Mistral's Kiss

WE MADE THE FAR SHORE, BUT I TRIPPED ON A SKELETON buried in the ground. Doyle picked me up and kept running. Gunshots echoed, and I saw Frost firing at Agnes as she threw herself on top of him. I had a glimpse of her face; something was wrong with it, as if her bones were sliding around under her skin. I screamed, "Frost," as a glint of metal showed in her hand. More shots sounded. Mistral was beside Frost, blades flashing.



"Doyle, stop!" I shouted.



He ignored me, and kept running with me in his arms. Abe and Rhys were with him.



"We can't leave Frost behind!" I said.



Doyle said, "We cannot risk you, not for anyone."



"Call a door," Abe said.



Doyle glanced behind us, but not at Mistral and Frost's fight with the night-hag. He glanced higher than that. It made me look up, too.



At first my eyes perceived clouds, black and grey rolling clouds, or smoke - but that was only my mind trying to make sense of it. I thought I had seen all the sluagh had to offer, but I was wrong. What was pouring down toward the island where Sholto stood was nothing my mind could accept. When I worked for the investigative agency...sometimes at a crime scene - if it's bad enough - sometimes your mind refuses to make an image out of it. It's just a jumble. Your mind gives you a moment to not see this horrible thing. If you have the chance to close your eyes and not look a second time, you can save yourself. This horror will not go into your mind and stain your soul. At most crime scenes I didn't have the choice of not seeing. But this; I looked away. If we didn't get away, then I'd have to look.



We had to get away.



Doyle yelled, "Don't look. Call the door."



I did what he asked. "I need a door to the Unseelie sithen." The door appeared, hanging in the middle of nowhere, just like before.



"No doors," Sholto screamed behind us.



The door vanished.



Rhys cursed.



Frost and Mistral were with us now. There was blood on their swords. I glanced back at the shore, and saw Agnes - a dark, still shape on the ground.



Doyle started running again, and the others joined us. "Call something else," Abe said, near breathless trying to keep up with Doyle's pace. "And do it quietly, so Sholto can't hear what you're doing."



"What?" I asked.



"You have the power of creation," he panted. "Use it."



"How?" My brain wasn't working under the pressure.



"Conjure something," he said, and stumbled, falling. He rejoined us, blood pouring down his chest from a new cut.



"Let the ground be grass and gentle to our feet." Grass flowed at our feet like green water. It didn't spread over everything like the herbs on the island. The grass sprang up in a path where we ran, and nowhere else.



"Try something else," Rhys said from the other side of us. He was shorter than the rest, and his voice showed the strain of keeping up with the longer legs of the others.



What could I call from the ground, from the grass, that could save us? I thought it and had my answer; one of the most magical of plants. "Give me a field of four-leaf clover." The grass spread out before us wide and smooth, then white clover began to grow through the grass, until we stood in the center of a field of it. White globes of sweet-smelling flowers burst like stars across all the green.



Doyle slowed, and the others slowed with him. Rhys said it out loud: "Not bad, not bad at all. You think well in a crisis."



"The wild hunt is of ill intent," Frost said. "They should be stopped at the field's edge."



Doyle sat me down amid the ankle-high clover. The plants brushed against me as if they were little hands. "Four-leaf clover is the most powerful plant protection from faerie," I said.



"Aye," Abe said, "but some of what is coming does not have to walk, Princess."



"Make us a roof, Meredith," Doyle said.



"A roof of what?"



"Rowan, thorn, and ash," Frost said.



"Of course," I said. Anywhere that the three trees grew together was a magical place - a place both of protection and of a weakening in the reality between worlds. Such a place would save you from faerie, or call faerie to you - like so many things with us, there was never a yes, or no, but a yes, a no, and a sometimes.



The earth underneath us trembled as if an earthquake were coming; then the trees blasted out of the ground, showering rock and dirt and clover over us. The trees stretched to the sky with a sound like a storm or a train, barreling down, but with a scream of wood to it. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. While the trees knit themselves together above our heads, I looked back. I could not help it.



