[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  “Do you feel that?”

  “Yes,” I gasped.

  “Is this really what you want?”

  “A different position, then, yes.”

  “What position?”

  “Me on top.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can control how deep you go. I’ve never felt anyone so hard.”

  He drew out of me as abruptly as he’d entered. He turned me around, keeping only one hand in his as he lay down on the ground. He drew me down on top of him, but it took both of us to slide me over him, to put that quivering hardness inside me.

  The feel of him sliding inside me flung my head back, closed my eyes. I fought my own body to stay high on my knees and not slam him into my cervix until I was ready for it.

  His hands touched my hips, brought my attention to more than just the part of him that was inside me. “I want to see your face while you ride me.”

  I looked down into his face and saw at last that look. That look that is dark and eager and all lust, but something else as well. Possession. In that moment, in a man’s eyes is the sure knowledge that you won’t say no. That you are, for that moment, his.

  I gazed into the heat of his eyes, not the heat of magic, of faerie, but the eternal magic of male and female, of that eternal dance that truly did make the grass grow, the flowers bloom, the crops ripen. It was all in his face, that spark that keeps it all going.

  “Amatheon,” I said, voice heavy with sighs.

  He frowned up at me. “What is wrong?”

  I smiled. “Nothing, absolutely nothing,” and I rolled my hips forward and began to ride him.

  I rode him until his hips began to rise and fall with mine. I rode him until his hands convulsed around my breasts and I cried out. I rode him until his body began to lose rhythm, and the earth underneath my knees began to change. I was using the hard surface for my leverage, and suddenly I didn’t have the leverage needed to keep the rhythm I wanted. That was my first hint that the ground was growing soft, and Amatheon was beginning to sink into it.

  I hesitated above him, and his hands gripped my waist.

  “Don’t stop, Goddess, don’t stop.”

  I stopped fighting to use my knees and used my hips instead. I used hips and stomach muscles to move me over and around him as the ground began to sink beneath us. I could no longer keep the tip of him from the end of me, but it didn’t hurt now. Now it was wet and open and ready.

  I rode my body over him now, as fast and hard as I could, back and forth, grinding myself against him, over him, around him, over and over and over until his hands convulsed at my waist and he yelled, “Merry, look at me!”

  I looked down into his eyes gone wild a second before his body bucked underneath mine, body straining a breath before orgasm caught me. I fought my body, fought not to look away, not to throw my head back, or close my eyes, as the pleasure took me, rolled me, climbed my skin in waves of warmth, convulsed my body around his, until we both cried out while I fought to keep eye contact. Fought to let him watch my frantic eyes, the near pain-filled look in a woman’s face. I gave him all I could for as long as I could, but finally the orgasm was too much and I screamed, full throated, head back, eyes closed. I screamed as he pressed himself inside me, and the earth sank under us like black water.

  I felt his body leave me before I opened my eyes and found myself kneeling on the rich black earth. I touched the ground where he had been, and it crumbled, black and moist in my hand.

  I gazed off across the plain, and it was all black and rich. I knelt in the soft, moist earth and wondered, “Amatheon, where are you?” I was left alone.

  Then I was kneeling on rough stone, in the half-light of the sithen hallway. One moment in the heart of vision and the next back in faerie. If I hadn’t been on my knees already, I would have fallen. But I was saved from pitching face-forward onto the floor by my own hand and Frost’s hand on my arm.

  “Consort save us,” he muttered, and that was my first hint that something had gone wrong. Before I could even look around, I was suddenly flat to the floor with him on top of me, shielding me. It was entirely too much like the assassination attempt at the press conference. My pulse was suddenly in my throat, and I fought two disparate urges—to look around and to make myself as small a target as possible. Frost gave me no choice. With his body on top of mine, his chest pressing my face into the stone, I couldn’t move.

  He raised up just enough to draw the gun that was under his right arm with his left hand. I watched his arm extend to point farther down the hall. I could see enough to know that this wasn’t the entrance hallway. As I lay there, his body pressing me painfully into the stone floor, I felt his body react to the shot, as the explosion of it echoed off the stones. He fired again, the shot jerking his body above me. A man cried out, but I did not know the voice.

