A Caress of Twilight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “It must be wounded,” Frost said.

  I looked at his arrogant face and knew that he was hiding something from me. I grabbed his arm. “How can you wound it?”

  His eyes softened as he looked down at me; the grey went from the color of storm clouds to sky just after the rain when the sun is about to break through. I watched the color swirl like clouds themselves across his eyes.

  “A weapon of power would be able to wound it, if the warrior were skilled enough.”

  I held on to his arm tighter. “What do you mean, skilled enough?”

  “Skilled enough not to get killed doing it,” Rhys said.

  Both Frost and Doyle gave him unfriendly looks. “Look, we don’t have time to play around here. One of us with a weapon of power and enough skill to do it has to draw blood,” Rhys said.

  I kept my grip on Frost’s arm but looked at Doyle. “Who’s on the list of skilled enough?”

  “Now that’s just insulting,” Rhys said. “Doyle and Frost aren’t the only people standing here.”

  They gave him another unfriendly look.

  “I was never the queen’s favorite guard, but once I was favored in battle.”

  Galen said, “I’m like Merry. I came along after all the old times. I’ve got good blades, but none of them are weapons of power.”

  “Because we lost the knack of making such things,” Frost said.

  “We have become more flesh and less pure spirit with every casting. It has allowed us to survive, even to thrive, but it has not been without cost.”

  I slid in against Frost’s body and found his sword, Winter Kiss, in our way. How apt. I looked at the other men. Frost was the only one in a tunic. Everyone else was wearing street clothes, T-shirts, jeans, boots, except for Kitto, who had thrown a shirt on over his shorts. The clothes were wrong, but the weapons were right.

  Frost had a second sword strapped to his back, a sword almost longer than I was tall. I knew the tunic covered more blades. He always carried some blade somewhere on him, unless the Queen had forbidden it.

  Doyle had kept his gun in its shoulder holster, but he’d added a sword at his hip and wrist sheaths on both arms. The knives glinted silver against his dark skin, but the sword was as black as he was. The blade was iron, not steel. I’d never known what the black handle was made of; it was metal, but what kind of metal I did not know. The sword was called Black Madness, Báinidhe Dub. If anyone other than Doyle tried to wield it, they would be struck permanently mad. The daggers on his wrists were twins, formed together at one making. These legendary blades were thought to hit any target once thrown. Their nicknames at court had been Snick and Snack. I knew they had true names, but I’d never heard them referred to as anything else.

  Galen had a sword belted at his side, and it was a good sword but not magical, not in the way of the great weapons. He had a dagger on the other side of his belt to balance the sword. He’d added a shoulder holster and gun over his button-down shirt, and a second gun tucked in the small of his back.

  I had put a belt around the middle of the sundress and threaded a side holster through it to hold my own gun. It ruined the line of the dress, but if things went really wrong, I’d rather survive looking a little silly than die looking perfect. I had two folding knives in thigh sheaths under the dress, and a smaller gun in an ankle holster. I’d been deemed unworthy even of a nonmagical blade by both courts.

  Rhys had his sword on his back, the one he’d used of old, Uamhas, Dread Death. He had his axe belted at his side, because with only one eye his depth perception just wasn’t up to a sword. He had daggers on him, but I wasn’t sure I’d want to be standing to the side of whatever he was throwing at. When you’re missing an eye, there’s only so much you can compensate for.

  Nicca had a sword that was almost identical to Galen’s, standard knight ware, beautiful, deadly, but not powerful. Nicca had two guns on either side of his shoulder holster. I had reason to know that he used either hand equally well. He had added a third gun to the small of his back, and a dagger on the opposite side from his sword. Maybe it was standard issue, too, like the sword.

  Kitto didn’t know enough about guns to be trusted not to shoot his foot off, but he had a short sword belted across the back of his Wile E. Coyote T-shirt.

  Sage had a tiny sword that gleamed bright silver in the sunlight. He would not give us the name of it. “To know the name of something is to have power over it,” he said.

