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Chapter 14
I HAD TO TURN MY BACK ON THE HAG, TO HAVE ANY CHANCE OF REACHING the
gun. I gave her my back; my hand was under the pillow, and claws slashed my bare back. I screamed,
still reaching for the gun. Clawed hands wrapped around my arms and flung me to the floor. I hit the floor
hard,
unarmed, and Nerys was on me before I could catch my breath.
I kicked at her, and she slashed my legs through the slacks. I kept trying to kick at her and get to my
feet, but she never gave me the chance. She attacked, slashing the air, my slacks, the flesh underneath,
until I crawled to the wall, and there was nowhere else to run.
She was shrieking at me. "He's ours! Ours! Ours!" Each word was punctuated with a slash. I had my
arms in front of my body, but she was going to strip the flesh from my arms, and it wouldn't stop her.
I'd expected the glow to be gone in a wash of terror and pain, but I was still a shining thing. Blood
spilled out of my arms in a wash of glittering crimson as if my very blood glowed. I felt power like a
warm fist rising up inside my body, spreading out, but not like any magic I'd ever felt before. The power
flared through me, and my body shone so brightly that the hag hesitated.
Then she yelled, "I'll eat your skin off, girl, and you won't glow anymore." She slashed my arms until I
cried out, and I saw that black-taloned hand coming at my face, my eyes.
I pushed my hand into her bony chest between her breasts, and power spilled up my arm, out my hand.
I felt it smash into the hag. She stopped trying to slash me, and just knelt frozen above me. The power
flowing through me hurt, it felt like every fiber of my body was being burned all at once. I screamed and
tried to stop it, but the pain grew, grew until I looked at Nerys through vision gone grey and spotted. I
was close to passing out from the pain, and if I did that, Nerys would kill me.
My body felt like it was being pulled apart with red-hot knives. I finally found voice to scream again, and
Nerys joined me. She pulled away from me, crawling to lean against the side of the bed. She watched me
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with wide eyes, a look of disbelief on her twisted face. Her skin began to... flow-it was the only word I
had for it. Her skin began to flow like thick water, spilling over her hand like a glove.
Nerys was screaming, "No, no!"
Her body began to fold upon itself, the bones sliding out of place, the muscles sliding to the surface like
logs rising in water. Blood spilled onto the carpet, then thicker, darker fluids burst in an acrid wash from
her. I watched her heart move to the surface of her body and draw the rest of her internal organs with it
like a string offish. She screamed for a very long time, and even when she was reduced to a large round
ball of flesh, you could still hear her screams, muffled, distant, but alive. Nerys was immortal-being turned
inside out didn't stop that.
My pain was fading now like an amputated limb that still hurt. I'd seen my father do similar things. It had
been one of his hands of power, the one that earned him the title Prince of Flesh.
I started crawling for the door, watching that pulsing, moving thing that I had made. When I cleared the
end of the bed I could see Black Agnes straddling Sholto. She'd taken that shining piece of him inside the
dull black of her body. He was struggling, but she held his arms down, pinning his body as she rode him.
There are things among the fey physically stronger than the sidhe. The hags are one of them.
I went for the splintered door and heard Agnes's voice chase me down the hall. "Nerys, kill that white
bitch." The last thing I heard was a plaintive, "Nerys?"
I was in the elevators before the next round of screaming started. If Black Agnes had wanted me dead
before, what I'd done to her sister wouldn't make her change her mind. It seemed to take a long time to
ride down to the lobby. I was shaking, cold. I raised my arms in front of my face. Both arms were
bloodied, hurting with that sharp pain that only slash cuts give, but my left arm was the worst. I could see
bone in the cut on the side of my left forearm. Blood flowed from it to run in a steady, red stream from
my elbow to the elevator floor. My slacks were soaked nearly purple with blood.
I was hurt enough for shock, but I didn't think that was it. It was the magic. I'd done what could only be
a hand of power. I'd done something my father could have done. It was his most terrible power. One that
even he used with regret, because they don't die. Nerys wouldn't die. She would be trapped in a prison
of her own flesh and fluids forever. Blind, unable to feed or breathe, but never dying. Never dying.
A scream built at the back of my throat, and I knew that if it came out that I would just keep screaming
until Agnes found me and pulled out my eyes. I'd left my shirt, my jacket, and the gun in the room. I didn't
even have anything to bind my wounds with. I did rearrange my bra so that my breasts were covered.
The elevator doors opened, and a couple almost got in, then saw me. Shock, fear showed on their
faces, and they let the doors slide shut. I'd forgotten my glamour. I couldn't go through the lobby looking
like this.
Personal glamour is my very best spell, yet I struggled, struggled as never before, to throw a veil of it
over me. The best I could do was make people not see me as hurt, and not notice I was wearing nothing
above the waist but a bra. I couldn't seem to concentrate on changing my appearance. I needed to use
glamour to hide myself from the sluagh, and I couldn't see myself in my head. I couldn't visualize it, and
without that, I couldn't do glamour.
The doors opened to the lobby, and I walked out. No one screamed or pointed, so the glamour was
working. I was all right. I was going to be all right. Then I saw Segna the Gold sitting on the plush oval
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couch in the center of the lobby. She watched me with narrowed yellow eyes.
I turned on my heel and went for the back entrance, and found Gethin of the Hawaiian shirt and the
baseball cap a few yards away, in front of the other doors. I searched that bright, busy lobby, all the
smiling people, the line for checking in and checking out, and knew that they could kill me here on this
flowered carpet and no one would know until my body hit the ground and my murderers had fled.
The ladies' room was visible from where I stood. I didn't question it, just walked calmly to it. When the
door shushed behind me, I turned and wrote the symbols for protection and strength on the door. I had
enough blood coming out of my body that I could have written a letter. I pressed my hands to the door
and I called power. I might have feared doing it so soon after what I'd accidentally done in the room, but
I had no choice. I poured my power into that door, those runes, and I knew that no one of the blood
would be able to pass. I knew it, because I willed it so, and I was sidhe, and I had warded the door with
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