  “I’m getting you out of here.” He said it as if I was going to argue, which I wasn’t. Getting out of there sounded just fine. Where was everyone else? Why was Frost the only person with me?

  He fired twice more in quick succession, his free hand already on my arm. He stood, pulling me with him, already moving us down the larger hallway, putting a wall between us and our enemies, but I could see what lay in the smaller hallway now. I stumbled, and might have struggled against Frost’s hand if he’d given me the chance. But I think he knew that, and he moved with all the speed and strength that being pure sidhe gave him. He had me up against the wall, and around the corner, out of the sight and aim of the attackers I still hadn’t seen. What I had seen was Crystall with his hands covered in white light, and Adair wading into men, sword already bloody. But that hadn’t been what made me push against Frost’s pinning arm, as he held me against the wall. Galen, lying on the floor, a pool of blood spilling out underneath him. He hadn’t been moving.

  “Let me go,” I said to Frost.

  He shook his head, his eyes anguished. “No. Your safety takes precedence over anything else.”

  I screamed at him, and fought against him, but it was like struggling against steel with muscle around it. I could not move him unless he let me. He had pressed his body along the line of mine, pinning me completely to the wall; I had no room to try to hurt him enough to make him let me go. He’d known I would fight him.

  I screamed the only word that mattered to me in that moment. “Galen!” I screamed his name until my throat went raw, but there was no answer.

  CHAPTER 19

  THERE WAS THE SOUND OF RUNNING FEET. FROST KEPT ME PINNED to the wall with only his chest, drawing a gun from behind his back, and pointing both guns in opposite directions down the hallway. To draw the other gun, he’d been forced to move his body enough off of me so that I was able to reach the gun at the small of my back. He’d been right to trap me, for my first instinct had been to run to Galen. No thought, no logic, just truth. Frost had given me those few moments to think. I aimed away from the corner where Galen lay, at the sound of running feet. They would be upon us in seconds.

  I wasn’t scared anymore. I was calm, that breathless, icy calm that is part anger, part terror, part things there are no words for. Galen was hurt, I would hurt them back. Somewhere in the back of my head was a thought that didn’t say hurt but said another word. I pushed it back and aimed.

  My finger had actually started to squeeze down when I realized it was Nicca and Biddy, and the rest of the guards who had been with Frost in the hallway before Amatheon and I took our little trip. I let my breath out and raised the gun carefully toward the ceiling. I started to shake almost immediately, realizing how close I had come to putting a bullet through Nicca’s chest. If the gun had had a shorter pull . . . A bullet through an arm or shoulder could be healed, but one in the heart, well, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

  Nicca and Biddy stayed with us, gun in his hand, sword in hers. They were both among the gentlest of the sidhe, but now they looked grim, and tall, and muscular, and dangerous, like tigers and lions. Dangerous simply because of what t
hey are. I had never seen resolve such as this on Nicca’s face.

  Frost stayed with me, his body still shielding me. The thought of another man I loved getting hurt because of me seemed more than I could bear. If I hadn’t been clinging to the gun with both hands to make sure it pointed only at stone, I would have pushed Frost away. Stupid, but until I knew how badly Galen was hurt, I didn’t want to risk anyone else. Especially stupid since the rest of the guards had just run around the corner. Magic filled the air, crawling over my skin. The sound of metal on metal. A man cried out, and then a woman’s cry, not of pain, but of rage. I wanted no one else to risk themselves for me today. I could do nothing but endanger them all.

  My eyes were hot and tight with things I did not want to cry away. Someone was moaning softly. All else was small sounds; the brush of metal against stone, footfalls, movement, but not fighting. The fight was over. The question was, Who had won? If Doyle or Frost had been with them, I wouldn’t have doubted the outcome, but Frost was still standing, tense and ready in front of me. His grey eyes were still searching down both directions of the hallway, as if he didn’t trust anyone else to keep watch. Without Doyle here, neither did I.

