He looked at me, gaze searching my face. “You could truly sleep with me and not be repulsed?”
“Repulsed? Uther, you have been too long among the humans. You are a jack-in-irons and you look exactly as you are supposed to look. There are others of your kind. You are not a freak.”
He shook his head. “I am exiled, Merry. I can never go back to faerie, and here among the humans I am a freak.”
It made my chest tight to hear him say that. “Uther, don’t let other people’s eyes make you hate yourself.”
“How can it not?” he asked.
I laid a hand over his chest, feeling the sure thick beat of his heart. “Inside is Uther, my friend, and I love you as a friend.”
“I’ve been among humans long enough to know what the friend speech means,” he said. Again he turned away from me, his body growing stiff and uncomfortable, as if he couldn’t bear for me to touch him.
I got to my knees. I would have said I straddled his legs, but the best I could do was to put a knee on each thigh. I touched his face with my hands, exploring the slope of his forehead, the thick eyebrows. I had to lower my arms and come from underneath to trace his cheeks. I ran my thumb along his mouth, rubbing my hands along the smooth bone of the tusks. “You are a handsome jack-in-irons. The double tusk is highly prized. And that curve in the end—the jacks consider it a sign of virility.”
“How do you know that?” His voice was soft, a whisper.
“When I was a teenager, the queen took a jack named Yannick as her lover. She said, after she’d been with him, that no sidhe could fill her as her Jack of Hearts could.” In the end she’d called him her Jack of Fools, and he’d fallen out of favor. He’d gotten away with his life, which was more than most of the queen’s nonsidhe lovers managed. The humans usually ended up committing suicide.
Uther stared at me. With me kneeling on his legs we were almost eye to eye. “What did you think of Yannick?” he asked, voice low and lower, so that I had to lean in to hear him.
“I thought he was a fool.” I leaned in to kiss him and he turned away. I put a hand on either side of his face and brought him back to face me. “But I thought that all the queen’s lovers were fools.” I had to sit on Uther’s lap, a leg to either side of his waist to get an angle to kiss him. The tusks got in the way for kissing. But if it would take that hurt from his eyes, it would be worth the effort.
I kissed him as my friend. I kissed him because I didn’t find him ugly. I’d grown up around fey that made Uther look like a GQ cover boy by human standards. One thing the Unseelie teaches is the love of every form of fey. There is beauty in all of us. Ugly is simply not a word you use at the Unseelie Court. At the Seelie court I was considered ugly, not tall enough, not slender enough, and my hair was the blood auburn of the Unseelie Court, not the more human red of the Seelie Court. Among the Unseelie I hadn’t had many “boyfriends” either. Not because they didn’t find me attractive, but because I was mortal. A sidhe that was mortal frightened them, I think. They treated it like a contagious disease. Only Griffin had been willing to try, and in the end I hadn’t been sidhe enough for him either.
I knew what it was to be forever the outsider, the freak. I put all that into the kiss, closing my eyes, cupping his chin in my hands. I kissed him hard enough to feel how the bones of his upper jaw widened before they curled upward.
Uther kissed like he spoke, carefully, each movement, like each syllable, well thought out. His hands kneaded my lower back, and I could feel the amazing strength in them, the potential in his body to break me like some fragile doll. Only trust would take you to his bed and let you expect to come out the other side unharmed. But I did trust Uther, and I wanted him to believe in himself again.
“I hate to interrupt,” Jeremy said, “but there’s another wreck up ahead. There’s a wreck at every side street we’ve tried.”
I drew back from the kiss. “What did you say?”
“We’re two wrecks for two side roads,” Jeremy said.
“Coincidence does not stretch so large,” Uther said. He kissed me gently on the cheek and let me slide out of the embrace to sit beside him, still staying in the shadow of his energy. The hurt look in his eyes had vanished, leaving something more solid, more sure of itself behind. It had been worth a kiss.
“They know I was at Roane’s apartment, but they don’t know where I am now. They’re trying to cut off all the escape routes.”
