Swallowing Darkness

Chapter Forty-One

There were voices. Screams, cries for help. I could see nothing, but I could hear them. There was something on top of me, something heavy. I found that I had hands, arms, and could push at the weight on top of me, but I could not move it. But the more I pushed at it, tried to turn my head against it, the more I began to realize what I was pushing at. Cloth, and under the cloth flesh; I was pushing at someone. Someone was on top of me, someone large and heavy, and... Jonty.

I whispered his name, still trapped in the darkness underneath him. His broad chest was so wide that I could see nothing but the dimness of his body. The ground underneath me was solid, and the frost on the grass was already begi

I braced against the ground, and pushed with all my might. Jonty's weight moved a little higher, but that was it. I had a moment of hope, then the weight simply did not move anymore. But warm liquid ran down my hands, and began to soak into my sleeves. The blood was still warm. That was good. Either it was his blood, and he was still alive enough for it to be warm, or it was his magical blood from his hat, and the fact that it was flowing at all meant he was still alive. I could see a thin line of moonlight. It was still night. My arms began to tremble, then finally collapse. I tried to keep the weight from crushing me, but other than that, I was trapped. The blood began to trickle down the side of my face, like a warm creeping finger. The darkness seemed thicker for that bit of brightness I'd seen.

The blood trickled down the side of my neck. I fought the urge to wipe at it, since I couldn't reach it anyway. It was just blood. Blood wasn't bad, and it was warm, and that was good. I fought to calm my pulse; panicking would not help me. I used what little movement I had with my hands to search for Jonty's heartbeat. I was much lower than his heart, though. I could not reach high enough to touch his heart. Was there another pulse point close to my hands? Was there any way for me to tell if he was still alive?

If I couldn't reach higher, could I reach lower? There was a big pulse point on the i

I inched my hand down the side of my body until I found the joint of his hip, then I traced inward, fighting against the weight and the sheer bulk of him. Since I couldn't see anything but the darkness of him above me, I closed my eyes and concentrated on my fingers, on what I was feeling.

My fingers found something softer than his thigh, which meant I was close to the artery. I moved my fingers down a little and to the side. As I pushed my way lower, his body reacted to my touch. What had been large and soft was becoming less soft. Did that mean that Jonty was alive? I tried to remember what I knew of the freshly dead. I knew that death sometimes made you have one last orgasm, but was this that, or was the quickening of his body against my wrist a sign that he was alive? I couldn't remember if any professor or book in college had ever talked about it; probably not, too much information for most human classrooms. In fact, you got in trouble for asking things like that, or I had. That embarrassed silence, the mortified look on the teacher's face.

My fingers slipped inside his thigh. I had to squirm my fingers just a little more into that warm, close place. His body continued to be happier against my arm. I was going to take it for a good sign, a sign of life, but I wanted to feel the beat of his pulse. I wanted to know that the swelling of his groin was not the last beat of his heart, the last thing he would ever feel. "Please, Goddess, please don't let him be dead."

I was almost certain that my fingertips were where they needed to be to feel the pulse. Admittedly, trapped underneath him, it was harder to judge, but I was almost sure. I couldn't feel anything. I took a deep breath in and held it. I held my breath and put all my attention into my fingers, into feeling what there was to feel. I stilled my body so that I wouldn't mistake my own pulse for his. I pressed my fingers into his flesh through his clothes, and willed that pulse to beat against my fingers.

There, was that it? The pulse came again, slow and thick against my fingers. It was slower than it should have been, but it was there. If we could get him to a healer, he would live. If we could get help, Jonty would not have to die for me. If we could find anyone who wasn't my enemy tonight.

The bomb had worked. I could hear the muffled screams of the soldiers. If Jonty's damage was any indication, the Red Caps were badly hurt too. Why had the Unseelie nobles not hunted me down and finished me while I was unconscious? What had they been waiting for?

