A Caress of Twilight

Chapter 43



I didn't wait for Nicca or Lucy to grab me, I just started running after Galen. My sandals weren't meant for running full out, and I threw them off as I rounded the corner. Kitto was at my heels, and Nicca, with Sage on his shoulder, wasn't far behind. Lucy and the last uniform had come with us, too.



But what we saw froze us all for a few seconds. The Nameless had no legs, yet it did. It was a writhing mass of a thing, and my eyes could not hold it. I felt a scream clawing at my throat, but I knew if I let that sound come out of me, I'd never stop -- like the policeman still huddled by the wall. Sometimes the only thing that keeps you from going mad is stubbornness and need.



Rhys was still wrapped in its flesh, but he'd stopped moving. His arms hung pale and empty, and I knew that to have let all his weapons fall away, he was at best not conscious, at worst ... I refused to finish the thought. There'd be time to think the unthinkable later.



The armored cops who had come in with the other guards lay scattered about the thing like discarded toys. The swimming pool lay just behind the thing, and its trail of destruction had taken out the pool house.



Frost's silver hair blew in a shining curtain. One arm hung limp at his side, but he'd won his way to the creature's base. He plunged Winter Kiss into one moving piece, and a tentacle came swinging out of the mass and smashed into him, tossing him back to bounce against the wall. He lay in a broken heap where he landed. Only Galen's hand on my arm kept me from running to him.



"Look," Galen said.



Where the sword still stood in the thing's flesh, a white spot was growing. When it was the size of a large table I realized it was frost and ice. Winter Kiss was exactly that. But the Nameless struck at the blade and sent it spinning off behind itself. The growing spot of cold remained, but ceased to grow.



I looked for Doyle, and found him like a pool of blackness beside the turquoise of the water. Blood spread like a drowning puddle from underneath him. He raised himself on one arm, and the thing hit him casually, knocking him into the water. He vanished from sight without so much as his hand surfacing. He just fell into the blue water and was gone.



Galen jerked me around to face him, hands grabbing my arms so hard that it hurt. "Swear to me that you won't go within its reach."



"Galen..."



He shook me. "Swear to me, swear it!"



I'd never seen him so fierce, and I knew he wouldn't let me go to help them, and he wouldn't help them himself until I'd promised.



"I swear it."



He drew me in and gave me a fierce, almost bruising kiss, then handed me to Kitto. "Stay with her, keep her alive."



Then he and Nicca exchanged a look and drew their guns. Lucy and the officer did the same thing, and they fanned out in a line and started shooting. It was easy not to hit Rhys; there was so much monster to aim at.



They fired until their guns clicked empty. The creature waded into them, and Lucy managed to dodge for the house, but the older uniform was picked up by things that looked like giant taloned hands but were not quite that. Those huge claws ripped into him, sending blood through the air in a bright arch of crimson. The man's scream was sharp, pain filled, horror filled; then came silence, abrupt silence, and I swear I could hear the sound of tearing cloth, the thicker sound of tearing flesh, the wet pop of bone as the thing ripped the dead man in half and flung him in our direction.



Kitto flung himself on top of me and pressed me under his smaller bulk as the body parts flew overhead, spraying blood so that it pattered his clothes like rain.



When I could raise my head enough to see the fight again, Nicca and Galen had each drawn sword and dagger, one for each hand. They began to circle it, each to one side -- but how do you circle something that has multiple eyes and multiple limbs?



I don't know if the other blades had hurt it badly enough that it didn't want to chance more, or if it was simply tired of being pricked, but it struck not with limbs, but with magic. Nicca was suddenly covered in a white mist. When the mist cleared he was motionless on the ground. I didn't have time to see if he was still breathing because the Nameless rushed Galen, who stood his ground. No one had ever accused Galen of cowardice.



I yelled his name, but he never turned, and I didn't want to distract him from the fight; I just wanted to keep him safe.



I started struggling to get up off the ground, and Kitto finally stopped hindering and started helping me. Galen didn't have a magic weapon of any kind; I had to do something. I walked forward and Kitto grabbed me back. I tried to jerk free, turning in my bare feet to order him to let me go, but I slipped on the bloody ground, falling butt first onto the slick grass. My hands came away covered in blood -- fresh, crimson blood like rain on the grass that hadn't soaked in yet. My left palm began to itch, then to burn. It was the blood of the Nameless, and it was as poisonous as the rest of it.



I got to my feet, trying to scrape the blood off my hand with my dress, but it didn't help. The burning had sunk into my hand, my skin, and it was flowing through my veins, feeling as if all the blood in my body had turned to molten metal, solid and burning hot, as though my own blood was boiling its way out of my skin.



