“Perhaps,” Doyle said.
“We can’t leave the puppy in with him, it’s not housebroken,” I said.
“It’s his puppy, Merry.”
“Do you know what kind of dog it is?”
“As you said, a hound.”
“The other two dogs are guard dogs; what can a puppy do?” Frost asked.
The puppy gave a contented sigh, and Alastair made a similar happy sound. “Maybe every boy needs a dog,” Doyle said.
“Did you have one when you were little?” I asked.
He smiled. “I did.”
I frowned at him. “What kind of dog?”
He shook his head. “Let’s say it was a present from one of my aunts.”
Since two of his aunts had been hellhounds, with no human form, I had to ask, “Are you saying that one of your cousins was your puppy?”
He smiled. “Dog was my other form; think of it as more a best friend than a boy’s dog.”
I looked down at our son and the “puppy.” “Are you saying that Alastair will be able to shapeshift?”
“I do not know, but let him keep the puppy, and we’ll see. It was once one of my symbols.” I knew he was referring to the fact that once he had been the god Nodens, a healing deity known for having dogs at his sanctuary that could lick a wound and heal it, among other things.
“Magical dogs; I assumed the dog was you, but you’re saying …”
“I was not the only dog in my temples,” he said.
We looked back down at our son and the puppy. The Cu Sith had lain down in front of Bryluen’s crib, and the galleytrot had done the same to Gwenwyfar’s.
My hounds bumped me and I stroked their silky heads. Spike put his head into the crib and sniffed both the baby and the puppy. It opened sleepy eyes and licked his nose. Spike rose back up and “smiled” at us, tongue out, so that he lost all his dignity and looked like the big, goofy hound he could be at times.
“Spike approves,” I said.
“He does,” Doyle said, smiling.
“He’s your son,” Frost said, sounding pleased.
Doyle took his hand in his and said, “Our son.”
Frost’s whole face lit up with the happiness of that shared phrase. “Our son,” he said.
I moved so that I could wrap my arms around both their waists, and we hugged my two men and me. There were other men in my life, and I loved them, but these were the two who made my heart sing the most. If I’d been human enough, I might have felt guilty about that, but I wasn’t, and I didn’t; it was just the truth of my heart.
Kitto petted the puppy and kissed the baby, then put the side of the crib back up. “Good night, little prince.”
We left the babies to sleep content with their new protectors, and new best friends, because Doyle was right; every child needs a dog.
TWO MORNINGS LATER
I woke to magic breathing and prickling along my skin. I had a moment of staring into the darkened bedroom and then Frost had me around the waist and was lifting me out of the bed, holding me one-armed behind him, while he pointed a sword at the other side of the bed. I gripped his arm where he held me, but I couldn’t see the threat around his body, and where was Doyle? Why wasn’t he with us?
Frost said, “Doyle, Doyle, it’s me, it’s your Killing Frost, and our Merry.”
A low, deep growl came from the other side of the room. It was a sound to raise the hair on your neck and tighten your body, ready for fight or flight.
“Doyle, do you know me? I am your lieutenant, your right hand, your Frost, do you not know me?” Frost’s voice got lower as he spoke, a gentling voice.
The deep, bass growl came again, and I knew in that moment that Doyle was in the room with us. He was just in his dog form, a black dog the size of a small pony.
“Doyle,” I said, softly, hesitantly.
He growled again.
Frost leaned ever so slightly so my feet could touch the floor and he could turn himself full toward the threat that was our dearest love. He spoke very carefully as if he were afraid to even move his mouth too much. “Very slowly, we back to the door. When we reach the door, turn the knob carefully, and open the door slowly.”
“No sudden movement,” I whispered.
“Yes,” he said.
The door started opening behind us, and I hissed, “Stop.”
It was Usna’s voice that said, “What is that?”
“Doyle,” I whispered, because I knew that he would hear me. Usna’s mother had been cursed into cat form, and it had left him with a lot of very feline traits, including calico-colored hair and skin and extremely good hearing, especially for higher-pitched noises, like women’s voices.
“Why is he threatening you?”
