“You don’t understand. By killing Sholto you put them all on alert, and I trust my men, and the human guards, and the human police, to fight.”
“It will not be a fight, Meredith, any more than Sholto had a chance to fight.”
“What of my babies? What happens to them if I let you bespell me?”
He settled his weight more firmly against me, one knee between my legs. “They are our babies, Meredith. They will come with you to the Seelie Court. They will be princesses and prince here with us.”
“You’ll never take them to a Disney movie, or read them a fairy tale without showing your disdain for the human who wrote it. You won’t love them.”
“I will love them, as I love you, Meredith.”
“You don’t love me!” I yelled it at the floor, the echo of my own voice strident in my ears.
“I love you, Meredith.”
“Swear it, swear that you love me truly, swear it by the Darkness That Eats All Things; swear that oath, uncle, and I may give you your willing kiss.”
“That is an Unseelie oath, and I will not utter it.”
“It is an oath that will hunt you down and destroy you if you break it. The only reason not to take such an oath is that you know you do not love me.”
“You will love me, Meredith. You will adore me. Our children will see us as a devoted couple.”
“You are not their father! The genetic tests will come back in a few weeks and that will prove that I was pregnant before you forced yourself on me. The tests will prove that you are a rapist, a liar, and infertile, and I will do everything I can to get you convicted of my rape. I will plaster it across the human media, that the great King of the Seelie is so insecure that he has to beat and rape rather than seduce.”
“You won’t; you will drop the charges against me, Meredith. You will tell everyone that you came to me willingly, Meredith.”
Of course I would; he was right, of course.
“You will tell the newspapers and the television that the Unseelie kept you prisoner and it was only when Shadowspawn, Darkness, and Storm were dead that you felt safe enough to escape to the Seelie Court with your babies.”
“You always go too far, uncle,” I said. “You almost have me under your spell, and then you say something that is so outrageous that even your magic can’t make me believe it. You are evil, uncle, did you know that?”
He got both of his legs inside mine, and only the dress with all its layers of petticoats kept him from pressing closer, but even through all the clothing I could feel him against me. I had to swallow past the lump in my throat. I prayed to Goddess that he would not touch me again.
“Do you feel that, Meredith?”
“I don’t know what you mean, uncle.” It was a lie, but I was not going to play along.
He ground himself in against my ass. “Do you feel me now, Meredith?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“I dressed you for this dream, Meredith; I can just as easily undress you with a thought.”
“Don’t.”
“Kiss me, Meredith, and then you will want me to, and it will not be rape.”
“Lust magic is the same as date-rape drugs in human courts, Uncle Taranis. Even if you bespell me, humans have forensic wizards who specialize in understanding spells like this; I have too many friends among the human police. They won’t believe that I was willing. Even if you win this moment, the police will free me of your spell eventually, and when they do, you will be jailed, or exiled from this country.”
“At worst they would limit me to the Seelie Court, Meredith, and that is where I stay anyway.”
“No, uncle dearest, you had a king of another kingdom assassinated; that is an act of war, and that is the one thing that will get you kicked out of this country.”
“Only you know what I did, Meredith, and once we kiss, you won’t tell.”
“You don’t believe the human wizards will free me once you have me under your spell?”
“No, Meredith, I don’t. Human magic has never been a match for mine. Now, about that dress.”
“No,” I said.
My clothes vanished and I was suddenly naked against the rugs and the stone. He was still pressed against my ass, but now he felt bigger and harder, eager for his conquest.“NO!” I pulled my hand free, and I prayed as never before, Let this work, let my hand of power be real here! Taranis made his clothes vanish. I had a moment of feeling him naked on top of me, pinning me to the floor, and then his hips began to shift, to hunt for an angle that would let him enter me, and I shoved my hand against his bare arm. The same arm that I had twisted in the last nightmare he’d given me.
His arm began to fold in upon itself. He let me go, and it was his turn to scream, “NO!”