I shrieked in pain, and Kitto touched me, tried to help. He yelled and let go of me, staggered back. The front of his T-shirt bloomed red, fresh blood. He clawed at his shirt, raised enough for me to see the marks of my nails spilling blood everywhere, worse, so much worse than the original injury.



My cousin Cel was Prince of Old Blood. He could call any injury to life no matter how ancient. But it was only ever as bad as the original hurt. This was something different. Doyle had told me once that I would have a second hand of power, but there was no way of knowing when it would manifest or what it would be. The pain in my own body was receding as Kitto bled. But I didn't want Kitto to bleed. I wanted the Nameless to bleed.



If I had to touch the Nameless for this new hand of power to work, I was going to die, but I was going to try with magic like you'd try with a gun. Shoot from far away before you're forced to shoot up close. And as long as you have the ammunition, keep shooting.



I pointed my left hand toward the creature, palm out, and thought, not the word blood but of blood. I thought about the taste of it, salty, metallic; the feel of it fresh and almost scalding hot in large doses, the way it thickened when it cooled. I thought of the smell of blood -- that neck-ruffling scent -- and the way enough of it freshly spilled always smelled like meat, like raw hamburger.



I thought of blood and began to walk toward the Nameless.



Chapter 44



I'd taken only a few steps when the pain returned, my blood boiled in my veins, and I stumbled to my knees, hand still out toward the creature -- but I was betting that Kitto had stopped bleeding. I screamed and watched one huge eye swivel to look at me, to truly look at me for the first time. The pain clouded my vision and finally stole my voice, my air. I was suffocating on pain. Then it eased, just a bit, then a bit more. When my vision cleared, blood was trickling out of the wounds in the mountain of flesh, trickling out not like blood should flow, but like water, faster, thinner. The last of my pain vanished as blood began to pour out of every wound the creature had sustained that day. Every bullet hole, every blade mark burst scarlet. The blood began to rain down the sides of the thing.



The Nameless began to move toward me, ponderous, and unnerving like watching a mountain roll toward you. I knew if it reached me, it would kill me, so I had to stop that from happening.



I thought not of blood alone, but of wounds; I thought not bleed but die. I wanted it to die.



A wound opened like a new mouth, slashing down its side, then another, and another. It was as if some giant invisible blade was hacking at it. The blood flowed faster, until the Nameless was covered in a slick red coat from top to bottom, covered in a dress of its own blood. Then blood gushed out of it in a nearly black wave, like a lake being dumped out upon the grass. It spilled and flowed and billowed toward me, until I knelt in a hot pool of blood, and still it bled.



The more it bled, the calmer I became. A stillness filled my body, almost a peacefulness. I knelt in the growing spread of blood, watching the thing quiver toward me, and I had no fear. I felt nothing, was nothing, but the magic. In that one instant I lived, breathed, and was one spell. The hand of blood rode me, used me, as surely as I had tried to use it. With the old magicks, who is master and who is slave is never sure.



The Nameless rose above me like a great bloody mountain, one curl of its body reaching out, out toward me, and only a few yards away, I heard it take a breath, a sharp sound, almost a sound of fear, then it exploded, not its body, but as if every last ounce of blood in that vast shape had burst forth at one time. The air became blood, and it was like trying to breathe underwater. For a second I thought I would drown, then I was choking in air and trying to spit out blood at the same time.



Something large hit the side of my head, and I fell to the bloody ground. Even in its death throes it had tried to take me with it. Kitto's crimson-washed face with a blood-soaked Sage on his shoulder was the last thing I saw before darkness swallowed the world.



Chapter 45



I woke to floating. I was floating in mid-air, and at first I thought it was a dream. Then I saw Galen floating just out of reach. I woke to find that all the fey in the yard were floating. Magic was everywhere, streaming through the air like multicolored fireworks, flying around us in flocks of fantastic birds that never knew mortal sky. Entire forests rose and fell before our eyes. The dead rose and walked and faded. It was like watching someone else's dreams and nightmares march through the bright California sunshine. It was raw enchantment with no hand to contain it or order it about; it was simply magic, everywhere.



And that magic was spilling into Rhys, Frost, Doyle, Kitto, Nicca, even Sage. I watched a phantom tree float over Nicca's body and vanish inside him. Sage was covered by a flowering vine. The dead men all went to Rhys and marched into him while he screamed. Frost was hidden by what looked like snow. He hit at it with his good arm, but he couldn't stop it. I caught a glimpse of Doyle half-hidden behind something black and serpentine; then the magic finally found Galen and me as we hung there only a few feet from each other. We were hit by scents and bursts of color. I smelled roses, and blood appeared on my wrist as if by the prick of thorns. I think the others were regaining what they'd given up to the Nameless, but neither Galen nor I had given anything to it. I thought it would pass us by because of that, but it turned out I was wrong. Wild magic had been freed, and it wanted to be somewhere in someone again.