Jeremy nodded. “Why haven’t you sensed them?”
“She’s been too busy,” Ringo said.
“No,” I said. “But as Uther’s aura keeps them from spotting me, so his aura interferes with me sensing them.”
“If you move away from him, you’ll be able to sense them,” Jeremy said.
“And they me,” I said.
“What do you want me to do?” Ringo asked.
“We seem to be stuck in traffic. I don’t think there’s anything you can do,” I said.
“They’ve blocked all the roads,” Jeremy said. “They’ll start searching among the cars now. Eventually, they will find us. We need a plan.”
“If Uther will move up with me, I’ll look and see if my eyes can sense something that the rest of me can’t.”
“My pleasure,” Uther said, and smiled.
We were both smiling as I crawled into the second row of seats. Uther hovered over the back of the seats, one big hand on my shoulder. There were cars parked on one side of the street, and two lanes of traffic trailing from the streetlight. The reason we weren’t moving was a three-car pileup at the light. One car was upside down on the pavement. The second car had smashed into it, and a third into both, so the three cars formed a pile of twisted metal and broken glass. I could visualize how the second and third car smashed into the first. What I couldn’t figure out was how that first car had gotten on its side, upside down in the middle of the road. No scenario that I could come up with would have flipped the car dead center into the middle of the road. Flipped it so that it formed as large a barrier across the street as possible. I was betting that someone or some things had turned the car over and let the other cars hit it. They’d formed a dam of machines and bleeding people. As long as they could use glamour to hide themselves and not be blamed, they wouldn’t give a damn about injured bystanders. My family—how I hate them sometimes.
There were people gathering on the sidewalks, people getting out of their cars, standing in the open doors. There were two police cars parked in the middle of the intersection, stopping the traffic that was still trying to drive on the cross street. The lights on the police cars cut the night in splashes of colored light, competing with the signs and lighted windows of the businesses and clubs that were on either side of the street. I could hear the wail of an ambulance coming closer, probably what the police were clearing the traffic for.
I searched the crowd with my eyes, and there was nothing unusual to see. I cast out with that other sense. I’d be limited with Uther’s energy leaking all over me, but not completely helpless. I might be able to spot how close they were before I revealed myself.
The air wavered two cars ahead of us, like a ripple of heat, except it wasn’t heat, and you never got that effect after dark. Something large was moving between the cars, something that didn’t want to be seen. I cast out farther and found three more ripples. “Four shapes moving out there, all bigger than a human. Closest one is only two cars up from us.”
“Can you see shapes?” Jeremy asked.
“No, just ripples.”
“To be able to hold glamour in place when you’re tipping over cars is more than most fey can manage,” Jeremy said.
Apparently, none of us believed the first car had gotten on its roof by itself. “Even most of the sidhe couldn’t do it, but some of them can.”
“So four larger than human, and at least one sidhe close by,” Uther said.
“Yes.”
“What’s the plan?” Ringo asked.
A good question that. U
nfortunately, I didn’t have a good answer. “We’ve got four policemen at the intersection. Are they going to be a help or a hindrance?”
“If we could break their glamour, make them visible to the police, and they didn’t know it right away . . .” Jeremy said.
“If they did something harmful in full sight of the police . . .” I said.
“Merry, my girl, I think you’ve grasped my plan.”
Ringo looked back at me. “I don’t know much about sidhe magic, but if Merry isn’t a full-blooded one, is she powerful enough to break their glamour?”
They all looked at me. “Well?” Jeremy said.
“We don’t have to break the spell. All we have to do is overload it,” I said.
“We’re listening,” Jeremy said.
“The first car was turned over, but the rest just crashed. They’re peering in the cars, looking for me but not touching anyone. If we get out and fight them, the sidhe won’t be able to keep them unseen.”
“I thought we wanted to avoid a direct fight if possible,” Ringo said.
The ripple was almost here. “If anyone’s got a better idea, you’ve got about sixty seconds to share it. We’re about to be searched.”
