Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [115]
The women exchanged another look. A particularly piteous scream rose in the silence between gunfire and magic. It was the sound of death. It was the sound of mortal life being ripped away.
“If I were willing to do this, how would I lure him?” Gregorio asked. The moment she said it, I knew she’d do it, if I could just think of a way to bring him to me.
I spoke, thinking aloud, because I had no clear plan. “He wants to find me. He knows by now that my guards are not with me in the car. If I were him and his allies, I’d find me.”
A mist formed on the other side of the road in the fringe of trees. It wasn’t a wide road, and before I could even voice a warning, figures appeared out of a mist that shouldn’t have been there, and hadn’t been there just moments before. I should have remembered that I was still on faerie land, and wishes can come true. I’d wanted Cel to find me, not all of his warriors. Be specific when you wish in faerie, and be careful what you wish for.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
SIOBHAN STEPPED OUT OF THE MIST, HER LONG WHITE HAIR haloing around her like spider silk caught in the wind. She was close enough that I could see the runes carved on her white armor. I knew that the armor seemed to be carved of old bone, but I had seen her on the dueling sands, and knew that the “bone” was as hard as any metal. The sword she held in her hand was also white. The blade was a killing blade, even if I’d been immortal. It was overkill for me. Then she held her blade up so it caught the moonlight. Blood gleamed on the edge of the bone blade. It might have been the blood of human soldiers, but then again, it might not.
She meant me to think it was the blood of my men, my lovers, the fathers of my children. She meant the sight of that blood to be a blow that would soften me up for the real blow to come. But I would have known if Doyle’s blood decorated her blade. I would have known if Rhys had been touched. As much as I valued Sholto and Mistral, my heart would survive their deaths.
“Shit,” Gregorio said. I felt her start to cast a spell, a prickling build of power. It was a pale thing, but very real.
“Don’t,” I said. “I know what to do.”
“Are you insane?” the driver asked. “Look at them.”
I glanced at the other soldiers with Siobhan. In their armor, they looked more like Seelie sidhe. Their colors were silver and gold, but there was also armor that seemed to be made of leaves, bark, fur, and things that humans had no words for. The Unseelie had kept closer to their origins, and not traded everything for metal and jewels. I recognized some of the soldiers, but some I had never seen in full armor. But they all stood behind Siobhan, not in front of her. Kill her and the rest would be leaderless, a snake without a head.
“I grew up seeing them,” I said finally.
I concentrated on Siobhan, she who had been Cel’s right hand for longer than any remembered. She whom Doyle feared, and the Darkness feared almost nothing. But some magics are no respecter of power; they will kill a king as quickly as a beggar.
I lowered my window. She called out to me, “The blood of your Darkness decorates my blade.”
I unbuckled my seat belt, and came to my knees, unsheathing Aben-dul as I moved. The odd hilt with its carved horrors fit my hand as if it had waited forever for my fingers to grip it. It came smoothly, like drawing silk across the skin. I pointed the blade at her.
She laughed. “You surprised me when you used the hand of flesh on Rozenwyn and Pascoe, but I know to stay out of reach now, Princess. I don’t need to get within reach of that little hand of yours. I can kill you from a distance, and free faerie of your mortal taint. We will put a true prince on the throne this night, and your challenge will be forgotten.”
Rozenwyn and Pascoe had been twins, and maybe that had caused the hand of flesh to combine them into one mass. It had been one of the