"Because Steve Patterson is heterosexual and he'll think girl before he thinks boy because of it," Rhys said.
"A medical textbook. She's going to butcher him."
Rhys leaned in the doorway as Frost and Doyle looked at each other. "The question is, are they already at this address or will they move Julian to the meeting spot?" Rhys said.
"Do we tell Lucy? Do we tell the police?" I asked.
The men exchanged a look. Doyle said, "If we don't bring the police in we can simply kill them. They don't want me at your side, that's fine. I am the Darkness. They won't see me until it's too late."
"If we just plan to kill them, it's easier," Rhys said, "simpler."
"What gives Julian the best chance to get out of this alive and whole?" I asked.
They exchanged a look among them again. "No police," Doyle said.
Rhys nodded. "No police."
Frost hugged me, and whispered it into my hair. "No police."
And just like that the plan changed again. We wouldn't call the police. We'd just kill them. I should have been human enough to be bothered by that, but I kept hearing Julian's voice over the phone and her voice asking him to scream for her. I kept seeing their victims. I remembered my dream with Royal dead in it. I thought about what they planned on doing to Julian and might be doing to him right this minute. I didn't feel bad as we planned how to find the address, scout it undetected, and decide how best to save Julian. If we could take them alive, we would, but we only had one priority: Julian as unhurt as possible, and the only dead: Steve and Bittersweet. Beyond that it was all fair game.
Rhys was right. It was much simpler.
Chapter Fourty-five
The address was a house in the hills. It was a nice house, or had been before the bank got it and the housing market crashed. Apparently our serial killers were squatting in the house. I wondered what they'd do if the estate agent brought prospective buyers around unexpectedly. Probably best that that didn't happen.
Sholto came back to L.A. He was the Lord of That Which Passes Between. The tree line and the yard of the house was a between place, just like where the beach met the ocean, or where a cultivated field abutted a wild place. He could bring more than a dozen soldiers to the edge of the yard itself. But that was as close as he could get. Doyle had been in charge of scouting the area and had found the house thick with magical wards. They might be crazed serial killers but they knew their magical wards. It was a mix of human and fey magic, as good as any he'd seen in years, which was high praise.
It meant we would have to be inside the wards and just trust that either we wouldn't need Sholto and his backup, or that we could stall until they smashed through the walls. He was going to bring the Red Caps because the magical wards wouldn't stop them. They'd just avoid the windows and doors, which were the most heavily warded, and make new doors in the walls themselves where there were no wards. Demi-fey were strong, but they didn't think about that kind of brute force any more than humans did. It was an edge for us, but we needed more.
Frost was coming with Sholto and the Red Caps. Doyle would go in ahead with Cathbodua and Usna, who were the other two guards about whom he actually said, "They hide almost as well as I do. I would trust them to do this." Again, high praise.
The question was, who would go in as my two overt guards? Barinthus asked to go. "I have failed you, Merry. I have been arrogant and unhelpful, but for this I am ideal. I can take more damage than even most of the sidhe. I have used diplomacy for centuries but it's not because I lack skill with any weapon." Doyle had backed him on that.
Barinthus had added, "And I am proof against most magic no matter what it is."
I'd studied his face, not sure if he was just bragging again.
"I am the sea made into flesh, Merry. You cannot set the sea on fire. You cannot drain it dry. You cannot even poison all of it. You can hit it, but the blow does you no good. Being by the ocean has given me back much of my power. Let me do this for you. Let me prove that I was worthy to be Essus's friend, and that I am yours."
In the end both Doyle and Frost agreed that he was a good choice and so he was one.
"The other one has to be me," Rhys said. "I'm third in charge and almost as good with weapons as the two big guys here, better with an axe. And I'm almost back to my old power level. I can kill fey with a touch of my hand; you've seen me do it."
"Have you tried doing it when faerie wasn't touching either you or the victim?" I asked.
We'd all had to think about that. In the end he'd gone out into the yard in a section that hadn't become fey and found an insect. He made sure the demi-fey were okay with him doing it, and then he touched it and told it to die. It rolled over on its back, twitched once, and died.
"Now if only I got back my healing powers, too," he said.
Doyle had agreed, but for this night's work death was better. By six that night we had our plan in place, and enough people to make it work. That was why kings and queens needed hundreds of people. Sometimes you needed soldiers.
Sholto would give us a little time and then he would take everyone out to the yard and the wall and he'd lead them to the edge of the other yard miles away. I knew he could do it, and then we'd have all the help we needed, but there would be a few minutes when it would be up to the handful of us who were going to be there first. Barinthus and Rhys as my guards, and Doyle, Usna, and Cathbodua, who had the best chance of going undetected into the house.
Some of our demi-fey mingled with the local insects on the edge of the property in the bank of wildflowers near the house. They were supposed to let us know if Bittersweet went too bitter too early and started to cut Julian up. It was the best we could do.