A Caress Of Twilight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

The Nameless became visible.

Its glamour went down with a magical backwash that staggered every fey in the area. Still pressed into the camellia bushes, I couldn't see anything, but two of the policemen opened their mouths wide and started to scream. The other policemen paled, but tried to calm the other two down, until one of the screamers dropped to his knees and tried to claw out his own eyes. One of the calm ones fought to hold the screamer's hands away from his body. Another older officer slapped the other screamer over and over, cursing under his own breath with each blow. "Son of a bitch," slap, "son of a bitch," slap. . until the screaming officer sat down on the grass and hid his face, whimpering.

The remaining two policemen and Lucy, pale but ready, had their guns out.

Galen had moved out from the wall when the glamour crashed down, and all the fey with us were staring fascinated at what lay up ahead. I almost didn't look. I was part human; maybe my mind would break like the two policemen. But in the end, I couldn't not look.

How do you describe the indescribable? There were tentacles, and eyes, and arms, and mouths, and teeth, and too many of all of it. But every time I thought I understood its shape, that shape changed. I'd blink my eyes, and it wouldn't be the way I remembered it. Maybe I couldn't see what the Nameless looked like. Maybe my mind just couldn't hold it all, and this was the best my poor mind could come up with. All I could think was if that shambling mountain of horror was the protective version that my mind would allow me to see, I did not want to see anything worse.

Lucy looked down at the ground, pain crossing her face as if it hurt her to simply look at the thing. "We're going to kill that?"

"Contain it," Galen said. "You can't kill magic."

She shook her head, took a tighter grip on her gun, and turned resolutely back to look at the very large target.

The radios on the uniforms crackled to life. The message was, if you can see it, you can kill it. Fire.

I had a second to think, where's Maeve, when Galen threw himself on top of me and forced me flat on the ground. A heartbeat later bullets flew overhead. One of the screaming policemen got loose of the two trying to wrestle him down, and when he stood up, his body did a jerking dance and he fell dead beside us. In that one moment bullets were more dangerous than the Nameless.

Lucy yelled into her hand radio. "We're taking friendly fire in here! We haven't secured the civilians yet! Cease fire unless you fucking know what you're hitting." The shooting continued.