Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [134]
“Princess,” he said, “are you all right?”
I nodded. “I think so.” I touched his hand. “I’m glad to see that you’re okay. I heard screaming.”
He got a strange look on his face. “I’m okay now.”
I thought it was an odd way to phrase it. But Galen was beside me, taking me into his arms, and there was no time to question Dawson. Galen lifted me off my feet, holding me so tightly that I couldn’t see his face clearly. But I could see Jonty’s back over Galen’s shoulder. The sight stole the smile from my face.
The Red Cap’s back was a mass of wounds, a red ruin. Doyle and the others laid him gently down on the grass. I knew why they’d moved him slowly now. “Oh, my God, Jonty,” I said.
Galen loosened his grip enough to see my face as he lowered me to the grass. “I’m sorry, Merry.” Blood was drying on the side of his face from a gash near his temple.
“You’re hurt.”
He smiled. “Not as bad as some.”
I looked back at Jonty with the other men grouped around him. They were too serious, too quiet. I didn’t like it. “Jonty’s heart is still beating. If we can get him to a healer he won’t die.”
Galen’s face was stricken in the moonlight, so pain-filled. “But you would have died.”
He was right. If the bomb had done that much damage to a Red Cap, then I’d have been so much red ruin. Me, and our babies, would have been turned into so much raw meat.
“Cel’s followers did this,” I said.
“Dawson told us,” Galen said.
I started toward Jonty and the others. Galen slid his hand in mine and we walked to him hand in hand.
Doyle laid his hand against my cheek, and I pressed my face against his hand. “The Red Caps did our duty for us,” he said.
The comment made me raise my face from his hand and look past Jonty and the other guards. Soldiers were standing, helping wounded move across the field, but the Red Caps were still figures lying across the grass. Almost none of them were sitting up, and none were standing.
“How are the humans up and the Red Caps so hurt?”
“We were hurt,” Dawson said, “but we healed.”
“What?” I asked.
“Every solider who you healed earlier healed on their own. Then we healed the others.”
“What?” I asked again, because it still didn’t make sense.
“We healed them,” Dawson said. “We used the nails. They were like some sort of magic wands.”
“Can it heal the Red Caps?” Doyle asked.
“They’re metal,” I said.
“They are dying, Meredith. I don’t think it will hurt them now,” Rhys said. One of his arms was in a sling, and the sleeve of his uniform was blackened.
Mistral’s coat was a blackened ruin across his back. Had Taranis himself attacked with his Seelie warriors? I realized that Sholto was still missing.
“Where’s Sholto?”
Doyle dropped his hand from my face, and answered me while turning away. “Sholto is well. The sluagh came to his call. It is all that saved us from Taranis and his men. They fled from the sluagh.”
I grabbed Doyle’s arm with my free hand. The other was squeezed tightly in Galen’s hand. There was too much happening, and I didn’t know how to cope with it all. But I knew one thing; I didn’t want Doyle’s face to look like that.
He turned and looked at me, but his face was that old unreadable darkness, only his eyes flinching around the edges. Now I knew what that little flinch meant.
“I want to wrap you around me like a coat, and cover you in kisses, but we have wounded to save. But do not doubt what I feel for you, even in the midst of this.” The first hard tear slid down my cheek. “I thought you were dead, and….”
Galen’s hand dropped away, and Doyle wrapped me in his arms. I clung to him as if his hands on my body were air and food, and everything I needed to live.
I heard Rhys say, “Come on, Dawson, let’s see if those little nails will help Jonty.”
I wanted to melt into Doyle’s kiss and never come up for air, but there was duty. There was always duty, and some horror that had to be fought, or healed, or…. Everyone thinks they want