[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight (36 page)

CHAPTER 35

I WAS LEFT STARING DOWN AT ROYAL'S BODY. HE WAS ALIVE, BUT
only because a stomach wound takes longer to kill. The wood had gone so far into his stomach that a piece of it came out the other side, missing his spine by a hairsbreadth. I pressed the cloth on either side of that wound. Hafwyn cautioned me to be careful, and not move him. Not until they had someone with more healing than she had left in her hands.

Royal's sister, Penny, was at his side, her dress covered in blood. Her hands were too small to compress the wound, but her words were plenty big enough to rub the guilt like sandpaper across my heart.

“We came to you for wings, and you have given us death.” She threw herself onto her brother, yelling at me, “Evil, you are all evil. You have never brought us anything but humiliation and destruction.”

I couldn't argue with her, not with Royal's body pressed against my hands, his life bleeding away.

She tried to grab him up onto her lap, and that made him cry out in pain. Hafwyn interfered. “Penny, Penny, if you move him you injure him further.”

But Penny had let her grief and fear swallow her. There was no reasoning with her. It was one of the other uninjured demi-fey who came and dragged her away. She cried and struggled, and the crème-colored rat that had pulled their chariot followed her like a frightened dog. It had kept its distance from Royal, as if it didn't know quite what to do. But to her, it came, as if to help the other fey take her away.

Royal touched my hand with his, barely covering my knuckle with his entire hand. He was one of the tallest of the fey in the room, but tall is relative when your world is full of people who look like children's toys.

He gazed up at me with his black eyes, his face so pale he looked ghost-like. But his chest still rose and fell against my fingertips, his stomach still convulsed as he closed his eyes, face pinching tight, with a spasm of pain. I felt him struggle not to writhe as that pain lanced through him.

I said the only thing I had left to offer. “I'm sorry.” I didn't mean for this to happen, but I would not make excuses. Regardless, he was dead unless a fresh healer arrived within minutes.

I said it again. “I am sorry, Royal, I am so sorry.”

He actually smiled at me, and that made my heart hurt. “I have had a sidhe princess say sorry to me.” His face showed that pain again, and his body fought against my fingers.

“Don't talk,” I said. “Help is coming.”

He gave me a look, and it was eloquent. “There will be no help for me.” His voice fell to a whisper, so low that I had to lean in to catch his words. “Queen Niceven made me . . . surrogate. Let me taste your . . . lips and blood . . . just once. Before . . .” Another spasm took him, and this time he couldn't quite make himself hold still. He writhed with the pain, and that caused him more pain, until he screamed. Blood flowed faster around my fingers and the sodden rags. He was going to die in my hands, and I could do nothing to prevent it.

I tasted the salt of my tears before I knew I was crying.

His eyes fluttered open, but they had that glazed look to them, as if he was already seeing things that the living do not see.

His lips moved, but I could not hear him. I leaned into him again, and heard him sigh, “Kiss . . . me.”

I did what he asked, though I had never kissed lips so delicate. It wasn't until his lips brushed mine, like the caress of a tightly curled flower, that I felt his glamour. I had let my pity blind me to possibilities. Pity, and the fact that he was dying. You don't think of the dying wasting energy on sex. It was the most chaste of kisses, but his magic made it more.

His mouth pressed to my lower lip, and in that moment his glamour poured over my skin like water from a warm bath. I could not breathe through it, could not think, could not do anything but feel.

It was like an hour of foreplay in one small kiss. His hand touched my bare breast, and he bit my lip. The touch was so much more than that tiny hand should have been able to deliver, as if he caressed the front of my body with a hand as large as any man's. That small, sharp shock of pain was like the last thrust, the last lick, the last caress, for it spilled me over the edge and made me scream my pleasure into him. But it was as if his mouth were bigger. He were bigger. In that instant I would have sworn that I lay atop a full-sized lover, that the hands that touched me were another human or sidhe. That the body that I was pressed against was not only full-sized, but well-sized.

I forgot everything but the feel of his body under mine. His hands exploring me. His mouth feeding at mine. His body searching between my legs, trying to find my opening. I think I would have let his last glamour undo me, but a sharp pain stabbed into my side, and broke his magic. I came to myself lying atop him, as much as our differences in size would allow. The pain did not stop with his broken glamour. I tried to raise my body and the pain sharpened. I stared down the line of our bodies and found the tip of the wood in his middle had pierced my side.

Galen and Frost were there, trying to lift me up. I was about to tell them to stop when the wood came out. The wound was shallow, thank the Goddess, but I'd have to talk to them about looking before they moved me. None of them were used to dealing with someone who injured as easily as I did.

