Chapter Twenty-Nine

The woman talking with Galen was one of their wizards. Specialist Paula Gregorio was only inches taller than me, with sleek black hair, a thin dark face, and huge brown eyes. Her eyes dominated her face so that she looked younger than she was, and much more delicate than the personality that burned out of them.

She shook my hand a little too hard, like some men will when they want to test another man. But our hands were the same size, and no matter how fit she was under that uniform, she didn't have the strength to hurt my hand. I might have looked as delicate as Specialist Gregorio, but comparatively, I was a lot harder to hurt. I was only part human, and she was all human.

But the fact that she didn't like me from the moment she saw me was not a good start, since, theoretically, she was here to keep me safe and alive; it would have been better if she'd liked me. But one flick of those big dark eyes to Galen let me know exactly why she didn't like me. What had he been doing out here for the last few hours with Specialist Gregorio to make her look at him that way and me the other?

Knowing Galen, nothing he thought of as flirting. He was just being friendly. He'd have talked the same way to a male wizard, but Gregorio didn't know that, and explaining it would have sounded either insulting to her or like I was trying to keep her away from Galen. Neither was what I meant, so I let it go. Hopefully, my safety would not depend on her. If it did, we had other problems than the fact that she thought Galen liked her.

The second wizard was tall, though not as tall as most of the sidhe, which put him just shy of six feet. He was as blond and pale as Gregorio was black-haired and dark. Staff Sergeant Dawson had an easy smile and hair cut so short you could see scalp on either side of his cap. "Princess Meredith, it's an honor to escort you to safety." He shook my hand, and there was no physical challenge to it, but there was a flare of magic. Not on purpose, because his own face looked too startled for that, but just a very powerful human psychic touching the hand of the new queen of faerie.

He didn't drop my hand, but he jerked, as if it hadn't felt entirely good. I drew my hand out first, slowly, being polite, but as I gazed up at him in the light of flood lamps, I saw something I hadn't before. There was an uptilt to his blue eyes, and the fingers of his hand were just a little too long, a little too thin, a little too delicate for his height. There was a sound like bells, and the scent of flowers, though not roses.

"What was that?" he asked, in a voice gone just a little breathy.

"I didn't hear anything," Gregorio said, but she looked out into the dark, past the lights. She trusted Dawson's instincts. I bet he had a lot of odd hunches that proved to be right.

"Bells," Galen said, and he moved closer to Dawson and me. He looked at me over the wizard's shoulder. He and I shared a moment of knowledge.

Dawson noticed it. "What is it? I heard the bells too, but you both know what it is. Is it something dangerous?" He was rubbing his hands on his arms as if he were cold, but I knew he wasn't cold from the winter chill. Though I had no doubt that his skin ran with goose-flesh, as if someone had walked over his grave.

I started to say something ordinary to hide it all and not spook him more, but what came out of my mouth was the opposite. "Welcome home, Dawson."

"I don't know what... " But the words died on his lips, and he simply gazed at me.

Gregorio turned back to us. She jerked Dawson by the arm hard, so that it broke our eye contact. "We were warned about her effect on men, Sergeant."

He looked embarrassed, and then stepped away from me so that he addressed his next words to the night beyond us. "It's not that I'm not flattered, ma'am, but I've got a job to do."

"Do you both think that I just tried to seduce the sergeant?" I asked.

Gregorio glared at me. "You just can't seem to leave any men for the rest of us, can you?"

"Specialist Gregorio," Dawson said in a sharp voice, "you will not speak to the princess like that. You will treat her and her party with the utmost respect." But he still didn't look too closely at me when he said it.

"Yes, sir," she said, but even those two words held anger.

"It isn't my physicality that called to you just now, Sergeant Dawson."

He shook his head. "I'll be riding in the first truck with the male driver. We've got a female driver and the specialist to ride with you in the second vehicle."

"You have some faerie blood in your ancestry," Rhys said.

"That's not... " But again Dawson's words failed him. His hands were balled into fists, and he was shaking his head.

"Don't make us have to put up wards against you, Princess," Gregorio said.

