Лорел Гамильтон - A Stroke Of Midnight

I gazed off across the plain, and it was all black and rich. I knelt in the soft, moist earth and wondered, “Amatheon, where are you?” I was left alone.

Then I was kneeling on rough stone, in the half-light of the sithen hallway. One moment in the heart of vision and the next back in faerie. If I hadn’t been on my knees already, I would have fallen. But I was saved from pitching face-forward onto the floor by my own hand and Frost’s hand on my arm.

“Consort save us,” he muttered, and that was my first hint that something had gone wrong. Before I could even look around, I was suddenly flat to the floor with him on top of me, shielding me. It was entirely too much like the assassination attempt at the press conference. My pulse was suddenly in my throat, and I fought two disparate urges—to look around and to make myself as small a target as possible. Frost gave me no choice. With his body on top of mine, his chest pressing my face into the stone, I couldn’t move.

He raised up just enough to draw the gun that was under his right arm with his left hand. I watched his arm extend to point farther down the hall. I could see enough to know that this wasn’t the entrance hallway. As I lay there, his body pressing me painfully into the stone floor, I felt his body react to the shot, as the explosion of it echoed off the stones. He fired again, the shot jerking his body above me. A man cried out, but I did not know the voice.

“I’m getting you out of here.” He said it as if I was going to argue, which I wasn’t. Getting out of there sounded just fine. Where was everyone else? Why was Frost the only person with me?

He fired twice more in quick succession, his free hand already on my arm. He stood, pulling me with him, already moving us down the larger hallway, putting a wall between us and our enemies, but I could see what lay in the smaller hallway now. I stumbled, and might have struggled against Frost’s hand if he’d given me the chance. But I think he knew that, and he moved with all the speed and strength that being pure sidhe gave him. He had me up against the wall, and around the corner, out of the sight and aim of the attackers I still hadn’t seen. What I had seen was Crystall with his hands covered in white light, and Adair wading into men, sword already bloody. But that hadn’t been what made me push against Frost’s pinning arm, as he held me against the wall. Galen, lying on the floor, a pool of blood spilling out underneath him. He hadn’t been moving.

“Let me go,” I said to Frost.

He shook his head, his eyes anguished. “No. Your safety takes precedence over anything else.”

I screamed at him, and fought against him, but it was like struggling against steel with muscle around it. I could not move him unless he let me. He had pressed his body along the line of mine, pinning me completely to the wall; I had no room to try to hurt him enough to make him let me go. He’d known I would fight him.

I screamed the only word that mattered to me in that moment. “Galen!” I screamed his name until my throat went raw, but there was no answer.

THERE WAS THE SOUND OF RUNNING FEET. FROST KEPT ME PINNED to the wall with only his chest, drawing a gun from behind his back, and pointing both guns in opposite directions down the hallway. To draw the other gun, he’d been forced to move his body enough off of me so that I was able to reach the gun at the small of my back. He’d been right to trap me, for my first instinct had been to run to Galen. No thought, no logic, just truth. Frost had given me those few moments to think. I aimed away from the corner where Galen lay, at the sound of running feet. They would be upon us in seconds.

I wasn’t scared anymore. I was calm, that breathless, icy calm that is part anger, part terror, part things there are no words for. Galen was hurt, I would hurt them back. Somewhere in the back of my head was a thought that didn’t say hurt but said another word. I pushed it back and aimed.

My finger had actually started to squeeze down when I realized it was Nicca and Biddy, and the rest of the guards who had been with Frost in the hallway before Amatheon and I took our little trip. I let my breath out and raised the gun carefully toward the ceiling. I started to shake almost immediately, realizing how close I had come to putting a bullet through Nicca’s chest. If the gun had had a shorter pull… A bullet through an arm or shoulder could be healed, but one in the heart, well, sometimes yes and sometimes no.

Nicca and Biddy stayed with us, gun in his hand, sword in hers. They were both among the gentlest of the sidhe, but now they looked grim, and tall, and muscular, and dangerous, like tigers and lions. Dangerous simply because of what they are. I had never seen resolve such as this on Nicca’s face.

Frost stayed with me, his body still shielding me. The thought of another man I loved getting hurt because of me seemed more than I could bear. If I hadn’t been clinging to the gun with both hands to make sure it pointed only at stone, I would have pushed Frost away. Stupid, but until I knew how badly Galen was hurt, I didn’t want to risk anyone else. Especially stupid since the rest of the guards had just run around the corner. Magic filled the air, crawling over my skin. The sound of metal on metal. A man cried out, and then a woman’s cry, not of pain, but of rage. I wanted no one else to risk themselves for me today. I could do nothing but endanger them all.

My eyes were hot and tight with things I did not want to cry away. Someone was moaning softly. All else was small sounds; the brush of metal against stone, footfalls, movement, but not fighting. The fight was over. The question was, Who had won? If Doyle or Frost had been with them, I wouldn’t have doubted the outcome, but Frost was still standing, tense and ready in front of me. His grey eyes were still searching down both directions of the hallway, as if he didn’t trust anyone else to keep watch. Without Doyle here, neither did I.

The two men trusted no one else as much as they trusted each other. When had I begun to believe that only these two could keep me safe? When had I begun to put my faith in these two men and lose it in the others?

Hawthorne came around the corner, his crimson armor spattered lightly with blood, as if someone had taken a red ink pen and shaken it at him. He was cleaning his blade with a piece of cloth that looked as if it had been jerked off someone’s body. “It is over.”

Adair was at his back, helmet tucked under one arm. Without his hair to cushion his helmet, there were marks on his forehead and against his neck, where it had rubbed. “They are subdued or as dead as we can make them, Frost, Princess.”

I started forward, gun still held carefully in my hand. Frost stopped me. “Put up the gun, Princess.”

I looked at his arrogant face, but saw the pain in his eyes. “Why?” I asked.

“Because I do not trust what you will do with it, if he is as gravely injured as he appeared to be.”

My heart was suddenly hammering painfully in my chest, as if I couldn’t quite breathe around it. I opened my mouth to say something, but finally closed it. I swallowed and it hurt, as if I were trying not to choke. I just nodded, and put the gun back where it belonged. I settled my cloak over it, as a matter of habit. Don’t want to ruin the line of the clothes if you can help it. Habit is what we have when the inside of our head is screaming, and we’re so scared that it sits like dry metal on our tongues.

Frost stepped away from me and started to put up his guns, but I didn’t stay to watch him finish the smooth, two-handed movement. I was already heading for the corner. One word kept going through my head over and over, Galen, Galen, Galen. Too scared to finish the thought. Too scared to do anything but run for him. I should have been praying to the Goddess harder than I’d ever prayed before. I’d just been in her presence, so she would have listened. But I didn’t pray to her or any deity I knew. If it was a prayer, it was a prayer to Galen. I cleared the corner, and saw him. Lying on his back, eyes closed, arms outspread, one leg bent under his body, and blood everywhere. A sea of blood, across the stone floor, spilling out and around him. So much blood, too much blood. The thought finished in my head, the only prayer I had to offer… Galen, don’t be dead, don’t be dead, Galen, please, don’t be dead.