A Caress of Twilight

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Rhys wouldn't answer. He just started walking ahead of us in his lower-heeled shoes. I looked up at Frost. "What did he mean by that?"

"Rhys was once called the Lord of Relics."

"And that means what?" I asked, nearly stumbling in the heels, holding tighter to his arm.

"Relics is an old poetic word. It means corpse."

I stopped him with my hands on his arm and stared up at him. I tried to see his eyes through a tangle of his silver hair and my own red fluttering across my face. "When a sidhe is called a lord of anything, it means they have power over it. So you're saying what? That Rhys can cause death? I knew that."

"No, Meredith, I am saying that he could at one point raise the old dead, those that had grown stiff and cold, to rise and fight on our side in battle."

I just stared at him. "I didn't know Rhys had that kind of power."

"He no longer does. When the Nameless was created, Rhys lost the power to raise armies of the dead. We had no more use for armies among ourselves, and to fight the humans in such a way would have meant our expulsion from this country." Frost hesitated, then said, "Many of us lost our most otherworldly powers when the Nameless was cast. But I do not know of any who lost so much as Rhys."

I watched Rhys walking ahead of us, his white curls blowing in the wind to mingle with the white of his coat. He had gone from being a god who could raise armies at his will, to being... Rhys. "Is that why he won't tell me his real name, the name he was worshipped under?"

"When he lost his powers, he took the name Rhys and said that the other was dead along with his magic. Everyone, including the queen, has always respected that. It could so easily have been any one of us who gave the most of ourselves to the spell."

I balanced on one foot while I slipped off the heels. My stocking feet would do for the sand. "How did you get everyone to agree to the Nameless?"

"Those in power decreed death for any who opposed it."

I should have guessed. I transferred my shoes to one hand and slipped my other hand back on Frost's arm. "I mean, how did Andais get Taranis to agree?"

"That is a secret only the queen and Taranis know." He touched my hair, smoothing it back from my face. "Unlike Rhys, I do not like being around so much death and sadness. I look forward to tonight."

I turned my face and kissed his palm. "Me, too."

"Merry!" Lucy Tate screamed at me from the top of the steps. Rhys was almost even with her. Lucy walked out of sight, with Rhys almost but not quite chasing her. If you could call it chasing at a casual walk.

I tugged on Frost's arm. "We had better hurry."

"Yes," Frost said. "I do not trust Rhys's sense of humor alone with the detective."

We exchanged a glance on the windy beach, then we began to hurry toward the steps. I think we were both hoping to get there before Rhys did something cute and unfortunate. I, for one, didn't believe we'd make it in time.

Chapter 22

Some of the bodies were in body bags, plastic cocoons from which nothing would wake. But they'd run out of body bags and just started laying the uncovered bodies out. I could not count at a glance how many there were. More than fifty. Maybe a hundred, maybe more. I couldn't bring myself to start counting, to make them just things in a row, so I stopped trying to estimate. I tried to stop thinking at all.

I tried to pretend that I was back at court and this was one of the queen's "entertainments." You never dared show distaste, disgust, horror, or least of all fear at one of her little shows. If you did, she'd often make you join in on the fun. Her shows ran more to sex and torture than true death, and suffocation wasn't one of Andais's kinks, so this little disaster wouldn't have pleased her. She'd probably see it as a waste. So many people who could have admired her, so many people she could have terrorized.

I pretended that my life depended on keeping a blank face and feeling nothing. It was the only way I knew to walk among the bodies and not have hysterics. My life depended on not going into hysterics. I repeated it in my head like a mantra -- my life depends on not having hysterics; my life depends on not having hysterics -- and it kept me moving down the rows, kept me able to look down at all this horror and not scream.

The bodies that weren't covered all had lips almost the same shade of blue as the girl on the beach, except this obviously wasn't lipstick. They'd all suffocated, but not instantly. They hadn't dropped magically and mercifully in their tracks. There were nail marks on some of the bodies where they'd clawed at their throats, their chests, as if trying to get air into lungs that no longer worked.

Nine bodies seemed different from the others. I couldn't figure out what it was, but I kept pacing in front of the nine, scattered in a row among the others. Frost had paced beside me at first, but he was back at the edge of the floor, trying to stay out of the way of the hurrying uniforms, plainclothes, paramedics, and all the extra people who seem to accumulate at any murder scene. I remembered being surprised the first time I saw how very many people tracked through a murder scene.

Behind Frost was something covered with a tablecloth but it wasn't a body. It took me a few seconds to realize that it was a Christmas tree. Someone had covered the artificial greenery, covered the entire Christmas display. It was as if someone hadn't wanted the tree to see the bodies, like hiding the eyes of the i

Frost seemed unaware of the covered tree, or much of anything else. Rhys, on the other hand, seemed aware of everything.

He stayed right at my side. He wasn't humming or even smiling now. He'd been subdued since we walked in on the carnage. Though carnage seemed the wrong word for it. Carnage seemed to imply blood and flesh ripped and torn. This was strangely clean, almost impersonal. No, not impersonal -- cold. I'd seen people who enjoyed slaughter, and they literally enjoyed the act of cutting someone up, the feel of the blade in flesh. There was no savage joy in this scene. It was just death, cold death, as if the Grim Reaper had been brought to life to ride through this place.

"What is it about these nine that's different?" I hadn't realized I'd spoken aloud until Rhys answered me.

"They went quietly, no nail marks, no signs of struggle. These, and only these nine, just... dropped where they were dancing."

"What in Goddess's name happened here, Rhys?"

"What the fuck are you doing here, Princess Meredith?" We both turned to the far side of the room. The man stalking toward us through the bodies was medium build, balding, obviously muscular, and even more obviously pissed.

"Lieutenant Peterson, isn't it?" I said. The first and last time I'd met Peterson I'd been trying to convince the police to investigate the possibility that a fey aphrodisiac had gotten out into the human population. They'd informed me that aphrodisiacs didn't work, and neither did love spells. I'd proven that it did work, and nearly caused a riot in the Los Angeles Police Department. The lieutenant had been one of the men I'd use to prove my point. They'd had to handcuff him before they could drag him off me.

"Don't be pleasant, Princess. What the fuck are you doing here?"

I smiled. "It's lovely to see you, too, Lieutenant."

He didn't smile. "Get out, now, before I have you thrown out."

Rhys moved an inch closer to my side. Peterson's eyes flicked to him, then back to me. "I see your two gorillas. If they try anything, diplomatic immunity or no diplomatic immunity, they're going to jail."