Mistrals Kiss   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

Strong hands were on mine, pulling my hands away from my eyes. I kept my eyes tight shut, and Doyle’s deep voice came. “Clawing your eyes out won’t help, Meredith. It’s inside you now. You can’t unsee it.”

I opened my mouth and screamed. I screamed and screamed and screamed. Doyle picked me up in his arms and started running toward the others. I knew Mistral and Sholto were behind us. Whimpers replaced my screams — I have no words for what I’d seen. They were things that should not have been. Things that could not have been alive, but they had moved. I had seen them.

If I had been alone, I would have fallen to the ground and shrieked until the wild hunt caught me. Instead I clung to Doyle and buried my nose and mouth against the curve of his neck, keeping my eyes fixed on the clover, and the trees, and my men. I wanted to replace the images that were burned inside me — it was as if I had to clean my eyes of the sight of the hunt. I breathed in the scent of Doyle’s neck, his hair, and it helped calm me. He was real, and solid, and I was safe in his arms.

Rhys moved to help Abe with Frost. Doyle still had Frost’s sword naked and bloody in his hand, held away from me. The blood smelled the way all blood smells: red, slightly metallic, sweet. If these creatures bled real blood, then they couldn’t be what I had seen; they weren’t nightmares. What I had seen in that lightning-kissed moment was nothing that would ever bleed real blood.

Doyle told Mistral to enter first, because we didn’t know where the doorway led. The Storm Lord didn’t argue, he just did what he was told. All of us, including Sholto, followed his broad back between the trees. One moment we were in the clover circle; the next we were in moonlight, at the edge of a snowbanked parking lot.



CHAPTER 18

THERE WAS A MARKED CAR AND SEVERAL UNMARKED CARS SITTING there. Inside, cops and FBI stared at us, eyes wide. We had simply appeared out of thin air; I guess it was worth a stare or two.

“How are we going to explain this?” Rhys asked softly.

The car doors started opening. Police of all flavors poured out into the cold. Then there was wind at our backs…warm wind, and a sound like birds, if birds could be too large, and too frightening for words.

“Oh, God,” Rhys said, “they’re coming through.”

“Mistral, Sholto, hold the door closed if you can. Give us time,” Doyle said.

Mistral and Sholto turned to face that warm, seeking wind. Doyle ran toward the cars; I was still in his arms.