Caress of Twilight chapter 41

I want a moment of silence, folks. A moment to commemorate what might have been.

Merry and company have rushed to rescue Maeve Reed. The police are apparently everywhere because an emergency exists, only they can't figure out what the fuck is going on (HINT: MAGIC) and we get the most beautiful, exciting piece of information to come our way this entire book:

A woman in full police battle armor with SWAT written across it was standing behind a barrier of cars in a pentagram and circle that she’d drawn in chalk on the road. L.A. had been one of the first police departments to attach witches or magicians to all special units.

There is a witch. Attached to SWAT. For serious.

WERE THE FUCK WAS THIS BOOK? WHY ARE WE NOT READING THIS BOOK? I want this book. I want a book about SWAT witches RIGHT FUCKING NOW. Dead serious. Somebody with more police procedural knowledge than me: START WRITING RIGHT NOW AND SELF PUBLISH IF YOU HAVE TO. I WANT THIS BOOK.

Immediately we find out:

-Merry can sense the witch's spell, in that it makes the air hard to breathe
-Doyle hates cars
-Lucy rode with them
-Doyle really hates cars
-Doyle likes to connect with the earth and this looks like he is praying
-DOYLE REALLY HATES CARS.

We have a swat witch standing over to the left doing magic things and we are focusing on an elf that gets carsick.

WHY?

 And thank you GOD, Laurel has finally figured out how to summerize her fucking side-trips:

The other guards, including Sage, poured out of the van. At Doyle’s urging we had gone back to the apartment for some more blades. Lucy had been against it, until he pointed out that until the Nameless’s glamour was broken, bullets wouldn’t hurt it. He assured her that they had things at the apartment that would break its glamour if anything could.

 Lucy had decided it was worth a side trip. She had radioed ahead that without some magical aid, the police might not be able to see the thing, let alone shoot it.

If it were any earlier in the book, this would be an entire chapter. I mean, can you just see it? Doyle insists they go back to the apartment. Lucy says they can't go back to the apartment. Doyle says they must. Lucy says they can't. Merry somehow manages to turn this into a pissing contest involving feminism. Nicca can't find that package from Magical Blade of the Month Club. Galen starts making out with Merry because it helps her focus, and they find the missing swords in the couch cushions while he's preforming an in-depth exploratory mission of Uranis. The Magical Mirror-phone is ringing with invitations to the Grand Galloping Gala, which Merry can't attend because the invite came from Rarity and not Princess Mi'amore Cadenza. Kitto is over in the corner playing with his not-toys in his not-a-dog-bed.

--I'm now absolutely convinced this scene existed verbatum, but LKH's publishers said "Not even with Micah's dick."

And then there is more on the spell. Apparently the witch tried "something simple" and it didn't work, so she went to work on the chalk drawing and the air is full of vaguely defined magic of some sort that makes it hard to breathe. Is she suffocating the nameless or something? Fuck me, Silver Ravenwolf has better descriptions than this. DEFINE THE MAGIC, MERRY. DEFINE THE MAGIC.

The spell rolled out and hit its target. The air wavered like heat rolling off summer asphalt. Except this heat wavered up and up, towering over twenty feet into the air.

That's literally as much description as we get. The best human magic can do is that ripply shit you get at three PM in July.

Why are humans not dead?

And of course, the police start shooting at the thing because police never worry about hitting the unarmed civilians inside the house. And the bullets go right through, and Merry idally wonders where the rounds are going.

Hey, am I the only person who has watched Hot Fuzz? Anybody else remember the massive mountain of paperwork they had to do right before Crazywatch guy came in and set the deep water mine off? The SWAT team has a pet witch on payroll. DO NOT TELL ME THIS POLICE DEPARTMENT DOES NOT HAVE PAPERWORK TO MATCH. They probably have a maurading god form, a miffed demigod form, a magical accident form, a "this person clearly irritated God/Goddess" form. Every person here took one look at shimmery mindfuck here and thought "Let's see, I've got thirteen bullets. That's thirteen 'I shot at Cthuluhu' forms...Lovecraft forbid I actually hit anything with those, because that's the "act of God" form, the 'irritated deity' form, the 'insanity meter down twenty percent form," and so on and so on.

