm and heavy and full of pleasure. That breath spread outward from us, so that we all glowed as if our skin could not hold such light, such warmth. We all screamed that pleasure, and the light burst out from us so that our eyes were dazzled and blinded by it. A tremendous crashing filled that light, a thunderous sound that shook the floor beneath me, and thrummed along my bones like the very walls of the sithen had convulsed with us.

We were left in the dark, collapsed upon one another. Galen dragged himself out of my mouth. And I had to cough, and turn my head to the side. “Did I hurt you?”

I had to clear my throat sharply to say, “Yes, but I liked it.” My voice sounded rough, not like me at all. It hurt to swallow, and my throat felt rubbed raw.

“Why did the lights go out?” Kitto asked.

“Why does the air taste like broken stone?” Nicca asked.

The first light into that darkness was a wavering, sickly greenish yellow flame. Doyle came with the fire on one hand and a gun gleaming dark in the other. Frost was at his side like the reverse of body and shadow. He threw a glittering ball of light into the room, and was down on one knee sighting down the guns in his hands, searching the room for targets.

“Where are they?” he asked.

“Who?” I asked.

“Your attackers,” Frost said.

All of us on the floor exchanged glances, as best we could. “We were not attacked,” Nicca said.

“Then what did that?” Frost pointed with one gun, and the glittering silver and white light moved where he pointed. The light hovered over the far wall of the bathroom, and we saw why he had asked who attacked us. The far wall was no more. Broken stone and debris showed a black, gaping hole.

Other guards, including Biddy, were at their backs, all with weapons drawn. “Is the princess hurt?” someone asked.

“No,” I said, but my voice was still rough, so I wasn't sure they heard me. I had to try twice before I could make myself clearly heard. “I am fine.”

Doyle sent Hawthorne and Adair to approach the far wall cautiously, their own balls of colored light acting like pet lanterns hovering just above their shoulders. One of them called back, “It's a garden. A small garden with a dry pool in the ground.”

“What surrounds the garden?” Doyle asked from where he stood near us.

“Stone,” Adair answered. “It is a cave of stone.”

Doyle and Frost were staring down at us. Frost's face was pale under the arrogant mask. I glanced past them and saw the heavy door to the outer room hanging twisted and broken in its frame.

“We thought you'd been attacked,” Doyle said, and his voice held that edge of relieved fear that Frost's face could not quite hide.

“We're safe,” I said.

“Why does your voice sound so rough?” Frost asked.

Galen raised his hand. “My fault.”

Doyle shook his head, and put up his gun. He still held the sickly flame in the other hand, as if his hand was the wick for the candle. It was the only light I'd ever seen him call in the dark.

“Well, at least this answers one question,” he said. “Sex inside faerie is different.”

“The ring has chosen no one for me yet.”

He gave a quick smile, a flash of white in his dark face. “That is good to know.”

“Yes,” Frost said, still pale, “that is good.” He was gazing at the destruction of the room. “But if the sex continues to grow more powerful, how are we to keep Merry safe, and make her queen?”

Doyle tapped a piece of stone with the toe of his boot. “There is a circle of debris around them as clean and neat as if it had been drawn. Merry and her lovers were safe enough. I think it is the furniture and walls we will have to worry over.”

“And anyone not in the circle with her,” Ivi said, and turned his face to the multicolored lights that bobbed in the room. His pale face glittered darkly on one side.

“Is that blood?” I asked.

“Yes,” Ivi said, and grimaced as he touched his forehead. “When the door exploded it sent shards of wood through the bedroom. Your new healer is tending the wounded.”

“The demi-fey?” I started to get up, but was still trapped beneath everyone's bodies. Galen and Nicca began to roll off me, so I could sit up. Frost offered me a hand, and helped me to my feet. He pulled too hard, or my legs still weren't working, because he had to catch me or I would have fallen. He caught me in against his body, and said, “What is that in your hair?”

“Oh, Kitto . . .”

“No, Merry,” Kitto said, “it isn't my seed.”

Frost had a gun in his other hand, so it was Doyle who reached out and touched my hair. “Goddess save us.”