I felt the scream begi

Where was Doyle? He hadn't been the body at their feet, but if he was able to come to my side, where was he? Galen, or Rhys, Mistral, Sholto, any of them, what could have kept them from my side this long? Were they... dead? Were all whom I had loved dead?

Jonty moved above me. "Jonty," I said.

He didn't answer, and I realized that I couldn't feel his muscles tensing at all. He was still unconscious above me, but he began to lift without his arms moving at all. Someone was lifting him. A few moments before I'd wanted him off of me so badly that I had had to fight down panic. Now, I wasn't so certain. Whether the Red Cap being lifted slowly off of me was a good thing or a bad thing depended entirely on who was doing the lifting.

My pulse sped up as Jonty's big chest rose upward. It was taking so long that I began to wonder if it was the humans, the soldiers. They would have trouble lifting him. Then he rose upward enough that I could see legs. The leg of a uniform, the torn leg of a designer suit. I said, "Doyle!"

He knelt, hands still on the big Red Cap, pushing like you'd shoulder press a weight. "I'm here," he said.

I reached out to touch his leg. My hand came back with blood on it. Was it Jonty's, or Doyle's? What had been happening while I lay unconscious? In that moment, I almost didn't care, because Doyle was here. I could touch him. It was all right, because he was there.

I could see more legs. Another was in black trousers and boots — Mistral. I remembered now that Galen and Rhys had been wearing soldiers' uniforms. They were all here, all of them. Thank you, Goddess.

"Are you hurt?" Doyle asked.

"I don't think so."

"Can you move out from under the Red Cap?"

I thought about it, and realized that I could. I began to push my way out from under Jonty's rising body. I had to do a sort of modified crab walk on my elbows and butt, but finally my face was in the clean, fresh air. I took a deep breath of winter air, and kept pushing. When I was clear enough, I turned and crawled on my hands and knees. A hand took my arm and helped me stand. It was Dawson. He looked unhurt.

"Princess," he said, "are you all right?"

I nodded. "I think so." I touched his hand. "I'm glad to see that you're okay. I heard screaming."

He got a strange look on his face. "I'm okay now."

I thought it was an odd way to phrase it. But Galen was beside me, taking me into his arms, and there was no time to question Dawson. Galen lifted me off my feet, holding me so tightly that I couldn't see his face clearly. But I could see Jonty's back over Galen's shoulder. The sight stole the smile from my face.

The Red Cap's back was a mass of wounds, a red ruin. Doyle and the others laid him gently down on the grass. I knew why they'd moved him slowly now. "Oh, my God, Jonty," I said.

Galen loosened his grip enough to see my face as he lowered me to the grass. "I'm sorry, Merry." Blood was drying on the side of his face from a gash near his temple.

"You're hurt."

He smiled. "Not as bad as some."

I looked back at Jonty with the other men grouped around him. They were too serious, too quiet. I didn't like it. "Jonty's heart is still beating. If we can get him to a healer he won't die."

Galen's face was stricken in the moonlight, so pain-filled. "But you would have died."

He was right. If the bomb had done that much damage to a Red Cap, then I'd have been so much red ruin. Me, and our babies, would have been turned into so much raw meat.

"Cel's followers did this," I said.

"Dawson told us," Galen said.

I started toward Jonty and the others. Galen slid his hand in mine and we walked to him hand in hand.

Doyle laid his hand against my cheek, and I pressed my face against his hand. "The Red Caps did our duty for us," he said.

The comment made me raise my face from his hand and look past Jonty and the other guards. Soldiers were standing, helping wounded move across the field, but the Red Caps were still figures lying across the grass. Almost none of them were sitting up, and none were standing.

"How are the humans up and the Red Caps so hurt?"

"We were hurt," Dawson said, "but we healed."

"What?" I asked.

"Every solider who you healed earlier healed on their own. Then we healed the others."

"What?" I asked again, because it still didn't make sense.

"We healed them," Dawson said. "We used the nails. They were like some sort of magic wands."