  There was a rumbling sound, and the ground seemed to swell up as a portion of Maeve’s wall fell inward. The Nameless had cheated. It hadn’t gotten past her wards; it had destroyed what she attached them to.

  The shimmering thing moved through the hole while a few shots rang out, and officers in charge yelled, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”

  Doyle was striding forward. “I will use the daggers. They must strike true, as is their nature.”

  “Can you get close enough and still stay out of reach?” Frost asked.

  Doyle gave a small glance back. “I think so.” He kept walking.

  Frost moved me away from him, his hands gentle on my arms. “I must go with him. If he falls, I must be there.”

  “Kiss me first,” I said.

  He shook his head. “If I touch your lips, I will never leave your side.” He kissed my forehead quickly, then jogged after Doyle.

  Rhys swept me up into his arms while I was still too surprised to react. He kissed me, thoroughly and completely, and ended up wearing most of my red lipstick on his lips. He sat me back on my feet a little breathless.

  “You can’t steal my courage with a kiss, Merry. You don’t love me enough for that.” He ran after the other two before I could think of anything to say.

  The police rounded up an armored group of S.W.A.T. officers to back up the men; then they moved forward, through the hole in the wall, and vanished from sight.

  Strangely, the Nameless had vanished, as well, as if once inside the wall the shimmer was lost, even though it should have towered above it.

  “What if we go in the back and get Maeve out?” Galen said into the heavy silence.

  We all looked at him.

  “We can’t fight the Nameless, but we might be able to do that.”

  Lucy slapped her forehead. “Dumb. Really dumb, we should have evacuated Ms. Reed before this.”

  “It will follow her,” I said. “Unless you can get a helicopter in here, we won’t be able to get her away fast enough.”

  Lucy seemed to think about that for a moment. “I might be able to swing it. The Reeds have a lot of clout in this town.”

  “Do it, if you can,” I said.

  “In the meantime give us a few men and let us go in the back,” Galen said.

  “I’m going with you,” I said.

  He shook his head, looking so serious. “No, Merry, you’re not.”

  “Yes, Galen, I am. I was raised to know that a leader never asks of her people what she isn’t willing to do herself.”

  “Your father was a good man … but you’re mortal, Merry. The rest of us aren’t.”

  “The police are, all of them, and they’re still here.”

  He shook his head. “No.”

  We argued, but in the end I got my way because all the men that could have argued me down were inside the broken wall facing off against the thing we’d come to destroy.

  Chapter 42

  GETTING OVER THE WALL WAS SURPRISINGLY EASY. IT WAS TALL, but not that tall, and setting off the silent alarm was no longer a problem. The police were already here. I was helped down into a narrow lane that was planted so thickly with dark green camellias that they formed a second wall to nearly hide the house in front of us. It wasn’t the right time of year for blooming, so they were just tall bushes with thick, waxy leaves. I knew exactly how the leaves felt because Lucy and Galen both made me stand in the damn shrubs. I could come along, but they were both going to make sure I didn’t get to do anything.

  A uniformed offic
er ducked around the corner and came back with whispered news that there was a sliding glass door: easy access. We were about to slip around that corner and enter the door to search for Maeve Reed, when something awful happened.

  The Nameless became visible.

  Its glamour went down with a magical backwash that staggered every fey in the area. Still pressed into the camellia bushes, I couldn’t see anything, but two of the policemen opened their mouths wide and started to scream. The other policemen paled, but tried to calm the other two down, until one of the screamers dropped to his knees and tried to claw out his own eyes. One of the calm ones fought to hold the screamer’s hands away from his body. Another older officer slapped the other screamer over and over, cursing under his own breath with each blow. “Son of a bitch,” slap, “son of a bitch,” slap … until the screaming officer sat down on the grass and hid his face, whimpering.

  The remaining two policemen and Lucy, pale but ready, had their guns out.

  Galen had moved out from the wall when the glamour crashed down, and all the fey with us were staring fascinated at what lay up ahead. I almost didn’t look. I was part human; maybe my mind would break like the two policemen. But in the end, I couldn’t not look.

