Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [58]
“I am the King of the sluagh, Meredith. I can hide a small army in plain sight. An army that would blast the minds of the humans we pass.”
I glanced down at the pristine floor and realized we were leaving a trail of blood drops. My hand didn’t hurt anymore, wound with his. It was as if the pain had already become familiar, but we were still bleeding. I could see the blood drops clearly, but the humans walked in it and left tracks, as if they could not see it.
The hospital was no longer a sterile environment. Was our blood a problem? Magic was often like this. It worked, but it could have unforeseen consequences. Were we contaminating everywhere we walked?
What was supposed to be a tattoo fluttered against my gown. It was a moth with wings again, stuck in my body, as if my flesh were ice that had captured it but left its wings to struggle vainly to free itself. The sensation was a little stomach-churning, or maybe the way I thought of it. But the frantic wings let me know that he was above us, and that we needed the elevator. The pulsing had been harder to interpret, but the frantic wings were easier to judge. We were running out of time. If I’d been inside faerie I could have moved the fabric of reality like a curtain and found him much sooner, but reality was harsher here, even for me with my human blood in my veins, and on the floor behind us.
The elevator went to the floor that someone had pushed, but the doctor there seemed unwilling to get inside with us, though he didn’t see us. Sholto was keeping our way clear. The doors closed and we went up again.
The elevator opened, but when Sholto tried to get off, the moth was so frantic it hurt, as if it were trying to fly free of my body. I pulled him back, and we waited for the doors to close. I hovered over the buttons, and hit the floor that the wings seemed most excited about.
I’d never navigated like this, and being inside so much metal and technology, I think I had assumed that the moth would not work very well here, but it was part of my body, and that meant that man-made things did not weaken its magic. I had to trust that all the magic I possessed would work here, and work well.
The elevator opened and the moth flew forward. I stepped in the direction that it wanted to go. Its frantic movements made me begin to run. We were close. Were we running into a trap, or were Doyle’s injuries stealing him away from me?
Sholto trotted at my side. He spoke as if he’d heard some of my thoughts. “I can hide us from other denizens of faerie as long as we do not interact with them.”
“I know only that he is in danger, not what that danger is,” I said. “I have no weapon,” he said.
“Our magic works here. Not all of theirs will.”
“The hand of power that injured Doyle and me worked just fine,” he said.
He had a point but I said, “Brownies have always been able to work magic around men and machinery. It was one of the reasons that Cair used Gran. You need mortal and brownie blood to work major magic here.”
Pain doubled me over. It felt as if the moth were trying to tear its way out of my skin. Only Sholto’s hand on me kept me upright. I pointed at the door to our left. “In there.”
He didn’t argue with me, simply made sure I could stand, then reached for the door handle. He was using glamour to hide us, but a door opening on its own was almost impossible to hide. You had to wait for others to open things for you if you wanted to remain hidden, but there was no time. The panic was screaming in my head, the moth frantic against my body.
A doctor, a nurse, and a uniformed policeman sitting in the corner all looked up as the door opened. I started to rush forward, but Sholto held me back. He was right. If we wanted to remain unseen, we had to move slowly and let the door close behind us. If we drew any more attention to the magically opening door, someone might see us.
But it took everything I had not to simply run across the room to Doyle. He lay terribly still against the white sheets. There were tubes and monitors everywhere. Needles pierced his body,