A Caress Of Twilight

Chapter 42

Getting over the wall was surprisingly easy. It was tall, but not that tall, and setting off the silent alarm was no longer a problem. The police were already here. I was helped down into a narrow lane that was planted so thickly with dark green camellias that they formed a second wall to nearly hide the house in front of us. It wasn't the right time of year for blooming, so they were just tall bushes with thick, waxy leaves. I knew exactly how the leaves felt because Lucy and Galen both made me stand in the damn shrubs. I could come along, but they were both going to make sure I didn't get to do anything.

A uniformed officer ducked around the corner and came back with whispered news that there was a sliding glass door: easy access. We were about to slip around that corner and enter the door to search for Maeve Reed, when something awful happened.

The Nameless became visible.

Its glamour went down with a magical backwash that staggered every fey in the area. Still pressed into the camellia bushes, I couldn't see anything, but two of the policemen opened their mouths wide and started to scream. The other policemen paled, but tried to calm the other two down, until one of the screamers dropped to his knees and tried to claw out his own eyes. One of the calm ones fought to hold the screamer's hands away from his body. Another older officer slapped the other screamer over and over, cursing under his own breath with each blow. "Son of a bitch," slap, "son of a bitch," slap. . until the screaming officer sat down on the grass and hid his face, whimpering.

The remaining two policemen and Lucy, pale but ready, had their guns out.

Galen had moved out from the wall when the glamour crashed down, and all the fey with us were staring fascinated at what lay up ahead. I almost didn't look. I was part human; maybe my mind would break like the two policemen. But in the end, I couldn't not look.

How do you describe the indescribable? There were tentacles, and eyes, and arms, and mouths, and teeth, and too many of all of it. But every time I thought I understood its shape, that shape changed. I'd blink my eyes, and it wouldn't be the way I remembered it. Maybe I couldn't see what the Nameless looked like. Maybe my mind just couldn't hold it all, and this was the best my poor mind could come up with. All I could think was if that shambling mountain of horror was the protective version that my mind would allow me to see, I did not want to see anything worse.

Lucy looked down at the ground, pain crossing her face as if it hurt her to simply look at the thing. "We're going to kill that?"

"Contain it," Galen said. "You can't kill magic."

She shook her head, took a tighter grip on her gun, and turned resolutely back to look at the very large target.

The radios on the uniforms crackled to life. The message was, if you can see it, you can kill it. Fire.

I had a second to think, where's Maeve, when Galen threw himself on top of me and forced me flat on the ground. A heartbeat later bullets flew overhead. One of the screaming policemen got loose of the two trying to wrestle him down, and when he stood up, his body did a jerking dance and he fell dead beside us. In that one moment bullets were more dangerous than the Nameless.

Lucy yelled into her hand radio. "We're taking friendly fire in here! We haven't secured the civilians yet! Cease fire unless you fucking know what you're hitting." The shooting continued. Lucy screamed again, "Officer down, officer down, hit by friendly fire, repeat, hit by friendly fire!"

The shooting slowed, then stopped altogether. We all stayed plastered to the ground for a few moments, waiting. It seemed very important to breathe, as if I'd never done it quite right before. Or maybe it was the bleeding body of the dead policeman that made breathing such a treat, as if we all had to make up for him being dead somehow.

When everything stayed quiet, Lucy carefully got to her knees. The rest of the police began to get to their knees, until finally one of the younger uniforms stood up. He didn't fall back down dead, so the rest of us stood up cautiously.

"Look," one of the policemen said.

We looked. The Nameless was bleeding. Blood trickled like crimson string down its "head."

"Shit," Lucy said. "We're going to need antitank weapons to blow that thing up."

I agreed with her. "How long will it take to get some sort of National Guard stuff here?"

"Too long," she said. Her radio squawked again. She listened to the unintelligible talk, then said, "Helicopter's en route. We need to find Ms. Reed and get her over the wall."

We didn't have to find Ms. Reed; she found us. She and Gordon Reed came running around the edge of the house at as fast a pace as he could manage. Julian was behind them. The greatest danger in that first second was shooting each other out of sheer nerves. We all managed not to be that stupid, but my pulse was thudding in my throat, and everyone looked big-eyed, like they were ready to get back over the wall.

Maeve Reed grabbed my hand in both of hers. "Is it Taranis? Does he know?"

"He doesn't know about the baby."

She frowned. "Then …"

"He found out we saw you."

"Ms. Reed — " An officer was holding out his hand." — we need to get you over the wall."

She kissed me on the cheek and let the nice officer hand her to another nice officer waiting on top of the wall.

Gordon Reed was next. He didn't say anything. He seemed to be struggling just to breathe and stay upright between Julian and the same nice officer who had helped Maeve over the wall.

When they were safely over, I asked Julian, "Where are your other people?"

He shook his head. "Everyone but Max is dead. He's too hurt to walk. I made him hide in the house so I could get the Reeds out."

I didn't know what to say, but a policeman said, "You're next" to Julian, and I didn't have to say anything, just watch him climb to safety.

Most of the cops that could still walk were already over, when Lucy's soft "Oh, my god" turned me around to look at the Nameless.

Rhys's white hair shone out against the darker colors of the monster. Something between an arm and a tentacle wrapped around his chest. The blade of his axe sparked in the sun as he drove it into an eye the size of a Volkswagen. The eye bled, the monster screamed, and so did Rhys.

"Get Merry out of here," said Galen. Then he was gone at a run toward the fight.