Chapter Sixteen
It was Hafwyn who moved forward, arms outstretched. "Let me help you, Caswyn."
He was shaking his head over and over, his hair in a wild profusion across his face so that his wide, staring eyes were framed by strands of his hair. It made him look wild, feral, and a little mad.
She started to bend and touch him, but he screamed again, and Galen was suddenly at her side, taking her wrist and saying "Make sure he sees you and not her before you touch him."
"He would never hurt me," she said.
"He may not know it's you," Galen said.
I started to get up off my knees and Rhys's hand was there to help me stand. Doyle and Frost were standing there staring at Caswyn. Their faces showed such grief.
I started toward them with Rhys's hand in mine. He drew back, and I looked at him. "My powers bring death, Merry. That won't help here."
I looked at Doyle and Frost, and even Barinthus still standing against the sliding-glass doors. I could see Amatheon and Adair out on the deck. They looked away when I made eye contact, as if they were happy to be outside cooking steaks, and not inside trying to make this better. That did seem easier, but the point to being a royal, a real one, was that you couldn't just do the easy things. Sometimes you had to do what was hardest if that was what your people needed. Caswyn needed something right now, and I was all we had.
I prayed, "Goddess, help me help him. Give me the power I need to heal him." I smelled roses, which was the scent that I smelled when the Goddess was answering prayers, or trying to get my attention.
Galen said, "Does anyone else smell flowers?"
"No," said Hafwyn.
"Does anyone else smell flowers or plants?" Rhys asked.
There was a chorus of deep bass "nos" throughout the room. I moved toward Galen and Hafwyn where they stood in front of Caswyn. The scent of roses was stronger as I moved toward them. That was one way I knew that the Goddess was saying yes. Inside faerie or a dream I got to see her, but in everyday life it was often perfume, or other less-dramatic signs.
Hafwyn moved away from Galen and Caswyn. Her blue eyes were wide as she said to me, "I can only heal the body, not the mind."
I nodded, and went to stand beside Galen. He looked down at me. "I'm not a healer."
"Me either," I said. I reached for his hand, nervous. The moment his hand wrapped around mine the scent of roses was even stronger, as if I stood beside a bank of wild roses thick with summer's heat.
"Flowers again," he said, "stronger than before."
"Yes," I said.
"How do we help him?" he asked.
And that was the question. How did we help him even with the scent of flowers around us, and the presence of the Goddess on the very air? How did we heal Caswyn outside of faerie?
The scent of roses was so thick it was as if I'd drunken rose water, so that it sat sweet and clean on my tongue. "May wine," Galen said, "I can taste May wine."
"Rose water," I said softly.
I started to kneel, and Galen knelt with me. "Goddess, let Caswyn see us. Let him know that we are his friends."
Galen's hand grew warm in mine, not heat warm, but as if he had been out in the sunshine and his skin held that warmth. He was smiling that welcoming, good-natured smile of his, and Caswyn was looking at him. His wide eyes began to lose their complete panic.
He said, "Galen."
"Yes, Wyn, it's me."
He looked frantically around the room, but he ended up staring at me. "Princess, where did she go?"
"Where did who go?" I asked, but I was pretty certain who "she" was.
Caswyn shook his head, making his hair slide over his face again. "I dare not speak her name after dark. She'll find me again."
"She's not in Los Angeles."
"Los Angeles?" he made it a question.
Galen asked, "Wyn, do you know where you are?"
Caswyn licked his lips, his eyes looking afraid again, but it was a different kind of fear now. It wasn't fear of some post-traumatic-stress vision, it was fear that he didn't know where he was, and he didn't know why he didn't know.
His eyes were wide and frightened as he whispered, "No, I don't know." He reached out to us and we both reached for him together with our unclasped hands. Was it accident or design that we touched him simultaneously, and both touched the bare skin of lower arms where the sleeves had been rolled back? Whatever the cause, the moment we all made skin contact magic breathed through us. It wasn't the overwhelming magic that it might have been inside faerie, but maybe that wasn't what Caswyn needed. Maybe what he needed to heal was something gentle, something like the touch of spring, or the first heat of summer when the roses fill the meadows.
Tears filled his eyes as he gazed at us, and we drew him into our arms and held him while he wept. We held him and the scent of flowers was everywhere.
