Swallowing Darkness   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

What do I mean by that? Darth Vader is still a Jedi Knight, right? The Christians still believe that Lucifer is a fallen angel, but what most people forget is that he's still an angel.

Dr. Mason had a death grip on her stethoscope again. "I don't know what's happening here exactly, but I know it's upsetting my patient. So, it stops now, or I will call security, or the police, and have this room cleared." Her voice was only a little shaky as she watched the bobbing lamp and floating cup.

"Gran," Galen said, his voice sounding loud in the sudden silence. She had stopped yelling. In fact, the room felt too quiet, like that hush that falls upon the world just before the heavens open and a storm crushes the world.

"Gran," I said softly, and my voice held the panic of my pulse in it. "Please, Gran, please don't do this."

Galen and Rhys were still between her and me, so I couldn't see her, but I could feel her. I could feel her magic as it spread through the room. The pen lifted out of the doctor's pocket. She made a small yip.

Rhys said, "You told me once, Hettie, that Meg went bogart because she was weak, and let her anger best her. Are you weak, Hettie? Will you let your anger be your master, or will you be the master of your anger?" There was more to his words than just what I could hear. There was power to his voice that was more than just words. Power, magic of a sort, filled his words like the push of the tide fills the riffling of waves. Waves can be small, but there is always that sense that behind the easy froth that curls around your ankles, there is something much larger, much less gentle. So it was with Rhys's voice, simple words, but there was a feel to them that made you want to agree with them. Made you want to be reasonable. He would never have tried such a trick on another sidhe, but Gran wasn't sidhe. Try as she might, even to marrying one of the great sidhe, she was lesser, and magic that would not work on the great might work on her.

It was both an insult from someone she thought a friend, and a move of desperation, because if it didn't work, then Rhys might have done the proverbial sowing of the wind. I prayed to Goddess that he wouldn't reap the whirlwind.

Doyle said, "Go, Doctor, go now."

She started for the door, but said over her shoulder, "I'm getting the police."

Rhys kept talking to Gran, slow, reasonable. Doyle said, "Unless the officers can do magic, they can't help here."

Dr. Mason was at the door when the water pitcher smashed itself to pieces so close to her head that the plastic cut her cheek. She screamed, and Galen started to go to her, then hesitated at the foot of the bed. He was torn between helping the woman and staying at my side. Rhys, Doyle, and Sholto had no such conflict. They moved up to the bed. They meant to simply shield me, I think, but Gran stepped back. I could see her, now that Galen was halfway to the door.

She stepped back, hands at her sides balled into fists. Her brown eyes were too wide, showing white. Her thin chest rose and fell like she'd been running. The big chair in the corner rose into the air.

"Gran, no!" I yelled, and reached out, as if my outstretched hand could do something more that my voice alone could not. I had hands of power, but none I was willing to use on my grandmother.

All the small objects in the room rushed toward the three men around my bed. Rushed toward me. But I knew that the small objects were a ruse. Throw the small then hit them with the big.

I had time to take a breath, to warn them. Then Doyle was on top of me guarding me with his body. The world was suddenly black, not from passing out, but from the fall of his midnight hair across my face.

I heard the doctor scream again. I heard unknown voices shouting from the direction of the door. Then Rhys yelled, "Sholto, no!"



Chapter Three

I pushed at Doyle's hair, tried to clear my vision, as the screams and shouts were joined by a sound like wind rushing toward us, and the breaking of glass. I heard Gran scream as I pushed desperately at Doyle. I had to see what was happening.

"Doyle, please, what's happening?" I pushed at him, but it was like pushing at a wall. There was no moving him, unless he allowed it. I spent my life being not as strong, not as much, as those around me, but in that moment, it was brought home to me that I could be their queen, but I would never be their equal.

I finally got enough of his hair out of my face to see the ceiling. I turned my head and found Galen by the door shielding the doctor with his body. There were shards of glass and wooden debris around him. The two uniformed cops by the door were inside with their guns drawn. But it was the looks on their faces that gave me some clue to what might be happening on the other side of the room.

Horror, a soft, amazed horror, was on both their faces. They raised their guns, and aimed, as if whatever they were aiming at was moving... a lot, and it was bigger than anything in the room that I was aware of, because they were aiming above even the tallest of the men.

The sound of gunshots exploded in the small room. I was deafened with it for a moment, then stunned by what they were firing at. Huge tentacles reached for them. Smaller shapes flew at them, black and vaguely batlike, if bats could be as large as a small person, and have tentacles in the center of their bodies that reached and writhed.

Something screamed outside the window, as the tentacles, some wide as a man's waist, kept coming in the face of the shots. The bullets were lead, and that hurts those of faerie, but I'd seen the tentacles before, and short of cutting them off, you couldn't stop them.

They slammed the two officers against the wall hard enough to shake the room. I saw smaller tentacles with guns held in them. I was okay with the disarming, because how do you explain to human police that the tentacled nightmare is on our side? Humans still have a tendency to think that good is always pretty and that evil is always ugly. I've found that it's so often the other way around.

The nightflyers swooped in like dark flying manta rays. They had feet for perching, but their main limbs were the tentacles in the center of their bodies. They used them now to take the guns from the larger tentacles. I watched the one nearest us cling to the wall and use a smaller tentacle to put the safety on the gun. The nightflyers had great dexterity with their tentacles, which the larger beast did not.

I felt Doyle move as he lay on top of me. He turned his head, and said, "Rhys, have you removed the spell?"

"Yes.