A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

"Son of a bitch," slap, "son of a bitch," slap. . until the screaming officer sat down on the grass and hid his face, whimpering.

The remaining two policemen and Lucy, pale but ready, had their guns out.

Galen had moved out from the wall when the glamour crashed down, and all the fey with us were staring fascinated at what lay up ahead. I almost didn't look. I was part human; maybe my mind would break like the two policemen. But in the end, I couldn't not look.

How do you describe the indescribable? There were tentacles, and eyes, and arms, and mouths, and teeth, and too many of all of it. But every time I thought I understood its shape, that shape changed. I'd blink my eyes, and it wouldn't be the way I remembered it. Maybe I couldn't see what the Nameless looked like. Maybe my mind just couldn't hold it all, and this was the best my poor mind could come up with. All I could think was if that shambling mountain of horror was the protective version that my mind would allow me to see, I did not want to see anything worse.

Lucy looked down at the ground, pain crossing her face as if it hurt her to simply look at the thing. "We're going to kill that?"

"Contain it," Galen said. "You can't kill magic."

She shook her head, took a tighter grip on her gun, and turned resolutely back to look at the very large target.

The radios on the uniforms crackled to life. The message was, if you can see it, you can kill it. Fire.

I had a second to think, where's Maeve, when Galen threw himself on top of me and forced me flat on the ground. A heartbeat later bullets flew overhead. One of the screaming policemen got loose of the two trying to wrestle him down, and when he stood up, his body did a jerking dance and he fell dead beside us. In that one moment bullets were more dangerous than the Nameless.

Lucy yelled into her hand radio. "We're taking friendly fire in here! We haven't secured the civilians yet! Cease fire unless you fucking know what you're hitting." The shooting continued. Lucy screamed again, "Officer down, officer down, hit by friendly fire, repeat, hit by friendly fire!"

The shooting slowed, then stopped altogether. We all stayed plastered to the ground for a few moments, waiting. It seemed very important to breathe, as if I'd never done it quite right before. Or maybe it was the bleeding body of the dead policeman that made breathing such a treat, as if we all had to make up for him being dead somehow.

When everything stayed quiet, Lucy carefully got to her knees. The rest of the police began to get to their knees, until finally one of the younger uniforms stood up. He didn't fall back down dead, so the rest of us stood up cautiously.

"Look," one of the policemen said.

We looked. The Nameless was bleeding. Blood trickled like crimson string down its "head."

"Shit," Lucy said. "We're going to need antitank weapons to blow that thing up."

I agreed with her. "How long will it take to get some sort of National Guard stuff here?"

"Too long," she said. Her radio squawked again. She listened to the unintelligible talk, then said, "Helicopter's en route. We need to find Ms. Reed and get her over the wall."

We didn't have to find Ms. Reed; she found us. She and Gordon Reed came running around the edge of the house at as fast a pace as he could manage. Julian was behind them. The greatest danger in that first second was shooting each other out of sheer nerves. We all managed not to be that stupid, but my pulse was thudding in my throat, and everyone looked big-eyed, like they were ready to get back over the wall.

Maeve Reed grabbed my hand in both of hers. "Is it Taranis? Does he know?"

"He doesn't know about the baby."

She frowned. "Then …"

"He found out we saw you."

"Ms. Reed — " An officer was holding out his hand."  — we need to get you over the wall."

She kissed me on the cheek and let the nice officer hand her to another nice officer waiting on top of the wall.

Gordon Reed was next. He didn't say anything. He seemed to be struggling just to breathe and stay upright between Julian and the same nice officer who had helped Maeve over the wall.

When they were safely over, I asked Julian, "Where are your other people?"

He shook his head. "Everyone but Max is dead. He's too hurt to walk. I made him hide in the house so I could get the Reeds out."

I didn't know what to say, but a policeman said, "You're next" to Julian, and I didn't have to say anything, just watch him climb to safety.

Most of the cops that could still walk were already over, when Lucy's soft "Oh, my god" turned me around to look at the Nameless.

Rhys's white hair shone out against the darker colors of the monster. Something between an arm and a tentacle wrapped around his chest. The blade of his axe sparked in the sun as he drove it into an eye the size of a Volkswagen. The eye bled, the monster screamed, and so did Rhys.

"Get Merry out of here," said Galen. Then he was gone at a run toward the fight.



Chapter 43

I didn't wait for Nicca or Lucy to grab me, I just started running after Galen. My sandals weren't meant for running full out, and I threw them off as I rounded the corner. Kitto was at my heels, and Nicca, with Sage on his shoulder, wasn't far behind. Lucy and the last uniform had come with us, too.

But what we saw froze us all for a few seconds. The Nameless had no legs, yet it did. It was a writhing mass of a thing, and my eyes could not hold it. I felt a scream clawing at my throat, but I knew if I let that sound come out of me, I'd never stop — like the policeman still huddled by the wall. Sometimes the only thing that keeps you from going mad is stubbornness and need.

Rhys was still wrapped in its flesh, but he'd stopped moving. His arms hung pale and empty, and I knew that to have let all his weapons fall away, he was at best not conscious, at worst … I refused to finish the thought. There'd be time to think the unthinkable later.

The armored cops who had come in with the other guards lay scattered about the thing like discarded toys. The swimming pool lay just behind the thing, and its trail of destruction had taken out the pool house.

Frost's silver hair blew in a shining curtain. One arm hung limp at his side, but he'd won his way to the creature's base. He plunged Winter Kiss into one moving piece, and a tentacle came swinging out of the mass and smashed into him, tossing him back to bounce against the wall. He lay in a broken heap where he landed. Only Galen's hand on my arm kept me from running to him.

"Look," Galen said.

Where the sword still stood in the thing's flesh, a white spot was growing.