Sholto was covered in the nightmares he had called. Tentacles writhed; bits and pieces that I had no word for flowed and struck. There were teeth everywhere, as if wind could be made solid and given fangs to tear and destroy. Sholto's uncles attacked the creatures with blade and muscle, but they were losing. Losing, but fighting hard enough that they had given us time to make our sanctuary.



Frost moved to stand so that his broad chest blocked my view. "It is not good to gaze too long upon them." There was a bloody furrow down one side of his face, as if Agnes had tried to claw his eyes out. I made as if to touch the wound, and he pulled away, catching my hand in his. "I will heal."



He didn't want me to fuss over him in front of Mistral. If it had just been Doyle and Rhys, he might have allowed it. But he would not have Mistral see him weak. I wasn't sure how he felt about Abe, but I knew he viewed Mistral as a threat. Men don't like to look weak in front of their rivals. Whatever I thought of Mistral, that was how Frost and Doyle saw him.



I took Frost's hand and tried not to act concerned about his wounds. "He called the hunt. Why are they attacking him?" I asked.



"I warned him that he looked too sidhe," Rhys said. "I wasn't saying that just to stop him from doing something dangerous to us."



Something warm dripped over my hand. I looked down to find Frost's blood painting my skin. I fought the spurt of panic and asked calmly, "How badly are you hurt?" The blood was coming steadily - not good.



"I will heal," Frost said, voice tight.



The trees closed overhead with a sound like the ocean waves rushing along a shore. Leaves tore and rained down on us as the branches wove a shield of leaves, thorns, and bright red berries above. The shadow it cast made Frost's skin look grey for a moment, and it frightened me.



"You heal gunshot wounds if the bullet goes through and through. You heal nonmagical blades. But Black Agnes was a night-hag and once a goddess. Is your wound of blade, or claw?"



Frost tried to take his hand back, but I wouldn't let him. Unless he wanted to be appear undignified, he couldn't break free. Our hands were covered in his blood, sticky and warm.



Doyle was at Frost's side. "How badly are you hurt?"



"We do not have time to tend my wounds," Frost said. He wouldn't look at Doyle, or any of us. He arranged his face in that arrogant mask, the one that made him impossibly handsome, and as cold as his namesake. But the terrible wounds on the right side of that face ruined the mask. It was like a chink in armor; he could not hide behind it.



"Nor do we have time to lose my strong right arm," Doyle said, "not if there is time to save it."



Frost looked at him, surprise showing through the mask. I wondered if Doyle had never, in all these long years, called Frost the strong right arm of the Darkness. The look on his face suggested so. And maybe it was as close as Doyle would come to apologizing for abandoning him to the fight with Agnes in order to save me. Had Frost thought Doyle left him behind on purpose?



A world of emotion seemed to pass between the two men. If they'd been human men, they might have exchanged some profanity or sports metaphor, which is what seems to pass for terms of deepest affection between friends. But they were who they were, and Doyle said, simply, "Remove enough weapons so we can see the wound." He smiled when he said it, because of all the guards Frost would be the one carrying the most weapons, with Mistral a distant second.



"Whatever you're going to do, do it fast," Rhys said.



We all looked at him, and then beyond him. The air boiled black, grey, white, and horrible. The hunt was coming toward us like a ribbon of nightmares. It took my eyes a moment to find Sholto on the island. He was a small, pale figure running - running full out - with that sidhe swiftness. But fast as he was, he wouldn't be fast enough - what chased him moved with the swiftness of birds, of wind, of water. It was like trying to outrun the wind; you just couldn't do it.



Doyle turned back to Frost. "Take off your jacket. I'll make a compress. We're not going to have time for more."



I glanced back toward the island. Sholto's guards, his uncles, tried to buy him time. They offered themselves as a sacrifice to slow the hunt. It worked, for a while. Some of that fearful boil of shapes slowed and covered them. I think I heard one of them scream over the high bird-like chittering of the creatures. But most of the wild hunt stayed on target. That target was Sholto.



He crossed the bridge and kept running. "Goddess help us," Rhys said, "he's coming here."



"He finally understands what he's called into being," Mistral said. "He runs in terror now. He runs to the only sanctuary he can see."



"We stand in the middle of four-leaf clovers, rowan, ash, and thorn. The wild hunt cannot touch us here," I said, but my voice was soft, and didn't hold the certainty I wished it had.