“Hide,” Uther said.
“What?”
“Merry hides,” he said.
It was a good idea. I slipped behind the secondary seats, and Uther moved away from the wall just enough for me to worm behind him. I didn’t think it would work, but it was better than nothing. We could fight later if they found me, but if I could hide . . . I pressed myself against the cool metal wall and Uther’s warm back and tried not to think too hard. Some sidhe can hear you thinking if you’re agitated enough. I was completely hidden from sight. Even if they opened the big sliding door, which I didn’t think they would risk, they wouldn’t see me. But it wasn’t really their eyes I was worried about. There are all types of fey, and not all of them have a human’s reliance on their vision. That wasn’t even counting the sidhe who was doing the glamour. If we were the only car with fey occupants, the sidhe would come to investigate before they left this area. He, or she, would have to see for themselves.
I wanted badly to watch that wavering in the air peer in all the windows. But that would have defeated the purpose of hiding, so I crouched behind Uther and tried to be very still. I heard, felt, something brush against the metal wall at my back. Something large was pressed against the metal. Then I heard it, a loud sniffing like of some gigantic hound.
I had a heartbeat to think, “It smells me,” then something smashed through the metal inches from me. I screamed, scrambling out from behind Uther, before my mind had fully registered the fist, large as my head, stuck through the side of the van.
A sound of shattering glass whirled me around. An arm big as a tree trunk and a chest wider than the car window was pressed through the driver’s-side window. Ringo beat at the arm, but it grabbed the front of his shirt and started pulling him through the broken window.
The gun was in my hand but there wasn’t a clear shot. Jeremy moved across the seats, and I saw the flash of a blade in his hand.
Metal screamed as giant fists pulled the side of the van apart until a huge leering face peered into the hole. He looked past Uther like he wasn’t there, yellow eyes on me. “Princess,” the ogre hissed, “we’ve been looking for you.”
Uther smashed his fist into the huge face. Blood sprayed from the ogre’s nose, and the face fell back from the hole. There were screams from outside, human screams. The glamour had collapsed under the violence. The ogres had simply appeared to the humans like magic. I heard a man’s voice yelling, “Police, stop where you are!”
The police were coming. Yeah. I put the gun back in my waistband. I didn’t want to explain it.
I turned back to the front seat. Ringo was still in the driver’s seat. Jeremy was leaning over him, and there was blood on his hands. I moved through the middle seats to them. I started to ask if Ringo was hurt, but the moment I saw his chest, I didn’t have to ask. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood, a piece of glass as wide as my hand stuck out of his chest.
“Ringo,” I said his name softly.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’m not going to be much help to you.” He coughed, and I could see it hurt.
I touched his face. “Don’t talk.”
I could hear the police talking to the ogres, telling them things like, “Hands on top of your heads! On your knees! Don’t fucking move!” Then I heard another man’s voice, a smooth masculine voice, with just a touch of accent. I knew the voice.
I scrambled to the big sliding door, while Jeremy was still saying, “What? What is it?”
“Sholto,” I said.
His face remained puzzled. The name meant nothing to him.
I tried again. “Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, King of the Sluagh.”
It was the last title that widened his eyes, and drove fear sharp in his face. “Oh my God,” he said.
Uther said, “Shadowspawn is here?”
I glanced at him. “Never say that to his face.” I could hear the voices through the broken window, so very clearly. I felt like I was moving in slow motion. The door didn’t want to open, or I’d grown clumsy with fear.
That voice was saying, “Thank you so much, Officers.”
“We’ll wait for transport for the ogres,” the policeman said.