  How do you describe the indescribable? There were tentacles, and eyes, and arms, and mouths, and teeth, and too many of all of it. But every time I thought I understood its shape, that shape changed. I’d blink my eyes, and it wouldn’t be the way I remembered it. Maybe I couldn’t see what the Nameless looked like. Maybe my mind just couldn’t hold it all, and this was the best my poor mind could come up with. All I could think was if that shambling mountain of horror was the protective version that my mind would allow me to see, I did not want to see anything worse.

  Lucy looked down at the ground, pain crossing her face as if it hurt her to simply look at the thing. “We’re going to kill that?”

  “Contain it,” Galen said. “You can’t kill magic.”

  She shook her head, took a tighter grip on her gun, and turned resolutely back to look at the very large target.

  The radios on the uniforms crackled to life. The message was, if you can see it, you can kill it. Fire.

  I had a second to think, where’s Maeve, when Galen threw himself on top of me and forced me flat on the ground. A heartbeat later bullets flew overhead. One of the screaming policemen got loose of the two trying to wrestle him down, and when he stood up, his body did a jerking dance and he fell dead beside us. In that one moment bullets were more dangerous than the Nameless.

  Lucy yelled into her hand radio. “We’re taking friendly fire in here! We haven’t secured the civilians yet! Cease fire unless you fucking know what you’re hitting.” The shooting continued. Lucy screamed again, “Officer down, officer down, hit by friendly fire, repeat, hit by friendly fire!”

  The shooting slowed, then stopped altogether. We all stayed plastered to the ground for a few moments, waiting. It seemed very important to breathe, as if I’d never done it quite right before. Or maybe it was the bleeding body of the dead policeman that made breathing such a treat, as if we all had to make up for him being dead somehow.

  When everything stayed quiet, Lucy carefully got to her knees. The rest of the police began to get to their knees, until finally one of the younger uniforms stood up. He didn’t fall back down dead, so the rest of us stood up cautiously.

  “Look,” one of the policemen said.

  We looked. The Nameless was bleeding. Blood trickled like crimson string down its “head.”

  “Shit,” Lucy said. “We’re going to need antitank weapons to blow that thing up.”

  I agreed with her. “How long will it take to get some sort of National Guard stuff here?”

  “Too long,” she said. Her radio squawked again. She listened to the unintelligible talk, then said, “Helicopter’s en route. We need to find Ms. Reed and get her over the wall.”

  We didn’t have to find Ms. Reed; she found us. She and Gordon Reed came running around the edge of the house at as fast a pace as he could manage. Julian was behind them. The greatest danger in that first second was shooting each other out of sheer nerves. We all managed not to be that stupid, but my pulse was thudding in my throat, and everyone looked big-eyed, like they were ready to get back over the wall.

  Maeve Reed grabbed my hand in both of hers. “Is it Taranis? Does he know?”

  “He doesn’t know about the baby.”

  She frowned. “Then …”

  “He found out we saw you.”

  “Ms. Reed—” An officer was holding out his hand. “—we need to get you over the wall.”

  She kissed me on the cheek and let the nice officer hand her to another nice officer waiting on top of the wall.

  Gordon Reed was next. He didn’t say anything. He seemed to be struggling just to breathe and stay upright between Julian and the same nice officer who had helped Maeve over the wall.

  When they were safely over, I asked Julian, “Where are your other people?”

  He shook his head. “Everyone but Max is dead. He’s too hurt to walk. I made him hide in the house so I could get the Reeds out.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but a policeman said, “You’re next” to Julian, and I didn’t have to say anything, just watch him climb to safety.

  Most of the cops that could still walk were already over, when Lucy’s soft “Oh, my god” turned me around to look at the Nameless.

  Rhys’s white hair shone out against the darker colors of the monster. Something between an arm and a tentacle wrapped around his chest. The blade of his axe sparked in the sun as he drove it into an eye the size of a Volkswagen. The eye bled, the monster screamed, and so did Rhys.

  “Get Merry out of here,” said Galen. Then he was gone at a run toward the fight.

  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.