Swallowing Darkness (Merry Gentry #7)(19)

“I applaud your sense of duty, Onilwyn. Contact the Unseelie mound, have them send healers, and help move Mistral someplace warm.”
“Why would I do that?” he asked. He loomed over us in his thick winter cloak, a stray lock of hair blowing across his cheek, as the cold wind began to play along our skin. I looked up into his face, and the clouds parted in that wind, so that I had enough moonlight to see his face clearly, and what I saw put my pulse into my throat.
I shivered, but it wasn’t just from the cold. I saw death on Onilwyn’s face, death and deep satisfaction, almost happiness.
“Onilwyn,” I said, “do as I command.” But my voice betrayed my fear.
He laughed softly. “I think not.” He swept back the heavy cloak, his hand seeking the sword revealed at his side.
I reached into the grass for the only weapon I had, the arrow. I used Mistral’s body to shield the movement. But I had to stab Onilwyn before he drew his sword. It was one of those moments when time seems to freeze, and you have both too much time to see the disaster unfolding, and not enough time to act.
I slapped at him with my left hand, and he batted it away, almost gently. He was looking at my empty hand as I stabbed upward with the arrow. I felt the arrow cut into flesh. I shoved, and he jerked back, away from me. The arrow stayed in his leg. I had sunk it deeply enough to make him back up.
It took everything I had not to look behind me toward the glow of the hunt. The screams of the men were distant, fading, but they were miles away. They were visible in the flat farmland, but distance is hard to judge on flat land. Things can seem so much closer than they are. I could not look behind me for help.
Onilwyn jerked the arrow out of his leg. “You bitch!”
“You swore an oath to protect me, Onilwyn. Is this really the night you want to be a breaker of oaths?”
He threw the arrow to the ground, and drew his sword. “Call the hunt; even flying, they will not get here in time to save you.”
I spoke the words. “I call you oathbreaker, Onilwyn. I call you traitor, and I call the wild hunt to hear me.”
I heard the scream of the horses, and screams of other things, as if the shapeless things had voices now. They would turn, they would come, and Sholto would lead them, but Onilwyn was striding across the grass, sword in hand. They would be too late unless I fought back.
The only magic I had that worked from a distance came at a price of pain. I wasn’t sure what it would do to the babies, but if I died, we all died.
I called the hand of blood. It wasn’t like most hands of power; there was no bolt of energy, no fire, no shining anything. I simply called it into the palm of my left hand, or maybe opened some invisible door in my hand, though my hand was solid to the eye and touch, but it was the doorway for the hand of blood for me.
I called my magic and prayed to the Goddess that what I was doing to save us wouldn’t kill two of us. It was as if the blood in my veins turned to molten metal, so hot, so much pain, as if my blood would boil until it melted my skin and poured out of me. But I’d learned what to do with the pain.
I screamed, and faced the palm of my left hand toward the now-running Onilwyn. He was sidhe, he would feel the magic, or maybe he just ran to make sure I died before the hunt arrived.
I thrust that burning, boiling pain into him. He staggered for a moment, then kept coming. I shrieked, “Bleed!”
The wound that I had made in his thigh burst open. His skin split, and blood fountained. The original wound had missed the femoral artery—it was too far under the skin that low in the thigh—but my power could take a small wound and make it bigger. Nick someone even close to a major artery, and I had a chance to open it.Onilwyn hesitated, putting a hand to his wound, his sword pointing downward. He looked past me, at the sky, and I knew what he saw. I fought not to look, because where I looked sometimes the hand of blood bled. I wanted Onilwyn to bleed, and no one else.
He raised his hand, shining dark in the moonlight with his own blood. He looked at me with deep hatred, then he raised his sword two-handed and ran at me, screaming a war cry.
I screamed my own cry of, “Bleed for me!”
The hunt was coming, but the man with the sword was too close. The only question was whether I could bleed him to death faster than he could cross that piece of ground.
CHAPTER TEN
I POINTED MY LEFT HAND AT HIM, AND SCREAMED FOR BLOOD. I pushed my power into the wound, and tore it wider. Onilwyn stumbled, but kept coming at a limping run. He was almost to me. I prayed to the Goddess and the Consort. I prayed for strength. Strength to save myself and my babies.
Onilwyn fell to his knees on the dark winter ground. He tried to stand, but his wounded leg betrayed him, and he ended on all fours, blood gushing out onto the frosted grass. The white of the frost vanished in the warm rush of his blood.