The door slid open and I had a frozen moment to see everything. Three of the ogres were on their knees on the sidewalk, hands clasped on their heads. Two policemen had their guns out. One officer was on the sidewalk in front of the ogres; the other one, separated from them by the line of parked cars. A tall figure, though only human tall, stood by the cars and that policeman. The figure was dressed in a grey leather trench coat with his white hair trailing down the back of it. The last time I’d seen Sholto, he’d been wearing a grey cloak, but the effect was surprisingly similar as he turned, as if he felt me standing there. Even from yards away in the electric-kissed darkness I could see that his eyes were three different shades of gold: metallic gold around the pupil, then amber, and last a circle the color of yellow autumn leaves. I was afraid of Sholto, always had been, but when I saw those eyes, I realized how homesick I was for the sidhe, because for a second, I was glad to see another person with a triple iris. Then the look in those familiar eyes sent a chill across my neck and the moment of connectedness was gone.
He turned, smiling, back to the police. “I will attend the princess.” He started walking toward the van, and they didn’t stop him. I realized why as he moved closer. He had the queen’s emblem, a badge that her Guard carried, hanging from his neck. It looks surprisingly like a police badge, and it had been well publicized that to use one of the emblems if you didn’t deserve it came with a curse. A curse that not even a sidhe would risk.
I didn’t know what he’d told them, but I could guess. He’d been sent to stop the attack on me. He’d see me safely home. All so very reasonable.
Sholto moved toward me in a long-legged, graceful stride. He was handsome, not the heartbreaking beauty of some of the sidhe, but striking. I knew that the humans watched him as he walked, because they could not help themselves. The grey coat blew back and there was the faintest bulk around his middle. Sholto had the hair, the eyes, the skin, the face, the shoulders, everything—except that from just below his nipples to vanish into his pants was a nest of tentacles, things with mouths. His mother had been sidhe, his father had not.
Something touched my shoulder and I jerked, screaming. It was Jeremy. “Close the door, Uther.”
Uther slid the door shut, almost in Sholto’s face. He leaned against it, so that it couldn’t be opened from the outside without some effort. “Run,” Uther said.
“Run,” Jeremy said.
I understood. Outside of a war, the sluagh hunted one prey at a time, and I was it. Sholto wouldn’t hurt them if I weren’t here. I slipped out the jagged metal hole that the ogre
s had made on the other side, managing to worm through without cutting myself. I could hear Sholto knocking, oh so politely, on the van’s big door. “Princess Meredith, I’ve come to take you home.”
I dropped low to the ground and used the parked cars to hide me as I made it to the sidewalk and the crowd that had gathered to watch the show. I threw another coating of glamour over me. Hair a nondescript brown, skin darker, tanned. I moved through the crowd, changing my appearance a little at a time so that no one would point and draw attention to me. By the time I made it out the other side and started down the side street, the only thing that still looked the same was the clothes. I slipped the suit jacket off, took the gun in my hand, and rolled the jacket around my hand and arm. Sholto had seen an auburn-haired woman with pale skin in a navy jacket. Now I was a brown-haired woman with a tan, and a green shirt. I walked calmly down the street, though there was a place between my shoulder blades that itched as if he were staring a hole through me.
I wanted to turn around and glance back, but I forced myself to keep walking. I made it to the corner without anyone yelling, “There she is!” When I got to the corner, I stopped for a second. Dear Goddess, I wanted to look back over my shoulder. I fought the urge and stepped around the corner of the building. When I was safely out of sight, I let out a breath I hadn’t known I was holding. I wasn’t out of danger, not with Sholto on this coast, but it was a start.
A noise came from overhead. A high, thin sound, almost too high to hear, but it pierced through the normal sounds of the city like an arrow through the heart. I scanned the night sky, but it was empty, except for the distant trail of an airplane glowing against the darkness. The sound came again almost painfully high, like the sounds of bats. There was nothing there.
I started walking backward, slowly, still scanning the sky, when a movement caught my eye. I followed that flicker to the top of the nearest building. A line of black shapes huddled on the building’s edge. They were like a line of ink-black hoods the size of small men. One of the “hoods” shook itself like a bird settling its feathers. The blackness raised its head to flash a pale, flat face. A slit of a mouth opened and that high-pitched cry sounded.
Meredith Gentry 01 - A Kiss of Shadows Page 13
