The first voice I heard clearly, though, wasn’t Christopher. It was Elessir, swearing down at me in a torrent of silver syllables—for he, not Christopher, was the one who’d attacked me without a scrap of magic at his command.
I stirred beneath him. For a heartbeat or two I thought I might actually retake my body, but then Melorite wrestled it back from me. Even through the pain hammering away at my system, she managed to writhe against the Unseelie and make it sensuous. “Hello to you too, lover,” she purred. “I see you haven’t lost the knack of throwing yourself at me.”
Much, much later I’d realize she’d answered him in the language of Faerie, and that, since she’d used my voice and body to do it, I’d actually understood her. Right then, though, I had no room to notice anything but Elessir’s pale, stark face above my own. With a curl to his mouth, he switched back to English. “Get out of her, darlin’. You’re outnumbered and outgunned, and there ain’t no way this ends for you in anything but oblivion.”
“No!” My uninvited guest probably meant that to be a screech, but as it was, it came out hoarse and breathless. “All I want is life! How can you deny me that?” The alokhiu pressed against him in ways I did not under any circumstances want to think about. “With all that we’ve shared? With all that I can promise?”
Christopher threw himself down to kneel beside me, his face joining Elessir’s above my own, his hands connecting with my body. But not to hold or support. His power engulfed me, bright and blazing. It crowded out everything else, even the pain building up a thunderhead just beyond the edge of my consciousness. In the calm before its storm, there was only Christopher, Elessir, and the stowaway inside my skull.
“Come back to me, Kenna,” Christopher urged me. His magic was an unending torrent, but his voice was ragged, and I glimpsed barely suppressed panic in his eyes—the same panic with which he’d greeted me when Elessir and I had found him out by Lake Sammamish. “You did it once, lass. You can do it again.”
My head snapped around, as much Melorite’s own feral locking onto the sound of his voice as my own desperate attempt to regain control and look at him myself. “And what if I tell you I’d like the bard instead, pretty mortal?”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” Christopher snarled, so abrupt and so furious that I’d have jolted if I were able. Then his tone reverted back to business, laced with that hint of desperation. But he addressed Elessir, not me. “Hold her still.”
Elessir replied, in a far cooler tone, “I’ve got her.”
Christopher’s left hand stayed clamped down on my shoulder. His right shifted to my forehead—and the power pouring into me redoubled.
A scream tore out of me from somewhere so deep that I couldn’t tell whether the alokhiu made it or I did. My vision, already filled with blinding spangles of light, swam until not even the boys’ faces above me were clear. But I could still feel Christopher’s hands. I felt Elessir’s arms around me, and every part of me that pressed against him.
And I felt Melorite, fraying wildly across my consciousness. Bolts of numbing cold raced along my limbs as she fought to maintain her control. With them came flashes of recollection, each one brief and bright, flaring and dying again almost before I even marked their presence.
Through her eyes, I saw an Elessir much changed from his modern appearance—not in the length of his hair, much longer than he wore it now, or in the garments of fine silk and velvet he wore. The difference was all in his eyes. Their gaze was unshielded, bright with what could only be the innocent confidence of youth. Even secondhand, even across hundreds of years, that sight of him almost broke my heart.
I glimpsed other fey as well, each one more unearthly than the last. This was the Unseelie Court and the shifting of face and form was as natural as breath, as easy as thought. But none of them eclipsed Elessir a’Natharion in Melorite’s memories, none save the Queen of Air and Darkness.
Luciriel was the dark core of the alokhiu’s existence, a theme played over and over again on instruments with voices that sang of blood. She called her servant’s own native magic into life, and then taught her in person when no other teacher of the Court could guide her. Not even death could usurp the Queen’s dominion, for it was by her will that what had once been Melorite now walked through bones that were not rightfully her own.
And oh, the death. Millie’s bullet wouldn’t kill me—at least, I hoped, but it was growing harder to tell what was going on with my own body. Melorite’s fear blotted out all else. All at once I couldn’t breathe for the cloying, smothering weight of it. Darkness. Cold. Nothingness. As those last few memories assaulted me, what ground I held on the battlefield of my psyche began to give.
