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Chapter Three

I pushed at Doyle&039;s hair, tried to clear my vision, as the screa toward us, and the breaking of glass I heard Gran scream as I pushed desperately at Doyle I had to see as happening

"Doyle, please, what&039;s happening?" I pushed at hi hi, not as ht home to me that I could be their queen, but I would never be their equal

I finally got enough of his hair out ofI turnedthe doctor with his body There were shards of glass and wooden debris around hiuns drawn But it was the looks on their faces that gaveon the other side of the room

Horror, a soft, auns, and ai a lot, and it was bigger than anything in the roo above even the tallest of the unshots exploded in the small room I was deafened with it for a e tentacles reached for theuely batlike, if bats could be as large as a small person, and have tentacles in the center of their bodies that reached and writhed

So screamed outside the , as the tentacles, so in the face of the shots The bullets were lead, and that hurts those of faerie, but I&039;d seen the tentacles before, and short of cutting them off, you couldn&039;t stop theh to shake the roouns held in the, because how do you explain to huhtmare is on our side? Huood is always pretty and that evil is always ugly I&039;ve found that it&039;s so often the other way around

The nightflyers swooped in like dark flying , but their main limbs were the tentacles in the center of their bodies They used theer tentacles I watched the one nearest us cling to the wall and use a shtflyers had great dexterity with their tentacles, which the larger beast did not

I felt Doyle move as he lay on top of me He turned his head, and said, "Rhys, have you removed the spell?"

"Yes"

Doyle turned back to look at the police and the doctor, still crouched under Galen&039;s protective charge He moved slowly off of me I could feel how tense his er He finally stood beside the bed, his shoulders and the h that I could see it

Rhys and Sholto held Gran between theh Brownies could harvest a field single-handed in one night, or thrash a barn full of wheat It wasn&039;t all their ability for telekinesis; soiving the htflyer, like the manta-ray creatures that had disarhtflyers had now exploded from beneath the t-shirt Sholto had worn to pass for human

His tentacles were the white of his flesh, decorated with veins of gold and jewel colors They were pretty, actually, once you got past the fact that they were there at all

Gran hadn&039;t had ti Sholto soundly "Do nae touch s!" Her arms looked thin as matchsticks, but when she yanked, Rhys and Sholto both moved a little

Sholto braced two of his thicker tentacles against the floor, and when next Gran pulled only Rhys moved Sholto had his foundation He could hold her, thanks to his extra bits The tentacles weren&039;t there just to horrify, or for decoration They were truly limbs, and like all limbs, they were useful

Rhys shouted to be heard above Gran&039;s yells, the police, and everything else "Hettie, so one hand froolden caught between finger and thu a broas a two-person job for most people, even the warriors of the sidhe Especially if you didn&039;t want to hurt the brownie

Gran balled her fist up, and I think she would have hit Rhys in the face, but Sholto caught her arm with a tentacle, and stopped her in ht hian to fly at hilass began to move that Rhys slapped her

I think it startled us all, because Gran looked at hi power into it so that it rang like so in the rooold thread in front of her face "Someone wove this into your hair, Hettie It is a spell of eer, ainst the black court You are one of the most reasonable fey I know, Hettie Why would you ever pick today to lose control?" He olden thread so that her eyes and head followed it He aze so that she would look at hter and your great-grandchildren whom she carries inside her? That is not you, Hettie"

She looked past the golden thread to an to shine in her eyes "Sorry I a"

There was a sound from near the doors Galen said, "Sholto, the tentacles are crushing the policee tentacles and police, as if he&039;d forgotten they were there "If I let theo, they will try to be heroic, for they will never believe that we are not villains We look tooelse to the hu bitter

How did we explain what had just happened so that the police didn&039;t think exactly that? How do you explain that the giant octopus tentacles are trying to rescue us, and that the little old lady was the danger?

