"Laurell K. Hamilton - Meredith Gentry 5 - Mistral's Kiss" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hamilton Laurell K)

CHAPTER 1

I DREAMT OF WARM FLESH AND COOKIES. THE SEX I UNDERSTOOD, but the
cookiesтАжWhy cookies? Why not cake, or meat? But thatтАЩs what my subconscious chose as I dreamt.
We were eating in the tiny kitchen of my Los Angeles apartmentтАФan apartment I didnтАЩt live in anymore,
outside of dreams. The we were me, Princess MeredithтАФthe only faerie royal ever born on American
soilтАФand my royal guards, more than a dozen of them.

They moved around me with skin the color of darkest night, whitest snow, the pale of newborn leaves,
the brown of leaves that have gone down to die on the forest floor, a rainbow of men moving nude
around the kitchen.

The real apartment kitchen would have barely held three of us, but in the dream everyone walked through
that narrow space between sink and stove and cabinets as if there were all the room in the world.

We were having cookies because weтАЩd just had sex and it was hungry work, or something like that. The
men moved around me graceful and perfectly nude. Several of the men were ones IтАЩd never seen nude.
They moved with skin the color of summer sunshine, the transparent white of crystals, colors I had no
name for, for the colors did not exist outside of faerie. It should have been a good dream, but it wasnтАЩt. I
knew something was wrong, that feeling of unease that you get in dreams when you know that the happy
sights are just a disguise, an illusion to hide the ugliness to come.

The plate of cookies was so innocent, so ordinary, but it bothered me. I tried to pay attention to the men,
touching their bodies, holding them, but each of them in turn would pick up a cookie and take a bite, as if
I werenтАЩt there.

Galen with his pale, pale green skin and greener eyes bit into a cookie, and something squirted out the
side. Something thick and dark. The dark liquid dripped down the edge of his kissable mouth and fell
onto the white countertop. That single drop splattered and spread and was red, so red, so fresh. The
cookies were bleeding.

I slapped it from GalenтАЩs hand. I picked up the tray to keep the men from eating any more. The tray was
full of blood. It dripped down the edges, poured over my hands. I dropped the tray, which shattered,
and the men bent as if they would eat from the floor and the broken glass. I pushed them back,
screaming, тАЬNo!тАЭ

Doyle looked up at me with his black eyes and said, тАЬBut it is all we have had to eat for so long.тАЭ

The dream changed, as dreams will. I stood in an open field with a ring of distant trees encircling it.
Beyond the trees, hills rode up into the paleness of a moonlit winterтАЩs night. Snow lay like a smooth
blanket across the ground. I was standing ankle-deep in snow. I was wearing a loose sweeping gown as
white as the snow. My arms were bare to the cold night. I should have been freezing, but I wasnтАЩt.
Dream, just a dream.

Then I noticed something in the center of the clearing. It was an animal, a small white animal, and I
thought, ThatтАЩs why I didnтАЩt see it, for it was white, whiter than the snow. Whiter than my gown, than
my skin, so white that it seemed to glow.