Doyle says they have to kill the nameless. But they can't kill the nameless because it is the nameless and they have to break its power. How do you break its power? By "wounding" it.

I am quite seriously imagining every single character in this scene as Angie McDowell's character from Hudson Hawk. "You must pay the rent" "But I can't pay the rent." The fact that I am movie and book hopping right now tells me my brain wants to be doing anything but this book right now. Le sigh.

Anyway, the only way to strip its magic is to wound it, and the only way to wound it is to get close with the Magical Blade of the month and draw blood.

From something that is a construct of all the powers the Faerie don't want.

HOW DOES THIS THING HAVE CORPOREAL FORM?

It's Korrok, isn't it? The Faerie summoned this dimension's version of Korrok. AND IT DOES FART.

...does this mean we can have David Wong and John instead of Merry and Co? And Molly? Seriously. Molly>Merry any day of the month. It is a dog that can drive a car. John will kill THIS version of Korrok with a magic enchilada after doing battle with a few dozen gorilla riding crabs and then spend the rest of the book explaining how we're all just figments of his cock's imagination.

(...fine, fine. /John Dies at the End references. Seriously, have you at least watched the movie yet?)

Anyway, the guys are literally comparing swords to figure out whose is the most magical and thus who is most capable of hurting the Nameless.


Yeah. If we're going to have pointless phallic imagry can we go back to the John Dies mashup? It was more entertaining.

And then more random Gaelic as we describe Doyle's swords. One of them apparently does to the brain what an opened ark of the covenant does to Nazi faces. The other one...

Okay, I would have breezed right on past this shit, but enough people highlighted it for it to be noted in the Kindle. Humanity thinks this is special: 

The daggers on his wrists were twins, formed together at one making. These legendary blades were thought to hit any target once thrown. Their nicknames at court had been Snick and Snack.

Please tell me this has mythological significance and it isn't just LKH trying to be cute.

And then we take a break from all of this for a moment in absurdity:

I had put a belt around the middle of the sundress and threaded a side holster through it to hold my own gun. It ruined the line of the dress, but if things went really wrong, I’d rather survive looking a little silly than die looking perfect.

Let me get this straight. You went back to your apartment to grab weapons and you didn't bother to get out of a dress first? BLUE JEANS. WHITE SHIRT. Come on, Merry. Yeah, you wouldn't look hot and sexy, but you wouldn't look silly and you wouldn't have to fuck with a skirt while you are being attacked by magical godzilla here. 

Well, at least it isn't Anita's "We have leg slits up to my belly button" dress from that date with Jean Claude.

(...yes. I did totally quote a Lana Del Ray song. Thanks for asking!)

We then get a litany of weaponry, armament and clothing that even informs us that Kitto has a sword.

Which is strapped to his Wile E. Coyote T-shirt.

We took time out from the action to make this very clear. The not-a-twelve-year-old Merry has been fucking is wearing a looney-tunes T-shirt.

HAVE I MENTIONED THAT I HATE THIS BOOK YET?

And then LKH actually stuns me.

See, Doyle runs off because he thinks he can kill the Nameless, and Frost runs off because Bromance, and Merry demands a kiss but if he touches her lips he will be "forever by her side" or some shit like that, and then:

Rhys swept me up into his arms while I was still too surprised to react. He kissed me, thoroughly and completely, and ended up wearing most of my red lipstick on his lips. He sat me back on my feet a little breathless. 

“You can’t steal my courage with a kiss, Merry. You don’t love me enough for that.” He ran after the other two before I could think of anything to say.

It's not perfection, but it's the closest we're going to get to good writing in this book. Seriously, it shows you so much about both their characters and their relationship. It's a little cheesy, but in a different book with better plotting and higher stakes (say, fewer boyfriends?) it'd be Bree and not cheddar, you know?

...yes, I am a romantic idiot. Why do you ask?

AND then Nicca points out that nobody has bothered to get Maeve Reed out of the house. 

YEP. This is treated as if it were an option the entire time. Lucy runs off to find a helicopter to get Maeve out fast, while Merry and Galen go blithely into battle. You know, because body guards will do that.

End of chapter.