Mistral's Kiss

I shook my head. "I don't think so." I looked out across the snow. I couldn't see anything, but…I started moving, and the hounds followed at my side. I started to run across the snow, and felt the first sharp pain in my cut feet. I ignored it, and ran faster. Time and distance shortened—as they never before had outside the sithen. One minute I was with the others, the next I was miles away, in the fields beside the road. My twin hounds had stayed with me, and half a dozen of the black mastiffs were there, too.

Frost lay in the snow, unmoving, as if he couldn't feel the dogs snuffling at him or my hands turning him over. The drifts underneath him were soaked with blood, and his eyes were closed. His face was so cold. I lowered my lips to his and whispered his name: "Frost, please, please, don't leave me."

His body convulsed, and his breath rattled back into his chest. Death seemed to be reversed. His eyes fluttered open, and he tried to reach for me, but his hand fell back into the snow, too weak. I lifted his hand to my face and held it there. I held his hand there while it grew warm against my skin.

I cried, and he found his voice, hoarse. He whispered, "The cold ca

"Oh, Frost."

He raised his other hand and touched the tears on my face. "Do not weep for me, Merry. You love me, I heard it. I was leaving, but I heard your voice, and I couldn't leave, not if you loved me."

I cradled his head in my lap and wept. His other hand, the one that I wasn't clutching, brushed the fur of one of the huge black dogs. The dog stretched and grew tall and white. A shining white stag stood over us. It had a collar of holly, and looked like some Yule card brought to life. It pranced in the snow, then ran in a white blur across the snow until it was lost to sight.

"What magic is abroad this night?" Frost whispered.

"The magic that will take you home." Doyle spoke from behind us. He fell to his knees in the snow beside Frost, and took his hand. "The next time I send you to a hospital, you are to go."

Frost managed a wan smile. "I could not leave her."

Doyle nodded as if that made perfect sense.

"I don't think the magic will last until morning," Rhys said. They were all there, trailing behind, except Mistral. He was with the queen, I supposed. I hadn't even gotten to say good-bye.

"But for tonight," Rhys said, "I am Cromm Cruach, and I can help." He knelt on the other side of Frost and laid hands on him, above where his clothing was black with blood.

Rhys was suddenly formed of white light, not just his hands, but all of him glowing. His hair moved in the wind of his own magic. Frost's body jerked upward, leaving my lap and our hands. He fell back against Doyle and me, and said in a voice that was almost his own, "That hurt."

"Sorry about that," said Rhys, "but I'm not a healer, not really. There is too much of death in my power to make it painless."

Frost touched his own shoulder and chest, taking his hands from out of Doyle's and mine. "If you are not a healer, then why do I feel healed?"

"Old magic," Rhys said. "The morning light will find this magic gone."

"How can you be certain?" Doyle asked.

"The voice of the God in my head tells me so."

No one questioned after that. We just accepted it as true.

Sholto led us to the edge of the field and forest. The dogs moved around us, some choosing their masters, others making it plain that they did not belong to anyone here. The ones that chose among us followed as Sholto walked, but the other black dogs began to fall back and vanish into the night, as if we had imagined them. The hound at my side bumped my hand for a pat, as if to remind me that it was real.

I wasn't certain the hounds would stay, but they seemed magically to give each of us what we needed tonight. Galen walked surrounded by dogs, circled by sleek-looking greyhounds and a trio of small dogs dancing at his feet. They made him smile, and helped chase the shadows from his face. Doyle moved in a circle of black dogs; they fawned and capered about him like puppies. The terriers followed Rhys like a small army of fur. Frost held my hand over the back of the smallest of the greyhounds. He had no dog at his side—only the white stag that had run into the night. But he seemed perfectly content with my hand in his.

The air was warm, and I looked from Frost's face to Sholto, and found that Sholto was walking on sand. One moment we were walking in snow-covered fields at the edge of the trees, and the next moment sand sucked at my feet. Water swirled over my bare toes, and the bite of salt let me know that I was bleeding.

I must have made some small sound, because Frost picked me up. I protested, but it did me no good. The greyhounds stayed at his side, dancing around us, half afraid of the curl of ocean, and seemingly worried that they couldn't stay in contact with me.

Sholto led us up on dry land. The three-headed dog and the bone weapons had vanished, but somehow I didn't think they were any more gone than the chalice was from me. True magic ca

We stood in the darkness, hours before dawn. I could hear the rushing of cars on the highway nearby. We were hidden by cliffs, but that would change as the dawn grew near. Surfers and fishermen would come down to the sea, and we needed to be gone before then.

"Use glamour to hide your appearance," Sholto said. "I have sent for taxis. They will arrive very soon."

"What magic is it," I asked, "that lets you find taxis in L.A. at a moment's notice?"

"I am the Lord of That Which Passes Between, Merry, and taxis are always going between one place and another."

It made perfect sense, but it made me smile all the same. I reached for Sholto, and Frost let him take me, though not just with his arms. The thick muscular tentacles wrapped around my body, the smaller ones playing along my thighs, somehow finding their way under the borrowed trench coat.

"Next time you are in my bed, I will not be half a man."

I kissed him, and whispered against his lips, "If that was you as only half a man, King Sholto, then I can hardly wait to have you in all your glory."

He laughed, that joyous sound that had brought the singing of birds in the sluagh's dead garden. I thought there would be no answer here, but suddenly over the sighing of surf came singing, one birdsong after another, sliding in joyous celebration in the dark. It was a mockingbird, singing for Sholto's laughter.

We stood for a moment on the edge of the Western Sea with the mockingbird's song pouring over us, as if happiness could have a sound.

Sholto kissed me back, hard and thorough, leaving me breathless. Then he handed me back, not to Frost, but to Doyle. "I will return so I can bring the rest of the guards who wish to come into exile with you."

Doyle cuddled me in against his body and said, "Beware the queen."

Sholto nodded. "I will be wary." He began to walk back the way we had come. Somewhere before he vanished from sight I saw the white shine of a dog at his side.

"Everybody remember that the glamour is supposed to hide the fact that we're naked, and bloody," Rhys said. "Anyone who doesn't have enough glamour to pull it off, stand next to someone who does."

"Yes, Teacher," I said.

He gri

We walked up to the line of waiting taxis, laughing. The drivers all seemed a little puzzled to find themselves in the middle of nowhere, waiting beside an empty beach, but they let us get in.

We gave the taxis the address of Maeve Reed's Holmby Hills house, and they drove. They didn't even complain about the dogs. Now, that was magic.