[Merry Gentry 04] - A Stroke of Midnight

by Laurell K. Hamilton

  Aisling let his half-drawn sword go back into its sheath. “Melangell, you cannot unsee me. I told you that.”

  I couldn’t tell if she was crying or if it was just pieces of her eyes. “The sight of your shining face will be the last thing I will ever see. I hate you for this, but I cannot regret it.”

  “Oh, Melangell,” he said, and he touched her face.

  She laid her bloody, drenched cheek against his hand the way a lover would. She let him cup her face for an instant, then she drew away from him, and said, “Take me to the queen, take me to a cell, I care not. But take me away from him.”

  Hawthorne drew her to her feet and rebound her hands, checking the knots. “What do you want me to do with her, Princess?”

  “It is my right to be taken before the queen,” Kieran said.

  “Yes, it is, but it is not her right. If Cel were free, then we would take her to him, but . . .” I shook my head, and looked away from her ravaged face. “Frost.” I buried my face against his chest. “Frost, I don’t know what to do with her.”

  “Take her to a cell. Tell Ezekiel she is not to be touched until he hears further from the princess.”

  “What of Kanna?”

  “Take her, as well.”

  “The lords?”

  “Take them to the queen, see what she does with them.”

  He assigned different guards to the duty. He sent Dogmaela along with the lords. She spoke to me as she pushed Kieran past me. “I am not a lover of women.”

  It was such an odd comment that I just answered it, “Neither am I.”

  “But Hafwyn . . .”

  I realized then that while we’d been trying to solve the mystery of Galen’s assassination attempt, and Cel’s treachery, that she had been worrying about her virtue. She wanted to be free of Cel, but not badly enough to lie with a woman. To be free of Cel, I would have slept with things that had never even been human, and never would be. I knew a lesser evil when I saw it. Looking into Dogmaela’s face, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. I still had visions of Melangell’s eyes dancing inside my head. I’d probably have nightmares about it.

  “I will bed Hafwyn and anyone else who wishes to come with me, not because I am a lover of women, but because I would not leave anyone in Cel’s power if I could save them. Now take Kieran before the queen and report truthfully and fully about his crimes.”

  She went, and the others went with her, two of the guard carrying the still unconscious Lord Innis between them. He left a trail of fresh blood as they vanished around the corner.

  Aisling had his golden veil wrapped around his face and hair again. The bloody cut on his side was almost healed.

  “You gained from using your power,” I said, my face still half-hidden against Frost’s chest.

  “I gained from besting her at her own game, yes. Once she was almost a match for me.”

  “She has lost much of who she was,” Frost said.

  “Once she was Sweet Poison.”

  I wanted to ask him if he was upset about what Melangell had done. Didn’t it bother him that a woman had torn her own eyes out rather than look upon his face? But I didn’t say it out loud, any of it. I had asked him to do it. It was my responsibility. To say that I hadn’t understood was no defense. You did not use magic that you did not understand because of shit like this happening. I buried my face against Frost’s chest, so I could not see Aisling, even in his veil.

  He laughed, a deep, rich masculine sound. “I was called Terrible Beauty.” But his voice said he was pleased with himself.

  I wanted to say I didn’t understand, but I didn’t. It wasn’t a good enough excuse anyway.

  CHAPTER 22

  MAJOR WALTERS, THE POLICE, THE CSU TECHS, AND DR. POLASKI, the medical examiner, had nothing but complaints. Their laptop computer wouldn’t work. Their cell phones didn’t work. Nothing they had with them that used electricity, or even batteries, worked. Was that me screaming earlier, and why had I been screaming Galen’s name? Glamour hides a multitude of sins, and both Galen and I were good enough to hide the blood. As long as no one touched us, and found that the cloth felt tacky with blood, we were fine.

