The cold winter air came through the open window. I’d lowered it to use magic against our enemies because the soldiers were dying, dying to protect me, and I couldn’t let that happen. They weren’t my soldiers, my guards, and somehow giving their life to protect me hadn’t seemed right. Not if I could stop it.

The explosion ripped the world apart with noise and force. I waited for the blow and the pain, but it didn’t come. The world wavered with the vibration, and suddenly it was daylight, bright hot daylight. I was blinded by the glare of it all, and sand was everywhere. I had never been anywhere with so much sand and rock. The heat through the open window was like peering into a broiling oven.

The only things that were the same were the explosions. The world reverberated with their impact, and the Hummer’s wheels rocked on the uneven ground of what had been a road before a bomb had put a crater in the middle of it.

There was another Hummer in desert camouflage colors, and there were soliders on one side of it using it for cover as something too big for a bullet and too small for a rocket whirred past. It made another impact crater in the road.

I heard a voice shouting, “They’re getting into our range. They’re getting into our range!”

The soldier on one end tried to move out from the Hummer but a bullet whizzed by him and hit the dirt of the road. They were pinned down and about to die.

Then the soldier at the other end of the line turned and saw the black Hummer. He had his rifle across his lap, one hand on it, but his other hand was wrapped around something at his neck. I thought it would be a cross, but then I saw his face, and knew it was a nail. A nail on the end of a leather cord tied around his neck.

He stared at me with large brown eyes, his skin dark enough with the sun’s heat that he looked changed from the paler version I remembered. It was Brennan, one of the soldiers whom I had healed at the beginning of it all.

His mouth moved, and I saw the shape of my name. There was no sound over the cry of the weapons. “Meredith,” he mouthed.

The Hummer drove to him, and the bullets seemed to not quite hit it, and when the next rocket came, it was just to one side of it. I felt the impact in my gut, as if the vibration ran through my body and hit me in the stomach. Sand and dirt fell like dry rain on the shiny black metal of the Hummer.

I opened the door, but it was as if only Brennan could see me. None of the others were mine. He said my name, and even over the ringing in my ears I heard the whisper of it, “Meredith.” He reached up with the hand that had been clutching the nail around his throat. The others asked, “What are you doing?”

It was only as his hand wrapped around mine that the others saw me, saw the car. There were gasps of amazement and guns pointed at me, but Brennan said, “She’s a friend. Now get in the Humvee!”

One of the other soldiers said, “Where did she come from? How did it…”

Brennan pushed him toward the front door. “Questions later.”

Another rocket hit just on the other side of their Hummer, and suddenly there were no more questions. There was an exclamation of, “No one’s driving!” But everyone piled in, Brennan squeezing beside me in the back, and the moment we were all inside the Hummer drove away. We drove farther down the road, which was intact enough to drive on, and the next moment the Humvee behind us exploded.

One of the new men said, “They got into our range.”

The man from the front seat turned around and asked, “What the fuck is going on, Brennan?”

He looked at me as he said, “I prayed for help.”

“Well, God hears you good,” the other man said.

“It wasn’t God I was praying to,” Brennan said, and he looked into my eyes and reached out one hand as if afraid to touch me.

I put his hand against my face. There was grit and dirt and blood. He had a wound in his hand that he’d touched to the nail.

“I was praying to Goddess,” Brennan said.

“You called me with blood, metal, and magic,” I whispered.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“Los Angeles,” I said.

I felt the dream, or vision, or whatever it was begin to soften and waver, and I spoke into the air, “Black Coach of mine, take them to safety. See that no harm comes to my people.”

The radio in the front of the Humvee crackled to life, which made us all startle, and then give nervous laughs. The song was “Take it Easy” by The Eagles.

One of the soldiers said, “What is this, a Transformer movie?”

Their laughter was the last thing I heard as the dream faded, and I woke sitting bolt upright in the bed between the men. The bed was covered in pink rose petals.

Chapter Eighteen

Rhys was the only one awake for some reason. Galen and Wyn slept as if nothing was happening. The petals decorated their hair and faces, but they slept on.

Rhys said, “There’s something on your face.” He reached out and came away with dirt and fresh blood. “Are you hurt?” he asked.

“It’s not my blood.”

“Whose is it, then?” he asked.

“Brennan’s.”

“Corporal Brennan—the soldier you healed, who helped us fight?”

“Yes,” I said. I wanted to know if Rhys had watched me dream. I wanted to know if my body had stayed here in the bed, or if I’d vanished, but I was half afraid to find out. But I had to know.

“How long have you been watching me?”

“I felt the touch of the Goddess. She woke me, and I kept guard over your sleep, though if you could come away with Brennan’s blood on you, maybe I wasn’t guarding the right part of you.”

“Why are Galen and Wyn not awake?” I asked, my voice soft the way you do when people nearby are sleeping.

“I’m not sure. Let’s leave them sleep and talk in the living room.”

I didn’t argue. I simply slipped out from the petal-covered sheet and the warmth of their bodies. Wyn snuggled into the hole I’d made. When he touched Galen, he stopped moving and settled back into deeper sleep. Galen never moved. That wasn’t entirely unusual; he was a heavy sleeper, but not this heavy.

I stared down at him as Rhys gathered his holster, gun, and a short sword that he usually wore at his back. He was licensed to carry the gun here, but the sword was only allowed because technically he was still the bodyguard of Princess Meredith, and some things that might attack me respected a blade more than a bullet.

He gathered his weapons, but he didn’t bother with clothes. He held out a hand to me, completely nude, with his weapons in his other hand.

I scooped up a short silk robe that had been lost to the floor. Sometimes I got cold; Rhys seldom did. He, like Frost, had once been a deity of colder things than a Southern California night.

He laid his weapons on the kitchen counter and turned on the light over the oven, making a small glow in the dark, quiet house. He turned on the coffeemaker, which was ready to go for the morning.

I chided him. “You just wanted coffee.”

He smiled at me. “I always want coffee, but I think this may be a long talk, and I worked today, too.”

“It’s industrial espionage using magic, right?” I asked.

“Yes, but the Goddess didn’t wake us up to talk about a case.”

I slipped the robe on and tied it. It was black with red and green flowers on it here and there. I seldom wore all black if I could help it. It was too much my aunt Andais’s signature color. My hair had gotten long enough that I had to sweep it out of the robe to settle the collar.

I enjoyed watching Rhys move around the kitchen nude. I admired the tight line of his ass as he stood on tiptoe to reach mugs from the cabinet.

“The problem with a seven-foot-tall man being the main one who lives here is that he puts things you use every day too damn high.”