I turned and saw him on his knees, naked, and maybe he was handsome, but all I could see was the monster he was, and his left arm was a curling, deformed thing. I waited for it to reach the main part of his body and turn him inside out so that he wouldn’t be able to hide the monster inside, behind the handsome façade. I would make him into the truth of himself, and pull the horror out so all the world could see it.
“Meredith! Help me, Meredith, help me!”
I said, “No.”
He vanished, and a second later I woke in the hospital with Doyle bending over me. He wasn’t dead. I wasn’t trapped with Taranis, and he hadn’t bespelled me, and maybe, just maybe, the damage I’d done to him in dream would be real when he woke. Now, all we had to do was stop the assassins from killing Doyle and Mistral the way they’d killed Sholto.
CHAPTER
FORTY-ONE
A SOUND IN the darkened room had frightened me at first, and then I’d seen the nightflyers plastered to the wall around the window, and my heart had lifted, because only Sholto could have brought them to L. A. He wasn’t dead? Had it been another dream? No, it had been real. I held Doyle’s hand in mine and looked around the room for Sholto.
Galen was on the other side of the bed. “I told you what she’d think when she saw the nightflyers. I’m sorry, Merry, but Sholto is still dead.”
“How did they get to L. A. without him?”
“Kitto brought them,” Doyle said.
I looked from one to the other of them. “Am I still dreaming?”
Galen smiled. “I could pinch you to prove we’re real.”
It made me smile a little. I tried to reach for his hand, but I was still hooked to an IV, so he took my hand instead. “No pinching necessary,” I said, “but how did Kitto bring the sluagh across the country?”
Doyle answered, “He used his hand of power.”
“The hand of reaching only lets him bring someone through a mirror during a call.” I looked at the mass of nightflyers covering the far wall and clinging to part of the ceiling. There had to be at least two dozen of them, though the way their flat bodies overlapped it was hard to get an accurate count, but still … “It would take hours to bring through this many of the sluagh. How long was I trapped in dream?”
My heart was pounding in my throat again, because though Doyle was here safe beside me, Mistral was not.
“You have only been asleep a short time, Merry; it has not been hours,” Doyle said.
“Where is Mistral?” I asked.
“At the main house, in charge of seeing that no harm comes to the babies. A hate group had claimed responsibility for trying to assassinate you, so I made Mistral stay at the house and see to the defenses there. He made me swear I would explain that only duty to our children would keep him from your side.”
“Doyle, you and Mistral are in terrible danger. Taranis means to have you both killed, as he killed Sholto. He fears the three of you the most of my men, and he intends to strip me of you, and then try to claim me for himself.”
Doyle touched my face, looking very hard into my eyes, as if trying to tell if I was telling the truth, or mad, or still dream befuddled.
“It was not just a nightmare, Doyle. Taranis was in my dreams again.”
Galen cursed softly. “Damn it, we let them put you to bed without the herbs in your pillow. I am so sorry, Merry; I should have thought of it.”
“We know that it is not a human hate group, but traitors among the sidhe themselves,” Doyle said.
“How do you know? Did Taranis invade someone else’s dreams?”
“No, but Rhys and Barinthus went to the beach house to make certain the sidhe there cooperated with the police, and forced them all to let the police take their fingerprints.”
“Are you saying one of the sidhe at the beach killed … shot Sholto?”
“Rhys and the police both quickly realized that the angle of the shot meant it could not have come from the hillside, but had to come from one of the upper windows of the house itself.”
“A lot of them didn’t want to cooperate with the police,” Galen said.
“I understand the murderer not wanting to cooperate with the police, but why did the rest refuse?”
Doyle and Galen exchanged a look, and it was Doyle who said, “They felt that the human authorities had no sway over them. I sent Rhys and Barinthus to convince them that they were mistaken.” There was something ominous in the way he said the last; at another time I might have asked how harsh the methods of persuasion had been, but frankly, I didn’t care. How dare they not want to help solve Sholto’s … murder.