[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  He put his hand to his sword, and the other men were suddenly unsheathing weapons. I don’t think any of them had smelled what we had, but they trusted Doyle’s instincts.

  “It’s all right,” he said, but he unsheathed his sword, and that didn’t comfort anyone in the room. When he had the blade completely free of its sheath, blood welled on the naked blade, as if the sword were bleeding.

  Harry stumbled back away from him and that dripping sword. I couldn’t blame him. Peasblossom screamed, and Mug hid her face against Galen’s neck.

  “Goddess save us,” Frost said. “What is it?”

  “Cromm Cruach,” Doyle said.

  It took me a second to realize he was using Rhys’s original name, when he’d been a deity. Cromm Cruach, red claw. As I watched the blood drip on the scrubbed kitchen floor, I began to understand where the name may have come from.

  Maggie May said, “Cromm Cruach, aye. Well, what does he say?”

  The blood formed letters on the floor: DON’T YOU CARRY ANY NONMAGICAL WEAPONS?

  “Oh,” Doyle said, and I swear he looked almost embarrassed. “May I borrow a kitchen knife, Maggie May?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him, but nodded. “Aye.”

  He took one of the long, wicked-looking chopping blades and laid a finger down the flat of the blade. The silver of the blade fogged instantly.

  Rhys’s face shone in the shiny surface. “Do you know how much blood I’ve had to waste trying to get you?”

  “I did not think I was carrying only enchanted blades,” and again, I had the rare treat of seeing Doyle shamefaced at not thinking of something.

  “Whose blood did you use?” Galen called.

  “Mine. I heal now, but it still hurts to do it, and it’s totally freaked the cops out.”

  “How many additional men do you need?” Doyle asked.

  “I’m not sure. It all depends on how many of the police Merry lets into the sithen.”

  I went to stand by Doyle, so Rhys could see me better. “How many police are there?”

  “Counting the local cops or the feds?” Rhys asked.

  “Feds?” I said. “You mean FBI?”

  “Yep.”

  “I didn’t call them into this.”

  “They say you called an Agent Gillett.”

  “I called him, but not to invite the FBI.”

  “Well, Agent Gillett called the local contingent of feds and invited them to the party. He told them, or implied, that you wanted federal help.”

  “Are you calling to ask if the feds get to come inside?”

  “Not exactly, I’m calling because the area around the faerie lands is federal property, and the feds are trying to tell the locals they have no right to be here.”

  “Please, tell me you’re exaggerating,” I said.

  His image blurred for a moment before I realized he’d moved his head. “I’m not exaggerating. We have a major mine’s-bigger-than-yours contest starting out here.”

  “Can you put the head agent on?”

  “No. Do you have any idea how many times I had to cut myself to get enough blood on the blade to write that message? None of them are going to come near this blade. If you want to talk to the humans you are going to have to pick a more mundane method of communication. Though I don’t think a phone call will do it.”

  “What do you suggest?” Doyle asked.

  “Get the princess out here because she’s the one who made the calls. What little credibility I had with them vanished into the blood-soaked snow. They’re afraid of me now.” He sighed hard enough that it fogged the blade for a moment. “I’d forgotten that look in a human’s eyes. It was a part of being Cromm Cruach that I didn’t miss.”

  “Forgive me for making such measures necessary,” Doyle said. “The princess and I will be there soon.”

  “See you then,” and the blade went back to just brightly polished metal.

  “Your Agent Gillett misunderstood you, I think.”

  I shook my head. “He didn’t misunderstand. He hasn’t seen me in person since I was eighteen or nineteen. He’s reacting as if I’m still that person.”

  “He hopes to push his way into this investigation,” Doyle said.

  I nodded.

  “You don’t want to make the feds angry at us,” Galen said. “There’s a chance that the local police lab might need a little more help with something they find tonight.” He began walking to me, forcing Mug to raise her face and adjust her balance.

