A Shiver of Light (Merry Gentry #9)(31)

I stood there wrapped in the warmth of my robe and Kitto’s arms, surrounded by our three children, and I wanted to feel content and happy, but there was still too much work to do, too many deaths to accomplish, because I finally owned that only the deaths of at least one of my relatives would bring safety to me and mine.
One of the babies shifted in their crib, making a small sound like the mewing of a kitten or the soft rustle of a bird. Kitto and I tensed, waiting to see if the noise grew and the baby woke, but the movement quieted and the room was full of that contented sleepiness that babies can give off, so you struggle to stay awake around them like being covered in dogs on the couch. 
As if my thoughts had called them, I heard a snuffling at the door. The quiet voice of one of the guards came. “No, pups, you’ll wake the babies moving around in there.”
I looked toward the door. I could see the vague shapes of larger dogs, and the smaller ones; their eyes shone in the light in a way that those of normal dogs did not, but they were the dogs of faerie, and they did a lot of things that normal dogs didn’t do.
I spoke softly. “It’s all right, let them in.”
“As you will, my lady.” And the door was opened so the mass of dogs could spill inside. There were so many of them that their wagging tails made a sound, like wind, or the softest of clapping. I’d never had so many dogs in so quiet a room to understand that wagging tails actually make noise. It made me smile.
My two faerie greyhounds, Mungo and Minnie, pressed close like silk over muscle; the pack of terriers and small lapdogs that seemed to always roam the house and grounds milled around our ankles and calves. The smaller dogs started yipping, and one terrier gave a full bark.
“Hush,” I said.
“You’ll wake the babies,” Kitto said.
The door pushed further open, and two more dogs entered. Two large black shapes, like all black Rottweilers, but they weren’t Rotties, they were hellhounds, the black, raw stuff of faerie’s wild magic made flesh and blood. Most of the dogs had begun as them, like black placeholders that would shift to a different variety of dog once they were needed, though Doyle said that if they remained in this form for long enough they would simply be hellhounds. They actually had nothing to do with hell and everything to do with being wild magic, powerful guardians, and hunting down those who had betrayed or threatened faerie. If you had a pack of them behind you, you might think Christian demons were chasing you. Doyle’s father had been a phouka, a shapeshifting faerie, but his mother had been a hellhound, so he could actually turn into a shape very similar to the pair that strode into the room. The other dogs went silent and gave way as the two came to bump against Kitto and me, only Mungo and Minnie stayed on either side of me, hunched, but touching me from behind. They acknowledged the bigger dogs’ dominance, but not their place at my side, which was a fine line to walk in dog politics, but so far they’d managed it without fights. I had no illusions who would win a fight between my two slender sight hounds and the more massive guard dogs. Kitto and I both touched the great black heads.
“Big fellas,” Kitto said, affectionately.
But then an even bigger shape pushed his way through the door, and the hellhounds gave way to him, as everyone else had given way before them.
“No,” I whispered, “that’s the big fella.”
Spike was one of the biggest dogs I’d ever seen; he could nearly look me in the eye just standing, as tall as a modern Irish wolfhound with the same wiry coat, but broader, beefier. He was the true figure of the dogs that the Romans said could bring down the horses that pulled their chariots and then, if their masters didn’t call them off, could slay the charioteer, too. They’d been so fierce that ransoms had been paid in an exchange of dogs. The great dogs had been pitted against lions in the arena, and the dogs had won enough matches to make it a good sport.
Spike strode into the room with an attitude that wasn’t sight hound at all; they tend to be more uncertain, nervous, whereas he carried himself more like a German shepherd, and the way he sized up a room was more Doberman. He just had working guard dog in every purposeful pad of those great feet. In good light his coat was a wonderful mix of pale brindle stripes. He had a “sibling” that was short-haired to his wire coat, so that his brother looked like a pale tiger, which was what we’d named him, so it was Tiger and Spike.“Aye,” Kitto said, “he is.”
The great dog came to me and I put both my hands on the big head and ruffled him. He gave a big tongue-lolling grin, as goofy and happy to be petted as any of the smallest terriers. I put my forehead against his rough, warm fur and whispered, “Did you hear us up, Spike?”
