Swallowing Darkness (31 page)

Dawson stopped me from taking the lead, and put some of his men in a line of guns pointing at the wounded sidhe. Jonty stayed at my side, and the Red Caps came at our backs. I started to say that we should put the Red Caps in front. They were a lot harder to kill than humans, but we were almost there. I didn’t want to do anything to delay touching Doyle. In that moment, I was not a leader of men, I was a woman who wanted the man she loved. In that moment, I understood that love is as dangerous as hate. It will make you forget, make you weak. I did not push the soldiers aside and run for Doyle. That took all the control I had left. Beyond that, there was nothing but the fear that crushed my chest tight, and the ache in my hands to touch his skin. If he were dead, I wanted to touch him while his skin still felt like him. A body doesn’t feel like your loved one once it grows cold. It’s like touching a doll. No, I have no words for what it feels like to touch someone you love once their body has given up its warmth. All the wonderful memories of my father, and the one that haunts is his skin under my hands, cold and unyielding with death. I did not want my last touch of Doyle to be like that. I prayed as we closed that distance. I prayed for him to be alive, but something made me pray for warmth too. Did that mean I already knew the truth? Did that mean he was already gone, and I was simply bargaining for what that last caress would be like?

There was a pressure building inside my head, pushing at my eyes. I would not cry, not yet. I would not shed tears when he might still live. Please, Goddess, please, Mother, let him be alive.

The wounded sidhe cried out, “Mercy, mercy on us, Princess. We followed our prince, as we would follow you.”

I didn’t answer, because I simply didn’t care. I knew they had betrayed me, and they knew I knew it. They were painting the best picture they could because we had filled them with bullets, had injured them until they could not flee. Their queen and their prince had left them to my mercy. They had nothing else to count on but the possibility that I was my father’s daughter. He would have spared them; such gestures of mercy were what made everyone love him. His mercy was also the thing his assassin had most likely used to lure him to his death. In that moment, for the first time, I saw my father’s mercy as weakness.

“Move away from Doyle,” I said, and my voice was choked with emotion. That I could not help. I wanted to run to him, to throw myself on him, but my enemies were too close. If Doyle were dead, then my death and the death of our children would not bring him back. If he still lived, then a few minutes of caution would not change that. Part of me screamed inside, hurry, hurry, but there was a larger part of me that was strangely calm. I felt icy, and somehow not quite myself. Something about tonight had stolen me away, and left a colder, wiser stranger in her place.

My father once said that as a ruler shapes a country, so the people of a country shape a ruler. The nobles on the ground, who were crawling, limping, and dragging their wounded away from Doyle’s still form, had helped bring me to this cold stranger. We would see how cold my heart would stay.

Jonty said, “Princess Meredith, we would protect you from their magic.”

I nodded.

“We are protecting the princess,” Dawson said.

“They can put their bodies between me and the hands of power of the nobles here. They would kill or maim you, but Red Caps are a tougher lot, Sergeant. They can be our shields.”

Dawson looked up at the towering figures. “You’ll be our meat shields?”

Jonty seemed to think about it, then nodded.

Dawson glanced at me, then shrugged as if to say, “If they’re willing to take the hit, better them than my men.”

“Okay” was what he said out loud.

The Red Caps moved around us so that they shielded both me and the soldiers. The humans were a little nervous, and several of them asked, “They’re on our side, right?”

Dawson and I assured them that, yes, Jonty and the rest were on our side. I wasn’t as reassuring as I might have been, because most of my attention was on the glimpses of Doyle that I kept getting as everyone moved around us. In that moment, I wasn’t sure I cared about anything, or anyone else. My world had narrowed down to that spill of black hair on the frost-rimmed grass.

My hands tingled with the need to touch him, long before Dawson and Jonty felt that it was safe. Finally, the way was clear, and I was able to hold up the leather skirt and run to him. I collapsed beside him, the skirt protecting me from the winter-rough grass. I reached for him, then hesitated. It seemed ridiculous that a moment before all I had wanted was to touch him, and now that I could, I was afraid. I was so afraid I could barely breathe through the tightness in my throat. My heart couldn’t decide if it was beating too fast, or forgetting to beat, so that my chest hurt with it. I knew that it was the beginning of a panic attack, not a heart attack, but a tiny part of me wasn’t sure I cared which it was. If he was dead, and Frost was lost, then….