Chapter Seventeen
I slept that night between Galen and Caswyn with Rhyson the far side of the big bed. There had been no sex, because Wyn needed to be held more than he needed to be fucked. In a very real way he'd been fucked up enough already, and the hands that held him as he drifted off to sleep were there to try to heal that. It had not been the restful end to the day that I'd wanted, but as I drifted off to sleep with Wyn spooned in my arms, and Galen spooned against my back, I realized that there were worse ways to end a day.
The dream started with me in the military Hummer. It was the one that the National Guard had rescued me with when I'd called for help so that my relatives couldn't take me back to either court. But none of the soldiers were in the Hummer. None of my guards. I was alone in the back with the Hummer driving itself. I knew that wasn't right, so I knew it was a dream. I'd dreamed about the bomb going off before, but always before it had been closer to the reality. Then I realized that the Hummer was black, completely, utterly black, and I knew it wasn't a military anything, but a new form of the Black Coach. It was the coach that had been coming to the beck and call of the ruler of the Unseelie Court for centuries. Once it had been a coach and four with horses blacker than any moonless night and eyes filled with fire that had never warmed anyone by a campfire. Then it had changed on its own and become a long black limousine with unholy fire under its hood. The Black Coach was a force of its own, a thing of its own, older than any of the fey courts, older than anyone could remember, which meant that it had existed for thousands of years or else it had simply appeared one day. Either way, it was somewhere between a living being and a magical construct, and it definitely had a mind of its own.
The question was, why was it in my dream? And was it just a dream, or did the Black Coach exist for "real" inside the dreamscape? It didn't talk, so I couldn't ask it, and I was alone so I couldn't ask anyone else.
The car drove itself over the narrow road. We were coming to the open meadow where the bomb had gone off. I'd ended up with shrapnel in one arm and shoulder, huge nails that had fallen out as I magically healed the wounded soldiers. I had never before had the gift of healing by the laying on of hands, but that night I did. But first there was the explosion.
The cold winter air came through the open window. I'd lowered it to use magic against our enemies because the soldiers were dying, dying to protect me, and I couldn't let that happen. They weren't my soldiers, my guards, and somehow giving their life to protect me hadn't seemed right. Not if I could stop it.
The explosion ripped the world apart with noise and force. I waited for the blow and the pain, but it didn't come. The world wavered with the vibration, and suddenly it was daylight, bright hot daylight. I was blinded by the glare of it all, and sand was everywhere. I had never been anywhere with so much sand and rock. The heat through the open window was like peering into a broiling oven.
The only things that were the same were the explosions. The world reverberated with their impact, and the Hummer's wheels rocked on the uneven ground of what had been a road before a bomb had put a crater in the middle of it.
There was another Hummer in desert camouflage colors, and there were soliders on one side of it using it for cover as something too big for a bullet and too small for a rocket whirred past. It made another impact crater in the road.
I heard a voice shouting, "They're getting into our range. They're getting into our range!"
The soldier on one end tried to move out from the Hummer but a bullet whizzed by him and hit the dirt of the road. They were pinned down and about to die.
Then the soldier at the other end of the line turned and saw the black Hummer. He had his rifle across his lap, one hand on it, but his other hand was wrapped around something at his neck. I thought it would be a cross, but then I saw his face, and knew it was a nail. A nail on the end of a leather cord tied around his neck.
He stared at me with large brown eyes, his skin dark enough with the sun's heat that he looked changed from the paler version I remembered. It was Brennan, one of the soldiers whom I had healed at the beginning of it all.
His mouth moved, and I saw the shape of my name. There was no sound over the cry of the weapons. "Meredith," he mouthed.
The Hummer drove to him, and the bullets seemed to not quite hit it, and when the next rocket came, it was just to one side of it. I felt the impact in my gut, as if the vibration ran through my body and hit me in the stomach. Sand and dirt fell like dry rain on the shiny black metal of the Hummer.
I opened the door, but it was as if only Brennan could see me. None of the others were mine. He said my name, and even over the ringing in my ears I heard the whisper of it, "Meredith." He reached up with the hand that had been clutching the nail around his throat. The others asked, "What are you doing?"
It was only as his hand wrapped around mine that the others saw me, saw the car. There were gasps of amazement and guns pointed at me, but Brennan said, "She's a friend. Now get in the Humvee!"
One of the other soldiers said, "Where did she come from? How did it..."
Brennan pushed him toward the front door. "Questions later."