Let me stay with you!
Her voice resounded within me, frantic now. In a flurry of icy needles, the cold of her danced through my flesh, as if snowflakes were pelting me from the sky and turning into icicles as they pierced me. Set off against that frost, the ache of my wound was a dull, pulsing heat. The contrast between them dazed me, and as I faltered, Melorite pulled me closer.
Neither of us has to die! I could give you centuries, pretty Seelie, I could teach you power and pleasure—
A raw bolt of sensation rolled through me, a shadow of the thrall she’d woven over me before, yet still enough to tempt me.
But she’d already shown me that future. I knew where it went, and how I’d eventually dissolve within her hunger no matter how long she extended my life. I wouldn’t even consider how she’d endanger others through me. I’d already promised Jude she wouldn’t be at risk again. One single tendril of that stultifying cold attacking her, Aunt Aggie, Jake or Carson was unthinkable.
And I’d die before I’d let her get anywhere near Christopher.
With that surge of resolve, I took back my voice. I screamed with all my might, barely recognizing the ragged syllables as coming out of my own throat, but by God, they were mine.
“Give it to me!”
Christopher’s hands were still pressed against my head and shoulder—and so it had to be Elessir who thrust what I sought against palms I couldn’t feel until the cold smoothness of bone pressed into them. That contact, though, was all I needed.
She was far beyond me in age, in magic, and probably in every other measure that the Unseelie Court cared about. She’d ripped apart the psyche of my best friend. In a dragon child’s body, she’d nearly destroyed an entire city. My city. And just like her Warders, I was going to put a stop to it.
I didn’t stop to quip or challenge her. I didn’t think. I barely breathed. There was no elegance at all in the way I seized hold of the interloping bitch behind my eyes and hurled her towards her skull. As if it sensed her coming, power arced up from it and into me, lassoing Melorite and ripping her free of my brain.
A roar of formless fury erupted from somewhere deep within me, propelling my consciousness up to the forefront of my mind—and my body forward out of the grasp of the boys as all at once I found myself on my knees. My shoulder shrieked with pain. My hands crackled with visible power, and despite their trembling, they clutched the skull so hard that it seemed I was about to crush it between them.
And my throat was raw, for I was still screaming. But I wasn’t the only one. A thin, unearthly wail sliced across my own keening, and the jangling discord of it drove me into breathless silence. One tiny part of me, hearing the alokhiu scream for the loss of her survival, almost felt sorry for her.
The rest of me, aching and exhausted, couldn’t muster even the barest shred of a damn.
When the skull flared hot against my palms, I wanted to hurl it to the earth just to get it away from me as fast as possible. I wanted to stomp on it. I wanted to grab a sword from Elessir or Melisanda or Jude, and start whacking the fucking thing until it shattered into a thousand pieces. And then I wanted to set the pieces on fire. But to my profound disgust, in that instant, I couldn’t seem to make myself move. It was all I could do to register everyone around me—first and foremost Christ
opher, crouched just beside me, looking as if he was about to pull me back into his arms any second now. Elessir was on my other side, ostensibly impassive. Something in the unguarded set of his face, though, declared him otherwise. Millicent, Melisanda, and Jude all ringed us, weapons drawn, while Jake, Carson, and my aunt Aggie dashed up just behind me, bearing the first aid kit we’d brought.
Just past them all, Makiko and her sons formed a protective semi-circle around the small, shuddering—and now, human—form of Saeko. At my roar, though, the nogitsune woman snapped up her head. In a fluid, graceful motion, she scooped her child up into her arms and came striding toward me. “My daughter,” she announced when she was close enough, “has something to tell Miss Thompson.”
“I want to help you smash it,” the little girl announced. Her English was less accented than her mother’s, her voice high and clear. The raw young power she sent questing out to me, even without Melorite’s mind to control it, would have dropped me to my knees if I hadn’t already been there. “I want to help you kill the ghost!”