"You must call off your beast, Sholto," Doyle said

"They will either try to run out the door and call for reinforceun and kill my beast They have already wounded hi with tentacles bigger than htflyers as iant tentacled thing as a "him" or "her" It was an "it," but apparently not Apparently, it was a "him," which implied a her out there somewhere I&039;d assumed that this was the saeles to fetch irl? Maybe I was still in shock, but I just couldn&039;t think of what I was looking at as a girl

"I a was trying to protect the princess" Doyle walked toward the police one side of the tentacles He spoke to the cops as they dangled

"Officers, I a The tentacles that hold you came to rescue the princess, not to haruns, it assumed that you were here to harm Princess Meredith, just as you would have assuuns"

One of the cops looked at the other one It was hard to tell what expression they shared, with their faces stillby the tentacles, but it was almost a "do you believe this?" look

The other cop, a little older,is on your side?"

"I am," Doyle said

I spoke from the bed "Gentlemen, it&039;s as if you ca, because he scared you"

The older cop said, his hands still tugging at the tentacle at his throat, "Lady, Princess, this ain&039;t no dog"

"The hospital wouldn&039;t let s in," I said

Dr Mason spoke from the floor, where she was still crouched behind Galen "If we let you have your dogs, will this never coain?"

Doyle nodded at Galen, and it was enough He helped the doctor to her feet, but her wide eyes re the police just above thes to look at it, it was hard to tell exactly where her gaze was

"I will keep my people outside the princess&039; ," Sholto said, "until we are certain the danger is past"

"So, this, these, have been outside theall this time?" the doctor asked in a voice that was a little shaky

"Yes," Sholto said

"What would attack uards?" I asked, and let the question include as many or as few of the fey in my room as the doctor wished to include

The older cop said, "No one told us that you&039;d have " He seemed to search for a word, and not find one

His partner said, "Nonhu officer frowned at the word, as if it sounded wrong even to him, but he didn&039;t try to pick a different word It wasn&039;t a bad word, and it was strangely appropriate

"We are not required to infor the safety of Princess Meredith," Doyle said

"If we are on the door, we should have a list of things that are on your side," the older cop said It was a good point It proved that he was recovering frohth cop, or maybe just cop You don&039;t last on the job if you aren&039;t tough The older officer looked like he was past the ten-yearnervous glances to the nightflyers on the ceiling But he seee from the blase attitude of his older partner I&039;d seen it before when I&039;d worked on cases with the police at Gray&039;s Detective Agency The older steadied the younger, if it was a good pair-up

The younger cop asked, "Can we have our guns back?"

The older cop gave him a look that said clearly that you don&039;t ask for your weapon back They were probably each carrying at least one hidden gun, or the older cop would be Regulations can say what they want, but I don&039;t know many police officers who don&039;t double up Your life too often depends on being armed

"If you promise not to shoot any of our people, yes," Doyle said

"Is the wo with his head at Gran, still held by Sholto, his extra bits, and his ar at Sholto&039;s hu that if asked to describe him later, they would have seen only the tentacles Cops are trained to observe, but so even for people with a badge

Rhys caic" He did that "hail-felloell-lamour to hide his ruined eye He wanted to look harmless in that moment Scarsto earn them

"What does that o He stood with his partner, surrounded by what he would think were nightuns And you would have to be a fool to not see the physical potential in Doyle and the rest of the men in the roo The policeman was no fool, but he also saw Gran as a little old lady, and he wasn&039;t leaving until he knew that she was all right I was beginning to see how he&039;d survived in the job for otten out of uniform If I were him, I&039;d have left the room and called for backup But then, I was a woman, which makes you more cautious around violence

"Grandmother," I said, and it may have been one of the few tiht I wanted the police to know that ere family

She looked at me, and there was pain in her eyes "Oh, Merry, child, do nae call me by a title"

"The fact that you don&039;t approve of ht to use your ic to trash my hospital room, Gran"

"It was the spell You know that"

"Do I?" I let my voice hold coldness, because I wasn&039;t sure "The spell was designed to sinify what you truly feel, Gran You truly do hate Sholto, and Doyle, and they are the fathers ofthe ol&039; woman made the stuff float and hit everyone?" the older cop asked He sounded doubtful

Gran pulled at Sholto&039;s grip "I ao"

