Swallowing Darkness - Laurell K. Hamilton [60]
I touched his shoulder, and Sholto touched his leg. His body reacted as if we had shocked him, spine bowing, eyes wide, breath coming in a gasp. He reacted to pain a second later, but he looked at me. He saw me.
He smiled, and whispered, “My Merry.”
I smiled back and felt the bite of happy tears. “Yes,” I said. “Yes, I am.”
His eyes lost focus, then fluttered closed. The doctor checked his pulse from his side of the bed. He was afraid of us, but not so afraid that he wouldn’t do his job. I liked him better for that.
“His pulse is stronger.” He looked at Sholto and me on the other side of the bed. “What did you do to him?”
“We shared some of the magic of faerie,” I said.
“Would it work on humans?” he asked.
I shook my head, and the crown of roses and mistletoe moved in my hair, like some serpentine pet settling more comfortably. “Your medicine would have helped a human with the same injuries.”
“Did your crown just move?” the nurse asked.
I ignored the question, because the sidhe are not allowed to lie, but the truth would not help her. She was already staring at us like we were amazing. The look on her face and to a lesser extent the policeman’s reminded me why President Thomas Jefferson had made certain that we agreed to never be worshipped as deities on American soil. Neither of us wanted to be worshipped, Sholto and I, but how do you keep that look off someone’s face when you stand before them crowned by the Goddess herself?
I expected the roses that bound our hands to uncurl so we could pick Doyle up, but they seemed perfectly happy where they were.
“Let us pick him up from the other side of the bed,” Sholto said. “That way you will be carrying his legs, which are lighter.”
I didn’t argue; we simply moved to the other side of the bed. The doctor moved back from us as if he didn’t want us to touch him. I couldn’t really blame him. It had been so long since the Goddess had blessed us to this degree that I wasn’t certain what would happen to a human who touched us in this moment.
Sholto bent over, putting his arms under Doyle’s shoulders. I did the same at his legs, though I didn’t have to bend nearly as far. It took some maneuvering, like an arm version of a three-legged race, but we picked Doyle up. He seemed to fill our arms as if he were meant to be there, or maybe that was just how I felt about touching him. As if he filled my arms, filled my body and my heart. How could I have left him to human medicine without another guard watching over him?
Where were the other guards? That policeman shouldn’t have been on his own.
“Meredith,” Sholto said, “you are thinking too hard, and we must move together to get him home.”
I nodded. “Sorry, I was just wondering where the other guards are. Someone should have stayed with him.”
The policeman answered. “They went with Rhys, and the one who’s called Falen, no, Galen. They took the body of your—” and he looked hesitant, as if he’d already said too much.
“My grandmother,” I finished for him.
“There were horses with them,” the cop said. “Horses in the hospital, and no one cared.”
“They were shining and white,” the nurse said. “So beautiful.”
“Every guard who they passed seemed to have a horse, and they rode out of the hospital,” the cop said.
“The magic took them,” Sholto said, “and they forgot their other duties.”
I hugged Doyle to me, and gazed at his face cuddled against Sholto’s body. “I’d heard that a faerie radhe could make the sidhe forget themselves, but I didn’t know what it meant.”
“It is a type of wild hunt, Meredith, except it is gentle, or even joyous. This one was for grief, and taking your grandmother home, but if it had been one of singing and celebration, they might have carried the entire hospital with them.”
“They were too solemn in their grief,” the nurse said.
“Yes,” Sholto said, “and good for your sakes.”
I looked at the nurse, gazing up at Sholto. She looked damn near elfstruck, a term for when mortals become so enamored of one of us that they will do anything