A Caress of Twilight

"Can you tell us the spell?" Doyle asked.

"Aye, but that da' na mean you can do it."

"Let us worry about that," Doyle said.

Bucca told us how he'd pla

When he'd finished telling us everything he knew about the Starving Ones, I asked, "Have you been hiding the Nameless from the Unseelie Court?"

"Girl, have ya not been payin' attention? Taranis is hidin' it."

"You raised that for him, too?" I couldn't keep the surprise out of my voice.

"I raised the Starvin' Ones with a little help from Taranis, but Taranis raised the Nameless with only a little help from me."

"He was one of the main powers behind its casting," Doyle said.

"Why would Taranis do that?" I asked.

"I thought he meant to take some of his power back from the thing," Bucca said, "and mayhap he did, but it didn't work out like he'd pla

"So Taranis is controlling the Nameless," Galen said.

"Nay, lad, do not ya un'erstand yet? Taranis freed it, gave it orders to kill this Maeve, but he no more controls it than I do the Starvin' Ones. He hid what he had done, but it is the thing itself that is hiding it now. Taranis was not half-panicked when he realized that, I tell you. He was scared, and he should be."

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"When I tried to send the Starvin' Ones through Maeve's wards, they couldna reach her. They turned on me, and found other prey. I saw the thing that you call the Nameless. It will breach her wards, and once it has killed her, then what will it do?"

"I don't know," I said softly.

"Anything it damn well pleases," Bucca said.

"What he means," Rhys said, "is that once the Nameless kills Maeve Reed it won't have a purpose anymore. It will just be this huge powerful thing, and it will destroy everything around it."

"Now there is a smart boy," Bucca said.

I looked at Rhys. "How do you know that for certain?"

"I gave most of my magic to that thing. I know what it will do, Merry. We have to keep it from killing Maeve. As long as she's alive, it will keep trying to kill her, and it will keep trying to hide its presence until it's done that. Once she's dead it'll just explode all over the city. The most alien energy the fey had to offer will be let loose in Southern California. The thing will stomp through L.A. like Godzilla through Tokyo."

"How am I supposed to convince Peterson that some ancient fey magic is about to stomp the city?" Lucy asked.

"You aren't," I said. "He won't believe it anyway."

"Then what are we going to do?" she asked.

"We're going to go keep Maeve Reed alive. Maybe convince her that Europe would be good this time of year. Maybe just keep her moving ahead of it until we can figure out something else."

"Not a bad idea," Rhys said.

"I take it back," said Bucca. "You're a smart one, too."

"Glad to hear that," I said. "Does someone have a cell phone?"

Lucy had one. I took it from her, and she gave me Maeve Reed's number out of her little notebook. I dialed, and Marie, the personal assistant, answered. She was hysterical. She began to scream, "It's the princess, it's the princess!" Julian took the phone from her. "Meredith, is that you?"

"Yeah, Julian, what's wrong?"

"Something's here, something so psychically big I can't even begin to sense all of it. It's trying to get through the wards, and I think it's going to do it."

I started for the door. "We're on our way, Julian. We'll send the police on ahead of us."

"You don't sound surprised, Meredith. Do you know what this thing is?"

"Yes," and I told him as we ran through the hospital toward the cars. I told him what it was, but I didn't know if anything I told him was going to help at all.

Chapter 41

By the time we arrived, Maeve Reed's place was surrounded by police everything. Marked cars, plain cars, special forces armed vehicles, ambulances waited at a sort of hopeful safe distance. Guns were everywhere. They were even trained on the wall in front of Maeve's house. The trouble was, there was nothing to shoot at.

A woman in full police battle armor with SWAT written across it was standing behind a barrier of cars in a pentagram and circle that she'd drawn in chalk on the road. L.A. had been one of the first police departments to attach witches or magicians to all special units.

The moment the car engine died I felt her spell. It made the air hard to breathe. Doyle, Frost, and I had ridden with Lucy. Doyle in particular had not enjoyed the wild ride. He half staggered over to a line of planted shrubbery and knelt. The humans would think he was praying -- and he was, in a way. He was renewing his touch with the earth. Doyle was quite frightened of almost all man-made transportation. He could travel through mystical pathways that would have made me scream forever, but driving fast through L.A. traffic had nearly done him in. Frost was fine.

The other guards, including Sage, poured out of the van. At Doyle's urging we had gone back to the apartment for some more blades. Lucy had been against it, until he pointed out that until the Nameless's glamour was broken, bullets wouldn't hurt it. He assured her that they had things at the apartment that would break its glamour if anything could.

Lucy had decided it was worth a side trip. She had radioed ahead that without some magical aid, the police might not be able to see the thing, let alone shoot it.

Apparently they'd taken our word for it. The witch had probably tried something simple, and when that didn't work, she'd begun to work on the chalk drawing, complete with runes and the whole nine yards. It worked in a skin-ruffling, throat-closing rush of power like an un-felt wind.

The spell rolled out and hit its target. The air wavered like heat rolling off summer asphalt. Except this heat wavered up and up, towering over twenty feet into the air.

I wasn't sure that the police without psychic talent were going to be able to see anything, but the wave of gasps and curses let me know I was wrong.

Lucy stared up at the shimmer. "Do we just start shooting it?" she asked.

"Yes," Frost said.

It didn't really matter what we did. Whoever was in charge gave the order, and suddenly the sound of gunfire was everywhere, bursting open like one huge explosion.

The bullets passed through the shimmering almost-form like it wasn't there. I began to wonder where all those bullets would end up, because they'd keep going until they found some target. Then men were yelling, "Stop firing, cease fire," all up and down the line.

The sudden silence rang in my ears. The shimmering form just kept pushing at the wall, or rather the wardings in the wall. It didn't seem to have noticed the bullets or the police.

"What just happened?" Lucy asked.

"It is in a time between this time and the next," Doyle said. He had walked back to us while we were watching them throw bullets at the thing. "It is a type of glamoury that allows the fey to hide themselves from mortal eyes."

Lucy looked at me. "Can you do that?"

"No," I said.

"Nor can the rest of the sidhe," Doyle said. "We gave up that ability when we made the Nameless."

"I've never been able to do anything like that," I said.

"You were born after we'd done two castings like the Nameless," Doyle said. "How could anyone have blamed you for being less than we once were?"

"The witch has broken some of the glamoury," Frost said.

"But not enough," Doyle said.

The two of them looked at each other.

"No," I said. "No to whatever you're thinking."