Swallowing Darkness (Merry Gentry #7)(25)

I gripped Sholto’s arm tightly. “There is no time to explain. Mistral can rest here in the magic of faerie. We will return and give our magic to him, but for now, Doyle’s life hangs in the balance. I feel it, and this feeling has never been wrong before, Sholto.”
He didn’t argue again, which was one of the qualities I valued about Sholto. The petal blanket slid over Mistral where Sholto had laid him without the aid of any hands we could see or sense. Magic touched every wound that the iron had made; it was the best we could do until we returned to him.
Sholto turned to me. Without Mistral’s body to block the view, the tentacles looked like some sort of clothing, and they were the only thing he was wearing above the waist. “How do we reach Doyle in time?” he asked.
“You are the Lord of That Which Passes Between, Sholto. You took us where a field met woods, and where the shore met ocean. Isn’t there anything in a hospital that is a place between?”
He thought for a second, then nodded. “Life and death. A hospital is full of people who hover between. But there is too much metal and technology for me, Meredith. I have no human blood in me to help me work major magic around such things.”
I took one of his hands and wrapped my much smaller fingers around his. “I do.”
He frowned at me. “But this is not your magic. It is mine.”
I prayed. “Goddess guide me. Show me the way.”
“Your hair,” Sholto whispered. “There is mistletoe in your hair again.”
I turned my head and could feel the waxy green leaves. A touch found the white berries. I gazed up at Sholto, and he had a crown of woven herbs. They bloomed with tiny stars of lavender, white, and blue. He raised his free hand and there again was a tendril of green like a living ring on his finger. It burst into white bloom, like the most delicate of gemstones. 
I felt movement around one ankle, and raised my gown to find an anklet of green and yellow leaves, lemon thyme wrapped around me. Except for the mistletoe in my hair, this was what we had gained the night that Sholto and I had first made love. The mistletoe had been from a night when I was with other of my men.
A vine rose from the bed like a thorny green serpent. It moved toward our clasped hands. “Why is it always thorns?” I asked, but this was one moment when my wishes would not change faerie.
Sholto said it, “Because everything worth having hurts.” His hand tensed against mine, then the vine found our hands and began to wind around us. Thorns bit into our skin with small biting pains. Blood began to trickle down our hands, mingling our blood as our hands were pressed more and more tightly by the thorns. It should have simply hurt, but the summer sunshine fell upon us, and the perfume of herbs and roses, warmed by the life-giving sun, was all around us.
The vine around our hands burst into flowers. Pink roses covered the vine, hiding the pain, and giving us a bouquet more intimate than any ever made by man.
I felt my hair move, and as Sholto leaned in to kiss me, he said, “You wear a crown of mistletoe and white roses.”
We kissed, and his free hand with its ring of flowers cradled my face. We drew apart just enough to speak. “By our mingled blood,” I whispered.
“By the power of the Goddess,” he said.
“Let us join our power,” I said.
“And our kingdoms,” he replied.
“Let it be so,” I said, and there was a sound like some great bell being rung, as if the universe had been waiting for us to say those words. I should have been afraid of what it meant. I should have had doubts, but in that moment, there was no room for such things. There were only Sholto’s eyes gazing into mine, his hand on my face, our hands tied together by the very magic of faerie itself.
“So mote it be,” he answered. “Now let us save our Darkness.”
I’d traveled with Sholto to the between places, but I’d never been able to feel his power stretching outward. It was surprisingly similar to a hand reaching outward in the dark until it finds what it needs and draws it near.
One moment we were in the heart of faerie, the next we were in an emergency room surrounded by doctors, nurses, and screaming monitors. There was a strange man on the gurney, and a doctor was trying to restart his heart.
They stared at us for a moment, then we simply walked away, leaving them to save the man if they could. “Where is he, Meredith?” Sholto asked.