Galen called, “Hafwyn, Merry is hurt.”

“No,” I said, “it looks worse than it is. There are others who need her more than I.”

“You are the princess, and they are only demi-fey,” Ivi said.

I shook my head, as Galen cradled me in his arms, laying me on Ivi's cloak. “Doyle can heal it when he gets back,” I said.

“At least let Hafwyn look at it,” Galen said.

I nodded. “If she has time.”

Of course, she came immediately. She knelt and cleaned the blood away with the cloth and bowl of water that Kitto had fetched for her. She explored the wound, which hurt, and removed some splinters, which hurt more.

Galen let me squeeze his hand while she took the splinters out with her fingers. Where were sterile tweezers when you needed them? Galen smiled down at me, and said, “I didn't know you were this strong. What a grip.”

It made me smile, which was what he'd intended.

I caught a glimpse of Royal behind Hafwyn and Galen. The demi-fey lay utterly still, eyes closed. The hands that had caressed my body were limp on either side of him. I chased Hafwyn's hands away. “See to Royal.”

She looked puzzled. I realized she didn't remember his name. “Royal, the demi I was helping.”

Hafwyn went to Royal's body as I'd ordered. She started to lay hands on him, and his spine bowed upward, as if drawn by some invisible string. His breath came into his body in a great gasping rush. It left his body in a shriek that reverberated through the room. His scream was echoed by the other wounded. It was as if they were all having a fit.

“What's happening?” Frost asked.

Hafwyn shook her head. I don't think she knew either. Not good.

The small knot of uninjured demi-fey started forward, as if to try to help. Then they all fell to their knees and began to scream and writhe on the ground.

“Is it poison?” Adair raised his voice to be heard over them.

Hafwyn said, “I do not know, Goddess help me, but I do not know.”

The wounds spurted blood upward like a dozen crimson fountains. The demi-fey without wounds still writhed, and called out in pain, but they had no wounds for the blood to be called from. For that was what it looked like. It looked like some version of my own hand of blood. Except I was not doing it, and no one else had the power to do it.

Then blood burst out of all of them like some hand was punching through their wounds. The wood pieces were pushed out in a last burst of blood and screams. It was as if the flesh itself was rejecting the wood.

The piece that had nearly bisected Royal was one of the last to come out, for it was one of the largest and most deeply embedded.

“Is this healing them?” Frost asked, making his voice heard above the demi-fey's screams.

“I am not sure,” Hafwyn said. “I think so.”

Even knowing that, it was hard to watch. Then I discovered something else. Hafwyn had not found all the splinters in my own wound. Those tiny splinters that she had missed began to push their way out of my flesh.

Galen looked down at me. I think I squeezed his hand again. He looked a question at me, but I shook my head. If Hafwyn could do anything to help ease pain, it wasn't me who needed it.

Frost had a gun in one hand, and a sword in the other. Adair stood a little away from him, weapon out, as well. Ivi had moved to the other side of the room away from them, and he, too, stood with bared sword. He had a look so serious on him that it almost didn't look like him. They were covering the room. They were going on the idea that this might be an attack. I didn't think it was that kind of a problem, but they were the bodyguards and I was not. Besides, I was too busy gripping Galen's hand and trying not to scream.

Two tiny splinters had worked their way out, blood spurting out of the wound in my side. It felt as if a fist were trying to punch its way out. I fought not to scream, to simply hold on to Galen's hand, but I couldn't hold my body still while the magic tried to shove its way through my body.

Frost was there, kneeling. “Merry!”

Someone yelled for Hafwyn.

My other hand reached into the air, and Nicca grabbed it. I had a moment to cling to Galen and Nicca's hands, a moment when the pain pulled back, and it was as if the world drew a breath. The three of us knelt in a well of silence. Galen asked, “What is this?” Him, I could hear. “Magic,” Nicca said. Frost stood above us, looking for an enemy to strike down. Biddy was at his side, looking down at Nicca, but her sword was in her hand, too. They would guard me, but the kind of guarding we needed had nothing to do with swords. We needed better magicians, not better swordsmen.

The silence that held us seemed to swell out like a bubble until it burst. Then came the pain. It was as if a thousand fists were trying to shove themselves out through my body. It was as if every muscle was fighting to tear itself free of my bones. I was being ripped apart. I screamed, and fell back onto the floor. Other screams echoed mine, and the hands that I gripped convulsed tightly around mine. Through pain-narrowed eyes I saw Galen and Nicca collapsing with me, their mouths wide with screams.