Something white like a great bird rose from the bloody mess and came for me like it had a purpose. Galen yelled, "Merry!" and the glowing shape smashed into me, through me, but not out the other side. For an instant I saw the world through crystal and mist. I smelled something burning, then darkness again.



By the time Galen and I were conscious again, the others had bound the Nameless into the soil, into the water, into the very air. They had bound it as it was meant to be bound. It couldn't be killed, but it couldn't be allowed to heal and go free either.



Maeve Reed had graciously allowed us to use some of her plentiful estate as the burial place, though that wasn't exactly what we did. It was both buried on her land and not buried in any land. It was trapped in a place betwixt and between.



Maeve offered us permanent use of her guest house, which was bigger than most people's entire homes. It solved the problem of a bigger apartment, and kept us within reach in case Taranis thought up some new way to attack Maeve.



I'd always thought that Andais was the crazy one, but I've changed my mind. Taranis is willing to do anything to save himself, anything. That's not the way a good king thinks. Bucca-Dhu is in Unseelie protective custody. We've had to tell Andais everything. We have a witness to what Taranis did, but that's not enough to overthrow a thousand-year reign. It will be a political nightmare to tiptoe around. But he cannot be allowed to remain in power.



Taranis is still insisting I come for a visit to his court. I don't think so.



Rhys laid the hungry ghosts easily. He's regained the powers that the Nameless had taken from him, and so have all the others. But what does that mean?



It means that Rhys talks to empty rooms... but if they are empty, why do voices answer him from the empty air? Frost can put a tracery of his namesake on my summer window, a spread of icy lace he uses to draw pictures for me. Doyle can vanish in plain sight, and none of us can find him. I am assured he is not invisible, but he might as well be. Nicca caused a tree to explode into blossom months off schedule... just by leaning against it. Kitto talks to snakes now. They slither out of the grass to greet him like you'd greet a king. It is positively unnerving how many snakes there are that you never see unless they wish you to see them. Sage has kept a single jasmine blossom alive and fragrant for two weeks with no water. The flower just sits tucked behind his ear and shows no sign of fading.



As for Galen and me -- touched by so much wild magic, none of it our own -- we don't know yet. Doyle thinks the new powers will come a little at a time. My second hand of power has well and truly come. All I need is a small wound and I can call all the blood from a being's body. I am Princess of Flesh and Blood. The hand of blood hasn't been seen as a power since the days of Balor of the Evil Eye. For those of you not up on pre-Celtic history, that's thousands of years before the birth of Christ.



The queen is pleased with me. She was in such a good mood that I got her to give me the men. Prince Cel has his own private guard; she has hers. Shouldn't I have mine? Andais agreed, so everyone who comes my way is mine. I'm keeping them all.



I promised Frost that I would keep him safe, that I would keep them all safe. A princess should always keep her promises.



Andais is sending more guards to help ensure my safety. I asked to be allowed to choose who they will be, but she wasn't that happy with me. I asked that Doyle be allowed to choose, and she refused that, as well. I think the Queen of Air and Darkness has her own agenda, and she will send who she wishes. I can do nothing about it but wait and see who shows up at my door.



There are gentle nights with my green knight, Galen mine at last. My Darkness is still as dangerous as he ever was, but underneath I get glimpses of his pain and his resolution to better things for us all. Rhys has changed and is no longer my laughing lover, nor does he wish to share me with Nicca. It's as if with Rhys's returned powers he's grown more serious, more compelling. There is simply more to him now, more magic, more desire, more force.



Nicca is still just Nicca. Lovely, gentle, but not strong enough.



Kitto, too, has grown and changed. He is more. I watch him grow into his power with something like awe.



Then there is Frost. What can you say of love, for love it is, but I am still without a child.



I performed a fertility rite that brought life to another sidhe's womb, but my own remains empty. Why? If I was truly infertile, the spell would have failed, but it did not.



I must be with child soon or none of the rest matters. Yule has come and gone, and we have only two months left of Cel's imprisonment. Will he be insane when he is released? Will he throw all caution away and try to kill me? Best to be pregnant before Cel gets out. Rhys has suggested we hire an assassin to slay Cel the moment he gets free. If it weren't for the Queen's anger and grief, I might almost agree. Almost.



I kneel at my altar and I pray. I pray for guidance, and I pray for luck, good luck. Some people will wish someone luck, but they don't say which kind. Always be careful when you pray, because deity is listening and will usually give you what you ask for, not what you meant to ask for. Goddess grant us good luck and a fertile winter.