“Hush. Usna, when I say so, open the door and grab Merry through,” Frost said carefully as he backed us closer to the now partially opened door. He changed our angle slightly to take advantage of the crack in the door.
“What about you?” I asked.
“I will come with you, but your safety is all.”
I wasn’t sure I agreed with that, but if Frost was actually going to have to fight Doyle in his hellhound/phouka form I wasn’t sure I could bear to watch. Why was Doyle still stalking us, growling? It was like a nightmare, and then I had an idea.
“He’s dreaming,” I said.
“What?” Frost asked, moving us agonizingly slowly closer to the door.
“Doyle is dreaming. He’s not awake.”
From the other side of the door, Usna said, “You mean he’s sleepwalking?”
“Yes.”
“He has never done that before,” Frost said, and that meant in centuries of friendship Doyle had never done such a thing, so why now?
“The king trapped me in dream,” I said. We were almost to the side of the opening. I touched Frost’s bare back gently, changing our angle slightly to leave room for Usna to open the door wide enough for us both to escape.
“You escaped,” Frost whispered.
“I had to fight, and my father’s sword came to me.”
“And we had to prevent you from attacking us with it,” he said, slowly.
“Shit,” Usna said.
“Yes,” Frost said.
That evil, frightening growl echoed along my spine, much closer this time. We had to wake Doyle, but how? What had brought me back to myself?
“You and Doyle touching me brought me back.”
“If you’re close enough to touch,” Usna said, “you’ll be too close.”
I agreed, but … I peeked around Frost’s body to see the great black dog. It took a moment for my eyes to distinguish it from the darkness of the room, and then it moved, and I could see the shape of the great beast like a piece of the night formed into something of muscle and skin and fur, and a slow, thundering growl. It stepped one paw closer, and the light from the door fell on it. The paw was bigger than my hand. Its lips curled back and teeth gleamed in the light from the hallway behind us.
I moved slightly out from behind Frost, and said, “Doyle, it’s me, your Merry.”
“Do not …” Frost began, and then the dog rushed toward us from less than four feet away, and there was no time for words.
FROST HAD A
naked sword in his hand; he could have run the dog through, but he didn’t, and the great black shape smashed into him, driving them both against the door and slamming it shut with us trapped inside.
Usna was yelling and pounding at the door. Other voices were joining his, but they couldn’t help us, not in time. Frost’s hands were holding the dog’s throat, keeping those huge, snapping jaws from his face, but even as I watched, the jaws got closer to him.
If it had been some monster sent by Taranis to kill us, I would have picked up one of the many guns in the room and shot it, but it was Doyle, and lead bullets can kill the fey, all of the fey, even the sidhe. I stood there like some helpless princess from one of those foolish stories, and watched the men I loved most locked in a death struggle.
I cursed under my breath and moved toward the bed and my weapons that were still in their nighttime sheaths on the headboard. Frost had moved me too fast for me to grab either my gun or my sword, and I needed one of them. I could wound Doyle to save Frost; I wasn’t sure I could kill him to do the same, but maybe lead would break this evil spell.
I moved slowly, not sure if it would attract the great dog, but he was too intent on killing Frost to notice me. I stopped going slow and bounced onto the bed, crawling toward my weapons.
Every hair on my body stood to attention; I smelled ozone, like before a close lightning strike, and had a second to throw myself flat to the bed before the lightning crashed through the upper part of the door and over my head, missing me by inches and leaving me gasping and stunned.
There was a hand on my back, another stroking my hair. Doyle’s voice came like a human version of that deep growl, so low it could make me shiver in happy anticipation, but this time it was relief. He was human again, ours again.
“Merry, are you hurt? Did we hurt you?”
I started to say no, but realized I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think so, but it wasn’t until I propped myself up on my elbows, with his hands still petting me, that I was confident enough to say, “No, I’m fine, just frightened.”
“I am so sorry.” Mistral crawled onto the bed, coming to my side. He was dressed in modern body armor over a black T-shirt. Leather biker pants with extra padding clung to his lower body, spilling into boots that matched them. Since his powers of lightning had returned he couldn’t wear his centuries-old metal armor, not and use his major hand of power. His gray hair spilled over his face like clouds to match the smell of lightning that still clung to him and the room.
