Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

He growled low and soft, but the sound raised the hair on the back of my neck. “I take it you found something.”

He nodded. Then he turned to Biddy, who was half fainting in Nicca’s arms. “I am sorry, Doyle. I am truly better than this.”

“It is a spell,” he told her, and lifted off her helmet to lay his hand above her face. He handed the helmet to Nicca and turned to me, unable to hide the spark of angry color in his eyes. He was fighting down his power, raised by anger. Anger at himself most likely for letting yet another spell slip under his nose. We had some truly subtle spells being worked on us. One of us would have noticed something big, but such small spells were harder to guard against.

“It is tied to mortal blood. It simply sucks at your energy, and fills you with cold.”

“Why is Biddy more affected than Merry?” Nicca asked. He was covered completely in a thick cloak, except for his wings. They were held tight together as if they would stay warmer that way, and maybe they did. He was warm-blooded; moth wings did not change that.

I answered him. “She’s half-human, I’m less than a fourth human. If it is seeking human blood, she’s got more than I have.”

“Are the human police affected?” Hawthorne asked.

Doyle put his hand back over me, and this time I felt a warm pulse of magic shiver over my shields. “It is like a contagion. It was put on either Biddy or the princess, then jumped from one to the other. If we do not remove it, it will spread to the police.”

I looked up at him, speaking with the warmth of his magic against my skin, like breath. “What would it do to full-blooded humans?”

“It made a warrior of the sidhe stumble in the snow. She is disoriented, and would be useless in a fight.”

Frost was staring off into the darkness. He and another fringe of guards were all staring out into the cold night. His voice carried to me. “Is this the beginning of a more overt attack?”

“Who would be so bold as to attack the human guards?” Amatheon wondered aloud. He’d been eager to come out into the cold, anything to be farther away from the queen, I think. But I remembered again that he had been Cel’s creature for centuries. Did a few acts of honor and kindness erase centuries of allegiance? And as close to Cel as he had been, he had to have witnessed some of the horrors the female guards spoke of, didn’t he? I made a mental note to ask him later, with Doyle and Frost at my back. Onilwyn was inside the faerie mound, because he had not recovered from the beating Maggie May and I had given him. Cold iron forces even the sidhe to heal human slow. Him I did not trust at all. Amatheon I was beginning to trust; was I wrong to trust him? Of course, the question itself meant I didn’t trust him, not really.

“Who indeed,” I said, and fought not to look at him, not to let him know with body language that I wondered if it was him.

Either I betrayed myself, or he felt insecure, because he said, “I will make any oath that I did not know of this.”

“You said you were a man without honor,” Adair said. “A man without honor has no oath.”

“Enough,” Doyle said, “we will not squabble amongst ourselves, not this close to the humans.”

“Doyle’s right. We will discuss this later.” I raised my face up to him, and said, “Can you remove it so that Biddy and I do not infect the police?”

“I can.”

“Then do it, and let us get this done.”

“You sound angry,” Galen said.

“I am tired of whoever is doing all this. Tired of these games.”

“It is a good sign, in a way,” Doyle said.

I looked at him. “What do you mean?”

“It means our murderer fears the human police, fears they may find him where our magic has failed.” He stuffed his gloves in the pocket of his coat and slid my hood off, so that the cold air spilled around my face. I shivered.

“I am afraid I will have to make you colder before I am done.”

I nodded. “Get this off of me, and I will warm myself.”

He pushed my cloak back. The cold rushed in, stealing the shell of warmth that the cloak had made. I fought not to shiver as he spread his hands over me, not touching even so much as my clothing, but caressing just above my body. His power shivered over my aura, and it felt as if he scooped something off of me, almost like flicking an insect off my skin.

He raised his hands upward, cupped as if he truly held something. He called that sickly green fire to his hands. It was the painful flame that I’d seen eat along a body. It could cause death if you were mortal, or excruciating pain and madness in the immortal. Now he used it to burn away the spell that had clung to me.

Rhys’s voice came from behind us. “What’s wrong?” He had a gun naked in his hand, but held along his body so the police probably wouldn’t see it from a distance. He saw the green light, and said, “What is it?” with a new urgency in his voice. “What am I not sensing?”

Galen answered him. “Someone put a spell on Merry.”

“On both the human bloods,” Frost said.

“It would have been contagious to the human police,” Doyle said. The green flame vanished, leaving the night a little darker. He turned to Biddy, where she half sagged in Nicca’s arms. “Let her go, Nicca.”

“She will fall.”

“Only to her knees in the snow. It won’t hurt her.” Doyle’s voice was surprisingly gentle.

Nicca still held her against him. His wings flared out once, then clamped tight again.

“It’s all right, Nicca,” Biddy said in a soft voice, a little breathy. “Doyle will help me.”

It was Hawthorne who came to him, and began to gently draw him away from her. “Let the captain help your lady.”

Nicca allowed himself to be drawn away, but when Biddy collapsed into the snow, he moved to catch her, and only Hawthorne and Adair on each side kept him from grabbing her before her knees hit the snow.

Rhys gave a soft whistle. “That would have done bad things to our nice policemen.”

“Yes,” Doyle said, as he knelt in the snow, his greatcoat spreading out like a pool of darkness against the white. He passed his hands above Biddy, much as he’d done me, but he hesitated close to her belly. “That someone could lay such a thing on her while she wore this much metal…” He shook his head. “It speaks of great power.”

“Or mixed blood,” I said. “Those of us with a little human or brownie or a few other things can handle metal and magic better than a pure-blooded sidhe.”

His mouth twitched. “Thank you for reminding me, because you are exactly right.”

“Can you trail it back to its owner?” I asked.

Doyle cocked his head to the side, the way a dog does when it is puzzled by something. “Yes.” His hands tensed above Biddy’s body. “I can remove it, but I can also add magic of my own, and force it to fly back to its owner.”

“You mean not just track it, but make it run back home?” Rhys asked.

“Yes.”

“You have not been able to do that in a very long time,” Frost said.

“But I can do it now,” Doyle said. “I can feel it in my hands, my stomach. All I have to do is remove it, and add my power at the moment of its release. It will be a chase to keep up with it, but it will work.”

“Who will go with you?” Frost asked. “I must stay with the princess.”

“Agreed.”

“I will go,” Usna said. “No dog can outrun a cat.”

Doyle gave him one of those fierce smiles. “Done.”

“I, too, will go.” It was Cathbodua, once a goddess of battle, now a refugee from Cel’s guard. Her cloak was formed of black feathers, so that it sometimes seemed as if her fine black hair was part of the cloak, and if you looked at her from the edges of your eyes, her hair looked as if it were made of feathers. She was Cathbodua, battle scald crow, and though diminished in power, she was still one of the few in the courts who had kept her original name. Rumor had it that she had not been as abused by Cel, for he feared her. Dogmaela, who stood in armor next to her, had been nicknamed Cel’s dog because she was given every awful task he could find. She had publicly denied him sex, and he’d never forgiven her. Cathbodua had done the same thing, and not suffered overly much for it. There was something about her, standing there in the snow, all black and feathered, with some air of… power that would give a braver man than Cel pause.