Other screams joined ours; the demi-fey rolled on the ground, their tiny bodies bursting into a rain of blood as I watched. Then my own pain made me writhe so that I could only look up.

Blood gushed from the wound in my stomach. Blood sprayed out of Galen's arm. Nicca's shoulder turned into a fountain of blood. Then everything stopped, and it was so sudden, I thought I'd gone deaf. But then I heard small sounds of pain, and someone yelling, “Mother help us.”

Galen had collapsed on top of me, our hands still clasped. I still held Nicca's hand, but I couldn't see him past Galen's body.

Frost appeared above me. “Merry, can you hear me?”

It took me two tries to say yes, but the voice was someone else's, distant and dry.

Hands lifted Galen off me, but I wouldn't let them take his hand from mine. They didn't argue, but simply laid him down beside me, so that the three of us were on our backs, staring up at the ceiling. It was a woman's voice that said, “The little ones, look at the little ones.” There was something in her voice that made me turn my head, even though I was so tired.

Royal was closest to us. He had rolled over onto his side, curled around his stomach, curled around his pain. But there was something on his back. I had to blink hard to understand what I was seeing. Tiny crumpled wings were unfurling on his back. They were wet with blood, but they grew larger as I watched, expanding with every beat of Royal's heart.

“They have wings,” Hafwyn said, “they all have wings.”

Ivi was kneeling at our feet. “Look at your stomach.”

I was almost afraid to look, afraid of what I would find. But it was just a moth, exactly where the wound had been. A beloved underwing moth just like the wings that were tearing their way out of Royal's back. It was only when Ivi moved to touch it that I realized it wasn't on me, but in me. The moth was embedded in my skin.

I didn't have time to be afraid, or horrified, or anything. The world went away in a swirl of dimming vision, and finally darkness. There were no visions, no manifestations. There was nothing but blessed oblivion.

CHAPTER 36

I WOKE, BLINKING UP INTO A CANOPY AS BLACK AS THE DARKNESS
that had sucked me under. Black material was held in graceful folds on dyed black wood. I thought, almost idly, that it looked like the queen's bed. Fear speared through me in a fine, breath-stealing rush. It was never good to wake up here.

I must have moved my hand more than I thought because I brushed someone's arm. It made me jump and look to the center of the bed.

Galen lay, eyes still closed, face peaceful. He was still nude, as were we all. For Nicca lay on the other side of Galen. That the three of us were naked in her bed did not make me feel one bit better.

I looked out at her room, and it was completely black except for a fire in a large metal brassier in the center of the room. Why were the walls without light? Where was the light of the sithen?

Something moved in that blackness, and I tensed, expecting it to be the queen, but there was no flash of her white skin. I knew who it was before he stepped into the amber glow of the firelight. Doyle in a cloak as black as the rest of him passed in the outer glow of the fire's light to glide toward the bed.

“Doyle.” I didn't even try to keep the relief from my voice.

“How do you feel?” His deep voice rumbled and the very sound of it lessened the panic that still fluttered in my pulse.

“Fine. Why are we here?”

“Because the queen willed it,” he said.

I did not like that answer. It sped my pulse again. Someone laughed in the dark. I choked on the panic of my own heartbeat. I felt Galen tense beside me, and knew he was awake, but he did not move. He very carefully did not let anyone else know he had woken. I did not give him away, but I knew that feigning sleep would not help him.

The laugh came again, and I knew it wasn't the queen. My pulse slowed enough that I could breathe around it. “Who else is here?”

There was movement in the farthest corner of the room. I caught a glimpse of pale hair, pale skin, a white cloak. The figure was so pale, the room so dark, that it was almost as if the figure materialized from that darkness like a ghost. Though I knew he was not.

The glint of firelight made me certain of who it was. “Ivi,” I said, and was not happy. He had scared me.

“Why unhappy to see me, Princess? I did offer up my cloak to guard your body.”

“Why sit in the corner? And what was funny?”

“To see the fear on your face at waking here. I sat in the dark, because I am too pale to hide closer to the fire.” The smile was gone by the time he came to stand at the foot of the bed. He leaned a shoulder against the big carved bedpost, huddling the cloak around him as if he was cold. His pale hair with its decoration of vines and leaves was trapped inside the cloak, so that it made a sort of hood around his face of his own hair.

“Where is everyone else?” I asked.

“Recruiting,” Ivi said.

Galen raised enough to look at them both. He was lying on his stomach. “Stop being so closemouthed and just tell us what has happened while we slept.” He sounded angry where I had sounded afraid.