I fought my breathing until it came more smoothly. I fought until my breath was deeper, more even. I would not lose control of myself. Not in front of the men. Later, in private, if….

I cursed myself for a coward and made myself reach out those last few inches to that long, black hair. The hair was thick and rich and perfect as it moved under my hands, so I could find his neck, and check his pulse. My fingers brushed something hard. I moved back and stared at the smooth line of his neck, exposed to the moonlight. There was nothing there but the collar of the designer suit that Doyle had borrowed from Sholto.

I shook my head and reached for his neck again. My eyes told me I was touching skin, but my fingers told me there was something in the way. Something hard, but cloth-covered, something…. There was only one reason that my eyes and my fingers weren’t telling me the same thing.

I fought down the first flutter of hope, squashed it flat, and had to calm myself for a very different reason. Positive emotions can blind you as surely as negative ones. I had to see the truth, had to touch the truth, whatever it might be.

I closed my eyes, for they were what was being fooled. I reached for the side of his neck, and found that hard cloth again. With my eyes closed, I could feel it better, because my sight wasn’t arguing with my sense of touch. I pushed past whatever piece of clothing it was, and found the neck. The moment I touched the skin, I knew it wasn’t Doyle. The skin texture wasn’t his. I searched for the big neck pulse, and found none. Whoever was under my fingertips was dead; still warm, but dead.

I kept my eyes closed and moved my hands upward, to find very short hair, and the roughness of the beginnings of stubble, and a face that was not the face I loved. It was illusion, really good illusion, but in the end, it was magic, not reality.

I had a moment of relief so complete that I half fell onto the body. It wasn’t Doyle. He wasn’t dead. I let myself collapse onto the body. I hugged it to me, my hands searching for the uniform, the weapons they hadn’t even bothered to remove. Such disdain, such arrogance.

Dawson knelt on one side of me, and Jonty came to the other. “I am so sorry, Princess Meredith,” Dawson said, touching my back.

“The Darkness was a great warrior,” Jonty said in his deep voice.

I shook my head, pushing myself up from the body. “It’s not him. It’s not Doyle. It’s an illusion.”

“What?” Dawson said.

“Then why are you crying?” Jonty asked.

I hadn’t even realized I was crying, but he was right. “Relief, I think,” I said.

“Why are they holding the glamour in place to make it look like Darkness?” Jonty asked.

Until that moment I hadn’t thought about it, but he was absolutely right. Why would they not drop an illusion guaranteed to make me angrier at them if they were truly giving up? Answer: they weren’t giving up, and they hoped to gain something through the trick. But what?

Jonty helped me to my feet, his hand so large that it encircled my upper arm with his hand almost in a fist, as if he could have wrapped his hand around me over and over.

He kept moving me over the frozen ground away from the glamour-hidden body. “What’s wrong?” Dawson asked.

“Mayhap nothing, but I do not like it.”

I started to say “Jonty,” but never got it out. It wasn’t the sound of the bomb that hit first; it was the physical push of the explosion. The rush of energy hit us before the sound so that we had a moment of being hit. Then Jonty was cradling me, hiding me against his body, and only then did the sound hit, a sound that rocked the world and deafened me. It was like getting hit twice by something huge and angry. I’d heard stories that giants could be invisible, and this was like that. It seemed wrong that something so powerful could be so unseen. That something so destructive could be merely chemicals and metal. There was something so alive about it, as it drove us to the ground, and smashed the world around us.

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

THERE WERE VOICES. SCREAMS, CRIES FOR HELP. I COULD SEE
nothing, but I could hear them. There was something on top of me, something heavy. I found that I had hands, arms, and could push at the weight on top of me, but I could not move it. But the more I pushed at it, tried to turn my head against it, the more I began to realize what I was pushing at. Cloth, and under the cloth flesh; I was pushing at someone. Someone was on top of me, someone large and heavy, and…Jonty.

