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Chapter Fourty-six
We were twentyarea What do you do when you arrive early at the kidnappers&039; rendezvous? Do you get out? Do you wait? What would Miss Manners say about it? I was betting it wasn&039;t in any of her books
Rhys got out first, then Barinthus He got the door for ave me his hand as I stepped out I had a little jacket on over the skirt and summer blouse to hide the Lady Smith at the sht trench coats to hide their guns, knives, swords, and for Rhys a sical holy items I had left mine at home, because the sword that had come to my hand had only one purpose and that was to kill and killelse If the police did get called we had to be able to at least fake the thought that we&039;d coirlfriend I was betting we&039;d get to all the above, but we needed wiggle roohbors called the cops
We went to the door as if ere visiting It felt al the doorbell and wait for them to answer Doyle had called us in the car and they hadn&039;t risked the wards for fear of getting Julian killed before they could rescue hih the door Barinthus would throw off enough ht they would get in at the sa the doorbell They had put iven my orders to not show myself until Rhys said differently I couldn&039;t see anything but that the door opened
Rhys&039;s matter-of-fact voice was un isn&039;t a very friendly way to start a visit"
"Where is the princess?"
"Wave to the man, Merry"
I waved above his wide shoulders
"Fine, coic your friend will be dead before you can get to him Bittersweet is with him now"
I didn&039;t like the sound of that, but I followed Rhys back through the door Theic that they tooklike it, not even in faerie itself
Barinthus cah last and did e&039;d planned He flared hiswide a cloak to make certain you tripped the alaric
Rhys kept ot your wards set too sensitive for Barinthus Easy, he was Mannan Mac Lir That&039;s a lot of et inside these wards"
If Barinthus hadn&039;t been so bloody spectacular in physical appearance it ht not have worked, but it was hard to stare up at a seven-foot-tall man with hair every shade of blue of the world&039;s oceans and elliptical pupils in his blue eyes like soic was standing in front of you
Bittersweet cae open living rooreat rooms I&039;d ever seen I saw her past Rhys&039;s shoulder as he and Barinthus tried to talk Steve Patterson into lowering the gun
She had a bloody knife in her hand al as she was, and just from the look on her face I knew she was Bitter, and not Sweet We were about toat our backs, Rhys," I said quietly
"I&039; lips as he tried to calm Patterson down
I turned to face her, and yelled out, "I&039;m here to help you be able toI could think of that h the bloodlust I saw on her face
It did s Blood dripped heavily and thickly off the tip of the i knife It had to have a wooden or ceramic handle around all that metal or she wouldn&039;t have been able to hold it
"They&039;re here to help us, Bitter They&039;ll help you be big enough for everything ant"
She blinked again as if she heard him but couldn&039;t understand I wondered if ere too late for reason Had her mental illness eaten her to the point where bloodlust was more important to her than love?
"Bittersweet," he said, "please, honey, can you hear me?" I wasn&039;t the only one worried about her
"Bittersweet," I said, "do you want to be with Steve?"
Her tiny face screwed up with concentration and then finally she nodded
"Good," I said "I&039;m here to help you be with Steve the way you want to be with hie was leaking away, butinto her eyes, her face The knife fell fro on the floor and spatter blood so that some droplets hit my skirt I did my best not to flinch It wasn&039;t the blood; it was the thought of it being Julian&039;s
Bittersweet looked at her hands and the fallen knife and wailed That was the only word for it It was one of the worst sounds I&039;d ever heard come from someone It held despair and torment and utter hopelessness If the Christian Hell exists, then people should make that sound there
"Steve, Steve, what did I do now? What did you let me do? I told you not to let me hurt him"
"Bittersweet, is that you?"
"For now," she said, and she looked at me There eariness in her face "You can&039;t ht be able to, but the Goddess would have to bless us"
"There is no blessing here," she said "The Goddess doesn&039;t talk to me anymore" She landed on the floor and looked up at me She was nude, but there was so ot close What had she done to Julian? Were Doyle and the others inside the house? Were they rescuing Julian?
She held her hand out to me I knelt down Rhys said, "Merry, I&039;un down," Barinthus said
The un dance, but for ure on the carpet I offered her er She tried to call her glamour and roll me as she could soh power It was as if she&039;d gotten the appearance of her deic was brownie It was so unfair
"You can&039;t save us," she said
"Bittersweet, she&039;ll ether"
"I know there&039;s so with me," she said, and she was calet an insanity plea pretty easily froer, but it wasn&039;t a happy smile "I can see into that other part of s I&039;m not sure what I&039;ve done and what I just dreaain "That other into cut the babies out of you and dance in your blood I can&039;t stop her, do you understand?"
I stared at her, trying to s past my pulse "I think so"
"Good Steve doesn&039;t understand Doesn&039;t want to believe"
"Believe what?" I asked
"That it&039;s too late" She smiled that sad, weary smile and then it was a totally different sskyith my blood on her s happened at once
Steve yelled soun went off It was thunderous in the enclosed room and I was partially deaf as I watched her pick up the blade and coht at me with that evil sun and shoot a target so small and so fast I called my hands of power, my hand of flesh and ave her s with my other hand, the hand of flesh A knife ca her to the floor in front of my knees
I turned toward Rhys and Barinthus and found Barinthus on the ground bleeding Rhys had his gun out and pointed The other man was on his back on the floor
Doyle leapt from the balcony where he&039;d thrown the knife from, and landed in a crouch on the balls of his feet and his hands He ca ar to be deep
Bittersweet&039;s body was dead before an to roll her flesh inside out She ended as a ball of unrecognizable flesh curled around the bisecting blade The full hand of flesh couldwas that it didn&039;t kill the immortal You could stop thelad she&039;d died first
"I&039;ll live See to Barinthus," I said
Doyle hesitated, then did what I asked Rhys was checking for a pulse on Patterson He un was kicked away fro, he shook his head Patterson was dead
I heard sirens The neighbors had called because of the gunshots Of all the times for someone in LA to call the cops
Doyle helped Barinthus sit up The big otten how et shot"
"It&039;s not fatal," Doyle said
"It still hurts"
"I thought you gave me the lecture about how the sea can&039;t be hurt," I said
He smiled at me "If I hadn&039;t said it, would you have let ht about it "I don&039;t know"
He nodded "It&039;s tiht," he said
Cathbodua flew fros than ever before She knelt by me "How bad is it?"
"Not sure," I said "Is Julian ?"
"He&039;ll live and he&039;ll heal, but he is hurt Usna is with hie Doyle was applying pressure on Barinthus&039;s side, and Rhys had put his gun out of sight and had his detective&039;s license out in plain sight when the police hit the door
They didn&039;t shoot us, and they didn&039;t arrest us It helped that we had so many wounded and that I was Princess Meredith Nic Essus Every once in a while it doesn&039;t suck to be the celebrity
Chapter Fourty-seven
I had to have stitches in my arm, but they were the kind that dissolved into the wound because the other kind of stitches would be grown over by the body before the doctor could get thelad the doctor knew enough about the fey to take the precaution
Lucy was as mad as I&039;d ever seen her "You could have been killed"
"He worked for the police, Lucy I was afraid if we called you guys in it would get back to him"
"None of our people would have talked to that serial-killing son of a bitch"
"I couldn&039;t risk Julian, especially since it was my fault that they took him"