Doyle turned on him. “You are all strong enough to break a modern door easily; why didn’t you try that before you nearly killed Merry?”
His eyes were the sickly green of tornado skies as he looked at the other man. “Doors were stouter things once; I have been on the wrong side of doors that I could not break open without magic.”
“Did you even try?”
The green in Mistral’s eyes began to swirl with anxiety like clouds do before a storm. “No,” he admitted.
“It’s all right, Mistral,” I said.
“It is not all right,” Doyle growled, and his voice still held the bass growls of the great black dog. It made me look at him, as if I needed my eyes to confirm that he hadn’t changed back, but he was still there: tall, dark, handsome, and very human. But I reached out to take his hand in mine; I needed the touch of his skin against mine to be certain what was real.
“I’m not hurt, Doyle,” I said, shaking his hand in mine.
Frost came to his knees beside the bed. “Alas, I am.”
I kept Doyle’s hand, but I sat up to see my other love. The front of his body was covered in blood. I let go of Doyle and slid to the floor beside him. “What happened?”
“I happened,” Doyle said.
I glanced up at him, and then down at Frost’s bloody body. “But how?”
“People think only cats have claws; dogs will cut you up while you keep them from biting your throat out,” Usna said, rubbing one hand down the white, red, and black skin of his arm, as if remembering some old wound. His gray eyes were the most human thing about him and most of his face was as white a skin as Frost’s and my own, but the edge of his face and neck were patterned with the same red and black spots, as if he’d been the cat his mother had been at his birth. I’d never asked if Usna had been born a kitten or a baby; it had never occurred to me to wonder until that moment.
I turned back to Frost and realized Usna was right. He’d been ripped in great bloody furrows from midchest to thighs; even his arms were marked up, though the worst was his chest, shoulders, and one leg. It took me a moment to realize he’d thrown a knee and thigh up over his groin to keep the great claws from tearing up such tender bits.
“I’ve sent for a healer,” Usna said.
Doyle knelt on the other side of him. “I am so sorry, Frost.”
“What happened to trap you in your dreams?” Frost asked, in a voice that held a hint of pain, which meant it hurt even more than I thought, otherwise he’d have hidden it better.
“Nightmares, and it was the Lord of Dreams … I guess, King of Dreams now.”
“Taranis,” I whispered.
“Yes,” Doyle said.
“Two nights ago he attacked Merry, tonight you; we must find a way to keep him out of our dreams,” Frost said.
“Agreed,” Doyle said.
“But how?” I asked.
No one answered me, but my cell phone went off. I jumped and scrambled to get it from the bedside table, because it was Rhys’s ring, and he was in charge of security while we slept tonight.
“Tell Mistral to control his anxiety,” Rhys said with no hello.
“What?” I asked.
“There’s a funnel cloud forming in the air about half a block away. It came out of a clear California night, so tell the storm god to calm down or our neighbors are really going to hate us.”
“Shit,” I said.
“Yes, now tell him to control himself, now!”
I told Mistral what Rhys had said, but even as I spoke the sickly storm green of his anxious eyes began to fill with movement, and I heard the first crack of thunder above us.
“Control yourself, Mistral,” Doyle ordered.
“I am trying, but it’s been centuries since I had the weather react to me. I’m out of practice.”
Rhys yelled on the phone, “Tell him to practice fast—the tail of the funnel is reaching for the first house.”
“Mistral!” I said.
“I’m trying!” His eyes were full of wind and storm.
THE MEN WERE
yelling at him, Doyle was ordering him. Mistral stood there, big hands clenched into fists; the effort of controlling his magic showed in the muscles in his arms as if stopping the storm had weight that he needed to lift with his body and not just his mind.
I went to him and touched his arm. It made him startle and look down at me with wide eyes. I could see the storm in his irises like tiny movie screens so that I saw the funnel cloud begin to reach for the earth below.
Someone said, “Let him concentrate, Merry.”
“We need fair weather,” I said, and went up on tiptoe, touching the side of Mistral’s neck, and he bent toward me, hands still in tight fists; as he bent lower I was able to slide my hands around his neck, touch his face, and stare into the wonder of Mistral’s eyes.