Sholto had gotten us here. Now it was up to me to find Doyle in time.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I HAD A MOMENT OF PANIC AS WE WALKED DOWN A CORRIDOR. How did I find Doyle? I thought about him, and the mark on my stomach pulsed. It had begun as a real moth but had thankfully become a tattoo. If I ever made a flag or a shield to represent me, it would hold that small moth with its bright hind wings. It was called the beloved underwing, an Ilia Underwing. It was my mark, and some of my guards bore it on their bodies. Doyle was one of those. The mark pulsed as we moved, like a game of hot and cold. If Doyle had been well, I could have simply called him to me, but I was afraid to call him. If his injuries were life threatening, then getting out of his sickbed to come to me might kill him.
I could not take that chance. We paced through the hospital guided by the mark on my body. I kept waiting for people to scream and point, but they didn’t. They acted as if they could not see us. I asked, “You’re hiding us?”“I am.”
“I can never make people walk around me without making them think too hard.”
“I am the King of the sluagh, Meredith. I can hide a small army in plain sight. An army that would blast the minds of the humans we pass.”
I glanced down at the pristine floor and realized we were leaving a trail of blood drops. My hand didn’t hurt anymore, wound with his. It was as if the pain had already become familiar, but we were still bleeding. I could see the blood drops clearly, but the humans walked in it and left tracks, as if they could not see it.
The hospital was no longer a sterile environment. Was our blood a problem? Magic was often like this. It worked, but it could have unforeseen consequences. Were we contaminating everywhere we walked?
What was supposed to be a tattoo fluttered against my gown. It was a moth with wings again, stuck in my body, as if my flesh were ice that had captured it but left its wings to struggle vainly to free itself. The sensation was a little stomach-churning, or maybe the way I thought of it. But the frantic wings let me know that he was above us, and that we needed the elevator. The pulsing had been harder to interpret, but the frantic wings were easier to judge. We were running out of time. If I’d been inside faerie I could have moved the fabric of reality like a curtain and found him much sooner, but reality was harsher here, even for me with my human blood in my veins, and on the floor behind us.
The elevator went to the floor that someone had pushed, but the doctor there seemed unwilling to get inside with us, though he didn’t see us. Sholto was keeping our way clear. The doors closed and we went up again.
The elevator opened, but when Sholto tried to get off, the moth was so frantic it hurt, as if it were trying to fly free of my body. I pulled him back, and we waited for the doors to close. I hovered over the buttons, and hit the floor that the wings seemed most excited about.
I’d never navigated like this, and being inside so much metal and technology, I think I had assumed that the moth would not work very well here, but it was part of my body, and that meant that man-made things did not weaken its magic. I had to trust that all the magic I possessed would work here, and work well.
The elevator opened and the moth flew forward. I stepped in the direction that it wanted to go. Its frantic movements made me begin to run. We were close. Were we running into a trap, or were Doyle’s injuries stealing him away from me?
Sholto trotted at my side. He spoke as if he’d heard some of my thoughts. “I can hide us from other denizens of faerie as long as we do not interact with them.”
“I know only that he is in danger, not what that danger is,” I said. “I have no weapon,” he said.
“Our magic works here. Not all of theirs will.” 
“The hand of power that injured Doyle and me worked just fine,” he said.
He had a point but I said, “Brownies have always been able to work magic around men and machinery. It was one of the reasons that Cair used Gran. You need mortal and brownie blood to work major magic here.”
Pain doubled me over. It felt as if the moth were trying to tear its way out of my skin. Only Sholto’s hand on me kept me upright. I pointed at the door to our left. “In there.”
He didn’t argue with me, simply made sure I could stand, then reached for the door handle. He was using glamour to hide us, but a door opening on its own was almost impossible to hide. You had to wait for others to open things for you if you wanted to remain hidden, but there was no time. The panic was screaming in my head, the moth frantic against my body.
A doctor, a nurse, and a uniformed policeman sitting in the corner all looked up as the door opened. I started to rush forward, but Sholto held me back. He was right. If we wanted to remain unseen, we had to move slowly and let the door close behind us. If we drew any more attention to the magically opening door, someone might see us.
But it took everything I had not to simply run across the room to Doyle. He lay terribly still against the white sheets. There were tubes and monitors everywhere. Needles pierced his body, and tape held them in place. Liquids ran down tubes into him.