Лорел Гамильтон - A Kiss Of Shadows

She writhed, unable to get enough air to curse me. I'd hit her heart, and maybe a lung. It wouldn't kill her, but it hurt.

The second hag raised her face into the light. Her skin was a dirty grey with huge pockmarks covering her face, tracing along the sharp nose like craters. Her lips were almost too thin to cover the mouth full of sharp carnivorous teeth. "I wonder if he'd still want you if you didn't have all that smooth white flesh."

The last hag was still standing, hooded, hidden. Her voice was better than theirs, more cultured somehow. "We could make you one of us, our sister."

I sighted at the grey one's face. "The second someone starts a curse, I'll shoot her through the face."

"It won't kill me," Grey said.

"No, but it won't help your looks either."

She hissed at me like some great crooked cat. "Bitch."

"Ditto," I said.

It was the one still standing that I was worried about. She hadn't panicked or let anger get the better of her. She'd suggested using magic against me when she was still partially hidden by shadows and night. Smarter, more cautious, more dangerous.

I had purposefully not used glamour to hide. I was standing in front of a lighted bookstore window with a gun in plain sight, obviously pointed at someone. The gunshot alone should have sent someone to the door or to call the police. I gave a quick flare of power, searching, and found the thick folds of the glamour. Heavy and well made. I was good at glamour, but not this kind. Sholto had covered the entire street with it, like an invisible wall. The humans in the shops would just want to stay inside. No one would see or hear anything to alarm them. Their minds would explain the gunshot as some ordinary noise. If I screamed for help, it would be the wind. Short of throwing someone through the window in back of me, into the shop itself, no one would see anything.

I'd have been willing to throw any and all of them through the glass, but I didn't trust them up close. The hands that clasped at the wound had black claws like the talons of some great bird. The teeth that bared when she hissed were made for tearing flesh. I would never win a one-on-one battle. I needed them at bay, and the gun kept them there, but Sholto would come, and I needed to be gone before that happened. Once he arrived I'd lose. Come to think of it, I wasn't doing too well now. They couldn't hurt me, but I was trapped. If I moved out from under the awning, the nightflyers would get me or at least mob me, then the hags and the grinning man could take me. I'd be disarmed or worse before Sholto showed up.

I had no offensive magic. The gun wouldn't kill any of them, only hurt and slow them. I needed a better idea, and I couldn't think of anything. I tried talking. When in doubt, talk. You never know what the enemy might let slip.

"Nerys the Grey, Segna the Gold, and Black Agnes, I presume."

"Who are you? Stanley?" Nerys said.

I had to smile. "And they say you have no sense of humor."

"Who're they?" she asked.

"The sidhe," I said.

"You are sidhe," Black Agnes said.

"If I were truly sidhe, would I be here on the shores of the Western Sea hiding from my queen?"

"The fact that you and your aunt are enemies makes you suicidally foolish, but it doesn't make you one ounce less sidhe." Agnes stood so straight and tall, like a black pillar of cloth.

"No, but the brownie blood on my mother's side does. I think the queen would forgive the human taint, but she can't forget the other."

"You're mortal," Segna said. "That's the unforgivable sin for a sidhe."

My hands were starting to cramp. My arms would start to tremble soon. I had to either shoot something, or lower the gun. Even a two-handed stance isn't meant to be held indefinitely.

"There are other sins my aunt finds just as unforgivable," I said.

A man's voice said, "Like having a nest of tentacles in the middle of all that perfect sidhe flesh."

I turned the gun toward the voice, keeping my vision on the three hags. I was soon going to have so many targets in so many different directions that I'd never be able to shoot them all in time. At least the movement and the fresh rush of adrenaline had helped chase away the muscle fatigue. I was suddenly sure I could hold the shooting stance forever.

Sholto was standing on the sidewalk, hands at his side. I think he was trying to appear harmless. He failed. "The queen said that to me once, that it was a shame that I had a nest of tentacles in the middle of one of the most perfect sidhe bodies she'd ever seen."

"Great. My aunt's a bitch. We all knew that. What do you want, Sholto?"

"Give him his title," Agnes said, that cultured voice holding an edge of anger.

It never hurts to be polite, so I did what she asked. "What do you want, Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between?"

"He is King Sholto." Segna spat the words at me, almost literally.

"He's not my king," I said.

"That could change," Agnes said, the implied threat nicely subtle.

"Enough," Sholto said. "The queen wants you dead, Meredith."

"We've never been friends, Lord Sholto. Use my title." It was an insult for him to have omitted my title after I'd used his. It was also an insult to insist on it from someone who was king of another people. But Sholto had always complicated his life by trying to play lord of the sidhe and king of the sluagh.

A look passed over the strong bones of his face—anger, I think, though I didn't know him well enough to be sure. "The queen wants you dead, Princess Meredith, daughter of Essus."

"And she sent you to fetch me home for the execution. I figured that much out."

"You couldn't be more wrong," Agnes said.

"Silence!" Sholto put the bite of command in that one word. The hags seemed to shrink in upon themselves, not bowing, but like they thought about it.

The grinning man to my right stepped closer. I didn't take the gun off Sholto, but I said, "Take two big steps back or I shoot your king."

I don't know what the man would have done because Sholto said, "Gethin, do what she asks."

Gethin didn't argue, just stepped back, though I noticed out of the corner of my eyes that his hands were folded across his chest. He wasn't doing the hands on top of your head routine anymore. Fine as long as he stayed out of immediate reach. They were all too close. If everyone rushed me at once, it was over. But Sholto didn't want me crowded. He wanted to talk. Fine with me.

"I don't want you dead, Princess Meredith," Sholto said.

I couldn't keep the suspicion off my face. "You'd go up against the queen and all her sidhe to save me?"

"Much has happened in the last three years, Princess. The queen relies more and more on the sluagh for her threat. I do not think she would start a war over you being alive if you were safely out of her sight."

"I'm as out of her sight as I can get and still be on dry land," I said.

"Ah, but perhaps there are others at court that whisper in her ear and remind her of you."

"Who?" I asked.

He smiled, and it made that handsome face almost pleasant. "We have many things to discuss, Princess. I have a room in one of the better hotels. Shall we retire to it and discuss the future?"

Something about the way he worded that bothered me, but it was the best offer I was going to get tonight. I lowered the gun. "Swear by your honor and the darkness that eats all things, that you mean all of what you just said."

"I swear on my honor, and by the darkness that eats all things, that every word I have spoken on this street to you is the truth."

I clicked the safety on the gun and tucked it at the small of my back. I picked my jacket up off the ground, shook it out, and slipped it on. It was a little wrinkled, but it would do. "How far is your hotel?"