Mistral's Kiss

I reached out from behind those shields and searched for a place in the trees that felt…thin. I couldn't look simply for magic; there was too much of it around me. Too much power flowing toward us. I needed to cast out for something more specific.

"The clover has slowed them," Mistral called.

This made me glance back, away from the trees. The cloud of nightmares rolled above the clover like a pack of hounds that had lost the scent.

Sholto just kept ru

"Concentrate, Merry," Rhys said. "I'll help you look for a door."

I nodded and went back to looking only at the trees. They thrummed with power, inherently magical and invested with further power because they had been called into being by one of the oldest magicks.

Rhys called from across the clearing. "Here!"

I ran to him, the clover tapping at my legs and feet as if patting me with soft green hands. I passed Frost on the ground, where Doyle sat holding his wound. Frost was hurt, very hurt, but there was no time to help—Doyle would take care of him. I had to take care of us all.

Rhys was standing by a group of three of the trees that looked no different from the others, really. But when I put my hand out toward them, it was as if reality had been rubbed thin here, like a good-luck pe

"You feel it?" Rhys asked.

I nodded. "How do we open it?"

"You just walk through," Rhys said. He looked back at the others. "Everybody gather around. We need to walk through together."

"Why?" I asked.

He gri

"Bad's one way of putting it," I said.

Doyle had to help Frost to his feet. Even so, he stumbled. Abe came and offered his shoulder to lean on, still grasping the horn cup in one hand, as if it was the most important thing in the world. It occurred to me then that the Goddess's chalice had gone back to wherever it went when it wasn't mucking about with me. I had never held on to it the way Abe did with his, but then, I had been afraid of its power. Abe wasn't afraid of his cup's power; he was afraid of losing it again.

Mistral was backing toward us. "Are we waiting for the Lord of Shadows or leaving him to his fate?"

It took me a second to realize he meant Sholto. I looked toward the lake. Sholto was almost here, almost to the tree line. The sky behind him was totally black, as if the father of all storms was about to break, except that instead of lightning there were tentacles, and mouths that shrieked.

"He can escape the same way," Rhys said. "The door won't close behind us."

I looked at him. "Don't we want it to?"

"I don't know if we can close it, but if we can, Merry, he would be trapped." There was a very serious look in his one eye—a measuring look. It was the look that I was begi

Could I leave Sholto to die? He had called the wild hunt. He'd offered himself as prey. He'd trapped us here with his no doors. Did I owe him?

I looked at what chased him. "I couldn't leave anyone to that."

"So be it," Doyle said from beside me.

"But we can go through ahead of him," Mistral said. "We don't have to wait."

"You're sure he'll sense the door?" I asked.

Everyone answered at once. Mistral said, "Yes." Rhys said, "Probably." Doyle and Frost said, "I do not know." Abe just shrugged.

I shook my head and whispered, "Goddess guide me, but I can't leave him. I can still taste his skin on my mouth." I stepped in front of the men, closer to the farther edge of the trees. I yelled, "Sholto, we're leaving, hurry, hurry!"

He stumbled, fell in the clover, and rolled to his feet again in a blur of motion. He dived through the trees, and I thought he'd made it, but something long and white whipped around his ankle just before it cleared the magical circle. It caught him in that instant when his body was airborne, not touching the clover, not inside the trees. The tentacle tried to lift him skyward, but his hands reached desperately for the trees. He caught a limb with his hands, and he was left suspended, feet above the ground.

I was ru

Doyle had Frost's sword in his hands. He leapt into the air in an impossibly graceful arc, and cut the tentacle in two. I smelled ozone a second before lightning crashed from Mistral's hand. The lightning hit the cloud and seemed to bounce from one creature to another, illuminating them. It was too much light. I screamed and covered my eyes, but it was as if the images were carved inside my lids.

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 ru

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.