He snuffled me, as if to say yes, or maybe he was just taking a bigger hit of my scent.
Kitto had moved out of the circle of my arms so I could greet Spike. He wasn’t afraid of the smaller dogs, but the wolfhounds seemed to give him and all the goblins pause. I’d learned that the wardogs hadn’t just killed Romans, but had actually been used in the great wars between the sidhe and goblins, and they had been one of the few things that could bring true death to the immortals. They looked like dogs, but in effect they were living, breathing manifestations of the wild magic of faerie itself, so in effect they were magic made flesh, and that meant they could kill goblins, sidhe, all of us. I put my face over those gigantic jaws and trusted he wouldn’t crush my throat with one bite.
Kitto moved away, and some of the smaller dogs followed him, so that he knelt in a swirl of them, petting them, and the sounds of their happy panting, snuffles, snorts, and quiet dog noises filled the room.
The two big, black dogs walked to the cribs and began to sniff them. Kitto got up and went to them. “Hush, you’ll wake the babies.”
The big black dog put its nose resolutely against the crib bars and looked back at me. It wasn’t a dog look in those dark eyes, and as I gazed into them there was a spark of red and green like Yule fires banked and ready to come to life and fill a room with everything the holiday was meant to be, and so seldom was. I smelled roses, and then I smelled pine, like Christmas trees, and I wasn’t surprised when I looked back to find Frost coming through the door. When the wild magic had first come here in L. A. he had sacrificed himself, become a great white stag; for a time we thought we’d lost him forever to that form, not dead, but not human enough to know that I was pregnant with his child, not human enough to hold me or love me.
He came to hold my hand now, and I smiled up at him, so happy that he stood beside me now. He bent and kissed me, whispering, “The God called me to your side.”
I nodded.
Kitto came to stand on my other side but didn’t try to take my hand. I reached out to him, and the smile that flashed joyful across his face was so worth that small gesture. “What’s happening?” he whispered.
“Magic,” I said.
The black dog snuffled Bryluen’s onesie-covered body. She stared at him, eyes intent, not afraid, and then the big nose touched her bare face. The rush of magic washed over us in a skin-tingling, hair-raising wash of warmth that filled the world with the scent of pine and roses, and the scent of spring like a wash of fresh rain that brings the first flowers. 
The black fur ran as if it were water moved by wind, and where that wind touched it the fur turned the green of grass and leaves, fur growing slightly longer, thicker, more wiry-looking. The shaggy green head was bigger than the baby it lay beside, but it raised that head and looked at us. Its tongue lolled out happily, and the overly wide eyes held both happy dog and something else, something more.
“Cu Sith,” Frost whispered, and it was, the great watchdogs that used to guard our faerie mounds, our sithens. One had appeared in Illinois and attached itself to the Seelie Court, and a second had appeared here in L.A. when the wild magic created new lands of faerie inside the walled estate. The first one had run away to take up its post among the Seelie and spent a lot of time protecting the servants from King Taranis’s rage. Taranis was afraid of their Cu Sith, partly because of what it was, and partly, I thought, because it didn’t like him, and a Cu Sith was the heart of any sithen it guarded. It was a way of saying that his faerie mound didn’t like him much.
Spike raised his head skyward and gave one long, deep baying howl. The other dogs joined him, one, two at a time, so that it was like a choir, each voice rising and blending with the next, so that we stood in the center of that beautiful, mournful, joyful noise. It reminded me more of the sound of wolves than dogs.
Gwenwyfar began to cry, and the other black dog went to her crib and looked back at us whining, as the howls reverberated and faded in the small room. We lowered the crib and the big black dog sniffed her. She cried harder, striking out with tiny legs and waving small fists. The dog snuffled her harder, rolling her a little with its muzzle; one of her tiny fists must have touched the fur, because white began to spread from its nose backward like a white snow covered the bare earth, except that this snow was shaggy fur, and the dog turned huge saucerlike eyes upward. Its great jaws were full of razor-sharp teeth, and though it looked like a big, white dog, there was just enough different about its eyes and mouth to make you think, Not quite a dog. It was one, and it wasn’t.