Лорел Гамильтон - Seduced by Moonlight

Small gasps, the sound of ripping cloth, and that thick, meaty sound that is flesh parting under a blade. It has to be a truly deep wound for that sound, a wound to the heaviest, most vital parts of the body. Finally a sound like spraying water, as if someone had turned on a hose, made me look.

I turned toward that noise, slowly, the way you turn in nightmares. Galen tried to move in front of me. But it was as if he, too, were moving too slowly. I saw Onilwyn's face wide-eyed with surprise. Blood fountained from his neck, spraying out and around like crimson rain. I caught a glimpse of pale spine before Galen's broad shoulders blocked my view.

I looked up at him, saw the pain in those pale green eyes. My voice was a hoarse whisper: «Move, Galen, let me see.»

He shook his head, his hair drying into haphazard curls as the ice had melted. «You don't want to see.»

«If I am princess here, then you must move. If I am not princess here, then what in the name of all that grows and lives are we doing here?»

It was enough. He moved and I could see what the queen had done to her Ravens, to her men, and to mine.

She was hacking at Frost. His dove-grey shirt was black with blood. He turned as he fell, and the lower half of his long silver hair clung to his body, scarlet with blood. He fell to all fours, head down. She raised the knife for a two-handed heart strike, and Doyle's arm was there, sweeping her arms away from Frost's exposed back, bringing her murderous attention to himself. His skin and clothing were so dark that it was harder to see the blood that was already on him, but bone glinted white and red on his side, where she'd nearly cleaved him to the heart.

I spoke his name, soft, a whisper. «Doyle.»

Andais began to slash at him, and he guarded his body with his arms. Blood flew from him as her blade tried to find bone, tried to find something to kill. It was as if by not allowing her to slash at the main meat of his body, he offended her. Even in her madness, this was not allowed. You did not fight the queen and live. In truth, she could not kill him, but she drove him to his knees with the fury of her blows. The knife was red with blood, the hilt slick with it, so Andais had to change her grip as she drove the point downward. It looked as if all her force was committed to plunging the knife into his chest. He moved his hands to block it, and she moved, like dark lightning, a blur of black and red, and plunged the blade into his face.

The force of the blow spun him around, and I watched his face split from chin to the top of his cheekbone. She could not kill him with the knife she wielded, but she could maim him.

Something inside me changed in that moment. I was still afraid, so afraid that it sat like something stale and metal on my tongue, but they say that hatred grows out of fear. Well, sometimes so does rage. The fear that had been a small, cringing thing rose inside me, and found it had wings, and teeth, and claws. Hatred, not of Andais, but of the terrible waste of it all. This was wrong. Even if I had not loved these men, it would still have been wrong.

Rhys darted in, took a blow that spurted blood from his arm, but it was as if she had grown tired of playing. These were the best warriors the sidhe could boast, but I watched her move like something liquid, faster than Rhys could follow, as she'd been too fast for Doyle. I realized in that moment that they weren't entirely playing; she was simply better than they were. She was the Queen of Air and Darkness, the dark goddess of battle.

If the Ravens could not stand against her, then what could I do? The men were all faster, stronger, better than I was. There was no weapon here that would aid me, except in getting myself killed. But I could not stand and watch, and do nothing. The anger translated into power, and I could not stop my skin from beginning to glow. The beginnings of power that would be as nothing to Andais.

Galen and Adair looked at me. Galen shook his head, «There is nothing you can do, Merry.» His grip tightened almost painfully on my arm. «They won't die.»

«No,» Adair said in his bitter voice, «we will heal, as we have healed before.»

«Not this bad,» and it was Mistral's voice, soft, but purring with thunder, so that it called goose bumps up and down my body, and something about it made my skin glow brighter. His strange, drowning deep eyes met mine, and he said, «She's never slaughtered us like this. Something's wrong.»

I looked back at Adair and Galen. «Is he right?»

«They'll heal,» Galen said, but even he didn't seem sure.

«Mistral speaks truly.» Adair looked away from the slaughter, and the face he turned back to me held such pain, and shame. The Ravens came of a tradition in which not to willingly take a death blow meant for your leader was the worst of shames. But that loyalty was bought by being worthy of loyalty. We were not always hereditary rulers; in fact, that was a human idea that we embraced, but once the best of us had ruled, regardless of bloodline, so long as they were sidhe.

Mistral turned his face from me, as if he could see my hesitation written across my face, but he whispered, «Mother help us, for no one else will.»

Andais's bare arms were slathered with blood, and as those smoothly muscled arms wove through the air, drops of blood followed them. Not the blood of her victims, but hers. She was bleeding. Bleeding from small wounds at her shoulder, chest, and neck. The Queen of Air and Darkness had wounded her own flesh in her battle frenzy. She feinted at Rhys's body, almost the same move she'd used on Doyle. Her arm flew out in an arc that I both knew was coming and could never have avoided. It was like watching fate strike, no way to stop it.

I screamed his name, «Rhys!» as the blade plunged into his eye, his only eye. She ground the knife into his face as if she'd cut that last blue orb from his flesh.

Amatheon tried to lure her out, but it was as if she didn't see him. She saw nothing but the ruin she was making of Rhys's face, heard nothing but the screams she finally had torn from his throat.

My power came upon me like an invisible dagger spilling into my left hand. The hand of blood, my second hand of power. Always before it had been a thing that caused me pain to use, a pain so intense it doubled my vision, but not this time. This time it came quietly, suddenly, and more completely than I'd ever felt it. I'd used my hands of power, but until that moment I hadn't embraced them. I was human enough to want pretty powers, not some of the most frightening among us. But that was a child's wish, and it fell away from me. I had one of those moments of clear sight when it is as if you can see through to the heart of everything around you.

I didn't have to conjure the smell and taste of blood; the room stank of it. As if someone had poured raw hamburger on the floor, and we had all stepped in it. The taste not just of blood but of meat clung to the back of my throat.

Barinthus had thrown himself across Rhys, used his back as shield, while she screamed and hacked at him. Rhys had thrown his head back, and his good eye was a red ruin. He was still screaming, wordless, hopeless.

I looked at the wounds in her shoulders, and with Galen and Adair still holding my arms, I simply thought, Bleed. Blood trickled out of the wounds on her arms, faster than before, but no one seemed to notice that the queen was bleeding, least of all her. She was too lost in battle lust to notice. I had no hope of slaying her. She was truly immortal. What I hoped was to weaken her, distract her. I could no longer watch and do nothing. I called the blood from her body, and she ignored me. She cut at Barinthus as if she planned on hacking a hole through him; as if she'd crawl inside him and drag Rhys back out the other side.