I laughed. I couldn't help it.

"What's so funny?"

In my head I thought, "You couldn't ward against me now if you tried." Out loud, I said, "I'm sorry, Specialist, I'm just tired, and it's been a rather difficult few days. It's just nervous tension, I think. Just get us out of here. Farther away from the faerie mounds will be better for all of us."

She looked like she wanted to argue but just nodded and went to check on her sergeant.

Rhys and Galen moved close to me. Rhys said, "Your power called to his blood."

"You mean his genetics?" I asked.

"I suppose so," Rhys said.

Doyle moved up behind me, putting his hands on my shoulders, drawing us all in close to talk. "Is this what it means to call someone's blood?" I asked.

Rhys nodded. "Yes, it's been so long since any of us could do it that I'd forgotten what it meant."

"I don't understand," I said, pressing myself back into the curve of Doyle's body. Sholto and Mistral were on either side of our group, but they were watching outward while they listened, as if Doyle had told them to do it. He probably had.

"You hold the hand of blood, Merry," Doyle said against my hair. "The power to call blood isn't just calling it out of the body," Rhys said. "It's also being able to call to the magic in a person's body. It may be that now you'll be calling to any fey blood in the humans around us. That's good on one hand; it will up their power level, and maybe yours. But it's going to creep out the humans you do it to until you figure out how to do it a little more quietly."

"What does it mean, exactly, that my hand of blood calls to Dawson's blood?"

"It means that your magic calls to his."

"Like calls to like," Mistral said, his eyes still directed out into the night.

"The fey in Europe intermarried with a lot of humans whose families immigrated to the United States," I said.

"Yes," Rhys said.

"So this may happen a lot?" I asked.

He nodded and shrugged. "Maybe."

"But it means more than that," Mistral said. "It means that the princess may be able to call the part-fey to her cause."

I looked up, trying to see Doyle's face, but he laid his cheek on top of my head. Not to stop me from seeing his face, but just for comfort, I think. "What does that mean?"

Doyle spoke low, his chest and throat so close to me that his voice vibrated against me. "Once, to hold some hands of power, you could call the humans to be your army, or your servants. You could call them to your side, and they came willingly, lovingly. The hand of blood was one of the few that could make humans want to join you. Literally, if you have all the power that the hand of blood once held, you call to the magic in their blood, and they will answer."

"Do they have a choice?" I asked.

"When you master this power, they will not want to have a choice. They will want to serve you, as we do."

"But... "

Rhys put his fingertip on my lips. "It's a type of love, Merry. It's the way men were supposed to feel for their lord and master. Once it wasn't like it is now, or has been for so long." He lowered his finger, and looked utterly sad. "I could do it too, call men to me. I gave them safety, comfort, joy. I protected them, and I did love them. Then I lost my powers, and I couldn't protect them. I couldn't save them anymore." He hugged me, and because Doyle was so close, he hugged us both.

Rhys whispered, "I don't know whether to be happy that this kind of power is returning to us or sad. It's so wonderful when it works, but when it went away, it was like I died with my people, Merry. They died, and they were pieces of me dying. I prayed for true death then. I prayed to die with my people, but I was immortal. I couldn't die, and I couldn't save them."

I felt the liquid on my face. I pressed my face against his cheek, and felt tears from his one good eye. The goblin who took his other eye had taken its tears too. I felt Doyle's arms tighten around us both. Then I felt Galen come in behind Rhys and hold him too.

Sholto put a hand on Rhys's hair, and Mistral's deep voice came. "I do not know if I want to be responsible for so many again."

"Me, either," Rhys said, in a voice squeezed with tears.

"Me, either," I said.

Doyle spoke. "You may have no choice."

And that was the truth, the wonderful and horrible truth.

CHAPTER THIRTY

Doyle hesitated at the door of the armored humvee. He peered into its depths as if looking into a cave that he wasn't sure was empty of a dragon. The moment I saw the line of his body, the set of his head, I realized that the army coming to our rescue was a mixed blessing.

"It's armored, and that's too much metal for you to ride inside,"

I said.