  The two men trusted no one else as much as they trusted each other. When had I begun to believe that only these two could keep me safe? When had I begun to put my faith in these two men and lose it in the others?

  Hawthorne came around the corner, his crimson armor spattered lightly with blood, as if someone had taken a red ink pen and shaken it at him. He was cleaning his blade with a piece of cloth that looked as if it had been jerked off someone’s body. “It is over.”

  Adair was at his back, helmet tucked under one arm. Without his hair to cushion his helmet, there were marks on his forehead and against his neck, where it had rubbed. “They are subdued or as dead as we can make them, Frost, Princess.”

  I started forward, gun still held carefully in my hand. Frost stopped me. “Put up the gun, Princess.”

  I looked at his arrogant face, but saw the pain in his eyes. “Why?” I asked.

  “Because I do not trust what you will do with it, if he is as gravely injured as he appeared to be.”

  My heart was suddenly hammering painfully in my chest, as if I couldn’t quite breathe around it. I opened my mouth to say something, but finally closed it. I swallowed and it hurt, as if I were trying not to choke. I just nodded, and put the gun back where it belonged. I settled my cloak over it, as a matter of habit. Don’t want to ruin the line of the clothes if you can help it. Habit is what we have when the inside of our head is screaming, and we’re so scared that it sits like dry metal on our tongues.

  Frost stepped away from me and started to put up his guns, but I didn’t stay to watch him finish the smooth, two-handed movement. I was already heading for the corner. One word kept going through my head over and over, Galen, Galen, Galen. Too scared to finish the thought. Too scared to do anything but run for him. I should have been praying to the Goddess harder than I’d ever prayed before. I’d just been in her presence, so she would have listened. But I didn’t pray to her or any deity I knew. If it was a prayer, it was a prayer to Galen. I cleared the corner, and saw him. Lying on his back, eyes closed, arms outspread, one leg bent under his body, and blood everywhere. A sea of blood, across the stone floor, spilling out and around him. So much blood, too much blood. The thought finished in my head, the only prayer I had to offer . . . Galen, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, Galen, please, don’t be dead.

  CHAPTER 20

  I FELL TO MY KNEES BESIDE HIM. THE BRIGHT RED OF THE BLOOD framed him, so that his hair was greener than I knew it to be. A moment before I had wanted to hold him more than anything in all of faerie. Now I hesitated, my hand hovering over his face. I wanted to touch him, have him open his eyes and smile up at me. I was afraid to touch him, afraid he would be cold to the touch, afraid to know.

  I made myself touch the side of his face. His skin was cool but not cold. A tightness in my chest eased minutely. I touched the side of his neck, pushed my fingers against his skin, searching. Nothing, nothing, then a faint flutter. The relief made me slump, my hand sliding down the side of his neck into the curls at the back of his head, but they were heavy with blood. I raised my hand up, and the fingers were bright with blood. “Where is it all coming from?” I didn’t realize I’d said it aloud until Adair answered me. “We have not had time to check for his wounds, Princess.”

  I nodded to let him know I’d heard him. “We have to get the bleeding stopped.”

  Adair knelt at Galen’s shoulders. “I have sent for a healer.”

  I shook my head. “His skin is cool. We need to stop this blood loss now, not wait for a healer.”

  “A sidhe who can die from blood loss is no sidhe at all.” I glanced up to find Kieran, Lord of Knives, kneeling with his hands bound behind his back. But Ivi still kept the lord at sword point. Kieran had only one hand of power, and it was the only magic left to him, which made many among the sidhe consider him weak. But that one hand was a deadly one. He could use his magic like a blade to stab deep into the body, even from a distance. I knew now how Galen had fallen without even drawing a blade or a gun. But why ambush Galen?

  My gaze traveled to the other three kneeling there. The rest were all women of Cel’s guard. That did not surprise me. There was another richly dressed lord, lying on his side, moaning. His hands were tied behind his back, but there was a smaller pool of blood beginning to seep out from him. His face was turned away from me, and it didn’t matter who it was. Later it might, but now, unless he could heal Galen, I didn’t care who he was.