I heard the door to the queen's bathroom open, before I saw by the fire's glow that it was Rhys in the doorway. He, too, was wearing a cloak around his body so that only his face and hair were bare to the dim light. “You've missed lots,” Rhys said. He looked tired.

He came to stand beside the bed a little ahead of Ivi at his corner.

“So much in fact,” Doyle said, “that I am not certain where to begin.”

“Why doesn't that make me feel better?” Galen asked.

“He didn't mean it to make us feel better,” Nicca said. “He's being the Darkness, all dour and frightening.”

I started to sit up, and something moved on my stomach. I jumped, and looked down, and found that I hadn't dreamed it. There was a moth on me, exactly where the wound had been. I stayed propped on one elbow, and reached cautiously to touch its upper wings, all charcoal grey and black. It flicked its wings at me, as if irritated by the touch, flashing the bright red and black underwings, like blood and darkness turned to glitter. Its wings brushed against my stomach, and I swore I felt something more solid inside me. I reached toward it again, for the head with its feathery antennae. It didn't react until I touched it, then it flicked its wings again, but it also struggled a little. I felt it move inside me because the lower half of the body was embedded in my flesh.

I drew my fingers back, and I had the color of its wings on my fingertips, as if I'd touched a real moth. “What in the name of Danu is that?”

“It will not last, Merry,” Doyle said. “It will become like a drawing on your skin.”

“You mean like a tattoo?” I asked.

“Something like that,” he said.

“How long will it keep moving like that?” I asked.

“A few hours,” he said.

“You say that like you've seen this happen before.”

“He has.” Nicca propped himself up on one elbow, turning his body to face me. He had a white flower in the hollow between his shoulder and chest, startling against his deep brown skin. The flower had a yellow center and five petals raised above his skin, but the stem was lost in his flesh. Like the moth in me, the flower was alive, but embedded in his skin.

Galen rolled over onto his side and let me see his right arm. Just below the shoulder was a butterfly so large it took up all the width of his arm. Its yellow-and-black-striped wings folded back around his arm as the butterfly flexed, gentle and unhurried, as if it were feeding from some sweet-nectared flower.

“It doesn't seem to be afraid that it's trapped,” he said.

I stared down at the moth on my own body. “No, they should be panicking, trying to free themselves. Why aren't they?”

“They are not real,” Doyle said.

“They are real,” Nicca said.

Doyle frowned, but gave a quick nod. “Perhaps ‘real' is not the correct word. They are not free animals that would mourn their captivity.”

I touched the moth's wings again, and it flicked them at me. Leave me alone, it was saying as clearly as it could. The sensation of having something alive wriggling inside me made my stomach roll uneasily. The more I touched the wings, the more irritated the moth became. I lay back against the pillows, closing my eyes and breathing around the sensation of it.

“Can you feel its legs inside you?” Galen's voice didn't sound any happier than my stomach felt.

“Yes,” I said.

“It's not a good feeling,” he said.

I opened my eyes and looked into his face. He looked a little greener than usual.

“Stop trying to pet them and they won't struggle,” Rhys said.

I stared at the black, red, grey, and even white that was smeared across my fingers. “What are these things?”

“They are the beginning of tattoos,” Doyle said, “marks of power.”

I stared up at him. “You mean the tattoos that the sidhe once had? They were more like birthmarks, weren't they?”

“Some are born with the marks upon them, but many are not.”

“Most of us acquire the marks as we enter our power in adolescence, or even adulthood,” Rhys said.

“I remember my father telling me that our tattoos were why our people painted themselves for battle. The mark of their deity to protect them.”

“Once, long ago,” Doyle said, “the marks on their bodies did protect our followers. Protected them better than any armor, for it was a conduit to the power of the sidhe they invoked.”

I realized that Doyle was talking to me like he used to, distant and formal. Was it Ivi's presence that had made him distance himself, or had something else happened?

“We were their gods,” Rhys said.

“We were not gods,” Doyle said, and his voice went lower with anger. “We thought we were gods, but when the gods themselves departed, we learned otherwise.” He stared out into the darkness, as if he saw things long ago and far away. “They stripped for battle, painted themselves with our symbols, and were slaughtered because we no longer had the power to save them.”

“A stubborn lot, the Celts,” Ivi said. “They kept painting themselves long after it stopped working.” He sounded wistful.

“They thought they had done something to make themselves unworthy,” Doyle said, “so they strove to become worthy again.” He turned away, gave me only the braid that trailed down his dark cloak. “We were the ones who were unworthy.”

“All right, that's it,” I said. “Why is Doyle beating himself up like this? What did I miss?”

“He's pouting,” Rhys said.