“What?” I asked, and I didn't like how everyone was acting. Doyle helped me, drawing a strand of my hair closer to my face. There were leaves in my hair.

Doyle extinguished the flame on his hand with a shake, like you blow out a match by fanning it sharp in the air. Frost's light came back to float above our heads, and in the white light I could see that it wasn't just leaves.

“Mistletoe's entwined in your hair.” Doyle glanced down at Kitto. “Is this your doing?”

“It was my seed in her hair, but I do not think I caused it.”

Brii came to stand beside us; his long yellow hair was decorated with bits of wood. “May I?” he asked me. His hand was raised toward my hair.

I nodded.

He touched the mistletoe tentatively, almost as if he were afraid it would hurt him, or it would vanish if he touched it too hard. “It was once considered the seed of the god.” He caressed the hard stems and the solid, thick green leaves, his fingertips gentle against the white berries.

“The seed of the god,” he whispered.

It was a good sign, a sign of great blessing, but . . . “How badly hurt are the demi-fey? If the splinters could do that to Ivi . . . how hurt are they?” I asked.

“We are not certain,” Frost said. “The blast of power threw us all to the floor or walls. They are small, and were thrown harder.”

I pushed away from his arms. I started for the far door. He picked me up, the drawn gun pressing cold against my bare legs. “There are splinters everywhere,” he said, as I tried to protest. I couldn't argue his point.

“Then take me to them. Let me see what my pleasure has cost my people.”

“Your people?” Brii asked, his eyes shining pale and gold in the magical lights.

“Yes,” I said, “they are Unseelie fey, and that makes them mine, makes them ours.”

“That is not how the queen sees it,” Ivi said, and the blood on his face gleamed in the lights. He'd come to stand beside Brii. Their long pale hair seemed to intermingle like entwining vines.

I shook my head and the illusion, or the trick of the light, went away, and they were simply standing close together. I touched Frost's arm. “Take me into the other room, let us help them.”

“Help them how?” Ivi asked.

“Hafwyn can heal them.”

“You would waste sidhe healing on a demi-fey?”

Frost answered for me. “That you would ask that of her says that you do not know the princess.”

Doyle added, “She will not see it as a waste.” He nodded, and as if that was an order Frost carried me toward the splintered door. Thin high-pitched screaming came from the other room. I prayed, “Mother help us, help them, heal them. Don't let my power be their doom.”

I caught the faint scent of roses, and a voice like a warm wind. “Grace can never be doom.” With that cryptic bit of wisdom, she was gone, and we were in what was left of the bedroom.

CHAPTER 34

IT LOOKED LIKE A MINIATURE BATTLEFIELD. SMALL BODIES WERE
scattered across the floor like a game of toy soldiers gone horribly wrong. Tiny bodies were collapsed against the walls as if some giant hand had swept them away. The four-foot-long Nile monitor lay on its back, and just the twisted look of the body let me know it had finished its death throes. A piece of wood the size of a small dagger had pierced its throat.

Frost carried me in, his feet crunching on bits of wood and metal from the door. I kept staring at the dead lizard, because I was afraid to look elsewhere. Afraid to look too closely at those smaller bodies, afraid I'd find them just as still, just as dead.

Hafwyn had made a triage line of tiny bodies. It had seemed like we had so many men to guard me, and too many in my bed, but now suddenly, we needed more hands. More bodies to help us save others. The queen had stripped me of too many. And Rhys had taken some with him, as well.

“Send word to the queen that we need more men, and more healers.”

Hafwyn looked up at me, even as she tried to hold a piece of cloth on a wound. “More healers? Do you mean to use sidhe healing on the demi-fey?”

“Yes,” I said.

“The queen does not waste such power on the lesser fey.”

She was right. In fact, there were some sidhe healers who would not willingly touch a lesser fey. As if they thought it was contagious. “Can you heal them?”

She looked surprised. “You truly mean for me to do this?”

“You are a healer, Hafwyn, can you sit here and watch them die, and not be pained by it?”

She lowered her head, and I watched her shoulders begin to shake. There was no sound, but when she turned her face back to me, there were tears upon her face. “Yes, it causes me pain to see such suffering and not be allowed to heal it.”

