A Caress Of Twilight

Chapter 23

I was behind the wheel of the Acura before I realized I couldn't remember where we were supposed to be going. I stared at the keys in my hands and couldn't think. "Where are we going?"

The men exchanged a look, then Rhys said from the backseat, "Let me drive, Merry." He reached between the seats and took the keys gently from my hand. I didn't argue. The day seemed to be full of a high buzzing sound like some invisible mosquito humming in my ear.

Rhys held the door open for me, and I walked around to the passenger-side door. Frost held the door for me and got me settled in before getting into the back. I was lucky that Rhys was with me. Frost didn't know how to drive a car.

"Buckle up," Rhys said.

It wasn't like me to forget my seat belt. It took me two tries to get the belt fastened. "What's wrong with me?"

"Shock," Rhys said, as he put the car in gear.

"Shock? Why?"

Frost answered, leaning forward over my seat. Most of the guards never buckled up; they could be decapitated and not die, so I guess a little trip through a windshield didn't worry them. "You said it yourself to the policeman. You have never seen anything as awful as what you have just seen."

"Have you seen worse?"

He was quiet for a second, then said, "Yes."

I glanced at Rhys, who had moved us onto the Pacific Highway with its beautiful views of the ocean. "How about you?"

"How about me, what?" he asked, flashing me a grin.

I frowned at him. "Have you seen worse?"

"Yes. And, no, I'm not going to tell you about it."

" Not even if I ask nicely?"

"Especially if you ask nicely. If I was angry enough, I might try to shock you with the horrors I've seen. But I'm not angry with you, and I don't want to hurt you."

"Frost?"

"I am sure Rhys has seen worse than 1.1 was not alive during the very first battles when our people fought the Firbolgs."

I knew the Firbolgs were the first semidivine inhabitants of the British Isles and Ireland. I knew that my ancestors had defeated them and won the right to be the new rulers of the lands. It was several thousand years of history away; that I knew. What I hadn't known was that Rhys was older than Frost, older than most of the sidhe. That Rhys was one of the first of us to come to the isles now thought to be the original home of all sidhe. "Rhys is older than you are?"

"Yes."

I looked at Rhys.

He suddenly seemed very interested in driving.

"Rhys?"

"Yes," he said, looking straight ahead. He maneuvered a curve a little too fast, so he'd have to play with the wheel.

"How much older are you than Frost?"

"I don't remember." His voice held a plaintive note.

"Yes, you do."

He glanced at me. "No, I don't. It's been too long, Merry. I don't remember what year Frost was born." He sounded grumpy now.

"Do you remember what year you were born?" I asked Frost.

He seemed to think about it, then shook his head. "Not really. Rhys is right on one thing. After a time it simply is too long to think about."

"Are you saying you all begin to lose parts of your memories?"

"No," Frost said, "but it no longer becomes important what year you were born. You know that we do not celebrate our birthdays."

"Well, yes, but I never really thought about why."

I turned back to Rhys. His face looked almost grim. "So you've seen worse than back there at the club, restaurant, whatever?"

"Yes." The word was very short, clipped.

"If I asked you to tell me about it, would you?"

"No," he said.

There is no that can be worn down to yes, then there is NO. Rhys's no was one of those.

I left it alone. Besides, I wasn't sure I wanted stories today about awful deaths, especially if that death was worse than what we'd just walked through. It was the most dead I'd ever seen, and more than I'd ever wanted to see.

"I'll respect your wishes."

He glanced at me almost as if he didn't trust me. "That's big of you."

"No need to be snide, Rhys."

He shrugged. "Sorry, Merry, I'm just not feeling particularly good right now."

"I thought I was the only one having trouble handling this."

"It's not the bodies that bothered me," Rhys said. "It's the fact that the lieutenant is wrong. It wasn't gas or poison, or anything like that."

"What do you mean, Rhys? What did you see that I didn't?"

Frost leaned back away from my seat.

"Okay, what did you both see that I didn't see?"

Rhys kept staring at the road. There was silence from the backseat.

"Someone talk to me," I said.

"You seem to be feeling better," Frost said.

"I am. There's nothing like getting a little angry to get you through things. Now what did you two see there that I missed?"

"You were shielding too hard to see anything mystical," Rhys said.

"You bet I was. Do you know how much metaphysical crap there is in a place where you've had a recent murder, let alone a mass execution? There are a lot of spirits that are attracted to sites like that. They flock like vultures to feed on the remaining living, feeding off their horror, their sorrow. You can go clean into a place like that and come out covered in riders."

"We know what the spirits that fly the air can do," Frost said.

" Probably better than I do," I said, "but you're sidhe and you don't get riders."

"We don't get small ones," Frost said, "but I have seen others of our kind nearly possessed by incorporeal beings. It does happen, especially if someone works with dark magic."