Doyle turned his head, just enough to give Rhys a look that would have made most people run screaming. “I am not pouting.”

Rhys grinned at him. “Yes, you are. You're pouting because the marks of power are on Galen and Nicca's bodies, and not yours. Two of us who never had the tattoos to begin with, and now they have the first ones, and we don't.” The grin had faded by the time he got to the end.

“I don't remember being told that it hurt to get the marks. I thought they just appeared.”

“Some did,” Rhys said, “but for the first few of us to gain them, it was bloody, and it hurt like hell.”

The three of us agreed.

“You were one of the first to gain the marks?” Doyle asked, not angry now, but looking at him.

Rhys nodded. “Cromm Cruach is only the last of my names, not the first, Doyle.”

Then Doyle asked something that was very unsidhe, very rude. “Who were you before Cromm Cruach?” The older sidhe never asked that of anyone. It was too painful a reminder of lost glories.

“Darkness, you know better than to ask that,” Rhys said.

Doyle actually bowed. “I am sorry, forgive me. It's just . . .” He made a frustrated noise. “I see power given to everyone, but I remain as I have been.”

“Are you jealous?” Rhys asked.

Doyle hunched inside his cloak, then gave a nod. “I believe I am. Not just of Merry, but of the magic, too.” Saying it out loud seemed to make him feel better, or clear his head. For he shook himself like a dog coming out of water, and he turned a more peaceful face to me.

“Most of the tattoos were like my wings. They appeared at birth,” Nicca said.

The comment made me turn to him, because I realized what I'd missed. “Where are your wings?”

He rolled over and let me see them. I expected them to be the tattoo I'd always known on his back, but they weren't. They were raised above his body like the flower, touchable and real, but lying flat now, as if they were but a step away from the tattoo they had once been.

“Are they going back to being a tattoo?” I asked.

“Maybe,” Rhys said.

“They don't know,” Nicca said.

“Have you both been awake longer than I have?” I asked.

“No,” Galen said, “but we didn't pass out as soon.”

I leaned up, very carefully, against the headboard. The moth flicked its wings, giving me a sudden flash of color, then settled back to its black and grey upper wings. Underwing moths, when at rest, try to blend in with tree bark. It wasn't the moth's fault that, trapped against the whiteness of my skin, it was very visible. It felt unnerving enough for the moth to move just a little. One of my new goals in life was not to scare it. I did not want to feel it truly struggle. I was very afraid that if it did, I might be quite sick. If a princess is not allowed to show fear, then nausea is completely out. Too unseemly.

Doyle seemed to understand my difficulty, because he helped me prop pillows under my back and head, so I could sit up and see the room, but not bend too much at the stomach. “How are Royal and the rest?” I asked.

“Your demi-fey is fine, though he is the only one who would not leave even to clean off the blood. He insisted that he stay and see you were well.”

I looked out into the darkened room. “Is he here?”

“Outside by the door with Adair and Hawthorne.”

Ivi wrapped his arm around the bedpost, showing a pale line of flesh. I realized that he must have been nude after he gave me his cloak, but I hadn't truly noticed when the room was full of blood and bodies. “He called you his white and red goddess.” Ivi managed both to make a joke of it, and make it not funny at all. A smile with serious eyes.

“I am no one's goddess,” I said.

“I don't know,” Ivi said, wrapping more of himself around the bedpost, so that only the wood kept me from seeing all of him. “We sidhe have been worshipped for less.”

“Long ago,” Doyle said, “and far from here.”

Ivi shrugged. “We were in the land of faerie then, and we are in the land of faerie now. That is not so far, Darkness.”

“Where is everyone else?” I asked.

“Kitto and Frost and a few others have gone to fetch food for you all,” Doyle said.

“Galen's comment about no one going anywhere alone.” Rhys shrugged. “It was smart, so the new rule is three of us together at all times.”

“We don't have enough men for that,” I said.

“We do now,” Rhys said.

I frowned at him. “I don't understand.”

“The queen agreed that we needed more than just the green men,” he said.

“So why is the room so empty?” I asked.

“We aren't enough company?” Galen asked.

I smiled at him. “It's not that, it's just that if everyone's here, I know they're safe.”

“Why did we get winged insects and Nicca got a flower?” Galen asked.

“He already has wings,” Rhys said. He moved when he said it, and I got a glimpse of something under his cloak.

“Is that a sling?” I asked.

He let the cloak fall open, and his right arm was in a sling.

“What happened?”

“First, we discovered that time is only running odd for us. Outside of our faerie mound time is creeping so slowly that the police probably haven't even gotten back to their lab yet.”