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"I liked the sprite, I said after a moment when the shield brightened to a
blinding sheen because their touch was pumping me full of what I used to keep
my power strong. Then I coughed and sputtered, because even though Bracken was
hugging me from the back, Green hadn't healed me yet and Bracken's touch was
making my nose bleed again. Green rubbed his thumb gently over my shattered
cheekbone and my swollen jaw and eye, his wide-spaced eyes narrowing in a
distinctly uncharacteristic charge of anger.
"Is everybody okay?" I asked, still sputtering, but Green's fingers were
gently probing my bruises and wiping away the still spilling bright red blood.
"Everybody's fine," Bracken said gently, breathing into my hair, which felt
wet and looking at Green over my shoulder. Green was showing me what his true
rage looked like and I realized that he might have scared me a few times, but
I'd never seen him as angry as he was now.
"Is that him?" he snarled, squinting into the power bubble, at what, to him,
must have been a dark blur.
I nodded my head, massaging his chest with my hands to try to calm him down.
"I'll kill him," he growled, his voice sounding very Victorian Cockney. "I'll
pull 'is fookin' guts ou' wi' me teeth." He took a huge, shuddering breath and
turned towards Hollow Man to do just that, and I reached up and caught his
beloved face in my hands. I touched the corners of his eyes, his elfin ears,
his long jaw, and felt the muscles there bunched up in a snarl of pure hatred.
How could I have ever put this man this sidhe into a box of 'gentle lover' I
asked myself, amazed at my own stupidity. Bracken was stroking my hair, just
my hair, not touching my scalp with his fingers and I took Green's hands in my
own and kissed them.
"Heal me, beloved," I asked wryly, looking with grateful tears into both sets
of Green's eyes, dancing around in my fractured vision, "Because I've got
something worse in mind.
Green shuddered again, and nodded, and bent and kissed my brow and I felt that
queasy slide of flesh that meant my body was using magic to regenerate and it
never felt quite human to do that. I also felt that Green was tired. How much
had it cost them, I wondered, turning and hugging Bracken, then touching the
blood that had soaked into the sleeves of his sweater from wounds that I
couldn't see now but had been there. How much had it taken to wade through the
Hollow Man's evil and come to my rescue? I stood on my tiptoes, supported by
the broadness of Bracken's hand on the small of my back and kissed his jaw,
watching his tawny eyes close in gratitude that I was still alive, and then
looked at both of them, and at Nicky who had just come down the stairs. I
reached out my hand to him and he stopped standing hesitantly and rushed in
for the hug, and a grateful kiss, his dusty animal smell clinging to me
reassuringly, and then I stepped away from all of them and said it.
"You know what I need to do, right?" Goddess, I hoped they did, because I was
feeling strong now, but the Hollow Man was pacing his magic prison of light
like a bull and I couldn't hold him there forever.
Green stepped forward and took my hands and nodded. "And you know what we need
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to do, right? he asked seriously, and I nodded back.
"You need to remind me who I am, I said quietly, and Nicky broke the moment.
"You'd better forgive us, he said seriously, and I managed a grin from my now
healthy, healed face. Nicky used both hands to rip off a piece of his
sweatshirt and gave it to me to clean the blood off, and I was grateful.
"If you called me a bitch, it had better be written across my fat white ass,"
I told him dryly, and then I smiled grimly at all of them, meeting their eyes
firmly and with all the confidence I didn't feel. "I love you all, I said,
and then I moved to the couch and grabbed the itty bitty scissors from my yarn
bag and then turned towards my shield.
I'd never stepped through my own power before it was exhilarating and
commonplace at once. It was my power, so it was an extension of me, but it was
the part of me that everybody else saw and I only generated. I felt pretty
damned good, I thought as I stepped through, and then I sobered, there in the
shining bubble of my magic, alone with Hollow Man again.
He lunged, of course, but I was ready for him and so was Green, because
visibility or no visibility it was his power that pinned him to the floor.
"You wanted to taste me?" I asked tauntingly. His eyes rolled, and he whined a
grown man whining because he didn't get his way was almost as repulsive as
that horribly sullied flesh. "You did want to taste me, didn't you? You wanted
to be inside me while you tasted me." Bracken made a wild animal sound outside
the shield but I ignored him. He'd trust me I knew he'd trust me. "That's what
you said, right?
"I blow people up, he said, his dreamy, wandering voice still focused on that
thing, that elusive thing he wanted, but couldn't name; needed, but couldn't
obtain; imagined, but couldn't know. "I'm part sidhe you can't kill me, not
with sunlight, not with decapitation I know. The sylphs tried. I don't burn, I
don't dissolve& I just am& 
I bent over him and used the pointy ends of the scissors to prick a blunt hole
in my thumb, then I grabbed his hand, pressed flat against the lovely fuchsia
colored rug, and did the same thing for him. "You blow up people who don't
know who they are," I told him, enjoying the little human whimper that came
when I made that wound just a little bit bigger, digging in past the mottled
brown and green flesh of his hands until a blackish, orange-ish ooze began to
seep out. "You've been lucky that way. Sylphs are waiting for love to cement
their identities. Were-creatures wouldn't have become were-creatures if they
weren't searching, waiting, trying to find that thing they needed but couldn't
name. Chuck and Shane and Chris they were all lost creatures, poor creatures,
without an identity of their own." I moved my thumb, dripping a little blood,
up the center of his chest, and watched him eye the blood hungrily. "Jon
Case he'd just started his first love affair with another man he was still
surprised to find out who he was.
"Not me, I said, savoring this knowledge, knowing that if I was wrong it
could be the last good thing I felt, but also knowing in my gut that I was
right simply because I felt it and my identity was not just a good thing, it
was a great thing. "I know exactly who I am. And if I ever forget, I've got
people I love more than life to remind me. So& who are you, Hollow Man?" I
asked, watching a fat red drop of my blood plop on his chin. "Do you really
want to know? [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]