I whispered his name, still trapped in the darkness underneath him. His broad chest was so wide that I could see nothing but the dimness of his body. The ground underneath me was solid, and the frost on the grass was already beginning to melt, which meant that Jonty and I had lain here long enough for our body heat to begin to warm the ground. How long had we lain here? How much time had passed? Who was screaming for help? It wasn’t the Red Caps. They would not scream. The soldiers, the human soldiers, it had to be them. Oh, Goddess, help me help them. Don’t let them die like this. Don’t let them die for me. It seemed so unfair.

I braced against the ground, and pushed with all my might. Jonty’s weight moved a little higher, but that was it. I had a moment of hope, then the weight simply did not move anymore. But warm liquid ran down my hands, and began to soak into my sleeves. The blood was still warm. That was good. Either it was his blood, and he was still alive enough for it to be warm, or it was his magical blood from his hat, and the fact that it was flowing at all meant he was still alive. I could see a thin line of moonlight. It was still night. My arms began to tremble, then finally collapse. I tried to keep the weight from crushing me, but other than that, I was trapped. The blood began to trickle down the side of my face, like a warm creeping finger. The darkness seemed thicker for that bit of brightness I’d seen.

The blood trickled down the side of my neck. I fought the urge to wipe at it, since I couldn’t reach it anyway. It was just blood. Blood wasn’t bad, and it was warm, and that was good. I fought to calm my pulse; panicking would not help me. I used what little movement I had with my hands to search for Jonty’s heartbeat. I was much lower than his heart, though. I could not reach high enough to touch his heart. Was there another pulse point close to my hands? Was there any way for me to tell if he was still alive?

If I couldn’t reach higher, could I reach lower? There was a big pulse point on the inner groin. The femoral artery was as good as the carotid in the neck, it was just usually too intimate to use. But, under the circumstances, I didn’t think Jonty would mind.

I inched my hand down the side of my body until I found the joint of his hip, then I traced inward, fighting against the weight and the sheer bulk of him. Since I couldn’t see anything but the darkness of him above me, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my fingers, on what I was feeling.

My fingers found something softer than his thigh, which meant I was close to the artery. I moved my fingers down a little and to the side. As I pushed my way lower, his body reacted to my touch. What had been large and soft was becoming less soft. Did that mean that Jonty was alive? I tried to remember what I knew of the freshly dead. I knew that death sometimes made you have one last orgasm, but was this that, or was the quickening of his body against my wrist a sign that he was alive? I couldn’t remember if any professor or book in college had ever talked about it; probably not, too much information for most human classrooms. In fact, you got in trouble for asking things like that, or I had. That embarrassed silence, the mortified look on the teacher’s face.

My fingers slipped inside his thigh. I had to squirm my fingers just a little more into that warm, close place. His body continued to be happier against my arm. I was going to take it for a good sign, a sign of life, but I wanted to feel the beat of his pulse. I wanted to know that the swelling of his groin was not the last beat of his heart, the last thing he would ever feel. “Please, Goddess, please don’t let him be dead.”

I was almost certain that my fingertips were where they needed to be to feel the pulse. Admittedly, trapped underneath him, it was harder to judge, but I was almost sure. I couldn’t feel anything. I took a deep breath in and held it. I held my breath and put all my attention into my fingers, into feeling what there was to feel. I stilled my body so that I wouldn’t mistake my own pulse for his. I pressed my fingers into his flesh through his clothes, and willed that pulse to beat against my fingers.

There, was that it? The pulse came again, slow and thick against my fingers. It was slower than it should have been, but it was there. If we could get him to a healer, he would live. If we could get help, Jonty would not have to die for me. If we could find anyone who wasn’t my enemy tonight.

The bomb had worked. I could hear the muffled screams of the soldiers. If Jonty’s damage was any indication, the Red Caps were badly hurt too. Why had the Unseelie nobles not hunted me down and finished me while I was unconscious? What had they been waiting for?