Another rocket hit just on the other side of their Hummer, and suddenly there were no more questions. There was an exclamation of, "No one's driving!" But everyone piled in, Brennan squeezing beside me in the back, and the moment we were all inside the Hummer drove away. We drove farther down the road, which was intact enough to drive on, and the next moment the Humvee behind us exploded.
One of the new men said, "They got into our range."
The man from the front seat turned around and asked, "What the fuck is going on, Brennan?"
He looked at me as he said, "I prayed for help."
"Well, God hears you good," the other man said.
"It wasn't God I was praying to," Brennan said, and he looked into my eyes and reached out one hand as if afraid to touch me.
I put his hand against my face. There was grit and dirt and blood. He had a wound in his hand that he'd touched to the nail.
"I was praying to Goddess," Brennan said.
"You called me with blood, metal, and magic," I whispered.
"Where are you?" he asked.
"Los Angeles," I said.
I felt the dream, or vision, or whatever it was begin to soften and waver, and I spoke into the air, "Black Coach of mine, take them to safety. See that no harm comes to my people."
The radio in the front of the Humvee crackled to life, which made us all startle, and then give nervous laughs. The song was "Take it Easy" by The Eagles.
One of the soldiers said, "What is this, a Transformer movie?"
Their laughter was the last thing I heard as the dream faded, and I woke sitting bolt upright in the bed between the men. The bed was covered in pink rose petals.
Chapter Eighteen
Rhys was the only one awake for some reason. Galen and Wyn slept as if nothing was happening. The petals decorated their hair and faces, but they slept on.
Rhys said, "There's something on your face." He reached out and came away with dirt and fresh blood. "Are you hurt?" he asked.
"It's not my blood."
"Whose is it, then?" he asked.
"Brennan's."
"Corporal Brennan - the soldier you healed, who helped us fight?"
"Yes," I said. I wanted to know if Rhys had watched me dream. I wanted to know if my body had stayed here in the bed, or if I'd vanished, but I was half afraid to find out. But I had to know.
"How long have you been watching me?"
"I felt the touch of the Goddess. She woke me, and I kept guard over your sleep, though if you could come away with Brennan's blood on you, maybe I wasn't guarding the right part of you."
"Why are Galen and Wyn not awake?" I asked, my voice soft the way you do when people nearby are sleeping.
"I'm not sure. Let's leave them sleep and talk in the living room."
I didn't argue. I simply slipped out from the petal-covered sheet and the warmth of their bodies. Wyn snuggled into the hole I'd made. When he touched Galen, he stopped moving and settled back into deeper sleep. Galen never moved. That wasn't entirely unusual; he was a heavy sleeper, but not this heavy.
I stared down at him as Rhys gathered his holster, gun, and a short sword that he usually wore at his back. He was licensed to carry the gun here, but the sword was only allowed because technically he was still the bodyguard of Princess Meredith, and some things that might attack me respected a blade more than a bullet.
He gathered his weapons, but he didn't bother with clothes. He held out a hand to me, completely nude, with his weapons in his other hand.
I scooped up a short silk robe that had been lost to the floor. Sometimes I got cold; Rhys seldom did. He, like Frost, had once been a deity of colder things than a Southern California night.
He laid his weapons on the kitchen counter and turned on the light over the oven, making a small glow in the dark, quiet house. He turned on the coffeemaker, which was ready to go for the morning.
I chided him. "You just wanted coffee."
He smiled at me. "I always want coffee, but I think this may be a long talk, and I worked today, too."
"It's industrial espionage using magic, right?" I asked.
"Yes, but the Goddess didn't wake us up to talk about a case."
I slipped the robe on and tied it. It was black with red and green flowers on it here and there. I seldom wore all black if I could help it. It was too much my aunt Andais's signature color. My hair had gotten long enough that I had to sweep it out of the robe to settle the collar.
I enjoyed watching Rhys move around the kitchen nude. I admired the tight line of his ass as he stood on tiptoe to reach mugs from the cabinet.
"The problem with a seven-foot-tall man being the main one who lives here is that he puts things you use every day too damn high."
"He doesn't think about it," I said, and slid onto the bar stool near the front of the outside counter.
He got the mugs down, and turned with a grin. "Were you watching my ass?"
"Yes, and the rest of you. I'm enjoying watching you move around the kitchen in nothing but your smile."