"Well, I'm human enough that I'll pick up things casually. I don't have to do a thing to attract them except not shield well enough."

"You tried to sense as little as possible while you were there," Rhys said.

"I am a private detective, not a professional psychic. I'm not even a professional magician or witch. I had no business being there today. I couldn't help."

"You could have helped if you'd let your shields down just a little," Rhys said.

"Fine, I'll try to be braver next time. Now what did you see?"

Frost sighed loudly enough for me to hear him. "I could feel the remnants of a powerful spell, very powerful. It clung in stinging echoes to the place."

"Could you sense it as soon as we got inside?"

"No, I did not wish to touch the dead, so I searched with other senses besides touch and vision. I, as you say, dropped my shields. It was then that I sensed the spell."

"Do you know what spell it was?" I asked. I'd turned in my seat enough to see him shake his head.

"I do." Rhys's voice turned me back around to him.

"What did you say?"

"Anyone who concentrated could have sensed the remains of magic. Merry could have seen it, if she'd wanted to."

"It would have told her nothing, as it told me nothing," Frost said, "but it would have made it harder for her to endure what she saw."

"I'm not arguing that," Rhys said. "What I mean is that I got down and looked at the bodies. Nine of them dropped where they stood, but the rest had time to fight, to be afraid, to try to run. But they didn't run like they'd run if, say, wild animals had attacked them. They didn't go for the doors, or break a window, not as soon as they saw what was happening. It's as if they couldn't see anything."

"You speak in riddles," Frost said.

"Yeah, plain English, Rhys, please."

"What if they didn't run because they didn't realize that anything was in the room?"

"What do you mean?" I asked.

"Most humans can't see spirits of any kind."

"Yeah, but if you're implying that spirits, noncorporeal beings killed everybody at the club, then I can't agree. Noncorporeal beings, riders, whatever, they don't have the… physical oomph to take out that many people like that. They might be able to do one person who was very susceptible to their influence, but even that's debatable."

"Not noncorporeal beings, Merry, but a different kind of spirit."

I blinked at him. "You mean, what, ghosts?"

He nodded.

"Ghosts don't do things like this, Rhys. They might be able to scare someone into a heart attack, if the person had a weak heart, but that's it. Real ghosts don't harm people. If you get true physical damage, then you're dealing with something other than ghosts."

"It depends on what kind of ghosts you're talking about, Merry."

"What do you mean by that? There is only one kind of ghost."

He glanced at me then, having to turn his head almost completely around because of the eye patch. He often glanced at me when he drove, but it was a movement without meaning because his right eye was gone; he couldn't see me. Now, he made the effort to look at me with his left eye. "You know so much."

I'd always assumed Rhys was one of the younger sidhe, because he never made me feel like I was in the wrong century. He was one of the few who had a house outside the faerie mound, electricity, a license. Now he looked at me as if I were a child and would never understand.

"Stop that," I said.

He turned back to the road. "Stop what?"

"I hate it when any of you give me that look, the look that says I'm so young and I couldn't possibly understand what you've experienced. Well, fine, I'll never be a thousand years old, but I'm over thirty, and by human standards I'm not a child. Please don't treat me like one."

"Then stop acting like one," he said, and his voice was full of reproach, again like a disappointed teacher. I got enough of that from Doyle. I didn't need it from Rhys.

"How did I act like a child? Because I wouldn't drop shields and see all that horror?"

"No, because you say there is only one type of ghost, like it's the only truth. Trust me, Merry, there are more than human shades running around."

"Like what?" I asked.

He took a deep breath, flexing his hands on the steering wheel. "What happens to an immortal being when it dies?"

"They're reincarnated like everybody else."

He smiled. "No, Merry, if it can be killed, then by definition it's not immortal. The sidhe say they're immortal, but they aren't. There are things that can kill us."

"Not without magical help there isn't," I said.

"It doesn't matter how it's done, Merry. What matters is that it can be done. Which brings us back to the question, what happens to the immortals when they die?"

"They can't die, they're immortal," I said.

"Exactly," he said.

I frowned at him. "Okay, I give up, what did that mean?"

"If something can't die, but it does, what happens to it?"

"You mean the elder ones," Frost said.

"Yes," Rhys said.

"But they are not ghosts," Frost said. "They are what remains of the first gods."

"Come on, guys," Rhys said. "Think with me. A human ghost is what remains of a human after death, before it goes to the afterlife. Or in some cases, a piece gets left behind because it's too hard to let go. But it is the spiritual remains of a human being, right?"

We both agreed.

"So aren't the remnants of the first gods just ghosts of the gods themselves?"

"No," Frost said, "because if someone could discover their name again and give them followers, they could, theoretically, rise to 'life' again. Human ghosts do not have such an option."

"Does the fact that the humans don't have the option make the elder ones less a ghost?" Rhys asked.