I felt the scream beginning to build, like a pressure that I couldn’t fight. No, didn’t want to fight. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t help Jonty. I couldn’t see what was happening. I couldn’t fight back, but I could scream. That I could do, and it was as if even that would be a release, a help to my awful growing panic. I took deep, even breaths, forced myself to slow my pulse, and that trembling sensation that was trying to steal me away from myself. If I started screaming from sheer panic, I wouldn’t stop. I’d scream, and squirm under Jonty’s body until my enemies found me. I had no illusions what would happen if Cel’s people found me. Were there Seelie warriors on the field tonight too? If they found me, would they try to take me back to Taranis? Probably. Death, or more rape by my uncle. Please, Goddess, let there be other choices.

Where was Doyle? He hadn’t been the body at their feet, but if he was able to come to my side, where was he? Galen, or Rhys, Mistral, Sholto, any of them, what could have kept them from my side this long? Were they…dead? Were all whom I had loved dead?

Jonty moved above me. “Jonty,” I said.

He didn’t answer, and I realized that I couldn’t feel his muscles tensing at all. He was still unconscious above me, but he began to lift without his arms moving at all. Someone was lifting him. A few moments before I’d wanted him off of me so badly that I had had to fight down panic. Now, I wasn’t so certain. Whether the Red Cap being lifted slowly off of me was a good thing or a bad thing depended entirely on who was doing the lifting.

My pulse sped up as Jonty’s big chest rose upward. It was taking so long that I began to wonder if it was the humans, the soldiers. They would have trouble lifting him. Then he rose upward enough that I could see legs. The leg of a uniform, the torn leg of a designer suit. I said, “Doyle!”

He knelt, hands still on the big Red Cap, pushing like you’d shoulder press a weight. “I’m here,” he said.

I reached out to touch his leg. My hand came back with blood on it. Was it Jonty’s, or Doyle’s? What had been happening while I lay unconscious? In that moment, I almost didn’t care, because Doyle was here. I could touch him. It was all right, because he was there.

I could see more legs. Another was in black trousers and boots—Mistral. I remembered now that Galen and Rhys had been wearing soldiers’ uniforms. They were all here, all of them. Thank you, Goddess.

“Are you hurt?” Doyle asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Can you move out from under the Red Cap?”

I thought about it, and realized that I could. I began to push my way out from under Jonty’s rising body. I had to do a sort of modified crab walk on my elbows and butt, but finally my face was in the clean, fresh air. I took a deep breath of winter air, and kept pushing. When I was clear enough, I turned and crawled on my hands and knees. A hand took my arm and helped me stand. It was Dawson. He looked unhurt.

“Princess,” he said, “are you all right?”

I nodded. “I think so.” I touched his hand. “I’m glad to see that you’re okay. I heard screaming.”

He got a strange look on his face. “I’m okay now.”

I thought it was an odd way to phrase it. But Galen was beside me, taking me into his arms, and there was no time to question Dawson. Galen lifted me off my feet, holding me so tightly that I couldn’t see his face clearly. But I could see Jonty’s back over Galen’s shoulder. The sight stole the smile from my face.

The Red Cap’s back was a mass of wounds, a red ruin. Doyle and the others laid him gently down on the grass. I knew why they’d moved him slowly now. “Oh, my God, Jonty,” I said.

Galen loosened his grip enough to see my face as he lowered me to the grass. “I’m sorry, Merry.” Blood was drying on the side of his face from a gash near his temple.

“You’re hurt.”

He smiled. “Not as bad as some.”

I looked back at Jonty with the other men grouped around him. They were too serious, too quiet. I didn’t like it. “Jonty’s heart is still beating. If we can get him to a healer he won’t die.”

Galen’s face was stricken in the moonlight, so pain-filled. “But you would have died.”

He was right. If the bomb had done that much damage to a Red Cap, then I’d have been so much red ruin. Me, and our babies, would have been turned into so much raw meat.

“Cel’s followers did this,” I said.

“Dawson told us,” Galen said.

I started toward Jonty and the others. Galen slid his hand in mine and we walked to him hand in hand.