“Then heal what you can, and I will fetch more healers.”

“Who would you send to fetch them?” Frost asked. He was still holding me effortlessly, as if he could have held me so all night long. Maybe he could have.

I understood what he meant. Andais was probably deep into the torturing of the betrayers. And my aunt did not like being interrupted in the middle of her “playtime.” People who interrupted her had a tendency to be forced to join the show. Did I send the one I liked the least, or the one who had a better chance of making her see sense?

“Who do you recommend?”

“Doyle,” he said.

I turned in Frost's arms and looked at him. “If she is deep in her blood lust then only Doyle has a chance of making her see sense. Ivi or Brii would end up as victim.”

“And you?”

“She has never listened to me as she listened to Doyle.” He said it without a trace of hurt ego. He simply stated it, fact. I believed him.

Doyle glided through the broken door, as if he'd heard us say his name. I told him what I wanted.

“I might be able to help heal some of them,” he said.

I had forgotten that he had limited healing ability himself. One of the first times he had ever touched me intimately had been for him to heal a wound on my thigh. He could not heal with his hands, but with his mouth, so it was not something he offered often. It was too intimate. And his ability to heal was not great, as the healers of faerie measured it.

“You can heal?” Hafwyn asked, pushing at her yellow hair with the back of her arm. Her hands were too bloody to be used for tucking a strand of hair back.

“A little, but not by hand.”

“Nodens,” she said simply.

“One of my names,” he said, “at the end.”

“How bad an jury can you heal?” she asked.

“Superficial wounds, deep but narrow.”

“Can you set bone?”

He shook his head.

She looked around at her patients. “I think Frost is right. I think the queen will hear you best, and if anyone can bring us more healers, it is you. You will be most welcome when I have more healers. We can conserve our strength, and let you finish a wound after we have begun it.”

“Gladly,” he said, “if you are certain?”

She nodded. “Go to the queen as the princess bids. Killing Frost is right; it is our best chance to save them.”

Doyle nodded, gave a small bow to me, and simply started for the door. I called him back, a hand in his. I drew him in for a kiss, while I was still held in Frost's arms. Doyle's lips were warm, and soft, and he drew back from the kiss before I was ready for him to.

“And Doyle goes alone?” Galen said. “You warned Rhys that he might be attacked.”

“He is the Queen's Darkness,” Brii said. “No one would dare.”

Galen shook his head. “No one goes alone, anywhere, not until we're back in L.A.”

“And do you rule here already, green knight?” Ivi asked.

“No, but we can't afford to lose Doyle because we got careless.”

I knew by the look on Doyle's face that he meant to argue. Then he smiled and shook his head. “He's right. We cannot afford to be arrogant or careless.” He looked at Frost, and I knew that was who he most wanted to take, but I also knew that he would not strip me of both of them at the same time.

“I will go,” Hawthorne said, “if you will have me.”

“I will go, if you wish, but I think my place is here guarding the princess,” Adair said.

“I agree.” Doyle looked at Galen with a small smile. “Are you content with Hawthorne?”

“Take Brii, too,” he said.

The smile left him. “I do not think that is necessary.”

“It would take me too long to dress or I'd go with you,” Galen said.

“Why so serious about my safety, Galen?” Doyle asked.

I wondered if Galen would tell Doyle what he'd said in the bathroom. He did. “I thought I was dead, and one of my last thoughts was it's okay, because you and Frost were still alive. I knew you'd keep Merry safe. I knew you'd get her out of here and back home to L.A. I thought, why kill me first? If I were going to do a first strike, it would be you I'd kill. I can't be the only one who's thinking that.”

We were all staring at him. “What?” he asked.

“We're not used to you sounding this smart,” Ivi said, “that's all.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“If you intend to save lives, go now,” Hafwyn said.

Doyle gave a small bow in my direction. Hawthorne and Brii fell in at his back, and they left us.

I looked at Hafwyn. “What can we do to keep them alive while we wait?” She told us. Ivi spread his cloak on the floor so that I could kneel in safety, while we did what little we could to hold their blood in their bodies, and their lives in our hands.