He turned and looked at me, face impassive. "I can ride inside with you."

"But it will hurt you," I said.

He seemed to think about his answer, then finally said, "It will not be pleasant, but it is doable."

I looked at the Humvee in front of us, and found the other men milling about at the door too. None of them wanted to be inside that much metal.

"None of you will be able to do magic once inside that much metal, will you?"

"No," Rhys said, beside me.

"We will be, what is the word you have used, head-blind. We will be as close to mortal senses as we can come encased in such as this."

"If someone left you inside this much metal, would you fade?"

They exchanged a look. "I do not know, but some might."

Rhys pulled me into a one-armed hug. "Don't look so serious, Merry-girl. We can do it for a short ride. Besides, this much metal doesn't just keep us from doing magic."

I looked at him, and thought I understood what he meant, but it was too important to leave to chance. "Do you mean that if we are attacked their magic won't work around the armored vehicles either?"

"I think this much man-made shielding will shatter any spell directed at it," Doyle said.

"Then let's get inside," Rhys said, "and get our princess out of here."

Doyle nodded firmly, and moved to slip inside. I took his arm, made him turn and look at me. I laid a kiss upon his lips. He looked startled.

"What was that for?"

"For being brave," I said.

His smile flashed bright in his dark face. "I would be brave forever for you, my Merry."

That earned him another kiss, this one with a little body language to it.

Specialist Gregorio cleared her throat loudly. Then she seemed compelled to add, "We're running a little short on time, Princess." She made "Princess" sound like an insult.

I broke from the kiss, and looked at her.

She flinched.

"What's wrong?" I asked.

"Your eyes  -  they're glowing."

"That happens sometimes," I said.

"Is it magic?" she asked.

I shook my head. "It's the effect he has on me."

"Besides," Rhys said, "her eyes are barely glowing at all. You should see what our eyes look like in the middle of major magic, or actual sex. It's a show."

She scowled at Rhys. "TMI. Too much information."

Rhys took a step toward her. "Oh, I haven't begun to tease."

Doyle and I both drew him back with a hand on one arm and shoulder. "Enough," Doyle said.

"We have to get in the big, bad car and go," I said.

Rhys turned to me and there was no teasing on his face, but almost a sadness. "You don't know what it's going to be like for us inside there, Merry."

I squeezed his arm. "If it's that bad, Rhys, then you and the other men ride in something more open. I saw some Jeeps. I'll ride in here by myself."

He shook his head. "What kind of guards would we be if we did that?" He leaned in and whispered, "And what kind of future fathers would we be?"

I laid my face against his cheek. "Being my king may never be safe, or easy."

"Love isn't supposed to be easy, Merry, or everyone would do it."

I drew back enough to see his face. "Everyone falls in love."

"It's not the falling, Merry, it's the staying in love." He flashed me that grin of his, the one that Galen had a version of that made you have to smile back. I hadn't seen Rhys do his version in a while.

I smiled at him, and gave him a chaste kiss that wouldn't make our escort complain.

"For bravery?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Our captain has it right, Merry. You make us all want to be better than we are."

"What is this a late-night Gidget rerun?" Specialist Gregorio asked. "I don't know what you mean," I said.

She frowned at me. "The moral of the original Gidget movie was that a real woman makes the men around her want to be better people. Which I hated, because then if the men around you are bastards, it implies that if you were woman enough, they'd straighten up. Which is bullshit."

I looked at the two men nearest me. Galen waved from the other truck they were getting inside. I blew him a kiss, and wished I could have done more.

"A good leader inspires her troops to do their best, Specialist Gregorio."

"Sure," she said.

Doyle spoke as he slipped into the Humvee. "Women are always the head of the household, if the house runs well," he said, and he slipped inside the great metal beast.

Specialist Gregorio looked at me, frowning. "Is he for real?"

I nodded. "Oh, yes, he's for real." I smiled at her. "Remember, we're Goddess worshippers. It makes us see things a little differently."

She looked thoughtful, and I left her with that thought. I climbed into the Humvee, and felt Rhys at my back.