Doyle laid his hand against my cheek, and I pressed my face against his hand. “The Red Caps did our duty for us,” he said.

The comment made me raise my face from his hand and look past Jonty and the other guards. Soldiers were standing, helping wounded move across the field, but the Red Caps were still figures lying across the grass. Almost none of them were sitting up, and none were standing.

“How are the humans up and the Red Caps so hurt?”

“We were hurt,” Dawson said, “but we healed.”

“What?” I asked.

“Every solider who you healed earlier healed on their own. Then we healed the others.”

“What?” I asked again, because it still didn’t make sense.

“We healed them,” Dawson said. “We used the nails. They were like some sort of magic wands.”

“Can it heal the Red Caps?” Doyle asked.

“They’re metal,” I said.

“They are dying, Meredith. I don’t think it will hurt them now,” Rhys said. One of his arms was in a sling, and the sleeve of his uniform was blackened.

Mistral’s coat was a blackened ruin across his back. Had Taranis himself attacked with his Seelie warriors? I realized that Sholto was still missing.

“Where’s Sholto?”

Doyle dropped his hand from my face, and answered me while turning away. “Sholto is well. The sluagh came to his call. It is all that saved us from Taranis and his men. They fled from the sluagh.”

I grabbed Doyle’s arm with my free hand. The other was squeezed tightly in Galen’s hand. There was too much happening, and I didn’t know how to cope with it all. But I knew one thing; I didn’t want Doyle’s face to look like that.

He turned and looked at me, but his face was that old unreadable darkness, only his eyes flinching around the edges. Now I knew what that little flinch meant.

“I want to wrap you around me like a coat, and cover you in kisses, but we have wounded to save. But do not doubt what I feel for you, even in the midst of this.” The first hard tear slid down my cheek. “I thought you were dead, and….”

Galen’s hand dropped away, and Doyle wrapped me in his arms. I clung to him as if his hands on my body were air and food, and everything I needed to live.

I heard Rhys say, “Come on, Dawson, let’s see if those little nails will help Jonty.”

I wanted to melt into Doyle’s kiss and never come up for air, but there was duty. There was always duty, and some horror that had to be fought, or healed, or…. Everyone thinks they want an extraordinary life, but you don’t. When standing knee-deep in yet another disaster, ordinary begins to look very good.

We broke apart, and he led me to Jonty’s side. Dawson was already kneeling on the ground. He held the nail that had come out of me when I healed him. He held it point down above one of the wounds.

“We’ll have to get the shrapnel out of his body first,” Rhys said.

“It didn’t work that way for us,” Dawson said.

“How did it work?” I asked, my arm wrapped around Doyle’s lean waist, the strength of him beside me almost too good to be real.

Galen was carefully not looking at Doyle and me. I realized that he had come to me first. That he had swept me off my feet, and though I had been glad to see him, it hadn’t been the feelings I had had for Doyle. It simply hadn’t. I couldn’t change how my heart felt, not even to save the feelings of one of my best friends.

“Like this,” Dawson said, and he began to pass the nail over Jonty’s wounds, point down, as if he were invisibly carving something. My hand tingled. The mark of blood on my palm tingled.

I stepped away from Doyle. He tried to catch my hand, but I drew it away before he could touch it. Somehow I wasn’t sure that him touching the hand of blood while it was itching to be used would be a good thing. I didn’t entirely understand what was happening, but I didn’t question the urge to step up and drop to my knees beside Dawson.

I spoke words without willing them, as if the universe had been waiting for me to speak them, and with each word, it was as if time itself let out a breath that it had been holding. “You call me with blood and metal. What would you have of me?”

Dawson looked at me, and his lips moved, but it was as if he too wasn’t in complete control of what he said. “Heal him, Meredith. I ask this with blood and metal and the magic you have given to this flesh.”

“So be it,” I said, and I spread my hand over Jonty’s back. My skin ran with heat, as if the blood in my body was turning to molten metal. There was a moment of almost unbearable pain, then blood fountained upward from Jonty’s body. Metal rained upward, expelled from the body with the blood.