  It was a good point, a good clearheaded point. I smiled and went to him, and touched his face. I touched the cheek opposite the one Mug sat by. “Always looking to make peace.”

  He laid his hand over mine, pressing it against his cheek. “Just to keep as much of it as I can.”

  I went up on tiptoe, and he bent down so I could lay a gentle kiss upon his mouth. Mug made a sound, not a bad sound, almost a yummy sound like she liked being this close to both of us. “Give us room, Mug,” I said. She pouted, but flew off. I let myself lean into him for a moment, let his strong arms wrap around me. If we lived in different times, gentler times, Galen would have been perfect—if peace was truly what we were after, but it wasn’t, not exactly.

  “What will you do about the FBI?” Doyle understood that I wasn’t going to do exactly what Galen had suggested.

  “I’ll go introduce myself to the local agent, and give him a message to take back to Gillett.”

  “And what will that message be?” he asked.

  “That I’m not a child anymore, and he can’t manipulate me like one.”

  Frost frowned. “You invited human science into our sithen to help solve these murders. That is all well and good, but I know enough of their system to agree with Galen. We cannot afford to alienate them completely.”

  “Because we may need them later,” I said.

  Frost nodded. “Yes.”

  It was rare for Galen and Frost to agree so completely, which meant they were probably right. “I will do my best not to offend the FBI, but if we go out there and appear weak, they won’t leave, and they will delay everything. We do not have time for everyone to play turf wars. And besides, this is our turf.”

  “Then let us go make that point to the authorities,” Doyle said, “both local and federal.” He actually offered me his arm, and I took it, feeling the solidness of muscle underneath the leather of his jacket. I realized, then, that my winter coat was still back at the airport, unless someone had thought to rescue it. I was going to need something to wear out into the December cold. I wondered whose coat I’d borrow.

  We sent Onilwyn to find a healer. I still didn’t know whether to believe what he had said. Had he come ahead of us to curry my favor, or had he something else in mind? Something more sinister, or maybe I was just looking for an excuse not to have sex with him. Maybe, or maybe Onilwyn had earned my distrust.

  CHAPTER 12

  DOYLE AND FROST ESCORTED ME BACK TO MY ROOM FOR FRESH CLOTHES. And warmer ones. I don’t know whose cloak iI borrowed, but it fit me, the hem barely brushing the floor of my room. The fur was cream and amber and a gold that was almost auburn. It was truly beautiful, but I felt about it the way I usually felt about fur coats; I thought the fur would have looked better on the animal it belonged to. I’d actually tried to argue that I wanted a leather coat, or something out of wool, but since it had been centuries since the sidhe had had domestic animals of their own, wool and leather were in short supply. Besides, Frost assured me that when it was killed, they had eaten it.

  “What was it?” I asked. I’d never seen anything with fur quite this color.

  “Troll,” he said.

  I stopped petting the fur. I’d never seen a troll, but I knew they were a type of fey, and though not the brightest, they still had culture, were still people. “That’s not exactly an animal; that’s more like cannibalism.”

  “He never said it was an animal,” Doyle said, “you did. Shall we go? The police are waiting.”

 
“If I have a problem wearing animal fur, didn’t it occur to either of you that wearing something made out of what amounts to one of us would bother me even more?”

  Frost sighed and settled back into a huge black chair, which unfortunately matched the new decor the queen had put in my room. It looked like a set for a gothic porn movie, or a funeral where the corpse was going to get a little too much attention.

  “I killed the troll. The fur is a trophy. I don’t understand your problem with wearing it.” Frost looked ghost pale against the black leather chair, and strangely decadent in his fur coat. His ankle-length silver-fox coat had made it back from the airport. It made me think that the leather coats had gone missing because no one was certain who they belonged to, and the fur stayed because who else but one of my men would have a full-length fur coat that would fit over a set of shoulders that broad.

  I turned to Doyle. “It would be like wearing a person’s skin for a coat.”