  Adair helped me turn Galen onto his side. He was limp as the dead. I was having trouble breathing again, past the taste of panic. There were two wounds in his back, deep and clean. Somehow, miraculously, they had missed the heart. They were still fearfully deep, but bleeding out this quickly wasn’t from a wound in his back, especially if it missed the heart.

  We eased him onto his back, and when his body settled against the blood-slick floor, there was a fresh gush of blood from his leg. I crawled to his legs, and found the third wound, high up on the thigh. They’d cut his femoral artery. A human could bleed out in twenty minutes. The blood should have been spurting out. The fact that it was only seeping meant that he had lost most of the blood in his body. Which meant that even if someone could close the wounds immediately, he might not recover. The sidhe can take a lot of wounds, a lot of blood loss, but there has to be enough blood left to keep the body running, the heart pumping.

  Frost had remained standing in front of me during all of it, guarding me. I couldn’t argue with his division of labor, not with Galen lying limp and pale on the floor. I was a great deal easier to kill than Galen.

  But Frost had watched as we found the wounds. “Where is the healer that you sent for?”

  Adair shook his head. “I do not know.”

  “We’re running out of time,” I said. “We have to close the wounds and keep what little blood he has left inside him.”

  “I can close his wounds,” a woman’s voice said. We looked to find one of the kneeling prisoners smiling at us. Her hair was the color of yellow corn silk, her eyes triple colors of blue, silver, with an inner circle of light, if light had a single color. I’d never known what to call the final color of Hafwyn’s eyes.

  The other women said, “No . . . You cannot help them. You betray our master . . .” and other less complimentary things.

  Hafwyn shrugged with her hands still bound behind her. “We are captured, and our master is still imprisoned. I think it would not be a mistake to have some favor on other shores.”

  She raised one of her dark eyebrows. With her very blond hair, in a human I would have thought dye, but in a race where your eyes could be three different colors, what was black eyebrows and blond hair?

  “You are a traitor to your oath if you do this,” Melangell said. There was blood running down her face from a wound that had split the side of
her helmet. If she’d been human, her brains would have spilled out, but she was barely bleeding.

  “I never made an oath to Prince Cel,” Hafwyn said. “It was Prince Essus I vowed to serve. When he died, no one asked if we would serve Cel, we were simply given to him. No one living has my oath of loyalty.” She looked at me as she said it, and there was something in her face, some need, some message.

  “Can she really heal him?” I asked.

  “She can close his wounds,” Adair said, “but that’s all.”

  “It is more than any of the rest of us can do for him,” said Hawthorne. “Though, in truth, it never occurred to me to ask Galen’s assassins if they could help heal him.” I searched his face for the irony that should have gone with those words, but he simply looked as if he were stating a fact.

  “Do we trust her?” Nicca asked.

  I laid a hand against Galen’s cooling skin. “No,” I said, “but untie her anyway.” Earlier that day I had been ready to give Galen up to an unknown lover. But that was different from losing him to death. I could live with his smile being for someone else if I knew he was happy. But to never see that smile again, to never feel his hand warm in mine again . . . I couldn’t stand that.

  Frost touched my shoulder, made me look up at him. “You must move away before I will allow Hafwyn to touch him.”

  I started to protest, but he touched my face and shook his head. “This could be a ruse to get close to you. I will not risk you to save him.” His hand went around my arm, and I had little choice but to go with him, though I was still reluctant to stop touching Galen. If we couldn’t save him, these would be my last moments to touch him while he felt . . . alive.

  Hafwyn knelt in the drying blood in her leather armor. She took off the leather gauntlets and tucked them into her sword belt. She settled her short sword more solidly at her hip, and I fought the urge to scream for her to hurry. She was entirely too calm, but then she had helped kill him. Why should she truly want to save him? Was this just a play effort on her part? She would do us a favor, but it would not work, so she could curry favor with us yet lose no favor with Cel and his people. Goddess help me, there were moments when I wished I did not see so many motives for the people around me. It was not a comforting way of looking at the world.