  “We weren’t certain what would happen to your modern tech down here. I’m sorry it’s not working,” I said. I wanted to avoid the screaming issue altogether, but I didn’t want him angry at me. Police do not like to be fucked with, especially if they’ve just, maybe, pissed off all the local feds on your behalf. No matter how much Walters had enjoyed my handing Marquez his hat, it still might make life difficult for him.

  “There are things inside the sithen that are frightening. One of them almost attacked Galen. It scared me, that’s all.” I turned, hoping to get away from Walters and his questions. I just wasn’t up to word games at that moment. Melangell’s face kept coming back to me. Frost’s assurance that her eyes would grow back if she were allowed to be in faerie and not in the Hallway of Mortality was small comfort if she couldn’t be cured of a hopeless obsession with Aisling. We had stolen something from Melangell if she couldn’t cure herself of the love.

  Walters grabbed my arm. I hadn’t expected him to touch me. “Princess Meredith, what aren’t you . . .” His voice trailed off because the arm he grabbed was tacky with the blood that covered it. He jerked me nearly off my feet, and my concentration was simply not good enough. Frost moved in to protect me, but the glamour slipped. Walters got a flickering look at what I was hiding.

  He looked past me at the others, and they were all busy trying to do their jobs, collecting evidence with none of their gadgets working. He didn’t let go of my arm. “We need to talk,” he said, his voice surprisingly calm.

  “In private,” I added.

  He nodded.

  Frost said, “Let go of the princess.”

  “It’s all right, Frost.” I led the way around the corner and a little way down the hall. Shiny white marble with veins of gold and silver was replacing the grey stone where Mistral and I had made love. It was as if something that we had done was changing the very nature of the sithen. The queen would not be pleased, but one problem at a time.

  When we were alone except for my ring of guards, he said, “Show me what I’m feeling, Princess, because it’s not the same thing I’m seeing.”

  Should I have tried to trick him? Maybe, but I was tired of games. We still didn’t know where Amatheon had disappeared to. The chalice had gone AWOL, and who knew when and where it would reappear. The only reason I had had Frost with me when I suddenly materialized in the other hallway was that he had grabbed me when I started to fade. But for that, I would have appeared alone, unguarded, in the middle of the fight.

  I dropped the glamour, and had the small satisfaction of watching Major Walters’s eyes go wide before he found his cop face. But I’d seen the moment, and knew I must be even messier than I thought.

  “What the hell happened to you?” He had let me go and now had some of the drying blood on his hand.

  “There was another assassination attempt,” I said, leaving out that it wasn’t aimed at me. “Galen was injured in the fighting.” Truth, as far as it went.

  Walters looked at Galen. I nodded, and Galen dropped the glamour. He even turned around so Walters could see the worst of the blood.

  “How is he up walking around?”

  “The sidhe heal faster than mere mortals,” I said.

  “He lost that much blood and he’s healed?”

  “I’m a little light-headed,” Galen said, “but give me an hour or two, and I’ll be good as new.”

  “Jesus, I wish we could heal like that.”

  “So do I,” I said.

  He looked at me. “I forgot, you’re mortal, like us.”

  I shrugged. “That’s the rumor.”

  “You don’t heal as fast as the rest of them.”

  “No.”

  “Your arm isn’t in a sling anymore,” he said, and motioned to it.

  “No, it got healed in a ritual.” The se
x with Mistral had healed it, but I didn’t need to overshare that much.

  He shook his head. “Is any of this blood yours?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “His last time,” he pointed at Frost, “now his,” he pointed to Galen. “You’re going to get one of them killed.”

  “I hope not.” I let my voice show how tired I was, how unhappy I was at the thought.

  “Go back to L.A., Princess. Take your men and go.”

  “Why?”

  “Because there have been two assassination attempts in two days, plus a double homicide. Someone wants you dead, and doesn’t care who gets hurt. If they want you dead bad enough, they’ll succeed. Maybe not tonight, or tomorrow, but if you stay, they will kill you.”

  “Are you trying to scare me, Major Walters?”