That made him grin again as he put the mugs by the coffeemaker, which was now making the happy noises that said coffee was on its way.
He came to me, face going solemn. He gave me the full attention of that one blue-ringed eye. He raised his hand again, and touched the blood and grit on my face.
"I take it Brennan was injured."
"A small cut on his palm, and it was that hand that he gripped the nail with."
"He's still wearing it around his neck," Rhys said.
I nodded.
"You know the rumors about the soldiers who fought beside us?"
"No," I said.
"They're healing people, Merry. They're laying on hands."
I stared at him. "I thought that was just for that night, just with faerie's magic bleeding all over everything."
"Apparently not," he said. He studied my face, as if looking for something specific.
"What?" I asked, nervous under his so-serious scrutiny.
"You never left the bed, Merry. I swear to that, but Brennan touched you physically. Enough to leave dirt from his location and his blood, and that scares me."
He turned and started searching the drawers of the cabinets for something. He came up with ziplock bags and a spoon.
I must have given him a suspicious look, because he chuckled and explained. "I'm going to take a sample of the dirt and blood. I want to know what a modern lab will make of it."
"To get the Grey Detective Agency to pay for it you'll have to explain."
"Jeremy is a good boss, a good fey, and a good man. He'll let me put it through as part of a case."
I couldn't argue with anything he said about Jeremy. He'd been one of my few friends when I first came to Los Angeles.
Rhys opened one of the bags and leaned toward my cheek with the spoon. "This isn't exactly chain of evidence. If it was a real case the zip lock bag might let the other side argue that it was contaminated by anything and everything."
"I wasn't thinking when I touched it, so my skin is in there, and you're right about the method of collection, but this isn't a real case, Merry." He very carefully scraped some dirt into one of the open bags. He was so gentle I felt only a slight pressure.
When he had enough dirt he closed the bag. He got a new spoon and a new bag, and scraped some of the dirt, but I was betting that he had more blood in this one. He took more time with this one, and it actually scraped my skin a little. It didn't hurt, but it might have if he'd kept doing it long enough.
"What do you hope to gain by testing these?"
"I don't know, but we'll know more than we do right this minute." He started opening drawers until he found a Sharpie in the drawer closest to the phone. He wrote on the bags, dated them, signed his name, and had me sign them, too.
The rich smell of coffee filled the kitchen. It always smelled good. He poured coffee into one of the mugs, but I stopped him from doing it twice.
"No caffeine, remember?"
He hung his head enough for the white curls to fall forward. "I'm an idiot. I'm sorry, Merry. I'll put on water for tea."
"I should have said something earlier, but honestly, the dream spooked me."
He filled the kettle with water and put it on the stove, then came back to stand beside me. "Tell me about it while we wait for the water to boil."
"You can drink your coffee," I said.
He shook his head. "I'll get fresh when you can have tea."
"You don't have to do that," I said.
"I know." He put his hand over mine. "Your hands are cold." He took my hands in his and raised them to his mouth to lay a gentle kiss on them. "Tell me about the dream."
I took a deep breath and told him. He listened, made encouraging noises here and there, and held my hands, when he wasn't making tea. When I finished telling the story, my hands were a little warmer, and there was a pot of tea steeping on the counter.
"Traveling through a dream or vision isn't unheard-of for us in the far past, but to manifest physically so that a follower could touch us and be touched or rescued from danger, that is really rare, even when we were in our prime as a people."
"How rare?" I asked.
The timer went off for the tea, and he went to hit the button. "I was willing to believe that we'd been quiet enough not to wake anyone, but I purposefully put on that annoying buzzer for the tea." He used small tongs to fish out the tea toddy with the loose-leaf jasmine in it. "No one woke up, Merry."
I thought about that. "Doyle and Frost should have been up when we walked past the door to the bedroom they're in, but they didn't."
"This buzzer would wake the dead." He seemed to find that funny, laughed at his own joke, shook his head, and put a small strainer over my mug before he poured the tea.
"I'm not sure I get the joke," I said.
"Death deity," he said, half pointing at himself as he put the teapot down.
I nodded, as if that made perfect sense, which it didn't, but ... "I still don't get the joke."
"Sorry, it's an insider sort of thing. You aren't a death deity, so you wouldn't get it."
"Okay."