I was beginning to get a headache. "Okay, fine, say that there are ghosts of elder gods running around. What has that got to do with anything?"

"I said I knew the spell. I don't, not exactly. But I have seen the shades of the elder let loose on fey. It was as if the very air turned deadly. Their lives were just sucked out of them."

"Fey are immortal," I said.

"Anything that can be killed, even if it reincarnates, is mortal, Merry. Length of life doesn't change that."

"So you're saying that these ghosts were let loose in that club?"

"Fey are harder to kill than humans. If the place had been full of fey, some might have survived, or been able to protect themselves, but, yes, I am saying that that's what did it."

"So the ghosts of dead gods killed over a hundred people in a nightclub in California?"

"Yes," Rhys said.

"Could it have been the Nameless?"

He seemed to think about that, then shook his head. "No, if it had been the Nameless, the building wouldn't be standing."

"That powerful?"

"That destructive."

"When did you see this happen the first time?"

"Before Frost was born."

"So a few thousand years ago."

"Yes."

"Who called the ghosts up then? Who did the spell?"

"A sidhe who has been dead longer than England has been ruled by the Normans and their descendents."

I did quick history math in my head. "So before 1066."

"Yes."

"Is there anyone alive today who could do the spell?"

"Probably, but it's forbidden to do it. If you're caught, it's an automatic execution, no trial, no commuting the sentence, you just get dead."

"Who would risk such a thing to harm a crowd of humans on the edge of the Western Sea?" Frost asked.

"No one," Rhys said.

"How sure are you that these elder ghosts did this?" I asked.

"There's always the possibility that some human magician has come up with a new spell that resembles the effects, but I'd bet a great deal that it was the elder ghosts."

"Do the ghosts take the lives for their master?" Frost asked.

"No, they keep the lives, and they feed on them. Theoretically, if they were allowed to feed each night unchecked, they could become. . alive again, for lack of a better word. They need the aid of a mortal to do it, but some of the elder ones can be brought back to full strength if they get enough lives. Sometimes one of them will convince a cult somewhere that they're the devil and get them to sacrifice themselves, and that could work, but it would take enormous amounts of lives to do it. Taking the lives from the mouths of the victims is quicker, no wasted energy, like trying to drink blood from an offering bowl."

"Has one of them ever been brought back to full strength?" I asked.

"No, it's always been stopped before it got that far. But to my knowledge they've never been let loose to feed directly — except for once, and that was in a controlled situation where they were contained as soon as the spell was finished. If they've gotten out without a leash on them, then. ."

"What can stop them?" I asked.

"The spell needs to be reversed."

"How do we do that?"

"I don't know. I'll have to talk to some of the others back at the apartment."

"Rhys," I said softly, because a horrible idea had just occurred to me.

"Yeah."

"If the only person you've ever known to do this spell was a sidhe, then does that mean it's one of us again?"

Silence for a few heartbeats, then, "That's what I'm afraid of. Because if it's a sidhe and the police find out — if they could prove it — it might be grounds to evict us all from American soil. There's an addendum to the treaty between us and Jefferson that says if we perform magic that is detrimental to the national interest, then we are considered outcast, and we'll have to move on."

"That's why you didn't mention this in front of the police," I said.

"One of the reasons," he said.

"What's the other?"

"Merry, they can't do anything about this. They can't stop these things. I'm not even sure that there are sidhe alive today who can stop them."

"There has to be at least one sidhe who could stop them," I said.

"How do you figure?" Rhys asked.

"A sidhe let them loose. He could put them back."

"Maybe," Rhys said, "or maybe the reason they slaughtered a hundred humans in a matter of minutes is that the sidhe lost control of them. They may have killed him when he couldn't control them."

"Fine, if a sidhe raised these things, why are they in California and not in Illinois where the sidhe are?"

Rhys did another of those full-face turns. "Merry, don't you get it? What if they wanted a way to kill you that couldn't be traced back to faerie."

Oh. "But we did trace it back to faerie," I said.

"Only because I'm here. Most of the court forgets who I was, and I don't remind them, because thanks to the Nameless I don't have the power to be that anymore." He couldn't quite keep the bitterness out of his voice. Then he laughed. "I'm probably one of the few sidhe alive who saw what Esras did. I was there, and whoever raised the elders just forgot about me." He laughed again, but it burned with mockery as if it hurt coming out of his throat. "They forgot about me. Here's hoping I can make them regret that little oversight."

I'd never heard Rhys so full of… anything but lust or teasing. He was never serious for long if he could help it. I looked at him as he drove us toward the apartment to pick up Kitto. There was a look to his face, a set to his shoulders. Even the grip of his hands seemed to have changed. I realized in that moment that I didn't really know him. He hid behind a veil of humor, lightness, but underneath was more, much more. He was my bodyguard and my lover, and I didn't know him at all. I wasn't sure if I owed Rhys an apology, or if he owed me one.