  “I’m trying to have you not die on my watch. I agreed to come into your murder scene partly to help my career, I admit that. But if you die with me inside your faerie land, I will never live it down. I’ll always be the one who let you die.”

  “If they kill me, Major Walters, the only thing you could do to stop them would be to die before me. I don’t think that’s very helpful.”

  “Are you making a joke?”

  I sighed, and rubbed my forehead, fighting off an urge to scream. “No, Major, I am not joking. What hunts me here is nothing you can stop or protect me from. I need your help to solve these murders, but truthfully, if I’d known it was this dangerous in faerie right now, I wouldn’t have brought you in.”

  “We’re police, Princess Meredith. We’re used to taking our chances.”

  I shook my head. “Do you have enough evidence? Do you have what you need?”

  “Dr. Polaski wanted to know what would happen if we gave you evidence that pointed to someone.”

  “Did she find something?”

  “She wanted to know what—” He paused over his words. “—use you would make of any evidence we gathered.”

  “We’d use it to hunt down and punish the murderer,” I said.

  He shook his head, wiping his big hand on the side of his jacket. “What about a trial?”

  I smiled, and knew it wasn’t pleasant. “There are no trials inside faerie, Major Walters.”

  “So you’ll use our evidence to kill someone?”

  “The punishment for murder among us is usually death, so execute them, yes.”

  “Then we’ll have to go back to the lab and contact you later.”

  “You did find something,” I said.

  He nodded. “If this was going to trial we’d want to run it through a computer. If what we’ve found is going to be used to execute someone without a trial, we want to be even more cautious.”

  “What did you find?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  “You do realize that the murderer could be the one behind the attempts on my life. By not telling me what you suspect, or who you suspect, you could be signing my death warrant. By the time you’ve analyzed your data, it could be too late for me.”

  His hands made fists, and he closed his eyes. “I told the doctor that in so many words. She won’t budge.”

  “So you don’t know either,” I said.

  “I know it’s a print of someone we took samples from, and the only ones we had access to were the ones in the hallway.”

  “The guards,” I said.

  “And the kitchen staff,” he said.

  I looked at him. “One of the royal guards, that’s what you think, isn’t it?”

  “It’s who I’d be afraid of, if I were you.”

  “I could compel her to tell me what she knows, or have one of my guards do it.”

  “Using magic on anyone connected with the police is a felony, Princess.”

  “I’m immune to prosecution.”

  “You’d never again get help out of my office, or anyone else on our side of the river. You might never get help from anyone. No other human law enforcement agency would trust you. Bringing us in here and mind-raping us.” He shook his head. “I may not agree with Polaski, but I’ll fight to keep her free will and choice.”

  I looked into his pale eyes, and knew he meant it. I could maybe get something useful out of Polaski and never be able to trust or be trusted by the police again, or I could let them go and hope that the doctor knew what she was doing. If I hadn’t wanted their expertise, then why had I brought them into the sithen in the first place?

  “I trust Dr. Polaski’s judgment, and your stubbornness. I’ll abide by the rules.”

  Frost moved beside me, as if he would have disagreed. “We will all abide by the rules of my agreement, is that clear?”

  Some nodded. Ivi was smiling as if he couldn’t quite believe me. Or maybe he was just amused at some private joke of his own. You never knew with Ivi.

  “I understand,” Frost said. “I do not agree, but I will abide by it.”

  Walters nodded. “I’ll try to hurry the doctor and her techs and get it to you as soon as I can, but a print out of place isn’t proof of murder. It isn’t proof enough to execute someone.”

  “Not in a human court,” I said.

  “See, talk like that will make Polaski sit on her evidence. You’ll never get it.”

  “But I’m not saying it to her, am I.”

  “You think I’d give it to you, if I had it.”

  “I think you understand, more than she does, how dangerous things are right now for me and my guards.”

  He looked at me for a long moment. “Maybe, but I agree with Polaski on one thing: I wouldn’t want to be the person who gave you just enough evidence to get the wrong person killed. Once someone’s dead, Princess Meredith, there’s no fixing it. No going back. I’d want to be dead certain that I had the right person before anyone got the ax.”