Doyle had ripped Frost's shirt away and torn Frost's own jacket into pieces small enough to be used as compresses.



"How bad is it?" I asked.



Doyle shook his head, pressing the cloth in an area that seemed to run under Frost's arm and into his shoulder. "Get us out of here, Meredith. I will tend Frost. But only you can get us out."



"The wild hunt will pass us by," I said. "We stand in the middle of things that they cannot pass through."



"If we were not its prey, then I would agree," Doyle said. He was trying to get Frost to lie down on the clover, but the other man was arguing. Doyle pressed harder on the wound, which made Frost draw a sharp breath. He continued, "But Sholto told us to run, if we were sidhe. He has conjured it to hunt us."



I started to turn away, but couldn't quite tear my eyes from Frost. Once he had been the Killing Frost: cold, frightening, arrogant, untouched, and untouchable. Now he was Frost, and he wasn't frightening, or cold, and I knew the touch of his body in almost every possible way. I wanted to go to him, to hold his hand while Doyle tended his wound.



"Merry," Doyle said, "if you do not get us out of here, Frost will not be the only one hurt."



I caught Frost's gaze. Pain, I saw there, but also something hopeful, or good. I think he liked that I was so worried about him. "Get us out, Merry," Frost said between gritted teeth. "I am fine."



I didn't call him a liar, but I did turn away so I couldn't watch. It would have distracted me too much, and I didn't have time to be weak.



"I need a door to the Unseelie Court." I said it clearly, but nothing happened.



"Try again," Rhys said.



I tried again, and again nothing happened.



"Sholto said No doors," Mistral said. "Apparently his word stands."



Sholto's feet had touched the edge of the field I'd made. He was only yards away from the first of the clover. The air above him was thick with tentacles and mouths and claws. I looked away from it, because I couldn't think while I was staring into it.



"Call something else," Abe said.



"What?" I asked.



It was Rhys who said, "Where rowan, ash, and thorn grow close together, the veil between worlds is thinner."



I looked up at the circle of trees that I'd called into being. Their branches had formed a lace of roof above us. They still hushed and moved above us the way the roses in the Unseelie Court moved, as if they had more life than an ordinary tree.



I began to walk the inside of the circle of trees, searching not with my hands, but with that part of me that sensed magic. Most human psychics have to do something to get themselves in the mood for magic, but I had to shield constantly not to be overwhelmed by it. Especially in faerie - there was so much of it that it became like the engine noise of some great ship, and you ceased to "hear" it after a while, though it was always there thrumming along your skin, making your bones vibrate to its rhythm.



I reached out from behind those shields and searched for a place in the trees that felt...thin. I couldn't look simply for magic; there was too much of it around me. Too much power flowing toward us. I needed to cast out for something more specific.



"The clover has slowed them," Mistral called.



This made me glance back, away from the trees. The cloud of nightmares rolled above the clover like a pack of hounds that had lost the scent.



Sholto just kept running, his hair flying behind him, the nude beauty of him beautiful in motion, like watching a horse run across a field. It was a beauty that transcended sex; simply beautiful for its own sake.



"Concentrate, Merry," Rhys said. "I'll help you look for a door."



I nodded and went back to looking only at the trees. They thrummed with power, inherently magical and invested with further power because they had been called into being by one of the oldest magicks.



Rhys called from across the clearing. "Here!"



I ran to him, the clover tapping at my legs and feet as if patting me with soft green hands. I passed Frost on the ground, where Doyle sat holding his wound. Frost was hurt, very hurt, but there was no time to help - Doyle would take care of him. I had to take care of us all.



Rhys was standing by a group of three of the trees that looked no different from the others, really. But when I put my hand out toward them, it was as if reality had been rubbed thin here, like a good-luck penny rubbed in your pocket.



"You feel it?" Rhys asked.



I nodded. "How do we open it?"



"You just walk through," Rhys said. He looked back at the others. "Everybody gather around. We need to walk through together."



"Why?" I asked.



He grinned at me. "Because naturally occurring doorways like this don't lead to the same place every time. It'd be bad if we were separated."



"Bad's one way of putting it," I said.