He brought my mug of tea to me, then went back to pour out his cold coffee, and pour fresh for himself. He took a sip, closed his eye, and just looked happy. I raised my tea so I could smell the jasmine before I tasted it. With some of the gentler teas, scent was as important as taste.
"Why do you think that no one else has woken up? I mean, Galen and Wyn were right there through all of it."
"I think Goddess isn't done with you tonight, and it's something she wants us to do together."
"Do you think it's because you're the only death deity we have out here?"
He shrugged. "I'm not the only death deity in Los Angeles, I'm just the only Celtic one in Los Angeles."
I frowned at him. "Who do you mean?"
"Other religions have deities, Merry, and some of them like to walk around pretending to be people."
"You make it sound like they're not the same kind of deity that you and the others are."
He shrugged again. "I know that this particular deity is choosing to walk around in human shape, but he can be simply spirit. If you see me walking around without being in human form, I'm dead."
"So you mean not just something else with magic over the dead, but something that is truly a deity, a god with a capital 'G' like the Goddess and the Consort."
He nodded, sipping his coffee.
"Who is it? I mean, what is it? I mean, ..."
"Nope, not going to tell you. I know you too well. You'll tell Doyle and he won't be able to resist a closer look. I've already spoken to the deity in question and he and I have a deal. I'll leave him alone and he'll leave us alone."
"Is he that scary?"
"Yes and no. Let's just say that I'd rather not test his limits when all we have to do is leave him alone."
"He's not harming anyone in the city, is he?"
"Leave it alone." He frowned. "I should have kept my big mouth shut."
I sipped my tea, enjoying the jasmine flavor, but honestly, the scent of Rhys's coffee overpowered the delicate perfume of flowers. Coffee would have been nice. I could try caffeine free.
"What are you thinking about so hard?" he asked suspiciously.
"I'm wondering if I could get caffeine-free coffee and how it would taste."
He laughed then, and leaned up to kiss my cheek. "We should clean you up."
He went to the sink again, and got a paper towel off the roll by the sink. He set his coffee down so he could get it wet. But the moment he came toward me with the towel, I smelled roses, not jasmine.
"No," I said, "we don't clean it off like this."
"What do you mean?" he asked.
I just knew the answer. "The ocean, Rhys, we clean it off in the ocean at the place where the water meets the shore."
"That's an in-between place," he said. "A place where faerie and a lot of other places meet the mundane world."
"It can be," I said.
"What do you have in mind?"
I took a deep breath and could smell jasmine again more than roses. "I'm not sure it's what I have in mind."
"All right, then what does the Goddess have in mind?"
"I don't know," I said.
"We're saying that a lot tonight. I don't like it."
"Me, either, but she's the Goddess. A real one like your nameless death deity."
"You're not going to let that go, are you?"
"No, because when I asked if he was harming people here, you wouldn't answer me."
"Fine, let's go down to the sea." He put his coffee down and held a hand out to me.
"Just like that, you'll go with me without knowing why."
"Yes."
"Because you don't want to talk about the death deity anymore," I said.
He smiled and made a wobbling motion with his head. "Partly, but the Goddess helped you save Brennan and his men. The Black Coach has chosen a new shape that will allow it to move through the war zone. The Goddess covered our bed with pink rose petals. She's never done that outside of faerie, or on nights when the wild magic is loose. Soldiers are healing people in your name. I think after all that that I'll take it on faith that she wants us down by the surf for a good reason."
I slid off the stool and put a hand in his. He grabbed his weapons as he moved past, and we went for the sliding-glass doors. He did add just before he let go of my hand to open the door, "If you get salt water on that silk robe it's ruined."
"You're right," I said, and undid the sash and let the robe fall to the floor.
He gave me the look that he'd been giving me since I was about sixteen, but now the look held knowledge and not just lust, but love. It was a good look.
"I don't think I'll need the robe," I said.
"The water's cold," he said.
I laughed. "Then I'm on top."
"There may be other problems with the cold."
"Ah, the guy problem with cold water," I said.
He nodded.
"Fertility deity, sort of. I think I can help you work around it," I said.
"Why does the Goddess want death and fertility at the water's edge?"
"She hasn't told me that part."
"Will she?"
I shrugged. "I don't know."
That made him shake his head, but he took my hand in his and we went out into the cool night air and the smell of the sea. We went out to do as the Goddess bid without knowing why, because sometimes faith is about that blind trust even if you were once worshipped as a god yourself.