  “So would I, Major, and I’ll push to see that we get more proof.”

  “You said they’d use the evidence to simply execute.”

  “I said they could and probably will, but I, like you, want to be sure. Fairplay and all, but more than that, Major Walters, once someone is executed for the crime the investigation stops. If we execute the wrong person, then the murderer is still free to kill again. I don’t want that.”

  “So it’s not about executing the wrong person for you but about letting the guilty go free.”

  “A guilty murderer that gets away with it once may try again.”

  He nodded. “If they get away with it once, most of them seem to get a taste for it.” He looked at me. “If everyone but you is supposed to be immortal down here, then how did this Beatrice die?”

  “That is another problem, isn’t it?”

  “Perhaps . . .” Aisling said.

  I didn’t want to look at him. I realized I was angry with him. Angry about what he’d done to Melangell. Angry that he didn’t seem to feel bad about it. His tone of voice had sounded almost as if he had enjoyed it.

  Mistral suddenly joined our group. “Excuse me, Princess. Queen Andais longs greatly to speak with you.” His face was utterly neutral as he said it. Too neutral. Something was wrong.

  “Princess Meredith, why not appeal directly to this doctor?” Aisling said.

  I took in a lot of air and let it out slow, then I turned very deliberately and looked at Aisling. “It’s not a bad idea,” I said, my voice sounding more matter-of-fact than my face felt.

  Aisling smiled. I could see just enough of his face through the gauze to know that.

  I looked away from him. I tried to make it casual, but I don’t think he, or any of the other men, was fooled. Maybe Mistral wouldn’t understand why I didn’t want to see that ghostly smile, but then he didn’t know that I’d unleashed Aisling’s smile on someone else.

  “No,” Walters said.

  We all looked at him. “Why not?” I asked.

  “I shouldn’t have told you.”

  “You’re in charge here, right? Of the human side, at least.”

  “Technica
lly, but she’s the chief medical examiner, and she’s in charge of her people. If I were the chief of police, yeah, but I’m not.”

  “So you cannot make her cooperate,” Frost said.

  Walters shook his head. “She’ll be pissed if she knows I told you as much as I did. If she gets pissed, she’ll be even less likely to share.”

  “Then why did you tell us?” Aisling asked.

  I kept my gaze on Walters this time as he said, “Because it’s got to be one of the people who were here in the hallway with us. Because they’re the only ones we took prints from. I won’t give you a name just because their print was where it shouldn’t be, not if you’re just going to kill them. But I don’t want you getting killed either.”

  “Why, Major Walters, I’m touched.” I didn’t smile when I said it.

  “Give me your word that the suspect won’t be harmed in any way, and I’ll help you talk to Polaski.”

  “I give you my word that I will do everything within my power to keep whoever it is safe from harm.”

  “Doing everything in your power isn’t the same thing as promising that they won’t be harmed,” Walters said.

  “No, it isn’t, but I’m Princess Meredith, not queen. I am not absolute ruler here. You can promise me things, but if the chief of police overrides you, then where does that leave me?”

  He shook his head. “Fine, talk to Polaski, but she’s not going to be happy with either of us.”

  “Why should she be any different?”

  “What?” he asked.

  I shook my head. “Just ignore me, Walters, I’m not feeling my best.”

  “If I’d had two assassination attempts on me in two days, I’d be pissed.”

  I thought about that. It wasn’t getting myself killed that bothered me; it was getting everyone else killed. There’s a reason why the president and his family aren’t supposed to date the secret service agents who guard them.

  There was still blood on Galen’s hand, his blood, dried, a little tacky still. Too much blood. Too much was happening in too small a space of time. Holding Galen’s hand made me start to tremble. I realized in that moment that I was going to break down.

  “Can you give us a few minutes, Major, please?” My voice was only a little shaky.