I wanted badly to watch that wavering in the air peer in all the windows. But that would have defeated the purpose of hiding, so I crouched behind Uther and tried to be very still. I heard, felt, something brush against the metal wall at my back. Something large was pressed against the metal. Then I heard it, a loud sniffing like of some gigantic hound.
I had a heartbeat to think, "It smells me," then something smashed through the metal inches from me. I screamed, scrambling out from behind Uther, before my mind had fully registered the fist, large as my head, stuck through the side of the van.
A sound of shattering glass whirled me around. An arm big as a tree trunk and a chest wider than the car window was pressed through the driver's-side window. Ringo beat at the arm, but it grabbed the front of his shirt and started pulling him through the broken window.
The gun was in my hand but there wasn't a clear shot. Jeremy moved across the seats, and I saw the flash of a blade in his hand.
Metal screamed as giant fists pulled the side of the van apart until a huge leering face peered into the hole. He looked past Uther like he wasn't there, yellow eyes on me. "Princess," the ogre hissed, "we've been looking for you."
Uther smashed his fist into the huge face. Blood sprayed from the ogre's nose, and the face fell back from the hole. There were screams from outside, human screams. The glamour had collapsed under the violence. The ogres had simply appeared to the humans like magic. I heard a man's voice yelling, "Police, stop where you are!"
The police were coming. Yeah. I put the gun back in my waistband. I didn't want to explain it.
I turned back to the front seat. Ringo was still in the driver's seat. Jeremy was leaning over him, and there was blood on his hands. I moved through the middle seats to them. I started to ask if Ringo was hurt, but the moment I saw his chest, I didn't have to ask. The front of his shirt was soaked with blood, a piece of glass as wide as my hand stuck out of his chest.
"Ringo," I said his name softly.
"Sorry," he said, "I'm not going to be much help to you." He coughed, and I could see it hurt.
I touched his face. "Don't talk."
I could hear the police talking to the ogres, telling them things like, "Hands on top of your heads! On your knees! Don't f**king move!" Then I heard another man's voice, a smooth masculine voice, with just a touch of accent. I knew the voice.
I scrambled to the big sliding door, while Jeremy was still saying, "What? What is it?"
"Sholto," I said.
His face remained puzzled. The name meant nothing to him.
I tried again. "Sholto, Lord of That Which Passes Between, Lord of Shadows, King of the Sluagh."
It was the last title that widened his eyes, and drove fear sharp in his face. "Oh my God," he said.
Uther said, "Shadowspawn is here?"
I glanced at him. "Never say that to his face." I could hear the voices through the broken window, so very clearly. I felt like I was moving in slow motion. The door didn't want to open, or I'd grown clumsy with fear.
That voice was saying, "Thank you so much, Officers."
"We'll wait for transport for the ogres," the policeman said.
The door slid open and I had a frozen moment to see everything. Three of the ogres were on their knees on the sidewalk, hands clasped on their heads. Two policemen had their guns out. One officer was on the sidewalk in front of the ogres; the other one, separated from them by the line of parked cars. A tall figure, though only human tall, stood by the cars and that policeman. The figure was dressed in a grey leather trench coat with his white hair trailing down the back of it. The last time I'd seen Sholto, he'd been wearing a grey cloak, but the effect was surprisingly similar as he turned, as if he felt me standing there. Even from yards away in the electric-kissed darkness I could see that his eyes were three different shades of gold: metallic gold around the pupil, then amber, and last a circle the color of yellow autumn leaves. I was afraid of Sholto, always had been, but when I saw those eyes, I realized how homesick I was for the sidhe, because for a second, I was glad to see another person with a triple iris. Then the look in those familiar eyes sent a chill across my neck and the moment of connectedness was gone.
He turned, smiling, back to the police. "I will attend the princess." He started walking toward the van, and they didn't stop him. I realized why as he moved closer. He had the queen's emblem, a badge that her Guard carried, hanging from his neck. It looks surprisingly like a police badge, and it had been well publicized that to use one of the emblems if you didn't deserve it came with a curse. A curse that not even a sidhe would risk.
I didn't know what he'd told them, but I could guess. He'd been sent to stop the attack on me. He'd see me safely home. All so very reasonable.
Sholto moved toward me in a long-legged, graceful stride. He was handsome, not the heartbreaking beauty of some of the sidhe, but striking. I knew that the humans watched him as he walked, because they could not help themselves. The grey coat blew back and there was the faintest bulk around his middle. Sholto had the hair, the eyes, the skin, the face, the shoulders, everything- except that from just below his ni**les to vanish into his pants was a nest of tentacles, things with mouths. His mother had been sidhe, his father had not.
Something touched my shoulder and I jerked, screaming. It was Jeremy. "Close the door, Uther."
Uther slid the door shut, almost in Sholto's face. He leaned against it, so that it couldn't be opened from the outside without some effort.
"Run," Uther said. 11
"Run," Jeremy said.