  Doyle grabbed my arm. His grip was bruising, and his face held the anger that his hand pressed against my flesh. “You are a princess of the Unseelie Court. You will rule us someday. You cannot show this much weakness, not if you expect to survive!”

  His black eyes held bits of brilliant color like psychedelic fireflies. There was an instant of vertigo, and then I was on solid ground in my snow boots, and I could look into his eyes and not be swayed. If he’d done it on purpose, it might not have been so easily cast aside, but it was his anger that brought his power, not his will. Anger is easier to avoid than force of will.

  Frost had pushed to his feet. “Doyle, it is not such a large problem as all that.” He sounded uncertain, and I knew why. This was Doyle, their captain, the immobile, unfeeling Darkness. He did not have fits of temper, ever.

  Doyle jerked me close to his body, and I felt the creeping line of energy as his power began to unfold. He snarled into my face, “Won’t wear the skins of our honored enemies. The police await us, our men stand in the cold, and you don’t like your coat! Such delicate sensibilities for someone who just fucked a stranger on the floor in front of us all.”

  I stared at him openmouthed, too astonished to do or say anything.

  “Doyle!” Frost came to stand near us, his hand moving toward me, as if he would take me away from the Darkness. But he let his hand fall back, because Frost, like me, wasn’t certain what Doyle would do if he tried to wrest me from him. He was behaving so unlike himself that I was afraid, and, I think, so was Frost.

  Doyle threw his head back and screamed. It was a sound of such anguish, such utter loneliness. The sound ended on a howl that raised the hairs on my body. He released me abruptly, and half threw me against Frost. Frost caught me and turned me so that his broad shoulders were between me and his captain.

  Doyle collapsed to the floor in a pool of black leather, his braid curling like a serpent around his legs.

  It took me a moment to realize that he was sobbing. Frost and I looked at each other. Neither of us had a clue as to what was happening to our stoic Darkness.

  I moved toward him, but Frost held me back, and shook his head. He was right. But it made my chest tight to hear such broken sounds coming from Doyle.

  Frost knelt beside him and laid a white hand on Doyle’s dark shoulder. “My captain, Doyle, what ails you?”

  Doyle covered his face with his hands and hunched over until his hands were nearly flat to the ground. He curled in upon himself, and his voice came thick with tears, and thicker with anger. “I cannot do it.” He raised up on hands and knees, his head hanging down. “I cannot bear it.” He looked up, and grabbed Frost’s arm, much as he’d grabbed mine, almost pleading. “I cannot go back to what I was here. I cannot stand at her side and watch another take her. I am not that strong, or that good.”

  Frost nodded, and drew the other man into his arms. He held him tight and fierce, and the face he showed to me was raw with sorrow.

  I had missed something. Something important. Something had happened not just to Doyle but to Frost as well. This was not his typical moodiness; this was mourning. But what did they mourn?

  “What has happened?” I asked.

  Doyle shook his head, pressed into Frost’s shoulder. “She doesn’t understand. She doesn’t know what it means.”

  “What?” Fear was beginning to tickle my stomach, march up my spine. My skin was cool with the beginnings of dread.

  Frost looked at me, and I realized that there were unshed tears glittering in his eyes. “The ring has chosen your king, Meredith.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  “Mistral,” Doyle said, raising his head, so I could see his face. “The ring has chosen Mistral. And I cannot let him have you.”

  I stared at him. “What are you babbling about? There is only one way for my king to be chosen, and I am not with child.”

  “Are you certain of that?” Frost asked. His face was so calm, empty of the emotional turmoil I would have expected from him. It was almost as if with Doyle fallen to pieces, he had to hold himself together better than was his wont.

  “Yes, I mean . . .” I thought about what he’d said. “It’s too early to be certain.”

  Doyle shook his head hard enough that his heavy braid rustled against the leather. “The ring has never come to life for any of us. You have never had such sex with any of us. What else could it mean but that he is the ring’s choice?”