“Come here then, honey,” I rasped. Power or no power, dragon hatchling or no, the thought of letting Saeko Asakura’s hands touch the skull I held seemed cruel on the face of it—but I couldn’t deny she had a hell of a reason to get in a blow. Not to mention that this kid’s magic had almost obliterated Seattle, and I didn’t have the strength now to get between her and anything she wanted to do.
Makiko set her daughter down, leaving Saeko free to come and face me. She was no taller now than the first time I’d seen her, running on the Burke-Gilman trail. But she was thinner now, markedly so. If I hadn’t seen the thunderheads lurking in her stare and the sheen of lightning playing along her skin even now, I’d have been wondering how she was still on her feet.
And oh, that stare. If Saeko still had any shred of a child’s innocence lingering in her, she showed no sign of it. The expression she turned on me was all too knowing, all too old for her child’s visage. She looked the least human of any of us left in the park, and I knew now to be wary of that—not because she was alien to me. She wasn’t. Not after I’d occupied her body with her. The part of me that wasn’t human still ached from the force of that.
The part of me that was human, though, was tired and in pain, and barely able to do more than focus on the goal at hand. And so I said to her, hoarsely, “You can make lightning…”
“Uh-huh. I’m sorry I broke the city with it. I didn’t mean to.”
Somebody nearby let out a tiny whimper of sympathy at that. Aunt Aggie, probably, though I didn’t turn to look. I didn’t dare break eye contact with Saeko as I held the skull out to her. “I know, honey. It’s okay. We’re going to kill the ghost that made you do it now. All you have to do is make a tiny bit of lightning along with me. Can you do that?”
With a grave nod, Saeko lifted her hands to join mine, cupping the skull between them. They were utterly prosaic, a child’s hands, small and grubby. I couldn’t quite imagine that they were the source of a month-long battery of storms… and yet. The instant they connected with the skull, I heard Melorite keening again, and felt her writhe in one last-ditch effort to reach either one of us. Or both.
“Count of three,” I told Saeko. “Then hit it with lightning, okay?” As she bobbed her head, I commenced the count. On one, I was already gathering my power. On two, I prepared to let it fly.
On three, I must have done exactly that—but Saeko’s notion of a tiny bit of lightning wasn’t mine. I heard something explode, interwoven with that last shriek of the alokhiu, drowned out by a sudden ringing in my ears. Bone shattered between my palms. The force of that, or maybe just the force of a miniature lightning bolt blowing up in my face, flung me backwards. Hard.
I never felt myself land. Which was for the best. I hurt too much to feel anything except inexpressible relief at finally being unconscious, if nothing else so that I could finally get some sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Four
In the end, even after getting shot, even after a dragon hatchling’s lightning bolt went off in my face, I never faded out entirely. I remember the clamor of everyone’s voices around me, and Jake’s worried eyes looking down at me as his medic’s hands efficiently patched me up. Along with that, I remember his myobu power warming me, encouraging me to sleep, to mend.
Arms lifted me up, and I didn’t need to see him to know that Christopher was carrying me. I didn’t even really need to sense his power, though it was impossible for me not to. All I needed was his scent and the soft rumble of his voice, though I never quite managed to pick out distinct words in the litanies he murmured into my hair.
Elessir’s words, though—those I remember. “Sweet Shining Lady, not a one of you is a real healer! If you don’t want her in the hospital, she’s going to have to heal it herself.”
Then there was motion. I remember the vaguely metallic tang of a car heater running at full blast—a rush of warmth that confused me until I realized how badly I was trembling from reaction and shock. Whose car I was in, I had no idea. All I recall of the ride was Christopher holding me, and intermittent waves of light and shadow as we drove through city streets that still hadn’t quite managed to restore full power.
