She found peace now and then, hearing the voices of her friends. Sawyer . . . reading? Yes, reading Terry Pratchett, an old one, with the female cop—who happened to be a werewolf.
Just like her.
Annika singing—opera and Adele. Curled on the bed with her, softly crooning and smelling of spring rain.
The nightmares would close in, and the pain spike. And then Sasha would be there with her, telling her she wasn’t alone, and the pain would subside, a little.
Bran running his hands over her, sometimes chanting in Irish or Latin, sometimes talking to her or to someone else who talked back to him with an accent as Irish as his own.
And Doyle, so often Doyle. He read Shakespeare. Who knew he had a voice so suited to Shakespeare? And when the demons chased her, demons with the faces of friends, he held her close.
“Beat them back, ma faol,” he told her—demanded of her. “You know how. Fight!”
So she fought, and she drifted, and agony turned to grinding aches.
Doyle was there when the woman came, and urged the contents of some vial between her lips.
“No. I don’t want—”
“It’s what you need that counts. Swallow it down, there’s a good girl.”
She had red hair and eyes fiercely green, and a beauty that had survived decades. “Arianrhod.”
“No, indeed. But one of her daughters, it seems. As you are. Sleep awhile more, and this fine young man will watch over you.”
“I’m older than you are, by far.”
The woman laughed at Doyle’s comment, stroked a hand over Riley’s cheek. “Sleep,” she said.
And Riley slept.
When she woke minutes later—hours, days?—Doyle was beside her, propped up on pillows, reading Much Ado out loud by lamplight.
“I wrote a paper on Beatrice as a feminist.”
Doyle lowered the book, shifted to study her face with eyes that looked exhausted. “You would.”
“Why are you in bed with me?”
“Doctor’s orders. Witch doctors. You look like hell, Gwin.”
“Matches how I feel. What happened? What the hell happened? I don’t—” Then she did, tried to bolt up, but Doyle held her down one-handed. “Sasha. She’s possessed. You have to—”
“No, that wasn’t it. It wasn’t Sasha.”
“She knocked the crap out of me, so I ought to know . . . No.” Riley closed her eyes, forced herself to try to remember what came in fragments. “No, not Sasha. Malmon.”
“That’s been our theory.”
“I’m sure of it. It looked and sounded like Sasha, until it clocked me. It felt like being hit with a brick.” Cautiously, she lifted her hand to her cheek, pressed. “Feels okay now. I couldn’t get my gun. I couldn’t . . . My hand.” She lifted her left hand, stared at the bandage wrapped around it. “Uh-oh.”
“Nearly healed. They don’t want you moving your fingers much as yet.”
“She—he—it—stomped on it. I think I passed out.”
“A lot of bones in the hand. Passing out would be the wise course when having them all broken or crushed.”
She braced herself. “How bad am I?”