"Swear Swear by the Darkness that Eats all Things that you will not try and hurt me, or anyone in this room"

"I&039;ll swear ta no hurt anyone in this room, at this moment, but I will nae promise beyond that, because ya are the murderer of my mother"

"Murderer," the older cop said

"He killed her o, or am I off by a century or two?" I asked

"You&039;re off by about two hundred years," Rhys said He was in front of the policeic that could go with the sh "Why don&039;t you talk to the nice policemen, Galen?" Rhys said

Galen looked puzzled, but he moved the small distance to the police directly under a crowd of nightflyers it didn&039;t show Which meant it didn&039;t bother hi that well

"I&039;m sorry that you had to see our mess," he said, and he sounded reasonable, friendly One of his abilities was to truly be pleasant Most people wouldn&039;t think of that as a ical ability, but to be able to charun to notice that it worked really well on huree on the other sidhe and some of the lesser fey Galen had always had a bit of this kind of charotten our powers boosted, his "friendliness" had grown to the level of real ic

I watched the policeer one smiled, all the way to his eyes I couldn&039;t even hear what Galen was saying, but I didn&039;t need to He&039;d understood what Rhys had wanted hiot the policehtflyers still hanging like bats fro in thelike soo of Gran had been the thing that had made the older cop succumb to Galen&039;s charm I think if the older cop had continued to see anyone in danger, he wouldn&039;t have been so easily won over

Oh, and Sholto had put his tentacles away Once he would have had to use glamour to hide them, but they would have still been there He&039;d been able to hide the his chest and stolaic escaped, or was called into being by Sholto and ained a new ability His tentacles could look like a very realistic tattoo, and it was a tattoo, but with a thought he could ain It was similar to the tattoos on Galen and myself that looked like a butterfly and a rateful when they stopped being alive, but trapped in our skin It had felt very wrong

Several of the men had tattoos, and some of them could become real Real vines to twine down the body None were as real as Sholto&039;s un life as part of his own body

Galen&039;s winning personality didn&039;t work if the person was too afraid, or was looking directly at so, so Sholto smoothed his extra bits back into the delicate tattoo Galen&039;s was a ic by our terms, but it was very, very useful in situations where the estion Galen turned to the doctor next, and it worked even better with her, but then she was a woet to another patient or two before she finally realized that she hadn&039;t said everything she&039;d wanted to say, but by then, she ht be too eet so ic was that ic, but just how handsome the man was, and what doctor wants to admit that they can be befuddled so easily by a pretty face?

When ere alone again, just us, we all turned to Gran I asked the question "You said you kneho did the spell? Who?"

Gran looked at the floor, as if she were embarrassed "Your cousin, Cair, she cohter" She said the last in a defensive tone

"I know that you have randchild, Gran"

"None so dear to me as you, Merry"

"I&039;m not jealous, Gran Just tell us what happened"

"She was very affectionate, touched me several times, stroked lad she got soenetics"

My cousin, Cair, was tall, slender, and very sidhe of body, but her face was like Gran&039;s, very brownie, noseless, and with all her smooth pale sidhe skin, her face looked unfinished There were huiven her a nose for real, but she was like most sidhe She didn&039;t haveto visit me?"

"Yes"

"Why would she wish me harm?"

"Perhaps it is not you she wished to harm," Doyle said

"What do you mean?" I asked

"I would nae have harmed ye on purpose, but these two," and she jabbed her thumb back at Sholto, and forward to Doyle, "I would happily have killed these two"

"Do you still feel that way?" I asked, voice soft

She had to think about it, but finally she said, "No, not kill You have the King of the sluagh as your man, and the Darkness; they are powerful allies, Merry I would nae part you froth"

"The fact that they are the fathers of your great-grandchildren holds no weight for you?" I asked, studying her face

"Itthat you are with child" She smiled, and her face was illu, and treasured ave that sood to be true, a&039;, Gran?" I asked

"You carry brownie blood in ya, child, and now one is the child of the sluagh, and Darkness can claienes too" She looked past the inside the room

I knehat she enetics at work insidebut happy about it, but the concern in her face wasn&039;t the comfort I needed