eased, just a bit, then a bit more. When my vision cleared, blood was trickling out of the wounds in the mountain of flesh, trickling out not like blood should flow, but like water, faster, thinner. The last of my pain vanished as blood began to pour out of every wound the creature had sustained that day. Every bullet hole, every blade mark burst scarlet. The blood began to rain down the sides of the thing.
The Nameless began to move toward me, ponderous, and unnerving like watching a mountain roll toward you. I knew if it reached me, it would kill me, so I had to stop that from happening.
I thought not of blood alone, but of wounds; I thought not bleed but die. I wanted it to die.
A wound opened like a new mouth, slashing down its side, then another, and another. It was as if some giant invisible blade was hacking at it. The blood flowed faster, until the Nameless was covered in a slick red coat from top to bottom, covered in a dress of its own blood. Then blood gushed out of it in a nearly black wave, like a lake being dumped out upon the grass. It spilled and flowed and billowed toward me, until I knelt in a hot pool of blood, and still it bled.
The more it bled, the calmer I became. A stillness filled my body, almost a peacefulness. I knelt in the growing spread of blood, watching the thing quiver toward me, and I had no fear. I felt nothing, was nothing, but the magic. In that one instant I lived, breathed, and was one spell. The hand of blood rode me, used me, as surely as I had tried to use it. With the old magicks, who is master and who is slave is never sure.
The Nameless rose above me like a great bloody mountain, one curl of its body reaching out, out toward me, and only a few yards away, I heard it take a breath, a sharp sound, almost a sound of fear, then it exploded, not its body, but as if every last ounce of blood in that vast shape had burst forth at one time. The air became blood, and it was like trying to breathe underwater. For a second I thought I would drown, then I was choking in air and trying to spit out blood at the same time.
Something large hit the side of my head, and I fell to the bloody ground. Even in its death throes it had tried to take me with it. Kitto's crimson-washed face with a blood-soaked Sage on his shoulder was the last thing I saw before darkness swallowed the world.
Chapter 45
I woke to floating. I was floating in mid-air, and at first I thought it was a dream. Then I saw Galen floating just out of reach. I woke to find that all the fey in the yard were floating. Magic was everywhere, streaming through the air like multicolored fireworks, flying around us in flocks of fantastic birds that never knew mortal sky. Entire forests rose and fell before our eyes. The dead rose and walked and faded. It was like watching someone else's dreams and nightmares march through the bright California sunshine. It was raw enchantment with no hand to contain it or order it about; it was simply magic, everywhere.
And that magic was spilling into Rhys, Frost, Doyle, Kitto, Nicca, even Sage. I watched a phantom tree float over Nicca's body and vanish inside him. Sage was covered by a flowering vine. The dead men all went to Rhys and marched into him while he screamed. Frost was hidden by what looked like snow. He hit at it with his good arm, but he couldn't stop it. I caught a glimpse of Doyle half-hidden behind something black and serpentine; then the magic finally found Galen and me as we hung there only a few feet from each other. We were hit by scents and bursts of color. I smelled roses, and blood appeared on my wrist as if by the prick of thorns. I think the others were regaining what they'd given up to the Nameless, but neither Galen nor I had given anything to it. I thought it would pass us by because of that, but it turned out I was wrong. Wild magic had been freed, and it wanted to be somewhere in someone again.
Something white like a great bird rose from the