Doyle had to help Frost to his feet. Even so, he stumbled. Abe came and offered his shoulder to lean on, still grasping the horn cup in one hand, as if it was the most important thing in the world. It occurred to me then that the Goddess's chalice had gone back to wherever it went when it wasn't mucking about with me. I had never held on to it the way Abe did with his, but then, I had been afraid of its power. Abe wasn't afraid of his cup's power; he was afraid of losing it again.



Mistral was backing toward us. "Are we waiting for the Lord of Shadows or leaving him to his fate?"



It took me a second to realize he meant Sholto. I looked toward the lake. Sholto was almost here, almost to the tree line. The sky behind him was totally black, as if the father of all storms was about to break, except that instead of lightning there were tentacles, and mouths that shrieked.



"He can escape the same way," Rhys said. "The door won't close behind us."



I looked at him. "Don't we want it to?"



"I don't know if we can close it, but if we can, Merry, he would be trapped." There was a very serious look in his one eye - a measuring look. It was the look that I was beginning to dread from all the men. A look that said: The decision is yours.



Could I leave Sholto to die? He had called the wild hunt. He'd offered himself as prey. He'd trapped us here with his no doors. Did I owe him?



I looked at what chased him. "I couldn't leave anyone to that."



"So be it," Doyle said from beside me.



"But we can go through ahead of him," Mistral said. "We don't have to wait."



"You're sure he'll sense the door?" I asked.



Everyone answered at once. Mistral said, "Yes." Rhys said, "Probably." Doyle and Frost said, "I do not know." Abe just shrugged.



I shook my head and whispered, "Goddess guide me, but I can't leave him. I can still taste his skin on my mouth." I stepped in front of the men, closer to the farther edge of the trees. I yelled, "Sholto, we're leaving, hurry, hurry!"



He stumbled, fell in the clover, and rolled to his feet again in a blur of motion. He dived through the trees, and I thought he'd made it, but something long and white whipped around his ankle just before it cleared the magical circle. It caught him in that instant when his body was airborne, not touching the clover, not inside the trees. The tentacle tried to lift him skyward, but his hands reached desperately for the trees. He caught a limb with his hands, and he was left suspended, feet above the ground.



I was running forward before I had time to think. I don't know what I planned to do when I got there, but I didn't have to worry, because a blur of movement rushed past me. Mistral and Doyle were there before me.



Doyle had Frost's sword in his hands. He leapt into the air in an impossibly graceful arc, and cut the tentacle in two. I smelled ozone a second before lightning crashed from Mistral's hand. The lightning hit the cloud and seemed to bounce from one creature to another, illuminating them. It was too much light. I screamed and covered my eyes, but it was as if the images were carved inside my lids.



Strong hands were on mine, pulling my hands away from my eyes. I kept my eyes tight shut, and Doyle's deep voice came. "Clawing your eyes out won't help, Meredith. It's inside you now. You can't unsee it."



I opened my mouth and screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed. Doyle picked me up in his arms and started running toward the others. I knew Mistral and Sholto were behind us. Whimpers replaced my screams - I have no words for what I'd seen. They were things that should not have been. Things that could not have been alive, but they had moved. I had seen them.



If I had been alone, I would have fallen to the ground and shrieked until the wild hunt caught me. Instead I clung to Doyle and buried my nose and mouth against the curve of his neck, keeping my eyes fixed on the clover, and the trees, and my men. I wanted to replace the images that were burned inside me - it was as if I had to clean my eyes of the sight of the hunt. I breathed in the scent of Doyle's neck, his hair, and it helped calm me. He was real, and solid, and I was safe in his arms.



Rhys moved to help Abe with Frost. Doyle still had Frost's sword naked and bloody in his hand, held away from me. The blood smelled the way all blood smells: red, slightly metallic, sweet. If these creatures bled real blood, then they couldn't be what I had seen; they weren't nightmares. What I had seen in that lightning-kissed moment was nothing that would ever bleed real blood.



Doyle told Mistral to enter first, because we didn't know where the doorway led. The Storm Lord didn't argue, he just did what he was told. All of us, including Sholto, followed his broad back between the trees. One moment we were in the clover circle; the next we were in moonlight, at the edge of a snowbanked parking lot.