“If you’re close enough to touch,” Usna said, “you’ll be too close.”

I agreed, but … I peeked around Frost’s body to see the great black dog. It took a moment for my eyes to distinguish it from the darkness of the room, and then it moved, and I could see the shape of the great beast like a piece of the night formed into something of muscle and skin and fur, and a slow, thundering growl. It stepped one paw closer, and the light from the door fell on it. The paw was bigger than my hand. Its lips curled back and teeth gleamed in the light from the hallway behind us.

I moved slightly out from behind Frost, and said, “Doyle, it’s me, your Merry.”

“Do not …” Frost began, and then the dog rushed toward us from less than four feet away, and there was no time for words.

CHAPTER

NINETEEN

FROST HAD A naked sword in his hand; he could have run the dog through, but he didn’t, and the great black shape smashed into him, driving them both against the door and slamming it shut with us trapped inside.

Usna was yelling and pounding at the door. Other voices were joining his, but they couldn’t help us, not in time. Frost’s hands were holding the dog’s throat, keeping those huge, snapping jaws from his face, but even as I watched, the jaws got closer to him.

If it had been some monster sent by Taranis to kill us, I would have picked up one of the many guns in the room and shot it, but it was Doyle, and lead bullets can kill the fey, all of the fey, even the sidhe. I stood there like some helpless princess from one of those foolish stories, and watched the men I loved most locked in a death struggle.

I cursed under my breath and moved toward the bed and my weapons that were still in their nighttime sheaths on the headboard. Frost had moved me too fast for me to grab either my gun or my sword, and I needed one of them. I could wound Doyle to save Frost; I wasn’t sure I could kill him to do the same, but maybe lead would break this evil spell.

I moved slowly, not sure if it would attract the great dog, but he was too intent on killing Frost to notice me. I stopped going slow and bounced onto the bed, crawling toward my weapons.

Every hair on my body stood to attention; I smelled ozone, like before a close lightning strike, and had a second to throw myself flat to the bed before the lightning crashed through the upper part of the door and over my head, missing me by inches and leaving me gasping and stunned.

There was a hand on my back, another stroking my hair. Doyle’s voice came like a human version of that deep growl, so low it could make me shiver in happy anticipation, but this time it was relief. He was human again, ours again.

“Merry, are you hurt? Did we hurt you?”

I started to say no, but realized I wasn’t sure. I didn’t think so, but it wasn’t until I propped myself up on my elbows, with his hands still petting me, that I was confident enough to say, “No, I’m fine, just frightened.”

“I am so sorry.” Mistral crawled onto the bed, coming to my side. He was dressed in modern body armor over a black T-shirt. Leather biker pants with extra padding clung to his lower body, spilling into boots that matched them. Since his powers of lightning had returned he couldn’t wear his centuries-old metal armor, not and use his major hand of power. His gray hair spilled over his face like clouds to match the smell of lightning that still clung to him and the room.

Doyle turned on him. “You are all strong enough to break a modern door easily; why didn’t you try that before you nearly killed Merry?”

His eyes were the sickly green of tornado skies as he looked at the other man. “Doors were stouter things once; I have been on the wrong side of doors that I could not break open without magic.”

“Did you even try?”

The green in Mistral’s eyes began to swirl with anxiety like clouds do before a storm. “No,” he admitted.

“It’s all right, Mistral,” I said.

“It is not all right,” Doyle growled, and his voice still held the bass growls of the great black dog. It made me look at him, as if I needed my eyes to confirm that he hadn’t changed back, but he was still there: tall, dark, handsome, and very human. But I reached out to take his hand in mine; I needed the touch of his skin against mine to be certain what was real.

“I’m not hurt, Doyle,” I said, shaking his hand in mine.

Frost came to his knees beside the bed. “Alas, I am.”

I kept Doyle’s hand, but I sat up to see my other love. The front of his body was covered in blood. I let go of Doyle and slid to the floor beside him. “What happened?”

“I happened,” Doyle said.

I glanced up at him, and then down at Frost’s bloody body. “But how?”

“People think only cats have claws; dogs will cut you up while you keep them from biting your throat out,” Usna said, rubbing one hand down the white, red, and black skin of his arm, as if remembering some old wound. His gray eyes were the most human thing about him and most of his face was as white a skin as Frost’s and my own, but the edge of his face and neck were patterned with the same red and black spots, as if he’d been the cat his mother had been at his birth. I’d never asked if Usna had been born a kitten or a baby; it had never occurred to me to wonder until that moment.

I turned back to Frost and realized Usna was right. He’d been ripped in great bloody furrows from midchest to thighs; even his arms were marked up, though the worst was his chest, shoulders, and one leg. It took me a moment to realize he’d thrown a knee and thigh up over his groin to keep the great claws from tearing up such tender bits.

“I’ve sent for a healer,” Usna said.

Doyle knelt on the other side of him. “I am so sorry, Frost.”

“What happened to trap you in your dreams?” Frost asked, in a voice that held a hint of pain, which meant it hurt even more than I thought, otherwise he’d have hidden it better.

“Nightmares, and it was the Lord of Dreams … I guess, King of Dreams now.”

“Taranis,” I whispered.

“Yes,” Doyle said.

“Two nights ago he attacked Merry, tonight you; we must find a way to keep him out of our dreams,” Frost said.

“Agreed,” Doyle said.

“But how?” I asked.

No one answered me, but my cell phone went off. I jumped and scrambled to get it from the bedside table, because it was Rhys’s ring, and he was in charge of security while we slept tonight.

“Tell Mistral to control his anxiety,” Rhys said with no hello.

“What?” I asked.

“There’s a funnel cloud forming in the air about half a block away. It came out of a clear California night, so tell the storm god to calm down or our neighbors are really going to hate us.”

“Shit,” I said.

“Yes, now tell him to control himself, now!”

I told Mistral what Rhys had said, but even as I spoke the sickly storm green of his anxious eyes began to fill with movement, and I heard the first crack of thunder above us.

“Control yourself, Mistral,” Doyle ordered.

“I am trying, but it’s been centuries since I had the weather react to me. I’m out of practice.”

Rhys yelled on the phone, “Tell him to practice fast—the tail of the funnel is reaching for the first house.”