  “I don’t know, but . . .” In the face of his pain, I didn’t know what to say. I looked from one to the other of them. Their belief was plain on their faces. I looked at them huddled together, light and darkness entwined, and my chest was tight. It was suddenly hard to breathe. The room felt hot and close. If I was pregnant from Mistral, I would lose them, both of them. I would be bound to Mistral, and I would be monogamous to him and him alone. The sex had been good, maybe great, but it was just sex, and . . . “I don’t love him.” The moment I said it, I knew it was a child’s plea. A child’s wish.

  “A queen does not marry for love.” Doyle’s deep voice held the edge of tears.

  “But wait, I thought the ring found your true love, your perfect match.”

  “It does,” Frost said.

  “Nicca and Biddy are completely gone on each other,” I said. “They look at each other as if there is no one else in the world.”

  They both nodded. Frost said, “It was always thus with the ones the ring chose.”

  “But Mistral and I are not looking at each other that way.”

  “You did not see his face afterwards,” Doyle said. “I did.”

  “As did I,” Frost said.

  I waved it away. “I was the first sex he’s had in centuries. And it was magical sex, power-driven sex. That is heady stuff. Any man would look at me that way, but it was lust, not love.”

  Frost frowned at me. Doyle just stared as if his emotions had emptied him.

  “I certainly don’t feel that way about Mistral.”

  Frost looked positively suspicious. “You do not, truly?”

  I shook my head. “If the ring had chosen him, then I’d be in love with him, right?”

  Frost nodded.

  “I do not feel that way about Mistral.”

  “How can you not want what we saw in the hallway?” Doyle asked, in a voice that had gone almost empty of emotion, as if it had all been too much for him.

  “It was great, but has it occurred to either of you that maybe the sex was that magical because it is the first time I have had sex inside faerie while wearing the ring?”

  Doyle blinked and tried to focus. I watched him fighting off the despair that was trying to numb him. Frost spoke for them both. “You have had sex inside faerie with one of us, surely.”

  I shook my head. “I do not believe so, and if I have, I wasn’t wearing the ring. Even in Los Angeles, I often didn’t wear the ring during sex.”

  “Because the power was too unpredictable,” Doyle said. He looked up at me. “Were we fools to lock it away?�
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  The ring on my finger pulsed once, as if squeezing my hand. I swallowed hard and nodded. “The ring thinks so.”

  Doyle rubbed at the tear tracks on his skin. “You truly do not love Mistral?”

  “No.”

  “You could still be pregnant,” he said.

  “The ring does fertility, but it does more than that,” Frost said. “If Meredith does not love Mistral, then perhaps he is not the match for her.”

  “Does he think he is?”

  I watched Doyle collect himself, gathering all that dark reserve. “Most likely.”

  “I know that Rhys does, for he said so,” Frost said.

  “Does Galen?”

  “He was much besotted with the ring’s power. The men that were besotted will most likely not be thinking that clearly.”

  “Only you, Rhys, Doyle, and Mistral himself did not seem drunk with power.”

  “Mistral was a part of the magic. Rhys did not appear in time.”

  “But why the two of you?”

  They looked at each other, and it was Frost who spoke, and Doyle who would not look at me. “The ring has no power over you if you are already in love.”

  “If it is true love,” Doyle said, and then he did look at me, and I almost wished he had not. His eyes held the pain that he had let me glimpse. The pain that must have begun to grow when none of them had made me pregnant in Los Angeles.

  I looked at the two of them, and for the first time I realized that if it was a choice between the throne or losing these two men, I wasn’t certain what I would choose. I wasn’t certain I was queen enough to sacrifice that much. But as long as Cel lived, he would see me dead. And I could not give the rest of faerie to him, even if he swore to leave me and the ones I loved alive. I could not give my people over to him. He made Andais look sane, and kindhearted. I could not give us over to Cel’s sadism. I was too much my father’s daughter to do it. But I stood there and felt the world sink down to nothing at the thought of losing Doyle and Frost.

  I thought of something, and said, “So the fact that Galen was besotted means that he is not in love, not true love?”