A Lick of Frost(28)

The EMTs hesitated for a second as the security guard in the front pointed at the right door. The door we'd come out of, of course. My pulse was in my throat. Who was hurt, and how badly?

One of the EMTs, a woman saw our guns. Without thinking, I pulled glamour around my hand so that it looked as if I held a small clutch purse. The woman frowned, shook her head, and followed her partner.

Galen whispered, "Nice purse."

I glanced at his hand, and saw a small bouquet of flowers. It looked real, even to me.

The security guard recognized us, or at least me. "Princess, I can't let you go inside until we've secured the area. Police are on the way."

"Do your job," I said. I hadn't argued with him. I hadn't lied, but as soon as they went through the door, I'd be right behind them.

They'd called EMTs and police. What in Danu's name had happened in there?

The doors hushed closed behind the gurney. Galen and I just started walking toward the doors. No discussion was necessary. I'd made up my mind, and he would follow my lead. There were moments when that was exactly what I needed from my men.

Galen opened the door, and used his body to shield me, just in case. If the fighting had still been ongoing, he'd have shoved me back. But I think we both believed that if the fighting was ongoing they'd have had the EMTs wait for the police, not just let them inside.

Galen hesitated for a moment. I heard voices. Some panicked, some calm, all a little too loud. Abe's voice, saying "Goddess, I wish I still drank."

A woman's voice. "We'll give you something for the pain."

I pushed at Galen's back, to let him know that I wanted to see. He took a breath deep enough that it shuddered through his body. Then he moved inside the room, and let me see what lay beyond.

One set of EMTs was clustered around Abe where he lay on his stomach nearest the door. They'd swept his long hair to one side, exposing scorch marks on his back. Taranis's hand of power had burned through suit jacket and shirt to the skin underneath.

One of the blue-suited security guards came toward us. "You need to wait outside until the police come, Princess Meredith."

Biggs, with his expensive suit singed on one sleeve, said, "Please, Princess, we can't guarantee your safety."

I looked at the big mirror. I heard Taranis's screams in the distance, but he wasn't visible. He was screaming, "Let me go! I'm your king! Unhand me!"

The Seelie noble who stood front and center in the mirror was Hugh Belenus. He was, in fact, Sir Hugh, but didn't always insist on it like most of the Seelie court. He was also one of the officers of Taranis's personal guard. Unlike the Unseelie Court, all the guards at Taranis's court were male. Even if you were a queen, you didn't get female guards. I had never realized before that Hugh resembled the king in one way. His long straight hair was the color of flames. Not sunset, like Taranis's, but the color of moving flame: red, yellow, and orange.

Frost and Rhys were standing in front of the mirror, talking with Hugh. Where was Doyle? He should have been with them. I had to walk farther into the room to see past the milling lawyers and security guards until I found the second set of EMTs with a second injured figure on a gurney. Doyle lay on the gurney, motionless. There was something wrong with his clothing. It was torn up, as if great claws had raked it. The world narrowed down, as if the edges of the room were collapsing, down, down, until all I could see clearly was him. In that moment, I didn't care about the mirror, or Hugh, or that Taranis had finally done something that he couldn't hide from the rest of the sidhe. There was just that still dark form on the gurney and nothing else.

Galen stayed with me, his free hand on my arm. I wasn't sure if he was guiding me, or holding me back. I stood beside the gurney, staring down at the tall muscled form of my Darkness. Doyle, who had fought a thousand battles before I was born. Doyle, who had seemed indestructible like his namesake. You cannot kill the dark, it is always with us.

His clothing wasn't torn; it was burned like Abe's. His black skin just didn't show the marks from a distance the way Abe's paler skin had, but there were shallow burns across his upper chest and one shoulder. And his face—one half of his face was bandaged from forehead to nearly chin. I knew that the fact that they'd tended his face first meant it was worse than his chest. There was a bag of clear liquid on top of his body. A flexible tube ran from it to his arm, where there was tape and a syringe.

I looked at the two techs. "Will he… ?"

"Unless shock sets in, it's not life-threatening," one of them said. Then they were pushing him toward the doors. "But we've got to get him to the burn unit."

"Burn unit," I repeated. I felt slow and stupid.