He started crawling toward me, dragging his injured leg behind him like a broken tail. He kept his sword in one fist, the point raised a little above the ground so it didn’t catch on anything. The look on his face was implacable. His eyes held only certainty and hatred.
I wanted to ask what I had ever done to him for such hatred to grow, but I had to concentrate on bleeding him to death before he could put that sword through me and my unborn children.
I wasn’t even frightened anymore. All the emotion that was in me was concentrated in my left hand. Concentrated into one thought: die. I could pretend that all I wanted was his blood, but that wasn’t enough. I needed death. I needed Onilwyn’s death.
He was close enough that I could see the sheen of sweat on his face, even by moonlight. I kept my hand pointed at him, and I cried out, “Die! Die for me!”
Onilwyn rose to his knees, swaying like a thin tree caught in a strong wind, but he rose above Mistral’s quiet body. The sword also rose.
I kept my hand pointed at him, but crawled backward from that shining metal. His hand fell, the sword striking the ground where I had been. He didn’t seem to realize at first that he’d missed me. He drove the sword home viciously, as if he were cutting flesh.
I got to my feet, still bleeding him, still killing him.
Onilwyn frowned at the ground, where he was cutting nothing. He leaned on Mistral’s body, one hand holding on to the other man. The other hand, with its sword, was thrust into the ground, but it was almost as if he’d forgotten it was there. 
He frowned up at me, as if he couldn’t quite focus. “Cel said you were weak.”
“Die for me, Onilwyn. Die for me, and keep your oath.”
His sword fell from his fingers. “If you can bleed me, you can save me.”
“You would kill me and my unborn children. Why should I save you?”
“For pity,” he said, his eyes beginning to look slightly to the side of where I stood.
I smelled roses, and the words that came from my mouth were not my words. “I am the dark goddess. I am the destroyer of worlds. I am the face of the moon when all light is gone. I could have come to you, Onilwyn, in the shape of light and spring and life, but you have called the winter down upon yourself, and there is no pity in the snow. There is only death.”
“You are with child,” he said, as he began to slump toward the cold ground. “You are full of life.”
I touched my stomach with my right hand; the left never stopped pointing at him. “The Goddess is all things at all times. There is never life without death, never light without darkness, never pain without hope. I am the Goddess, I am creation and destruction. I am the cradle of life, and the end of the world. You would destroy me, Ash Lord, but you cannot.”
He stared up at me with unfocused eyes. He reached out toward me, not with magic, but as if he would touch me, or was trying to touch something. I wasn’t certain he was reaching for me, but he saw something in that moment. He saw something that made him reach for it.
“Forgive me,” he whispered.
“I am the face of the goddess that you called into being this night, Ash Lord. Is there forgiveness in the face you see?”
“No,” he whispered. He slumped until the side of his face touched the ground, and the rest of him was draped across Mistral’s body. He shuddered, and gave a last, long breath. Onilwyn, Lord of the Ash Grove, died as he had lived, surrounded by enemies.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
I SAW THE WHITE GLOW OF THE HUNT BEHIND ME LIKE A SECOND moon in the sky before I heard the wind of its coming. But I kept my eyes on the fallen sidhe lord. Onilwyn looked unconscious, maybe even dead, but until it was certain, I would not turn and give him a second chance to kill me.
I heard the horses and other things land on the frozen ground. I heard running feet, and Sholto was beside me. He put himself between me and the slumped forms. The bone spear was pointed up, the bone dagger naked in his hand.
I leaned against his back, feeling the strength of him through the remnants of his t-shirt. He, like me, hadn’t dressed for the cold. Magic can make you forget practicalities, until the magic recedes and you realize that you are mortal once more. Oh, I guess that was just me. Some of the sidhe never felt the cold.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No, just feeling the cold.” Saying it out loud seemed to give me permission to shiver. I pressed myself more tightly against the warmth of his back, and reached around to encircle his waist. I found more in the front of his body than just waist. The tentacles petted and caressed my hands and arms. He was touching me, holding me, just as he would have with his hands if they weren’t full of weapons. But Sholto had enough “hands” to hold me and fight. There had been a time when the extra bits had disturbed me to the point that I wasn’t sure I could get past them, but such petty concerns seemed ages ago. The tentacles were warm, as if they had blood close to the surface. They reached around his body to hold more of me, stretching as only things with no bones can. Tonight it wasn’t disturbing, it was warm.