Nor had my house, since we’d turned off the generator before we’d left. The ride ended in quiet dimness, softened by candlelight—scentless candles mostly, since those were the only ones I could stand to use anymore. But somebody lit one that smelled so cleanly of rosemary and sage that it surely must have been handmade, and I could pick up the scent of it wafting from clear across the house. Not that that was important, though. I really only cared about the softness of my bed as Christopher lowered me into it, and about the sudden weight of the cat as Fort jumped up onto my chest. It hurt. Christopher promptly moved him off of me, but not far, and the big fuzzball kept jamming his face into my ear, purring with all his might.
Maybe now, I thought, everybody would leave me alone and let me sleep. No such luck. While everybody else vanished out of my immediate awareness, both of the boys lingered in earshot. And while both of them kept their voices down, nonetheless they kept right on bitterly arguing.
“What part of ‘get out of Kenna’s face’ are you not getting?”
“Mr. MacSimidh, for a man who professes to love this woman, you’re doing an excellent job of obstructing the one person under this roof who can help her put herself back in one piece.”
“Christ, b’y, none o’ this would’ve happened to start with except for you! She’s shot because o’ you!”
“I’m acutely aware of that. Are you going to let me help her, or would you rather just take this outside?”
Right about then I wanted to tell them both to bugger off and leave me be—but uttering the words, not to mention opening my eyes, seemed like far too much effort. But I must have made some sort of disgruntled noise, for Christopher swore and then growled, “You better make it good. She’s been through enough.”
The Unseelie gave no reply that I could hear. There should have been one, surely, but there was no drawl, no snark. There was only Elessir’s hand brushing my brow, unexpectedly cool and soothing. No hum of magic was in his touch, and even his voice was exhausted as he murmured to me, “I know you can hear me, Miss Thompson. So you might as well look at me.”
“Go away,” I muttered.
“I will as soon as I’m convinced you’ll be able to heal yourself.”
He’d said that before, I realized. It made no more sense the second time than it had the first. Thinking to scowl at him, I cracked open one eye and then squeezed it shut again, not prepared to handle even the gentle illumination of the candle burning on the low table beside my bed. That was enough, though, to give me a glimpse of the bard sitting on the edge of the bed, just beside me. Looming just behind him was Christopher, such unhappiness etched into his face that you’d have thought I was on death’s door. I could stand looking at that even less than the candle, so I tried to press my face into my pillow. Or t
he cat, whichever one was closest. “Don’t know how,” I groused at Elessir.
“That’s what I’m here for. Listen to me, darlin’. It’s important. Your body already knows how to heal, but you’re going to have to feed power into it to speed it up. It’s either that or we have to get you to the hospital, and nobody wants to explain why Millicent had to shoot you.”
Later on I’d remember that entirely logical argument. Right then and there, all I wanted Elessir to do was shut up—by which I actually meant, keep up petting my head. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t shake the thought that his fingertips against my skin felt far nicer than they had any right to feel. “My head hurts,” I complained. Outside voice, I scolded myself. But I was too worn out and too in pain to care.
“We know, Kenna-lass.” Christopher again. His hand took up mine, and his thumb traced patterns against my palm. That contact was warmth itself, soaking into me slowly, as if my man feared to bathe me too deeply in his own power. “You had too many people in there.” He paused, and then added grudgingly, “If the bard knows what he’s talking about, listen to him.”
That surprised me enough that I forced both eyes open, just so that I could peer up at the two of them. Christopher looked about as shocked by his own words as I’d been to hear them, but if Elessir shared that astonishment, he showed no sign of it. He simply moved his hand to my wounded shoulder, touching without the slightest pressure, just to direct my attention there. “You can feel where you’re hurt,” he told me. “You know what it feels like to not be hurt. All it takes is as much power as you can stand to channel there.”
“I’m so tired.”
Elessir’s impassivity cracked, just a little, giving me a glimpse of that same openness he’d shown me when I’d thrown open the portal. “I… we know that, too. But you need to do this. Just send your magic right beneath my hand until I tell you to stop. I’ll feel it when you do.” He paused, and then added quietly, “Then I’ll let you sleep, Miss Thompson. I promise.”
Bone Walker Page 24
